Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Practice makes....

...you realize you need more pracice. :D

I got in about 24 games on Connect the DOTs (my 2v2) yesterday. Not bad..

It's a lot less stressful trying to get better at Arenas once you've accepted that you have to practice to get better.

I looked at most of the top teams out there... this season, most have played more than 600 games. Some of them are in the upwards of 1000 games. And you realize that most of these teams have lost more games than you have played. Practice, practice practice.

Sure, there are some people out there who with their class matrix and background of PvP, hit it out of the park on their first try. But it's not the case for everyone else... not matter how many elistis braggards say so.

We average-joe's... gotta practice. No special juice we can take to make ourselves better overnight. I take comfort in that fact actually.

And here's the thing, it's not just your own skills you have to work on... it's knowing all of the other classes by heart as well.. which takes a lot of time. How to spot a demo warlock from an affliction.. How to tell a resto shammy from an elemental...How to spot a hunter's trap... Knowing when to neutralize an arc powered mage... Memorizing the standard subtelty rogue's general attack routine so you can learn to counter it..perdicting a pally shield or a mage's iceblock...etc..

Also, there's no shame in losing. You always learn more from losing than from winning. So unless you're at the top, you can assume you still have a lot to learn.
Not to say it can't be demoralizing and make you feel like total sh*t. That's part of PvP and Arenas. I really like the challenge.

It's interesting to us that our easiest matches are actually against one of the hardest class combos out there. The top rated 2v2 teams are warrior/pally and warlock/pally.

When we see warrior/pally, we're like "YES!!!"

But rogue/rogue or rogue/druid... gah.. we have yet to be able to find a good method of defeating this combo. Generally what happens is that I get sapped for 12 seconds. Then the rogue comes back for me at the end of the 12 seconds to blind me for 8 seconds. In the meantime, they are stunlocking Felix's warlock and beating focus firing him for 20 full seconds while I'm helpless.

We've tried rank 1 AOE's, popping perception...etc.. but the increased sap range makes it even harder now to stop the initial sap.

Our only strategy at this point is to stay far away from each other during the opening of the arena battle. This makes it harder for the rogue to run back in time before my sap wears off and he can blind me again.

Other than that, we're kind of still researching. I think the first step is for the both of us to become really good at dueling rogues and druids. LFM! Bastard Rogues to duel! hehehe. I still get pretty nervous about dueling. I don't do it often enough unfortunately. It's on my list of things to start doing to help improve my PvP game.

Oh yeah.. something I noticed recently...Listening to light and breezy classical music or soundtracks while you PvP helps keep you calm and collected. I used to listen to techno or dance tracks but noticed they made me jumpy and excited which doesn't help your game despite most button mashing theories. lol. I've been listening to the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack. I know... I know.. whatever.. shut up.

3 comments:

Lance said...

Hi again Alachi,
I'm waiting on a few buddies to ding 70 but we'll be starting arenas pretty soon. (still working on those key quests for now)

In battlegrounds, Lancet the hunter's encounters with rogues almost always end badly...popping the insignia get's me out of the first stun.....but my little toy is then gone and I'm looking at my toes and waiting for the inevitable.

Some more arena movies would be appreciated with narration about what you're seeing.

As always, thanks for podcast & blog!

Lance (Lancet 70 Troll Hunter-Ursin)

Alachia said...

good. you should document your encounters as well!

unfortunately, I can't use my trinket to pop out of sap or blinds as they are not considered stuns. :(

blind is a poison so if you have a druid with ya, you can have them dispel that..but otherwise, 20 seconds of a lot of nuthin!

Unknown said...

"Pride and Prejudice soundtrack. I know... I know.. whatever.. shut up."

LMAO

Don't let people judge you upon the music you're listening to. As long as it makes you feel good for whatever you're doing. Still, this is far from NIN LOL.

Good luck on all this Arena practicing !

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