Posted On Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 By Jay
Offensive healing. Arena pvp is a unique situation. You enter with a predefined set of teammates, so does the other team. The other team knows they will be fighting other players. Even more so then BGs, losing in an arena match is more detrimental then a BG. Combining all these factors creates a unique situation for a priest. These factors contribute to a larger overall sense of competition. Knowing this and keeping your cool will mean you live and win.
We have great presence!
That’s right folks, we’re a fairly squishy, and we make other casters nervous. We can heal through their damage, fear, dispel through spells and remove pally bubbles. We are scary(SCAR EE). As I’ve moved slowly up in the arena ratings, I notice a few behaviors. Casters stand by a pillar. Or teams actively work to separate their foes. Using this presence can really make the opposing team sweat. Use you presence to affect the other team. You can force the druid to stay out of LoS. You can force the paladin to heal while you drain his mana. You can Continue Reading
Posted On Monday, April 7th, 2008 By Jay
Braids over at Out of Mana beat me to the punch. Here is an excellent article on how to gear up to be competitive in PvP.
Posted On Monday, April 7th, 2008 By Jay
Last week with much debating, we reformed our 3v3. PWM is our latest foray and we loved it. I found the class composition to be very complementary. We went 11-6. Very successful week. Here are my observations.
Kill the hunter.
Just do it. Our first match we went after another target first, lock and pet I believe to lock down the fears. The hunter own’d me in about 5 seconds. There was nothing I could do, I even pillar danced fairly well. From this point forward we destroyed every hunter first. When we killed the hunter, we won. A common group was hunter/lock/X. We killed then in this order.
I’m at my best when I can perform at my best.
We won every match when my team mates protected me from nasties. Those nasties include: Hunters, Warlocks, Rogues and Warrior. In that order. Every other class I can 1v1 effectively while they take out a target. Of particular note, Frost Nova > Warrior. This is the single best priest defense. I know alot of magesmage, use frost mage to protect your team against warriors.
already Continue Reading
Posted On Monday, April 7th, 2008 By Jay
10-8
Although this isn’t a great rating, we learned lots, rather, we have the opportunity to learn lots. We started a brand new team. We beat teams we should have beat and we lost to teams that should have beaten us. Its been a great overall experience. Some thoughts:
Know when to turn on the offense.
This is a tough one because any time you are not healing you risk someone dying. We have a unique setup in that roughly 60% of the time, there is one sheeped target. This allows me to occasionally add a smite/mind blast/shadow word:death to a target. Each is about 1k damage and has their benefits.
“But I’m a priest, I should be healing!”
Yes you should! Always, keeping your mates alive is priority #1! Arena is all about knowing your class, 100% in and out. Its about knowing when you can afford double the mana for a binding heal and when you can’t. There’s always a time when as a priest you need to try on a new hat. Mana burn is just as important in the arena as flash heal. Chew on that.
Know when to quit!
This is an odd one. In my 2v2 we were shooting Continue Reading
Posted On Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 By Jay
After a stint where my guild leader decided to move ZA raid night over my Kara raid night, I’ve decided that I will focus my time and efforts on arena. With patch 2.4 coming out, kara is open to anyone, as long as one person has a key to open the gates. This means that I can run kara frequently with my pvp buddies. Since most of us already have better than kara gear, even though their gear is pvp focused, its a great opportunity to share what the 10 man raid experience is with those that would otherwise not pursue it. That is an exciting prospect. It also clears up Wednesday night, which is a great night to focus on arena.
Season 4 is just around the corner and my 3v3 team is rocking. We regularly run 6-4 or 7-3 and with a little work, we’ll hit the 9-1 or 10-0 mark. Our team is a disc priest, BM hunter and afflict lock. I’ll be posting reactions each evening about the team and the general improvement. Stay tuned, there’ll even be pics of when mage pets get banished!
