While many people have been sitting around wondering about the new season and what items it will introduce, I simply sat on the, "no new set," band wagon and left it at that. Perhaps it was because of my hope to have a full arena set at some point, or perhaps it was because season 2 items were released along side tier 6 items.

Firstly, I'd just like to point out to those who say, "season 2 gear is equal to tier 5 because they look the same," that this isn't really the case. Just because two item sets look the same does not mean they are the same level. What you need to look at is the item level itself and not the looks. Aesthetics are there to please you and are generally not there to dictate what level an item is.

Now I've recently jumped off the, "no season 3 set," band wagon to take a look at what is actually likely to happen. To do this, I'm going to take a look at and compare the arena sets with the varying tiered sets. This should give us a good idea of what the base level difference between items is.

Firstly, the Absolution Regalia. The Absolution Regalia is Priest tier 6 DPS gear and the most appropriate comparison to Priest season 2 DPS gear for this investigation. Now Thottbot* lists the DPS gear as having an item level of 146 overall. The Merciless set however has an item level of 136 which puts the tier 6 set at 10 levels ahead of the season 2 set.

Secondly, lets compare tier 5 priest DPS gear to the original season 1 Priest DPS gear. This time, tier 5 has an overall item level of 133, 3 levels below season 2 gear. Season 1 Gladiator gear has an overall item level of 123, putting it yet again 10 levels behind the tiered comparison in this study.

Next, I compared season 1 gear to tier 4 and found that the level difference was yet again 3 levels, with tier 4 having an overall level of 120. Season 2 compared to tier 5 has already proven to be 3 levels ahead of the tier 5 set.

So this means that Blizzard want the tiered sets to consistently be 10 levels higher than the arena gear (excluding tier 4) or that they want them to be 3 levels lower than the equivalent arena sets.

Having already sat on the, "no new set," band wagon, I am going to get off and sit in the middle because there is just to much to consider and item levels don't seem to be helping much here. Right back to the old days when HWL epics were the highest level PvP gear you could get you had tier 3 laughing at them from up on high and I'm more inclined to place my vote on the .5 tier difference. That said however, itemisation has changed in TBC and the level difference on the items may have no bearing on its effectiveness in a particular role.

So we have one of two ways to go:

1) Arena Gear is 10 levels lower than its equivalent tiered gear or... 2) Arena Gear is (almost) .5 tiers ahead of its equivalent tiered gear.

Now as I've said I am not going to sit in any camp this time because there is just to much to take into account but I am going to say that I now wouldn't be surprised if there is a season 3 set introduction. If there isn't then a season 4 set is more or less certain.

I'll leave you guys to make up your own minds.