Official Start Date for Season 4 Announced

The official start date for Season 4 has been announced. It begins 24th June for US players and the 25th June for EU players.

"It's about time", don't you think? Many players have been eaglery waiting for Season 4' to arrive.. and then waited some more and even more. Finally we know approx when. Yay!

Official announcement from Blizzard:

We’re currently planning to end the third Arena season and begin Arena Season 4 on June 24, 2008. This exciting Arena season will introduce the Brutal Gladiator set, and will also allow players to purchase Arena Season 2 items using the honor system. Please note that we will be resetting all Arena team and personal ratings. Players will still retain their Arena points and teams with this reset. The team and personal rating will simply be reset to the default 1500, allowing all teams to once again compete for top honors with a fresh start.

Also, with the end of the third season, players on the top teams from each battlegroup will receive their end-of-season rewards. These include Arena-specific titles that they can display proudly until the end of the new season, and, for the best of the best, an Armored Nether Drake. Please also be aware that with the end of the current season, all previous end-of-season titles will be removed.

[Source]

Recap of Season 4 information

Changes to the Arena and Rating Requirements for Season 4

While Season 3 is still going strong, we wanted to announce ahead of time the rating requirements that will be present for arena items once Season 4 begins. We also wanted to give everyone a heads up to some changes that will be in an upcoming patch, altering how points are gained and players are matched in the arena system. The patch with these changes is scheduled to release before the start of Season 4.

First though, the rating requirement changes:

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.

The changes to the rating requirements for these items reflect the nature of the items, their power, and the relative difficulty that should be had when attempting to obtain them. These items are comparable to those found in the newest 25 person raid zone, Sunwell Plateau, and should therefore also feel very challenging to obtain.

To help ensure that the challenge in obtaining these items stays true to those achieving these ratings, we'll also be implementing new rules with an upcoming patch to curb practices that undermine the core concepts of the arena system. These rules are as follows:

If a character’s personal rating is more than 150 points below the team rating, they will earn points based on their personal rating instead of the team rating.

This means that a player cannot join a highly rated team and begin earning points based purely on the pre-established rating of the team before they joined it. They'll need to compete, improve, and gain a personal rating worthy of the points they would receive.

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.

This means that players cannot join a highly rated team and immediately face highly rated opponents, easily and quickly bringing their personal rating up. Instead they'll need to again compete, improve, and earn their rating.

We're excited to see these changes implemented, which will continue to emphasize the strong competitive nature of the arenas, and the challenge in obtaining the highest end rewards available for PvP.

[Source]

Season 4 Items and Prices

All of the Season 4 items and the prices can be seen below.

Prices

Here's all the prices on Season 4 arena items. FIve pages of goodness.

Armor Sets

Druid
- Feral (damage)
- Restoration (healing)
- Balance (spell damage)
Hunter
Mage
Paladin
- Holy (healing)
- Retribution (damage)
- Protection (tanking/spell damage)
Priest
- Holy (healing)
- Shadow (damage)
Rogue
Shaman
- Enhancement
- Elemental
- Restoration (healing)
Warlock
- Dreadweave
- Felweave
Warrior

New Honor Items

There's many new honor items available. Check out the items and prices below. Also to note: bracers has a 1575 personal rating requirement. Boots got a 1700 personal rating requirement and the rings require 1650 personal rating.

Weapons, Shields, Idols, Librams and misc Items

Axes

Bows

Brutal Gladiator's Longbow

Guns

Brutal Gladiator's Rifle

Crossbows

Brutal Gladiator's Heavy Crossbow

Daggers

Brutal Gladiator's Mutilator (Off Hand)
Brutal Gladiator's Shiv (Off Hand)
Brutal Gladiator's Shanker (One Hand)
Brutal Gladiator's Spellblade (Main Hand)
Brutal Gladiator's Blade of Alacrity (Main Hand)

Fist Weapons

Brutal Gladiator's Left Render (Off Hand)
Brutal Gladiator's Left Ripper (Off Hand)
Brutal Gladiator's Right Ripper (Main Hand)

Idols

Librams

Maces

Brutal Gladiator's Bonecracker
Brutal Gladiator's Bonegrinder (2-hander)
Brutal Gladiator's Gavel (Main Hand)
Brutal Gladiator's Salvation (Main Hand)
Brutal Gladiator's Pummeler (One Hand)
Brutal Gladiator's Swift Judgement (Main Hand)

Off-hand

Polearms

Brutal Gladiator's Painsaw

Shields

Staves

Swords

Brutal Gladiator's Greatsword (2h)
Brutal Gladiator's Quickblade (Off Hand)
Brutal Gladiator's Slicer (One Hand)

Thrown

Brutal Gladiator's War Edge

Totems

Wands

Curse

Addons & Mods

Popular Downloads