Arena: Week 3
We left off from our matches last week with high hopes of getting into some skirmishes over the weekend, get some practice, good stuff. Oh, and there was the whole arena snafu where everything went down and the ratings were borked and much QQ was spewed about the forums.
The good news is that we did our games before the maintenance (when the points were calculated and everything went to hell) so we got to keep our 1-9 score for that week, 2-18 total. OK, that’s not very good news, but we kept our points which means that I can buy my shoulders today.
If I weren’t busy reinstalling WoW. Stupid corrupted launcher thingy.
The bad news is that RL™ blew up for my partner and I got kind of busy running around honoring elders – no skirmishes at all again for the week. And again, no one skirmishes on Monday nights.
The worse news is that when we ran our matches for the week yesterday, we discovered that the arena rating system has metamorphosized into some incredibly complicated monstrosity. We have our Personal Rating. We have our Team Rating. And now, we have a Hidden Rating. Which, as the name implies, is hidden.
This new HR is supposed to fix matching issues and stop points sales and end global warming. What it really does is freak out people at the close of a match.
Our first two weeks a loss would look something like we go down 10 points, they go up 10 points. The points varied from 10ish to 18ish, usually around 14. We ended week 2 with a TR of 1290-something I think.
This week I kept track of the points, the arena, and took better notes.
Week 3:
- Dalaran Sewer, Hunter and Druid, -23/10
That’s right, we lost 23 points and they gained 10. We are going to sink like a stone. It was our first match of the night, so we were still warming up. The druid was stealthed at the start so we focused on the hunter, who in turn, focused on me. We did enough damage to draw the druid out, he went tree and worked on saving his buddy. I tried to get into a corner to get an evocate off and get some health back (Glyph of Evocation = win), but I wasn’t quite out of line of sight. Moonfire. Dead. Watched my partner get creamed.
Discovered something odd. The druid was wearing a reputation tabard for the Kirin Tor. The buff came up as “stealable” on X-Perl. When my partner tried to spellsteal the renew and other goodies the druid had, guess which buff dropped. Yep, the fucking Kirin Tor buff dropped. I championed Wyrmrest Accord for the rest of the night just in case. - Dalaran Sewer, Paladin and Rogue, 6/-20
OMFG, we won a match that was not the last of the evening! And, OMFG we only got 6 points for doing it!?! Of course, the rogue was stealthed at the beginning. No problem, just burn the pally down until he bubbled, switch to the rogue, back to the pally when he was vulnerable. I <3 Counterspell on heals. Back to the rogue that was performing some aggressive accupuncture on my vitals. I did not get my Ice Block off before the rogue’s poisons wore me down. I was trying to get my Mirror Images up before I popped IB and just didn’t have the reflexes. My partner had about 7k life left, popped his IB just to be on the safe side and let the summoned water elemental chew up the rogue. - Dalaran Sewer, Warrior and Hunter, -20/5
It’s going to be very hard to gain ground like this, losing 4 times as many points as we can gain, WTF. This fight was very ugly and very brief. Tried to PoM-polymorph the hunter and failed, was dead three seconds later. Partner was not up much longer. - Blade’s Edge Mountain, Death Knight and Rogue, 7/-24
Wow, a second win? This is incredible! And we’re out of the sewers, but I hate this map. Military common sense tells you that the high ground is desirable. I die every time I go up the damn ramp. We hang back for a second, just the lone DK with below-average hit points. Like only 5-6k more than me and I’m a squishy fucking mage. Decide to head up the ramp and greet him on the walkway. My partner is invisible and walking beside me. I get sapped on the way up, no surprise. Get out of the sap, but that rogue is on me like glue. Poisonous glue. It burns. I die. While I was dying, my partner actually pulled off a nasty Blizzard and tore the two of them (three counting the ghoul) a new one. I went down and the DK dropped right after. At that point it became a cat and mouse game with the rogue down on the ground trying to use pillars to break LoS. Hard to do that when an angry mage comes around the pillar one way and his water elemental takes the other side. What was weird, was that the rogue never vanished. Not once. - Dalaran Sewer, Warrior and Mage, 8/-24
And we’re back in the sewers. Their mage started invisible. The warrior ran up to the platform, we went to meet him, popping Mirror Image on the way. Where there were two mages, now the warrior had 8 to pick from. And they were all casting spells at him. He popped Spell Reflect, good idea, and just stood there, bad idea. He was dead before his buddy came out of invisibility. We took turns counterspelling him and used Frost Nova to keep him pinned down while we just unloaded on him. - Lorderon, Death Knight and Paladin, -18/5
This was the worst WTF match I think we have had. BOTH of us lost our home keys on the keyboard and did some bizarre things. I use the mouse for the majority of my movement, but still strafe off the keys. Somehow I shifted by one to the right. My apolgies to the person that got the bizarre whisper full of random letters and numbers. My partner ended up sending gibberish to the guild channel. By the time we got it sorted out, it was too late. - Actually, this is the worst WTF match we’ve ever had. We lost. We don’t know where we were or who we fought, but the arena page was pretty adamant that at this point we had fought 7 matches. The only thing I can think of is my partner got a phone call and we had to “Hide” from a match or two. Does this count as a forfeit? I dunno. It’s either that or the HR decided we sucked so bad in the previous match that we lost twice for good measure.
- Ring of Valor, Warlock and Rogue, 10/-19
My favorite arena, this is where our “Elevator Burn” move was born. And it’s the only arena with an elevator, so it’s the only arena we can pull this off in. Elevator goes up, water elemental and mirror images come out, gates drop, first target dies. In this case, it was the warlock first, who did put forth valiant effort in staying alive. Those healthstones can pack quite a burst back into the green on health. But a counterspelled warlock makes for an unhappy warlock. Had his felguard chasing me, too bad for him most of my arsenal is instant casts. The rogue died shortly after, he just couldn’t get close enough to us. - Lorderon, Warrior and Priest, 8/-17
Got a successful polymorph on the warrior (I remembered to Ice Lance to stop the Charge, go me!). Destroyed the healer so fast I almost felt sorry for her. She drops, spirit healer takes her place. We burn down the warrior fast, almost down, the spirit healer saves him, and he’s focusing hard on me. My partner frost novas him in place and I dash off around a corner for some heals. I’m an idiot and use a bandage instead of Evocate, durrrr…. what glyph do I have? I come back just in time to throw another Arcane Barrage as he goes down. - Ring of Valor, Hunter and Hunter, 14/-20
One of the night elf hunters starts off in Shadowmeld, but there are two kitties so we know what’s up. Elevator Burn the visible hunter, he runs off to the back and tries to feign. Funny thing is, kitty keeps attacking me and the little bar at the top tells me that I still have two opponents. Re-target and obliterate him. All the while, the second hunter has come out of hiding and is trying to kill me. OK, he’s succeeding in killing me, but my death is not in vain. Death comes for hunter #2 in the form of frostbolts to the back. - Ring of Valor, Druid and Priest, -12/8
We decided to play an 11th game (10th to us) just in case the other game disappeared as randomly as it appeared. This was a bad move on our part. The Elevator Burn ALMOST killed the moonkin! But the night elf priest in shadowmeld came out just in time to heal him. Apparently a priest can mass dispel mirror images. Who knew? Certainly not us until 6 seconds into the fight. We kept trying to kill the druid and by the time we made the call to swap to the priest it was too late. Bad match for points, but good match for learning
We had some good matches and came out 6-5. So we won more than we lost. Our rating should be same if not a smidgen higher than before we started, right?
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
No.
WTF?
We came into this team completely fresh. Literally. Neither of us even so much as have ever had a character in an arena before this team. This is the only team we play on. We are the only two members of the team. Last week we ended with a TR in the upper 1200, 1290-something I think.
We end this week at a TR of 1226 and a PR each of 1246.
The forums are full of QQ but lacking any definitive blue posts. Hell there’s even a screen shot of a team that WON their match and their rating went DOWN. They WIN and the LOSE at the same time, WTF?!?!?!
It looks like the new HR system takes a while to “normalize.” We’ll keep doing our ten matches a week for points, but there is zero incentive to do any more than ten while we are still on our learning curve. If the gains from the wins equaled the raping from the losses, we might play more ranked games. But when we win more than we lose and we lose rating…
My reinstall is done. My launcher is still buggered (Vista can die a painful death, I hate you), but I can get into the game again. I’m off to get my welfare shoulders and then to the lag-fest known as Wintergrasp. Needz moar marks!!!
