I have heard a couple folks, notably Caleb, recommend a rush strategy early on when you're a bit undergeared in arena. The hope is that you can plow into them and kill 1 fast enough that it causes mass confusion on their end. I have not tried this much, but here's what I can see are the pros/cons:

Pros:
* Getting a quick first kill is good for a variety of reasons, including putting them on their heels, not giving them time to figure out what they're up against, and generally demoralizing them.
* You may be able to better concentrate DPS on someone if you charge in and take out the range (and potentially LoS) issues
* You may be able to avoid a coordinated rogue/melee charge on your team since the rogues tend to "go wide" and set up in stealth

Cons:
* You may likely draw "first blood" and still get very badly beated in a 5v4 sitaution
* You don't have much totem defenses at first, fearbomb/AoE/etc
* You will likely have one of your team CCed as you're charging towards them

The rush strategy is likely to work better against undergeared/uncoordinated opponents. But then again, playing it safer with a totem farm is likely to produce good results against those teams as well.