Random Duels are Always Interesting ... (with video!)Follow

I remember a few days after I started playing WoW way back in closed beta, I was a Hunter and I dueled a Warrior. I kited him around (I didn't even know the term "kite" back then!) and killed him with 100% of my HP left. His response, of course, was that duels are meant to take place standing still, and that I was cheating! He was suggesting, of course, that I stand still and let him hit my soft armor with an axe ...

Over the years, whether I'm hanging out in Loch Modan with my newbies or Goldshire with my RP buddies (jk lol), people who randomly /duel spam are always rather interesting. If you beat them, there is always a reason, which never involves their lack of skill. If they beat you, they usually call you a nub and /lol or /spit at you.

Today I was standing around on my (very geared...) 72 subtlety rogue in Borean Tundra. I was looking at my PvP achievements - and I have some fun ones, like "Wrecking Ball" - and I realized I was L72 and still missing duel-iciuous. I saw a L69 Tauren Protadin standing around and I thought about asking him to duel (with a whisper first, of course) but decided against it because although he had about the same size HP pool as me, our gear, level and spec were just too tilted in my favor.

What luck - he came over and /duel'd me! No whisper, of course, but since I was pretty sure I was going to win anyway, I didn't really care. So we dueled, and as I suspected, I won, and it was relatively one sided... So I gave a sportly /cheer and whispered him and said thanks for the duel, it's really just a gear imbalance.

He didn't like that ... He accused me of cheating! How did I stun him 3 times if I didn't cheat?! He wanted to go again ... I told him the outcome would be the same but he insisted. This video starts at the beginning of the second duel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5pJdCrhy9A

LOL. He's not an idiot.

Video says otherwise.

I feel sorry for mankind. He's going to breed someday.

"NOOB"

LOL, classic.

Was he using a dagger? terrible paladin is terrible.

BUT IF I USE MY MOUSE TO TURN, HOW DO I CLICK REND?! :O

Well played.

Left hand is for using abilities. Everything you use in battle (especially for PvP) should be bound to a key or combination that you can remember and hit without looking.

You do not "turn" with the keyboard (no A or D keys) but rather just go forward, backward, and strafe (Q and E).

Your right hand is for the mouse - which you should use to choose targets, to look around, and to turn. Make sure you know the difference between right-click-dragging, left-click-dragging, and both-click-dragging.

Takes some practice, but it will improve your gameplay drastically.

I found going from clicking abilities, to keybinding everything at once far too intimidating so i changed over slowly. The first thing to do is rebind E and Q to commonly used abilities and strafe using A D and mouse movement (or vice versa, whatever feels more comfortable). If you play fps games this will probably feel more natural anyway. Then i started to see how far across the keyboard i could comfortably reach while in the middle of a fight.

Getting a common theme going between characters also helps a lot. I found V was really easy to reach for proc abilities so on my ret pally it's Exorcism, on my lock it's shadowbolt (instant from nightfall talent). B is for defensive movement, so blink on my mage, demonic teleport on my lock, bubble on the pally. 4 has always been my interrupt key, and so on.

Just bind 2 extra abilities at a time until you get comfortable with the change then 2 more. A good addon helps too, i use bartender4 which has a nice simple keybinding function built in. /kb!

Edited, Jan 4th 2011 9:23pm by ArtemisEnteri

I don't drink beer from a straw! What are you, 16?

Beer should be in an appropriate glass, unless you drink cheap beer in which case you should throw it in the trashcan and buy better beer.

Now that sounds like a better plan.