One last arena post

Oh arena... my dear arena. I don't know if I have done anything in game that provided such highs and lows as arena did. Sure we had our struggles in raiding (I am reminded of one of our last raid nights that caused me to use multiple f-bombs in one sentence over vent). But I don't know, arena was just somehow different than the highs and lows of raiding.

As I look back on Season 8, it was the first full season of arena that I participated in where I not only had experience, but started out with a pretty decent set of last season's gear. Though we had some highs like actually hitting 1700 as a 5v5 team, which allowed some of our casters to pick up purty new wands, we've struggled with the lows of a less than optimal team makeup.

All in all though I think we've done ok given what we had. I do think that my reaction time is definitely faster after a full season of arena. How much that helped with raiding, I don't know. And yeah, going into battlegrounds with arena gear on is pretty sweet!

As I think back on season 8, I think this quote from Charles Dickens summarizes my feelings on the highs and lows of arena quite perfectly:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way"

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Squish burn and updating arena gear

Look at what I got this week!

To quote our disc priest Heidilux, I say "Booyah!" Heid and Shat are good on educating us on Ohio street talk, with Heid throwing in a "way laid" after coming back from an afk, while Shat referred to something at "teice". I'm still not sure what they mean though. Hmmm.

Anyways, in terms of arena this season, I pretty much stopped doing 2v2 and 3v3 months ago, in favor of 5v5. As our first full season in 5v5, a 1500 rating was a goal that I wanted us to reach. I'm not exactly sure if I thought we'd make it, but here we are sitting as a team at 1565. Heck, let's see if we can push to 1700!

I'm not sure though how much more time we have. Season 8 started on February 2 and if the recent history of seasons running 18-20 weeks holds true, we are close to the end of the season. We are currently in week 18, so I am guessing Season 8 will come to a close by the end of this month. I am also optimistic that we will get the
Challenger achievement for being in the top 10-35% of 5v5 teams within our Emberstorm battlegroup.

Now I know that we are far from some top 2000+ rated 5v5 team, but one thing that is interesting about our team is that we have sorta brought the players, not the classes. What do I mean by this, well we have quite the unique team makeup. The 8 toons that are rotated in are resto druid, ret pally, two disc priests, shadow priest, elemental shammy, and two frost mages.

I think I've mentioned before that its not uncommon for us to run with 3 healers, myself and two disc priests. Having two mana burns at your disposal is amazing. Heck when Nikolai is with us on his shadow priest, we have 3! And yes, our team is squishier than most, and we don't have a ton of CC at our disposal. But somehow we've made it work with the classes that we brought to the table.

You know how people have nicknames for team compositions, like Beast cleave? Well, we have affectionately called our composition Squish burn. Because we are squishy, but we have the mana burn! Fear the burn! Anyways, so my pvp gear is now rated higher than my pve gear. And can I just say going into a regular battleground as a tree with arena gear on makes me feel very OP. :)

In terms of resilience, I've chosen to sit right around 1200 resilience. The cap I hear is currently 1415, but I don't know if there really is a need to get that high. Perhaps if you are constantly the first one targeted? Anyways, with 1200 resilience, I have chosen to equip a pve ring and trinket to up my spell power so I can keep people up against bursty teams.

Now as some of my team members get their ratings up and are able to get rating required pieces, I have to look up what they are able to get every single time. So for them, and for any of you wanting to update your pvp gear, here's a list. I'll list the gear category for each section, but will only specifically link the resto druid piece here, because um hello, where are we?

I. Pieces that require only honor or marks (aka, farm honor and go pick these up you lazy ass!):

1. Wrathful Gladiator's Cloak with 52,200 honor - Wrathful Gladiator's Cloak of Deliverance

2. Wrathful Gladiator's Pendant with 52,200 honor - Wrathful Gladiator's Pendant of Deliverance

3. Wrathful Gladiator's Band for 52,200 honor - Wrathful Gladiator's Band of Dominance

4. Wrathful Gladiator's Armwraps for 43,400 honor - Wrathful Gladiator's Armwraps of Salvation

5. Medallion of the Alliance for 68,200 honor - Medallion of the Alliance

6. Titan Forged Spaulders for 40 Wintergrasp marks - Titan-Forged Spaulders of Salvation

II. Pieces that require rating

1. At 1300 rating: Wrathful Gladiator's Belt for 68,200 honor - Wrathful Gladiator's Belt of Salvation

2. At 1400 rating: Wrathful Gladiator's Boots for 68,200 honor - Wrathful Gladiator's Boots of Salvation

3. At 1400 rating: Wrathful Gladiator's Gloves for 1430 arena points - Wrathful Gladiator's Kodohide Gloves

4. At 1500 rating: Wrathful Gladiator's Legguards for 2370 arena points - Wrathful Gladiator's Kodohide Legguards

5. At 1600 rating: Wrathful Gladiator's Robes for 2370 arena points - Wrathful Gladiator's Kodohide Robes

6. At 1800 rating: Arena weapons

7. At 1950 rating: Wrathful Gladiator's Helm for 2370 arena points - Wrathful Gladiator's Kodohide Helm

8. At 2000 rating: Wrathful Gladiator's Spaulders for 1930 arena points - Wrathful Gladiator's Kodohide Spaulders

I am hoping that I pick up enough arena points to get the Wrathful legguards upgrade next week. And don't forget that you can pick up the level 251 Relentless pieces for your class set until you achieve the ratings and arena points to pick up the Wrathful pieces. The Relentless helm, shoulders, chest, gloves, and legguards range from requiring 8000-13200 honor along with 440 to 770 arena points.

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Arena Update

Arena Season 8 has been out for 3 weeks now. I have been involved in a 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 team this season, which is interesting because I have to definitely alter not only my strategy, but my choice of trinkets based on the team. With 3 teams it sometimes gets crazy and I don't end up getting matches in for each team every week, but its been pretty fun so far. The fact that I entered this season having a decent chunk of last season's gear, plus a previous season of experience has been very valuable.

We've gotten in somewhat of a regular schedule by doing 2s and 3s on weekend mornings when we can, then getting in our 5s on Monday nights. Though I wonder if we should tweak this at all due to our biological clocks:

Apparently we should be getting in our arena matches between 2:30 and 3:30 pm! Hmmmm... Anyways, we probably had the most experience from last season on our 2s and 3s teams. We haven't done a ton of matches on either teams, but I am hopeful we can get more in (especially on our 3s team!). Though Wut, Muriel (Jess' disc priest), and I had an epic 3v3 match two weeks ago:

Yep, 23 freakin minutes... only to lose. Grrrr. I know their matchmaking value was higher than ours, but we should have won! Especially since their pally ended up rezing their priest after Wut already took the priest down. Double grrrrr!!!

Now I think our 5s team is just starting to get the hang of things this season. I remember the few matches we did last season... and they were just a painful bloody blur. But this season we are much more experienced and better geared. Last night we put our 5v5 team over the 1000 rating, so its been a great start.

I find that I get a good number of folks who land on this blog after searching for something like "resto druid arena" in Google. For those just starting out with arena, frustrated at your performance, it sucks, but the best advice I can give is to be patient. It really does take about a season of painful losses (and gearing up with arena level gear) to understand your abilities and how they mesh with your partners, how to communicate within your team, using line of sight, and how to quickly react to your opponents. I think a lot of teams give up too quickly in their first season, thinking they suck.

I've thought about trying to talk a bit about what I do in arena matches, and how my strategy may change in 2s vs 3s vs 5s. But there is so much of arena that is variable. A lot does depend on your partners. Are they melee? Casters? What kind of CC do they have? Then of course your tactics also are going to change based on the class composition of your opponents, then reacting to what they do.

But I can try to summarize a bit of what we do. In terms of our first choice targets, it seems to go priests, locks, rogues, then perhaps elemental shammys or hunters. I am so conscious of not leaving priests unattended. The ping sound of mana burns landing on me gives me nightmares.

Now in terms of what I do. In 2s (I play with Wut a ret pally), I am almost always the first target. So I typically throw up hots on myself, then get ready to trinket out of their first CC. If things get bad I cry out for Wut's bubble, but then work on cycloning the opposing healer so Wut can take their dps down. If we are against two dps, I try to root whatever melee dps there may be so they aren't beating on me. In 2s I tend to use trinkets with armor, stam, and resilience because its pretty likely they will be beating on me.

In our 3v3 team, we typically always run with a priest. And the priest is the first target almost all of the time. So I tend to switch out to pvp trinkets that max spell power here, but my first moves are a combination of keeping our priest healed up along with rooting and cycloning their healers.

And 5s? Well 5s are really a whirling dervish of craziness. But I tend to keep my spellpower pvp trinkets for our 5s team as well, and my first moves are typically focused on cycloning the opposing healer. Since we run our 5s team with at least two healers, its nice that I can spend a couple seconds getting the CC off knowing that the other healer will be healing as well.

How about you guys? How's Season 8 going for you so far?

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Resto Druid Season 8 Wrathful Gear with No Rating!!!

OMG! Two posts in one day! So Season 8 opened yesterday, and like the good little pvp tree I am, I had to go check out what was available. I first went to Wintergrasp, and see that there is no new gear available with WG marks. Boo. (There is new WG gear available, see below for edits). Then I trot myself over to Stormwind to look at all of last season's Relentless gear now available with honor. While I'm doing this, I hop over to the other vendor to look at the new Wrathful non-set pieces that I figured would be available with rating requirements.

But what? Huh? I see that a number of items, the bracers... the cloak... the neck piece are available to buy with just simply honor. No arena rating required. Holy crap!!! I wasn't sure if it was a bug that they would eventually take back, but what the hell, in case they don't, I picked up all I could right then and there.

I also made sure Wutsie came over to pick up his Ret Pally pieces. I am really looking forward to seeing how we do this upcoming arena season given that we are starting with a bit more experience and gear than we did last season. Our biggest issue was around finding the time. Wut and I did a good amount of 2v2 last season, but I'd love to be able to do some more 3v3 and 5v5 this season.

Now back to the phat lewts. Would the bug be fixed and the pieces taken back? I didn't know. But then today I find this forum post from Bornakk where he confirms that the Wrathful bracers, trinket, cloak, neck, and ring are available with no rating required. This is huge! Level 264 season 8 pieces with no rating! Equivalent relentless pieces were only available last season with rating requirements of 1450-1750+ and now they're just available with honor? Heck ya!

Below is the list of these Wrathful goodies for us resto druids. And don't forget we should be filling out the rest of our gear with all the Season 7 Relentless gear that is available with honor. (Note, I think some of the Relentless gear still requires arena points). As Jess noted last night, scary PvP K with her foul mouth (I'm very bad when I'm PvPing) is back. Time to farm honor kids, time to farm honor.

Wrathful Gladiator's Armwraps of Salvation
Wrathful Gladiator's Pendant of Deliverance
Wrathful Gladiator's Cloak of Deliverance
Wrathful Gladiator's Band of Dominance
Medallion of the Alliance

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EDIT: Thanks to Ashley, there is new gear available with WG marks. 25 marks each for a neck or cloak, 40 marks for shoulders. I missed the vendor because its the smaller guy next to the big mammoth. For us druids, the cloak would be Titan-Forged Cloak of Ascendancy and the neck piece would be Titan-Forged Pendant of Ascendancy

I picked up Titan-Forged Spaulders of Salvation last night.

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A note for my PVP gear

If you guys haven't noticed by now, I'm a bit of an internet and blog junkie. My Google reader is a bit insane. Anyways, today I share with you a pic I came across from passiveaggressivenotes.com which is a hilarious site where you can laugh at how crazy people are.

I love the XOXO touch at the end.

In terms of an arena update, we haven't been able to arena regularly for the last two weeks. Plus, last night I was hoping to get some matches in, but Drenden was down all night! So we won't end up getting any arena points this week. Damn you Seattle server data center place (techy technical words ftw)! Damn you!

I think what we've found is that we do best in 3v3s when we run with two healers, myself and a disc priest. Its fun for whatever dps we take as the third person because they don't have to coordinate with another deeps and can do whatever the heck they want to do.

We're also trying to run more 5v5s, which we run with 3 healers, myself and TWO disc priests. The set up allows us to stay standing a decent amount, even against 1800 rated 5v5 teams. The last time we ran this 5v5 set up, we did pretty darned well going 9-5 or something like that!

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Arena Update

It's been a bit since I've updated our arena progress.

1. 65 matches in a row:

What's interesting about our arena experiences is that our team changes. I had been running a lot of 3v3 with Wutsie and T-baby (do not let these cute names fool you, we are deadly!). So that is a ret pally and then alternatively with a rogue or elemental shammy as our third. One day the three of us crazily ran 65 3v3 matches in a row. It was madness. Flat out.

On one of our matches it had gone down to Wut and I against 2 of the opposing team members. It was going on for a while, when wtf? The rogue on their side that we had killed came back up somehow! Again I ask WTF?!?! Did he get rezzed? Ooooh, Shat was hot when we then lost that match. I had no clue you could rez in arena matches. Or was it just a bug or cheat of some sort?

2. Priest on other side = bad. Priest on your side = good.

But I also ran a number of 3v3s with Shat (the elemental shammy) and Heidilux (who needs a cute nickname... I'm still thinking) who is a disc priest. It was a totally different experience running these 3s with two healers. I think Shat liked that he didn't have to coordinate focus firing and could just do whatever the heck he wanted to do while Heid and I worked on healing (duh) and CCing. With a second healer I could really work on rooting and cycloning more.

Let me just say that when Wut, T, and I would come up against priests, I hate them! Damn those priests with their mana burns and fears! But when a priest is on our side... damn I love those mana burns and fears! Perspective is everything, eh?

What was so interesting about this makeup was that our matches were long. Damn long. Even when we were up against teams rated much higher than us, we made them work for it. We had a couple matches that were in the 12 minute range. This team makeup is definitely not a flashy burst team, we are all about survivability baby! As Shat said (and yes, he provides a number of funny quotes), "This team puts on the Marvin Gaye and takes it slow". I just bet that a number of our opponents who eventually lost to us were cursing us. I would have been annoyed.

3. "Don't worry guys, my bracers got this"

Something perhaps a bit different that I am playing with currently is equipping The Black Heart as my second trinket. What are other resto druids using as their second trinket after their removing movement impairment trinket? At 867 resilience, should I still be stacking resilience?

Secondly, I haz relentless gear! I am wearing Relentless Gladiator's Armwraps of Salvation and Relentless Gladiator's Belt of Salvation which is pretty exciting for a noob arena person like me. When Shat got his relentless bracers, he informed Wut and I that we could just hang back cuz his bracers got this. :)

4. Arena names

One thing that I do always take note of is the teams that we come across. It seems that a number of arena teams somehow get past the Blizz rule of inoffensive names. However a number of teams seriously crack me up. (So you guys know you can go to WOW armory and get summary and detailed info on your arena matches, right?)

Checking out our WOW armory information reminds me of some amusing team names we came up against: Teldrassil Sproutlings (which broke my heart a little to beat them), Everyone Run Taco is OOM, Double Bubble Trouble, plz not in the face, and Keyboard Turn is Good.

5. Do arenas make you mean?

Well I definitely am not shy about admitting that I curse a whole lot more in arenas than I do while raiding. My commentary while losing is in the lines of "F'in ay" and "For F sake". But do you think folks get angrier or meaner in arenas as opposed to raiding because you are going up against real people?

I know that a lot of arena matches include taunting and emoting between teams. Now I typically won't do any of this except for maybe when there are three of us taking down one final person on the other team who runs around basically prolonging an inevitable death. In these situations, I may throw in a /sigh here and there. But I do not do any mean taunting ... unless I am provoked. Let's examine:

Keredria laughs at Princess
Keredria laughs at Princess
Keredria laughs at Princess
Wut: K! You're mean!
Shat: Aw K, cold.
Keredria: What? She laughed at me when they beat us the last match. Payback's a bitch ain't it?

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More arena talk

I know, I know... more arena talk you ask? I'm telling ya, once you get into it, its addicting. Wut and I did a number of 2v2 matches last night and we did ok again, doubling our team rating. I still don't like rogues, but they weren't our biggest problem last night. My new favorite classes to bitch about? Locks and priests. We went up against several lock and priest duos and while we beat some of them, they were f'in annoying. Seriously.

One final thing I wanted to mention in my post yesterday is what I am currently using as my pvp weapon. So we all know that you can't get any pvp weapons until you build up arena points and ratings. But here's an excellent option for any caster types in the meantime: Pillar of Fortitude.

I got it a while back as a drop off trash in Ulduar. Even if I do build up the arena rating and points, I am questioning whether I would trade this in for a pvp weapon. I can build up resilience on my other gear... perhaps I'll keep the +159 stamina!

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K in arenas!

A while back I had listed a couple of things in game that I still wanted to do. One thing on this list was trying the whole tanking business, which I started a couple weeks ago. Another item on the list that I can now cross off was arena-ing. Hmmm is that the proper verb? Or is it just referred to as "doing arenas"? Anyways, I digress.

Last week was the first full week where I did a bunch of 2v2 and 3v3 arena matches. I did 2v2 with two set ups. I did a couple of matches with Terrondris a rogue, then a bunch of matches with Wutan, a ret pally. Now I didn't end up doing that many 2v2 matches with T, but we went 3-3 which I thought was decent for the first week. With Wut, we ended up going 9-7 and won a bunch of matches that we should have lost (as surmised by the match rating and the other team losing points). I think Wut and I definitely had the advantage that a resto druid-ret pally is a very strong 2v2 team.

In Wut and I's 2v2 teams, there seemed to be a recurring theme in the matches that we did lose. I don't recall us ever beating a team that had a rogue on their side. F'in rogues! They'd search me out as I was prowled and just mow me down. Another interesting point of the 2v2 matches was that some of them were long. I mean damn long. I remember one 2v2 that T and I did against a priest and a lock. They just kept fearing us. We finally got one of them down, but the other one kept fearing us as well. I was like "Damn it! Accept defeat already!"

We also did a number of 3v3 matches with different team setups: 2 different combos of druid, pally, rogue (2 different rogues, same druid and pally - me and Wut) and druid, pally, shammy. I think the #1 rule we learned in the 3v3 teams was the whole focus issue. You have to make sure you're going for the same target.

So I am still pretty new to this whole arena business, but two quick tips:

1. You have to be prepared. And by this I mean resilience gear. Yes, definitely the entire team needs to have resilience, but as the healer for your team, I would say it may be even more critical for you because the other team often comes for you first. I am currently at 818 resilience, which is pretty good and gives me a bit of a cushion. Now you can grind the honor to buy the gear, but don't forget that the wintergrasp vendor has a good deal of stuff you can buy with WG marks.

2. Get one of those trinkets that removes movement impairing effects from the wintergrasp vendor. Its critical. You're going to be using it every single match.

Here's what I did in my 2v2 matches (remember, I'm still a scrub at this). I started out prowled with T or used Wut as my meatshield. With Wut, I'd wait until one of them made a move on Wut first. If I couldn't see their second member, I'd try to wait for them to become visible before I would unprowl and turn into tree. I would then look at my team mate's health and/or whether they had some CC on them and decide whether I would throw a hot on them before or after CCing whichever opposing team member my team mate was not going after.

Now in 3v3 matches, I found that I did not have enough time to put out my CC as a first move. As soon as I made the decision to pop out of prowl, I had to heal Wut and or T. Then I would gauge what was going on before CCing someone. Cyclone is my CC of choice, but I definitely used entangling roots a bit more in the 3v3 matches to avoid the whole diminishing returns thing.

We're still pretty new to this whole arena thing, but I am looking forward to the future weeks and getting better at this!

Now those of you who are arena veterans, I have some questions. Does your team attack or react? And by this I mean is it better to make the first move or wait until the other side makes their first move? Secondly, on 3v3 teams, do you always go for a dps or healer first on the opposing side? Sometimes we went for their healer first, sometimes we went for a dps first, both with different results. Does all of this just depend on the teams you face and your team makeup?

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Getting ready for arenas

The other day I talked about how I had gotten back into pvp lately. Well, to take it a bit further, I am looking at dabbling a little more seriously into arenas. We've dabbled a bit before in arenas, but it was definitely a half hearted dabble because gear wasn't all pvp gear and specs weren't pvp specs. I want to try it a bit more seriously this time. So how am I doing this? Let's take a look.

How K is getting ready for arena:

1. First and foremost, I am preparing myself right now for a lot of death and destruction and pain and eating of dirt. (Yay! Sounds so fun!) Arena play is a whole new animal and I know that there is quite a big learning curve.

2. Now how to spec as a resto druid in arena? Hmmm, well I started by researching specs of some other top rated resto druids. Looking at SK Gaming's ranking of top arena teams I see that a number of resto druids are going 24/0/47 taking up insect swarm in the balance tree. Hmmm insect swarm, huh? But I see others staying around 16/0/55. Gonna have to play around a bit.

3. I still need to run a number of battlegrounds to earn the honor to pick up a pvp cloak, both rings, and a trinket. So any of y'all on Emberstorm battlegroup, be on the look out for a nelf druid in a pretty dress with a scary mask.

4. In terms of glyphs, I'll probably pick up Glyph of Barkskin and keep Glyph of Swiftmend and Innervate.

5. Now in terms of partners, I've already talked to Wut about this and Im sure Atania and Vel would be interested as well. I think we could do some interesting 3v3 teams. In doing some of my research, I found a lot of 2v2 teams with a resto druid and a DK or warrior. Hmmm I don't think Jess is big into pvping or arena on that toon... but perhaps I could convince Paradise.

6. Installing what looks like the must have addon for arenas, Gladius.

7. Buying bars of soap to wash out my mouth after all the swearing that I know I will be doing (see #1).

Anyone else with arena experience have any advice in general or specific to doing arenas as a resto druid?

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