Arena personal rating

From WoWWiki

Arena Personal Rating is a new arena feature introduced by Blizzard with the release of Arena Season 3. This is a new requirement focused on making the Arena system more challenging.

How does Personal Rating work?

Personal Rating starts at 1500 when you create/join a new team. You can have different personal ratings on your different teams, which means that your 2vs2 personal rating can be completely difffent to your 5vs5 personal rating. The way it works is very similar to the Arena team rating, the difference is that personal rating is based ONLY on the fights you actually participate.

Lets say you have a 2vs2 team with 3 members, 2 DPSers and 1 healer. Usually the two DPS will take turns to play with the healer so they can both have at least 30% games played. In this case, you will notice that your healer personal rating is higher than both of the DPSers personal rating, because he is actually playing 100% of the games while you only play a smaller percentage.

How do I use Personal Rating?

Personal Rating is required to buy Arena Season 3 (shoulders/weapons) and Arena Season 4 items (all except gloves). You must have a certain personal rating as well as team rating in order to purchase some of the Season 3 and Season 4 rewards. However, you do not have to maintain these ratings to continue use of the item.