How to improve at arenas?

[Malgru]

Alright, so here I am playing a hunter. Started PVPing about 3/4 of the way through last season, and unfortunately missed the first two weeks of the season due to WoW being insanely boring at that point. I played a DK last season, and have benched him and am now maining my hunter who I started a few weeks before last season ended. I have a friend who plays a warrior and we've been rolling 2s together and are staying at around 1530. We've gotten up to 1688 I believe at one point. However we just transferred to Alterac Mountains Alliance so our arena team is pretty low rated. We tried 3s with a holy pally who raged at us for not being quite experienced enough (he reached 2300 in 3s - we've only gotten to maybe 1300 in triple dps before we transferred). What I would like to know is how do you actually keep track of everything going on? I do watch Sacredheals, Finalrequiem, and some other high rated guys who post some tutorials (mostly Sacred that does that though). I have Gladius, InterruptBar, etc, but I feel like KFC's damage for us just isn't high enough. I'm trapping and silencing and monkey blinding, I just don't know who to silence or who to monkey blind and when, etc. Do I use my only somewhat reliable interrupt on the mage that's on our healer? Or do I use it on their dpriest to get some pressure out? Do I trap the hpal when the rogue is at 80%, or do I wait a little while to trap and risk the hpal just topping the rogue off? In 2s we do fine, save the healer-dps combos which we lose unless we own the healer in the opener, which means if its a holy pally or a disc priest we usually can't get the kill unless their dps just doesn't do enough damage. My trap just gets cleansed. I hate trying to trap when they're stacked, since the wrong target usually ends up taking the trap. Also, why do traps work on pets? I cannot tell you how many times I've tried to trap a rogue that's on me and a warlock pet or hunter pet just takes the trap and then i'm at 50% before I can react. I have ~4350 resilience, since I'm using Kiril RF version until I get my CP polearm (which will probably be last, Kiril burst is pretty nuts). My armory is here... I know I'm not spell pen capped, but I'm getting my cape next week for the cape enchant and I'll be fine there. Haven't enchanted Ruthless gear (only 3 pieces) due to the fact that I was completely out of gold for a while. Do you have any sort of tips for me? Using my MM spec as my arena spec, don't really enjoy BM or Surv.


Also, please don't say "get a better comp." Both my partner and I know Warrior Hunter in 2s sucks, but we don't really care. We also don't have any 85s on our new server. Thank you

[Freezeonfire]

First of all, hunters shred mages. Absolutely shred them. If it's one of the smaller maps, hunter's mark them before they turn invisible.

I don't actually play a hunter, but if you and your warrior force a trinket on their healer with Intimidating Shout and Scatter Trap, you basically win. Just wait for DRs and scatter trap again while killing the squishiest/most threatening DPS.

[Malgru]

Yeah I don't really have any trouble 1v1ing casters, DKs, rogues, and ferals just rip me to pieces unless I outgear them. Plus bear form is "LOL!" mode against hunters. Our problem is that we CC them early... If we don't, we don't bring the dps down very quickly and the dps just kills either the warrior or me. I usually trap as my warrior is starting, but then the healer just eats the full trap and as my warrior focus-charges into a fear, they trinket and we're screwed. If the warrior Throwdowns the healer, the dps will just run away and hide behind a pillar where I can't do anything and my warrior has to Heroic Leap (if not already used) to the target. By the time we get to him, the throwdown is over and he's back to full. I can silence, but it's only 3 seconds and we can't exactly bring someone from 60% to sub20% in 3 seconds unless all our procs are aligned and they have under 4k resilience, which is pretty rare at this rating.

[Palli]

Alright, so here I am playing a hunter. Started PVPing about 3/4 of the way through last season, and unfortunately missed the first two weeks of the season due to WoW being insanely boring at that point. I played a DK last season, and have benched him and am now maining my hunter who I started a few weeks before last season ended. I have a friend who plays a warrior and we've been rolling 2s together and are staying at around 1530. We've gotten up to 1688 I believe at one point. However we just transferred to Alterac Mountains Alliance so our arena team is pretty low rated. We tried 3s with a holy pally who raged at us for not being quite experienced enough (he reached 2300 in 3s - we've only gotten to maybe 1300 in triple dps before we transferred). What I would like to know is how do you actually keep track of everything going on? I do watch Sacredheals, Finalrequiem, and some other high rated guys who post some tutorials (mostly Sacred that does that though). I have Gladius, InterruptBar, etc, but I feel like KFC's damage for us just isn't high enough. I'm trapping and silencing and monkey blinding, I just don't know who to silence or who to monkey blind and when, etc. Do I use my only somewhat reliable interrupt on the mage that's on our healer? Or do I use it on their dpriest to get some pressure out? Do I trap the hpal when the rogue is at 80%, or do I wait a little while to trap and risk the hpal just topping the rogue off? In 2s we do fine, save the healer-dps combos which we lose unless we own the healer in the opener, which means if its a holy pally or a disc priest we usually can't get the kill unless their dps just doesn't do enough damage. My trap just gets cleansed. I hate trying to trap when they're stacked, since the wrong target usually ends up taking the trap. Also, why do traps work on pets? I cannot tell you how many times I've tried to trap a rogue that's on me and a warlock pet or hunter pet just takes the trap and then i'm at 50% before I can react. I have ~4350 resilience, since I'm using Kiril RF version until I get my CP polearm (which will probably be last, Kiril burst is pretty nuts). My armory is here... I know I'm not spell pen capped, but I'm getting my cape next week for the cape enchant and I'll be fine there. Haven't enchanted Ruthless gear (only 3 pieces) due to the fact that I was completely out of gold for a while. Do you have any sort of tips for me? Using my MM spec as my arena spec, don't really enjoy BM or Surv.


Also, please don't say "get a better comp." Both my partner and I know Warrior Hunter in 2s sucks, but we don't really care. We also don't have any 85s on our new server. Thank you

The biggest take away I get from this is that the communication between you and your warrior while on targets can be improved. Ditch push to talk if you are using that. Use Skype or auto-talk in Vent. In 2's CC the healer and kill the DPS. Always communicate as to what you are doing, who you are on, what CC is on you and for how long. Full, half, short etc. Timing and coordinating your CC's through communication will get you to 1800 easily. The warrior should peel melee of you. You also ought to be able to kite ret's until they are blue in the face.

You want to almost always be landing some form of CC. The more CC going out the more pressure the other team is going to feel.

One of the strategies against hunter traps is for a DPS to try and eat the trap for the healer. That is just part of the strategy.

In 2s, if you can scatter trap the healer and get him to trinket then have your warrior land a double fear you'll be sitting in a good position. Also your warrior can stop heals through charging. He should make a focus macro to charge, then leap back to the kill target.

---------- Post added 2012-03-06 at 12:57 AM ----------

Yeah I don't really have any trouble 1v1ing casters, DKs, rogues, and ferals just rip me to pieces unless I outgear them. Plus bear form is "LOL!" mode against hunters. Our problem is that we CC them early... If we don't, we don't bring the dps down very quickly and the dps just kills either the warrior or me. I usually trap as my warrior is starting, but then the healer just eats the full trap and as my warrior focus-charges into a fear, they trinket and we're screwed. If the warrior Throwdowns the healer, the dps will just run away and hide behind a pillar where I can't do anything and my warrior has to Heroic Leap (if not already used) to the target. By the time we get to him, the throwdown is over and he's back to full. I can silence, but it's only 3 seconds and we can't exactly bring someone from 60% to sub20% in 3 seconds unless all our procs are aligned and they have under 4k resilience, which is pretty rare at this rating.

The DPS shouldn't be able to pillar hump you that easily if the warrior was on him.

Silent shot healer, then scatter trap him. You ought to be able to put out enough pressure to get him to trinket. If not the warrior will have to charge throw down him. If he doesn't trinket after that then you just aren't putting out enough damage. Constantly pump out he damage. As double dps you need to be putting out un-healable damage.

Setup focus macros also. It is an huge time saver. Clicking on targets with Gladius or even tab'ing them is inefficient when cc'ing. I dont know if you have macros setup or not. You didn't mention it.

Also don't be afraid to use deterrence for offensive pressure. If you know you are about to be cc'ed or take some huge damage deterrence then cancel it.

I checked out your armory and compared it against the hunter I run jungle cleave with. If you changed your talents out of One with Nature and into Survival Tactics you can reduce resists on traps and decrease disengage CD. You can also swap out Glyph of Silencing Shot with Glyph of Disengage. Reducing your Disengage CD significantly helping with kiting melee or los'ing range.

[Zeusy]

when playing a hunter comp you typically need max damage. It sounds as though you don't have full gear. Gear at this point in this xpac is one of the biggest things . You won't get kills when you are meant to and you aren't able to learn what the comp is able to offer fully. you have most of yours and your warrior has maybe 60%.. these little bits you dont have can add up very quickly. When not referring to damage, i would say try to force a trinket without using the warrior fear as the warrior fear is on a very long cd and if the other team takes your traps you will never have anything to cc them with outside of fear. All of the hunter teams i see do some very big damage quickly ( havent seen a kfc in a long time, i'm mostly refering to phdk.) I would say to use silence shot on maybe a pennace cast if they are in range or maybe a mage if hes shattering your warrior.

[Malgru]

The biggest take away I get from this is that the communication between you and your warrior while on targets can be improved. Ditch push to talk if you are using that. Use Skype or auto-talk in Vent. In 2's CC the healer and kill the DPS. Always communicate as to what you are doing, who you are on, what CC is on you and for how long. Full, half, short etc. Timing and coordinating your CC's through communication will get you to 1800 easily. The warrior should peel melee of you. You also ought to be able to kite ret's until they are blue in the face.

You want to almost always be landing some form of CC. The more CC going out the more pressure the other team is going to feel.

One of the strategies against hunter traps is for a DPS to try and eat the trap for the healer. That is just part of the strategy.

In 2s, if you can scatter trap the healer and get him to trinket then have your warrior land a double fear you'll be sitting in a good position. Also your warrior can stop heals through charging. He should make a focus macro to charge, then leap back to the kill target.

---------- Post added 2012-03-06 at 12:57 AM ----------



The DPS shouldn't be able to pillar hump you that easily if the warrior was on him.

Silent shot healer, then scatter trap him. You ought to be able to put out enough pressure to get him to trinket. If not the warrior will have to charge throw down him. If he doesn't trinket after that then you just aren't putting out enough damage. Constantly pump out he damage. As double dps you need to be putting out un-healable damage.

Setup focus macros also. It is an huge time saver. Clicking on targets with Gladius or even tab'ing them is inefficient when cc'ing. I dont know if you have macros setup or not. You didn't mention it.

Also don't be afraid to use deterrence for offensive pressure. If you know you are about to be cc'ed or take some huge damage deterrence then cancel it.

I checked out your armory and compared it against the hunter I run jungle cleave with. If you changed your talents out of One with Nature and into Survival Tactics you can reduce resists on traps and decrease disengage CD. You can also swap out Glyph of Silencing Shot with Glyph of Disengage. Reducing your Disengage CD significantly helping with kiting melee or los'ing range.

Double fear? its a 2minute cooldown, how would he land a double fear? o.O
Yes, I do use deterrence offensively but rarely, I like to save it for when I'm getting trained. I mostly use it offensively for lock fears. I do use several macros... in fact, my macro page for a single character is full.

[worsthitmanNa]

Double fear means he got 2 people not how many times he feared. Its the number of people feared.

[Shilz]

watch this guy's guides

http://www.youtube.com/ZumioNET

[Woop Woop]

try not to stare at your targets health, many people do that for some reason. (not saying you are doing this, btw)
instead, look around, see what's happening, find out where your teammates are, where the enemies are.

[Deleted]

As a rogue I really couldn't think of anything you can do against us that would be gamechanging. Hunters seem a fairly easy target for us.

[Miloscub]

Get your professions up to at least 500 so you have the bonuses,get Glyph of Feign death and Fear Beast (minor glyphs),get 2 points in survival tactics and only 1 in one withe nature as someone above me said,also get glyph of chimera shot instead of steady,and disengage glyph instead of silencing shot,Also I don't know about freezing trap glyph,its kinda meh,better get conc shot glyph,helps kite melee alot,just my 2 cents,also enchant your gear and stuff,and try get cataclysmic items asap,GL anyway!

[Malgru]

Yeah I plan on revamping my glyphs and leveling up professions. I've just been too lazy to level up Profs and just recently got some gold income so I can now get some better glyphs.

[Zeusy]

Overall in arenas you want to improve your awareness of what your team and the other team is doing. You want to improve your reactions to unexpected things. Keybind everything, make sure your gear is completely up to date. Understand every single thing happening. Be effective with your cc chains and don't randomly waste cds and then get feared during a major dps cooldown. Position yourself very effectively is also another big one to prevent good swaps and getting fear pathed to africa preventing dispels. Moving away from your team during a fear bomb is also big as double or triple fears can be deadly.

[Palli]

Double fear? its a 2minute cooldown, how would he land a double fear? o.O
Yes, I do use deterrence offensively but rarely, I like to save it for when I'm getting trained. I mostly use it offensively for lock fears. I do use several macros... in fact, my macro page for a single character is full.

Double fear means getting both of them feared at the same time. Not popping fear twice. Fear is more effective if you are able to hit them both with it at the same time.

[champlo]

do better IMO

[McDuffy]

I think we all wish we could improve in arenas

[ergonomic]

Watch and read guides. The first things to work on are communication, chaining cc's, and positioning.

Communication - Always be very vocal about who you're attacking, any cc's you put out, and any cc's that are on you as well as trinket usages and defensive cooldowns (ie Deterrence).
Chaining CC's - Use Gladius to help you time the chaining of cc's. Typically, you want to scatter -> trap -> monkey stun - > silence healers.
Positioning - If you're running with a healer, try to be in LoS of them whenever possible (especially if you're getting focused or cc'd). If possible, also be in LoS of their healer or at least in LoS if they emerge from the pillar to try to heal their teammate. If you're being focused by a melee, kite him away from their healer.