Clarification about the Arena Rating Calculations

There has been some confusion regarding the changes to Arena Team and Personal rating calculations in patch 2.4.2 for those players with 100% participation on their team so we’d like to clarify how the system works now.

The adjustment to a team’s personal rating can vary based on the average personal rating of the other team while team ratings will always adjust based directly on the team rating of the other team. If the average personal rating of the players queuing for a game is more than 150 points below the team’s rating, the team will be queued against an opponent matching or similar to the average personal rating. Adjustments to your personal rating are based on the ratings by which the opposing team was queued.

• If the opposing team was queued based on their team rating, your personal rating will be adjusted based on their team rating.
• If the opposing team was queued based on their average personal rating, your personal rating will be adjusted based on their average personal rating.

Example:

• Team A has a rating of 1550. Team B has a rating of 1750.
• Team A has an average personal rating of 1520 for the members participating in the match. Team B has an average personal rating of 1490 for the members participating in the match.
• Team A wins. Team A’s team rating is adjusted based off of a win over Team B’s team rating of 1750.
• All members of Team A have their personal ratings adjusted based off of a win over Team B’s average personal rating of 1490 but it will be a smaller gain when compared to the rating their team got.

This change promotes having teams compete against players who’s ratings statistically match up best against them. In turn this will help provide the most competitive environment possible in the Arena.

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Character Slots & Death Knights

We don’t plan to add another character slot with the introduction of the Death Knight, which means that you would have to either delete or transfer a character, if you wish to roll a Death Knight on a realm that already has 10 characters on it.

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Death Knight making other classes obsolete? No, not really

It would be rather silly to think that the Death Knight will make other classes obsolete, because that is really not the case. The Death Knight will bring its own flavour and style to the game, but at the same time it will be able to share roles with some of the existing classes. We have seen quite a few posts recently saying that there are too few tanks to go around, posts that claim that it takes forever to find a tank for PUGs or that guild progression is being slowed down due to shortage of tanks. By adding another potential tank to the mix, the Death Knight should most surely be considered a helpful addition to the game instead of a threatening one. I don't think Warriors will have anything to worry about in WotLK, because they will not be replaced by the Death Knight. Warriors will still be needed in groups and guilds, as they have always been, and they will still be great tanks. This also holds true for Druids and Paladins by the way.