Questions from an Arena virgin

Never done arena before, but I have scoured these forums for info. I have a few questions that I can't seem to find any answers for here. (unless they are in the protected Arena forum that I don't have access to)

1) Do you get any points for losing? I'm afraid that I'll suck so bad that I won't win anything for a while

2) It seems like a no-brainer to do 5v5, but some recent posts seem to suggest doing 2v2 or 3v3 because less people are doing 5v5 now, so there are less teams, making wins harder to come by. But wouldn't it both take longer to get points for my 5 toons and make wins harder to come by because I won't have as much DPS on a single target?

3) For elemental shamans, is haste or crit or mastery the best stat for PVP? I recall haste being the best stat in the past, but I'm not sure at this point.

Thanks.

I will leave 3) for shaman boxers.


1. you have to win at least 6 matches to be capped for conquest points for the week.

2. 2 v 2 and 3 v 3 have more teams. If solo, definitely 2 v 2 or 3 v 3 are easier to play. For boxing, depending on what combos you have, are you just starting out with no pvp gear ? if that's the case, it would not be easy. Gonna take you a while to be competitive. With that said, 6 win is definitely doable. You have 1 week to do it. Keep losing, your MMR will drop to very low. Then you meet teams that only have 4 players, no resilience, etc. can win against those. Be sure to play on Monday night and Tuesday night. But do test the water every night on arena. Never know when there are noob teams to play. and anything can happen at 500MMR.

I know you need 6 wins to get max conquest points. I was asking if you get ANY points if you always lose. Is it all or nothing? I ask because it will help me decide if I should spend the time to craft a full pvp starter set before doing any arena. If I can get points even if I go 0-10 or 0-20, then I'll jump in right away.

actually it is 5 wins, not 6.

each win you get, 286 conquest points are rewarded. So no win, no points. The points are rewarded the moment you win. And you can spend them right away.

blizzard certainly did everything they could to scare away casual players from 5v5's this season. merely participating gets you nothing but a bruised ego now.

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Originally Posted by Kromtor

blizzard certainly did everything they could to scare away casual players from 5v5's this season. merely participating gets you nothing but a bruised ego now.

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which is how it should be... Areana was becoming a joke, where you got points for just standing in there doing /dance

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Originally Posted by Bollwerk

Never done arena before, but I have scoured these forums for info. I have a few questions that I can't seem to find any answers for here. (unless they are in the protected Arena forum that I don't have access to)

1) Do you get any points for losing? I'm afraid that I'll suck so bad that I won't win anything for a while

2) It seems like a no-brainer to do 5v5, but some recent posts seem to suggest doing 2v2 or 3v3 because less people are doing 5v5 now, so there are less teams, making wins harder to come by. But wouldn't it both take longer to get points for my 5 toons and make wins harder to come by because I won't have as much DPS on a single target?

3) For elemental shamans, is haste or crit or mastery the best stat for PVP? I recall haste being the best stat in the past, but I'm not sure at this point.

Thanks.

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2) The advantage from a boxer is perfect communication between 4 toons. The smaller the arena, the smaller the advantage becomes. So we're definitely most effective in 5's, but it also has a smaller Playerbase. So to get points you could try 3's.

3) DPS wise Mastery is a very strong stat. Crit is definitely worst. I think you'll find that mastery is the best stat. Not that much experience yet.

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Originally Posted by mikekim

which is how it should be... Areana was becoming a joke, where you got points for just standing in there doing /dance

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It's quite hard to gear up if you keep meeting full PVPgeared teams as new player. Since you have to beat them to improve your gear. Yes i'm dramatising, but I'm not convinced yet. Just losing 10 games a week still took several weeks to get 1 armorpiece. It --seems-- that you get a lot more points now if you're halfdecent.

For 3) Mastery will increase your damage the most, but haste is just a hair less effective for damage, and it also helps your healing effectiveness. Trading a fraction of damage for a lot of healing effectiveness should be a no brainer.

Thanks for the responses.
I think I'll dip my toe into some Arena matches to see how bad I suck and work on my blue PVP starter set in my free time.
Probably going to use my Paladin to heal and off-spec the mage to Frost, since I hear that's the best pvp mage spec.
My biggest challenge is going to be figuring out how to alter Mercurio's 2-step macros for PVP use.

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Originally Posted by mikekim

which is how it should be... Areana was becoming a joke, where you got points for just standing in there doing /dance

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While I agree, it was a joke to just queue 10 games for points, it's much much worse today.

The biggest problem with the 5s bracket right now is the lack of participation. I tried queuing various times and different days all last week and found that most mornings, the queues aren't even available. Afternoon - early evenings, expect a 5-10 minute queue, sometimes creeping up to 20 minutes. Late evenings seem best where 3-8 min queues are normal.

While the queue times are bad enough, it's way worse to get the same teams repeatedly. You think of how many millions of subscribers they have, and yet you still face the same teams over and over - the fact is, 5s has nothing special to offer over rated bgs or 2s or 3s, so the participation has died.

Like Remanz said, if you just want to get the points, find someone that will do 2s or 3s with you. The queue times are typically around a minute, and you'll face a lot more flavors. I've been playing my DK with my daughters druid in 2s and actually having a blast with that comp.

I've considered hanging my hat for boxing simply on how bad 5s are these day. I like the occasional BGs, but hate the grind. Back when you had sub 30 second queue times, and faced many different teams, it was always fun and challenging. I think with gear, it will be about the same as it was, but it's the humongous wait between matches that really burns me out on it. When I feel like doing some pvp, i like to queue arenas and fight. Simply queueing and working on archeology or other stuff just doesn't cut it for me any more.

On the other hand, I play frequently with a few RL friends in my guild, so I don't see myself walking away either.

I'd look at Rated Battlegrounds, as a place for points too.

If you have no gear, and cannot beat semi-geared teams in 2's, 3's or 5's.
You might do better in 10's or 15's, where you're a percentage of the team instead of the whole team.

Either join when someone advertises in trade.
Or advertise yourself.



Another consideration, for 2's, 3's, 5's or Battlegrounds.
You don't necessarily need to queue with your entire team, if they're all undergeared you are a drain on the team... but if you run them in 3's with one toon at a time, that can get you the initial gearing you need to be more competitive.

However you get the points, get points every week.

Just keep trying the 5v5 queues, people are playing, it's just that they are only going to play when others play. If youre facing teh same teams, and not winning, stop, and try again in a few hours.

The fact that we as boxers have the ability to play whenever means that we will and can get more 5v5 practice than any of them, so we will be more attuned to the chaos than the opposing players.

As more people gear up, more people are going to try their hand at 5v5 so that they can get the achievements for rating in that bracket, so fear not, the queues will fill up eventually.

Monday night has had the best queues for me so far.

I agree with Monday nights for best queues. I have been playing a few other times throughout the week here and there, and some of those repeat teams can be fun if the matches are close, as both myself and the opponents are formulating new strategies as we both know we'll likely see each other again. The fact that every week brings some new fresh 80s, I don't see 5s left to die, and hopefully it'll grow as the season progresses.

In Wrath, most of the enjoyment I had was gearing up the teams, playing competitively in arenas, some bgs, and some good world pvp here and there including WG, and soloing heroics.

With the current status, WG/TB and heroics are now longer part of that mix, so I'm left with long queue arenas, bgs and world pvp, unless I go back to solo.

Anyway, not to derail the original thread. IMO, if you're a fresh 80 team, I would encourage you to try 5s weekly even if you do get beat down only so you get the experience of playing it. For gearing your team, however, you'll likely find it faster and easier to run them either solo or rated bgs.