Patch 5.2 is on the horizon for World of Warcraft, and with it many changes that has the community excited. Among these changes are a new raid and a new daily quest hub. Another change that will come is to how PvP gear will be achieved. Honestly, I think it is about time Blizzard changed how PvP gearing worked, a process that has been in place since Cataclysm. However, I am not entirely convinced that the way they are changing it is the right direction to take.
First of all, let’s take a look at how PvP gearing works now. In Cataclysm, Blizzard removed the rating requirement for most gear, except for the the Elite gear, which required 2200 rating to earn. This system raised a couple of issues though. The main issue was that players who were not yet at 2200 would need to beat players who were past 2200 and had better gear, making such a task much harder to achieve. Unless players started at the beginning of the season, it would be incredibly difficult to achieve 2200. This formed an invisible wall that most players, even very good players, are unable to get by.
In order to fix this, Blizzard will be removing all 2200 rating requirements. Instead, the Elite gear will be purchasable for Conquest points, once players have earned 27,000 Conquest points on the season. This does achieve Blizzard goal of removing the wall at 2200 rating, while still rewarding better players, since players at higher ratings will earn Conquest points faster, thus getting better gear faster, but not enough to make them unbeatable by lesser geared players.
This change fixes the problem, but I am not entirely convinced it is the best route to take. The problem I see with this system is that it rewards every player with the same gear, eventually, regardless of the rating that the players achieved. In terms of PvE, this would be like having Heroic gear drop, at a lesser rate, in Looking For Raid. Yes, players doing harder content will get the gear faster, but other players will get it eventually, doing easier content. This would certainly upset the community of hardcore raiders, and the PvP gearing may do the same to hardcore PvPers. Instead, I would like to see Blizzard what they did in Wrath, where each set piece was tied to its own rating. This gave players a strong incentive to push for higher ratings, while not making it impossible for lower geared players to earn these ratings.
The changes are not exactly a bad idea, however. The way PvP gear was earned was definitely in need of a change. Maybe it is just the nostalgia I feel from Wrath, but I feel like that was the best system for PvP gearing, but the new changes may provide to be a decent way to deal with PvP gearing. We will just have to wait and see how the system actually works out on live servers.
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