Arena: Testing the waters of Saurfang/Vengeance

Tournament realm is so quiet still.  I can't find any proper information about when it starts or when it ends, and we want to get started as soon as possible.  However, our few ventures have been not very good and we have not won a game yet /sadface.  Some of it is me and my UI stuffing up still as I haven't quite set it up the same as Navimie's but that's because it's mixed in with all my PvE stuff.

We decided to go back to live and do some arena.  Queues for games are not as good as they are on Dath'remar - but that was because we were on Bloodlust battlegroup.  Interestingly though, even though we're on Vengeance, we have still had teams from Frostmourne in our arena matches.  I thought we only got matched with those within our battlegroup.  Strange.

We had a great run of arena earlier int he week when we came back to live from Tournament.  We fought the same groups over and over and changed strategies with varying success.

My teammates are rather predictable, and so am I.  We have favourite kill targets.  If there is a frost mage in the group, Shab wants that one dead.  I think it's because he knows how much damage they can do with their burst.  It's not so horrible for me because I have lots of practice against a mage so I have some survival techniques up my sleeve - but combine that with a second DPS, then I'm screwed.

My favourite kill target is a hunter.  I LOATHE the scatter shot+ice trap cc's they drop on me and they are so fast at getting me at range that I hardly have time to pillar.  It feels like the ice traps last forever.  I hate hunters!  Rooting them is a useless cc for a ranged and so I have to resort to cyclone.  And sometimes if I'm running away in some kind of animal form I get put to sleep.  GRRR!

Sev's favourite kill target is a warrior.  Warriors lock him down big time and stop him from casting, rendering him useless.  He gets very very grumpy when warriors are training him, and they have fear resists.

So, who gets to win?  Often, Sev and Shab will help by killing the hunter first because they know that when I'm cc'd I'm pretty useless and they will die.  Sev likes eating mages so he doesn't mind killing mages first either, pushing them to iceblock is a sure way to get them to die quickly if we get the healer cc'd at the right time.  Warriors I like to cc, and so does Shab, so poor Sev has to put up with warriors most of the time while we focus on something else.

Things which they DON'T like killing include rogues and disc priests.  Rogues are annoying.  I don't know how Sodah cc's them all the time because they are constantly vanishing and my faerie fire goes off them and they get out of my stuff.  Shab always says I have to control the rogue but more often than not I can't find it and the best I can do is root and cyclone and even that sometimes gets wasted because they vanish when I target them.

So what team comps have we been getting?

There was a Destro lock, hunter and druid which we had encountered a lot.  They beat us a few times and we beat them a few times.  The final time we beat them by focussing the lock instead of the hunter and he wasn't fast enough with his cooldowns and he died.  I think that surprised him and the healer because we hadn't done that before.  Destro locks usually have a few cooldowns whereas hunters only have the one (deterrence) so they are generally an easier kill.

Then there was a druid/Dk/warrior team. The final time we fought them, the druid was the only one standing versus Shab and me, and I was trying to rez Sev and the druid constantly interrupted me - I thought he did very well.  Shab had a dreadful time trying to beat it, and I he got it in the end because the druid was busy distracted trying to stop my rez and Shab killed it.  DKs are annoying with their antimagic shell and their self heals and when we battled that team earlier I was gettng smashed by the DK.  In one of the fights against them my headset decided to die and Sev and Shab had the giggles listening to beeping coming from my side of Ventrilo.  I however was going crazy trying to say "Get THIS F*&^er off me!!!" and wondering if I had time to pull my headset off to plug into power or not.  It turned out alright in the end, we won, but boy was that nasty.  I don't think I could ever arena without a headset or Vent.

Last night we did a few more games, and we got some strong teams.  We lost to some good teams - priests with hunters drive me crazy!!! - but we went up against one team with an elemental shaman that we decided to focus and for some reason didn't want to use ascendance!?  He died, then we made quick work of the others.  One of the hunter and ret pally dps teams smashed me by surprise in Lordaeron arena, and another time a really good target switch by the another team brought me down when they had been focussing on Shab before.  Didn't even have time to hit iceblock.

The cool thing is that we can actually rank on this battlegroup!  Even with our 1650 rating in 3s back on Dath'remar it didn't make the top 2k on Bloodlust, but on Vengeance our rating of 1609 places us in the comfortable 600s which is really cool!  That also puts us at #19 on our server and #10 for Horde on Saurfang.  My personal goal is to get to 500 but the boys think we can do better - but I'm not so sure, I still make plenty of noob mistakes!!

Then we thought we'd ask Luxy to join our 5s team.  Elemental shammies are so painful, so we thought it would be cool to have her there.  We decided to do some duelling and Sev gallantly went first.  I thought he went soft on her because he was whittling her down to under 40% and then suddenly she popped ascendance and smashed him and beat him.  I was shocked!  Shab got scared!  Then Shab duelled her and he just managed to beat her but boy is ascendance scary!!!  Then I duelled her and after she burnt her cooldowns she said she was bored... LOL I don't blame her, duelling healers sucks sometimes!  One more teammate healer and we'll have a five man team - Disco wasn't interested, but maybe Dah can come on his monk as windwalker and Sev can heal on his monk as mistweaver - OMG double monk team, that's gonna drive people nuts LOL!