The arena ticket items are far too overpowered and at no inconvenience, save the lack of health. I feel that that is not enough, which leads to another suggestion: mana needs to be used in the arena. It is a factor elsewhere and it should be in the arena. If you run out of health, you die, but you can't run out of mana? That's not right.
I propose that mana is again used in the arena and that the arena ticket items will HALVE the user's mana. This would put the arena gear at a great inconvenience to wear, preventing from incredibly lower levels from potentially defeating higher levels simply because of their overpowered stats.
Totally disagree. What if someone was waiting to fight and he fled a battle to get to the arena and he still has to use mana? I say keep it the way it is.
Arena ticket items halve the user's mana? What if you use two? So the high level with 400 mana that wants some boots, and a hat, and a cloak, and oh, a nice ring, now has 50 mana? That doesn't even make any sense!
And mana should NOT be used in the arena, because it's supposed to be friendly competition between wizards. There's just no reason for friendly competition to waste mana when it doesn't have to.
Actually, the pvp gear is balanced by how difficult it is to get the gear. The problem right now is that group ranked is dominated by chain stunning, so I would stick to 1v1 for now.
Firstly, choosing to accept your match is not considered fleeing, and will NOT drain your mana as such. Secondly, health and mana are both refilled at the start of each match, so this isn't a problem for other users. Lastly, as the items currently reduce 100% of MAX mana, they would simply reduce 50% of MAX mana, meaning that the refill from the start of the match would only refill them to their new halfway MAX.
Though I can hardly say PvP is anything close to friendly competition, even IN friendly competition, there is no reason that limitations that would normally require concern shouldn't be implemented in PvP combat. TRUE competition should include ALL normal limiting factors.
Just because something is being used doesn't mean it is being wasted. I might as well say that battling monsters should waste my mana because I might need it for PvP. You need not do either, but should you choose to, you opt to drain your resources, whether you deem it useful or not. Besides, health and mana are currently refilled after PvP matches and I intend for it to remain that way.
You do propose an interesting issue Blazian, and for that my idea may need to be altered somewhat. Perhaps instead of reducing mana as a percentage, it would simply subtract a defined amount of mana as the items previously did. Since there are 3 items to the set, then I propose each would reduce 75 mana, leaving a user with exceptional mana (say, 460 as I have on my Storm) still left with 235 mana.
These items NEED to come at a price, and they currently do not. cbfan14 suggests that is already fair enough, but I simply disagree. One needs only to obtain enough tickets to buy the gear and then they possess a permanent advantage at no cost afterward. The tickets are not useful for anything else, so that's HARDLY a fair price.
Mana in stories of wizards and many other games has been the fuel behind their spells. The only thing that is accomplished from removing this significant aspect of the wizard theme is eliminating another varying element that could potentially make duels much more interesting. With mana eliminated in PvP, many items that offer high amounts of mana are useless, and otherwise extremely useful items should not be compromised because of a faulty idea. Without mana use in PvP, a duel could potentially continue forever, as long as each member has too reshuffles, allowing for an infinite cycle of reshuffling at NO nonrenewable cost whatsoever.
Many of my friends in-game with the complete set of gear still agree that there needs to be a price for such advantageous stats.
Mana should not be used in the arena. That is the point of the arena clothes -100 mana per item. You can't use them outside of the arena.
As far as not coming with a price? 1000 tickets for the commander robe is a high price. you need to win 100 duels to get it.
The commander cowl is 700 tickets, so requires another 70 wins.
And lastly the commander boots are 500 tickets so require another 50 wins.
To outfit a character in the commander arena clothes requires 220 wins, so a minimum of 220 duels if you never lose, and I don't know anyone on the top 100 list who never loses. This requires a lot of time to earn that many tickets. And you would also need to maintain at least an 800 rank to buy the clothes.
Off topic:
I also agree with Valkoor above, and unless you know the other team in 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4 there is a fair chance they will chain stun you to win and gain tickets/rank. I did not say earn, because chain stunning to get tickets and rank is not earning them. This is a problem that needs to be fixed sooner rather than later.
I previously suggested adding a resistance category for stuns, but would also add effects like beguile to this category as well.
You assume that at level 50 every wizard has a certain amount of mana. This is not the case. Both my level 50 wizards have 120 mana. Reducing mana in any way for the arena gear would severely handicap them in PvP, and this should not be the case when wearing clothes specifically for PvP and only useful in the arena.
You are also incorrect that all you need to do is earn enough tickets. You also need to maintain a certain rank, and for the high end clothes that is a rank of 800+ which is not that easy to maintain. And as I previously stated to buy the full arena clothes it costs 2,200 tickets, and even winning four duels per day will take 55 days, and that is only wins.
You also assume that the arena clothes are only an advantage, but they do come at another price. Most clothes provide additional health, but the arena clothes provide no such benefit, so by wearing the arena clothes you sacrifice health for resistance. In the case of one of my level 50's they normally have 2,952 health while wearing the best level 50 clothes, and when in Arena boots and robe with a crown hat has 2,388 health. So wearing the arena clothes costs almost 600 health.
Also having dueled in many matches with opponents wearing the full arena clothes they are more difficult to defeat, but the clothes do not provide an insurmountable advantage.
