Tee
19th February 2007, 11:34
This week I have tried the new Arena games in 2, 3 and 5 man teams. Let me clear something from beginning – the arena is totally awesome and by far is the best content from Burning Crusade.
The main strong points are – no downtime (1 min queue ftw), quick games (games last from 30 sec to 3 minutes), dynamic environment (team composition, specs, play styles), challenge (after all nothing can beat a human in term of challenge) and competition (very nice system, way better then the previous honor system, where ranking really says something).
I will focus this post on the 2 and 3 man experience I had with my teams.
In the 2 man team – named Against – I had played together with Allora or Rai. So far we 1700+ rating with a 3:1 win:loss ratio, I say pretty nice for the first days where we learn a lot of things, especially when comes to team play.
Definitely in the 2 man games, the class composition matter a lot, but don’t find this as a big issue because in the same way you have some bad match-up you will have also good ones. We find we had hard times with high armor groups like warriors, druid, paladins while we trample over dps cloth teams like double warlocks/mages, mages/warlocks.
What is amazing about the arena is that the experience is totally different from 2 men to 3 men and from 3 men to 5 men brackets. So far we find that there are 4 ways you can make your team
1) go full dps
2) go heavy healing
3) go heavy crowd control
4) a bit from anything
In our 3 man teams - named Xanadu - we had rogue, priest and druid which I find it a very nice group as we have:
- 2 dps (rogue, druid)
- 1,5 healers (priests, druid)
- And a lot of crowd control – sap, blind, fear, stuns (rogue and druid) and the amazing Cyclone which if properly used can be a game winner. Rai did a great job with cyclone in almost all games. I say almost because in 1 game he cyclone enemy priest on 10%, thus saving him from death :)
Basically an usual game, starts with saping one of their members (usually the off healer or a dps), full dps (me and druid) on the healer, then blind / cyclone the off healer when sap ends. The amazing thing of cyclone is that it counters so well the paladin off healer (which for a party without druid is a pain).
Of course there are plenty of elements, who can vary from team to team, but so far things worked good, and most important we get better and better with every game. In the first day we reach 1700+ rating with a 4:1 win:loss ration.
I saw around a lot of people who don’t want to play ranked games as they don’t have a strong team or the proper gear. Don’t do this mistake! If you have time, go for ranked games no matter what is your gear. Not only you will start to accumulate arena points but most important you accumulate experience. And no matter how much you talk or plan, the best way to learn is in the arena.
Conclusion is that everyone who is interested in the PvP aspect of the game should be in the arena. Play every time you had time. Practice makes perfect! For the time being, gear is not an issue, as most of the people don’t have it. Things will change in 1-2 months when heavy resilience team with appear. If you have plans to go for a strong arena competition in future now is the time to start farm PvP set.
See you in the Arena!
The main strong points are – no downtime (1 min queue ftw), quick games (games last from 30 sec to 3 minutes), dynamic environment (team composition, specs, play styles), challenge (after all nothing can beat a human in term of challenge) and competition (very nice system, way better then the previous honor system, where ranking really says something).
I will focus this post on the 2 and 3 man experience I had with my teams.
In the 2 man team – named Against – I had played together with Allora or Rai. So far we 1700+ rating with a 3:1 win:loss ratio, I say pretty nice for the first days where we learn a lot of things, especially when comes to team play.
Definitely in the 2 man games, the class composition matter a lot, but don’t find this as a big issue because in the same way you have some bad match-up you will have also good ones. We find we had hard times with high armor groups like warriors, druid, paladins while we trample over dps cloth teams like double warlocks/mages, mages/warlocks.
What is amazing about the arena is that the experience is totally different from 2 men to 3 men and from 3 men to 5 men brackets. So far we find that there are 4 ways you can make your team
1) go full dps
2) go heavy healing
3) go heavy crowd control
4) a bit from anything
In our 3 man teams - named Xanadu - we had rogue, priest and druid which I find it a very nice group as we have:
- 2 dps (rogue, druid)
- 1,5 healers (priests, druid)
- And a lot of crowd control – sap, blind, fear, stuns (rogue and druid) and the amazing Cyclone which if properly used can be a game winner. Rai did a great job with cyclone in almost all games. I say almost because in 1 game he cyclone enemy priest on 10%, thus saving him from death :)
Basically an usual game, starts with saping one of their members (usually the off healer or a dps), full dps (me and druid) on the healer, then blind / cyclone the off healer when sap ends. The amazing thing of cyclone is that it counters so well the paladin off healer (which for a party without druid is a pain).
Of course there are plenty of elements, who can vary from team to team, but so far things worked good, and most important we get better and better with every game. In the first day we reach 1700+ rating with a 4:1 win:loss ration.
I saw around a lot of people who don’t want to play ranked games as they don’t have a strong team or the proper gear. Don’t do this mistake! If you have time, go for ranked games no matter what is your gear. Not only you will start to accumulate arena points but most important you accumulate experience. And no matter how much you talk or plan, the best way to learn is in the arena.
Conclusion is that everyone who is interested in the PvP aspect of the game should be in the arena. Play every time you had time. Practice makes perfect! For the time being, gear is not an issue, as most of the people don’t have it. Things will change in 1-2 months when heavy resilience team with appear. If you have plans to go for a strong arena competition in future now is the time to start farm PvP set.
See you in the Arena!