Rets Arena Week Four

[Mosg2]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSYcfJZ9RLA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN4jBcmdaJc

http://www.wowarmory.com/team-info.xml?r=Gorefiend&ts=5&t=All+Too+Easy&select=All+Too+Easy

Links to part one and part two. I was able to get them to look quite nice using Windows Movie Maker. It just took a little bit of love :) In any case, on to the commentary:

1. In most of those games I was able to get 1-2 targets down when I lost and most times it was before I had taken any serious damage. I think my issue is two-fold: One, I get really heated up when I'm playing and it's sometimes hard to hit the right button. Two, My DS/DS macros are not super accessible (Being shift 1-4 while FoL is just 1-4). I'm working on being more relaxed but I'm not sure how to make better use of my keyboard. I know people have said get a G13 etc--I'm looking into it or a gamepad :)

2. There are still two games there where I forgot to hit my /focus macro. It's ridiculous that I forgot this. I'm ashamed.

3. Gladius helped me a great deal with target selection, but there were still a few games where I opened with DG on the target. My gut instinct is that I need to mount on top of them and use DG for runners.

So, to sum it all up: Better management of healing and DS/DS rotations. Fine tune target selection. Save DG for runners while mounting on top for initial engagement. Don't be a retard :)

I'd love to hear comments and suggestions!

P.S. Playing games this week makes me even more interested in my Rogues. I think with a dedicated healer it'll be ridiculously easy to open up and gib 1-2 targets while you're invincible from Evasion/CoS. Surviving after that with a dedicated healer seems easy peasy :)

[Maxion]

Don't forget to post the links ;)

[Mosg2]

I knew someone was going to ninja me while I was grabbing them haha.

[Fat Tire]

good stuff mosg2! I enjoy watching your videos. Thanks for posting them.

The initial adrenaline rush goes away over time once you play more. It did for me or maybe it was when I stopped caring if I lost. :D

[Mosg2]

After rewatching the videos I think there are a couple games that I would've undoubtedly won if I had healed better. Last game on video one I think--I got the Warlock down and my team was basically at full. Then I lost a 5v4 in my favor.

Considerations:

1. I'm thinking a Deathgrip/Chains of Ice macro is necessary. Two games the initial target got away because I was depending on Hammer of Justice to keep them stuck before I mashed my Chains of Ice button.

2. I need a better healing solution. Period. DS/DS and healing need to be second nature.

3. I completely forgot to use Hand of Protection on my DK in any game.

Overall I'd say that I need to get more comfortable with my keybinds.

[Fat Tire]

After rewatching the videos I think there are a couple games that I would've undoubtedly won if I had healed better. Last game on video one I think--I got the Warlock down and my team was basically at full. Then I lost a 5v4 in my favor.

Considerations:

1. I'm thinking a Deathgrip/Chains of Ice macro is necessary. Two games the initial target got away because I was depending on Hammer of Justice to keep them stuck before I mashed my Chains of Ice button.

2. I need a better healing solution. Period. DS/DS and healing need to be second nature.

3. I completely forgot to use Hand of Protection on my DK in any game.

Overall I'd say that I need to get more comfortable with my keybinds.

I didnt see wings once, maybe I was missing it. People living too long at less than 20%----HoWrath! Since you lead with your DK you could have Gnaw on the healer-right click gladius sets focus. Is your DK even using a pet? Arena target macro for repentance, maybe pop wings on your first HoJ/ Storm?

My ass would just zerg them trying to get as many in DS as possible. Attacking a healer first brings melee back to where you are and thus hitting more with your best ability. Popping freedom right as you dismount. /shrug

[Mosg2]

I usually save wings for after DS/DS. I guess I need to just play around with it. I'm *really* concerned about the ease-of-use of healing and DS/DS. This is something I need to be able to hit reliably in half a second, not have to think about it and then do it. Shift+2 twice for DS/DS sequence is just plain too long.

Another thing I thought about--I use a /click FCFS and maybe I should manually do Hammer of Wrath. You're right that the first ability I use when they hit 20% should be Hammer. Hmmm.

Seems like I need to have better control over my guys overall. Some tips? I'm going to do a write up on what I have and do and see what suggestions I can get.

[Fat Tire]

I usually save wings for after DS/DS. I guess I need to just play around with it. I'm *really* concerned about the ease-of-use of healing and DS/DS. This is something I need to be able to hit reliably in half a second, not have to think about it and then do it. Shift+2 twice for DS/DS sequence is just plain too long.

Another thing I thought about--I use a /click FCFS and maybe I should manually do Hammer of Wrath. You're right that the first ability I use when they hit 20% should be Hammer. Hmmm.

Seems like I need to have better control over my guys overall. Some tips? I'm going to do a write up on what I have and do and see what suggestions I can get.

yea 5s is a totally different beast

I know I have my wrath on a totally separate button so I can hit it as soon and I see the pop up. x4 wrath @ 5-6k each and boom thru any healing. You also need some addons or turn on the wow proc thing not sure what its called. Everytime Wrath is available(mob below 20%) its pops up telling me to wrath instead of having to think about it.

Edit; Also use a DK pet. At the very least its a 40% heal to the DK thru death pact


In 2s/3s I round robin my CC to get a kill . 5s is all about the zerg/burst. I am probably not the best to talk to about 5s, but hey I always got an opinion. :D

[Mosg2]

The problem is that I'm already pressed for space in my keybindings to handle everything. There are a lot of things that can't be automated with a mixed team like this and trying to figure out which is which is a pain in the ass. I'm going to spend the rest of the (work, lol) day figuring out how to simplify things better. Hmmmmm.

[asonimie]

I think my issue is two-fold: One, I get really heated up when I'm playing and it's sometimes hard to hit the right button.

I have a ritual before I do 5s on the shamans, it's worked for 3 seasons.

Prior to playing games, I either go for a 4+ mile run... or I start drinking. Either way it calms the nerves and I make less twitchy finger mistakes and generally follow the strat more regularly.

I'm super competitive so without a little help I'm about as smooth as a crackhead.

FREE YOUR MIND.

[Mosg2]

Asonimie, what's the name of that mouse that you use that's got the thumb scroll wheel? I'm trying to figure out a hardware solution that gives me more keybinds.

[asonimie]

logitech mx revolution

http://brokenremote.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/logitech-mx-revolution.jpg

[Ellay]

I have a ritual before I do 5s on the shamans, it's worked for 3 seasons.

Prior to playing games, I either go for a 4+ mile run... or I start drinking. Either way it calms the nerves and I make less twitchy finger mistakes and generally follow the strat more regularly.

I'm super competitive so without a little help I'm about as smooth as a crackhead.

FREE YOUR MIND.

I do the same routine when I was in the top 10 rankings. It's a lot of pressure, I would suggest running or going to the gym. Anything of that nature is 2 fold, it's extremely healthy for you and when you get back home and take a shower you feel great and relaxed. It helps hitting the right keys at the right time and being less frigidity.

[Maxion]

Good to hear I'm not the only one that gets excited and shaky when I PvP.

[Fat Tire]

I used to get upset when I lost and usually my monitor got a verbal beating. My heart would start beating so fast at the start of a match that after 10 matches I would have to change my shirt. I am past that initial anxiety, maybe its the Fat Tire? hmmm new guild name Drunken Boxing.

Psychologically, I try and be good at arena to resolve deep seated oedipal issues. I was breastfed until I was 6 and now no woman can match up

[Fat Tire]

dble post

[asonimie]

I used to get upset when I lost and usually my monitor got a verbal beating. My heart would start beating so fast at the start of a match that after 10 matches I would have to change my shirt. I am past that initial anxiety, maybe its the Fat Tire? hmmm new guild name Drunken Boxing.

Psychologically, I try and be good at arena to resolve deep seated oedipal issues. I was breastfed until I was 6 and now no woman can match up

lolz

[asonimie]

I do the same routine when I was in the top 10 rankings. It's a lot of pressure, I would suggest running or going to the gym. Anything of that nature is 2 fold, it's extremely healthy for you and when you get back home and take a shower you feel great and relaxed. It helps hitting the right keys at the right time and being less frigidity.

SHOWER? Who said anything about showering after. Showers are for pussies. I use the stench to terrify my arena opponents :P

[Multibocks]

Psychologically, I try and be good at arena to resolve deep seated oedipal issues. I was breastfed until I was 6 and now no woman can match up


^ lol!

And yes I get so stressed out that I just dont do arena anymore. It's not worth the shaking/sweating.

[Fat Tire]

^ lol!

And yes I get so stressed out that I just dont do arena anymore. It's not worth the shaking/sweating.

To be honest when I got glad(2v2) with my lock in S4(I know hard right) it was the least I enjoyed this game. I played with a guy who I really didnt know and it was rough because he and I blamed each other for losses. Every game I felt a ton of pressure not to screw up. The team was not my team so the dude could have kicked me at any time which added even more pressure. Boxing gave me the option of playing arena/pvp and I only have to answer to myself. So the anxiety is all gone now. I find myself laughing more now instead of cursing, I only box 2v2/3v3 now, so maybe that is different than 5s. /shrug

[Multibocks]

Oh god that sounds like a job where your manager sucks and blames you for his shortcomings.

[Ellay]

To be honest when I got glad(2v2) with my lock in S4(I know hard right) it was the least I enjoyed this game. I played with a guy who I really didnt know and it was rough because he and I blamed each other for losses. Every game I felt a ton of pressure not to screw up. The team was not my team so the dude could have kicked me at any time which added even more pressure. Boxing gave me the option of playing arena/pvp and I only have to answer to myself. So the anxiety is all gone now. Refreshing. I find myself laughing more now instead of cursing.


Me and my best friend had the same issue with blaming, Arena's sometimes brings out with the worst in people. You almost turn into a different person, so we've pretty much vowed never to arena together again.

Which in turn is why 1 DK 4 Ret.. ( we need to come up with an awesome name for this comp :P ) is so promising, it's all on your own basically. You can play the comp whenever and the only person that needs to improve is yourself.

[suprafro]

Which in turn is why 1 DK 4 Ret.. ( we need to come up with an awesome name for this comp :P ).

IMO:

The Kromtor Express
or
The Kromtor Special

;):D

[Mosg2]

Ok, so a jog beforehand is a necessity. Check :)

Anyone have any specific commentary on the videos? Suggestions for macros? Etc? As a group I think that boxers are pretty innovative and I'm hoping to tap into that to get some (more) solid suggestions.

Asonimie: I used that mouse for a couple days but I found that my mouse would shake all over the pad while I spammed it with my thumb. Do you have overly large hands or some secret with Setpoint that I don't know? :)

Edit:

Yes, I love that this comp is all you at the keyboard but it makes me very uncomfortable having no separate healer. I feel like at this point (ie, all purple pvp gear) I have nobody and nothing but me to blame if I can't get to 1800. Kromtor, as he said, did it with what I've got so far as gear goes. Apparently there's a large skill gap :) I'm looking for any sort of community input/insight into this. Thanks in advance!

[Shodokan]

You need to seriously learn some basic mechanics for your classes. I don't think i saw a single bubble/heal or divine shield anywhere in this video. Also i noticed that once health bars go down they continue to. There is no stopping attacking for anything to heal whatsoever. Also your paladins go off in random directions sometimes. And do not focus on a particular target at times unless they ALL run at them from the start and they are cornered in a room. IIRC you only ever WON when people turtled and attempted to take the damage.

Just a few things i noticed.

[Fat Tire]

You need to seriously learn some basic mechanics for your classes. I don't think i saw a single bubble/heal or divine shield anywhere in this video. Also i noticed that once health bars go down they continue to. There is no stopping attacking for anything to heal whatsoever. Also your paladins go off in random directions sometimes. And do not focus on a particular target at times unless they ALL run at them from the start and they are cornered in a room. IIRC you only ever WON when people turtled and attempted to take the damage.

Just a few things i noticed.


lolwut

[Ellay]

You mentioned in your posts that you forgot to /focus a target? With this comp your assist keys shouldn't rely on focusing at all, it's definitely ok for them to see what is coming and just do the basic /assist main strat.
FTL is definitely the best route though if you can get that set up. I don't think there is any time to mess with /focus.

Don't wait in the beginning on some teams, I almost want to coin this team SWAT but want to pay homage to Kromtor somehow in the process. The basic idea of a SWAT team in RL is rushing in on the enemy and catching them in the moment of surprise. Which causes them to freeze in a state of shell shock.
Your team is already of a hive mind and can rush in and gains I want to say at least a 5 second coordinated head start on attacking before the other team can formulate a decent offensive. I would highly assume this is Kromtor's main strat, sitting behind a pillar only worsens your chances of winning.

Also the smoothness doesn't just happen overnight, run around in some bg's and don't take the easy route. Rush into areas that have 5+ people knowing very well your going to get rolled and see how long you can stay alive / mitigate the damage. It's training your mind to handle crazy situations :)

[Fat Tire]

i almost want to coin this team swat but want to pay homage to kromtor somehow in the process.

kwat

[Mosg2]

You need to seriously learn some basic mechanics for your classes. I don't think i saw a single bubble/heal or divine shield anywhere in this video. Also i noticed that once health bars go down they continue to. There is no stopping attacking for anything to heal whatsoever. Also your paladins go off in random directions sometimes. And do not focus on a particular target at times unless they ALL run at them from the start and they are cornered in a room. IIRC you only ever WON when people turtled and attempted to take the damage.

Just a few things i noticed.

Thanks for the feedback! In order:

1. I acknowledged that I need to work on my hardware/macro setup so that I can more easily DS/DS. Right now it's Shift+1-4 for DS/DS and that's a difficult combination. I'm trying to find another, more easily hit button for it.

2. I know I need to work on keeping my guys up. First thing when I get home is a reimagining of my keyspace so that I can use all these abilities easier--A mixed team is not simple to run for me.

3. Two games I had forgotten to hit my focus macro pre-game so everyone ran all over the place. Part of the trouble of running melee teams is that after a fear/cc or some sort your guys won't want to reassist and IWT. As I said above, I'm going to be redoing my macros/keyboard space and I think I can make reassist/IWT work better.

4. I'm seriously thinking about swapping over to Innerspace. The mousewheel on a n52te could be setup to do a two-step dps+IWT sequence and would be fast as shit. Then you'd have ALL those buttons for heals/DS/HoP etc. Hmmmm.

Edit: I really appreciate the comments Ellay!
Edit edit: I have FTL setup for follow. I'll swap it over to my alts too. That'll fix a lot of the running around issues.

[remanz]

I know Kromtor has used this blood/frost hybrid spec. and It worked out for him. But What about frost/unholy hybrid? You lose mark of blood and improved death strike. Instead you gain 1 more snare + anti magic zone and bone armor. anti magic zone absorbs like 17k magic dmg.

I tend to think range casters are your biggest threat. If you are close enough to do "death strike" on someone, he is probably dead anyway. Also I don't think you need that haste buff from Frost tree. It is more PVE than PVP. You have Chain of Ice glyph + endless winter, no reason to use icy touch.

[Mosg2]

I'm interested firstly in getting my macros and such fixed before I fiddle around with specs for the DK. I'm totally into testing it out but regardless of spec I'm not going anywhere until I can fix the healing/DS-DS castsequence problem.

[Maxion]

My suggestion would be having IWT on for example ` (key to left of 1) and dps spam stuff on 1 maybe 2 and or 3 depending on how much different stuff you want, and include /assist and /follow in your dps spam key (i do this with great success on my fresh pally team) and then have keys for bubbling/healing each character on the subsequent numbers / alt-number, i tend to find alt much more accessible than shift since my thumb can it hit it easily right next to the spacebar where it rests somewhere by the two.

[Mosg2]

I'm looking at the n52te. It was ok last time I used it but I think I didn't spend enough effort trying to get used to it.

[Iceorbz]

Thanks for the feedback! In order:

1. I acknowledged that I need to work on my hardware/macro setup so that I can more easily DS/DS. Right now it's Shift+1-4 for DS/DS and that's a difficult combination. I'm trying to find another, more easily hit button for it.

2. I know I need to work on keeping my guys up. First thing when I get home is a reimagining of my keyspace so that I can use all these abilities easier--A mixed team is not simple to run for me.

3. Two games I had forgotten to hit my focus macro pre-game so everyone ran all over the place. Part of the trouble of running melee teams is that after a fear/cc or some sort your guys won't want to reassist and IWT. As I said above, I'm going to be redoing my macros/keyboard space and I think I can make reassist/IWT work better.

4. I'm seriously thinking about swapping over to Innerspace. The mousewheel on a n52te could be setup to do a two-step dps+IWT sequence and would be fast as shit. Then you'd have ALL those buttons for heals/DS/HoP etc. Hmmmm.

Edit: I really appreciate the comments Ellay!
Edit edit: I have FTL setup for follow. I'll swap it over to my alts too. That'll fix a lot of the running around issues.


Sorry I think somewhere you said you have small hands. If you do you won't be able to reach that mouse wheel and keep your hands on the arrow keys. The direction pad is way to shitty to try and drive with, you also have to be able to hit jump at the same time which is your thumb. I use the MX revolution as above and have IWT bound to the top little button it works great. I can spam it with my middle right hand finger no problems. If your not using FTL, your behind the curve for pvp. Id really be interested in seeing if any 1800+ person is using a focus based system.

Leaving focus allows you to setup better macros so you can get at least some control of your stuff.

[Mosg2]

Currently setting up ISBoxer with repeater regions and all that jazz. That alone freed up 10 or so keybinds for me. Huge. Will get back once I get a better picture of what it all looks like.

Yes, I have small girly hands. I had used the n52te before and it felt cumbersome BUT I got another one tonight to try out and it seems like I figured out how to get my hand on it comfortably. Once I get it all setup I'm going to do a complete post about it for critique/suggestions etc.

[Ualaa]

I have an example, in my IS Boxer guide, for merging IWT and your FTL DPS keys.
You make them into two step keymaps.
Step 1 - IWT
Step 2 - FTL DPS key.
Then spam your dps keys, at least twice.
You could change them to key down (step 1) and key up (step 2) if you like.

You could also do a two step keymaps for "Click to Move".
Just disable CTM, when you don't want FTL spam.
And enable when you want it.
Step 1 (disable) runs /console AutoInteract 0
Step 2 (enable) runs /console AutoInteract 1

[Multibocks]

Currently setting up ISBoxer with repeater regions and all that jazz. That alone freed up 10 or so keybinds for me. Huge. Will get back once I get a better picture of what it all looks like.

Yes, I have small girly hands. I had used the n52te before and it felt cumbersome BUT I got another one tonight to try out and it seems like I figured out how to get my hand on it comfortably. Once I get it all setup I'm going to do a complete post about it for critique/suggestions etc.


Its not the size of the hands, but the lotion and wrist motion... wait, I dont think that's right.

[drevil]

thanks for posting the vids.

[Mosg2]

I was up until almost 3am setting up ISBoxer and then my UI. Currently have everyone's UI functioning the way I want including a repeater region for click healing. What's left on the plate is actually mapping out what keys do what--I decided to use the Belkin n52te gamepad after trying it out for a few hours last night. I decided that it's got too much functionality for a melee boxer to not use. I'm sold.

So now I'm off to work. My plan is to figure out what buttons do what while I'm there so when I get home I just have to hit the bindings--I have everything in place even.

Once that's done all I need to do is fix my /click dps sequence and then I'm good to go. I intend on doing a full writeup with pictures and explanations on why I'm doing things they way I am and I hope to get some solid feedback about it. Hopefully we'll have those private pvp forums by then :)

[TeamGrizzly]

Sorry. Total noob here.. What is DS/DS? Two divine storms? If so, isn't there a 10s cooldown on divine storm?

[Maxion]

Divine Shield Divine Storm I guess.

[suprafro]

What is DS/DS?

He's referring to using divine shield followed by divine sacrifice