Videos or other suggestionsFollow

I mainly just watch WCM. But also you can go to arenajunkies and depending who is online streaming at the time, watch live streams. I've seen multiple rank 1 gladiator streams just from being on at the right time. One was a hpally in rated bgs another was a warrior playing 5s.


Some movies I literally learn nothing though. Especially when you cant understand their UI. It helps to download movies rather then stream whenever possible because the streaming are often poor quality so you cant read castbars.



Other things, like binding every ability, using focus target in arena and having target=focus macros for your core spells. I assume still playing priest, so focus dispell, focus sw:death with /cancelaura pw:shield macro'd in to break a poly, focus mana burn.

I'm looking into some mods myself to alert of spells like collosus smash and recklessness and zealotry or other burst cooldowns enemies use (shadow dance etc)


Also the one thing you dont hear arena players admit much, you simply have to grind out the games. How many have you played this season? When you are climbing its not uncommon for teams to play 1000+

I remember hitting 2200 with my partner. It was just as tough at 1600 as it was at 2100. Mild, mild exageration there. But really the difference between 2k teams and 1600 teams was marginal. There are false barriers in your mind about "I hit this rating it gets harder". Its not true. You just keep grinding out games you slowly keep climbing rating. Its like 52 steps forward 49 steps backward 35 steps forward 32 back, thats how you climb, its a grind.

If you've played like 400 games this season and still not 1550 I'd be a little more concerned. But I'm guessing its more like 30-120 games in which case simply keep grinding out games, talk about your losses, maybe film some games which can also help. And like I said get in the habit of focus macros every game. DO watch lots of disc videos, you will see the offensive playstyle they bring which wins games. Burst hard, fear healers on CD, position aggressively and focus mana burn, etc..

Edited, Mar 3rd 2011 10:15am by mikelolol

You could do that for sure. Myself I mainly just use gladius to set focus targets in arena (right click) and track trinkets and watch health/mana bars. I never thought of using it for mouseover macros actually. I suppose you could use them, I'd think its a little faster to have more keybinds myself but it comes down to preference. I'd have say ALT-X as /cast [@focus,harm] mana burn; mana burn so the second I see a pally sneak out behind the pillar I'm casting it.

I really have to emphasize downloading movies when at all possible; I even did a few months of subscription to WCM just to get premium download mirrors so I could see videos better.

Reading AJ helps depending on your class. For rogues it's a marginal help because the rogue forum tends to be a cesspool, for hunters it's pretty easy because most hunters are pretty laid back.

Anyway, watching videos over and over as Aethien said really does help. Similar to how football players watch film, I consider it a necessary evil to being a good PvPer so that you get used to natural reactions people have at high end.

40 minute queues o.O

You know about the queue bug? You can sit in endless queues. But they made some fix where horde generally get instant queues now and alliance queues are always instant. If you sit in a queue more then 2 mins, leave and requeue odds are you should get an instant pop. Or at least <2 min. Sometimes it takes 2-3 times of requeueing to get a pop. But the bug is basically, it will sit you in an endless queue. "Estimated time, 4 minutes, time in queue, 39 minutes" is the queue bug. Never sit in one more then 2-3 minutes (assuming you're talking about 85 bracket as horde, alliance should always be instant). Non 85 bgs can be a bit longer.

The bug is really annoying, but beyond that, they fixed SOMETHING. Queues are faster then I remember from as far back as TBC where they were actually acceptable. In WoTLK they got borked and stayed that way the entire expansion and the early chunk of Cata so I'm happy they are finally pretty fast.

Teacake -- are you queuing for specific BGs or the random and/or Call to Arms? I always queue for random or call to arms, so I can't speak to the queue times for specific BGs, but since Cata I rarely wait more than 1 minute. Of course it will vary based on faction and battlegroup, but I can't imagine the difference being as large as my 1 min to your 40 mins. I'm Alliance on Ruin, fwiw.

Re: the original topic, I have the same trouble where I watch some vid theo recommended and can't figure out what on earth is going on. Then I go back and read theo's comments and he's all like "wow that redirect kidney to focus step dance garrote ambush was amazing". A I'm all like, "who shot who in the what now?"

I exaggerate, of course, but the point is that finding vids where the player goes back and steps through his/her thoughts/approach is HUGELY helpful. Learned a ton from those.

You bite your tongue, young lady! Though, it's funny you say that...my primary ally server is pve and my primary horde server is pvp. On the other hand, all my arena experience has been as ally. EMFH is just too sweet.

I'm Horde on a PVE server. :) I'm just messing with you, because you are either a draenai, or allied with the draenei, and either must be punished.


(Important update on my feelings about the alliance: the draenai have actually surpassed gnomes on my hate list. I'm not sure whether this is because my affection for my goblin brethren has slighty softened my position on gnomes, or because male draenei pallies prancing around on their goat feet flailing swords around with their tentacles are just so damn stupid they wore me down.)

Vent sometimes helps but a lot of the time they don't explain what they're doing, they're just talking to their teammates about what they're doing.

They often won't say "redirect KS" they'll just say "KS" or "focus KS" or similar.

Explanations with slowed down video sequences are really the ideal, but very few videos feature that kind of stuff.