Arenas! It's been a while.

It's been a long time since I've played Arenas - my usual Rogue partner has been really busy with work, so I've held off. Tonight, I picked up with a Holy Priest friend to try some 2s on Shabula in the high 1300s/low 1400s.

For those who aren't familiar with my attitudes about PvP, let's just say they're negative. But I'm trying!

I raid tomorrow, so tonight's specs were PvE BM and PvE Holy. No Scatter Shot, no Silencing Shot, but I did have Bestial Wrath! And that, friends and enemies mine, is useful

We went 5-5, and I could tell that my PvP skills and gear have improved dramatically - about 100 resilience may not be much compared to what serious PvPers are running around with, but it helps. I've picked up a couple of pieces from Honor - the Vindicator's Band of Triumph and the nice 2-minute Medallion of the Horde. Megatf sez 2-minute trinket! And boy, is he ever right... that thing is more of a help than I ever expected.

I also picked up the Crossbow of Relentless Strikes. Just a little upgrade, there.

More importantly than gear, though, I've been doing some actual PvP, mostly in Alterac Valley. AV makes me a terribly bitter WoWer - nowhere else can you see quite so much laziness, incompetence, QQing, and frustration all in one place. Despite all that, though, it's taught me quite a bit about the practice of killing other players.

On to the Arena matches!

What are we doing well with? Well, I'm very good at annoying and killing healers. My Viper Sting button got a workout tonight - I drained more mana than health, almost certainly. I'm also getting pretty good at 1v1s against Rogues. We faced a geared Warrior/Rogue team twice, and both times they killed my healer just slowly enough that I could burn the Warrior down and kill the Rogue. Given full health, any kind of mana, and the knowledge that there is a Rogue intent on killing me, they're not very threatening.

We faced two Shaman/Spriest teams tonight, in two games each. One of them went down like a house of cards - the first time we faced them, I burned the shadow priest down so quickly I didn't even have time to pop BW. The second time wasn't any better for them.

What aren't we doing so well with? If I was to draw a picture like a certain sushi-loving blogger, it'd be a picture of me floating in mid-air, screaming "FSCK CYCLONE!!1!" So, yeah, Druids were our main problem - we faced 2 teams involving a druid and lost both games. The first was paired with a Warlock, and the game was a 15-minute ordeal where I'd chase the Druid from one side of the Arena to the other trying to keep him from drinking long enough to kill either of them. It was nightmarish. Every time I got close, he'd Cyclone me, go travel form, and sprint to the other side of the arena. Naturally, he was healing the Warlock this whole time.

The second team was Rogue/Druid, and I have to say they were very well-coordinated - I saw them both in stealth and popped them with a multishot, but it did no good. The Druid turned into Invincibear (tm) and Feral Charged my healer while the rogue got up my narrow troll ass with both Season 3 maces. That Gnome has a lot of crit rating, I'll give him that.

The other team we lost to, twice, was a frustration - Elemental Shaman and Shadow Priest. The Shadow Priest wasn't particularly good or geared, though he did know how to hump pillars reasonably well. The Elemental Shaman, on the other hand, was sporting a title from Season 3 and gear to match. His Lesser Healing Waves during brief LoS were more than enough to keep him alive as he pounded my low-resilience Troll with Lightning Bolt crits. It was ugly.

All told, a decent night of Arenas - we crushed teams with similar gear, and got rolled by teams who were clearly in the bracket on purpose.

I'm developing certain 2v2 strategeries - if they seem unsound to you, please, help an Arena noob out.

1.) If there is a Paladin, make it bubble. Then kill other stuff. Making most Paladins bubble is really pretty easy... Viper Sting and an Aimed Shot is usually plenty to make a twitchy Pally toss up a bubble. Once that bubble is gone, they're toast.

2.) If there is a Shadow Priest, kill it. Squishy!

3.) If there is a Druid, mana drain it, put pet on it, and then do whatever else needs doing while he uses his mana up. Aimed Shot if there's time, but thanks to the Hunter's 5-yard minimum range, anyone with 5 working brain cells will just hop inside the safety circle. If they do that, Wing Clip 'em and make 'em spend mana to shift. :-)

4.) Dual-melee teams are pretty much a DPS race. Blow up whichever one I want to fight least once my healer is dead. Without healers involved, this is a race I win. Thank God, PvE gear is good for something.

5.) If the healer is getting focused, great! I can focus theirs, and my DPS is better. This will most certainly change... but for these low brackets it seems that leaving me alone to pew my best pew is a death warrant for at least one team member.

6.) No Aspect of the Pack/Cheetah unless certain that no one is going to hit you for a while. Self-CC FTL.

Advice? Tips? Strategeries? Let me know. I need all the help I can get.