We Respec and Try Again
The SSC raid got canceled again. Bela respec’d Discipline/Holy and we respec’d slightly but maintained our 41/20/0 for the most part, and off we went. 4-3 for our second night before the clock stuck the top of the hour at ten and we were required elsewhere.
Match 1. Loss, BM/MM Hunter and and BM/SV Hunter, Nagrand. Nice guy who reads our blog cleaned our clock. Holy stamina, Batman, nice PvP-gear! Now get outta our ratings.
/huff
/seriously though, mucho love to WB!
Match 2. Loss! BM Hunter and Holy Pally, Ruins. Even as we write this, this combo eludes a quick strategy. Pally first with mana burn and Viper Sting? Yuck, hate this combo, and our first two-loss streak.
/cry
Match 3. Win! MM Hunter and Disc Priest, Ruins. You can run but you cannot hide, little squishy. Yummy and it breaks us out of the 5-7 hole into which we had fallen.
Match 4. Win, Resto Druid and Frost Mage, BEM. Killed the elemental first, mage was easy afterwards. Our first two-win streak!
/cheer!
Match 5. Loss, MM Hunter and Combat Rogue, Ruins. Rogue was in full season/battleground/something PvP gear, MM hunter was a 0/51/10 spec with greenies. Rogue destroyed our priest, we destroyed the hunter, we almost had the rogue down but he caught us. Phooey, we really wanted this one.
Match 6. Win, Elemental Shaman and Frost Mage, Nagrand. Again, killed the water elemental and the mage was cake.
Match 7. Win, Holy Pally and Balance Druid, BEM. Longest fight of the night, by far. Got the druid’s mana down after what seemed like three minutes and he was finished. Without counting our priest’s damage, we did exactly 50,000 damage to this group. Long fight, best of the night, called it because it was late and we wanted to go out with our second two-win streak and an overall winning record, 9-8.
/dance-machine!
For those who cannot follow our link at the top, here’s a screenie of our current PvP spec for 2v2 arena. We’re not saying it’s the best, but it’s much better than before. Comment away, of course.
Clip on 29 Jan 2008 at 12:25 am #
Good to see ya entering into arena. It is a lot of fun and it will be nice to read about your PvP adventures again.
Chesko on 29 Jan 2008 at 12:36 am #
I know you think improved stings is a useless talent, but it is much more important than bigger crits (with resilience negating most of that and the chances of it happening by a ton) for draining.
That comment only makes sense if you keep your current build, which I would reccomend changing. 41/20 is good with good pvp gear, but the best PVP build for your gear is 41/5/15 (with 3 in humanoid slaying [since you're only going against humanoids], 2 in hawkeye (helps when they are playing the LOS game with you], 3 in improved wing clip [best hunter talent in pvp to gain range], 2 in entrapment [or 1 in entrapment and the other in hawk eye], and then dump the rest in survivalist for that 10% boost in HP [or 4 in surv and 1 in deterrance]), stamina is by far the #1 stat in arena. The fact that you have a winning record is a testament to your ability to play your class well, but until you get a fair amount of PVP gear with +stam, you need to get HP anyways possible.
garil on 29 Jan 2008 at 3:32 am #
A feeling of puzzlement v_v
Sisutar on 29 Jan 2008 at 5:10 am #
Whaaat ? BRK does arena now ? Brilliant!
I would love for hunter PvP and arena to be featured in your blog more from now on.
I have been doing 2v2 arena for 5 weeks now so I’d say I know a thing or two about it now. Chesko speaks wise words. Improved stings is godly for arena. In arena people will always have masses of stacked resilience, and I feel that going for lethal and mortal shots isn’t the way to go for arena. I tried the good old 41/20/0 similar to your spec when I started, then I started experimenting with BM/SV specs and things have been going MUCH better. Im currently at 42/0/19 and i’m a frikkin tank, while still dealing great damage, this is aided by my gear which is focused on agility and stamina with little emphasis on crit. And since the main sacrifice of forgoing MM is losing crit its no big loss imho!
I play with a resto druid (Much cheers to Reetveter if you read this!), and oftentimes when facing a dps plus healer team the fights are LONG as hell, and 2 points in spirit bond help out quite a bit in those cases. Though lately i’ve been considering placing those points in deflection instead, since parry is godly for surviving against rogues and warriors (the 2 main classes that give us trouble).
Sorry to ramble on, hope this was some use to someone =)
Damaged on 29 Jan 2008 at 6:34 am #
Good on ya BRK for trying it out. I haven’t mainly coz i dont want to cough up 25g every time I move from raiding to arena. Shurely there must be a way round this need to respec everytime
Is there one spec that you can raid and pvp arena with - or am i asking for the holy grail here?
Katjun and Pinchy on 29 Jan 2008 at 7:42 am #
Well the improved stings rock when playing the “long drained out battle”. I actually respecced MM/SV to play arena even though I am a BM at heart :/
megatf fanboy on 29 Jan 2008 at 8:35 am #
If you want to see how good a hunter can be in 2v2 arena do a search on the wow hunter forums for Megatf. He did some movies and comments on how to beat every class combo. He is MM spec last I looked but it will give you an idea on what you can improve on. After the latest hunter buffs we received his team has moved to #1 on his realm with a 2200 rating. He may not be the best hunter out there but he is the best I have seen that is willing to share so much information. I will post a link for the original strat / video post. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=8B24E7506EFC8D287AF1F79C9C5B6A50?topicId=965513044&sid=1&pageNo=1
Buckwild on 29 Jan 2008 at 9:07 am #
I noticed that two out of the three losses were to double DPS teams. With a healer, all this means is that either you or the healer needs more surviving power. If you have a healer and they don’t, every bit of damage you deal is not usually healed by them, while yours is. The longer the game, the more likely you will win.
Spec-wise, I don’t play a hunter, but Chesko sounds like he knows what he is talking about.
Lurker on 29 Jan 2008 at 11:09 am #
DPS/Healer should ALWAYS win vs DPS/DPS. However, that’s gear dependant. As BRK is not in good pvp gear, his priest probably isn’t either. You guys get gear, and you’ll find it easy to get more wins.
GJ on the mage btw. Never, ever let that elemental alone. It should take you 2-3 hits to kill it with your current gear. It deals massive damage (sometimes I really feel it deals more damage than the mage himself) and does a ranged frost nova every 30sec. Don’t let it beat on your priest
IMO, imp stings is nice, but not good enough for me to respec. HOWEVER. Imp concussive shot is not even an option imo. SO if you want to dump an extra 5 points in, put it in stings, not cs. BTW, with a holy priest, you may find yourself to have mana troubles on thsoe long fights. You mentioned 50k damage. My current high record was over 94500 damage done in a 2v2. Longest freakin match ever. We won
Final note… you can buy drinks from hall of champions. These can be used in arena if you FD and drink when a druid runs away for instance. don’t underestimate freezetrap, drink when it’s down to 1v1 and you’re losing due to mana issues, i.e. kiting a holy paladin that’s shocking you to death.
Dagashai on 29 Jan 2008 at 11:34 am #
How’s that imp concussive shot working out for ya? I’m always tempted to dump it for efficiency… but then think better of it…
As far as improved stings… I notice a dearth of pallies among your opponents… (tho I’ve NEVER seen that many hunters myself… I think you attract them, not surprisingly…) anyway, Imp stings work well on pallies, priests and mages… sometimes other hunters. Of these classes, the only one you can’t burn down without a mana draing fight is the pally. And yo partner should pwn a pally naturally. So I rather doubt that imp stings would help you much more than what yuir packing now.
Another reason to avoid imp stings… you inevitably start thinking scorpid to keep the pally from purging yo stings… and who the hell wants to read the rantings of BIGREDSCORPID?
megan on 29 Jan 2008 at 12:05 pm #
BM Hunter for 2v2 belongs on 2DPS team. BRK does this with a Shadow Priest, who also can Mana Burn if they haven’t gibbed someone during the BigRedCooldown/Silence/Mind Blast/SW:Death train.
Imp. Stings in this case is still very nice even without a Scorpid—just because he’s paired with a Priest, the option to play the drain game is nice.
I’m not too sure about the Priest going Disc/Holy though, they are more suited for a Marks Hunter pairing.
Anj and GirlsVsWorld on 29 Jan 2008 at 12:16 pm #
How is the Improved Arcane Shot in practice? I have to say I’ve never touched it on account of the “Aaw, come on! Just 1sec?!” factor. I know that with in-your-grill PvP encounters a second can seem like a long time but then, on the other hand, it’s not that long.
Bela on 29 Jan 2008 at 12:52 pm #
@megan
I’m not sure where you’re getting your information to base these opinions on. IMHO we did a lot better when I was specced Disc than Shadow. Being a priest makes me a target for most teams, but being discipline gives me a lot more ways to deal with it than shadow. Most of our early losses were due to me being dead. I don’t miss silence, nor am I having a problem with the longer CD on fear. Overall, I think this spec is better suited to our team dynamics than shadow was.
Endimion on 29 Jan 2008 at 1:24 pm #
Match 2. - should have mana burned the hunter first. an autoshotting hunter isn’t gonna do crap. also deffinately consider killing pets if you can. this allows your priest to sometimes get OOC and drink.
Match 5. Entrapment…. it’s a glorious thing
glad to see some PvE peeps finally crossing over to the glory of arena
you should make a 3v3 tho. faster ques and doesn’t really take that much more organization.
Chesko on 29 Jan 2008 at 1:56 pm #
In response to the idea of a 3v3, the best combo to go along with your priest friend is to pick up a sl/sl lock (although you’d probably be better off switching to a 0/41/20 build). You can drain their healer in a manner of seconds with that team and even against a pally, the locks dots will keep your viper from being dispelled.
Mace Rogue/Resto Druid can work nice as well. Pally/warrior combo is horrible as far as the fun factor is concerned because you’re the easy choice to get targeted first.
Side note: I’ve been reading your blog for a while (even though this is the first post I’ve responded to) and am in a guild that is behind you in progression (we just downed Gruul for the first time this past Sunday!) so I’ve always found your insight amazingly helpful. Since reading your tips, I’ve gone from being near the top of the dps charts to consistently being #1 on nearly every raid and definitely every boss fight (and just topped 1000 dps for the first time last week on Shade of Aran! =D). I’ve even writing my Master’s thesis on WoW and will most likely cite your blog within it. So thanks and glad I can finally offer a some help back your way. Even though I am Horde through and through, all of us hunters have a bond.
Side note 2: Look up Hammura on wow armory to see a good MM build if you ever want to try it out. He is considered by many to be the best PVP hunter in WoW and is part of the best 5v5 in all of WoW (although looking at his armory right now, they had a REALLY bad week lol).
Mwahahah & baksteen on 29 Jan 2008 at 5:24 pm #
Nice to see BRK in arena combat! I just locked in my first 1850 with my disc priest last night using a MM/SV build. You can check out my spec on the armory. I’m the only Yardbo
Imp stings really helps. Place Hobbes in the stables and make a pinchy friend. Follow up viper sting with silencing shot on healer/melee combos. LOS 2dps teams and survive their burst. Make sure you place traps on pillars (etc) and use LOS to YOUR advantage
Drink whenever possible! Don’t panic. Insta 1850 hehe 
~Yardbo-Thunderhorn (Vindication)
Qualkehk on 30 Jan 2008 at 6:14 am #
@beck:
Megan “gets her information” from being an experienced PvPer playing several different classes… and I’d have to agree with her. As a BM hunter who spends the majority of his arena time in 2s, I’d much rather have a Shadow Priest at my side. SP/BM makes for a frightening amount of DPS, and the opportunity to play the drain game if the need arises. You personally may have higher survivability as disc/holy; but once you both gear up, BRK’s purposes will probably be better served by an SP…
That being said, good rapport with your teammates and an understanding of their play styles/specs will trump following the cookie-cutter team comps almost every time, imho. Good luck to ye.
@megatf fanboy:
As of sk-gaming’s last update, megatf was listed as not only the top ranked hunter in 3v3s (sorry chesko, hammura’s quite a few ranks down in everything but 5s), but also the top ranked player of ANY class worldwide… so wipe that uncertainty from your face and wear your fanboyism proudly. =)