Until recently I was a PvE addict, but since most of my guildies quit the game, the heavy instance raids didn’t seem too much fun anymore. PvE being boring, I decided to re-orientate my characters to PvP. I was familiar enough with the battlegrounds but I really didn’t know much about the arena, so I asked one of the gladiators on my server, the guildmaster of a powerful PvP guild, to share a few of his secrets with me. He joked saying that he didn’t have time for disciples and he recommended me a WoW arena guide.

After struggling for a while around the pitiful rating of 1500, I decided to take a look at the WoW arena guide that was recommended to me. Guess what? I discovered quite a few aspects of the arena gameplay that I didn’t even see before and got full explanations on how to improve my general gameplay as well as my role in most setups of any bracket.

Here are a few of the aspects outlined in the WoW arena guide, that were total mysteries to me before.

Know your team’s gameplay

When I started to play arena I switched teams after 3-4 matches because we lost a lot and I thought it was always their fault. After getting my copy of the WoW Arena Guide, I realized that it was me that made any setup lose. I didn’t know anything about my role in any of the setups I got invited to and no matter how good I played on my own, the team lost because I didn’t bring any contribution to the team effort. So, maybe one of the most important things for the arena gameplay of a team is the understanding the general tactic of that certain team. Playing only 3-4 games in a team, doesn’t matter if you lose or win, it’s basically nothing. To consolidate the gameplay, a team must practice a lot in order to reach the top of the ratings.

Know your opponents

Knowing your team gameplay it’s not that hard compared to this aspect. You can only get good knowledge of the other setups and other teams by playing many matches with your team. So, the practice you’re doing by playing with your team not only improves the knowledge on your team’s general strategy of arena gameplay, also consolidates your team’s evolution versus all the other possible setups. There is also a very important thing to understand here. No matter the setup of your team, there will always an opposite setup that has superior chances of winning against you, but perfecting yourselves you will have high chances of winning against any setup.

The Macros

Macros permit a player to use abilities or sequences of abilities with the touch of a single key. It is pretty hard to get used to macros, that’s why some people don’t bother with them. Many players don’t understand the importance of the speed in which they use abilities in every combat situation. Of course, playing a lot of PvE, I was used to have many keybinds for my abilities but I really didn’t know much about macros. So the WoW arena guide taught me exactly what macros to use in arena to maximize my performance.

The Addons

As a PvE player I had knowledge about many addons for World of Warcraft, but most of them were oriented to PvE. I found out that most of the PvE addons were useless in arena or battlegrounds. I had to download the newest versions of the most important addons for arena. As the first steady team I joined recommended, I downloaded Proximo, Antagonist, CooldownTimers and MetaHUD. These addons are a must for any arena player. Of course, you can choose not to use any addons, but comparative to those who use them, your gameplay won’t be that good.

The Gear and the Talent Builds

For any arena setup there are specific talent builds. Joining a team you’ll have to respec according to your team strategy. Usually a damage dealer should spec to obtain maximum damage on a single target, giving up aoe. Your equipment for arena should apply directly to your spec. It’s a good thing to know that if your character is a heavy armored, you should concentrate on increasing your defenses even more, to resist as long as possible, while those with lesser defenses must take their damage to the limit. Since WotLK was released, resilience doesn’t work properly for any class. For example, as a rogue I play with PvE gear with end game weapons to be able to deal maximum damage in the shortest time possible.

These are the most important principles that a player needs to know and to respect when playing arena. They are, no wonder, part of the secrets of the gladiator title bearers. After applying every aspect in my copy of the WoW arena guide and after “educating” the team mates helping them to take the path of the gladiator as well, the results showed up. We managed to rise above 2100 rating which granted us access to the arena equipment that we’ve been saving our points for. The greatest satisfaction that I had was mopping the floor several times with the team of the guild master that recommended me the guide. He asked me to join their guild and main team and I replied as well, that I didn’t have time for disciples.