Recently Blizzard have changed the way arena teams are paired up with each other and in the process completely overhauled the way in which rating is gained or lost; the main problem is this system has yet to be decently explained leading to many arena players wondering what exactly is going on.

What has happened is that every player now has a separate invisible rating called the matchmaking mating which is not viewable by the player leading to its nickname of the “spooky ghost rating”. What determines each player’s matchmaking rating appears to be data from past arena game performance.

When you que up to arena matches now you are placed up against teams that have a similar average matchmaking rating to your team to help ensure you are always playing against players of a similar skill level; the reason behind this change was to stop new teams hitting a wall that stops their progress when they keep running into experienced players who reform their teams to try new setups.

If you win or lose a match your team ratings still adjust as normal depending on the current team ratings; what this leads to is players with low team ratings but high matchmaking ratings gaining large amounts of points per win since they should be matched with high rank teams allowing them to quickly rise in the ranks without disturbing less experienced players.

Where this system can be unfair though is the fact that top teams can end up matched against low rated teams that have high matchmaking ratings. Since the matchmaking ratings are similar it is expected that the games will be fairly close however for every win a high rated team has they stand to gain very little while every loss costs dearly; this means it is going to be much much harder for high level teams to stay at the top, giving little incentive for them to play more than their mandatory 10 games a week.

Equally it will be very hard for players who perform poorly in the arena to simply reset their teams when their rating drops low since they will still be matched with low ranking players making it much harder for them to advance to higher ratings; what will matter now is consistent performance rather than a lucky win or loss streak through a setup change.

On top of these ratings you will still have your own personal rating which is designed to show your overall contribution to a team and prevent players from simply being boosted; this should always converge towards your team rating as you play more games.

Overall these changes to the arena will make for much more challenging and fair matches for every player and provide a closer estimation of a players actual skill levels all while making things far more challenging and risky for the battle to become a Gladiator. The players at the top will only be able to stay there if they truly are the most dominating teams in the battlegroup!