Great success!Follow

TL;DR Yay two arena nubs (DK/rogue) are 6-5 after expecting more like 1-10. DK respecced blood which was FTW at this level. Saw few healers in our low bracket and the ones we did see weren’t very good. Can’t wait for Tuesday when the cap resets.

…Helps when “success” is defined quite broadly, but I’ve no qualms doing so. Buddy and I fired up a little 2v2 last night just for S’s & giggles, expecting maybe a win or two amongst many losses. Buddy plays a DK with about 2.3k resil and I a sub rogue with exactly 2k. With regards to experience, my DK just started doing BGs this xpac, nevermind arena, and cannot seem to break his keyboard-turning ways…though he DOES keybind, so I’m not exactly sure what’s going on there. For my part, I spent a ton of time in arena in S2 and S3, but that was on a different toon (mage) and anyhow, pvp was a bit different back then.

DK started off unholy, but spent so much time getting trained (with me in stealth) that we decided to try out blood and found much more success there. Hurt his damage, but mostly we just need him to stay alive while I worry about setting up burst, making the proper switches, and keeping SOMEbody (anybody ffs) blinded or slowed.

After 11 matches, we found ourselves conquest-capped and with a record of 6-5. It should suffice to say that we were pleasantly surprised. Our first couple matches were predictably chaotic with me speed-explaining the basics, quickly explaining the layout of each arena when we popped in, then calling out the “strat”. Strat is a funny word to use there b/c it amounted to me yelling at him to stay out of combat so I could sap X, but I digress. Our success rate with that was below 50%, I’d estimate. It quickly became evident that our chance of success was directly related to how short the match was, though there were a couple fun ones where I actually managed to run off and restealth with recuperate up, which amounted to a rogue’s favorite thing (full reset).

Was surprised to see so many double-dps teams, but I suppose most of the “proper” comps are out of our low rating bracket? Dunno. I recall reading on AJ.com that 2v2 matches with healers are long and mind-numbing (no pun intended) affairs, so perhaps folks are just steering clear of that. Saw a few of the predictable rogue/fmage, and a couple ret/war teams that I didn’t expect to see. Couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the pally on the team only had 27k mana and thus couldn’t be holy.

Definitely a lot of bads at this rating (ourselves included) – spriests that got gibbed before they could pop dispersion, resto druids that let their warrior die before they managed to get out of stealth (o hai RNG how YOU doin), dpriests that were hanging out right next to their sapped warrior buddy, leaving no downtime between sap and boomboom. Good times.

Looking forward to next week! Any suggestions on that first conquest point purchase? The shanker is the obvious temptation, but for about the same cost one could upgrade 2-3 other slots and pick up 3-400 resil.

Thanks, TC!

You don't have to worry about seeing us anytime soon, methinks. My guess is that our haphazard approach to cc and target switching is going to run us into a brick wall around 1k rating. My only hope is that we get better (nowhere to go but up in that deptartment haha) as we gain experience and our rating improves. Considering how new my DK is to arena and how new I am to Cata and Rogue arena, just a small bit of experience should help quite a bit.

Your logic re: staff and wand is, I think, exactly what I was trying to convince myself of as a justification for saving up for the MH dagger. Glad to hear I'm not alone there.

Your matches must last forever with a healer and a prot-specced dps. Do you help dps at all?

GL to 1500 this week! 2v2 rating doesn't technically have any significance, right? Can't get gear based on it, can't get titles based on it? That's a real bummer.

Congrats on the good times. I just had a similar experience like this just two weeks ago when I first decided to tread into arena. I teamed up with a good friend of mine (holy pally) on my hunter and decided to give it a try. We eneded up 8-8 or so our first week. We did more matches than the got points for, but we were having so much fun we just wanted the practice.

Right now we are 26-31 and at 1257 rating. What was more important is the ammount of fun I had. I can honestly say it's been possible before Wrath since I have had that much fun in a night on WoW. I would encourage anyone who is considering doing arena for the first time to give it a try.