How to "Break into" PvP?

[Horrigan]

Hey everyone, I've been playing WoW for quite a while now, but I've always been a raider, and I have really only dabbled in PvP (Enough "Just-For-Points" arenas with my guilds monk Tank to get a full set of the Epic Malev. gear). After some leadership differences within my guild, myself and a few other officers have decided to leave, and while I like raiding, the entire thing has left a rather sour taste in my mouth so I'd rather take some time off, instead of getting back into it.

The problem is, is that outside of Progression Raiding, there's really no other avenue where I feel I could become a better player other than PvP, and while it certainly has its appeals, I've found it frustrating to try to break in, and to not feel out of place.

To clarify, in Raiding, if you want to improve your performance, you Check out what people who are ranking on WoL are doing, you watch videos of the fights and figure out class-specific ways to increase damage. You have tools like SimCraft, Askmrrobot, Reforgelite, and Elitistjerks that are there to guide even the most stat illiterate raider, unfortunately when it comes to tools I can use to improve in PvP, I'm drawing a blank.

So I've come here basically asking, as a Death Knight looking to break into PvP seriously for the first time in my WoW career, what websites can I look at for information, where do I find high ranked players to find a rough guide for what I should be doing, and more importantly, how can I improve my skills overall in PvP so I feel as comfortable doing an arena or rbg, as I do a heroic boss fight?

[Zulandia]

Arena junkies sometimes has some quality info, other than that you can of course look at the ladders to find someone to emulate gear/spec wise other than looking at some basic guides however it's a lot more about really practicing to get better.

And I don't just mean play a bazillion games and hope you improve, actively try and improve yourself with every game. After every match say to yourself "Hey I really fucked that up and that's why we lost" or "Even though we won I could really improve this", recording yourself to watch replays really helps.

Also remember not to blame your partner (even if it is easy) the odds are you're both making just as many mistakes so work on fixing your own and if they want to improve they will too, if they don't get a new one.

[Faerwen]

Arenajunkie has links to streams and guides, but if your willing to shell out like 5 bucks, skillcapped is an amazing website, with a bunch of in depth guides for every class, each video guide covering specific, intricate aspects of the class. I highly recommend it if you feel like getting serious about pvp. All guides are also made by multi-glads and rank 1 tournament player, so they know their shit.

[Hammerschlag]

Your a Death Knight so look at some of "Finalreqrium's" videos. I believe he is a Death Knight YouTuber. Also check out arenajunkies.com. Another good thing to do is check out some of the PvP streams on twitch.tv, and watch arena videos. Oh yeah, don't forget to keybind on your keyboard and always mouse turn. Good luck!

[Snuggli]

Hey there,

First things first you want to get an idea of the sort of comp/spec you should be playing. For this I normally go to World of Wargraphs, go to PvP, look at best players and filter them by 3s.

From this you can see most are playing Unholy but there is a couple of Frost DKs in there. It's pretty early in the season so unfortunately not many people are above 2.2k yet (nobody will be rating pushing this early, most people will be doing RBGs for a higher cap). You kind of want to use well-known PVPers to stalk on armoury (I assume it's the same in PvE). Mes is the most well known on there.

The main thing to note in PvP though is that 9 times out of 10, there is not a definitive answer as to what you should've done in any situation. This even counts for gemming/speccing/reforging. As an example, I could reforge to 3 possible stats on my Boomkin (after hit). Haste, Crit or Mastery. All 3 of these are viable (unlike PVE) because you can build comps around it, as each has a completely different effect on the playstyle.

There not being an answer also applies to movement, CD usage, positioning, target calling, swapping. The best thing you can have is someone 'give you advice', you can't be told what to do or how to play because there are so many hundreds of thousands of different things that could happen in one arena game that change how you should be playing. You might know what to do if someone is popping CDs, or what to do if the healer is drinking, or what to do if someone is over extending.. but what if all 3 happen at the same time? Then you've got to add in the fact you're playing with 2 other people who are also deciding what they should do to every single situation and the fact that any of your enemies could change their mind at any moment because they are also real people who are deciding what to do. I've gone on a bit of a tangent but you get the idea, there are so many different things that could happen that you can't really be told how to play in PvP. And that's what I think people find most appealing about it.

My overall point is that there aren't websites which teach you how to PvP, because you can't be taught how to PvP. You have to take tips, apply them to your gameplay and learn them inside out and practice. Skillcapped from what I understand is a good start though, as it has up-to-date information which no other website has. AJ is very old and nobody really contributes any meaningful info to it anymore. YouTube might have some good stuff on it. I would recommend watching streams but they can confuse people a little bit, they are good for learning tactics and how to communicate in PvP though.

Edit: Here is a post I made a few weeks back with some useful addons for PvP.

[Deleted]

Skillcapped seems to be full of people complaining about the lack of content so i wouldn't go paying out just yet and AJ seems outdated and not updated much at all.
Check youtube for 5.2 dk vids, reinhart (sp?) does decent how to dk ones and i'm sure there are others around for free.
Check out streams once you get the basics so you know what you're looking at. Make sure to check out a variety of different players to maximize your knowledge gain and then take what you learn and make it your own.
If you play top end pve you already know how to manage runes etc and your situational awareness should be good so that will be a big help.
Be prepared to die alot till you get the hang of it
Mostly though have fun, dk is great fun in arena and bg's/rbgs

[Terahertz]

Reinhartdarussian (has been suggested A LOT to newbie pvp players) has several nice guides about unholy DK on his YT channel.

Just giving a heads up. (DK)PvP is all about monitoring and being aware of your environment. Especially DK players have a somewhat harder time of learning how to break into PvP due to monitoring Blood Tap charges, monitoring runes (like as in instead of looking at your actionbars to decide whether you can use an attack, you look at your runes instead, because you know: 1 frost rune and 1 blood rune = 1 festering strike etc), monitoring runic power and for unholy: monitoring little timmy.

The thing that has helped me a lot in PvP (still learning though) is by explicidly looking at my target while fighting him. Having enemy nameplates on for this is mandatory, while also managing my runes and runic power.

[solvexx]

Honestly you need to just go and armory someone you respect as a player and players similarly to you.
I suggest Mes Multi Rank 1 player, and all around good guy.
Then perhaps go ahead and watch some videos or ask questions.

It's 99% practice. Just go and queue some arenas and try to improve.


Also, always remake teams when you cap out at your current skill level.
If you play 300 games at 1500, your MMR and team rating are always going to cap out.
Get to 1500, remake team after a few losses and try again so that when you are good enough your team can go to 1750 without bottle necking from team rating.

[DiscoGhost]

the best pvp content comes from skill-capped.com

warning, monthly subscription required.

[c2dholla619]

fail-fail-fail-fail-fail-fail-fail-fail-fail-pass

thats the only why

[Deleted]

One good indicator is the official battleground arena ranking specially 3on3. People playing high rated usually are doing SOMETHING right. Another good idea might be to watch some streams like on twitch of high rated people streaming.

Aside from that the only think you need are a few makros and addons and a lot of training. There really isn't anything better than to actual do PvP to learn PvP. Do duells, do RBGs, spam arena games with random people if necessary.

[Brewski]

Honestly if you've done 2's before, you can jump right into 3's. Play a viable comp, not something random that won't be good. Look up useful PvP macros for your class, and find out who are the high rated players for your class/spec and analyze their armory gems/chants/reforges. Watching PvP can give you good insight as to how the good players do arena... for example check out Reckful's stream and take some things into consideration. Even if you don't play his class, you can still learn a lot about arenas and what are good/bad strategies.

[Yvaelle]

Skillcapped is a pretty decent website, the rogue in my 3's subscribes and seems to like it.

Arenajunkies is an empty wasteland populated by high-rated trolls and outdated information.

Twitch.tv, Warcraftmovies, and Youtube are strong bets for finding some PvP that will help you see how it works at high ratings.

There is also our new PvP Stream+Videos thread, which needs more videos - but has a bit of a start:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Stream-Thread

As a general strategy, I recommend watching some streams or youtube of high-rated players, preferably of your comp - but any high-rated pvp will honestly help. What you are looking for is communication between teammates, as this will tell you what you need to be thinking about during the match. Beyond that you need to find some DK specific guides, and practice, practice, practice.

I suspect if you main a PvE DK - you probably know most of the tricks of the class - but tricks can count for a lot - arena is an arms race of tools and techniques and comps, some of them may seem trivial - but without them you are only weaker off than your opponents: saving up runic power when I anticipate a bad healer CC chain coming, and then Conversion->Lichborne->Death Coiling myself has saved my DKs life a lot now, as example.