Best approach for arena?

[Ualaa]

Obviously it is quite a while after the start of the season.

I've decided to start going for Conquest points on the Pally/DK's team.
Unfortunately, it's not that easy to get wins.

My DK's are mid 2.6k resiliency and 108k health unbuffed.
They are pvp hit capped and have 220 spell penetration between 3 blue gems and the cloak enchant.
They're missing four pieces of honor gear, so that will add a little to them still.
They're using iLV 318 2H Axes.
DK's: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...%C3%A9s/simple

My Pally is barely over 3k resiliency, and has 112k health unbuffed.
She has prioritized Spirit and Haste.
She has a 325 Mace and the 359 (AH) Shield.
There are three more pieces of honor gear available.
Pally: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../judsea/simple

Running 5's hasn't been that successful.
Queues are over 5 minutes a game, on the weekend when theoretically more people are playing.
Even using Anti-Magic, for a sustained opener on the first target and using the HB-FS-NS-BS, two healers (each team so far has been 2 Healers + 3 DPS) easily outheal my DPS.
Not even close to killing even one opponent yet.

Running 2's... figured that would be easier.
Haven't done much of this, as teams disband after two games or so, without a win.
The Pally (with a 3k res Warrior) lost their two games.
The DK (with a 3.3k res Resto Shammy) lost a game, and the Shammy said the DPS was very low.

What's the answer?
Just continue to plug away, and eventually my rating will tank to the point where I'll play equally shitty opponents?
Or say screw arena, and just get Honor capped for the end of the season... which will let me buy weapons on Day 1...
And do an honor grind again, for Conquest gear... but at the most be one week behind others in gearing?

Any suggestions?

[Kekkerer]

It helps to start off with someone else healing initially to get your 5 wins. I had a priest with 4k+ resi heal me and we had a reasonable win rate when my dks were between 1.5k-2k resiliance. A significant win boost was levelling up engineering for the heads and glove enchants. I'm playing now with my pally and i'm not doing amazingly 1550 rating (in my book anything over 1.5k is good) but i did go 5-0 this week, don't have time to play more games.

[pinotnoir]

You have 4 options. Que 5's with guild mates and get your points. Que 2's with 2 dks and maybe get to 1600. Que 3's with 3 dk's and maybe get to 1600. Que 2's with your pally and 1 dk and maybe get to 1500. Now that everyone is sporting full pvp gear the holy grail of 4 DK's are not as powerful. They are still the best option for pvping as a boxer. However, they are not steamrolling anyone like people did at the start of the season when nobody had gear. Give up any attempt to get high rating and just get your points and be done with it. It will save yourself the frustration of watching people live through 4 dk's going all out on them.

[Ualaa]

All I care about really, is the Conquest weapons or for the healer Weapon + Shield.
If my rating never went above 1000, I could care less.
Battlegrounds are what I find fun, not arena.

It is kind of frustrating...
I remade the 5's team, after the first one lost 18 matches without killing a single opponent.
Two healers can easily outheal the DPS I put out.
That puts my team at 0 wins and 20 losses, so far.



Don't have anyone else in my guild, so that's not an option.

I guess making new character sets in IS Boxer is the next chore then.
So the round-robin will be Toon A, Toon B, Toon A, Toon B... rather than C and D, who aren't there.

[Kekkerer]

It helps to have a round robin strangulate IWT macro on focus for one of the healers.

[Kekkerer]

You posted in another thread that you have 318 2H-Axes.

That is a problem, you should easily be able to get 333 swords from ring of blood in twilight, there are no pres for that. I upgraded my 333 sword to the 85 badge TB swords and then to arena weapons.

[Littleburst]

+ 1 on swords are important

+1 on silences. You're gonna have a tough time just spamming damage in a target, you will need to CC to kill someone. HELLO hungering Cold. Esp with a healer hopefully keeping you alive you can really screw them up properly. Just use it twice. wait for DR and use it again. Combining that with Strangulate on healer should get some good pressure out.

[Ualaa]

Thank you for the suggestions.

Have Strangulate on round-robin.
But add in, versus the focus target.
*Edit*
Do you manually push the Strangulate, or build it into your DPS spam?

I will look into Engineering.

I went and bought four 2H Maces on the AH (very good price, so figured why not).
They're iLV 344, more than a 100 DPS increase on the weapon.
And better stats.. see how that goes.

I've got Hungering Cold, as one of the "random" spammed buttons in the rotation.
HB (key down) and on key up, one of: HB, FS, FS, NS, BS, HC.
Could take that out, and manually control it; the random nature has worked well in battlegrounds, but more control cannot hurt in BG's and I can see that as being a boost in arena too.

Thanks.

[Kekkerer]

I personally do not like the hungering cold macro in the manifesto because of the significant dps decrease on one of the chars.

I've got it set up exactly like mind freeze on my main dps key but with longer delays and obliterate ofc.

[ghonosyph]

i've found more success by having an outside healer on my team. My pally has been severely lacking on points because of it, but thats just how it rolls. There are some things i've found that work rather well with two healer teams, as long as they're not 1800 rated when you're like 1400... you're gonna lose those matches regardless of two heals or not.

what i start out with is a macro that deathgrips EVERYONE into range, fires off two howling blasts and then hungering cold. *(ie i have a macro for each dk that does /cast @arena1-4 deathgrip, and then just target arena 5 and focus fire on him)... this usually causes two things to happen, their team will instinctively pop all defensive cooldowns or trinkets, pop hungering cold again and then obliterate spam and blood strike spam, pop runic empowerment and obliterate 3 times on each dk.

IF you can "surprise" a group like this then you're going to down someone almost assuredly. The /focus on a healer and round robin on strangulate is a good touch as well, tho i haven't implemented it yet, i just have strangulate on my T key on round robin and use it to burst down heals or stop mages from being pesky.

IMO hire a healer, get your points for a couple weeks on your dks and buy the 359 weapons(axe mace sword, depending on race and preference) I mainly work the pally in when one of my 5 other healers aren't around to play. I usually win close to same rated teams, but anything thats mmr 1650 + wrecks me(ie the opponents are usually a good 200 to 400 rating higher than me IF they win, anything like rated or lower loses harshly to me lol). I've got about 3100 resil on my dks too, so they stay alive a bit longer.

One thing you can learn to do is to manage defensive cooldowns better, and wear out their healers mana by focusing on a hard to kill target. Watch them closely and when they get low grip BOTH healers into the kill zone and go for the burst with a mix of howling blast and obliterate , using runic empowerment then, to really mess them up. If you can keep their DPS on the defensive and put out LOTZ of dmg so that the healers HAVE to pressure heal, then they're going to burn out on mana quick(lol thats a relative term but you get the idea) then just try to grip and burst. going against two healers is going to be all about the outlast the mana and then cc/burst. Target swapping when someone gets low is kinda win as well once they get low on mana. Make them MAKE choices, and react to you, vs you just smacking against the wall.

Liek the others have said before me here, you really should get some weapons that was MY biggest wall, and once i got my 359 axes i started really rolling over teams. Stack strength /resil and keep that spell pen capped and you should be seeing better numbers soon <3 =)