Returning To the Arena

Over the weekend, I saw a guildmate of mine advertising in trade chat for a ‘well geared and very skilled Ret Paladin for 3s team.’ I sent him a tell and told him that while I was neither ‘well geared’ nor ‘very skilled’ if they needed someone to help them get their games in this week, I would happy to fill in, until they could find a better Ret Paladin. He accepted my offer and I was invited to their team. It turns out it was my guildmate, who was an Arms Warrior and his Resto Druid 2s partner, also from my guild. So our 3s comp was Ret/Resto/Arms.

We found out that their original 3s partner was a Warlock from our guild who recently left the game. This same Warlock had been my 2s partner briefly.

My PVP gear is not all that great, only about 300 Resilence. I’m still using a ton of PVE gear, including my weapon which I got my Ulduar 10.

I was told my job was to assist the Warrior and try to burn down the other team’s healer while helping to CC targets that were going after our Resto Druid.

We saw a ton of Warriors, Death Knights, and Priests with a smattering of other classes.

We fought the same team about 3 times and I was starting to feel sorry for their Priest who kept getting blown up by my Warrior friend and I usually before my Hammer of Justice stun would wear off.

One of the more frustating matches for me was when I tried to take out an enemy Warlock. I ran up and unloaded on him and his heal bar barely moved while he destroyed our Resto Druid.

Any team that switched to me found my very squishy and I would start to go down quickly. I’m relying way too much on my Bubble in those situations. The opposing Warriors were only to willing to demonstrate by removing it. Shattering Throw is an order of magnitude worse than Mass Dispel. I had learned how to move away from a Mass Dispel since it’s a targeted AoE. Shattering Throw is a directly targeted spell, no getting away from that.

We went 6-5 before I had to go. The other guys seem to feel like I had done a decent job starting out.

I absolutely hate the idea of being the boat anchor for my team. Those two guys are accomplished PVPers, and much better geared than I. Now I’m realy torn between leveing alts and farming honor for Honorshammer, especially now that it looks like I’ll have some Arena rating / points to use.

The most surprising development from the night was that I really enjoyed myself, but I’m generally not a huge fan of PVP. I much prefer what Josh over at Eye For an Eye called “Paint By Numbers PVE”.

I know my ‘twitch’ skills have diminished over the past couple of years, but I really enjoy the strategic depth of a good Arena match.

You can really feel the unload-wait-unload system that Ghostcrawler has described for Ret Paladin PVP. You basically run up, unload your cooldowns and wait for them to come back around. Its good burst, but I can see where it’s not as dynamic as an Arms Warrior, and I’m sure it’s not terribly fun for the poor Priest on the other end of it.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to farm up some PVP gear over the next couple of weeks and really starts helping them get their rating up.

Comments

Argon said…
If you've been doing Wintergrasp for a while, the WG marks can be traded in for some nice starter gear. 15 for boots, 15 for a belt, plus some pretty cheap trinkets. You can also get chest and head armor for 40 apiece, which is pretty pricey.
Dorgol said…
I never really thought the Ret combat mechanic all that bad. Just run in and beat on the enemy until they died.

Then I started doing some PvP on my feral druid. Now I had to deal with combo points. Now I had the choice of just burning someone down or loading them up with bleeds and kiting them. Now I had the problem of being really, really squishy without the bubble to reset everything.

Whatever Blizzard has planned for Ret probably won't be as complicated as the Feral / Rogue setup, but I'm hoping it adds a little more complexity.
lethal said…
I can't remember where I read it, but maybe try PvPing as PROT in HOLY gear?
Read something that makes it sound like that is quite powerful, not sure if you need a specific prot build or not.
Just a thought.
Honors Code said…
I have almost no spell power gear to try that, plus I need my 2nd spec to also serve as my "I don't need to tank this fight" spec, so it needs to be Ret.

Popular posts from this blog

Cataclysm Profession Bonuses

Raid Comp Tool

Back To Basics: The 969 Paladin Threat Rotation