Follow our progress, the lessons we learn, and the strategies we try as we enter into Arena pvp with no experience and climb to the top!
Lets recap, what have I learned so far?
The most important thing I've learned so far is that its impossiable to get ahead in arenas while being a clicker, so I've broken that habit. I've completely re-done my interface, set everything onto keybinds and gotten pretty use to it. The second most important thing I've learned is that in 2v2s you will be the primary target for the enemy 90% of the time as a Warlock. The majority of my time is spent trying to survive, and as a Destruction Warlock that makes it hard to keep my dps up at the same time. Since I have to focus on trying to stay alive its impossiable to do cast time dps, still continue to CC, and live at the same time.
So how do you plan to fix your survivability?
Well, it was clear our comp wasn't working. Since I had to focus on surviving and my dps dropped because of it, Kofo had to increase his dps to make up for it. The easiest way to do that was for him to switch to Feral. He had never played Feral before but we decided to give it a shot. He farmed BGs for about a week non-stop which was very frustrating for him. If anyone reading this is alliance they know what I'm talking about. You get about 80 honor per 30minute game since we lose about 80% of the BGs. In the end though he got his full set of BG pvp armor. The penalty though was he had to forfeit the arena pvp gear he already bought for his Moonkin since they use different armor. I decided to give Affliction yet another shot. I had only played it for a week so I didn't really give it a fair chance. I really hated the fact I was going to give up my Nether Ward though as it was awesome against any class that used magic damage, including Deathknights & Rogues.
So why did you switch?
I decided to gamble on the fact that Affliction can put on their dots and then focus on surviving while still doing max dps from damage over time. I also decided to mess around more with 2 addons, Debuff Filter and Gladiatorlossa. Both of them are awesome, Debuff Filter allows me to see the buffs my target has on and what CC's are on my focus target easily. It also allows me to keep tract of my dots on my target and focus aswell. Gladiatorlossa verbally announces when a nearby enemy uses a special ability like Recklessness, Shadow Dance, etc. even if they are not my current target. The video to the right shows how we did our first time using this comp. When watching please remember this was Kofo's first time as Feral and only my second week as Affliction.
Were you satisfied with the results, do you plan on sticking with this comp?
I wasn't satisfied but we planned to stick with this comp and get better with it. Our rating went up to 1400~ which was only a +50 increase. We did alot of things wrong since we both are just getting use to our new specs. The major thing I realized I was doing wrong after watching my own video was that I needed to take Spell Lock off autocast. I had to start getting use to using it on my own. I also had to use my focus targets more. I wasn't using them enough. We were also having alot of CC problems. So I decided to do some google searches on my own spec and see how other people played it. For the next week in arenas I mainly practiced using my Focus targets more and manually casting Spell Lock only when we needed to lock someone out of their spell tree and not letting it go off whenever it was up. In the end I would sometimes forget to use it completly since I wasn't use to it but I figured I was on the right track and kept at it. The video to the right shows how it went. We ended up going up another 50 rating and were now sitting at around ~1450.
What did you do next? What else did you need to work on?
Soul Swap! I wasn't using soul swap enough. So for next next week I just focused on getting use to soul swapping whenever I had the chance as well as continuing to practice manual Spell Lock. We were also still having CC problems but for now I wanted to get better at my spec. I felt that would help more in the long-run. In order to help fight the CC problems I tried to use the map more to my advantage. I placed my teleports in better positions and when people focused on me I tried to use it to seperate the enemy players from each other. The next video is to the right. We played ALOT of games so its quite long. In the end we went up to 1500~ rating a few times but kept falling back down to 1450~. We just couldnt quite break the 1500 mark yet. The CC problems hurt alot.
So how did you fix the CC problems?
Well I went back and was looking at the games I recorded where we lost to see what the problem was and I noticed something. I saw a druid instant cyclone me while jumping through the air chasing Kofo and I was like WTF was that! lmao! So we decided to investigate and it turns out Feral druids can instant cast cyclone as a talent tree proc. Kofo and I didn't know about this since it was only Kofo's second week ever playing Feral and I always played with him as Moonkin before. We both felt like complete noobs finding this out but figured 'Oh well' atleast now we know! ^_^. He's been hardcasting his CCs this whole time. So for the next week I kept practicing the same things as before and Kofo started practicing his Instant nature CCs. Not only could he instant cast cyclone, hibernate, or entangling roots on his focus/target, but he could also instant cast big heals on himself aswell if a CC wasn't needed. It turned out to be an amazing help. We ended up going on a major winning spree and our rating skyrocketed from 1450~ to 1600~!. Thats hard to do when you already have 200+ games under your belt. We got matched up against a few people with really high matchmaking rating and a further armory inspection showed quite a few of them were rated 2000+ in 3v3s. The video is to the right.
How did we get past 1800~ rating?
Click here to goto Part 3 of '2v2 Arena Progress, Lessons, & Strategies!'
(Coming Soon!)
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