Few questions from a complete PVP n00b

[Fef]

Hi there,

My second team reached level 80 recently, Paladin + 4 x Shaman. In order to found their Heroic endeavours, I took out my first team to 80, Druid + 4 x Hunter. They are so good at doing quests and farming in general. It makes them the ideal way to make gold quickly (well, the Auction House is certainly more efficient, but it is less fun).

These few days playing that team also reminded me how fun they are to play, and I realized that they are quite efficient at killing other people. Since I established that I would not be able to do high level instances with them (no real tank = a lot of content simply not doable, at least for me), I thought I would give a go at PVP.

Now, a brief descriptions of my PVP experience :

- I never attack first in the outside world, unless the other player is on my KOS list.
- I ran a couple (really, not more) Arathi Bassins back in the time when it was the only BG.
- I never set foot in wintergrasp.
- I never had any ranking at all.
- The most life-time kill any of my characters have must be around 200 (a hunter I soloed/duoed from 1 to 70).
- I have no specific PVP gear, the team is dressed in craftable level 78 blues and the 2 craftable epic pieces.
- Honestly, I am not very good at PVP. I like to put that on lack of training ...

So, the questions :

- Where do I start ? Probably not arenas, it will be too tough.
- Should I expect a lot of hostility in BGs while multi-boxing (and not knowing strats) ?
- Can I expect to get to a high enough level/ranking with this team to get any profit from PVP at all ? (in terms of gear, that is)
- Can I do with that gear to start (optimising enchants and stuff for Resilience and Stamina), or should I look at something else ?

Basically, any advice is welcome. And remember : I'm 100% PVP n00b.

[Enndo]

Your gear is ok to start but don't expect to survive long if a deadly geared player comes after you. My advice would be start out in av to get practice and stay with the larger group! The pvp earned with bg honor/tokens will be nice upgrades from your 78 blues. Try and get into archavon runs every week. Most people in av are happy when they see multi boxers, smaller bg's like ab and wsg people will try and blame losses on you most of the time when the cause will be that all the momos wanna follow around the boxer to rack up hk's instead of trying to win.

[Siaea]

AV is definitely the battleground to get your feet wet in. In WSG and AB you will seriously gimp the team (and piss people off, especially when you're losing). People do seem to like boxers in AV. At level 70 when I was running 5 shaman I became known as the "Turtle Breaker" on my battle group, because I could always pretty much sacrifice my team killing everyone at the Storm Pike graveyard, giving us time to cap it before they all rezzed. It's a great battleground for learning and getting honor.

[cmeche]

100% agree with the two posts above. You get major hate when you loose(your fault or not).....but rarely get a compliment if you win. I only pvp with 4 shaman......with 5 you wil get alot more hate. I would say the best thing is to get to know the bg's first. Either do them solo or take druid/2hunters in to learn the strats of each map. But in the end the whole point of playing is to have fun....which in my opinion boxing pvp is ALOT more enjoyable.....so do whatever you want to do and just ignore everyone else.

[Ualaa]

I would definitely Arena immediately.
Just not expect to win much if anything.
But - you will begin to earn points right away.
As your gear, skill and coordination improves the rating will too.

Battlegrounds will be the most of your gains at the moment.
You can get a full set of Hateful gear for honor alone now.
Alterac Valley has been the most honor per hour for me in the past.
With the quest based on marks of honor, I believe 1 each from AV, AB, WSG and Strand, it might be an idea to do whichever you have the least marks from.
And then turn in the quest frequently for the bonus honor. Can do that as many times in a day as you'd like.

Initially you'll die painfully and often.
Still, you'll improve over time.
If its frustrating, go to the Pally/Shammy team, and do some PvE for a bit.
Bounce between the two, and keep the game fun.

[Stealthy]

I'd advise hitting WG whenever it's up...the honor gains from the weekly quests are good (even after the recent nerfs) and the rewards purchaseable with the WG marks are great, especially the shaman gear.

Cheers,
S

[Fef]

Thank you for the advices.

So I did 10 games in the arena yesterday. I got so destroyed it was actually rather hilarious.
But I learned a lot. For instance :

- When entering arena, followers lose focus. It took me the first two games to realise why nobody was moving.
- Pets get stuck on the elevator. This seems to be a known bug. Not making things easy with 4 hunters.
- Arena is not that stupid ! There seems to be quite a bit of tactic (hidding healers, etc ...).
- Some people are REALLY good. One rogue killed all my characters without me even seeing him !
- I didn't have to wait more than a minute between games. Nice.

Oh, I guess I should mention how I did. Well, I lost 10 and won 0. I *almost* killed a mage once, though ;)
Great fun, but I understand it must get frustrasting after a while.

After that, I tried Battlegrounds, clicked the "First Available" button, endend up doing 6 Alterac Valley runs, or so. Nice. And I didn't do that bad, actually. I could destroy anyone with my hunters, and was not far from the top in the Damage Done table at the end. We (alliance) lost every game, though. Maybe my fault :)

[Dominian]

Thank you for the advices.

So I did 10 games in the arena yesterday. I got so destroyed it was actually rather hilarious.
But I learned a lot. For instance :

- When entering arena, followers lose focus. It took me the first two games to realise why nobody was moving.
- Pets get stuck on the elevator. This seems to be a known bug. Not making things easy with 4 hunters.
- Arena is not that stupid ! There seems to be quite a bit of tactic (hidding healers, etc ...).
- Some people are REALLY good. One rogue killed all my characters without me even seeing him !
- I didn't have to wait more than a minute between games. Nice.

Oh, I guess I should mention how I did. Well, I lost 10 and won 0. I *almost* killed a mage once, though ;)
Great fun, but I understand it must get frustrasting after a while.

After that, I tried Battlegrounds, clicked the "First Available" button, endend up doing 6 Alterac Valley runs, or so. Nice. And I didn't do that bad, actually. I could destroy anyone with my hunters, and was not far from the top in the Damage Done table at the end. We (alliance) lost every game, though. Maybe my fault :)

-I have never used focus for following but its nice to see you found a solution!
-Line of sight is indeed a very vital tactic and even though your fresh its nice to hear that you picked this up after only 10 matches!
-Ret paladins can basicly press 3 buttons and your dead no matter how skilled you are, its more about gear then skill since atm i assume your gear is not that great? :) Get gear and it will get sooo much better!

You run 4x of a currently weak arena class, but your realy uniqe multiboxing that setup in the areana atm! :) Just keep on doing Wintergrasp and battlegrounds for more pvp gear!!

And by ALL MEANS keep us updated on your progress since we would realy like to hear more from people who runs something else then 4 shamans! :thumbsup:

[Ualaa]

On honor alone, you can purchase a full set of Hateful gear.
I believe Deadly is better, but that requires either VoA 25-man or a combination of Arena/Honor points and minimum Arena rating.

If you're going for maximum honor gains, generally AV is better honor per hour then the others.
Without a premade, which is generally ~500 min resiliency per toon, even on bonus weekends, AV is the most honor per hour.
Maybe you'll find another BG is better then this, it might vary in your battlegroup.

If you're willing to mix it up, doing the quest where you turn in 1 mark each from AB, AV, WSG, and SotA is probably faster honor.
Since you get 3 marks for a win, and 1 for a loss, you'll usually have a differing number of marks.
Do whichever battleground you have the fewest marks from, and turn the quest in whenever you can.
The first time is gold and 1241 honor. Thereafter it is just honor, but still very worthwhile. You can do it as often per day as you'd like.
Gloves are a good first piece, as they reduce the mana/energy of a move, or increase range etc. IE, give your toons a pvp bonus.
Two pieces is resilience bonus.

Gear comes in time.
A lot of classes have success by mixing in PvE (raid/heroic/badge) gear with their PvP stuff.
Experiment and see what you enjoy doing and what works for you.

[Fat Tire]

4 hunters you say?

What class is your healer?

All your hunters should be BM for BW so you are all immune to CC for 18sec and CD is 1min40sec with gyplh and they put out some extreme burst potenial. What pets are you using? Crabs are nice because of Pin (4 sec root) I can keep a player Pined down for 12sec with my 3 BM hunters using RR for the pet abilites. Not including Intimidation 3 sec stun RR for another 9 seconds. This is not ever including traps along with disengage. Really its only takes 1 pin or stun to take down someone with 3 hunters(4 in your case). You must keep Aimed shot up at all times. MS will help alot with bursting someone down.

Pets wise I like core hounds fore 25% frontal cone spell casting debuff and they are a dps pet so they do really good dps. I also like the chimera for a frontal 50% slow and they do good dps also. Crabs are nice for control and their are pets that have the ability to take dmg for you kinda like warlocks SL. Roar of Sacrifice -This ability allows your pet to absorb incomming damage on any friendly target on your team at 30% and up to half of the pets life. The ability is useful for dampening burst attempts on your team mates. This is another reasopn I like crabs as pets.

Pick a target that cant make your pets lose target or waste your BW and your golden. Dont target mages (Ice block) Rogues (Vanish) Paladins (Bubble) Hunters(Fegin Death) first. Best to target squishies first -Warlocks,Priests,Shamans. You can work some burst/kill shots out with your healer using their stuns/CC. There are tactics for certain arena maps also i.e Blade edge, fight on the bottom dont go on the brigde because once you cast your BW they are just going to jump off the bridge and your big reds have to run all the way around wasting alot of BW and on certain maps they can run your pet too far away making him disappear.

What does your pvp shot rotation look like?

I guess I am going for the most edits in a day achievement :whistling: .

[Fat Tire]

Another thought is trying out 3v3. 3x BM hunters blow shit up!

Personally, I enjoy 3v3 more than my quad shamans /healer doin 5v5. I run x3 hunter,x3 warlock team and have done some 3v3 with just my shamans also. The number one thing to do is play as many games as you can. In this case practice is indeed perfect.

[Ualaa]

I'll amend my honor per hour, by saying Strand of the Ancients seems to be the best honor per hour, for a single Battleground.

Attacking or defending, Wintergrasp is far and away the most honor per time invested.

The pvp mark turn in quest, which is repeatable for 1241 honor, will be faster then focusing on a single BG.
Over time, your gear and experience will improve, and your coordination between your team.
Give it some time, as you grow, you'll get there in the end.

[Fef]

Just a little update after 2 weeks.

I played my 10 arena games this week again, and Oh Glory, I killed someone. Well, I didn't really, the pets did, but still, that was an achievement. The victim was a mage of course. For the rest, I still took a serious beating on the 10 games. If I remember correctly, 10 lost games still make me 344 arena points a week.

I am reluctant to split the team to do 3 vs 3, just because it won't be very practical to follow available points and such. The only thing I could think off would be to get a fifth hunter, since my druid is rather useless, I usually don't have time to heal a single time ! But I won't have the patience to level another hunter to 80.

I start understanding what is happening in Alterac Valley. The game is very stereotyped, though. Not very interesting I would say.

I had a blast trying Eye of the Storm. Simply put, I could take a tower on my own, and keep it. The geography around the points of interest, the narrow paths and such, make it extremely fun for my team. Nice feeling, like I was really making a difference.

I ran Strand of the Ancients only once (to get a token and complete the PVP quest for which all BG have to be ran), it looked quite complicated and not really multi-boxer friendly with the machines and canons.

I still have to give Wintergrasp a try.

All in all, PVP is more fun than I imagined. Certainly a nice options when I cannot get into an instance with my PVE group, and I don't feel like levelling one of my "youg" groups.

[Ualaa]

If you're running four hunters and a druid, I'd probably run the different class (druid in this case) as the active/lead toon.

You can have the hunters attack the druids target very easily.
You can have them assist the druid (for target) and switch to a new target by having the druid switch and then have hunters assist the druid again.
You can focus with the hunters, some or all, on any of the targets they have.

For example Druid targets Priest, then Warrior, then Paladin, then back to the Warrior.
Hunters have assisted the Druid each time, but while the priest was targeted they set him as their focus.

Now you can have the hunters unload on whoever you like, and optionally quickly switch to the focus target.

While on the druid you can Cyclone and have a variety of Heals, where target=mouseover.
Much easier to target heals that way, where they are needed the most.
I'd start the druid in cat form and stealth, to give you a big of survivability.

Without a dedicated healer, you're not going to win a whole lot of games.
You'll still earn "x" points per week, which makes 10 losses worthwhile as you gear up.
Plus you'll learn what works against various classes.