So You Want To Arena (The Comprehensive 5v5 Starter)

So You Want To Arena (The Comprehensive 5v5 Starter)

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Table of Contents

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Introduction

Part One: What composition should I play?

Part Two: How should I gear up/spec?

Part Three: Do I need any mods?

Part Four: Is there anything else before hopping in?

Part Five: So queue just popped...

A: Playing as the Plate Outlast Team

B: Playing as the Manaburun Outlast Team

C: Playing as the Coordinated CC Team

D: Playing as the 2.5 Healer Team

E: Playing as the 4DPS Spriest/Lock Team

F: Playing as the 4DPS Gib Team

G: Dealing with Nonstandard Compositions on Either Side

Part Six: How do I get better?

Part Seven: Conclusion

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Maybe you and your friends want a more competetive way to play together than instancing. Maybe you've PvPed a while, fancy yourself good at it, and want to prove it. Maybe you just want the gear. But you've never arenaed before, and you have little clue what to do. You might join a pug team that gets destroyed at 1500, your friends might be unsure who to listen to, you might not know what to say...the list goes on. So here's some tips on getting together a workable 5v5 arena team, and calling in games.



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Part One: What composition should I play?

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This question depends a lot on why you're arenaing. If you're looking to start a team with randoms, or you have more than five friends who play, this section is more important; if you know exactly who you want to play with your options are obviously more limited.



First, lets look at the types of teams that are typically successful.



Plate/Outlast Teams: These teams, typically pallyX2/warriorX2/(insert class - usually shaman, druid, or frost mage), have players that put out consistent damage for a long time. Although they have little to no CC, the healing potential of double pally and the damage mitigation of plate means that this comp presents no attractive target (except maybe the shaman, but he still won't drop quickly). Often called a "scrub friendly" team, the stereotype has merit - for beginners who don't have too much coordination or knowledge of arena play this comp will probably net you the highest rating. Its weakness comes against teams that are good enough at locking their dps down to get a kill off or drain the pallies. If you want to get a high rating fast, this is my recommendation. If you want to learn good coordination and arena play, with the intent to get a higher rating (1800+), I recommend a different comp.



Manaburn/Outlast Teams: While these teams are somewhat rare these days, and definitely rare at lower levels, they are incredibly effective if they can work their magic. These teams have at least two of the three following classes: warlock, hunter, priest (common comps are pally/warrior/mage/priest/hunter and pally/warrior/warlock/priest/hunter). Their strategy is to minimize incoming damage long enough for their manadraining classes to drain mana, manaburn, and viper sting the opposing healers out of mana. Once that happens, they win. Its weakness comes from a modification of the previous sentence: if that happens, they win. This is quite difficult to do; the hunter and warlock in particular have to be very skilled, and your priest has to be well geared and godly at kiting. This is one of two compositions my team plays, and it's very fun to play, along with being great los and kiting practice.



Coordinated CC Teams: The most typical composition here is pally/warrior/priest/lock/mage. This team will pressure one or two targets, throwing CCs around healers and dps to keep them burning defensive cooldowns. Once they decide it's time, they create a window of fears and sheeps on the healers, and burn all their offensive cooldowns to take a target down. The weakness of this composition is that the CCs have to go just right, and the team has to be coordinated enough to get someone down. Of all the compositions to run, imo, this one requires the most teamwork and practice. It is our standard composition, and we love it, but even at 2k+, we are still working on our strategies and our coordination.



2.5 Healer Teams: This team is built around pally/warrior/priest/shaman, with the 5th being either mage (the notorious "2345" or warlock. This team just goes on targets and kills them. No really, they have everything. Good cc, bloodlusted priest manaburns, good burst dps. They can focus a target from the beginning, or they can pull fast burst target switches. There's really no good way to tell. They have a lot of dispel, so you're buffless and can't rely on bop. If you are really serious about arena, you should probably run this composition - for now anyways.



4DPS Spriest/Lock: This team is built around the shadowpriest/affliction lock synergy. The actual composition can vary wildly, but this composition is usually warriorless. Pally/shadowpriest/afflock/afflock/mage is popular, as is pally/shadowpriest/afflock/mage/shaman. A new composition that is seeing success is druid/afflock/afflock/shadowpriest/rogue. These teams use overwhelming CC and dot damage, combined with the anti-dispel of unstable affliction, to put simply outrageous pressure on healers. Almost always they'll focus the warrior down first, so that mortal strike doesn't put too much pressure on their one healer. Its weakness is that they only have one healer - if he's properly locked down, whoever their focus is had better be good at avoiding damage. Both this comp and the "gib" variant are looked down upon as requiring no strategy - "cc stuff, kill the warrior". Not going to spark controversy by agreeing or disagreeing, but either way, it's a powerful comp.



4DPS "Gib" Team: The different between this composition and the one above is that the damage is more direct rather than dot damage. A typical composition is pally/shaman/afflock/mage/warrior, though rogues are often featured in this composition too. They will bounce CC around, and rather than putting out massive pressure, they'll just coordinate burst and drop a target. Once they decide to kill a target, it will drop FAST. Sometimes playing against this team our warrior will be like "cheap shotted...wtf i just died". If you're playing with your friends and one of your friends is a rogue, imo this is the comp you should run. This comp's weakness is that it relies on lots of cooldowns. Once cloak of shadows, water elemental, heroism, etc. are gone, if they haven't gotten a target down they have to work a lot harder to win.





Well, those are all the most popular compositions. Hopefully you can find one that suits your playing style, friends' classes, etc. If you have a group of classes you can choose from and are still wondering how to build a team, feel free to comment or send a message. Now that we've gotten past composition, let's move on to the next step.



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Part 2: How should I gear up/spec?

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Ah, the not-so-fun part of preparing for arena. Okay, first step, if you are really serious about arena: farm out all of the latest honor gear, including the two-minute pvp trinket. You could even farm the grand marshal set too if you don't mind grinding a lot. If you aren't quite so serious about getting up fast, and are willing to wait for gear from arena, you want to be stacking as much stamina and resilience as you can. Resilience is somewhat hard to come by outside of arena/honor pieces, but it's there if you look. Try to break 10,000 hp unbuffed, and get as much resilience as you can manage (hp is more important until you get to around 1700).



As for spec, this is a more complicated question to answer. There are most certainly very particular specs that are better than others, but which you spec depends on the composition, and a tiny bit of personal preference. Here are some links to the most popular specs:



Feral Druid: Smilyfun of Dejthstoneegslyfunecima

Resto Druid: Secretive of The Owls That Fly At Dawn



Beast Mastery Hunter (Please don't spec this for 5s, but if you must :P): Swarez of The Kraken

Marksmanship Hunter: Hamchook of Yea We Lift



17/44 Mage: Ecilam of Team Pandemic

5/56 Mage: Papashlapa of Trounce

For an in-depth look at these specs and how they differ, Radikal's Blog on Arena Specs has a good breakdown.



Paladin (Holy, there's really only one spec for them): Sck of Team Pandemic



Holy Priest: Brazetina of Rag Dolled (for those of you who wonder, the 1 pt in blessed recovery is for a dispel buffer)

Shadow Priest: Unbalance of The Fallen Angels



Combat Mace Rogue (you should probably be this spec): Xecks of The Owls That Fly At Dawn

Mutilate Daggers Rogue (he must be God to pull this off, but linked just the same): Baloth of Tapout



Elemental Shaman (with 2345 this is the spec you use): Kollektiv of Rag Dolled

Resto Shaman: Allard of Yea We Lift



Affliction Warlock (w/ Unstable Affliction): Saosinned of Trounce

Drain Tank Warlock (Siphon + Soul Link): Oldmanmcgee of The Owls That Fly At Dawn

Felguard Warlock: Streygo of Pewp Machine



Warrior (you spec 35/23/3. or else.): Noktyn of Team Pandemic





Again, feel free to ask questions in comment or through messaging.



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Part 3: Do I need any mods?

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You don't "need" mods, but trust me, you want them. There is no excuse not to have them, and you can count on any sort of good competition you will face online to be against teams using at least the standard arena mods. So here they are.



"ArenaMaster" Type Mods. This is the most important mod to have. It has a little box on your screen that displays your opponents name and class, and clicking on it targets that player. That way you don't have to spend time looking all over the place for people. The three most popular ones are ArenaMaster, Gladiator, and Proximo. I recommend Arena Master - it's very easy to use. Lots of people like Proximo, but its features are more advanced and its not really something a new team would take advantage of. They can all be found at http://files.wowace.com/



Unitframes mod with focus castbar. This is also very useful, albeit more difficult to set up. YOU can set a target as a "focus" target, and use a macro to cast a spell on that target without switching your current target. (/focus on your target sets that target to be focus, /cast [target=focus] Spell casts (Spell) on your focus target). For example, a mage could set the paladin to be his focus target, be DPSing the priest, and when he sees the paladin start to heal, press a macro that casts counterspell on the paladin. That way he can keep dpsing the priest without having to worry about targeting the pally and waiting for him to heal, and then switching back. My unitframes mod of choise is X-Perl, but lots of people like PitBull as well. Again, they can both be found at http://files.wowace.com



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Part 4: Is there anything else to do before hopping in?

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Depends. I recommend getting together and doing something that works on your coordination outside of the context of a rated match. Skirmish matches can work sometimes, but I personally suggest that you just get the 5 of you and queue up for WSG or AB. Just roam around in a group and kill things, making sure that you're on the same target. Communicate with each other what you are doing, and if someone emerges as a natural leader, make sure everyone else on the team listens to him/her. If no-one on your team particularly enjoys leading, then the target caller should typically be the rogue or affliction lock in 4dps, or the warrior in everything else. This is because the warlock decides who gets UA, the rogue has limited mobility so whoever he is on pretty much needs to be the focus, and the warrior is the one putting MS up. So decide on a leader, and have fun practicing under the 5 in your lineup. If you want a humorous, dastardly way to practice, go fun Setthek Halls together, and try burst down whoever gets mind controlled. Just get used to playing with your team. As individually skilled as you may be at PvP, in duels, BGs, whatever, it is ultimately teamwork and coordination that win you games.



Make sure you buy plenty of arena water (Stars' Tears) to use during your fights. It's not usually possible to get full drinks off, but even just a tick of a drink when you can afford to go out of combat can mean the difference between winning and losing.



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Part 5: So Queue Just Popped...

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Now you're in the game. You're all geared. You're all buffed up. You're ready. The door opens. What now? Well, that depends on your group composition. Here I'll break down some common strategies at low to medium rating levels for each of the popular group compositions.



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Part 5A: The Plate/Outlast Team

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Okay, this one's easy. As long as you keep your people from getting burst early in the game, you have a tremendous advantage. Depending on whether or not you're running with a shaman, your disadvantage here is that you have no offensive dispel (shamans can purge). Regardless, you have no mass dispel, so enemy pallies and mages make poor targets. If you have a shaman, you should go on the squishiest class you can find (Affliction Warlocks, Fire Mages, Hunters, Priests). Make sure your shaman is pre-purging it, so that when it gets boped, the next purge gets it off. Since you can take bop off with a shaman, you shouldn't have to switch targets at all. If you don't have a shaman, you should have a class that can CC; your CC should go on the paladin at this level. You can't get bop off and you have mostly physical damage, so you want to go on a target where attacking him keeps him from doing his job. Pretty much attack anything but frost mages (who can Ice Block) and Priests (priest gets boped and healed, you accomplished nothing). As SOON as the bop hits, everyone on your team switch to a different target: the priest if there is one, otherwise anyone who has no defensive outs like Ice Block or Bubble. On either team, if the paladin bubbles and the bubble wears off before you get someone close to down, everyone switch to the paladin - a pally without bubble is very limited in his options.



Now for the exceptions. Against 4DPS teams, you will always want to be going on the shadowpriest (yes I know affliction locks are often better targets once resil gets high, but we're talking 1600s here for those of you on high ranked teams reading this - shadowpriests here typically have worse gear). Against other plate/outlast teams, it is a viable strategy to force a pally to bubble, go into damage mitigation mode when he does (CC the dps if you have a mage/druid, pressure their 5th if you have a shaman), and then switch back to the pally when he's out of bubble.



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Part 5B: The Manaburn/Outlast Team

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(NOTE: I've only played the traditional pally/war/priest/mage/hunter matrix of this, so this is written from that perspective, not that of a team with a warlock burn; nevertheless the strategy should carry over)

Against Plate/Outlast Teams, you should have the advantage. You'll want to be making sure frost trap is always up, and your priest (and shaman if you have one) should be getting everything off the warriors so that when pallies freedom them you can get the freedom off right away. As long as your offensive dispel can keep freedom off and your hunter can conc/frost trap/scattershot, you should be able to kite the warriors fairly effectively (run around the pillars so they can't intercept, just stay out of their melee range as much as you can). You'll probably want to start by draining their 5th, unless its a druid (in which case you should be draining one of the pallies). Your warrior should be pressuring the 5th with dps, your mage should be chain sheeping the warriors, and if you have a warlock he should be coordinating fears with hunter's silence shots on the pallies. Continue to pressure the 5th until you can get him oom; after that, your warrior should stay on him while the rest of you switch to draining one of the pallies, keeping CC up the entire time on as much as you can. Especially once you get the 5th oom, your pally should use bop very late - there is incredibly little dps that can be put out by a plate/outlast team that isn't physical, so bop is very very effective if you start feeling too much pressure. One VERY IMPORTANT thing against this team - make SURE your paladin, priest, or mage, or anyone who happens to pass by, gets rid of windfury totems as SOON as they come up. They're an absolutely massive dps increase for the plate/outlast team, so taking them out saves you a LOT of healing.



Against other Manaburn/Outlast Teams, you can have some interesting fights. Often times it can be worth it to surprise them and just all-out dps their hunter or priest. In a more traditional fight, though, you want your warrior to be keeping pressure on their hunter, your drains on their priest, your CC on their dps, and your DPS on whatever CC you can prevent through pushbacks (i.e. well-timed dps on mages keeps them from effectively polying). Often these fights will come down to who is better at keeping the warrior CCed or slowed or kited, so make sure your mage is sheeping, slowing, and frost novaing the warrior as much as he can afford to do. Manaburn teams rely on mitigating incoming damage, so if you can do enough damage to them to get a chance to get a focus down before they get your healers oom, you're in very good shape.



Against Coordinated CC teams, you are at a bit of a disadvantage. You do not have the burst to reliably kill any one player on this team (because their CC is so strong), so you will want to be doing as much as you can to limit their incoming damage while you wear them down. It is often effective to kill the water elemental (multishot+arcane+fireblast should take care of it easy) against this comp, just because that cuts down a large amount of incoming dps, and you don't have the dps to bring someone down under their CC this early. Winning this fight often includes pulling cheesy tricks on the pally (silence + scatter + noninterrupting (silence) counterspell) to force him to bubble early. Your biggest challenge will be keeping their warrior off of your team; if you can pull this off while keeping the mage CCed, you just cut out an enormous amount of their dps (the warlock on this team is usually CCing most of the fight, until the burst). You have to be religious about keeping tongues off your pally, and your healers should be religious about trying to los the lock (put something in between you and him so he can't cast on you, but you can still heal your teammates). Your warrior should probably be on their priest along with your priest/hunter drains, so that they don't manaburn, but once the pally is out of bubble (if you forced an early one) it is often better to switch drains to him. The hunter should be dpsing the mage whenever he's not CCed; hunters can annoy mages and keep them from polying more than any other class. If you feel confident collapsing on a target (most likely the priest), go for it, but most likely you will have to wait until you get at least one healer oom before you have a chance at killing anything.



Against 4DPS warlock/spriest teams, you will want to be bursting on the priest. Viper the healer if you'd like, but you don't have time for manadraining here, and the amount of CC they can throw out really makes it negligible unless your entire team is amazing at los kitng to avoid damage. Just train on the priest, counterspell (I'll call it CS from now on) a pally heal as soon as you can, and scatter>silencing shot out of the CS. Make sure your priest knows when your hunter does this combo, because he has to be ready to mass dispel the bubble quickly - ideally before a heal goes off. Then the mage can sheep out of the MD and by then the shadowpriest should be dead. Don't forget to dispel the shadowpriest as much as you can - dispelled shadowpriests go down very, very quickly.



Against 4DPS gib teams, you're again at a bit of a disadvantage due to lack of very good CC. But if you can survive their cooldowns, you have a good chance of winning. Throw burns/viper up on the elemental shaman, if there is one, the pally if there isn't. Every one of your teammates should be ready to go into "defensive" mode - pally ready to bubble, priest ready to fear/get another shield up, warlock ready to healthstone, hunter ready to deterrence + monkey, mage ready to iceblock, warrior ready to go into defensive 1h/shield and spell reflect, etc. You can't really predict who they will kill, although warriors are a likely target. If you do this quick mitigation and burn through your defensive cooldowns (scattershot the rogue, silence the mage, CS the shaman's elemental tree even, burn aoe fears) early, you will hopefully make them burn all their offensive cooldowns and be unsuccessful at their burst attempt. If you survived, good job, you have a chance. After the f the rogue pops cloak of shadows, train onto him if you don't have something low, keeping the pally CCed. Until then, get on the shadowpriest if there is one, shaman if there isn't. Make sure whoever is getting focused is running to your mage, so that he can burn his personal nova to help you kite. Your mage should be using sheeps as interrupts rather than CCs here - throwing them around on the shaman and mage to keep them from open casting - until you're close to getting a target down, or your healers are feeling less pressure. This is really about surviving the first 10-15 seconds. These teams can get an unprepared, full buffed warrior down in about 5 seconds, so you REALLY have to be prepared for it.



Ah, 2.5 healer teams. I saved this for last because it is probably the biggest anticomp of the manaburn team. It's annoying as hell to play against, and imo evenly matched teams the 2.5 will win every time. Still, here's the best you can do. Your warrior should always be on either their priest or shaman, preventing as much open casting as possible. If one starts kiting/gets freedom, go on the other, it doesn't matter because both of them have just as deadly casts to your team. Your drains/viper should be on the priest, and your silence should be on priest to prevent burns. Your mage should get slows on the warrior and then switch between sheeping the warrior and mage. Your priest should predispel everyone so that when heroism goes off he can dispel it off the shaman, mage, and warrior quickly. Ultimately your goal is to drop either the priest or the shaman, but often times you can get a minute or two into the battle before this happens. If you aren't feeling a ridiculous amount of pressure, make sure your healers are getting drinks off - not full ones mind you, just dip out of combat and get a tick of arena water off.



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Part 5C: The Coordinated CC Team

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Against plate/outlast teams, your goal is to survive the warriors long enough to get a target down. Your Mage should be playing almost completely defensively this fight, juggling sheeps on the two warriors and using personal nova, rank 1 cone of cold/frostbolt, etc. to keep the warriors off whoever their targets are. Your priest needs to keep freedom off of the two warriors or you're dead, so make sure they're predispelled. Against this composition we like to burst a paladin down through bubble. Sick your warrior on a paladin, but don't burn any of your burst abilities off the bat, just pressure him down. Mage CSes the first pally heal, warlock fears the 5th. When the CS is off, warlock fears the 2nd pally, and the 5th when its on diminishing returns. Your priest has to be quick on the mass dispels here; if either pally bubbles it needs to come off fast, preferably before they get a heal (you can mass dispel->scream to stop a heal if noone else has a CC up). Take the bubble off of your focus, when it gets to 40ish% mage switches to sheeping the other pally (which should be on fear diminishing returns by now) while warlock fears the 5th. By now CS should be up, sheep one of the warriors again or burn your personal nova. CS the pally heal when the other pally gets low, and make sure your warrior/warlock are coordinating intercept/pummel/spelllock or pet intercepts on the pally that's getting dpsed. Pallies typically don't have the hp or resil to take a beating outside of bubble, so you should be able to get him down inside the 2nd CS. This should be a pretty easy fight as long as you are mitigating the warrior damage; make SURE that your pally gives freedom to whoever the warriors are targeting, and again make sure your priest gets it off their warriors.



Against manaburn/outlast teams, you have the advantage because of the enormous CC at your disposal. Your target should almost always be your opponent's priest. Have your mage get a sheep off on the warrior at the start so people can start kiting, then tab sheep between the warrior and the mage. Your warlock should be fearing their paladin and hunter/lock. Here it helps to have good coordination with the mage, because when diminishing returns hit your warlock can start fearing their mage and your mage can start sheeping their hunter/lock. Your pally/priest should be making sure to keep cleansing each other - make sure scorpid poison is off quickly, so that viper sting doesn't stay on anyone for too long. This shouldn't really be a healing intensive fight, so you can afford to spend more globals cleansing and dispelling. Their priest has no escape options, especially if you keep the hunter CCed and unable to properly give support through scatter/traps. So just train on him, get ready to dispel the bop, and kill him. Now, if you do come across a priest that is a god at kiting (they're infrequent, but not rare), you can switch to the hunter - he really has no escape options either, and often times hunters are quite squishy.



Coordinated CC mirror matches are really fun. I can't even give advice on who to target, we do it differently every game, and people do it differently to us all the time. Just remember that your goal is to use your CC to create a window of opportunity to burst someone down. Priests and mages make attractive targets, but sometimes warlocks are worth focusing down too, especially if they have a felguard out and you can kill the pet early. I've even seen people save up all their cooldowns and pull a fast switch to get a warrior down in this mirror comp match. Ultimately the fight isn't won here by who picks the best target, it's won here by who has the more timely (partly luck, partly experience) CC on offensive or defensive classes. In general CC dps enemies when you're taking a lot of damage, and CC healer enemies when you've got a target taking lots of hits. Definitely a fun fight no matter how this turns out.



Against 2.5 healer teams, you're going to be in for some long games. My best advice at the 1500s-1600s level is to go on the priest, but at our level (2k) this isn't always reliable. For now it's effective to go on the priest the whole time, keeping warlock fears on pally/shaman and mage sheeps on warrior/(mage/lock). The warlock variant of this team is much easier to beat imo because they have no mage decurse, so tongues can go up all over the place and their healers are in a bit of a spot. You're going to want to keep constant pressure on them and be ready to dispel stuff very quickly, because if the shaman switches to spot healing its going to be hard to get your focus down. Still, if you can force him to do this it's good, because it will run him oom very quickly, especially if your priest throws a few manaburns out on him as well. Make sure your focus is predispelled so bop/freedom comes off him quickly, and if he's kiting you too well, don't be afraid to switch to the shaman - keeping him from open casting will cut down his dps significantly. This fight really depends on how meticulous your CC is: if you can keep the healers down for long enough, you can get a sneaky burst in, and then your priest is free to burn them to pieces once it's a 5v4. Be careful, though, and try not to let them kill one of you. Any 4 of the 5 classes in a 2345 matrix makes a very strong composition of 4, and if you slack off they might actually surprise you with a comeback.



Against 4DPS spriest/lock teams, you will want to be hitting the shadowpriest or affliction warlock, usually the shadowpriest. Have your warlock fear their paladin and shaman, and have the mage sheep whatever's left. Make sure your warrior is in defensive stance with 1h/shield. He'll want to charge->defensive->mortal strike, dps until he starts feeling pressure, and then intervene to a healer to get out of los. Once you get the shadowpriest low, if your warrior isn't feeling too much pressure (above 70% hp) he can afford to switch to zerk really quickly to throw an intercept>mortal strike>whirlwind>execute, and then go back into defensive. Once the shadowpriest is down, don't stop throwing CCs around. Your healers might want to take the respite to dart out and coordinate drinks/heals. The fight isn't really over yet, as we've lost some annoyingly close 5v4s to a 4dps down a shadowpriest before. If the pally has diminishing returns on one of your CCs, make sure the other gets put on him, so that heals don't come out. The warlock is an attractive next target, as is a rogue or shaman. At this point if they've taken the pressure off the warrior, he can switch back into zerker and 2-handed for extra dps. Just make sure that the next target goes down without them taking one of you with them.



Against 4DPS gibs, it all comes down to preparation. You know one of you is going to start dropping insanely fast. When the rogue comes out of stealth especially, everyone dump their aoe fears in a rotation (priest->warrior->warlock if he can), to get them off while whoever is being burst goes into defensive mode. Your mage and warlock should barely even be putting out damage at this point, favoring chain CCing instead. When diminishing returns hit, have your mage and warlock switch CC targets. Meanwhile your priest is healing like mad or dispelling heroism off of them if you aren't feeling pressure. Throughout this, your warrior (who might be in defensive at this point) should be on their shadowpriest if they have one, their shaman if they don't. Keep MS up from defensive, keep spell reflect up whenever you can, and focus on getting the priest down whenever you have a global to spare. Once water elemental goes down, and heroism is off, etc. you can start switching from CC to dps, and by this point as long as you're CCing the healer, you should have this fight easily.



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Part 5D: The 2.5 Healer Team

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You'll have to forgive any sarcastic comments about strategy in this section; we're currently at the rating where almost every team we play runs this composition, so I suppose I have some hard feelings :P



Against plate outlast teams, you should have no problem. You'll probably want to focus one of the pallies, or the 5th, or even one of the warriors if you do a fast switch. Your mage should be tab sheeping and personal novaing to keep the warriors off of their focus, while your shaman and priest purge/dispel everything, and your priest could start manaburning (manaburn the 5th first, especially if its an elemental shaman). Make sure windfury totems are knocked down right away, and really you should be able to focus whomever you'd like. Killing anyone in this comp is effective, so just split warrior and caster dps and then go for whoever doesn't get heals. Make sure your shaman earthshocks the pally heals, and coupled with mage CS it shouldn't be a problem to get someone down. Just make sure if you go for a warrior that you coordinate your burst (water elemental/es chain lightning/warrior mortal strike whirlwind), or else you'll be giving them plenty of free rage.



Against manaburn outlast teams, you should have no problem (in fact, 2.5 is considered a direct countercomp to them). Your shaman can spot heal if the going gets tough, so you can pretty much always have a healer drinking if they have to. You'll want to be focusing their priest to prevent manaburns, pretty much the only thing you really need to worry about here. Mage should keep CC up on the warrior, as usual, and your shaman should be earth shocking pally heals. If the priest kites you too much, snap bursts on the hunter or warrior can be effective as well, but you should be able to get the priest down with little concern.



Against coordinated CC teams, you should have no...you getting the idea? Actually, this fight can be a bit trickier. The best advice I can give is from the perspective of the other side of the fight; we play a coordinated CC comp against 2345 all the time. When we win, we manage to put enough pressure on the mage to keep him from sheeping our warrior, and as a result we can force the ice-block, bop, and finally get the mage down. This eliminates the CC of the 2345 team, allowing all five of us free reign to CC. When we lose it's because our priest or warlock or mage goes down too fast, before we can get a kill off. So pick any of those three targets and pop heroism early to make SURE that you get someone down early as possible. Make sure you're sheeping/CCing their warrior, too - he is a very large source of earlygame dps (when the mage and lock are throwing CC all over the place), so keeping him locked down potentially takes the pressure off your priest and allows him free dispel/burn reign.



Against other 2.5 comps, anything goes. At high levels of play you typically see many target switches in a match before someone finally gets focused down. The priest is always a good target, but going after the shaman is effective too. Again, if you have the coordination to pull out a quick burst, you can even go for the warrior. IMO these fights come down to the priests and the shamans, and how offensive and defensive they are. Both of them have the ability to switch between dispel/purge/dps and heals, and knowing when to do each makes the difference. In general you want to try to put out enough pressure that your shaman never has to spot heal (because their mage is being defensive, for example), but if you start taking serious damage he should be ready to throw out a few for good measure.



Against 4DPS spriest/lock teams, you should be focusing on either the shadowpriest or the affliction warlock. Make sure whoever it is gets their buffs stripped, because you really want bop off as fast as possible. I know I emphasize this always, but against 4DPS teams it is even more crucial that you not let it interrupt your dps. Other than that, this fight is pretty simple, just kill stuff.



Against 4DPS gib teams, you actually have to be a little careful. It's the closest thing to a countercomp, but you should still be pulling at least 50/50 against them. Your shaman should be ready to spot heal, maybe even burn nature's swiftness to keep someone up. You'll want to pick whoever the squishiest target is, typically the shaman or shadowpriest, to focus. Again if you can survive the initial burst you should have minimal difficulties, but your priest/shaman should always be ready to switch from dispelling/burning to healing, just in case.



Gee, those were short, I can almost fit an extra paragraph in. 2.5 teams are very "unstrategic", so to speak, until you get to higher levels of play. The reason for this is that unless you're facing teams that really know how to take advantage of mistakes, you can afford to have less than perfect technical play and execution. Why am I mouthing off about this? Because we play these teams every day and I hate them :P. But really, the key to playing against teams with this comp is to take advantage of how quickly you can switch between defensive and offensive modes through the multiple roles of your priest, and to a lesser extent shaman.



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Part 5E: The 4DPS Shadowpriest/Warlock Team

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I'll go into a bit of detail with each comp, but there is a mantra you should follow here. Kill That Warrior. He is almost always your first burst target, and the only thing that changes from comp to comp is how you CC the healers. Your objective is not necessarily to burst him down, your objective is to put overwhelming pressure on their healers through dots and CC. In fact, the longer the match goes, the more powerful your warlock dots are going to be. Ideally you want to be killing the warrior before their healers are on diminishing returns. Oh, and in case you didn't know, the warlock should ALWAYS keep unstable affliction up on whatever target your dots are on. That is what makes this composition effective.



Against plate outlast teams, you'll want to pick a warrior to dot up. Your shadowpriest should be ready to kite his ass off, and if you have a mage he should be sheeping the other warrior as much as humanly possible. Your shadowpriest should get a silence off on one of the pallies if he is in range, and your warlock should be getting a fear off on the other. Mage CS should be up on the pally that got silenced, with the priest prepping a mass dispel in case he bubbles the silence. If you have a rogue he should be stunlocking the warrior you're dpsing so that he can't los, and be ready to pop sprint if he intervenes back to a healer. If you can keep the shadowpriest from getting killed past the 5th's interrupt (CS, 1st Earthshock, etc) on your pally (who, by the way, may want to bubble offensively if you think you can get the warrior down inside of it), then you should be in good shape. Just remember that your power comes from keeping CC up as long as you can while your dots do their work.



Against manaburn outlast teams, you want to get your silence early on the paladin coupled with a fear from the warlock. The idea here is to make him bubble fast, so that you can get a mass dispel and another fear off; once the pally is dispelled you should have no trouble controlling him. Your mage, if you have one, should have CS on the priest; if not, earth shock him. Again you should be focusing the warrior down with the rogue locking him down. This fight should go pretty smoothly, you just want to make it end pretty quickly before their stings/burns take down your mana pool.



Against coordinated CC teams, you have to be very careful. Basically you have to ensure that you get your CCs off before they do. Silence the pally, put fears/sheeps up on the priest/mage. If you don't have another CC available, you may want to keep a little pressure on the warlock - this is where you might want the rogue to stunlock the lock instead of your dps target, the warrior as always. Just let the dots do their work, and the rogue will destroy the warlock's ability to CC. Remember that they rely on CC to create a kill window and you only have one healer, so you have to be really good at damage mitigation in case he gets CCed. Be ready to throw fears, sheeps, whatever out on the DPS if you have to.



Against 2.5 healer teams, you have too many targets to CC, this is the challenge in fighting this team. Your best bet is to force a pally bubble (again through silence + fear). If you dot up the warrior and put your rogue (if you have one) on the shaman, CC on him if you don't have a rogue, then you'll keep him from spot healing and keep the priest in healing mode. Getting interrupts off on him and the pally should guarantee that you keep the pressure up long enough to get their warrior down. Basically the way this fight goes you want to be throwing CC up all over the place, keeping constant pressure on the warrior. He'll probably be in defensive the whole time you're doing this, so he won't be putting out the dps. If you can keep this team from putting out too much dps, you can probably dispatch them with little trouble.



Against other 4DPS teams of any kind, my advice is this. Go for the healer. It's the surefire way to win a 4DPS vs 4DPS, if you kill their healer and they don't kill yours. So spam all the AOE fears and CC and everything that you possibly can on the DPS, and train yourselves on the opponent's healer. Make sure you're ready to mass dispel QUICK, this is essential - you cannot spare a second in this fight, especially if they're racing to get your healer down too. Once their healer is down, just go for targets in order of squishiness (shadowpriests, warlocks, mages), although if you are facing a shaman, you'll want to kill him after the main healer so that he can't spot heal. These fights are hard to predict; if both teams play it the same way it really comes down to who has luckier crits/fear resists/etc.



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Part 5F: The 4DPS Gib Team

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I can't really lay out strategy for each individual composition here. The best advice I can give is to practice your burst in a non-competitive environment first. Go into an instance, give a countdown, and try to "condense" your burst - that is, try to time your largest sources of damage to land in as short a time frame as possible. The idea is to eventually be able to kill someone in between heals landing, so the more damage that lands simultaneously, the better. Your target doesn't have to necessarily be the warrior here, although it is probably still your best option. But soft targets with no escape options are viable too - Hunters, Priests, and Shamans can all be your first burst target.



The rogue is very important on this team; his role is to keep the focus locked down where the fighting starts, so that he can't use los to avoid a kill long enough for his team to pull one out. Once your rogue gets cheap shot off and a few damage spells/dots have landed, unload your burst accompanied by a silence, CS, or some form of interrupt/CC on the enemy healers. If your technical play is flawless, i.e. your timing goes exactly the way you want it, you should be able to kill someone very quickly. If the target gets BOPed, you need to get it off as fast as you can, but don't forget that your magic damage can go through it, so you don't have to stop DPS until it's off. If you haven't burned your AOE fears yet, when BOP goes up on the target you probably want to use one.



The only composition that's worth mentioning is the 2.5 healer composition. Because the shaman could possibly spot heal, it is not always the best idea to focus the warrior first unless you are very comfortable with your CC. You might want to go for the priest or the shaman first. The shaman is an especially attractive target here because rogues can effectively lock them down (prevent heals/dps) because of lack of pushback resistance. Not only do you kill someone who could potentially be healing, you are also cutting down their largest source of burst damage, making a 4v4 much less likely. However, if you are a practiced team (not necessarily likely at this point) and can coordinate your CCs very well, taking down the warrior first is probably the surest path to victory.



It is also worth mentioning that, since this composition is much more burst-reliant and less dot-reliant than the spriest/warlock variant, you have to be worried about the warrior spell-reflecting a big crit. There isn't really anything you can do (you should NOT stop dps for the 5 seconds its up), but your paladin should be prepared to heal someone that might not necessarily be focused at the time, and you should be ready to pop your healthstones, or burn AOE fears if you get too low.



Remember, your job is to kill someone as fast as you possibly can, before you go through your cooldowns, and DEFINITELY before someone on your team goes down.



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Part 5G: Dealing with Nonstandard Compositions on Either Side

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You won't always have the luxury of a perfect matchup, especially at low ratings. So what happens if you come up against a random composition not listed here? Well, you have to analyze them and determine who to focus first. Ask yourself these questions, in this order:



1. Is this a 4DPS, 3DPS, or 2.5 DPS team? Count the number of DPS classes, noting whether or not the priest is shadow, and determine this. If the team is 4DPS and you are 3/2.5, you will want to be going for a DPS; if you are 4DPS as well, you will want to be going for the healer probably. If the team is 3 or 2.5 DPS, you can't always tell who you should go on yet. Just keep it in the back of your mind.

2. Okay, you've come up against a 3 or 2.5 DPS team. If you are 4DPS team, you have to determine what the biggest DPS threat to your team is. Usually this is the warrior, but if their comp doesn't have a warrior it may be the fire mage or the rogue or the elemental shaman (all large sources of burst). You will want to kill whoever poses the biggest threat to you DPS-wise first. If you are a 3 or 2.5 DPS team, read on.

3. Okay, you're a 3 or 2.5 DPS team coming up against another one. I can't tell you who necessarily to go on. All I can say is that Paladins and Warriors make bad first burst targets, because hitting either one of them does NOT affect the job that they do (it actually makes a warrior's job easier). Take this reasoning and apply it backwards: you want to be hitting someone where putting them under the pressure of being focused makes it difficult for them to do their job. This is what makes priests and shamans nice bursts here, because neither of them can play offensively when they are focused. Just develop a good sense for what classes your team can shut down (e.g. rogues can shut down casters with pushback resistance, unlike other classes), and target those classes first.



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Part 6: How do I get better?

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Now this is the nebulous one. You start to get coordinated, you start performing well, you start gearing up. Unless you're the next Power Trip, you'll likely rise to a rating at which you'll start losing games and not know why. Maybe it seems like you have fairly equal gear, or maybe you're outgeared but it seems like that isn't the problem, or maybe you're losing to mirror comps that outplay you. How do you find out what you're doing wrong? How do you find out how to get better? Here are a few tips:



1. Gear is a lot more important than you think it is. Our warrior upgrading from Thunder to Deep Thunder (which EVERY serious arena warrior should get, btw) resulted in a 200 point rating bump in our 2v2 and 5v5 teams THAT WEEK. His 2v2 jumped some 240 points in a single day of play. You might think skill should be able to beat gear, and this is true, but given equal skill, better gear wins, so get some. You may say, "but I can't do that...I have to wait to get more points". But do you have the best enchants you can get on the gear you have? Do you have all your gems socketed? Do you have all your honor gear? Make sure you get your head enchant and shoulder enchant and boar's speed and all of the expensive things you might think don't make a difference. They do, and it will pay off to get them (though obviously I wouldn't put the 90g head enchant on a piece you will be replacing that Tuesday; work with me here :P).



2. Teamwork is usually the problem, not individual skill. When it is individual skill it is painfully, painfully obvious, trust me. It will be a universal thing felt by every other member of your team. If the team is arguing after a loss and accusations get thrown around and argued about, it is most likely NOT the fault of personal skill (though it may be a mistake, which is different - you fix your mistakes). Most likely, you need to develop better teamwork, become more coordinated, and develop better plans for dealing with situations in the match. This is where having a good leader really helps.



3. While personal skill does not usually lose matches (again, unless it's painfully obvious to everyone on your team), that is not at ALL to say that you as an individual player cannot improve. Watch arena videos of your class, if they're available. I am not familiar with every class, so if people would like to suggest good movies to watch to learn each class, I will gladly include them in this post. For the moment I can say Noktyn's video for warriors, Sck's video for pallies, and Kollektiv's video for elemental shamans are pretty good examples to see someone at the top of the game playing their respective classes. In future articles I may fraps some footage from our own team and do some analysis on what we're doing right and wrong, just in case people might be doing the same thing, but for now, and still then, I recommend getting a good PvPer's video footage to look at.



4. Speaking of fraps, if your computer can handle it, frapsing your matches is a very, very good practice. Watch over the match in hindsight and critique your play. Not only does this let you know what really happened (the "WTF I DID NOT MISS THAT CS" can be proven/disproven), it allows you to see the plays you make without personal bias in your reflection. Trust me, I've made a lot of mistake before that I would swear I would never make, but there they are in the fraps, so now that I see that **** I did do that, I can work on fixing it. I'll even say that I've gotten offers to have my fraps footage looked at by members of top teams before. I'm not suggesting that you pester them to look, but a lot of them are really cool guys and if you catch them at a good time, and have some webspace to host the file on, who knows, maybe they'll critique your play for you.



5. Small bracket play improves coordination amongst your players. This is also a tip I gave in another article; if you 2v2 and 3v3 with your 5v5 teammates, then you'll start to develop teamwork at a much more intricate level, because you're dealing with play at a much less confusing level (4 people to keep track of instead of 10). If your mage and warlock play together, for example, they might start to develop a sheep/fear rotation that they call out in vent, and so when they 5v5 they'll be calling their rotation just like in 2s, leading to much more effective CC. Not only that, but in the rare occasion that the 5v5 is whittled down into a 3vx or 2vx situation and you're with your partner(s), you'll be prepared for how to deal with it ("ah, it's pally/lock, you know what to do".



On the topic of my other article, if you check my blog I have another article written. If you've gotten everything you can get out of this one, you might want to check it out, it has some tips in there intended for slightly more experienced arena players.



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Part 7: Conclusion

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Conclusion, WTF? I don't know why I even had this as a category, other than that there isn't anywhere else to put this: if you have any questions, feel free to msg/ask them here. I've been arenaing a while, so it's quite possible I assumed knowledge of something (acronyms especially) that you don't know, and I would appreciate feedback on how easy this is to take in from a new player's perspective. Of course I'm also happy to clear up any confusion you might have.



Tzatziki