The arenas are crazy fun. me and a guild mate that got into beta did a few. We are obviously no pvp masters so our strategy usual broke down into "is it a rogue...... ZERG EM!"

But shadow priests finally get a venue where they truly shine.

So where exactly do shadow priests not shine? =p

Anyone know if the skirmishes (pre 70 arenas) are going to give honor when 2.0 goes live next week? They don't on the PTR and I can't see it staying that way.

Save this quote for all the servers where 2x Holy Paladin teams go undefeated for the next few years... If they have the gear, they do damage, and they do it while they wear a shield. Holy Paladins can kill people all too well with spell damage gear.

Sorry to nit-pick, but I think cooldowns are reset at the start of each arena fight, not the end. I think I remember coming out of a match on the test server with things on cooldown, and I know I entered matches with trinkets on cooldown, but when i zoned in they were ready for use.

And to answer the question, I vastly preferred the 3v3 bracket while pugging because it was more controlled - i could keep track of my team mates and the enemy and manage to keep everyone at the ranges I want to keep them at - in 5v5 people were running around all over the place and the enemy usually wasn't grouped enough to DPS properly.

When i signed up for a premade though, 5v5 was a blast. 3 hunters + Paladin + Mage generally meant we could stand at our gate and focus fire down anyone we wanted - since we had a team we could set out guidelines ahead of time about what order enemy classes needed to die.

And a wish-list entry: I wish people could click a sort of ready check button in buffing time - if everyone on both sides is ready, the match begins, instead of waiting the full preptime. given how short the matches are, the short preptime gets annoying when you're in a team that can finish all buffs in 10s.

Reagents: I think buff reagents should be free, so people can do Arcane Brilliance and Prayer of Fortitude and Greater Blessings without reagents. Combat reagents on the other hand I don't know. I don't see them making arrows or poisons or bandages free, so I don't see why blinding powder or soul shards should be free either. Especially not with how annoying it would be for blind - if it cost no reagent, having a rogue on your team would mean one person on the enemy team would be out of action for 15s every game - and that's almost long enough to win a match.

Yeah, would work better with Prot paladins instead of Holy since Holy is a viable spec
As for arenas they don't give honor on beta either, not even in rated matches. I guess you don't get any honor for beating people in an arena from a roleplaying point of view, while you'd get some from defending "world" objectives in BGs

The Spaniard was honourable :(

2blinds=16secs, no DR on it and it lasts full duration all the time, even in arenas

My biggest problem with the blind reagent is that I've heard nothing of it dropping off higher level herbs. Farming lockboxes for it is just stupid as I rarely get more than 3~5 boxes/hr if i'm pickpocketing humaniods as I farm. This means I have to either rely on others to go to SM and farm fadeleaf for me or drop a profession.

I guess I didn't use my terms quite right. There's arena points and honor points. You only get arena points in the arena and you only get honor points in the battleground. And you can battle the same faction for arena points, that's cool.

I think I heard that you only got credit for one bracket per week, whichever you got the most points for. Is this correct?

Yes you only get points for one bracket, whatever gives you the most. Means if you're like #6 5vs5 and #1 2vs2, you might get the points from 2vs2 because it's higher(those numbers are purely fictionnal). Makes doing 3vs3 or 2vs2 "backup" teams useful in case your main 5vs5 team has problems(like people quitting the game and stuff).

Yes, that is correct.

Yeah 10secs, always think it's twice a scattershot but it's more than that. And I wasn't arguing it was overpowered, it's fine imo, just that I haven't seen a blind break early yet in arenas. And if you have a shaman dropping a poison cleansing totem, blinds aren't an issue really.

The poison thing was more of a response to:

Arenas are live on my server as of this morning. However shard requirements are live as well; making healthstones for the group costs shards, according to the warlock I grouped with.

Sadly the Blizz site says differently:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/arena/index.xml

I have never, ever, ever seen a blind break early, barring damage done to the blinded target, or a poison cleansing totem/abolish poison.

That may be so, but that would require two rogues.

Every team with a Rogue that's even remotely competitive will be sure to have a few blinding powder ready before going into every match, so the above doesn't really make sense.