Throw Away(?) Arena Team

As I mentioned in my last post about PvP gear, we did “throw away” arena yesterday just to get some points and get the ball rolling. If you’re not doing this I highly recommend getting it going in your guild; in my opinion it’s always good to have extra arena points.

What is a throw-away team? Get up to 10 people together, create a new 5v5 arena team, make a shtoopit name and a lame team banner and get in the arena with ZERO expectations. Win, lose, whatever, just have fun. One week early in Season 3 we all mounted up and raced around the arenas, whoever was the last one to die was the winner. With 10 people it’s 20g per week, provided you make a new team each week though in my experience even a piss-poor losing team can hold out for 2 weeks and still provide decent points. For the cost of 1.5 dailies you get to accumulate points for gear.

But I digress, we went into arenas last night with that expectation: hey, let’s just have fun, if we win that’s great, if we lose then oh well. I didn’t even try to optimize teams; I just made two groups of 5 based on who had to log early and who could stick around. I was in the first group: Holy Paladin, Arms Warr, 2 hunters, me. We zerged across the bottom of Blade’s Edge and ripped apart some clothies. It was over so fast I didn’t even know what happened. We faced the same team 3 more times and beat them handily each time.

Of course they were focus firing on me—why’s everyone always picking on the shaman? WHY?!? But the Pally did a great job with his heals keeping me up even when I was stun-locked then entire fight. (thanks Audax (the artist formerly known as Farkor)).

We lost 1 match to a 5 DPS team (2 Warr, 2 DK, 1 Ele Shaman, 1 Ret Pally) that simply DPS’d harder than we did, end of story. My group went 4-1.

The next group lost their first match because one of the hunters didn’t get the queue. They won the next four.

It’s worth mentioning that we’re a PvE raiding guild. Most of us do arena for kicks and maybe some gear. A few are solid hardcore PvPers, like Laasthope our MT DK who was arena point and honor point capped on two (three?) toons prior to Wrath’s launch. OK he’s a crazy person. But otherwise we PvP casually so you can understand my surprise when last night we stepped into arena with two ragtag groups of 5 and went 8-2, and by all accounts probably could have gone 9-1 if it wasn’t for Hump the Hunter not getting the queue. *shakes head* Normally, the first week of a new season is brutal as the badass PvP players slash their way through the ranks to fight for domination. Not so last night.

So yeah... It looks like I’m stuck with my arena throwaway team with the dumb name (Mele Kalikimaka) and lame colors (green, red and white) for a while. WTF.

Did anyone do arenas this week? What were your experiences? Did you go in to lose and come out with wins? Did you go all DPS, no heals and own or get owned? Any hardcore arena/PvP players reading this that can comment?

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.

Start of S4 on the 5v5

We kicked off season four last night on our 5v5. We rolled with the Disc Priest, Holy Pally, MS Warr, Hunter, and me. We went 6-6 on the night and ended up with a grand total of 1506 rating.

As I expected there were some sick teams. We got rolled by a few with full S3 gear who must have just started their season as well. There was one 4 dps / 1 healer team that decided to FF me down first. They charged across the bridge in the BEM map and I started dropping totems. By the time they got to me I hit Heroism and as my health was dropping I popped Shamanistic Rage and I was toasted before that GCD was up. It took two GCD--three seconds total--for them to rip me to shreds. ouch.

And then there were some teams trying to make their way like us. As the gates opened on our 2nd battle there was no one to be found. We speculated the possibilities: all rogue, all druid, druid/rogue, or stealthers + Shadowmeld. The priest got sapped so we started beating on that rogue who popped up behind enemy lines, and then our Proximo's lit up: five rogue team. It's both my dream come true and my worst nightmare all rolled into one. If our team was a 4 dps team or if the rogues had their stunlocks down better they probably could have stunned the pally, killed the priest and then made trouble for us. But being rogues they are not required to have skill or strategy so they didn't have their act together and we picked them apart one by one. Mmmmm DELICIOUS. With rogue blood on my blades we looked for the next challenges.

I made two tactical errors that at worst cost us matches or at best made the loss go down faster. The first was on a two healer team I had us going after a dps first. It was a Pally, Disc Priest, SL/SL Lock, Frost Mage, MS Warr team. A pretty vanilla combo for 5v5 and one that makes choosing a target tough. I picked the Lock and chose wrong. Mental note and 5v5 Arena Rule Number 1 for our setup: On two healer teams, take a healer first. We could have very easily attacked the pally, forced the bubble, have the priest dispel it right away and finish him off. Then we are free to dps through the Priest's heals.

The other tactical error I made was choosing a 2nd target on a very unusual team combo: Disc Priest, 2x MS Warr, Resto Druid, Feral Druid. We got the priest down first and fast. Then I called out to go for the Resto Druid because I recognized the Kodohide Spaulders and thought he would be very weak. But he did an amazing job of kiting using Cyclone, roots, cheetah, and pillars to save himself. At that point the three physical DPS had taken down the priest, even after a bubble, and then the hunter. Props to the druid in crappy gear, goes to show skill+spec > gear. Of course it helped the rest of the team had full S3 gear including shoulders and weapons. That resto druid was the natural choice, but he sure had some great people carrying him.

On the whole it was a tough start to the season, but in the end we fared... well, mediocre. Maybe we'll get a crack at it again today or tomorrow.

Season 4

Wow I haven't posted in five days. That's a long stretch for me and considering everything that's going on: Season 4, WotLK updates, Summer Fire Festival thing, and Patch 2.4.3. Let's start with Season 4.

I have over 70k honor, enough marks to buy any of the gear, and 3872 arena points. The best rating we had on any of our teams at any point in time was 1635. This means I can get the neck, waist, and wrist pieces very quickly. The ring will be doable with a bit of work and the boots a stretch at 1700. What will be helpful is that I am replacing 2 pieces of PvE gear with the neck and waist. Granted the War-Feathered Loop was a nice cross-over piece with armor ignore and some decent stam, but nothing beats resilience. Those two replacements will give me an additional 39 resilience. The bracer upgrade does not increase my resil but does give additional stats.

For arena gear I am looking at the legs and chest as the first upgrades. Unfortunately my only two pieces of remaining S2 gear are the helm and the shoulders, so I will be replacing all of the S3 gear for starters. The 1550 rating on the legs should be very easy to obtain, with the 1600 doable once all the hardcore teams grind up to their 1900-2000 ratings.

This brings up a point I made to my team: let's not jump into arenas first thing on Tuesday. Considering that every team starts over at 1500 rating the uber groups will be sitting in the lower bracket grinding points off the mid ranks and the scrubs. So a team we would normally lose 6 points to could take us for 15-16 and do so over and over again. They don't seem to share my viewpoint so I told them I'd play a few but if we are getting wasted and losing lots of points we need to cool it until the weekend.

Good luck to you in Season 4 and I'll see you in the arena.

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.

PvP Night

On Sunday I spent the morning reading everything I could get my hands on about Enhancement Shaman PvP. I devoured the thread at Elitist Jerks as well as the one at the official WoW forums. I checked out specs on Push, Diivide, and others. I made new macros, retooled my bars for PvP, re-gemmed, and changed some enchants on my PvP set. I was stoked.

First I had to MT at Kara run on my druid for some guild alts, mains (that want badges), and some guild friends/family. It was nice to actually see gear get used and have people /roll for it rather than just send it all to the disenchanter for voids. Normally we just farm that place on the weekend for badges.

But I digress. After kara I got together whoever was available for some 5v5. None of my arena teams are anything special, I've just been point farming since near the end of season 1, but now I'm committed to being a damn good enhancement Shammy in arenas. For this group we had an unusual but surprisingly good setup (for the lower brackets anyway). We had a resto shaman, prot pally in healing gear, marks hunter, MS warr, and me. Basically the shaman was in charge of healing with the pally dispelling, bubbling, and backup healing. We went 7-3 on the night and stopped there. Our first loss was to a full s3 team that FF down the hunter, the warr, then me. They kept one healer cc'd with a sick cc rotation of sheep, cyclone, hammer, lather rinse repeat. It was over before it started.

The wins were coming frequently though. We would mostly run a "shock and awe" campaign with the warr going in first or charging up the right-hand side of the BEM map, picking up a warlock and MSing him right away. The rest of us would follow the warr except the resto shaman who would be the only one to go left with the intention of holding a pillar and staying out of the action. That worked very well as we were well coordinated, focused fired, and didn't give the other team a chance to setup. We didn't have any cc other than the pally's HoJ.

I did enjoy my new shield when I was the FF target. That was one of two major changes to my strategy: rather than try and heal through a rogue or warr on me with points in Healing Focus, I opted for a Gladiator's Shieldwall which effectively doubles my armor to nearly 13k. That extra staying power helped the healers keep me up through a few rogue/warr or rogue/hunter combos on me. I popped on my shield, cleansed myself and enjoyed the heals while still chasing around whatever target I was on.

The other major change was no more 2H. Dual wielding is hands-down proven to be far superior to a big fat 2H. I shelved my Axe of the Gronn Lords permanently.

The resto shaman and I each set up a focus-interrupt macro, I would call out a healer that we were going to set as our focus interrupt target and with the help of Quartz add-on and Perl Classic I could keep track of the healer and interrupt as often as possible. The macro is:

#showtooltip Earth Shock
/clearfocus [modifier:alt][target=focus,dead][target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus] Earth Shock(Rank 1)

I had it bound to my fifth mouse button and between the two of us it allowed us to stop a few key heals and turn the tide in a few matches.

For our final game of the night we went up against 5 rogues. I'm not even going to say how horrible and disgusting that team setup is. I'm not going to even say anything about how we lost either, and how pathetic it was of me to be running around in Ghost Wolf form scouting them out only to get chain stunned and ripped to shreds. I don't want to talk about it.

Ah well, back to raiding this week. Tonight we're taking shots at Lady Vashj again. I'll post about my Strider kiting strategy later.

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.