The new season 4 arean rating requirements have me seriously reconsidering buying a better computer and Age of Conan. I love World of PvP and often enjoy BGs. I want to be part of big epic battles where I kill Alliance (especially gnomes), not a 2 on 2 against other Horde in an arena match that is totally meaningless.

Except arena is the only way to get serious gear for PVP, which sucks for people who don’t have fun in arena. Raiding Stormwind is hard, why doesn’t that make me eligible for gear? Defending Thrall against 200 Alliance would be tough too so why doesn’t that make em eligible for gear? Because when I walk into Stormwind, I want as much resilience as possible. When I’m in AV I want as much resilience as possible.

These are my choices as I see them:

1. Spend many hours not having fun in arenas hoping to get a high enoughr ating to purchase some S4 gear. Then do the stuff I enjoy in awesome gear.

2. Do the stuff I enjoy in pve gear and the limited pvp gear I get from BGs. Basically meaning I have to be a rogue or a paladin. I’d like to play a shadow priest but their survivability in pve gear sucks. Eventually I could do enough BGs to get all S2 or better gear, but I don’t like grinding BGs…

3. Quit “world of arenacraft” and find a game that actually supports world PVP.

3 is lame because I hate starting over. I do have close friends playing AOC and if they say it’s cool I’ll have to consider it.

2 allows me to spend most of my time having fun, but pvp is more fun when I live and it doesn’t give me access to a lot of good pvp gear.

1 means I spend a lot of time playing a game and not having fun doing it. I might as well just work and earn some money while not having fun.

So I’m gonna try choice 2. We’ll see what happens.

Possible objections – I know some people will say that this is good because it rewards the serious pvpers. That is an exaggeration though. This system rewards the serious arena players. I am or would like to be a serious pvper, in battles with hundreds of other players. However for pvpers like me there are no gear rewards.

The rules we’re tlaking about by the way:

When Season 4 begins, Season 3 items will be reduced in personal and team arena rating requirement to:

Shoulders: 1950
Weapon: 1800

The new Season 4 items will have the below personal and team arena rating requirements:

Shoulders: 2200
Weapon: 2050
Head: 1700
Chest: 1600
Legs: 1550
Gloves: none
Off-hand: none

In addition, some of the Season 4 quality items that will be purchasable with honor will also carry a personal and team arena rating requirement:

Boots: 1700
Ring: 1650
Bracers: 1575
Belt: none
Necklace: none
Trinket: none

The Season 2 items, which will move to the honor system when Season 4 begins, will continue to have no rating requirement.

Gnometoseer is 48 now and pretty soon he can get into AV. At lower levels I may not be able to do much but I will go in there and try to do my part fairly early (level 52 or so).

On Goldsong I waited until level 58 to enter, but with Gnometosser I will be a bit more greedy. I want some stuff from AV before I hit 60:

Bandolier and quiver at 55, plus I want my crossbow as soon as spossible (like level 51 or 52).

I think I also want a Frostwolf mount (not a big kodo fan) and a battle standard (becauses it might be kind of fun / cool). That stuff I can earn later. Maybe get the mount from 58-60 and maybe do the banner then or maybe at 70 or maybe not at all.

I bought a Lei of Lillies for Gonmetosser for 30 gold today, dinged 46, equipped it, used it to make a lily root. I love it and think 30 gold was a steal. If I can get one reasonably it also seems like a must for Goldsong – a mana/health boost independent of potion timers? Awesome for a tank.

I think this will be great for pvp and pve. I mean when don’t you need mana and health?

I want to get heroic quality tanking gear for Goldsong about as soon as I hit 70 so I might need to start working toward revered for Strength of the Untamed. I have some rep and some unidentified plant parts to turn in from grinding for Sporeggar honored and getting my Petrified Lichen Guard.

Natasha’s battle chain and Thalodien’s Charm have 10 more stamina but no dodge. I like dodge. However these two don’t require level 70 or a rep grind.

I’ll definitely try to pick one of those up before hitting 70 in order to tank before I can wear the CE neck. But I think the CE neck will be the one I need for heroics because of the dodge. With over 8,000 health now I’m not really worried about getting to 10-11,000 by the time I hit 70 so I doubt the extra 10 stamina will make a huge difference when I am ready for heroics.

I’ll also need KOPT revered for Timewarden’s leggings I guess. I don’t have to worry about that one just yet. I do have to figure out if they are much better than felsteel legs or Legguards of the Resolute Defender (which don’t require 70) – either of which would save me a rep grind… But it looks like the KOT legs win with stamina and dodge. And I need KOT rep anyway for the head chant.

Well if you check out Goldsong, you’ll see he is now level 64 and IMO well geared with stuff from ramparts, the engineering helm (now complete with meta gem – 10% shield block and 12 defense – and with enduring talasite – 4 defense 6 stamina), and the Sporeggar shield.

The rest of my gear has cheap gems from the guy in Thrallmar but since things like light-touched breastplate will be replaced long before my goggles, I decided to go cheap on their gems and spend on my meta gem in the helm.

It has been a busy couple days, pugging Ramps a few times, but I think I’ll see a difference when I go back into the BGs with my extra level and improved gear.

As for pugging ramps, it wasn’t too bad. I think part of that was because I was tanking. We had some funny hunters on one run – one dude explained his sucking by saying he was on a friend’s toon – the other dude’s bow broke before the final 2 bosses. We didn’t end up wiping until that stupid dragon and we had him down to 20% or so. Well there was the one time the feral druid decided to pull like 20 guys when no one was ready. A simple “I pull” solved that issue and then we didn’t wipe until the dragon at the end.

Anyway, I know from playing Gnometosser that you don’t need to be super skilled to dps as a hunter. And I’ve done enough healing on Goldsong to know it is 10 times easier than tanking. So being the tank makes it easier to PUG because if I keep aggro off the healer he’d have to be amazingly sucky not to heal me (though that did happen when I was pugging Zul Farrak way back). And the DPSers can shoot their arrows or whatever as long as they don’t go AFK or something.

Pretty soon I’ll be pugging Blood Furnace. I think with my upgraded gear (didn’t have the meta gem and some other things for Ramps) I am 100% ready. My talents are messed up – will probably respec when I go do my 64 training – then do Blood Furnace.