How do i l2arena

[Zinger26]

i've been playing a mage for a while now and i consider myself a decent mage, almost always top 3~5 dmg in BGs yet i suck at arena.
is there a way other than subscribing to skill-capped to l2p??
maybe i can find here a patient teammate who will couch me?

[pitakos]

Teamwork is your best friend.Your class is blessed with some nice cc and decent nuke,communicate with your teamate and chain cc a target instead of throwing them randomly. Being able to give heads up to your healer for bigs heals on you or inform him fast enough that you will use defensives and he doesnt have to waste trinket or a major cd can win you a match. Communicate with your other dps arena m8 how to force healer cds or trinket (many ways to do that depends on comp,etc).With experience and communication you should learn to swap target depending the situation (target used defensives so your dmg output is toned down,its better to bring pressure to his healer at this point than wasting your dmg) and many other things that are completly situational.

Also consider using macros for arena only. They will help you with reaction times and minimize the fail on ccs (mistargeting,trying to target someone makes your reaction slower than having it into a bind etc)
/focus macro for healer and a
/stopcasting (stopcasting is good to use on most CC macros since your cc is of grave importance ,so binding into a macro is much faster than pressing escape for this sole action or moving)
cast [target=focus] Any cc (deep freeze, counterspell, etc)

or macros like /target arena1,2,3 etc with a cc bound on them or simply use /cast [target=arena1] yourCChere (where 1=arena target)
For example
/cast [target=arena1] Deep Freeze
/cast [target=arena2] Polymorph
etc


You should also consider watching some streams to get hints of competitive playing.Many streamers (or their chat) will gladly answer to any questions you have, and might even share some macros they use.I don't have a mage toon so i dont know which mage streams are considered good,but i enjoy watching Ziqo and he is quite communicative.(You should watch other classes streams too, knowing your enemy is as important as knowing your own class).

Sorry for not giving you more specific ideas, but your question is quite general, maybe having more specific questions can let ppl help you more than i did

[Zinger26]

ok, to be more specific one question pops immediately to mind is choosing the target.
say i play with a healer, and the opponent team is another healer+dps combo, who do i attack? assuming all of us are 483 at least
or we're both dps and the other team is both dps, or we're healer dps and the opponent is double dps..
i always try to attack the wrong target and end up losing..
i do use macros for easy cc so at least i'm not a total mess when it comes to that.
comm is sometimes a difficult as well because i don't know my partner's CC capabilities so we end up CCing the same target and wasting DR's and CDs...

so any tips for anything listed above?

[apepi]

Watch good people who arena, and the best thing to learn about arena is to arena, nothing like good ole' experience.

[Rorke]

Don't listen to what the other posters said regarding watching streams. Sitting on the sidelines and "watching other people play" will never help you. Those people who stream on twitch are at top level play, and generally whatever strategies used at top level play, won't work in the 1800 brackets when used by inexperienced players.

The only way you get better in this game is putting up through a thousand games of abuse until you're finally able to react to things that you couldn't before. Its a huge treadmill. Not only is this game about your individual skill, but your teammates skill. If you have terrible teammates, no matter how good you are, you will be stuck at whichever rating wall they're at.

So you basically have to learn how to screw people and find people that are better than you and are willing to carry you for whatever reason. You'll basically be their bitch for awhile, but if you learn the ropes from what they tell you, you'll get better without realizing it. You don't need to waste your time watching other people play.

[asb]

Don't listen to what the other posters said regarding watching streams. Sitting on the sidelines and "watching other people play" will never help you. Those people who stream on twitch are at top level play, and generally whatever strategies used at top level play, won't work in the 1800 brackets when used by inexperienced players.

Yeah, I kind of agree with this. While it won't hurt you to watch streams and you certainly can learn things from it, most of the things you need to know to start doing well in arena aren't going to be pointed out or be otherwise apparent to you in those streams. A lot of things are pretty subtle--they'll change targets based on positioning or cooldowns available, and even on the offchance it's explained it won't be all that beneficial to you. You have to teach yourself the game.

The first step is just learning every class' mechanics and core abilities. It's hard to deal with what you don't understand. Alts, streams, wowhead, and of course your everyday battlegrounds are all beneficial here. Once you're at a competence level where you know your own class inside and out and have at least a pretty good understanding of every other class, it's just a matter of being aware of where your problems were and coming up with ways to fix them.

When I'm learning a new class or comp, usually I'm pretty terrible. I'll make a lot of bad calls, generally have poor strategy, and I'll wind up pretty frustrated. Once I go to bed that night though, replaying the encounters in my head I come up with a lot of ways to try dealing with the things giving us trouble. The ideal way to do this is actually recording your games so that you can analyze every GCD later on. If you have access to fraps or xsplit, I'm sure it's worthwhile, but certainly not necessary for entry-level play.

ok, to be more specific one question pops immediately to mind is choosing the target.
say i play with a healer, and the opponent team is another healer+dps combo, who do i attack? assuming all of us are 483 at least
or we're both dps and the other team is both dps, or we're healer dps and the opponent is double dps..
i always try to attack the wrong target and end up losing..
i do use macros for easy cc so at least i'm not a total mess when it comes to that.
comm is sometimes a difficult as well because i don't know my partner's CC capabilities so we end up CCing the same target and wasting DR's and CDs...

so any tips for anything listed above?

Well first, communication is a precursor to coordination. If you don't have a voice chat or anything, you're going to overlap some CCs and waste cooldowns here and there. This usually isn't a big deal in 2v2, where win/loss is so highly based on comp advantages and broken classes, but still it would improve your game slightly.

As for knowing what target to go for, it's really just a trial and error process. General strategy will depend on each team's comp, but there are a lot of mindgames and exploiting mistakes that can come up too. The main thing you have to figure out though is what classes your damage-dealers have an advantage against in 1v1, and what specs your healing classes can best tank. Battlegrounds can be good indicators here, but the best way to know for sure is to simply give things a try and keep track of what works.

[Mican17]

Not only is this game about your individual skill, but your teammates skill. If you have terrible teammates, no matter how good you are, you will be stuck at whichever rating wall they're at.

This is huge. In order to make a jump in rating, you need to be playing with skilled arena players. I went from struggling around 1650 with one team to reaching 2k with another team in the course of a week back when I first started doing 3s.

[KrumTheKing]

You can watch all the videos you want, but the main thing that will make you better is experience. Just spam queue arenas, play as much as you can.

[Tucci]

I have a headache so I don't wanna type out a lot of stuff right now but some advice I could give you is go to Arena Junkies and watch the streams. Also read some threads on there as well. Never ever ever click, bind everything. Use macros and modifiers (shift, ctrl, alt).


EDIT: Actually, here. I'll copy/paste the advice I gave in another thread.

First thing is start keybinding if you haven't already. Bind EVERYTHING, get used to modifiers (alt, shift, ctrl) and make a lot of macros. Don't click. Literally the biggest mistake you'll ever make. Also get into the habit of strafing instead of using S to walk backwards. Never do that in pvp. Don't ever keyboard turn, only mouse turn. Turn on the option for activating an ability on keypress down instead of release. It's somewhere in your WoW settings. Set your camera so it doesn't auto adjust when you run. That way you can look behind you and still run and get off abilities. If you cast anything and you know there's something that can interrupt you, always try and "juke" or fake cast it. You can do this by starting the cast and then moving to stop it, pressing escape to stop it or you could have /stopcast in a macro. You want to do this so your enemy wastes his interrupt. I also recommend getting an addon like Juked or InterruptBar to track enemy interrupt cooldowns so you know when you can cast and when to fake.

Watch pvp livestreams if you want to see how the top players play. You can get a lot of info from just watching them pvp. Once you have all your keybinds and macros set up and you spend some time getting used to them, you can start looking for people who are around your skill level but don't rage when they lose. You both have to want to learn and get used to everything and adapt. Do some BG's for practice and to get used to your binds. I recommend WSG, Twin Peaks, AB, and Gilneas for good practice. Also using focus macros is important for arena/pvp for quick interrupts and cc while you're targeting someone else. Arena target macros are also good for fast switching. Learning the other class abilities is key in doing well in PvP. You'll want to know what each class can do, what cc they have, what cooldowns to watch out for, etc. This will usually come as you gain more experience and also if you level alts.

It might sound like a lot to take in but it really isn't. Just take it one step at a time. It just takes practice.

[Zinger26]

well thanks a lot for all the advices given, all i need now is a partner who doesn't rage

[Coke]

What that and learn from the best.

[Baracuda]

Learn to kite like a god and you'll be a god.

[liljc711]

First thing is start keybinding if you haven't already. Bind EVERYTHING, get used to modifiers (alt, shift, ctrl) and make a lot of macros. Don't click.

Going off what this said. Don't over bind yourself, just focus on 2-3 new binds a day. Maybe even just one. And slowly add more and more. Be sure to learn your pet's binds, don't leave their auto cast on. Learning who to attack first will just take time in learning different comp setups, how they burst, how they peel, and at different skill caps typically they blow cds in a similar manner. The addon http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/gladiatorlossa is extremely helpful in low ratings, it will verbally tell you what the other comp is popping to help you learn abilities.

[Senathor]

Make macros
play arenas
play some more arenas
more arenas

[dercaderca]

Skirmishes.


Seriously though, practice makes perfect. Just do arenas whenever you can, you can't be taught experience.

[Deleted]

You play it alot! =)

[Illiterate]

Start in 2s and once you suck less move on to 3s

[The Small Hours]

Practise and learn from your mistakes, a good arena partner(s) and awareness, communication and a computer that doesn't have low fps.

[masta]

There is no much to learn in wow arena. Run around pillars , interrupt/fakecast , winners are pre-defined by patch notes , FOTM wins. No skill , talent , creativity , personal approach involved. Classic wow pvp enjoyed by mass.

[Bobzor]

Play 5000 games of arena. Learn from your mistakes and you'll be good at it. Very simple.