PvP 101 - Intro to PvP

[Xl House lX]

Ok, so you just started getting into the PvP aspect of the game, and you are getting destroyed, and can't manage to kill anybody. You wonder to yourself... "WHY?!" or "HAX!" I've been there... and I've done that. It sucks, and can be quite discouraging. I haven't done any searching on the forums, but here is a basic guide to help you get yourself in a better place.

The VERY Basics:

Mindset- When you enter a battleground, you need the mindset of playing to win. Which means at no point in the game you are running away from enemies, sitting in graveyard, or just running around doing nothing. All of the aforementioned does nothing to help you win or get better at the game. Having this mindset ensures that you are trying to make yourself better. And that's the first step to actually getting better.

Attitude- If your anything like me, the more and more you lose and lose, the more pissed and pissed you get, making you play worse and worse. Woah. Staying positive is so critical, that it's almost hard to explain. If your pissed, not only will you play worse, it'll also ruin your mindset. If this happens, your just taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Staying positive can be hard to do, but to ensure so that you are, try switching your chat frame to your combat log (one so you can't see ULTRAPALLYX laughs at you, and two so you can see exactly what hit you if you were confused as to how you died). And try your best to never be in a spot by yourself.

Playing with friends- Don't queue into a random battleground (or any battleground at that) by yourself. You don't want to take that gamble. Sure, you could get in a awesome premade on your team. Or, you could get into one that has an awesome premade on THEIR team. Try playing with friends (real life or online, whatever you are more comfortable with, and if you don't have any friends, find some! There are plenty of ways to find people to play with, this is WoW... you gotta be a little social). Use Ventrilo or Skype to talk with them. This will ensure good communication training and will also make the game much more enjoyable to play.

The Basics:

Keybindings- Do you click your cooldowns? I used to. Keybindings are essential to getting better at PvP and PvE alike. When your taking your cursor away you are narrowing your field of vision to your action bar that can potentially draw your eyes away from something more important like a mage fixing to combust on you. To change your keybindings, go to the main menu of World of Warcraft, click on keybindings, and the options should align with your action bar. Popular keybings are: Q, E, R, s-Q, s-E, s-R, s-(1-4), and so on. You can keybind literally any key on your keyboard to a button on your action bars. And by the way, the [s] stands for a shift key modifier. You can also use CTRL and ALT modifiers. With Q, E, and R alone you can keybind up to 9 keybinds just with 3 keys. Pretty awesome. Another note is to get a mouse with extra buttons. The Razer Naga is an excellent option, and will allow you to keybind a ton of keybinds.

Macros- Sometimes abilities by themselves just isn't enough. For example, lets say you play a Paladin and you just popped bubble to break a fear and about 6 dots/debuffs, and you want to remove bubble to remove the 50% damage reduction debuff. Well, the only way you can do that is to right click the buff off (remember what we said about clicking things?). So what can you do to ensure your not clicking shit? Make a macro! Macro's work wonders. To fix the aforementioned problem, you can make a macro something like this:

/cancelaura Divine Shield
/cast Divine Shield

(a /cancelaura macro just removes an unwated buff.)

So when you use this macro, it will first try to cancel Divine Shield for you, but since you don't have it, it will go ahead and use Divine Shield for you. After you use it again, it will cancel divine shield through the cancelaura string of the macro, and attempt to use Divine Shield again, but it won't work. This is just a basic example of making a macro, for a more thorough guide to making macros, visit: http://www.wowwiki.com/Making_a_macro

Movement: Do NOT keyboard turn. By now you've probably heard the term *keyboard turner* and in general it's not a positive thing to be said about someone. Using your mouse's left and right button's to move you can make more precise movements and will allow you to use your keybinds more effectively. Optionally you can used the ASDW keys to move along with your mouse, but it's advised to use your mouse primarily for movement.

Teamwork: Don't just train* people, help your teammates, lets bring the Paladin back in here for example. Paladins have a ton of utility that can really change a situation around. Instead of popping wings and going apeshit on some random boomkin, see the status of your friend that you are in Skype with. If he is low on health or is yelling about how he can't move, throw a Word of Glory on him and a Freedom and I bet he'll love you long time. To help better aware yourself of friends, I will lead us into the next basics topic, Focus.

Focus: No, not the hunter's resource system. Use focus frames. Generally in battlegrounds its better to set a focus up on a teammate or friend rather than foe, but you can do this either way you wish. The focus frame is a frame that will show whoever you've focused no matter what. What's great about focus frames, is you can make macros to help or destroy your focus without even targeting them. (See the macro guide for more on focus macros). This is great because it also shows your focus target anywhere on your minimap (unless they are out of range on the minimap).

Now that the basics are covered, you should start seeing some pretty big leaps in your skill after applying these tips. But now we move on to more moderate PvP gameplay.

Getting Competitive!:

Situation/Location awareness: So, there are a lot of things in the environment that can assist you in PvPing. Things such as buildings, hills, columns, and just straight up distance will help you win. You can use things such as buildings and columns to LoS (Line of Sight) a caster, and basically make things annoying for him/her to do. Knowing the distances between you and whatever your target might be is also extremely important. If your out of range, and your healing someone who is getting trained by 2 rogues, their probably fucked. So knowing when your to far away, as well as to close (not talking about hunters, talking about Over-Extending*) can be the deciding factor in whether you win or lose a situation.

Crowd-Control: Crowd control is so much more important than how much damage you can do. Learning to avoid or counter crowd controls and learning your opponents cooldowns will ensure your not getting interrupted or sheeped. When you're facing a healer with dps, sometimes its better to crowd control the healer while you beat the shit out of the DPS. Or you can control the DPS while you zerg the healer, the choice is up to you. But if your in a sticky situation, learn to use crowd controls. They can get you back into the game.

Cooldowns: Cooldowns are also important. Bringing back the Pally (jeeze this pally is getting his fill of PvP today), if hes on a Druid trying to put up pressure*, and the druids pops treeform, would the Pally be better of popping his wings then? Probably not, since druids are almost invincible while there treeform is popped, your better off trying to CC the druid or just putting up mild pressure and saving your cooldowns after treeform is popped to pop wings and land a killing blow. Cooldown management is vital guys.

Peeling: Peeling is when someone on your team is getting trained, you try putting up pressure via CC or high damage output to get them off your friend and to get them to play a little more defensively. Use this. Trust me.

Class dismissed. Remember, these are just the basics. There is still a lot to learn about PvP such as blanketing and mastering the art of fake casting that will be seen in high MMR* rankings.

*Trained- When people start tunneling (or just attacking someone without any situational awareness) trying to put out high damage without using any CC's or peels.
*Over-Extending- When your to far away from allies and to far into enemy territory.
*MMR- Matchmaking Rating.
*Pressure- Putting on a large amount of damage or CC to make enemies play defensively rather than offensively.