[DK+4xRet] Freshies and Arena Strat

[Boylston]

Well, as expected, I went 0-10 as my freshly 80 team stepped into the arena last night before the weekly reset. They have their Savage Saronite set, but only 2 of the team has L219 Garfrost Hammers, with the rest of them wielding Amphitheatre of Anguish quest reward axes. I have a few questions/requests for confirmation:

1.) Just to refresh my memory, since I haven't played arena for a while... In the newest ratings/points system, I get the same number of arena points for any rating 0->1500, correct? A 10-loss week is still worthwhile playing and I'll get as many points as a 1499 team, right?

2.) My gear-up strategy is going to be a.) Get 219 weapons for everyone, b.) Gear up my tank a bit for PvE heroic purposes (mostly done), c.) Run heroics each night to get some L232/245 Triumph badge gear, d.) Sneak into a few BGs each night in order to accumulate honor. Can anyone recommend a better order for gearing up? (Forgot VoA, looks like I should at least try to get my gang through there individually each week, yes?)

3.) As for arena strategy, I was basically mounting up and going for broke with AW + top DPS buffs going in a hope to kill someone, anyone at first and maybe win a match against some bad players. Didn't work out too well, I killed 1-2 people tops in a match before getting rolled. I know this is crummy strategy if I had gear, but I was curious what tactics people tried out with fresh, undergeared characters.

I assume that the best to hope for is some 10-loss weeks for a few weeks until I can get some decent gear? Has anyone had any kind of upward rating climb with freshies??

Thanks in advance for your thoughtful replies!

Boyl

[Zappy]

1) At 1500 or less for 10 games played and each member has at least 30% of the games played, they'll receive 344 points.

2) Heroic grinding is a good way to get at least furious pvp gear on them, along with some nice gold.

3) I've only played 3-4 weeks now on my DK/Rets and am finally starting to win some. Gear definitely helps, however mass CC is the difference breaker. Sometimes I forget to hit my mass CC button (repentance, followed by HoJ) on the first 4 arena targets, along with hungering cold. Other matches, I feel like things are going okay, but don't follow through with the DS/DS rotation. Once I remember both of those, it seems like I actually have a chance.

On a funny note, my paladins are dual-spec'd (slight changes between SoC and SoJ specs/glyphs). The first couple of weeks playing, I was so used to heroic grinding, that I rarely refresh SoC, so I ran into these matches and couldn't figure out why my burst seemed very low. I faced another DK/Ret team, and he had two of his guys stuck on the other side of a pillar, yet he still destroyed me. Once I remembered to turn on the seal, the matches were a lot closer. :)

Right now, I'm working on #3. Gotta play a lot more to get the rotations down in memory better so that I actually use them all. I should finally hit 1300 tonight. lol

[Stealthy]

Honor grinding will be a lot easier after patch...Shodokhan was reporting 4-6K from AV per match on the PTR.

Cheers,
S.

[Ualaa]

I'd recommend Wintergrasp, once a week as well.
Do the quests there, its pretty good honor.
And Wintergrasp marks have some fairly decent pieces when gearing up.

[Zugdud]

I would skip BGs all together, unless you enjoy playing them. Personally I haven't stepped foot into a BG on my current team ((I typically only run them with friends for fun)). In my experience, chain farming heroics to buy the 5/5 furious armor with emblems while using stonekeeper shards to buy accessories is far,far more efficient. Wintergrasp is also good to run when possible in between as the marks can be used on some good placeholder gear , and the honor per hour ratio is pretty good if your faction tends to win most of them

[Boylston]

Peeking over at Ellay's team, it looks like he's gearing them out with PvE stuff (or he's got dual sets and is logging out in PvE gear).

Ellay, if you're lurking--- Are you doing this because it's cheaper to buy that gear with Badges and hoping to earn arena upgrades through actual arena play? Or is it a matter of being able to more efficiently badge farm with some starter PvE gear?

Inquiring minds want to know...

[Dorffo]

He could just be collecting both sets =p

[remanz]

DK can probably cheat with PVE gears. Paladins, not. Low resilience, you die too quickly and you don't have time to react with bubble. Damage wise, PVE provides minor minor improvement over PVP gears (unless you got 2 pieces of t10).

Blizzard has pretty much separated PVP and PVE paths in this game. The 2 rarely cross now. Damage is too high without resilience. a warlock can kill my 5800 GS PVE restore shaman within a fear duration without even trying (some random bolts crit me for 18k per hit).

[Littleburst]

Honor grinding will be a lot easier after patch...Shodokhan was reporting 4-6K from AV per match on the PTR.

Cheers,
S.

According to patch notes honor would double at max, so good luck at farming AV while getting more then 4k for an AV? I'd asume 4,5k should be max or i'm missing out on something.

[Mokoi]

when we force a resource win on Bloodlust we get 2000-2500 honor from sheer kills and stuff, especially easy with multiple boxers in the same game. takes longer, but it has the advantage of being RIDICULOUSLY fun (which is why we play the game) and good honor. so that would be 4k-5k honor now.

[Boylston]

Back on topic, please...

I'm a little split, I guess. My rets are currently at about 3200-3800-- they *just* got a complete set of Garfrost iLvl 219 hammers last night. My DK is significantly beefier due to having 6 iLvl245 pieces, but he also has some major trinket/sigil holes and could use more overall health.

I am able to easily do several heroics and a lot of bosses, so I can generally fill my 2-3 hour night full of heroic farming, but there are a lot of instances that I have to bail out of if I was to just spam random heroic runs for bonus triumph badges. My gear is low enough that I can't even random Heroic Pit of Saron or Forge of Souls yet (as well as other instances).

So, strategy A would be to buy some PvE gear (which is cheaper, badge-wise) in order to jump start my team into a badge farming machine. If I thought that a team full of 232 PvE gear could go into arena and clear the magical 1500 mark, I would go this route for sure. I still get Arena points each week, so I can spend badges->PvE and arena/honor->PvP and cobble together a mixed set.

Strategy B is to foresake most all PvE gear and spend badges on L232 PvP gear (for the pallies). While not the best gear for PvP, the 232 badge stuff is miles ahead of the iLvl 187 and 200 gear the pallies have now in many spots. I have no doubt they would farm heroics faster and safer in a set of arena gear, even if it was L232. Arena point gain would be the same as Strat A, with the possibility that I might start to do better as I got a more complete set of Resilience gear.

Anyhow, I guess I'm conflicted. The badge-PvP gear is more expensive and not as good for PvE, so it's bothering me that I'd buy it first right when I'm desperate to get over the hump with really clearing heroics in style.

[Void]

What i did is fully gear pve then stomped every heroic in like 10-20 min each depending on the instance.This made getting furious gear alot faster. WG honor and all stonekeeper shards turned in for honor then some bgs when tired of pve for wrathful offsets. This is what i did my team is almost 1600 now with that gear+4 battered hilts.

[Kalros]

Ok, so I'm running this same team as well, got to 80, and grinded the crap out of BGs. My guys are all in full PvP gear, and I just did my first set of Arenas and I got completely STOMPED! They just Mass CC/Feared/Stunned/etc. I never had a chance to do anything. They all jumped and ran around and I couldnt even figure out who and where the healers were until a couple of my guys were already dead.

So whats the main strat for the DK/4xRet team? Do you pop all cooldowns (Divine Shield and DK cooldowns) right at the start until you get your bearings? How do you deal with 2 healers?

HELP!

[Mosg2]

The resilience changes have made this team much harder to run now imo~. Without MS you have to BURST a target to zero--That means have a focus-Strangulate and such setup along with splash Repentance and splash HoJ.

Even with that... The amount of AE CC that messes up an all-melee team is ridiculous--Even with HoF :)

[Boylston]

So whats the main strat for the DK/4xRet team? Do you pop all cooldowns (Divine Shield and DK cooldowns) right at the start until you get your bearings? How do you deal with 2 healers?

HELP!


I have to admit, I'm struggling with this as well. My team is progressing along through the gear-up process, although I am still largely using lvl 219 weapons, which limits overall DPS+burst significantly.

Part of the problem as a player who's in the middle of the gear-out process and doesn't have great weapons is that a lot of what should work at better gear levels is inappropriate for now. For example, I've achieved some mild success with "going for broke" and being very aggressive. We're talking about charging in with 4xAvenging Wrath, Hysteria buff active, and using Art of War procs for Exorcism-- hoping to kill 1-2 people before they drop one of your guys. I think this is a bad tactic later, but it does seem to work from time to time at lower rankings.

Same with the use of Death Grip and Strangulate. I heard Kromtor say once that he preferred to use DG to pull a second target into his melee group once he was engaged with someone (probably a healer, I'd guess). This probably works well when you have a lot of resilience and decent weapons, but at the point I'm at right now, I think I stick with DG as an opener and pray for a successful first kill. I try to DG someone out of position of their healer and get an early kill down since I struggle with overcoming 1-2 healers on my kill target.

I'm undecided about Hand of Freedom-- seems like later I should save it until CC has hit my team, but maybe I need to use it proactively now to avoid the first big CC. Maybe Trinket + HoF is the way to go?

I'm keeping my DK in Frost Presence a lot too... No idea whether this is a good early arena tactic or not. He sure seems to be the focus target 95% of the time, so I lose some DPS but gain some survivability.

I'm hoping to push my way up to 1000 rating and then get a look at the super seeekrit forums and glean some advice from the more experienced players. As popular as this combo has been, there's relatively few "How to Get Started in Arena" nuggets of wisdom out there. Timing of these key abilities and combos is important, and I still feel like I'm fumbling through it all...

Must... get... better... weapons!

[Shodokan]

I have to admit, I'm struggling with this as well. My team is progressing along through the gear-up process, although I am still largely using lvl 219 weapons, which limits overall DPS+burst significantly.

Part of the problem as a player who's in the middle of the gear-out process and doesn't have great weapons is that a lot of what should work at better gear levels is inappropriate for now. For example, I've achieved some mild success with "going for broke" and being very aggressive. We're talking about charging in with 4xAvenging Wrath, Hysteria buff active, and using Art of War procs for Exorcism-- hoping to kill 1-2 people before they drop one of your guys. I think this is a bad tactic later, but it does seem to work from time to time at lower rankings.

Same with the use of Death Grip and Strangulate. I heard Kromtor say once that he preferred to use DG to pull a second target into his melee group once he was engaged with someone (probably a healer, I'd guess). This probably works well when you have a lot of resilience and decent weapons, but at the point I'm at right now, I think I stick with DG as an opener and pray for a successful first kill. I try to DG someone out of position of their healer and get an early kill down since I struggle with overcoming 1-2 healers on my kill target.

I'm undecided about Hand of Freedom-- seems like later I should save it until CC has hit my team, but maybe I need to use it proactively now to avoid the first big CC. Maybe Trinket + HoF is the way to go?

I'm keeping my DK in Frost Presence a lot too... No idea whether this is a good early arena tactic or not. He sure seems to be the focus target 95% of the time, so I lose some DPS but gain some survivability.

I'm hoping to push my way up to 1000 rating and then get a look at the super seeekrit forums and glean some advice from the more experienced players. As popular as this combo has been, there's relatively few "How to Get Started in Arena" nuggets of wisdom out there. Timing of these key abilities and combos is important, and I still feel like I'm fumbling through it all...

Must... get... better... weapons!


You should have plenty of burst if you set it up right.

DMC: Death + judgement + rockets + divine storm SHOULD kill someone with a decent weapon. Especially if you pop wings. You really need to kill someone who can CC the crap out of you (warlock, priest, warrior)

Not having MS will hurt, but DMC and rockets are on a 45 second timer... if you can last that long and kill one person from the get go and then go for the healer next you should be able to pull off a win unless something goes awry.

An important part is to know what cooldowns to use and when. Hand of protection glyphed reduces damage taken by 20%. Divine sacrifice + bubble will reduce damage taken by your team by 20% for 6 seconds... And your bubble negates the damage taken from it.

Knowing when to pop cooldowns is important, especially when to use hungering cold, HOJ and repentence. This along with being able to effectively mindfreeze and strangulate as well as the ability to DG to stop large heals (holy light). If you are BE you have AOE silence that lasts for 2 seconds as well which can be helpful and IIRC it is on a 25 second timer for DR.

Making sure that sacred shield is up at all times can also make or break a fight... one FOL that has 50% more chance to crit can help... odds are you will get that crit and more life. Knowing when to summon ghoul + sac it for health is also important and you should have macros to do that as well.

This team requires HUGE amounts of micromanagement and understanding of other classes to be truely successful. Cleansing what can be and knowing not to cleanse when an affliction lock has UA on you is a perfect example of this type of knowledge... where a destro lock's immolate can be. Things as simple as taunting to get into combat so a rogue can't sap one of your guys can help too.

[Mosg2]

I appreciate what you're saying Shodokan but there's a gap between intellectually understanding all of the tools you have available and actually being able to pull them off.

1. Many teams have no good target for initial burst. Almost every class has a get-out-of-jail-free card nowadays that can and will stop you cold.

2. AE CC is ridiculous right now. Yeah, you can Cleanse and Freedom but they only go so far. Those are precious GCD's where you're putting NO pressure on the other team and they're faceraping you.

3. Any team with a Paladin is probably going to take points from you--What do you do when your primary target get's HoP'd and the only other decent target is 40 yards away?

Overall I do love the team but the utter frustration of being chain CC'd and kited is hard to deal with.

[Boylston]

The good news is that I really like the team for BGs, and I can feel my power slowly growing in BGs with each gear increase. I think Shodokan nailed part of my problem... There's so many useful things you could be doing that it's hard to pick one. With shamans, you can somewhat set up a lot of your defensiveness via totem-farms, but it's a little harder with the DK/pally setup.

At my level of (in)experience in arenas, I guess I'm trying to find a good first strategy that's going to help me get to modest ratings levels and allow even more gear upgrades. I just haven't hit that groove yet.

I want to blame my 219 weapons for a lot of it, but comparing DPS numbers in something like Rawr, there isn't a huge sustained difference (I suggest that it's all about the burst difference though).

I've been using Seal of Command, but I'm thinking of ditching it for a glyphed Seal of Righteousness. Any thoughts, gang?

[Shodokan]

The good news is that I really like the team for BGs, and I can feel my power slowly growing in BGs with each gear increase. I think Shodokan nailed part of my problem... There's so many useful things you could be doing that it's hard to pick one. With shamans, you can somewhat set up a lot of your defensiveness via totem-farms, but it's a little harder with the DK/pally setup.

At my level of (in)experience in arenas, I guess I'm trying to find a good first strategy that's going to help me get to modest ratings levels and allow even more gear upgrades. I just haven't hit that groove yet.

I want to blame my 219 weapons for a lot of it, but comparing DPS numbers in something like Rawr, there isn't a huge sustained difference (I suggest that it's all about the burst difference though).

I've been using Seal of Command, but I'm thinking of ditching it for a glyphed Seal of Righteousness. Any thoughts, gang?

Not using SoC = mistake. You are bursting people down... and it hits more than one target which forces healers to pick and choose who to heal. SoV / SoR are good single target but not really much else as SoR requires time to build up to full potential.

[Boylston]

Not using SoC = mistake. You are bursting people down... and it hits more than one target which forces healers to pick and choose who to heal. SoV / SoR are good single target but not really much else as SoR requires time to build up to full potential.


Ok, good to know. I knew I had been using SoC for a reason. :)

I have been playing many more BGs lately, so I am getting more practice with timing things like DG+Strangulate on healers/mages/warlocks. I'm trying to formulate the best kill strategy for each class and just get more PvP experience overall with this group. I am very close to having my PvP armor situation squared away (will buy legs with arena points next week, and then just have a 1-2 honor-based odds and ends to finish out).

I deliberately delayed getting engineering trained up on all my guys until I decided whether I liked the team enough to commit the resources/time to raising the skill. I made that mental commitment this week and am starting the skill-up process for engineering. 5x1600 rocket damage will certainly help.

I also am considering devoting some significant time to farming battered hilts, although I wonder if it might just be easier to farm gold and buy them for 7-8,000 g each. I also have been trying to do GDKP runs in ToC for a shot at 245 weapons. With ICC 251 items out there, it might be reasonable to offer up a 3-5,000g fee to any guild that will let me tag along for a shot at the 3 decent weapons that drop in there. I hate the idea of spending money on Hilts this late in the WotLK expansion.

Anyhow, thanks for the discussion, guys (esp. Shodokan). This is a learning process and given my limited playtime, I haven't been able to go from Lvl 1 to 2000 arena rating in 4.5 days like Kromtor!

[outdrsyguy1]

I completely disagree about using SoC. Using it in arena at low to even medium gear levels is a mistake. You are going for burst damage, splash is irrelevant most times. Look at the judgement damage between the 2 spells, one crits in the 2.5k range and the other nearly 5k range. multiply that by 4 and you'll find that you will actually burst down targets significantly easier with righousness. SoC is great for bg's because people don't heal that much and there are swarms but arena's they will just step away and cc you or get healed. I'm not pro by any means and i've only just started focusing on arena's but i did manage to break 1400 last week with all 219 weaps (except one 232). If a healer is actively healing your target your not really going to be able to take them down before you lose a guy. Your not going to make them have to chose who to heal and then kill the other.

I'd also suggest not wearing any pve gear for arena's, the difference between a few pve pieces and all pvp is very noticable in my opinion.

Always be rotating divine sacrifice with bubbles, even in bg's if there's more than about 2 opponents. It's 50% damage reduction for 6 seconds and 30% for the next 4 so it's HUGE. I've found it's insanely more effective to pop that first rather than wings on all. They also go for my dk like 90%+ of the time so I keep him in frost. Dk damage is terrible compared to the pallies imo so the difference between frost and any other stance is marginal. Having him survive so your pallies aren't kited to death is big.

I hope some of your guys are blood elf, the aoe silence is awesome. It even stops ret pallies from using skills for 2 seconds so it's great for more than just typical casters. Open up on a priest with aoe silence then stun just under 2 seconds later and you'll get that kill before they can blow the aoe fear.

I personally geared up pve first but regretted spending the marks on it rather than on furious. I geared up more in bg's and weekly 10 arena matches so the resilience makes a difference.

Do daily bg's every day (you'll need the honor, trust me), do all wg quests every week (used to be able to do them 2 times a week,tuesday then like sat or later but doesn't seem to work any more), do one daily random heroic, you want to get that 264 trinket for the pallies, it's a lot of extra dps over that terrrible arena trinket. I never did Voa but if you have time to run each of your guys through go for it. It's just really tough to get in one with crappy gear and no achievement and when you factor in random fail and loot not being for your class I just didn't think it was worth it.

Hilts are coming down in price, i bought one yesterday for 5.5k which is like 5 hours of daily's for me and well worth it if you can find em cheap.

just my 2 cents, take what you want from it! I love playing the dk/pally team. It's so much more fun than shammy team in my opinion. Not having to cast and be facing the right direction after blinds/fears/death coil's etc and not having to be constantly raped by whirlwind and other melee is a nice breath of fresh air.

[Boylston]

I completely disagree about using SoC. Using it in arena at low to even medium gear levels is a mistake. You are going for burst damage, splash is irrelevant most times. Look at the judgement damage between the 2 spells, one crits in the 2.5k range and the other nearly 5k range. multiply that by 4 and you'll find that you will actually burst down targets significantly easier with righousness. SoC is great for bg's because people don't heal that much and there are swarms but arena's they will just step away and cc you or get healed. I'm not pro by any means and i've only just started focusing on arena's but i did manage to break 1400 last week with all 219 weaps (except one 232). If a healer is actively healing your target your not really going to be able to take them down before you lose a guy. Your not going to make them have to chose who to heal and then kill the other.

You guys have me flip-flopping. I think I will have to try out SoR some. One thing I dislike is that I use basically one spec on my Pallies for both PvE and PvP and I think this would force me into giving up Glyph of SoC, which is handy for PvE.

SoR benefits from the 5pt Holy talent Seals of the Pure (+15% dmg), but I don't think I can afford to spend points there...


A couple other random comments based off your post, outdrsyguy1:

Gearing: I bootstrapped myself with a couple PvE items, but I've basically been doing 344 arena points/week + honor farming to buy PvP gear ever since the first couple weeks passed. The pallies are all basically in 800-850 resilience range-- I have legs left to replace (some Savage Saronite or L200 PvE stuff on them, yuck!) with arena points next tuesday, a necklace slot to upgrade with honor, and then some L245 PvE rings to replace with PvP stuff after that.

I am pretty good about DSac+Bubble usage, and have to admit that it's very nice. I tend to worry in arena about whether I should do it in advance of the fight or once the fight begins. I am leaning towards trying to get the first one going before I engage.

I had a revelation last night that I hadn't been using Righteous Fury in PvP at all, even though the team is talented to get the 6% damage resistance. DOH!! Talk about fail... that's now fixed!

Since I'm horde, all my pallies are BElfs. I am re-writing some keybinds/macros so that I have better usage of this silence. It's an area I need to improve upon. My DK happens to be troll (I made him a long time ago), but I will probably be changing him to BElf as well so that the team is consistent and as small as possible. I'll probably have a keybind for the 4 pallies to rotate through casting silence and leave the DK's available for a mouse click. This doesn't consume a GCD, right?

I have a macroed /cast [target=arena1..4] Repentance on all pallies, but I am not sure that I am getting the best usage out of this. I am interleaving stuns in my default kill sequence, so basically my guys fire off stuns periodically as I start the DPS sequence. This may not be ideal, but it works for PvE well and it's one less thing to try to micro-manage for arena. I may pull 1-2 of the guys out of this rotation so that their stun stays available until mid-fight.

Considering blowing Hand of Freedom proactively at the beginning of a fight instead of waiting to get rooted/snared/etc. Would love to hear your thoughts on this...



Anyhow, a lot to do and the first few seconds of arena go by fast.

[outdrsyguy1]

let me know what you think about rightousness vs soc.

i find that if i don't blow divine sac as fight starts, within about 5 seconds somone is at half health or lower and without a dedicated healer they are going to go down shortly thereafter. If you time your silences and stuns well though and don't end up getting fear bombed 2 times in a row it's very likely you'll kill your target even though one of your pallies is doing 50% damage.

and yes, it's a hell of a lot to do within about 6 seconds. don't forget you have cleanes and stuff you can use too so it's rather hectic.

[Mosg2]

I also completely disagree with Shodokan about SoC vs SoR. SoC just does not put out enough pressure against any decent healer.

[heyaz]

soc is ok for splash damage on other targets but try SoR vs SoC on a single target and see the difference. SoC is incredibly gimp on single target. SoR rips people in half - outside of arena situations its an instant kill, in arenas its 1-2 globals. Switch to SoC and you'll get down to auto-attack swaming and they're still alive

[Zugdud]

When you are comparing SoR to SoC, also keep in mind that a judgement with SoR will also proc a seal on the target while a judgement with SoC does not. So in addition to SoR judgements dealing about 2-2.5x more damage, there is an additional 1,000 or so damage delt from a seal hit as well.

The seal hits from SoR will be slightly less damaging then SoC hits, and SoR seal hits can not crit, however SoR seal hits do not have the possibility to be dodge/block/parried while SoC seal hits can be

[Mystic]

Heyaz speaks the truth about SoR vs SoC (PVP only of course).

I used to be lazy about twisting them and just kept SoC up all the time, but then watched Heyaz on livestream a few weeks ago rip through his opponents about 2-3 times faster than me, and him not much better geared than my team.

I switched to SoR (twisting to SoC when it is rarely more efficient) and now I kill cloth instantly, and 35k+ plate in about 3-4 seconds max (sometimes near instant if Darkmoon: Death procs and I also pop pyros). I have 2-pc T-10 for the almost non-stop spamming of Diviine Storm, which does a good job of keeping AoE damage, largely negating the need for SoC. If I get 6+ melee opponents lynch-mob on me however I twist to SoC, because it takes them down much faster than going one by one. This is in BGs, and SoC is especially effective if you get a cluster on you beause there are hardly ever any heals given to those you are AoEing.

In Arena, I have little play time, but I can definitely say that from my limited experience there, against a good team, SoC will just get you laughed at as they keep their distance, totally spread out from each other, CC you, and easily out-heal your SoC on anyone hit. With SoR, you have a good chance of taking your mark out in spite of the heals, espcially if you pop pyros and Darkmoon : Death procs. Between the latter two that's around 16k (avg) damage additional burst.

Use SoC if you are against a noob arena team who likes to stick together, especially if they pillar cluster-hump. Run in, glue them to the ground with glyphed Hungering Cold, with 2-pc T-10 spammable DS and SoC, you will kill one or two easily, as they cannot move away quick enough and the healer cannot heal everyone. For those that get away, twist to SoR and pursue them one by one. Again my arena time is minimal but when they are glued (and then slowed) and you are AoE'ing the ever-loving crap out of them, there is no healing done at all, as everyone including the healers are just trying to get away. This tactic usually only works a couple of times against a given team, and they then know to stay pretty spread out, and then you will use SoR and throw SoC to the curb.

[Boylston]

Updates:

I'm definitely prioritizing Engineering x 4 and Weapons Farming for the team to increase burst DPS on the initial kill. Two 232 and three 219 weapons just aren't cutting it.

SoR vs. SoC was tried out extensively over the weekend. Honestly, one can feel the extra initial burst of SoR, but the SoC splash damage has its place as well. Two fights where I squeezed out a victory were made possible only because there was a lot of DPS from SoC that helped kill the second and third players in the match. I'm sticking with SoR for now, but I think the points that have been made about SoR not putting enough healing pressure are valid with higher ranked teams.

My matchmaking rating is up at 1200 or so, even though I'm only actually rated 700ish. I faced a nice stream of 1200-1600 teams over the weekend and really struggled as a result. I think it's good news overall, since I won't be wasting practice against totally pathetic teams where technique doesn't matter.

FIrst target selection continues to frustrate me. Combined with lower burst than I want, too many classes can survive or disrupt my team before the first big healing response comes. Ignoring classes and going for someone "out of position" seems to work best. Timing of strangulate is key.... miss it and there's a bubble/iceblock/thunderstorm/howling terror/etc and I might as well leave the arena instantly.

I get a big leg upgrade tomorrow, but I clearly need to address the weaponry issue before I will be more successful. Having fun, but it's annoying that you can't get a badge/arena point weapon...

[Zappy]

Since I'm horde, all my pallies are BElfs. I am re-writing some keybinds/macros so that I have better usage of this silence. It's an area I need to improve upon. My DK happens to be troll (I made him a long time ago), but I will probably be changing him to BElf as well so that the team is consistent and as small as possible. I'll probably have a keybind for the 4 pallies to rotate through casting silence and leave the DK's available for a mouse click. This doesn't consume a GCD, right?

I'm not sure which broadcasting software you use, but as long as it supports round robin keystrokes, you don't even need to waste a special macro for it. Simply hit your arcane torrent key while dpsing or anything, so long as you aren't stunned or silences, and it'll fire off nicely without triggering a GCD.

[TeamGrizzly]

Seems lots of folks are getting good progress in aneras with their DK/4 rets teams. I am still losing all matches. The seldom wins I get are against teams that exit anera b4 the match starts.. :mad: Can't seem to burst down any target even though my team are all over 5K gear score. How do U guys do it so easily :confused:

[Boylston]

Grizzly, let me give you a little bit of an update and perhaps some encouragement...

My gear-up path was to run 10 games/week for a guaranteed 344 points per week and buy all the available ArenaPt+Honor gear that was possible without a rating. Additionally, I farmed honor to get the non-set pieces. Again, bought the best non-rating-required gear that was possible.

As I geared up, I began to see more and more success in the battlegrounds, but continued to have 95% loss in the arena during this phase (other than the /afk and "let's lose 5" teams). If you read this thread, you'll see my worries that weapons were holding me back in arena.

After getting to about 850-900 resilience by getting all the available arena/honor gear that was possible without a rating, I switched gears and began working on acquiring better weapons and getting Engineering to 400 on all characters.

Engineering was "easy", it's just a cash sink. Weapons were a little harder. At a bare minimum, you should have iLvl 219s from Pit of Saron Normal (Garfrost Hammers). These can be farmed relatively quickly. Here are a few things to think about for weapon upgrades beyond 219:

* I'd skip iLvl 232 weapons as an upgrade path. Not worth the time and effort for an upgrade that is not that great.

* iLvl 245 upgrade options are available via Trial of Crusader-25 man. On my server, these are PUGged as well as run by GDKP groups. Personally, I tried to get into GDKP runs as much as possible to have a shot at the Faction Champions STR based weapon as well as the Anub'Arak AGI polearm. The polearm isn't the best 245 ret weapon, but it certainly beats the 219s.

* Battered Hilts for the 251 weapon *may* be a viable option for you, depending on your server economy and your individual cash situation. I farmed Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron for about 25-30 hours, resetting them before I killed a boss and got saved. No luck on a drop, but while you're farming you're also looting everything and making some cash. Hilt prices on my server hit a low of about 5500g/hilt which I did NOT get a chance to utilize. I bought one at 7500 last week, and suspect that my server's current higher price reflects that fewer people are running these heroics now for gear upgrades and there are simply fewer to sell, driving the price up. I would not recommend farming them and hoping you'll get multiples, it's possible but I think there's better use of your time. I would recommend buying them if you can get a good deal or the financial outlay isn't too bad.

* Note: The financial outlay for running a GDKP ToC25 and spending 500-2000g on a 245 weapon is much less than a hilt. Not a huge difference between 245/251. I tried to run as many GDKPs as I could, and even bought a polearm for 400g... Stellar value, in my opinion.

* Other 251 options are found in ICC-10. There are THREE good 251 weapon drops in there, including one sword right off the first boss. If you are in a guild, you might be able to convince them to let you take a pally through the first boss for a shot at the weapon. Even if you can't swing this with a guild, ICC-10 is PUGged routinely and you should try to get all of your guys through there each week for a shot. If you have a lot of the 245/251/264 PvP gear, your "Gearscore" will be pretty high and you might find that you can get into ICC PUG groups fairly easily. People may harass you about the PvP gear, but you can minimize this if you're smart.

* A fantastic 264 weapon option is available on the first boss of ICC-25. Again, it's possible to PUG this instance. The great news is that you can join a PUG for ICC25, and if they can't down the boss, you don't get saved. If they kill the first boss but struggle to progress, it's not the end of the world for you. Two of my team have this weapon from PUG events. It's also possible on my server to find an odd GDKP 25 man run, jump on this if you have the cash, but expect a higher price than TOC25.

* You might also try contacting some of the better guilds on your server and offering them a guild bank donation for a 245-264 drop. I know a guild that has no more need for the drop and is DEing the awesome 264 weapon-- they've told me they're happy to have a pally come through and pay 4-5,000g for the thing if it drops. I'd be honest with people, tell them your team situation and try to reach a mutual beneficial arrangement. You'll appear less like a mooch or loser if you just lay out your situation.

*whew* Still with me?

Back to me and my arena progress. After a couple of weeks of concerted effort to improve my weapons, I was able to get a couple 245s on pallies and 232s on my DK and another pally. With a weapon loadout of 232-245-245-219-232, I was able to start winning matches and my win ratio climbed up to about 50%.

Keep in mind that your matchmaking rating is going to probably be in the 1300-1450 range because of the PvP gear you're sporting, so you will be matched against "better" teams or at least teams that will be harder to kill because they're also in your MMR neighborhood due to their gear. Just plan on most folks you meet having 750-850 resilience, even early in your arena progression.

If you have enough weaponry to be able to kill these 750-850 people, you'll start to win 20-50% of your matches and accumulate good points for the wins and lose very few points for your losses. With my above weapon loadout, I quickly climbed from 400 rating up to 1000 rating in one week.

Another week went by, and I picked up 2 weapons from ICC25 PUGs. New team loadout looks like:
232(DK) - 264 - 264 - 245 (polearm) - 251 (hilt). With this setup, I was able to very quickly shoot up to 1300ish rating, where I promptly stopped to farm honor and buy the belt upgrade, which requires rating. I'm still winning 70% of the matches against teams with MMR ratings near me. Only brutal losses I've had in the last week have been against 3 teams that had MMRs of 1950-2010. (Gotta love being paired against these guys... you don't actually lose any rating for these losses!)

I'm going to keep working on adding 251-264 weapons to my team, but I'm at the point now where I no longer feel that weapons are holding me back from hitting the 1500-1600 rating range. But there have really been 2-3 thresholds I've had to cross where my performance changed dramatically. First was getting everyone into the best armor that is available without a rating, the second was getting people into 232-245 gear, and the last big bump up in power was shifting more of the weapon gear to 251-261 range and finishing engineering (for rockets) on all characters.

It gets better. Hang in there!

[Fat Tire]

^ fantastic post

[Mosg2]

I agree with everything Boylston posted. Amazing post.

I will add a bit to it if I may. My team was/is in full Wrathful offsets and picking up the Wrathful main pieces that I have rating for... And I'm fairly certain that DK+4 Rets is just not going to break 2k this season. You're so susceptible to roots, fears, and snares against good teams that you're going to spend 75% of a match not in melee. Which means you're not getting AoW heals. Which means you're not healing. Which means you're dying. Quickly.

I swapped out two Rets for a Warrior and a Shaman--In BG's it's awesome. For 5's Void runs his Priest--We're almost at 1600 in Wrathful offsets, Quel'Delars, and mixed Relentless/Furious main pieces. I'm happier with this setup even though it's not solo.

[Boylston]

I am very excited about the prospect of character-centered area-of-effect heals that paladins will likely get for Cataclysm. I think that will help with surviving through the AoE CC that makes us vulnerable.

I am curious about the future, particularly with Rated BGs being such a new development. I like my melee team in BGs a lot. The shamans were/are very defensive oriented, whereas I feel like the DK/Pally team shines when you are on the move and attacking.

People hover outside of range of shamans and strategize about how to deal with them, you can sense them working up the courage and planning an attack. With the melee team, about halfway through a BG most people simply turn tail and run in fear.

I love that I can ride into an opponent or five and immediately start laying down the smack. With the shamans, there's so much totem setup and target facing that needs to happen before you can blow people up (safely).

I'd honestly be happy to be at about an 1800 rating and call it good for arena. I enjoy BGs more, but I'd like the ability to get all the gear through PvP instead of having to run people through PvE content in order to get weapons (a critical melee-team component!!).

I also like the fact that I can run arenas totally solo and not have to coordinate playtime (and training/practice) with a dedicated healer like the shamans require. That's a big bonus for me...

[Toned]

... have to coordinate playtime (and training/practice) with a dedicated healer like the shamans require. That's a big bonus for me...

Tell me about it ... I hate finding healers

If I wasn't working on my shamans raiding and pvp so much I'd try to finish up my ret/dk team and give it a go seems fun.

[heyaz]

GDKP pugs are probably the best way to get your 251 or 264 weps. Just bring more gold than everyone else and you're set (should be like, 2000-3000g for the weapon?) I don't think the battered hilts are worth it unless gdkp pugs aren't an option.

I agree with skipping the 232 upgrades. That stupid axe never, ever dropped for me after dozens of runs. I think the boss must have them on backorder, since it seems every melee class already has one and every fury warrior I see has a pair. They suck anyway even if you do get them.

Other option? Hire a frost mage to play 2s with you. Most will carry you to 1800 for 3k-5k gold and it's the best weapon you can get for pvp. I warn you though, it's not easy. 2v2 is loaded with melee/healer teams with 264+ or even 277 weapons starting at 1400 rating, and a ton of counter comps you just won't beat. You'll have to farm rogue/priest and rogue/mage teams to get to 1800 (they are easily countered by mage/ret). It's a bit of a grind but the weapons are awesome and you can keep your 1800 rated teams to buy everything but the helm and shoulders once you have points, even if you farm 5s just for 344 points a week.

[Shodokan]

GDKP pugs are probably the best way to get your 251 or 264 weps. Just bring more gold than everyone else and you're set (should be like, 2000-3000g for the weapon?) I don't think the battered hilts are worth it unless gdkp pugs aren't an option.

I agree with skipping the 232 upgrades. That stupid axe never, ever dropped for me after dozens of runs. I think the boss must have them on backorder, since it seems every melee class already has one and every fury warrior I see has a pair. They suck anyway even if you do get them.

Other option? Hire a frost mage to play 2s with you. Most will carry you to 1800 for 3k-5k gold and it's the best weapon you can get for pvp. I warn you though, it's not easy. 2v2 is loaded with melee/healer teams with 264+ or even 277 weapons starting at 1400 rating, and a ton of counter comps you just won't beat. You'll have to farm rogue/priest and rogue/mage teams to get to 1800 (they are easily countered by mage/ret). It's a bit of a grind but the weapons are awesome and you can keep your 1800 rated teams to buy everything but the helm and shoulders once you have points, even if you farm 5s just for 344 points a week.

The 1800 weps thing is your best bet. But most of them require you to be geared atleast in furious to get that. So if you are at that point then go for it. For rets though i would honestly say that bryntroll is better than the pvp weapon though, a bit lower top end but the proc for heals and damage is great.

[Seldum]

Super thread! Thanks for sharing the information guys.