I know that this thread may come across as sounding quite noobish, but I consider myself to be a skilled player for the most part and I would really like to know what kind of things I can do to improve my PvP skills. Overall I'm in a SW raiding guild on a PvE server, but I PvP on both Rogue and Warlock. My Warlock is in almost full s3 gear and my rogue is in a mix of pvp/pve gear, but moderately well geared all around. My question is thus: I often find myself getting stuck at far lower brackets than I think I should. My guildmates laugh about point-selling at 2100+ ratings while I sometimes can't break 1700 given the comp.

I'm sure that I can't be the only person out there who does decently enough at arenas to get up above 1600-1700 but I guess my question becomes: how do you take it farther?

I've been playing with friends for the most part who are always well geared and whom when I play with them I can't see any glaring issues with their choices for ability usage. Yet we always get stuck somewhere between 1650 and 1800 rating. I recently played 2s Warlock/Rogue (my Warlock) with a guildmate Rogue who is always 2000+ rated and he helped me get to 1850 so that once I get the points I can buy the weapon. I earned it through playing with him, but at the same time, there is that feeling that he carried me.

Are there any general comments, tricks, hints, or maybe questions for me that you'd like to bring to the floor to help me understand the difference between a 1700 team, and a 2000 rated team.

Thanks,

Practicing with good players is the best way to get better. People who just shit on your playstyle/etc. should be avoided, you want skilled partners who will give you feedback, if they get a little angry/frustrated that you're not playing up to their level, remind them politely that you simply don't have the experience and ask them to explain in detail after every fight what you did well and what you need to improve upon.

Watch videos, lots of them. Just like inexperienced raiders watch t6.5 raid videos to learn boss strats/etc. you need to watch videos of people playing your preferred setup in whatever bracket. Watch those, watch videos of teams you have trouble beating, strategize, etc.

Macro everything. Clicking is slow, even the fastest clicker in the world is going to be slower than a good hotkeyer. Tapping a key is just that much faster (and takes less concentration) than clicking.

Know when to auto-devour, learn to micro manage your pet, fears, deathcoil spell-locks. Coordinate burst (shadowbolts) with your teammate(s) for maximum pain. Make focus targets for easy spellock/deathcoil/fear chains.

Read Arena-Junkies, a lot. Watch more videos. Play a lot of games (yes I know queue times on Bloodlust suck huge cock but just do it, 3s are better than 2s if that helps). Play in multiple brackets. Learn the playstyles and the differences in different brackets (i.e. very offensive in 2s, defensive in 3s, spam tongues in 5s and pray you don't face triple melee).

Communicate. The number one failure of my lower-ranked arena partners is coordinating CC/Peels with me. Often times they will think that they are in good shape, but be playing overly aggressive, and eat massive stun/cc chains and end up dying before they even call for a peel. My higher-ranked partners tend to let me know EVERYTHING they are doing. This helps TONS because I know when to use my cooldowns, pummel, intercept, etc. and maximize every little bit of my abilities in order to gain the advantage. Get that mod that spams party/raid chat with "Devoured: Buff X" etc. I can't recall its name now but all of my good partners use it to great effect (i.e. I know when feldom gets purged after I pummel it and can resume facerolling instead of having to intercept/fear chain the lock).

Use cast-bars so you know when somebody is casting shit so you can lock them out.

The list could go on and on, but I would say start at arena junkies, use the search function there as well, and read the lock, the 2v2, and the 3v3 thread here. Cheers and good luck, tell Lorilay and Mach to stop carrying Jerten in 2s and 3s.

I definitely have already started doing a lot of what you mention. I certainly feel that with my Warlock I learned a ton from my Rogue partner. He did exactly as you suggested and when we lost he would say little things like "don't dot the cc target because it will break my blind when I use it" and little things like that. He was also very good at teaching me CC chains such as sap -> fear -> blind -> fear. He would just call out what CCing he wanted me to do and after a while of course I didn't have to anymore.

Communication was actually a much bigger issue on my Rogue and I picked up an addon called CastYeller from Wowace which lets me spam most of my messages to party/raid/yell. However it's definitely not the addon you're talking about and I need to find that addon because CastYeller won't do my kicks, let alone say what spell I interrupted. But it was a big change for my Rogue (me)/ Mage team for me to start using that addon because I would yell out who I was sapping, gouging, blinding, and my partner would know not to break it.

I definitely already read a ton of arenajunkies and some of their macros were really useful (totem eating macro lol) and some of the guides were moderately helpful. I guess overall it really does come down to practice. I do of course feel however that there is a distinct difference between myself who can pretty comfortably get to 1800 rating with a good partner, or some of my guildmates who seem to be able to pull any old joe up to 1900+ rating without too much effort. I guess it could just be lots of practice and the instinct of knowing what to do in every situation.

If anyone else has any tips please feel free to share.

I've hit 2k on both my Warlock (main) and Druid (alt). In addition to those teams that have hit that rating, I also play on a number of other teams that are in the 17-1800 range (perhaps on both teams that hit 2k I was carried by my partner, but I'd like to think that I can pull my own weight). The main difference I've noticed between players who can hit 2k and those stuck at 1700ish is that the players who are more successful can track all 4/6/10 players and have a decent idea of what they're doing. Tunnel visioning with good gear will get you to about 1700, and you'll need to actually be able to watch the entire field of play to get beyond that point.

I think that's the most important thing to say. However, finding someone to play with, who actually doesn't go "tunnel visioning" isn't easy. Especially as a healer i notice my DDs going to stick to much on something, trying to much to kill that SINLGE ONE target, even forgetting about their own defence/health.

I had a lot of nice games with crap gear and good players and way to much the other way around. And to point it out once again, a good player isn't necessarily the one that just knows about his class, but who knows his class AND at least important things of all classes and most of all who keeps an eye on what's happening around him.

Doubt this topic will provde you with any answers, there are loads of 'help' topics in the pvp forum already and special thread for locks/rogues only. Apart from that; breaking from 1750 to 1850 is not different from going to 1850 to 1950. You just fight slightly better players and more standarized lineups.

A few tips from my own lock:

Every lock can fear/dot targets, the only place where you can improve greatly is micromanaging your pets to a maximum. This means: petattack/petpassive macro, focus spelllock macro, turn of auto devour and use it as defensive dispell. (depending on setup). Rest comes down to practise, preferely with high rated partner who can improve your game.

While there's certainly gains to be made from more efficient pet-micro, crowd-control and so forth, my current major focus is Positioning, if only because it seems to be talked about so rarely.

I've generally found that good players are almost always in the Right Spot at the Right time. It's a bit vague as a description, but I think it summarizes the objective. Where exactly the right spot is at any particular time depends entirely on the million individual factors of a match, but perhaps I can provide some examples.

I can't count the number of terrible druids my lock/rogue team has destroyed when the druid unstealths right in the middle of some barren patch of land and in easy range for fear spam or a hard switch. Or warriors who take just one too many steps around a pillar and line of sight an incoming heal from their healer. Or mages who find themselves completely out of line of sight of any of the fighting. It even applies to people who are fighting melee and such. If you have a warrior on you and your rogue can stun him while you walk around a pillar, that warrior is going to have to slowly walk around after you, great fun.

That sort of thing sounds somewhat basic and perhaps even obvious while you're sitting here reading, but it becomes rather more difficult in the heat of combat. In any case, that's the largest difference I see between say 1800 and 2k. At 2k druids unstealth behind things and warriors rarely get pulled around corners.

Beyond that a lot of it is just pure experience and muscle memory. There's generally not that many variables or options in each fight, especially 2v2 and you can probably learn the vast majority.

I'll note, somewhat parenthetically, that one of my biggest problems playing with a rogue was playing too conservatively to try to allow for sexy blind-sap moments. As awesome as they are, the higher we got, the less frequent they become. A large part of a warlock's power, especially sl/sl, relies on hitting multiple targets with your dots, hitting just one target gimps you severely. I've also found that healers, very especially the healers who actually have to cast heals such as paladins and shamans, but even druids do it, is let themselves get rather low if you get dots on them and apply pressure to their partner. This tends to allow for perfect dps switches to healers at 50% hp.


Of course there are the obvious warlock things, practice with your pet controls, bind spell lock and devour magic, use a focus frame or similar for whatever you want your pet to spell lock, keep track of what every person on a battlefield is doing, things like that. Get used to starting a long cast, like searing pain, and then clicking or looking around to figure out exactly where everyone else is.

Some lock/rogue specifics, vs healer/dps teams we kill the healer, either by pressuring their dps to force the healer out or just jumping the healer straight off. This especially applies to paladins who are going to bubble at some point anyway and you certainly want them to bubble when you have a possibility of surviving to the end of it. Versus double dps generally my rogue waits for the enemy rogue to jump me then jumps him, avoiding those initial stun chains is huge. Either he stays on the rogue or jumps to the other one at that point, it doesn't matter that much. The exception to killing the healer first is vs hunter teams, generally they're squishy enough that they can just be dropped with limited cc on the healer.

A lot of inexperienced players confuse bad positioning and other transparent Arena mechanics with a) Class imbalance and b) Bad luck.

I can't count how many times i've heard people on vent (usually my own guild) whom have low ratings complaining that they "couldn't possibly do anything to avoid losing to that team".

Every successful Arena player will tell you: There is a shitload more going on in the background of a game than meets the eye. If your stuck at 1600 rating and can't figure out why, you need to practice a lot more until you learn the arts of "the hidden game".

Find someone in your guild who has pvp'ed at the high level (2200+) and convince them to do some games with you. If you can find a resto druid/rogue listen to their feedback and you will hit 1850 pretty quickly.

The difference between 2300 and 1850 isn't as huge as some may think. The players at 2300 just have a little bit better idea what to do, react slightly faster, bit more aware, and have a bit more general understanding of the other classes. Naturally, combine these traits on multiple players on a team a they can consistently beat most teams.

Imho, the best way to get good is to play with a fantastic player and have them critique you and explain their strats.


PS: Ignore my current ratings just helping a friend get his shoulders.

Hopefully I can say this without falling into the 'excuses' category, but I think there is something to be said for pvp'ing in BG9 vs some other BGs. I'm not saying this to get flamed, but I genuinely think you will have a harder time on Proudmoore than you will on some of the more quiet BGs. Not to mention lag if you're an Aus player. You are probably alot better than you think (but that doesn't help you get your shoulders/weapons does it?)

In terms of what you can do to get better, well I'm probably not the best person to give advice seeing as I only broke 1850 in S1 / early S2 before imploding and hating arenas. I would say though that it is very important to pick a good partner who you know has some patience and preferably has some priorities outside of arena too. When I was desperately trying to get above 1850 in s3, I had a number of different warriors who would all rage and chuck a hissy fit when things didnt go their way. It nearly always meant that they would jump ship for another druid and leave me having to relearn how another new partner plays - which generally meant that I had a hard time getting better.

Pick a decent partner and stick together. It sounds like you've got a good partner already, so I can only advise you to stick with him at nearly all costs. Learn how each other reacts in different situations. Learn how your rogue likes to play and adapt accordingly. Some of my best games (and most fun) were with an undergeared friend when we were able to take down teams with much higher ratings / better gear. We did this because I *knew* what he was going to do / where he was going to be and vice versa.

There's alot to be said for playing with a different player for a while to see how things are done, but in my opinion playing with a regular team mate and training as a team will be much more helpful Just play more games, try going into BGs and take on 2 v 3/4/5s. Watch how he manages his cooldowns, what targets he likes to CC and what kind of burst he puts out.

Disclaimer: I'm a massive noob and you should not believe anything I say, about anything, ever.

I used to play on BG9, and yes, it IS harder, but most of that is at 2k+ where the fame of BG9 comes from, the "super-saturation" of amazing players doesn't start at 1500. BG9 has an enormous arena population and thus you are just as likely to run into a string of bads and smoothly sail to 2k as you are to meet glad reroll after glad reroll 30 games in a row. The difference is entirely on when you play (don't play tuesdays, people level pointsells then) and how you deal with that. Also, due to the enormous Oceanic population on BG9, you're just as likely to run into merc glads at 5am in the morning as you are at 5pm at night. It's rougher than places like Emberstorm and Retaliation, that's for sure. But the skill-difference in the 1500-1850 bracket between let's say, Vengeance, and Bloodlust is pretty minimal. There may be more teams queueing on BG9 at any given point, but until you hit 2k/2.1k+ it's not that different from other BGs.

In fact, for me it was easier to hit 2k in 2v2 on BG9 than it has been on Rampage. This is mostly an effect of who was queueing and when, and yes, rustiness, but still, the skill level in 2s is really not any different between BGs sub 2k. Other brackets you can probably make that argument but I'm not going to go there.

A big mistake I see people getting stuck at the 1600-1800s is they have these notions about certain "absolute truths" that may be true to some extent, but are not absolute, or in some cases may be outright wrong in the first place. Statements such as:

"There's no way at all for me to get away from or do anything about _________."

"__________ kills me in 2 seconds every time."

"Well, I WOULD normally do _________, but they will just pop ________ and make it pointless."


I have a very geared rogue alt, and something that has never ceased to amaze me is observing the difference in what druids do when I am playing my rogue compared to when I am playing my warrior. Even druids that could be classified as "pretty bad" players knew enough to cyclone and root my warrior whenever possible. However, when I would play my rogue, (on similar comps to my warrior), the amount of times I would get rooted and cycloned is far, FAR fewer. I've tried to think up reasons why this is, and about the only thing I can come up with is that they assume it's pointless to root, because I will CloS or vanish out of it. But since they never even tried it, I never had to blow those cooldowns, so I could use them for other things.

It clearly depends on how good you actually are but alot of suggestions made already hold alot of truth.

What helped me getting better in arenas actually was 3 things:

a) Duelling. Some may say "Duelling has absolutely nothing to do with an arena match" and this may be true, however, you will learn alot about your own and the other classes while duelling. You will get a feeling for what you are able to pull of and what not and you will see how your opponents will react. Becoming better at duelling will make you become better in arenas.

b) Read. Watch videos. Soke up other players knowledge. There is alot of really good pvp material out there and I don't mean those "roflmao oloo 8k insta pyro crit omfg! I pwn y0u!"-videos but tutorial-like videos (eg. "I suck at ..."-series, siij's Battlecast, etc), arena videos by high ranked arena players (eg. gc, sonny, etc) and good suggestions and stuff in forums like this one.

c) Dont ever whine about loosing. Whining about imbalance, about overpowered classes, too skilled players, unfairness of mechanics or just your unability to beat some player or class will not make you better at it. Ever. If you lose it's most likely your fault. You will need to be aware of this simple fact and start searching for mistakes you propably constantly do while playing. I believe this is a huge step, that most people struggling to break into the upper ratings fail at.

This is very true and very good advice.

How manny Warlock's try to fear warriors?



As for the thread, my best advice is to make sure you have the basics down.

-Keybind everything and further make sure the way you lay out your bindings is good
-Dont keyboard turn or back peddle (back peddiling is one of my own bad habbits BTW)
-Have a good UI (Proximo, Pitbull whatever)
-Use a focus frame and focus macros
-Run a good Comp
-Play with good players
-Read strats and pratice your Comp
-Make sure your gear is as good as it can be


If you are doing these things you should be able to get good score in most brackets.

'zactly. As a warlock/druid makeup, I see plenty of our makeups up at 2200+. Yes, we have trouble with rogue/priest, but these other warlock/druid combos are up that high, so they *must* have learned how to outplay the rogue/priest at 1800. Ergo, I need to be better if I'm at 1800.

Postscript - yes, rogue/priest is the hardest combo for us, so they won't always be beatable. But we should at least be able to beat other combos that are "tough" or "so-so" for us at this rating.

Communication, awareness, and easy access to all your abilities are definitely key. You should also be using the right abilities at the right times without prompting, not just randomly doing dps or healing without thinking about your other options. Generally speaking, if I'm playing with a clothie and they have to call for me to bop them when they're getting low, or they die and I say something like "You didn't ask for a BoP!," I'm doing something wrong. If I'm with a warrior and he has to call for BoF when he gets rooted, I'm doing something wrong (he should still call it out, but I should be paying attention and doing it already). Similarly, if I'm having to tell a lock to CoT the paladin, or be casting fear regularly in between applying dots, other similar basic ideas, he's doing something wrong. (Note that 5s is the only bracket I've taken seriously this season, my 2s and 3s were solely used to help some friends).

Also, for 2s and 3s especially, be willing to stop queueing if you're getting a bad matchup. Sometimes the smaller brackets can be a lot like poker. The key isn't winning every time, that's impossible, it's winning when you should win, winning more often than not where the chances are even, and minimizing your losses when you can't win. In 2s especially and 3s to a degree, there are certain matchups that may be impossible for you to win, given a competent opponent. If the queues are somewhat long and you get the same unbeatable team a couple of times in a row, stop queueing. When my 5s team had trouble getting off the ground at the start of the season, I jumped into 2s with our warrior to get him the s3 weapon asap. We went 1500-1850 in one week without too much trouble, despite the weaknesses of paladin-warrior that spawn so much QQing by warrior and paladin alike, by making sure if we ran into a nasty mage/rogue or lock/healer team that we felt we couldn't beat twice in a row, we would stop queueing and try again an hour later or another day. And we got huge chunks of points from warrior/druid teams that couldn't beat us, but would queue into us like 5 times in a row.

The risk of that is that most people think every loss was "impossible, there was nothing I could do!", but if you're actually a good judge of fights you can win and fights you can't, stop queueing into the fights you can't.

Persuading your team to spend their banked arena/honour points "now" and not later is a good start, it definitely helps against the burst/outlast setups which test your gear along with your skill. Especially if you're like me and hit dualist in s2 as shadow, but needed a full new disc equip to heal after shadow became the 'carry me' spec.

The main thing is just playing more, and at least have some basic strategy/ability to target switch. Nothing makes me happier than people with tunnel vision since it's effectively a free win, but at the time you want your teammates to not feel they 'must' keep pressuring one target. As a dualist from s2 playing shadow I'm still getting used to the offensive style of the disc priest, mainly due to me finding it difficult to walk the tightrope between offensive pressure (dispels, mana burns) and heals. I'd say the biggest mistake I make is generally trying to 'Do it all', by healing my teammates, kiting dps, contributing to pressure on their healers aswell as handling offensive and defensive dispels - when usually I'd have been more useful by just paying more attention to debuffs and buffs and reacting accordingly. Spending a couple of minutes talking afterwards about what went wrong, how pressure could have been directed and so on also helps you understand your teammates concerns - and therefore helps your synergy with them in future games.

Because of the importance of BoF/BoP/DS/IB in lower brackets I'd almost certainly recommend putting a few custom lines into your SCT so you're on top of your dispels. We've lost a few games due to me simply not paying attention and leaving BoP up a couple of seconds and thankfully putting some custom SCT events in as part of my UI helps.

Lastly, keybinds.. if you're like me and have multiple characters with different keybinds I'd almost certainly do a quick AV/AB first to mentally 'save' what buttons do what, it can save you a loss or two by you not paying attention,e specially if you play after work. I realise some people play their main exclusively so this isn't an issue, but for those of us with a plethora of alts - silly as it sounds - it helps (me at least).

I consider myself a slightly above average player. However, I crept into gladiator range in season 2, barely making the last page in the reckoning battlegroup (some consider it the 2nd most competitive after bg9).

The secret? Playing a lot of games. I think I played 400 games on my 2's team to get there, over the course of a few months. My partners were more skilled than me with a lot more experience, but I obviously had to pull my own weight being 50% of the team.

The biggest difference after playing that many games is, you get to the point where you don't have to think too much about what to do. You just do it. You figure out when you need to target switch after getting cc'd, what order to blow your cooldowns in, when to go defensive and reset and when to blow everything - these things take time to learn. You have a basic action plan versus every team comp, and if you're losing to the same team over and over, you stop queing. Sometimes you have to queue dodge if you get dumped on 5 times in a row by that god damn rogue/spriest team with double engineering belts.

Perhaps this isn't in the spirit of the game, and most of the posters on this board have better morals than I, but WoW PvP is - for the average player - a grind like any other. You play enough, and you'll get there. Obviously it's possible that your skill could limit you - but if you can play every night until you can find the comps you're good against, or the teams that are higher rated but worse than you or point sellers are queueing - you can get high.

Once you've played 500, or a thousand games in your bracket with your comp, you know just about everything you can come up against, you make few mistakes, and it's relatively easy to get high rated if you start a new team. But those first few hundred games where you learn how to play are what will prove most difficult. It's annoying, you'll yo-yo up and down in ratings, you'll fight teams that seem easy and then those that seem hard, but if you can sink the time into it, you'll get there.

It takes time.

Or, alternatively, you can just do it like this guy -- The World of Warcraft Armory

What do you suppose the strategy is for pvping at 1925 personal rating wearing greens? Working as intended, right? He's just that much better than you? What a joke.

I had a 2k+ personal rating in 5s on my warrior with pieces of blue/green gear earlier in the season - the gear in that link isn't even that terrible. Unless you have some other reason to presume that someone win traded for their rating, it's not really fair to accuse them of such based simply on gear.

He might be logging out in different gear from what he arenas in, as a joke.

That Chest and the Gun are hardly bad.