I wasn't sure if either of these issues deserved their own thread, so combining them seemed appropriate.

How important to an Arena team do you think morale is, and what are the best ways of keeping a team's morale high? Other than winning of course, that boosts it naturally. But I've noticed once my teams get into hard streaks, even when it's mostly not our fault (simply outgeared/bad class matchups,) it becomes difficult to start the winning cycle again and we may even lose due to poor playing that wouldn't have happened earlier in the evening. What are good tips to break out of the slump?

In a semi-related vein, what are good tips for communicating with your partner? I tend to focus too hard on my play and forget to talk to my teammates, and they may not know I've got so-and-so cycloned, or that they're outrunning a heal I'm trying to drop. What do you consider "vital" information that absolutely must be communicated to your team in the heat of battle? How did you train youself to always say what you need to?

I run a little 2's team with my feral druid and a frost mage friend. We tend to do very well when we start playing, usually going 8-2 or so by the time we hit ten games. However once we hit a bad pocket of games, (either bad matchups or mistakes) I can just feel the team morale start to fall. Then I notice even more mistakes, and we'll usually end after a few consecutive losses past ten. So 12-6 is normal for us, but those last 4 losses were likely consecutive and it sucks to end the night on a much lower rating than you had in the middle of your gaming.

I used to find a good way was to take a couple of minutes break after a game you feel you should of won. Go grab a drink and then take a few minutes to go over what you feel you, or a team-mate did wrong. There's no need to point fingers, just honest "I might of been able to avoid X by doing Y." Review timing of CCs, how exactly did people die, or at what point did things start to go wrong? Those sorts of questions. At the very least the break can help you skip the team you just lost against and keep you feeling fresh. It's always pretty morale crushing to face the same team a few fights in a row.

The more info you can communicate the better. So basically yell out everything you're doing in 2s, but in 5s keep it to more necessary info like who you're CC'ing, when to switch, when you're running off to drink, when they're ressing, etc, to prevent vent from getting too clogged with voices.

As far as morale goes -- that totally depends on who you're playing with. Some people will wimp out after a losing streak, others will still wanna keep playing at 1344 after a 3-22 run. Some will be able to take the most violent and aggressive insults while others will take even constructive criticism poorly. Get to know your team mates and what kinda people they are -- if they need you to yell at them then do it, if you need to treat them with kid gloves then do that too.

Most of what Xavias said is a very good set of guidelines to follow, but ultimately just get to know your team mates and get into a comfortable sort of communication standard with them.

knowing exactly when to stop is really important; I try to call it before we end up that deep in a loosing streak. also, if possible, switch things up a bit; if 3s are running rough, try to thunk down to taking turns in 2s (assuming your in the same teams). if theres a particular player who you think might be having a bad night, make it a point to team specificaly with them, and see how things work out- maybe he's trying something new that your not used to?

This is a fantastic question to which I don't have the best answers. Running into the same team makeup five times in a row and losing every time is obviously demoralizing. My team tries to keep spirits high by joking when we can and calling people out after games on good plays, and by keeping all criticism constructive. We don't tell people that they fucked up. Instead we ask what prevented someone from doing X and then discuss what we could do in the future in a similar situation. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but it is extremely important, I find, to keep being constructive. No one is going to play perfectly. We all need help, and sometimes you find out a strategy that works exceptionally well in the future. As long as my team learns something and improves our play we are salvaging something out of a loss.

In addition to all these things, the most important thing is playing with people who can accept criticism and think as objectively as possible about what just happened in a game. Learning to not get defensive is really hard, but also vital to improving.

In the smaller brackets I find it's much easier to post-mortum a loss, work out what went wrong, and come up with a plan to do better next time. In 5v5 it's so often its hard to pin it down, the DPS will just say that their targets "just wouldn't die", or conversely our team members just get gibbed one by one, without there being a specific mistake someone made, which is pretty frustrating for everyone.

As a healer It is really annoying when they start questioning why I didn't heal them etc. Healing is keeping x team members up and having offensive CC/dots up. That whats makes even harder after a loss when they say you need to cyclone Y which I do next game which leads to dead team members. Trust in your team mates is a good start.

Secondly people cannot read your mind, if you are swiching targets tell it in advance, blinding the polymorph is a wast of cooldown. Remember the lag in vent, and a possible cast time. Having your rogue saying: "Blind CD is up in 10s blinding the warrior" is a perfect way of letting team mates know the coming actions and reducing misshaps.

When every body can say I could have done this better would make the trip to the top so much easier instead of the blame game.

Having people able to blame themselves is the best thing I think. It's much easier for everyone if the person who messed up is able to recognize that and say so to the group, not only because it's better on morale than having to tell someone they messed up, but each person has a better idea of what they are doing than anybody else. I can tell why somebody died usually, and I'll tell them "you needed to LOS that shaman" or "you got carried away and out of range" or "my bad there because of X". But I can't tell why Y opponent didn't die when they should have. Did someone blow a cooldown too early? Did someone mess up on pinning down a healer? I really couldn't say because I'm too busy doing my own thing. I hate saying "why did that hunter not die?" because it's a stupid question and annoying to the DPS, but if nobody can say why the hunter didn't die, how can we make sure we kill him next time?

My honest best advice would be, get to know the people you're playing with, and try to stick with a consistent team. Morale is always better when you're dealing with friends, not treating winning arena games like a business transaction. I've had worse results with healers that have more resilience that I simply know nothing about - I can't plan around what to expect of them, either in-game or as a player.

In terms of communication, the biggest flaw I see in most teams is their lack of a pre-game setup. Once we're in the fight, the things to communicate are obvious - CC, LoS, target switches, etc.

What tends to not come across, though, is all the pre-game strategy - where to go if you need to drink or get healed up, how target selection will occur (so that we're never the victims of a rush strategy), etc. Having some of the basics of your positioning and general plan worked out before you queue can save you a lot of ugly mishaps.

WTB 8/11/42 Druid for 2's, PST.