This is something that has bothered me for awhile, so I supposed I'd get into it here.

About a week ago I was on <Kill Order>'s vent horde side, when one of their former hunters (who had transfered off the server to a guild in BT/MH). The hunter stated that I did not know when I was talking about when I responded to his statement of "ya I killed someone with only my 2 swords and a bow." I quipped back with "Well hunters can solo Illidan at lvl 65 and thats the reason that the hunters can't use his Warglaives."

Long story short, I was told that I didn't know shit about the class and having a 70 hunter on the arena test realm (which I don't) doesn't make me an expert. I was told to go kill Illidan and then maybe I'd know what I was talking about.

Now as far as the hunter goes, he knows nothing about me, as the only toon I have that is older than my hunter is my original paladin. I also know for a fact that given a head start, if a hunter knows what they are doing they can normally kite someone to death. This however is all beside the point.

"If you haven't Killed Illidan you don't know what you are talking about."

"If you haven't gotten over 2k in S3, you don't know what you are talking about."

Both of these statements seem prevalent in this game now more than ever. The consistent talk about "Welfare Epics" both out of Kara and the S1 from honor are looked down upon now. I realize the frustration at the S1 epics, since I can honestly say this season has had the most pairty for lack of a better term than S1. No longer is it epics v blues, but its epics v epics. In S2 the sword you could grind from honor (2h) had 93.3 dps where as the S2 Sword via arena was 126 or so dps. This season, we are back to the sword you can grind from honor being 116. dps where as the sword from S3 is 135 or so. This dramatically closed the given gap thus minimizing the effect of gear (for the person who grinds for it) in the arenas.

The same welfare epics out of Kara and off the badge vendors achieve the same thing in the PvE Side. This game is always in motion, with new people arriving every day.  You never know when you might find someone new to the game who is great at playing. They allow people to rather quickly gear up for new specs, or allow new people to catch up with friends in my case.

I am not even covering the spec questions here. I won't get into people in multiple guilds that look down upon me even though I am ret (which I admit to being the cause to at least leaving one of my former guilds). Yes on raid night you are not there alone, but instead you are there with 24 other people (and Garreth's mods) to achieve a common purpose, thus for at least that time I can understand tryin to do your spec/enchant/mods/et al to the best of your ability. Just remember though, if someone comes in with what you think was a strange spec, someone else had to pinoneer that spec long before it was commonplace.

A good example of a spec/combo for me regardes my main arena team on my other server. My RL friend and I run Shadowstep Rogue/Ret paladin and have been since Season 1. We stuck with the specs through all their ups and downs, becoming better players at our classes imo because of it. And what many used to write off as an "lol who runs that combo" has become one of the most dangerous 2v2 teams in the bracket.

No, not everyone has Killed Illidan and no not everyone has reached 2k, but because they haven't yet, or because they are just geared in kara epics does not mean they don't know what they are doing. Especially since you never know when you migh tone day find yourself under them. Where they are your class leader, raid leader, guild leader etc.

Or worse, meeting them in some arena in the future just to drop 100 total points to them when the RNG for arena keeps pairing you 2 up.

/rant