It seems that everyone is grinding honor these days, but after picking up the one upgrade I needed I've been spending just about all my time in the arenas. After getting over the initial shock of how quick they are it's been some of the most exciting PVP I've seen yet.

When 2.0 came out I originally got shadowfury, and it was great for pvp in the battlegrounds, but I found that I did a lot better in the arenas with an affliction build, specifically anything that included instant howl of terror, which is just amazing. I've been trying out different specs lately to try and find one that really maximizes my potential in the arenas. So, besides blowing a good chunk of gold on repecs I've also been trying out a lot of talents that I'd always just passed by.

Right now I'm considering going something like this http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=AZbxczIiz0xoZxV0tzhwhich is something I'd never consider outside of the arenas. I'm not a big fan of soullink for raiding or organized pvp, and not taking things like improved corruption or bane just feels wierd, but I think I could do some serious damage in arenas with this build just by spamming searing pain. I'd also probably grind a bit of AV to get the Marshal's gloves with 50% chance to avoid interuption (and put a fire power enchant on them).

So, has anyone tried any "off" specs, or wierd talents to gain an edge in arenas at the expense of everything else?

(although if you're a lock, and you have a great build, maybe you should just PM me, so everyone else on this battleground doesn't hear about it, ha)

Not sure how this thread with fair with the vast majority of posters being PvE oriented...but I'll bite.

I'm currently 8-0-43 (Cloak of Shadows, Hemo). I've won a few 1v2 matches with it, namely with the other two are a mage and a warlock. With a feral druid, we've got the monopoly on 2v2 arena's. I put 2 points into cheat death to see how it would fair...haven't notice it working though, maybe it just doesn't show in the combat log?

Fairly sure this is the last push from Beta that didn't show it (Doesn't show potency procs either) in the log. It does show on test, and works fairly decently.

Sounds like Free Cloak of shadows with a combat / assassination build will be very balanced against casters :P

As a lock, I gave all 3 options a shot, I think Destro might be the way to go for 5v5, but it just wasn't cutting it for 2v2.

Affliction did pretty well... I'm a gnome so kiting with CoX / Escape Artist was pretty viable, but I was still finding myself dead if there was a good CloS rogue on the other team before I could get out of stunlock.

I found myself doing best with a Noobguard spec. Fel domination is pretty huge since its timer is reset for each match. Having about 6k health along with SL really gave me the ability to live through the initial Burst to give myself time to pop a healthstone and wait out the initial volley so that I could re-establish control.

Alot of locks dismiss Demo since its so easy to just banish the Felguard.. but honestly by the time they get it off I've already got a fear off and dots up. And then while they are feared I'll just FD out a puppy if they actually managed to get a banish to stick.

Against melee, the 1.5second VW at the last second goes a long way to stacking the match in your favor.

I'm sure the spec is obvious to anyone who seriously group pvps with a shaman, but I went 0/8/43. No healing way, max silence resist talent, imp LS in case I'm grouping with a priest (he'll get the earth shield).

Yesterday my guildmate DCed right at the start of the fight so I beat 2 rogues at the same time. IMO resto is now the only serious pvp spec.

As a shaman, I would never do an arena without Eye of the Storm; it simply has too much value for survival. The other talent that is also amazing for arenas is Nature's Guardian. My last spec, 18/0/33, was incredible for tanking the assist train in 5v5s. The reason I haven't gone Earth Shield is because it's too easily removed by a good team, and in the case of a bad team, they will be steamrolled anyways.

I've done a good amount of arena lately, but I have to ask. Are you doing organized PvP? 2v2? 3v3? I can't imagine PvPing with a warlock that is using his DoTs in organized arena. Breaks far too much CC! What team are you running with?

Personally as a rogue, ive been running 21/0/30 for both PvP and PvE, and its great. The only thing I feel i'm missing is Imp. Sprint, but past getting used to blowing a ton of cooldowns very quickly the spec has worked very, very well for me thus far.
Been running Priest(Disc)/Mage(Frost)/Rogue a lot and its definitely my favorite.

Level 60 arenas seems kinda pointless to me, although for level 70 warrior, 45/5/11 is looking good. Last Stand + Lifegiving should provide some nice burst protection.

Usually I've just been single queueing for 2v2 while I wait for some people on my friendslist to get tired of AV and come play. I actually really enjoy single queueing 2v2, you don't get too many matches that are lopsided 2v1 or don't fill up (unlike 3v3 or 5v5 where it seems to happen a majority of the time unless you queue as a group) and I get to meet a lot of good PVPers on other servers. It's great when you get matched up with the same player 2 or 3 times in a row.

But as far as CC and dots go, even though I'm deep affiliction right now I usually don't end up throwing a lot of dots unless it's down to 1v1, I've really only gone affilication for the instant HoT anyways. My first few moves are usually a curse (exhaustion or tongues), either deathcoil or HoT depending on how the fight has stacked up, and maybe a fear or spell lock and then it's usually time to finish one of them off, so I'll start in with some dots/direct damage. Of course if things go bad (and I'm still alive) I'm usually just running/dotting everything in sight.

CloS is one of the main reasons I've been considering going with a soul link build, it seems that the only counter to CloS is just having enough health to outlive the stun + 5secs of resists.

Do you think Demonology would be worthwhile without the Felguard, or is it the best choice for DPS? I've been a little reluctant to go demonology because it seems I'll be burning through many more shards per match, at least until they fix arena prep to work for us, but if it means killing more rogues, it'd be worth it.

And how does Demo stack up against Pallys?

Level 60 arena is all about burst dmg timers. 3 minute mages really shine here, because there's no rematch for the node 2 minutes later.

I've seen a few arcane mages - god that spec is so shit, it's unbelievable

Pointless because you're getting your face rocked off or because there are no rewards? I've War+Pal duod a bit with my heal paladin and it's pretty awesome.

So you're not the kind of guy that PVPs just for the challenge and fun?

People don't play to their full potential when there's nothing at stake. It's human nature.

Edit: Not to mention that when there's no rating system, you're basically matched against 100% random teams, instead of similarly skilled teams. The entire appeal of the arena to me is the removal of "rolling pugs" that's currently present in 99% of premade BG games. It's not fun to play when there's no competition.

Oh, and thanks for assuming I'm either a shitty player or a loot whore. I really appreciate that.

Yeah well the topic was good specs for level 60 arenas, not for someone to come into the thread and shit it up with that it's "kinda pointless."

Dunno if that was in jest, but enhancement shamans can rock some face in pvp. I think that general notion is rooted in Enhancement being the Retnoob spec of shamans - a large percentage are morons who run in looking for big numbers, usually never healing even themselves or learning when to take a more defensive approach. Though you have a point in that you can't have 70% uninterruptable heals and 41 points in enhancement till level 65...

There's no way a deep Enhancement Shaman will do well at level 60, like you said. You can't get Healing Focus or Eye of the Storm, so the whole healing side of the class is pretty gimped when you're being attacked. Of course, you can get Healing Focus if you go all the way down to Stormstrike, because I can't imagine why you'd ever want to DW in PvP (and Unleashed/Shamanistic Rage are pretty PvE oriented), so it can't be that bad (no NS though D:). However, itemization for Enhancement Shaman really isn't that great, either, and in general those who play Enhancement are pretty terrible players.

I used to think that about Retnoobs as well, but once I saw an actually good Ret Paladin lock down two healers at once with HoJ + Repentance and keep BoF on his Warrior + cleanses on his group, I sort of changed my mind. Well, I still think taking Crusader Strike to an Arena group is silly, but that's just me.

There are certainly a good number of pointless matches in arenas right now, especially in 3v3 or 5v5, the lack of a ranking system definitely hurts. Plus we have all the burst damage without the lvl 70 stamina itemization so matches can be decided by a couple lucky crits.

But when the matches are good, they're easily some of the best pvp I've seen, right up there with that super rare good-group vs. good-group Arathi Basin. They're the kind of fights that I hope for in most BGs or world PVP and rarely see.

Even without any honor rewards (I think the experience in preperation for the real deal at 70 is worth the time I'm putting in now though) you'd be surpised at the number of people just single queueing who will go all out and give some amazing performances even though there's nothing at stake and they're just playing with other random players. Makes me wish that cross server queueing was feasible.

Edit: I'm working on another rediculous arena only build, and was wondering if anyone knew if Aftermath and Pyroclasm both stacked with hellfire and rain of fire? Would there be a 36% chance to daze or stun when aoeing?

Those are different mechanics, I'm not sure why they would stack?

Also AoE spells work differenetly with Aftermath and Pyroclasm. The procrate is calculated by the duration of the spell, so it's actually something pitiful like 2.6% chance to stun and 1% chance to daze someone. I can't recall the exact math though.

Destruction owns.
Felguard Owns (ish)
Affliction not so much.

Burst and CC is king. Survivability is also king.

I have not beaten two good prep rogues in 2v2.

The beauty of Crusader Strike is that if used properly, it's extra burst damage that takes minimal time away from healing/cleansing/etc. You can drop an autoattack swing, a CS, possibly an SoC proc, and a JoC just about as fast as you can push the buttons (since Judgement is independent of the GCD) and then go right back to supporting for another 10+ seconds. It's basically the Reckbomb again in a somewhat weaker but much more controllable form.

Played as a Disc Priest with my Warrior roomate, we weren't taking it entirely seriously, mainly because we outgeared most of our opponents. It was quite an eye opener of things that i had missed, even good AB/WSG teams weren't doing things to me that these teams were doing, i mean i've never had a hunter/paladin try to burst me down in BG, need to get used to the different tactics and debuffs being applied.

The team that easily beat us was a pally/warr duo from my server, a little better geared than us. Alot of that came from me not really understanding what to do against a paladin when i'm disc, having never fought them in organised PVP before.

On the whole, i was actually very impressed with the Disc tree for PVP, although i'm slightly worried about how it will be at 70, because from my build there is literally no other PVP talents that i can get with the extra 10 points, and some of the combos that other classes will be getting will tip the balance back their way i think.

Reflective shield is actually bad i think, the most problem i have in arenas is from warriors, and giving them rage even if they don't break through your shield is definately not worth the dmg you cause. Pain suppresion is awesome, but we didn't fight a real team with a dispeller in it, i think as you move up into 3v3 and especially 5v5, every team will have an offensive dispeller, and Pain Suppression will stop being as useful.

It definately works, it comes up as 'Absorbed' damage. I had an interesting 1 vs 1 with a rogue where he absorbed 3 spells in a row at the end. The lucky bugger.

Cloak of Shadows seems a little ridiculous at the moment, i've yet to find a counter for it without biting the bullet and speccing deep frost. It'd be nice to have a choice in builds for my arena fighting. I dread the times where its trainable and on a 1 minute cooldown :(

51 frost is strong, the water elemental is a great asset especially fighting 2 vs 2 and the ability to abuse coldsnap is a significant advantage .