There is no thread on this so I figure it is time to start one. What classes do people kill first in arena?

For example, when playing warrior/healer in 2v2 and faced with SL warlock/pally, which one do you try to kill?

Another one that puzzles me was what happened several times last weekend. My team sports several juiciy targets, such as a priest and a resto druid. Yet several teams focus fired our hunter, who has 14.5k HP arena buffed. And those were not total scrub teams either. Do people generally go for DPS or healers first in 5v5? How does the answer change when the opposing team has 3 instead of 2 healers?

Did the new arena gear change the answer to any of the questions above? Because it seems it did for us. I am focus fired significantly less these days now that I am all stacked in defensive gear. Is that just a coincidence? Because obviously the rest of my team got tougher, too, and we did not change our lineup.

Interesting. I have always figured hunters to be low on the priority list. Sure they can do a lot of damage but even pressured they are still useful as not all of your team will congregate in their dead zone. A resto druid under pressure on the other hand does very little. Yeah we are hard to kill but our usefulness in survival mode is minimal. When not pressured though, rotating cyclones will massively cut your DPS.

Same goes for priests. Yes a priest is tough to kill, but unmolested a bloodlusted holy/disc priest will own your mana pool.

In general, do people go for the easiest targets to kill first, or for the targets that are least useful under pressure?

Resto Druids do very well under pressure compared to Priests or Paladins, if you're spending time kiting you can usually get a few HoTs off or an NS where as everyone else has to stand still and get a 1.5s cast off, which isn't really easy to do, and unless you're using a heavly magic focused group you still have to deal with armor.

Cyclone is annoying, but unless you're running a gib team I don't really consider it to be that much of a threat that I'd shift priority to a Druid first, but that mainly depends on the rest of the team, if it's 2 healers followed by 3 magic classes I'd probably go for a Druid first still.

It depends on the entire team, if I think we can kill someone in 10-15s I'd go for the easiest target, but if you're spending 30s+ on them you may as well go for the target that does the worse under pressure.

Hunters are one of the classes most vulnerable to disruption via assist train, since keeping us under pressure prevents us from being able to effective manuver to DPS/disrupt our intended targets, and we can't use the vast majority of our abilities on any in melee range. We also have no real escape skills, outside of frost trap, but frost trap doesn't cut it as an escape tool if we're slowed ourselves. Hunter DPS is a lot like caster DPS - if we're getting hit, we're a ton less effective, since steady shot is actually a huge part of our damage output and the only mana-efficient way for us to DPS outside of autoshot.

The most important thing in choosing targets really isn't who's the easiest to kill, but who's the most dangerous to leave alone and the easiest to disrupt. Warlocks have a ton of HP and defensive abilities, but letting a warlock cast unhindered is just asking to lose. Hunters aren't necessarily as dangerous as an unmolested warlock, since we can't chain fear or anything, but we're easier to keep locked down since we don't have escape tools like howl or death coil.

In my 5v5 team I call targets and my general order based off how our team is setup is as follows.

Priest > Warlock > Mage. We always go for a cloth wearing healer first then assist train our way down so this is usually the first target we go for. Otherwise assuming none of these it looks more like this.

Shaman > Druid > Hunter. Assuming druid starts stealthed we just kill the shaman and then move onto the Druid.

Rogues > Paladins > Warriors. This is pretty much standard order I think at least for our group.

I am curious why you put shamans first in the second batch. Does that apply to both resto and elemental shamans? I agree on elemental shamans because they hurt, but I found resto shamans to have almost paladin-like toughness these days so I figure they are better to be interrupted while killing someone else.

We always go for a healer first. The way our team is setup, 2 warriors, we WW, Cleave and try and keep as many of our 5 near each other to maximise AoE DPS, while still FF my target. Doing this while on a healer makes it near impossible for 1 person to heal. Shamans in general go down really fast, especially when there is no BOP.

2 warriors with Lust, WF, and Deathwish on a tight nit group are going to tear through most targets quickly.

It's totally subjective depending on who you are near, what they are doing, what their gear is like, if anyone makes a mistake (falls off, is standing too far forward or away from team mates etc) and so on.

Obviously you have to assume equal gear and skill and flawless play to minimize the variables.

There are basically two philosphies here: getting in someone's face to disrupt versus getting on them to kill.

Particularly if you're playing an endurance setup(though this really applies to any game to various extents), disrupting the opponent's ability to deal damage is crucial. In particular, hunters and mages have their damage slashed significantly when you get in their face and force them to move. Locks lose two of their most dangerous spells(UA and Fear). Warriors and Rogues on the other hand, unless you plan on killing them, you're better off just Snaring/CC'ing them and moving on, because you're really not accomplishing much otherwise.

I could carry this a little further, but I think the basic idea is there. Obviously some classes are better at locking down specific opponents than others.

Of course if you're going for the kill, things are a bit simpler. Choose a target that's vulnerable to whatever forms of damage your team employs, and go for it.

Depends on situations but generally, and this is my thought process for all brackets:

Warlocks in the arena devastate unless they're disrupted/killed in a short amount of time, you can't allow a Warlock any time to do anything in the arena, it's just frustrating when they're up and allowed to do whatever they want. >_>

Shadow Priests after Warlocks, because they're vulnerable target with low defensive capabilities.

Hunters/Mages are good targets as well, because you lower their damage potential by applying alot of pressure.

Rogues are killable, but generally you don't want to target one until they've burned through a few of their cooldowns, you however DON'T want a Rogue lingering over a long match, like Warriors they don't need mana to survive, and can find time to restealth when you're at the end of a match.

Warriors are probably awesome targets if you're a caster heavy team, switching to a Warrior who's in Zerker and popped Death Wish and taking 115.5% extra damage could be golden. When it comes to crunch time and both teams are low on mana, you HAVE to kill a Warrior, it's too much unchecked damage with no limitation to allow to live.

Resto Shaman are amazingly annoying to kill nowadays, a geared to the teeth arena shaman is no joke to get down and kill, they take a very low priority on the kill list, though I will admit in 2vs2 under the right circumstances it's probably worth it to try and get an early kill on one.

Paladins are easier targets in 2vs2 or 3vs3 if you have a Warlock or a Mage to lock out their healing tree and they have no additional healing help. In 5vs5, a good one will find ways to delay the usage of that shield, and hide until Forbearance wears off.

Druids are insanely difficult to focus on in any bracket, if you can catch one at half health and in leather-form, you might be able to ninja kill them, but good teams keep that Druid topped off and running around on cyclone duty.