Good and Evil, a Potent Combination
With the advent of Dual Specs, I’ve decided to jump into PVP in Season 6.
I avoided Season 5 entirely. Part of this was because of the punitive nature of the system. You lose points until you came down to your rating. Plus all the PVP gear had Arena rating requirements on it, so you had to Arena to get Arena gear to do Arena.
But the major reason I avoided PVP in Season 5 was the hassle of specing back and forth between Tank and PVP, plus the necessary glyph changes. It became cost prohibitive and just wasn’t fun.
Now with Dual Spec, it’s simple to switch from Tank to PVP spec and I can do it multiple times a night.
I saw on the Guild Forums that one of the Warlocks in my guild was looking for an Arena partner. He’s Haunt spec. I volunteered my services as a Retribution Paladin.
I had a ton of Honor saved up. Since I wasn’t PVPing I didn’t see any need to spend it, and I had gotten plenty doing Wintergrasp from time to time. In addition, I was beginning to accumulate Emblems of Valor from our Ulduar runs and I didn’t have any PVE gear I needed to buy with them.
In short order I had my Hateful gloves and Shoulders, Wintergrasp Boots, Wintergrasp Trinket (AP and remove CC), Hateful Ring, Deadly Ring and Deadly cloak. That added up to about 300 Resilience.
My Warlock partner and I headed off into the wild and wooly world of PVP.
Now I readily admit I’m much better at PVE than PVP. My twitch First Person Shooter skills have noticeably declined since my heady day of mowing down people in Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight and Unreal Tournament 2003.
Our first week, we were 5-5. We were going through those new team growing pains, learning each others styles and strengths. Even when I’m Ret I still think like a tank and tend to play defensively.
Other teams seem to want to burst me to make me bubble and then try to get on him. Alternatively, they leave me alone and try to burst him down.
One of our first matches was against Mage/Lock. I managed to kill the Lock, but the Mage got me right after, so it came down to my Lock versus their Mage. He didn’t have much trouble at all and we bagged our first win.
Hunters may be considered a weak arena class, but I have nothing but trouble with them.
We played a Priest/Druid team that just destroyed us
This past week we went like 14-7, or something like that.
I hate Boomkins (but not you, Lakini). We fought a Boomkin/Mage team that was over before it started. I was literally dead in 3 seconds.
The most frustating match was against a Priest/Mage. Basically what happened was their Mage killed my Warlock, while I killed their Priest. It was down to me at about 70% life against a Mage at 25% life.
The Mage Iceblocked, and then sheeped me. He proceeded to use Evocation which not only filled his mana bar, but his life bar as well. And here I thought Mages couldn’t heal. I’m sure I made some totally noob mistakes that let all that happen, but it was frustrating to steal defeat from very jaws for victory.
We ended this week just shy of 1300. The higher we go the more it feels like my 300 resilience just isn’t going to cut it.
I’m using my Tier 7 chest and legs to get the two piece PVE bonus which is 10% damage on Divine Storm. I’m thinking my Helm is the next piece to replace. I havent’ compared the Wintergrasp Helm to the Hateful one yet to figure out which one I want. This is pretty close to what my gear looks like right now.
Then a Paladin in our guild that recently hit 80 showed me a Holy PVP spec that actually looks pretty fun. The only problem is I can’t try it out. I need my Ret spec to serve as both the PVP as well as the DPS when I don’t need to tank spec. I would love a Tri-spec option to test out that Holy build he showed me. Otherwise, I'm back to the whole problem of having to respec and reglyph, though I may start grabbing some ‘soon to be sharded’ spell power gear just in case I ever get the urge to try it out.
I actually did 10 games with him on my Hunter. My Hunter is still in quest greens with a couple of Auction House bought blues. My Paladin friend was basically in full Ornate Saronite. We actually won two games believe it or not.
I hate the new map where you start on the platform that slowly ascends to the Arena floor. On the flip side, I’m liking the
NagrandBlade's Edge ‘Bridge’ map a bit more.
I avoided Season 5 entirely. Part of this was because of the punitive nature of the system. You lose points until you came down to your rating. Plus all the PVP gear had Arena rating requirements on it, so you had to Arena to get Arena gear to do Arena.
But the major reason I avoided PVP in Season 5 was the hassle of specing back and forth between Tank and PVP, plus the necessary glyph changes. It became cost prohibitive and just wasn’t fun.
Now with Dual Spec, it’s simple to switch from Tank to PVP spec and I can do it multiple times a night.
I saw on the Guild Forums that one of the Warlocks in my guild was looking for an Arena partner. He’s Haunt spec. I volunteered my services as a Retribution Paladin.
I had a ton of Honor saved up. Since I wasn’t PVPing I didn’t see any need to spend it, and I had gotten plenty doing Wintergrasp from time to time. In addition, I was beginning to accumulate Emblems of Valor from our Ulduar runs and I didn’t have any PVE gear I needed to buy with them.
In short order I had my Hateful gloves and Shoulders, Wintergrasp Boots, Wintergrasp Trinket (AP and remove CC), Hateful Ring, Deadly Ring and Deadly cloak. That added up to about 300 Resilience.
My Warlock partner and I headed off into the wild and wooly world of PVP.
Now I readily admit I’m much better at PVE than PVP. My twitch First Person Shooter skills have noticeably declined since my heady day of mowing down people in Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight and Unreal Tournament 2003.
Our first week, we were 5-5. We were going through those new team growing pains, learning each others styles and strengths. Even when I’m Ret I still think like a tank and tend to play defensively.
Other teams seem to want to burst me to make me bubble and then try to get on him. Alternatively, they leave me alone and try to burst him down.
One of our first matches was against Mage/Lock. I managed to kill the Lock, but the Mage got me right after, so it came down to my Lock versus their Mage. He didn’t have much trouble at all and we bagged our first win.
Hunters may be considered a weak arena class, but I have nothing but trouble with them.
We played a Priest/Druid team that just destroyed us
This past week we went like 14-7, or something like that.
I hate Boomkins (but not you, Lakini). We fought a Boomkin/Mage team that was over before it started. I was literally dead in 3 seconds.
The most frustating match was against a Priest/Mage. Basically what happened was their Mage killed my Warlock, while I killed their Priest. It was down to me at about 70% life against a Mage at 25% life.
The Mage Iceblocked, and then sheeped me. He proceeded to use Evocation which not only filled his mana bar, but his life bar as well. And here I thought Mages couldn’t heal. I’m sure I made some totally noob mistakes that let all that happen, but it was frustrating to steal defeat from very jaws for victory.
We ended this week just shy of 1300. The higher we go the more it feels like my 300 resilience just isn’t going to cut it.
I’m using my Tier 7 chest and legs to get the two piece PVE bonus which is 10% damage on Divine Storm. I’m thinking my Helm is the next piece to replace. I havent’ compared the Wintergrasp Helm to the Hateful one yet to figure out which one I want. This is pretty close to what my gear looks like right now.
Then a Paladin in our guild that recently hit 80 showed me a Holy PVP spec that actually looks pretty fun. The only problem is I can’t try it out. I need my Ret spec to serve as both the PVP as well as the DPS when I don’t need to tank spec. I would love a Tri-spec option to test out that Holy build he showed me. Otherwise, I'm back to the whole problem of having to respec and reglyph, though I may start grabbing some ‘soon to be sharded’ spell power gear just in case I ever get the urge to try it out.
I actually did 10 games with him on my Hunter. My Hunter is still in quest greens with a couple of Auction House bought blues. My Paladin friend was basically in full Ornate Saronite. We actually won two games believe it or not.
I hate the new map where you start on the platform that slowly ascends to the Arena floor. On the flip side, I’m liking the
Comments
Managed to get to 1400 in the first week and bought my Furious bracers, which brought me more joy than should be possible. Seems like wins are getting harder to come by, though.
this is my arena spec
Wankster of Magtheridon