A couple comments:

When I and Ellay say "rush", we generally mean that their whole team goes straight for you as soon as the door opens. Ellay's recommended anti-rush tactics on each map generally involve having a totem farm out and bloodlust #1 burned so that if they rush in, you can kill 1-2 fast.

Against the "took their sweet time and have a CC plan" teams, it's more important than ever to focus on killing their DPS first. I really like the following targets:

Warriors: They're going to fear bomb and Mortal Strike you. I 4xPurge them, cast one LB volley, then evaluate their health. If they are in range of a 4xEM+NS+Trinket+CL kill, I burn it and hopefully take them out. Be ready to add a 4xShock on if they don't quite die. If for some reason they get healed through this, it's bad news for me, generally.

Fire Mage: These are arguably the most dangerous DPSers, but they are more dangerous on a rush than if they have setup/strategy time. If there's one present, I prioritize them over a warrior. Frost mages I ignore for the most part.

Hunters: Mana draining stings and multishot wreak havoc if left unabated. I really like to blow up Hunters ASAP because they have no Cloak of Shadows/Ice Block/Divine Shield/Soul Link type immunity/mitigation. When you engage one, keep your mouse over them so that you can retarget them quickly after the inevitable feign death.

Rogues and Feral Druids: I drop Fire Novas and maybe shock these guys. Because Cloak of Shadows is so annoying, I do not try to make a rogue my 1st/2nd kill ever. A feral druid can sometimes drop easily if they got hit with Chain Lightning or Fire Nova damage and haven't yet gotten healing support.

Again, I don't worry about trying to get the chain Cycloning druid or the other CC as much as I try to get their biggest DPS threats down first. Sure, your healer may be struggling to fight CC and you may have a shammy tied up, but if you can take out a strong DPSer on their side, they're going to be left with only 1-2 people that are really going to be a threat.

Echoing Ellay-- I also recommend "turtling" a bit by pitching in heals, reapplying totems/bloodlust, etc. If anything, my early arena experiences showed me that we were trying to kill TOO FAST and not being defensive enough. Feel free to "reset" the battle after you kill the first person (or two). 5v4 or 5v3 is much easier than 5v5.


For whatever it's worth, we're doing about 1600 rating now. My lead shammy is at 710 or so spell damage and 400 resilience, but the 3 others are still at 660 spell damage and 300 resilience. I had similar issues to the ones you are having now a few weeks back, but now I've moved on to new problems. (Such as, how to counter the team with 2 rezzers (or three!!) that undoes all your early kills.

Good luck!