Season 4, Week 2

Week 2 is behind us as of this morning, though my struggles and frustrations continue. Stoney is now capped on arena points but lacks the rating to even get the Brutal Linked Leggings which only require the basic 1550 rating. In fact the source of my points for the week was the 5v5 team which and it's crappy 1420 rating. We did 7 games with what was supposed to be our "good" group and got eaten alive by full Vengeful teams still in the 1500 bracket. We finished out the week with three games going to a "throw-away" group just to get points on some of our alts.

I think I will end up spending the arena points on the Vengeful helm and the Brutal Gloves, just to get some sort of an upgrade. To say nothing of the 40k+ honor points sitting there.

Nix is another story: 1577 rating on 3v3 after only 5 games but only 197 arena points (before today's reset) and a constant need to bring honor. Thankfully it was AV weekend and I could bang out AV's all day Saturday to grind enough honor to get Nix his Guardian bracers. But it is so frustrating to have the rating and not the points on one toon, and the opposite for the other toon.

Ah well. I'm off to DC today to catch the Dropkick Murphy's and Mighty Mighty Bosstones in concert TOGETHER! Two of my favorite bands in one night. I'm stoked. It should wash away my PvP point woes.

Nixhex

Nixhex is my warlock. I started him pre-BC to see what was up with the class our guild could never seem to recruit. In 40-man raids we would be lucky to have 1 or 2 warlocks. I found the class to be easy to level and fun to play. Lots of spells to choose from and three different pure damage dealing trees were new to me.

Nix sat in the mid 40s until the beginning of the year when I decided I needed an herber to make me pots and elixirs. I power leveled him, which I found to be even easier than leveling Stoney had been a year earlier. And then just used him for herbing and running dailies. I had no interest in gearing him in Kara, let alone getting the key for it. Occasionally I would run him on the weekly throw-away 5v5 just to get points. The points accumulated and soon I found myself with enough to buy S3 chest and legs.

All of a sudden I realized I have in my hands one of Blizzard’s favored children: the warlock. This could be a PvP powerhouse just by the unique structure of arena and how spec plays into that.

I grinded out enough honor to get the S2 shoulders & helm—two of the best looking pieces in the game in my opinion—plus the Guardian belt and neckpiece. I found a resto druid and an MS Warr for some 3v3. On our first night we went 5-0 and got a 1577 rating. Played right, it’s a great combo.

Now here is the great irony: after months and months of gearing, specing, reading, testing, tweaking, and all around optimizing Stoney for arena I step in with a half-geared lock and roflstomp the competition, as opposed to Stoney's struggles to break even in the first week. In fact, by comparison the resto druid of Nix's team is only half as well geared as Schlimmy, the former resto drood of Stoney’s team.

It proves a point that I have known, that is well known and nothing new to be revealed here: arena is heavily class & spec dependent. A single player (me) can accomplish more, easier and faster in arena with an undergeared SL/SL lock than a well geared and tweaked Enhance Shaman.

I’ll keep you posted on both teams as the season progresses. Let’s see if I can get Stoney up there as well as I can Nix.

The New Team

*Another post I started and didn't complete. Back-dated to the original date. *

After getting dumped for rogues me and Riddaren moved on in search of a healer for our 3v3. That night we were running bg’s with a friend of his from EQ days, Slyok a priest that just PvPs as he’s burnt out on raiding. We talked him into being our healer on a 3v3. He had never done arena and was only now experimenting with a Disc/Holy spec, but he obliged.

Gear-wise Sly has mostly S1 that he got from casual honor grinding in bg’s over the last few months. We’ve run with him before and he’s a good guy, It sure does make a difference to have a healer in a bg. That aside he definitely needs some gear upgrades but we decided to give it a go.

We went 6-7 and ended the night at 1486 in some very frustrating losses. It’s a learning experience for everyone. The Disc priest style of play will have to be very different than the resto druid style. The advantage is that we can FF down Pally and Mage, call for the Mass Dispel and continue to burn through them after the bubble or Ice Block has been cast aside. The downside is that he will be very gear dependent. His bonus heal, mana pool, and resil are not at max levels right now. Regardless, the team has promise as we learn to work together.

I'm excited to see what the new week brings.

Dumped

* I started this post and did not complete it, so I'm backdating to the day that I started it *

Dumped. I got dumped from my 3v3. Not for lack of skill, not for lack of cooperation, but simply because our resto druid decided he could get further with a ... a ... I can't even begin to say it. *chokes back tears* a rogue. I got dumped for a rogue.

Damn! At first I thought he wanted the combo that won the recent 3v3 tourney: Resto Druid, Rogue, MS Warr. But a few days later I came to find that he dropped the MS Warr too in favor of a warlock and another rogue. This move didn't make any sense to me. For all my angst of rogues I can understand dropping me in favor of one of Blizzard's favored children. But why drop the Warr? And it was for a warlock that just started PvPing and a rogue that's an alt in our guild. Well, the first rogue is one of our top DPS rogues and a damn fine player, Zorren.

So I got dumped from my 3v3 and I'm in search of a new group, a new team. I'm out on the street trying to make a new life. Wish me luck.

Arena Update

I did a good amount of arena between Sunday and Monday nights. Both 3v3 and 5v5 matches. I would say it was a good weekend for arena, not just because we gained points on two teams, but because I got to smash a lot of dirty filthy rogues.

On our 3v3 we climbed 30 more points to 1576. We faced a wide variety of teams and for the most part we did a great job with it. Schlimmy our resto druid pointed out that we had gotten away from our Shock & Awe campaign. Sitting back even for an extra couple of seconds gives the other team a chance to assess and setup. We are a burst DPS team with limited CC and being all melee, we need the element of surprise. We agreed that even if we are attacking the "wrong" target from the beginning that's OK, just get in there and sow chaos. So this week we dropped the defensive stance we'd been taking and got on offense and it had a positive impact.

Riddaren, our MS warrior, was a hamstring maniac. I was giving him WF as much as possible and using my Rank 1 Earth Shock macro to interrupt healers as much as possible. I think if we played a few more we could have gotten back up over 1600. But we called it a night as it was late on Sunday already.

We had 1 heart-breaker of a match. It was an RMP combo, we wasted the rogue as soon as he popped but they took down Ridd a split second later. That left Resto Druid/Enhance Shaman vs Disc Priest/Frost Mage. It was a long long fight with the Priest and Mage both going OOM countless times. Perhaps the most annoying part of it all though was the constant Sheeping by the mage. I thought you were supposed to go immune due to the diminishing returns effect, but there I was, bleating away for 8 seconds throughout the fight. It seemed that after an "immune" to the cast the diminishing returns reset. Then it was 8 seconds of sheep, 4 seconds, 2 seconds, and then it seemed to start all over again. I suppose those 15 seconds went by fast enough to reset the DR effect. Unfortunately it took me away from the priest long enough to let him drink up, and then I made the mistake of going after the mage, who just kited me despite being practically OOM--I guess just enough mana left for Frost Armor and Frost Nova. Ah well, the right play would have been to stay on the Priest, and work him down. In the end we lost but only lost 5 points. I must say I'm pleased we held up so well against such a highly ranked team.

As for 5v5 we once again coordinated a throw-away team for points and then tried to make a "winning" team. The final 7 games were Resto Shaman, Holy Pally, Hunter, MS Warrior, and Enhance Shaman. Again we are limited in CC so we went with another Shock & Awe strategy. Also, Ridd and I are accustomed to running like this so it was an easy transition. We faced this one team 4 times out of 7, beat them the first time and lost the next three. They were: Disc Priest, Holy Pally, MS Warr, Warlock, Feral Druid. The first time we beat them I was left alone and pounded the everliving crap out of them all, doing around 50% of the total damage. Thus the next three times we faced them they FF me down right away. I barely had time to pop Sham Rage between the stuns and fears before I was toast. Ah well, in the end the team went 6-4 on the night and climbed 26 points to 1540.

We decided that we are going to start a consistent 5v5 team and try to bring that rating up as well. The hardest part with that seems to be getting the right 5 people online and able to do arena matches at the same time. We want to go with a 2-healer setup with Awl (Holy Pally) as our anchorman healer. We would love to find a PvP geared Disc Priest to add to the team as well. We will have three healers and four dps to choose from, but the key I think will be to have Ridd on for his MS. Here's what we're looking at right now:
Heals: Holy Pally, Resto Druid, Disc Priest (need to find one)
DPS: MS Warrior, Enhance Shaman, BM/Surv Hunter, Mage, Warlock (depends who's online)

We'll see how it all pans out.

Going Downhill

We had a really rough arena day yesterday. We went 5-8 and drove our rating down to 1566. It sucked completely. At one point we were up to 1603, but we only had 9 matches so we had to play again. We lost that match and lost 18 points... ouch. So we played another, lost it but only lost 3 points. Another against the same team and lost 3 points again. Then we lost one more, lost a ton of points and had to call it a day.

The damn friggin rogues were ripping us apart. We need a strategy to beat the teams with rogues. I spend most of the fight with my shield on unless they are not hitting me. But when the team pops out they only see a warrior and a shaman so naturally I'm the target. I start with the shield, get totems down quickly, then back into Ghostwolf to avoid at least a Sap. But with us playing defensively we're giving the other team the opportunity to mana burn, mana drain, and do big damage. There are just so many tricks up a rogue's sleeve they don't even have to be well geared to compete against an S3 team. We focus-fire on them and they Shadowstep away or Cheat Death, Blind, Cloak of Shadow, Vanish, and get a heal. Then we are starting all over again. Even with Faerie Fire and dots up on them that Cloak of Shadows gives them the chance to get away.

If they are on our druid it's twice as bad. Our damage is wasted and our healer is going down. Nasty nasty nasty. We were all bent out of shape yesterday after arenas.

We are working on some rogue strategies. First of all, we're going to have the warrior Intercept when the rogue is on our druid. We're toying with the idea if we should Intervene as well. That would mean lost rage for him as he switches in and out of stances, but it might help with a timely Intercept/Intervene. We shall see.

The other thing that becomes clear is that if we are going to FF on a rogue, we have to keep after it. After he blows all his cooldowns, we have 1 minute to burn him down again or all those cd's will be back up again.

Another strategy is to kill anything that does not have a life-saving effect. That means no targeting mages, rogues, or paladins, and avoiding warlock and priests (assuming they are SL/SL and disc, respectively). That means we kill hunters (we loooove killing hunters), shamans, druids, and maybe even warriors. In fact, that's a thought. I wonder if we should take down a warrior first if the group has one? I can pop a shield and Shamanistic Rage to help mitigate the increased damage I'd take, but that could work if we face a warr/rogue team.

With summer here our druid is out of school and we will have more time to get in more arena matches. I'm glad because I hate having to do them at the last minute. I was also talking with a guildie that has three teams over 1800, including a 2000 rated 2v2. He says the best times he finds for arena is early in the morning and late at night. I'll be keeping track and we'll see when the best times of day are for 3v3.

Damn Rogues

Tonight was a rough night in arena for us. We went 5-6 and dropped nearly 20 points in our rating. We had to call it a night due to our Druid needing to get to bed, but agreed to try again later in the week to get that rating back up.

The problem tonight: rogues. Damn friggin rogues. Hate. If it's not Kidney Shot it's Cheap Shot. Then it's Vanish or ShadowStep or Cheat Death. And it's not that they do a lot of damage--they don't It's just the complete and utter immobilization. The worst part was that we were not handling the group makeups very well and going after
the wrong players. It was an off-night to say the least.

When the rogue got on me I would switch to shield and pop Shamanistic Rage, but that's only 15 seconds of love. When they got on our druid healer he was immobilized and I had to backup heal. This took the pressure off their healer who could then assist with DPS and/or CC. Horrible all around. We are all looking up some strategies on how to handle rogues because let's face it, the RMP (Rogue Mage Priest) combo is the nastiest of them all and we are sure to face more and more rogues the higher we get.

I'm ok with losing a hard-fought match, though it sucks. And losing to a 2000+ rated team is quick and relatively painless. But losing to an undergeared rogue just because it's a damn rogue just plain sucks.

Our only loss against a no-rogue team was to a holy pally, ret pally, MS warr combo. that couldn't be a worse combo for us. It would be a caster's delight, but not ours.

On the plus side on the night, we faced ourselves (enhance sham, MS warr, resto druid) and owned them. That felt good, we realized we are doing something right that we could take down a team that matches us.

I think I am going to make a kill-list-order for us to set a few must-kills from the start so that we can take them out the moment they appear on our screens. Then after they are down we can go after the lower priority targets. More to come on that.

1608 - The climb begins

It was a good night for Stoneybaby over all. We did a Kara power-clear for a quick 22 badges, followed by 3v3 arena where we went 13-5 and took our rating up to 1608, then had some consecutive AV wins to round out the night.

The 3v3 team consists of Riddaren the MS Warrior, Schlimmy the resto Druid, and me. Schlimmy is an amazing arena healer and a flawless kiter. Ridd is an extremely smart player and though still working on his pvp gear goes blow for blow with me in there for damage output.

Our strategy is Shock & Awe--charge in and get on a clothie before the other team can adjust and set up a strategy. The hardest part of this for me are the initial 10 seconds of the fight. I have to get totems down, get my healer focus-target set, Frost Shock our dps target to keep it slowed, and pop Heroism. Even without dropping totems, just a Frost Shock and a Heroism is 3 seconds worth of fight. I also try to drop WF totem right away to help the warr. That's 4 seconds of GCD used. If I'm stunned or spell-locked those 4 seconds can become 6, 7, 8 or more. Then add in if I become the focus fire target of two melee or a hunter/melee combo I immediately have to put on my shield and pop Shamanistic Rage. That may not seem like much time, but in one of our wins and one of our losses the first to die was within 3 seconds of engaging. And believe me, you lose someone that fast you know it's over at that point. Deciding what to do first is a split second decision and can be crucial.

Here were the matchups we had tonight (listing healers first)
Pr-Pa-Wr -- W
Pa-Sh-Wr -- W
Dr-Wl-Wr -- W
Pa-Hu-Ma -- W
Pr-Hu-Wr -- W
Pr-Ma-Pa -- W
Sh-Hu-Ma -- L
Dr-Ro-Wr -- L
Pa-Ma-Wr -- L
Pa-Ro-Wl -- W
Dr-Wl-Wr -- W
Dr-Wl-Wr -- W
Ma-Ro-Wl -- W
Pa-Sh-Wr -- L
Pr-Pa-Wr -- W
Sh-Hu-Wl -- L
Sh-Hu-Wl -- W
Pa-Sh-Wr -- W

We set a goal of 1600 rating on the night and were within 5 points when we took our fifth loss. It was to an all-dps team that zerged me and ripped me to shreds. In that fight we chose the Warlock to kill first but afterwards we talked about it and decided if we got them again we should go for another. He was SL/SL and so would not be doing much damage and and would take too long to kill. We figured that we should have gone for the hunter first if we faced them again--and we did!

Same team for the next match, I equipped my shield before we began, knowing they would come for me again. Ridd charged in, I got off heroism before they got to me, and put down a grounding and a tremor totem. I probably should have popped Shamanistic Rage before the totems because by the time I did pop it I was already below 50% health. But we had the hunter down low, too. It was a DPS race and though we only had two DPS to their three, it was all tied up. Schlimmy, left to his own devices, was spamming Regrowth on me trying desperately to keep me up. I was taking a beating even with the shield and Sham Rage. The hunter Feigned Death but we were wise to it and both got crits off on him to finish him off. And then immediately after I was down to a Lightning Bolt from the opposing shaman.

It was now two against two and they went for Ridd next. He was low at one point but Schlim got off a Swiftmend bringing him back to above 50% health. During this the warlock had stopped casting/dotting and was chain-fearing Ridd. Eventually after so many fears Ridd was immune and thus free to beat the shaman down to a pulp, which he was doing to the best of his ability between fears. The warlock tried to solo those two but to no avail. We took the win and recouped some of the points we lost to them in the first match.

Our last match of the night proved easy. We went for the shaman first--of course everyone does! He was squishy and the paladin was late coming out of their starting area. It was over before it started with a fast Heroism, some Windfury crits, and wicked execute by Ridd. BAM! 1608 on the night.

I'm feeling good about this.

How am I going to get to 1750?

How AM I going to get that rating?

I don't know how I caught the PvP fever, but I've got it bad. I think one of the things that happens with end-game raiders is that you run out of things to do that are worthwhile and/or interesting once you get deep enough into raid content. There are fewer gear upgrades for me; most of which come from badges or SWP crafted (once someone starts selling them on our tiny server). And I feel like I've run every instance 100 times. But once I got into PvP I discovered a whole new world. It's always new and interesting (except when I get chain stun locked by a mace spec rogue named Stabuxyz for the billionth time).

I started doing arena just to get the gear for PvE. A fellow guildie convinced a group of us to start a new team each week. We'd spend 40g apiece and pretty much go 0-10. Hey we didn't care as we were getting loot out of it--eventually. And somewhere along the way, something changed. I started trying to win. We started rejoicing in victories and pondering over defeats.

Now I'm an avid PvP'er with 3/5 vengeful, 2/5 merc, a merc MH axe, 2 vindicators, and my battlemaster trinket. And I only use 2 pieces of PvP gear for PvE now.

But I've never been on a team rated higher than 1650.

Looking down the road to Season 4 I'm wondering how the heck am I going to continue to gear up without having a decent team? More to the point, I wonder how am I going to be competitive as an enhance shaman?

Resto shaman? They rock PvP. MS Warr? A must have in arena. But enhancement shaman?!? No friggin way. Not a top-of-the-chart spec for arena and with little hope of any changes coming to correct that. In fact, Blizzard has stated that they do not intend every spec to be viable in PvP. I'm not saying anything you, the well-read enhance shaman, doesn't already know.

So how am I going to get to 1750? I am going to try two paths: 3's & 5's. On the 3v3 we have a top rated resto shaman, an MS warr, and me. On the 5v5 we have 2 holy pallies, 1 frost mage, 1 fire mage, and me.

The strategy in the 3v3 is shock and awe. Warr charges in first, I follow close behind. We pick a target and MS it right off the mount. I pop heroism and drop a WF right away (he'll have some WF left from the totem be down in the prep stage). Then resto druid pops out of stealth under the cover of the chaos we are sowing in melee. That's the idea....

For 5v5 I picked that setup for 2 bubbles, 2 healers, 2 ice blocks, and I'm kinda the odd-man out. Actually, the frost mage is instructed to drop frost nova every time it's up so I get kited less. And one of the Paladins is cleansing me and giving me blessing of freedom so I get kited less. That's the idea there...

Problem is that we've not put it all to the test. I'll keep you posted.