(27-7, 1803 rating) Arena Week Observations for 7-28-08

Yet another post of my success and failures regarding last weeks Arena. I liked the stir I caused in the community and enjoyed reading everyone's responses to my last post that I'm making a new one :D

I played with 5 healers last week. Druid, Pally, 2xPriest, and a Shaman. I can't reiterate enough how much playing with different classes of healers helps mix up the Arena experience and allows one to see obvious mistakes and potential improvements. Mind you I played with all different skill levels and gear compositions. From some Veng and Merc to 4/5 Brutal healers. Gear does not equal skill level. I had the most success with my most undergeared healer.

Last night at about 9PM server time I dropped my Dpriest team sitting at 1766 and rerolled. The Paladin had impeccable timing and communication. Awesomely timed stuns, AoE silence and big heals. Concentration Aura made 27 teams sound like frying bacon last night, yummy! Once we hit the 1700 bracket the competition level jumps significantly, no longer are teams attempting to rush in and instead are hiding behind pillars for 10 minutes at a time. We finally called it a night at 1:00am at a record of 27-7. Average fight team in teh 1700 bracket was 15min.

I learned patience. One wrong move against these teams and its gg. Waiting 15 mins for a fight to start to down one guy and then have them run and hide for another 5 minutes is tough. But at 15 pts a game it all adds up. Tank and spank from the totems for the win. Its definitely more fun playing in the 1500 bracket and I now understand rerolls. Nuke through the low level teams because the action starts immediately. I can tell how good the team I am playing is just by how they come out of the gate. Scrub teams come out one by one, scattered and often stand in plain sight. Good teams run in a tightly packed groups and stay out of sight for minutes.

Top 30 teams just play the LoS game like crazy. If its a top Eurocomp team I'll drop the mage and then spend the rest of the match ensuring the priest doesnt get the rez, while the whole team just LoS's. The funny part is against these teams that LoS like crazy the typical match time is just under 15min. And there is no coincidence that theres five of them and the cooldown on my nuke is 3min. It takes a ton of discipline and not letting them make me anxious or panic.

About panic...my best healers attribute is his ability to follow the game plan and stay cool under pressure, this guy does not panic. Many of my healers panic at the sight of S3 teams or huge amount of damages followed by cc. My Pally healer is great, he calmly communicates kicks, silences, my need to heal, and his mana status. This allows me to focus all of my energy on taking down the other team. Having a skillfull healer that is patient and calm makes all the difference in the W column.

I have finally put a formula to the heal and purge strat. Heal through their damage. Purge you nuke target. Finish off the Purge target. Keep yourself topped off while you purge their entire team. Then I get back on DPS and the team melts like butter.

Another observation: We have to be perfect as a Quadbox while its 5v5. After you slowly turn the game in your favor by taking people out theres a little more room for error. But make no mistake, against these high level teams I have lost matches in a 5v3 situation. Rez attempts are so common, that in a 5v3 game I now move Rezzers to the top of the kill list. By this time their running for their lives anyways but all it takes is one good LoS rez and it could be gg.

I apologize for the long post and I know not everyone is having the same experience as me in the arena. But Im only perfecting my mimmic of Ellay and the strat he's shared from the video (ty again!). I always take away something from your guys' responses so keep on sharing. Going to make a run for 1950 tonight, wish me luck!

I am sorry for interrupting your topic, but how do you stop their ressers? I love distance, so much in BGs. I throw my pets. I drop totems and traps and keep distance. But, if your pally has 10 yard interrupt and you have a 20 yard interrupt and their res is 40 yards (or maybe 30), how do you stop them? I thinking of what I would do if I needed to heal my voids on my lock, he has to be 20 yards and that is WAY to close for an intercept, CC, etc. I can heal my hunters' pets from 45 yards, so that isn't so bad. But for other people like my shammies, what can I do to keep distance and still attack?

Glad to hear your doing so well :)if you run into anymore issues let me know but judging by your current record it seems like your on the right path to beating me~

Elektric,

Great to hear you are doing well with a team that is not as well geared (shammies or healer) as mine. It gives me hope that Aelli isn't just an alien. ;)

I have never played with any healer but a pally, and always the same one. I'm glad you are singing the praises of a pally healer because I'd hate to have to switch after working with him for a while. His ability to stun targets are often what gives my guys the ability to down those teams that are constantly LOSing, and between concentration aura and the 50% spell timer knockback reduction from having 4 arena mail pieces, the spells have very little chance of not going off.

I've yet to master the purge and heal dance, and our communication could be better. I'm learning that so much of arena is noting when the opposing team has mages, priests, and pallies, noticing when they have used their ice blocks, pain suppressions, or bubbles, and knowing when our alphas won't go to waste. I've also noticed that healing through the war stomps, blood elf arcane AOEs, and other AOE CCs tends to be better than trying to DPS through them. Guess it is just so hard to heal when you know someone is one LB volley away from dead.

The other thing I'm worried about is that the lessons I'm learning now may be only forming bad habits - the vast majority of my fights have been in the 1400 bracket. Last Monday we went 7-3 for our best showing yet, with all 3 losses against horde heavy melee teams (each made up of only taurens and blook elves). Ended the night barely above 1500 and had to stop due to RL constraints.

Keep up the postings - always an informative read.

Continuing the "how to interrupt ressers" topic, well, it kinda depends (at least to me) on the position where the dead player is, and wich arena.
On lordaeron ruins, i once took out a hunter, by standing in the green water, thing is, he died in the side of the middle tomb, so the other team shaman was trying to ress him all the way back from the gy side, so i had to break my MB to go there and earth shock. They had 3 ressers, enhanc shaman, holy pala and a dpriest, and this new proximo helps a lot, tho i didnt knew u have to be focusng on target to see the cast bar.
So, u gotta watch out where the body lies down, and if theres any chance for them to ress, it often comes down to the fact that they will show their ressing, because ur not anymore allover the arena, u are back, MB'ing or just waiting, making preasure on their heads :P I remember to play 5man arenas with 4 friends, and we didnt had much experience on it, but as usual, we got the best gear we could get. I was playing a warrior, and basic setup was war/hpala/lock/mage/eleshaman or eleshaman for another healer...and... it was amazing how often the other teams ressed their players, without no one notice. From what i think, ppl must think someone will be watching it, and no one will. Sometimes its just lack of attention. Now im quad boxing, and either me or my partner will spot the ress in 1/2 seconds, theres much more focus. Theres also another thing, ppl dont comments much, but...we only have to count on 2 ppl to do arenas, and thats awesome. No more: im not here today, or wtv. At any time, after work, we can manage to do arenas.

I've only done like 50 arenas since i box, but i think i can give some ideas on what i think results best, at least in euro arenas, cause i've seen a lot US movies with headless chickens :P
-same arena in a row, im used to make something different, i usually rush according to the arena, getting my ground asap. Im much more confident when im in lordaeron controlling their spawn point, than them controlling me inside mine. Im starting to make this a frequent move in lordaeron, go for the green water, own a side so they can only: a) los u with the smaller side of the tomb, where my priest can fear them; b) stay on spawn, and now they will have a man down, when they come out.

-so u managed to kill one, and they decided to LOS instead of making an attempt to kill me. Keep an eye for the rez, and i'll stay and do what i like the most in an arena: mana break. Sometimes i see one or two of them desperate to stop me from getting my mana up, i love panic :D, so it ends either on failed attempts, or on an increase of panic that will give them a loss.

-try to show ur brain the less possible, at least when u run similar names. on most arenas i'll move to los areas, and once there, ill move the less possible and always in ghost wolf, on top of the other chars, causing them to target the wrong one, and upon their rush, they wont have time to call to focus another target, they will be one man less, without nuking me where it hurts the most. OFC they will know ur main after some arenas, but this helps when u start ur arenas :)

-i cant stress enough the fact that, u have to show them ur cool, calm, ur there to win, and their there to panic. I often take my time, along with my partner to check their gear, we can afford to nuke palas and mages, my partner can mass dispell them fast.

these simple tips were made on some own arenas experiences, and they gave me rating to buy bracers, and on the future, my pants. Hopefully i'll reach 1600, only 1/2 wins away from it, to get the chest. i hope to get 1800 one day as well.

A little advice for handling resurrections.

In arenas resurrection is only possible with out of combat abilities. This means you don’t have to shock someone to actually interrupt resurrection. Shooting a rank 1 (1 sec cast time) lightning bolt from 40 yards just to put the resurrecter back in combat will just as good interrupt the resurrection as a shock would do.

Get an addon that warns when someone is casting resurrection spells.

I use antagonist , by default it sadly doesn’t have the resurrection spells among the casts but with a little lua editing it’s pretty easy to fix. Here is the edited file I use. It might take some time to filter out the spells you don’t want to see, so your screen doesn’t get mass spammed by useless stuff. Here is the file that goes into your WTF\Account\accname\SavedVariables directory if you want to use the filters/settings I use.

So far purge has been my prefered method of interupting res's because i can do it on the move, but if they are buffless and the purge doesn't work to put them in combat i'll go ahead with a shock. I need to find a button spot for rank 1 lightning bolt though since that's where our range is at.

btw Maat, thanks for sharing those. I know my partner will be happy as shit if I can wake up to the res's a bit better. He's gotten himself killed trying to stop res'd before and it's gg after that.

theres nothing worse than killing someone and then having someone rez them :( My team has 5 rezzers and i have never gotten one off. :thumbdown:

I use a res macro now on all of my resers

/cast [target=playertarget,dead,exists,help][target=ArenaPartner,dead,exists,help][target=shaman1,dead,exists,help][target=shaman2,dead,exists,help][target=shaman3,dead,exists,help] Ancestral Spirit

When someone dies. i just hit that button which is bound to the same key on all my shamans (ie. 9) then they all try to res. It's worked a couple of times for me.

The first condition set [target=playertarget] lets me manually select a body to res, that way if i'm out and about and see someone get wasted I can just click his body and still hit my '9' button to res them. In arena this should work everytime with the [...,help] conditional to ensure it's not stuck with an error trying to res someone you killed.

happy res'ing