Advice For A Care Bear wanting to test the waters?

[Svpernova09]

I'm a total care bear. but I'm interested in testing the waters. I've got 3 shaman, a feral druid, a DK, and a Warlock all at 80. Should I dive into WG and BGs and see how things pan out? What should I do to prepare? Should I really downgrade my PVE gear to blue PvP crafted gear?

[BobGnarly]

I would take your 3 shaman (simple), and do WG and AV. Being in a larger group helps give you some time to figure out what you're doing without always being focused (which is going to happen when you're boxing in general).

Use your pve gear - you'll get rolled with it on, but you'll also be dishing out the pain. I guess maybe it depends on your pve gear, but I assume you have pretty good gear or you wouldn't be asking. If it's marginal, yeah, get the blue crafted stuff.

Best thing to prepare is to understand you will probably need an entirely different set of keybinds and macros, in addition to a different mindset, obviously. Understand that you have pay careful attention to staying alive. While that's true in pve as well, while pve'ing you generally know exactly what is happening and what is going to happen because you've seen it all before. pvp is dynamica, and you never know when that rogue will jump you. Your power goes down exponentially as you lose toons, so I focus very hard on not letting anyone die. Plus it save a lot of headache about ressing a toon clear across the bg.

So yeah, just jump in a give is a whirl, you'll love it.

[Svpernova09]

Awesome info. I think I do have a bit of a PvP mindset, I played as a resto druid in 2v2 and some 3v3 in seasons 3 and 4, and toyed around as resto druid in 3s in S6. My druid has resto gear with ~750ish Resilience, So maybe I'll toy around with leading with the DK.

Next question...


FTL? I'm currently using focus, but I assume I can save myself some headache by swapping over to FTL before I get too involved.


Edit: I've been Bladstormed by an 80 warrior and it didn't seem to do much at all to me, I just TS'd and laughed at him. Maybe he was just really terribly geared.

[Kromtor]

Blue PvP gear is a waste of money. Don't enter arenas without at least full deadly + furious offsets from honor farming unless you want your dreams crushed before they begin.

[Svpernova09]

Blue PvP gear is a waste of money. Don't enter arenas without at least full deadly + furious offsets from honor farming unless you want your dreams crushed before they begin.

No worries, my dreams were crushed as soon as I posted this thread. If I can get everything going fast enough I may try to lose a quick 10 tonight just to get the arena points going. My druid will be resto for sure, I've got 800+ resilience on her with about 1950 healing in resto pvp gear. My shaman are all geared out in heroic / badge gear.

[heyaz]

Mixed pvp, especially with a melee, is difficult to coordinate. You may find playing 4 casters to be your best option.

I would not downgrade your pve gear to the blue stuff. You will take a lot of damage in pve gear but you will be able to kill, which is important. if you are able to get epic pvp gear and gem it very aggressively (no stam gems, all spell power and penetration), that may be preferable.

Target priority is very important. I would give you a list but I think you will discover very quick;y which classes are the most threat to you. In general it's the DPS and people that can aoe. Aoe will be a significant factor until you've got 23k+ hp and 900+ resilience, at that point you can ignore it for at least a short time and kill off single target dps. When you're undergeared through, you need to find the blizzard, hurricane, or mind sear and stop it immediately.

You'll want to avoid arms warriors like the plague until you are very very tough. At that point you can either nuke them or heal through it.

Running with an aoe healer is very helpful. If I bring my priest just spamming circle of healing and such, it goes from being able to take on 4-5 people to more like 8-10.

You will want a minimum of 75 spell penetration on all your casters in PVP. More like 95-120 for arenas.

[Ualaa]

Create an arena team immediately.
Play as few games as possible, where the team plays at least ten, and every toon plays at least 30% of the games.
The only objective here, is to be earning points; ten or twelve losses a week is just fine.
Even though you're only here for points now, observe how teams beat you.
Definitely try to win, and adapt a bit to each composition type that attacks you.
It will help out down the road, when you are trying to win with gearing done too.

The level 78 rare pvp set is worthwhile, for toons who are fresh to 80th.
Chances are it is a huge upgrade over quest rewards and drops.
However, for a team already at 80th for some time, especially with PvE gear, I'd pass.

I would spend most of my time in AV.
It is the best honor per hour of play time.
And honor is the limiting factor in how quickly gear comes.

Once you have near full honor gear, start to concentrate on arena's.
Experiment and see what works for you.

[Ridere]

And for what it's worth, there are a ton more arena teams playing on Monday. I used to get my arena losses on Wednesday (20 total, 10 per team), and it'd be an evening-long affair. I did my 20 losses on my two new 80's teams yesterday (Monday), and queues were no more than 3-5 minute wait times. I hammered out my losses very quickly.

Wintergrasp and AV are definitely good practice grounds for PVP, as you can kind of hide in the pack and work on things.

[Svpernova09]

And for what it's worth, there are a ton more arena teams playing on Monday. I used to get my arena losses on Wednesday (20 total, 10 per team), and it'd be an evening-long affair. I did my 20 losses on my two new 80's teams yesterday (Monday), and queues were no more than 3-5 minute wait times. I hammered out my losses very quickly.

Wintergrasp and AV are definitely good practice grounds for PVP, as you can kind of hide in the pack and work on things.

I've seen people here talk about easy / quick ques on Monday nights, I created a 3v3 and qued, and waited for 45 minutes before giving up and heading to WG. and this was at 10pm Server time, so I'll try to get my games in earlier.

[Iceorbz]

wow... no one plays 5's on my realm (1062 rating and im 222nd ranked). And I never wait for a que except for the 1 minute lol.