We’re Sure We Mentioned Death Somewhere
“Dear BRK … I am primarily a PvE player but I do dabble in the [battlegrounds] from time to time. Recently some guildies and I had the notion of giving arenas a try. Now, I’m not expecting miracles but I also don’t want to be smashed into the ground a laughed at every match. Which brings me to my question.
“Am I better served playing my arena matches in my Kara and crafted epics or should I pick up the blue PvP gear available from the faction quartermasters?
“I know I will gain a ton of resilience and stamina but my other stats take a nose dive. Balancing act between survivability and damage output I guess. What do you recommend? Gothyelk“
Know this, new arena person: You’re gonna die.
You’re gonna die in the blue arena PvP set.
You’re gonna die in the epic arena PvP sets.
You’re gonna die in epic crafted gear, Kara gear, T5, T6, and Merciless and Vengeful and whatever else gear you get. Gear is not the savior of arena. It helps, no doubt, but there is something much more important:
Skill.
And you don’t have it. At least, not yet. And since you don’t have Skill, you’re gonna get destroyed by those teams that do. Wiped out. Obliterated. Smushed into dust.
But don’t look at it like that’s a bad thing.
Look at it as a Learning Experience.
When you die – and did we mention you’re going to? – don’t just queue for match after match after match. After you lose, take a minute and write down what you did, the team you faced, the tactics that beat you. Discuss with your partners what they saw, and tell them what you experienced. Talk about the terrain, the LOS issues, your group dynamics, and the abilities you used and when you used them. You’ll be shocked at what you find out happened.
You know, there are movies and descriptions and tutorials about raid bosses. There are numerous websites dedicated to raid encounters and tricks and everything a guild needs to progress from Attumen through Sunwell.
But it’s an extreme rarity to one-shot any raid boss, on the first visit. What you need is Skill, and practice gives that to you.
The same theory applies to arenas; you’re not going to go 10-0 your first time. Heck, you’ll probably go 0-10 your first time. But that’s OK! Your goal is not to Win, no it’s not.
Your initial arena-goals should be twofold:
1. Have fun.
2. Learn.
Now we have only participated in one season of arenas because we violated Goal #1; we didn’t enjoy it all that much. We learned as we went, got better as the season went on, and finished with a Challenger title. But we dreaded arena-Mondays and the stress they induced. We loved Tuesdays because it was the longest time before the next mandatory-arena matches. So we stopped and haven’t missed it at all.
There are loads of arena-bloggers who can help you with Goal #2. Megs of OutOfMana is the place we recommend you start.
So go get your buddies and do some research. Then queue up and go do some arenas. Go have fun. Go learn.
Go die.
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As BRK said it’s a learning experience. If you go in thinking this is a learning experience and working on strategy it won’t be too bad. And don’t expect some team you just threw together to even have a winning record for a while. Especially be careful how you give a teammate advice about what they need to do. If you start just pointing fingers and blaming people can easily get upset and just leave. It’s a team so talk together as a team about what would be a better situation with what you have if you fought that same team again.
And I’m sure since you say you are primarily a PvE player that you have access to Vent/Teamspeak. Make sure to use it as WoW Voice Chat is horrible and typing out in party is gonna cost ya time you don’t have.
Once you build up a trust with your partners about what they need to do matches should go smoother but you’ll still have times where a match started badly or you face a group that is just a matchup for you.
Have fun.
Even though this advice sounds a bit discouraging, it’s obviously spot-on. When I hit 70 in two more levels, my good friends and I are planning on making an arena team (2v2 or 3v3). Now I certainly don’t expect to EVER be highly ranked or reside in the upper crust of successful teams, but I at least thought we could more or less “hold our own” against the plethora of other crappy teams out there. I’m basically assuming we’ll be losing more than winning, but hopefully still acquiring enough arena points to get decent gear??
To this end, can anyone recommend good arena strategy guides specifically for hunters? I took a peek at the link BRK posted but that site is a bit overwhelming, scattered about, and seems to cover all classes.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
My vote goes out to PvP gear. It’s hard to learn if you die before you can do anything.
arena is fun…but early on u get pwned…pwn-ed into oblivion!!! lol but yes u learn from getting pwned and it helps u get better…6-4 is my best record 1 month in to arena
Also for Hunter PVP help, make sure to visit BRK’s own forums, PVP section of course:
http://www.bigredkitty.net/forums/index.php?board=7.0
While it’s no EJ or ArenaJunkies, you’ll still find various topics/questions and useful info/tips to be picked up and absorbed like:
“One very important thing when it comes to being successful in pvp is to always be on the ball. Don’t slack off or you’re gonna drop on that list. . . Personally, after playing the same damn BG’s since they launched, there are times when I hate them to the extent that I can’t enter them, but when I enter I never slack. I don’t slack in raids or in arenas so why should I be any less on edge in a BG? Slackers only bring the other players down and that’s just bad manners, even if they are a bunch of retarded strangers more often than not. Don’t stoop to their level.”
“I’m finding that a big part of success here is knowing when to run and when to stay and try and burn down a target. Sometimes it’s just better to get the heck out of the way than to linger and try to get that finishing shot in.”
While I agree that you will die early on, I do think that having some PvP gear can be helpful going into your first matches, if only to keep you alive for a few more seconds of learning!
BTW, BRKizzle.. you’ve come along way in understanding the true power of the darks—er, understanding PVP/Arena mechanics, that was very solid advice and some of it I would have said myself.
It brings a tear to my eye (yes of course the tear immediately froze into an icicle) and as your reward, I will refrain from breaking out KigRedBitty and the usual slandering remarks in AC gchat while you’re not logged in. For 1 day at least.
I think the person realizes the steps to becoming successful in arena. However, the gear question isnt really answered.
Here’s the answer: It depends on your team.
If you are on a balanced team/drain (most likely specced marks) team wear the blue pvp gear, socket all stam and stam/resilience gems, and make sure you get the revered SSO head enchant and the 15 resilience chest enchant. Pick and choose your gear slots so that you maximize your resilience and stamina. Aim for 10k Stamina and as much resilience as you can muster.
If you are on a burst damage team (aka 3 dps in 3’s, 2 dps in 2’s, 4 dps in 5’s) where you are most likely specced BM, Pick and choose your gear so you have some PvP gear and some PvE gear (low stamina usually makes you a prime first target) so you can make sure you have alot of dps when it’s needed. If your game is “let’s get a kill in 20 seconds or we lose”, try to have a teammate that’s a juicier target (aka warlocks, priests, elemental shamans) to offset your lack of survivability. Wearing blatantly obvious PvP pieces can sometimes dissuade others from attacking you over your teammate. If you dont kill someone in 20 seconds, work on your cc rotation and communication.
If you want to get even more into gear nuances, you can recognize a trend in the types of teams queuing and adjust your gear accordingly. If your healer can keep you up easily vs the teams your fighting, swap in some pve gear. Getting raped by crit based teams, get that resilience gear on.
lol skill in arena.
It pretty much comes down to your team.
LOL. Yeah, the SKILL of your team.
Awesome, you guys rock. Thanks for the advice BRK and everybody else. I fully understand that most of my time will be spent face down… at least at first.
I’m am just finally beginning to embark on my own arena adventure, and am in a similar boat as Gothyelk. I am only doing arenas for the fun of it, maybe get myself a pretty Waraxe out of it, but I don’t know if I want to spent anything on specific PvP gear. After all, I am just doing it for fun, not looking to get myself any snazzy titles or mounts. Will the PvP-specific gear really help? I don’t know. I too think it is more a matter of skill than resilience.
And I look forward to getting myself better acquainted with the floor.
great entry.
First 10 arena matches for me? Spur of the moment with 2 guildies? Why not? We went Lock/Priest/Hunter, got annihilated and went 2-8 on the day.
But those 2……oh those 2……those were incredible adrenaline rushes. Tons of fun.
Losing is a huge learning experiance, nothing more, nothing less.
My first 3v3 team was me (warlock), my wife’s mage and our friends mage. None of us had any pvp gear and we lost our first 27 matches. Our best at the end of the season was 5-5 but there were weeks we’d lose all 10 matches. Eventually we’d get better after finding our strong point – burst damage. Knowing that we excelled at huge amounts of burst damage we’d pick targets that would give us the most trouble like Warriors or Rogues and focus fire until they died or we lost lol.
I just started 3v3 on my Warrior this week and went 0-10 lol. I’m learning =\
http://www.arenajunkies.com/strategy/
IMO whole site is full of win but alot of good reads there…
The biggest challange of all is to find someone willing to party with me, knowing that we’ll be losing over and over again for quite a while until I’ve come a bit further up on the learning curve.
I must be the worst arena player EVER. That’s why I can’t help thinking that I really should challenge myself and give it a serious try.
At some point I guess even I can learn and improve a bit. But it would take a really really forgiving and comitted partner to endure the time it will take before I hit that point.
yeah, i myself have just done my second series of 10 games myself.
You get killed. Alot. By the same team. Warrior/druid/rogue. death.
I usually get targetted first (i’m in 2v2 with a lock but still get nuked first). Best thing you can do is try to survive as long as possible.
Don’t try to go for a set rating, it’s *very* dependant on the other teams. Last week we faced warr/druid 8 times :/ we owned the other 2, non-OP combo’s though.
Just a few more weeks and i have a shiny new axe
patience is the key
In 2v2 im kind of getting tired of seeing rogue/mage teams. As a healer/dps team all they do is sheep my healer and blind him etc. So its basically a 2v1. I guess the only way to avoid that is to have a druid healer :/ We still in 60-70% of our games though
Even though we fought 4 different rogue/mage teams last night 
I agree with BRK. Its def the way to go. However i have never been a huge fan of arenas mainly because i am a bit rubbish but with the right attitude i may eventually accidently trick myself into trying arena again.
If your healer is a priest, you can SW:D sheeps and blinds. What I mean by that is …
Due to the way the game lags, if you cast SW:D half-way through the sheep spell, you’ll get sheeped … and then the game will realize you haven’t killed your target, so you’ll take damage, effectively breaking the sheep. It’s trickier to do with Blind since, obviously, it doesn’t have a cast time.
Focus macros help immensely with that.