Arena Status: We’ve Started 3v3!

Good news: my 2v2 partner Kashmír found a solid Resto Druid (Skipz) for 3v3, and we started running Protection Paladin /Enhancement Shaman/Resto Druid last night.

The main challenge in finding a Resto Druid has simply been finding one who is:

1. geared, and
2. willing to try the comp, and
3. not already committed to exclusively running with other people (i.e. we waited too long to find one)

Skipz was understandably skeptical, so Kashmír pointed him to our 2v2 2k videos, which convinced Skipz to at least give us a try in 3v3 :)

We went 9-2, which was an excellent start given that we had not run with a Resto Druid before nor PVP’d previously with Skipz, and we raised the team Rating from 800 to over 1600:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/arena/wildhammer/3v3/get%20dub%20stepped%20bro/

The comp functioned even better than Kashmír and I had projected. Skipz said he enjoyed it, because his role in our comp is dynamic – he’s expected to CC as well as kite-heal – and we can bail him out of bad situations or bridge-heal when he is CC’d.

Of the 9 wins, we had 0 friendly deaths. Both losses were addressable with different tactics:

• We lost to a spellcleave (Mage/Lock/RDruid) and ironically I was the person who died first. In retrospect it might have been better if we had tunneled the Lock instead of the Mage, as the Mage was a good kiter. And I’ll need to be more careful and LoS kite earlier
• We lost to a DK/Hunter/HPal, because we spent too much timing chasing the Hunter, and in a long match our Healer went OOM before theirs did. Hunters are underrated in Arena IMO – they have terrific kiting and survivability tools (e.g. Ice Trap, Deterrence, Feign Death, the leap-back thing, Scattershot, etc). If we had simply tunneled the DK and CC’d the other two, we would have been fine.

Stay tuned for 3v3 videos, they’re coming soon :)

From this point on, Kashmír and I will continue to run at least 10 matches per week for our 2v2 team, but our preferred focus with be 3v3 because:

1. it’s fun, and
2. we have a few weeks to try to get the 3v3 team up to 2200 Rating before the new PVP weapons are released, two weeks after Patch 4.0.6 goes live: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1622892691?page=1#1

As previously announced (http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1302975366), Conquest weapons requiring 2200 rating were to be made available today, January 26, but have been delayed. We currently plan to make the 2200 weapons available approximately two weeks after the release of patch 4.0.6.

Our 2v2 team reached 2k Rating several weeks ago, and since then we’ve been slowly raising the Rating. What we have seen over the past several weeks on the Shadowburn 2v2 ladder:

• as of this post, there are 1016 teams at 1800+ Rating. So there is a lot of competition in our battlegroup
• the number of teams at 2000+ Rating has increased from an absolute perspective
• therefore to stay in the Top 200 on the Ladder, the cutoff Rating has continued to increase. E.g. when we hit 2k for the first time at 2002, we were ranked #144 for that week. Now we’re at 2035 and ranked #218
• the number of challenging FOTM comps has increased from an absolute perspective

Kashmír is the 8th highest-ranked Enhancement Shaman, and I am the highest-ranked Prot Pally. Keep in mind, as I’ve said before, we could probably both get higher Rated with a different partner class – but neither of us cares. We have fun and it’s satisfying to beat the FOTM players.

The main barrier to our getting to 2100 in 2v2 has been the number of Mage/xxx comps. Mages are incredibly strong at the moment in terms of the amount of CC, survivability, and burst DPS they bring to the table. In it’s current state, Frost Mage is the most powerful PVP spec I’ve seen across the major MMO’s I’ve played over the past 5 years, which includes WoW, Warhammer Online, and LOTRO. And that’s saying a lot :)

Cheers,

Taugrim