Arena Knowledge Guide

[AdamsGaming]

Arena Knowledge Guide
by AdamsGaming

PRELUDE (Read): This guide will show you how to achieve the ratings you would like if you are just starting out in arena, or are a heavy raider and just don't know alot about the arena environment side of WoW. I will give tips and suggestions on how to get the ratings you would like to achieve without the use of addons. I feel as if addons are a crutch in arena environments and take away from the gameplay and skill required to gain victory. My qualifications are as follows: Gladiator ratings while playing multiple classes seasons 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

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Table of Contents
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Section I -- Mouse Clicking vs. Keybinding

Section II -- Watching Cooldowns

Section III -- Communication

Section IV -- Keybinding

Section V -- Composition

Section VI -- Playstyle

Conclusion

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Section I: Mouse Clicking vs. Keybinding

There is alot of conversation about which to use in the PvP setting. The simple answer is to keybind, there isn't any simpler way I can say it. But, I know some of you raiders out there will think otherwise so here comes the persuasion! You may be comfortable mouse clicking in the PvE setting because you know that you can click your next cast before the global cooldown of your prior cast is up. This is very true, many people can click a damage rotation while beating thier own global cooldown to the next cast every time while following the encounters abilities, whether it be moving out of the fire or dodging vile gas. However, in a PvP setting, you are constantly on the move and when something happens to one of your teammates or even yourself, you must react within the global cooldown and it simply is not possible for you to react at this speed every time while clicking because who knows, you may be clicking your steady shot next because thats what you normally do after your aimed shot and then you get hit for a large amount down to 15% health and need to deterrence and its all the way across the screen. Keybinding allows the reaction time to be precise no matter the situation. To put the argument metaphorically, say you are driving in your car and you want to change the radio station. You aren't going to sit there going down to road at top speeds turning the knob searching for the station you want to listen to, because you already have your favorite stations programmed to the buttons on the radio in your car so you can change the station quickly opening the ability to react faster just in case there is a dire situation like needing to brake suddenly.

I will talk more on how to keybind later in the guide, I hope I persuaded you to switch over to keybinding.


Section II: Watching Cooldowns

Watching your own cooldowns is very important to your teams success in arenas. You need to know when you can help your partners survive, deal damage, or crowd control and the only way of doing this is managing your cooldowns well. I will give a quick example of how to manage your cooldowns well and then explain in detail. Ex., You are playing your paladin in 3v3 going up against a Rogue, Mage, Priest team setup. You have your eyes on the entire map and about five seconds after the rogue opens on your teammate he vanishes and reopens on his same target, thirty seconds into the match he vanishes again, this time away to go open on your partner that is on his priest. They get a shatter burst combo on your partner and he drops to about 20% health and you use Hand of Protection on him. Your second partner that was left open gets on the rogue and after the first partner gets to full health helps finish off the rogue to win the match. Ok, now to explain what went on in that scenario. Once you see that the rogue has used two vanishes in close sequence to each other, you should be aware that he doesn't have another for a good six to eight minutes. Having that knowledge, once they dropped your partner to 20% health, you used Hand of Protection which makes the target immune to all physical damage for ten seconds leaving the rogue to do nothing but run and hide because he doesn't have another vanish. Then, your second partner gets on the rogue to slow him down and deal damage, and once the first partner is brought to full health he has full freedom to finish off the rogue.

In that scenario, watching cooldowns won the match, but if you are the only one on your team that saw what happened, the kill may have not been carried out if you didn't communicate.


Section III: Communication

Communication is the very key to winning every match you play. Using Skype, Ventrilo, or whatever is necessary to communicate with your teammates during a match will guarantee many victories. While communicating with your team, calling out every crowd control that is used on you and every cooldown you are using will better help your partners while playing with you. If your healer is polymorphed and you don't know about it, you could get into the heat of battle without knowing you aren't receiving any heals. If you are feared and your healer doesn't know about it for whatever reason, they may think that they don't have to use any major cooldowns to survive because you are peeling the opponents off of them.

There is a misconception while communicating in arenas for new players, however. You can't have a full on conversation about your cooldowns with your teammates while playing a match, they may not be able to react fast enough. Make sure you are talking semi-fast without slurring your words and make sure you are fully communicating what is happening in a very short timespan.

Here is an example of me and my partners while arenaing:

Me (Healer): "Sheeped 4 seconds."
Teammate 1: "Ok, going defense"
Teammate 2: "I'm good, going on rogue."
Me (Healer): "First Sacrifice blown, you should switch."
Teammate 1: "Switch Mage"
Teammate 2: "Switching Mage, gogo"
Teammate 1: "Cheap shot on me"
Teammate 2: "On rogue"
Teammate 1: "Switching rogue after Kidney"

Ok, I think you get the point. Try to communicate what is happening enough for your teammates to react to what is happening, we're not robots after all. Though I wish we were.


Section IV: Keybinding

Ok, this section will teach you the most efficient way to keybind, if you still aren't up for keybinding see Section I.

Alright, I'm going to be assuming you are an average player using the average keybinding to move. WSADEQ. Keybinding your abilities are one thing, learning how to use them is another. It will probably take you two to three days in battlegrounds to memorize all of your keybinds, its kind of like just starting out playing Guitar Hero where you look down at which color you are pressing all the time :*(. At the end of all this, you should pretty much only be looking down at your abilities to find out how long you have left on your cooldowns, and not to remind yourself which keybind to press or where the ability is on your screen. Like the hunter scenario I posed in Section I, if you drop to 15% health it shouldn't be up to how skilled you are to hit the deterrence icon with your cursor across the screen, it should just be up to knowing to press that keybind whenever you get that low.

Alright, lets get started. You need to use the keys around your movement keys for the most important spells and abilities that aren't on a cooldown then work out from there usually ending to where the furthest keybind away from your movement keys are the longest cooldowns. Hence, Shift+6 shouldn't be your spammed ability. I honestly only go out as far as 5, T, and G for my abilities, but my hands are small so some of you may go out as far as 6, Y, and H. I only use the modifier SHIFT, some people are big on using ALT and CTRL as well though, its all up to you. Here is my own keybind list for you to follow, you can obviously shift things around or add new ones as you please.

1--------Shift+D-----F---------Shift+Mouse Scroll Up
2--------Shift+C-----Shift+1---Shift+Mouse Side Button 1
3--------Shift+F-----Shift+2---Shift+Mouse Side Button 2
4--------Shift+R-----Shift+3
5--------Shift+T-----Shift+4
Shift+Q--Shift+G-----Shift+5
Shift+W---X---------Mouse Scroll Up
Shift+E----Z---------Mouse Scroll Button
Shift+A----R---------Mouse Side Button 1
Shift+S----T---------Mouse Side Button 2


Section V: Composition

As great as Blizzard is at making games like Starcraft and Diablo, arena is only an aspect of WoW and not a full game in itself so there is only so much Blizzard can do to balance it. Saying that, even if you play your hardest, with the best communication possible and cooldown managing, you can still lose if you aren't playing a viable composition. It is the same idea with raiding, you obviously aren't going to down a boss if you take twenty-five damage dealers into a raid with no healers or tanks. You need a composition that works. Most of the time, new arena players just resort to playing popular compositions. But, if you are a new player and have real life friends that want to play with you, you need to take into consideration what they bring to the team. Creating new compositions is what arena is all about, people are constantly looking for that exact amount of damage, crowd control, and healing that will take them to the top of the rankings. Just remember, when making a new composition, you must take into consideration all three aspects of damage, healing, and crowd control.


Section VI: Playstyle

During an arena match, you are going to have to play different ways in order to elongate the game or speed up the game in order to achieve a kill. This means going back to sports terms of offense and defense. When playing a match, you should be keeping up with how the flow of the match is going. If you run in and engage them and they start by almost one shotting you and then switch to your partner and almost one shot them as well, they are blowing alot of cooldowns to do so and you have to react fast or you will lose. By react, I mean play defense to elongate the game, use line of sight and if you can't get to line of sight use defensive cooldowns. However, you may find yourself in the opposite position after you play defense and go offensive on your opponents. Then, they will play defense and try to elongate the game against you. Playstyle is basically how you play the middle of an arena match, not the opener, not how you get the kill, but how you get the other team to make mistakes. If your playstyle is good, then you will wear the opposing team out, and they will begin making mistakes like the damage dealers enaging you when you are line of sighting them behind a pillar, then they line of sight their own healers and you get a kill. This can happen when you are playing on the offensive side as well, they will make mistakes like stop playing defense and coming out to engage you while you are playing offense and just get killed on the spot because thier teammates are still playing defensive.


Conclusion

I sure hope this guide cleared up some stuff for you, or even sparked something inside you to get into arena! If you have any questions at all, post them in here or PM me and I will try my very best to answer them.

Thanks for reading my guide!

[coliseum]

nice guide. been looking for something like this.

[Merlinsback]

Arena Knowledge Guide
by AdamsGaming



Section II: Watching Cooldowns
Once you see that the rogue has used two vanishes in close sequence to each other, you should be aware that he doesn't have another for a good six to eight minutes.

If the rogue has prep like in your senario (blowing 2 vanishes so close together I assume he does) then vanish is on a 2 min cd. One would think a "gladiator" like yourself would know this...

[AdamsGaming]

If the rogue has prep like in your senario (blowing 2 vanishes so close together I assume he does) then vanish is on a 2 min cd. One would think a "gladiator" like yourself would know this...

I was referring to preparation.

[Merlinsback]

Rogues can vanish every 2 min if spec'd. Using prep (10 min cd) only refreshes the cd. So he can vanish, immediately prep and vanish again, after this, he will be able to vanish again in 2 min. The way you worded it made it sound like he wouldn't be able to vanish for 6-8 min. Maybe it's just a typo, in which case, you have my apologies.

[AdamsGaming]

The way you worded it made it sound like he wouldn't be able to vanish for 6-8 min. Maybe it's just a typo, in which case, you have my apologies.

The wording is a little off, I meant the whole vanish+prep+vanish scenario.

[chris1402]

Ty for the guide

[Zibeline]

Where is the gear section x)) ? The partner section ? (because choosing your partner contribute to at least 30% of your long term success).

May I know what you used to play to get glad ?

I was hopping for an awesome 100 pages guide with like "how to play against with", with every matchup for every comp, str and weekness of each common comp, stats of most played comps depending of the battlecorps, etc...But no, no, that was too good to be true.

Na, anyways, GJ GJ, If only I could have had something like that when I started arena.

Still it could be a sticky !? Make smaller walls of text.

[AdamsGaming]

Where is the gear section x)) ? The partner section ? (because choosing your partner contribute to at least 30% of your long term success).

May I know what you used to play to get glad ?

I was hopping for an awesome 100 pages guide with like "how to play against with", with every matchup for every comp, str and weekness of each common comp, stats of most played comps depending of the battlecorps, etc...But no, no, that was too good to be true.

Na, anyways, GJ GJ, If only I could have had something like that when I started arena.

Still it could be a sticky !? Make smaller walls of text.

Remember, this is just a general knowledge guide for people who would like to get started with competing in WoW Arena whether they are just reaching level 80 or coming from a long term raid setting and want to get into PvP.

I reached Gladiator throughout the seasons I listed playing many classes and specs: Holy Paladin, Retri Paladin, Warrior, Hunter, Discipline Priest, and Death Knight are just a few.

---------- Post added 06-22-2010 at 04:08 PM ----------

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