Getting Started in World Of Warcraft Arenas

When a game like World of Warcraft is alive and well three years after its release, one must wonder about the secret of its longevity since nine million players can’t be wrong. At some point WoW was been nominated as the fastest MMORPG in which you can reach the level cap, so rushing your character to 70 can’t be it. Unless you’re knee deep into Tempest Keep already, or even the Black Temple, then high level 25-man instances aren’t your thing and PvE is second in your interests. This can only mean one thing: you’re born for PvP; you enjoy the thrill of battle and want to match your skill, wits and gear with other human players. Blizzard has implemented the PvP Arenas for some time now, since Season 2 is soon to come to an end, but there still are a lot of players struggling with low rated teams. The following guide will set you on your way to 1900 rating so that you can at least look decent and have the basis for further improvement.

We’ll presume you start with zero resilience and blue PvE gear at level 70 so the first priority will be to get your gear into order. The idea that PvE gear works well in the Arenas should be ditched immediately since it’s long overdue, so you need to boost up your resilience and stamina first, regardless of what class you’re playing. First off you’re going to need the epic level 70 PvP items you can buy in the Officer’s Quarters and for that you require honor points. Each week, starting midnight on Thursday and ending the following Tuesday morning, there are battleground weekends available, meaning fighting in one particular battleground out of the four will award extra honor. The best way to get honor is by always playing in the appropriate battleground within a premade team. Unfortunately that’s harder than it seems, so the second best choice involves farming Alterac Valley battleground over and over again. You should stick to AV because it has the shortest queues and regardless of a win or loss by your faction (a factor you can’t really influence), you still get massive amounts of honor points. In order to avoid entering AV games that drag on for more than 30 minutes, you should queue to the 2v2 and 3v3 Skirmish arena just seconds before entering that game. It’s a great failsafe system that will get you out of dead games as well as grant you extra honor. With the current honor point distribution system, in most cases you can get 100 free honor points in the first 4 minutes of a new AV game. AV weekends are never to be missed if you need honor, since you can get up to 2000 honor per hour. With that in mind, be ready to gradually buy your items from the PvP vendor, always changing your current gear to maximize the stamina and resilience gain. It’s the same for everyone, so expect to trade damage dealing or healing power for survivability. Usually players first buy the epic bracers, ring, necklace, cloak and two pieces of blue High Warlord equipment in order to get the +35 resilience set bonus. Usually it’s better to get the helmet, for its Meta socket, and the chest piece. Their Merciless Gladiator counterparts are too expansive to acquire at this stage, since arena points are limited each week while honor can be farmed in huge amounts daily.

Gearing up for PvP will take a few weeks so it’s better to keep hoarding honor while getting the hang of basic arena play. The average gain will be 1000 honor per hour so you can calibrate your expectations depending on what items you need and their price. Remember you also need some battleground badges for those. With weak gear and no experience whatsoever, chances are you’re going to get completely wiped in 5v5 arenas, so it’s better to start slow, learning the popular combos and how to get more out of your class in 3v3 and 2v2. Currently the rating system gives a penalty for smaller teams. With 3v3 you get 80% and with 2v2 you get 60% the points you’d have for the same rating on a 5v5 team. Blizzard is planning to lower the penalty within the v2.2 patch. Your team starts at 1500 rating and this rating will go up or down if you win or lose games within the arenas. More points are won by defeating higher rated teams, while less is lost while being killed by a far superior force. In the end, your team will go up and down averaging a certain rating and that should represent the current value of your team. It can be improved by changing the group setup with a more competitive one, learning how to master your class’ strengths and minimizing its weakness as well as gaining better gear. One of the above will work so be flexible and don’t despair. You can’t learn without doing mistakes and the more mistakes you do, the more you learn.

Your best bet would be to get a good setup running for 3v3 and get that team to a respectable rating in order to get points while gearing up. Many argue it’s a game of rock – paper - scissors unless you’re going for 5v5, since the group setup can single out a winner before the arena even starts. It’s a choice between dual damage dealers or one healer and a damage dealer. While raising your rating up from the default 1500, you will meet all kinds of strange and innovative teams, but in the end, popular combos rule the top. In 2v2 paladin or druid and a warrior, priest or shaman healers with a rogue, paladin with a warlock rule the landscape, being relatively easy to play and leaving a greater margin for error. Mage or hunter teamed with rogue are also two popular combos, but require more finesse due to the lack of healing. When it comes to 3v3, it’s usually two damage dealers and a healer or three damage dealers, apart from the solid Paladin/Warrior/Shaman dual healer combo that has ridiculous survivability and burst. This team setup has it easy against healer / rogue / frost mage teams which in turn kill healer / warlock / shadow priest. They die to 3 damage dealer teams which get completely obliterated by the dual healer combo, closing a full circle. Of course this is all on paper and on high ratings. Below 1900 rating you can worry more about playing your game properly and doing the best your class does. At lower ratings, skill is better than team setup.

While you can safely march through the battlegrounds in a PvE talent build without worrying too much about surviving, arenas are a whole different deal. Dreams of greatness come to reality only if you go to your class trainer and respect to a full PvP build. There are no hybrids allowed, so you either play in raid instances or in the arenas. Now that we got it settled, you need to get yourself a targeting add-on to monitor your opponents’ life within the arenas and select them faster for the killing blow. Arena Master is alright for the job. Alt + left click will allow you to move the icon away from the center of the screen to a more suitable location. Communication is crucial and Blizzard is taking care of ingame voice options, but since that is also a v2.2 patch feature, you should install Ventrilo and find a free server you and your mates to join. This implies the use of a microphone. Don’t be afraid to use it, just go in and call your targets, announce if you silenced a healer of sheeped a damage dealer, and let everybody know if your target is getting low on health to assist you in finishing the job. As a minimum, you must also have macro for the main assist target. For instance, on a 3v3 full damage dealer team one of you will be the main assist, like a warrior or a rogue, and everybody will attack his target. It makes wonders for bursting down one enemy when their healer has no chance of reacting and it goes like this /assist warrior-name.

Once you have enough arena points, you need to buy two Merciless Gladiator armor pieces to get yet another +35 resilience bonus, namely the cheaper gloves (1125 arena points) and shoulder piece ( 1500 arena points). The gloves are important due to their special class bonus. Though if you’re a warrior, hunter, rogue or melee shaman, the best course of action would be to buy off the weapons first. There aren’t that many weapons in the game that fare better than these beauties, at least not without consistent help from an end-game raiding guild. At this point, playing PvP arenas is a lot more casual than raiding five times per week. With this kind of starting gear you get 200 resilience and a decent health pool to go along, at the cost of 75000 honor points and 2625 arena points. It is doable within 5 weeks of playing and should be the minimal gear requirements for entering the big game PvP arenas for 5v5. You have to take into consideration that most characters playing a 1900 rating team have 10.000. health unbuffed and more than 350 resilience so you need to work a bit to compete since gear is too important.

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