by C. Christian Moore

Tauren

War Stomp: Activate to stun opponents – Stuns up to 5 enemies within 8 yards for 2 seconds. 2 minute cooldown.

This might just be personal bias, but I absolutely love War Stomp. It’s a racial that is often under-utilized — I see PvPers trying to use it defensively a lot of times. This thing is nothing short of an extra stun in a kill-target lockdown repertoire. It can also double as a silence to interrupt healers.

While War Stomp isn’t strictly better than Arcane Torrent, it comes pretty close. War stomp has a .5 second cast time, but works on everyone (silencing melee doesn’t do that much). The .5 second cast time can actually be a benefit, as you have more time off the global cooldown once the ability affects your target.

For an active racial (as opposed to a passive racial), it doesn’t get any better than War Stomp.

Endurance: Base health increased by 5%.

Because it’s only base health, this isn’t a big deal. If someone can tell me exactly how much hp this is, that would be awesome.

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by Tyler Caraway

this is going to be an introduction to balance PvP. I’ll examine talents, team comps, strategies, and gearing,. This isn’t the end all, be all of how to do balance PvP. There are lots of options, lots of things you can try or experiment with. PvP in and of itself is a very large experiment where you can test what can and cannot work. This may gloss over some topics, but I will try to provide as much information as I can. If you feel that there is anything of glaring importance that I missed, then leave a comment on the issue and I will correct it as soon as I am able to.

1. What is balance PvP?

The balance spec is the druid’s caster DPS tree. In PvP, the tree focuses on dealing damage, some control, and occasional healing.

2. Advantages of balance PvP

• Able to put out high levels of pressure if given the opportunity to free cast.
• Very solid levels of control against various targets, though more so against melee.
• A solid number of debuffs to act as a form of dispel protection.
• Solid synergy with multiple casters.

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by C. Christian Moore

This Week: We’ll be discussing some helpful tips for finding arena partners. Everything from trade chat to recruitment forums and more. We’re gonna do this quasi-chronologically. You might shift around the order a bit, that’s cool.

1) Get as much PvP gear as possible.

Do Vault of Archavon 25-man and 10-man each week. Grind heroics for badges to buy PvP main pieces. Grind battlegrounds for off-set pieces. Having a lot of PvP gear will help you to win games, which helps to get skilled PvPers to notice you.

2) Play as much arena as you can.

Experience is the most important qualification a player can bring to the table in an arena match. You’ll also get arena points which help you to gear up, so it’s a win-win situation for you and your teammates. Of course, to play a lot of arena, you need other players…

3) Use trade chat.

It’s great for picking up PvPers, and you’ll occasionally get someone who really wants to get into arena (like yourself). Think of doing games with someone you’ve never met before like a pug. You should do alright, but it’s probably not going to be anything amazing. Try to have fun with it.

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by C. Christian Moore

While different resource mechanics within an MMO isn’t revolutionary, the simplicity and accessibility of our beloved WoW resources is just one of the reasons the game is so successful.

Energy / Combo Points

I’m lumping these two together. Why? There are only two energy users in game (rogue / feral druid) and they both use combo points. Combo points can also (easily) be put on other mechanics, but they aren’t. Combo points are also the largest difference between focus and energy.

Energy is one of the best resource mechanics in arena PvP. I won’t spend that much time on it because it’s a pretty basic, yet elegant, mechanic.

While white attacks (auto attacks) account for a very large portion of rogue and kitty dps, builders and finishers (stuff that uses the yellow bar) is the bread and butter of the energy resource mechanic. Let’s compare this resource system to mana to see how it’s balanced:
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by Zach Yonzon

1Druids, by and large, have a very high survivability as a class. Pair this with their supreme mobility and you’ve got one hell of a fight on your hands.

Shapeshifting
The one distinguishing characteristic of a druid is the ability to shapeshift. This is their greatest strength and ironically one of their notable weaknesses. When the class was designed, the folks at Blizzard envisioned a protean opponent that constantly changed forms during an encounter. While the design didn’t completely end up that way, with druids mostly keeping to one form suited for a particular task (e.g., bears when tanking), players get to see druids change shape more often during PvP. It’s essential. Some of the best druids switch forms appropriately and often, although this can sometimes take a toll on their mana.

Druids are a hybrid class and thus enjoy the benefit of having three distinct roles and fighting styles which can confuse enemies at the beginning of a fight. Their shapeshifting, noted as their strength, is also their weakness here as it usually reveals their hand earlier than other hybrid classes because their forms are usually distinctive to their spec. A moonkin, for example, is obviously a ranged caster and likely to be an unsavory opponent in Eye of the Storm (stay away from the edge just to make sure).

By the same token, a druid is weakest in their normal (whatever passes for normal for a shapeshifting class, anyway), humanoid state. There is almost never a better time to beat down a druid as when they are in their Night Elf or Tauren — and soon Worgen and Troll — forms trying to cast a life-saving spell. Their various forms confer numerous protective benefits, and improvements to the moonkin and Tree of Life forms in the past have made for irritatingly surprisingly resilient opponents. Fortunately for would-be druid killers, forms have some restrictions, too.

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for starters, all this information is about level 80 PvP, as a rogue.

Talent Build: Mutilate/Prep 41/5/25

Stats:
AP: This is your highest priority, you want burst.
Crit: This goes along with AP, not as important but take it where you can.
Hit: Try and be close-ish to the PvP hit cap, which is 5%.
Expertise and Haste: Don’t worry about it, doesn’t hurt though.
Armor Penetration: Nicer than Exp/Haste, but still don’t focus on it.
Resil: Resilience is a tricky balance. You want to have enough you won’t be bursted down in a few GCDs, but it shouldn’t be needed to get a lot. Try and be in the range of 400-500. A bit more or less will probably be ok, but if you have less you may have to play more defensively.

Gear:
You want a balance of PvE and PvP gear. Enough PvP to be in the ideal resil area, and enough PvE to be able to burst people down. This really depends on how far progressed you are in both, so just go for as much AP and crit as you can within the resil range.
Always gem offensively:
Red/Prismatic(eternal belt buckle) sockets – +AP
Blue sockets – +Stam/AP
Yellow sockets – +Crit/AP
(AP, attack power, is your friend!)
Misc. Gear:
There’s a few pieces that aren’t too hard to get you should aim for.
Titan-Forged Rune of Determination – Replace your “regular” PvP trinket with this, easy to get.
Darkmoon Card: Death – Your other trinket, can cost a bit (usually 800-1200, depending on your realm) but trust me, it’s worth it. High proc rate, 45s internal cooldown. So it’s pretty much +2k damage to your opener.
Direbrew’s Shanker 2.0 – Not absolutely needed, but since it’s brewfest you shouldn’t have too hard a time getting one. I use this along with Sinister Revenge and it’s 2.0 speed is really outstanding, more damage from your mutilate, even though it’s lower DPS.
Enchants:
If you are an engineer, congratulations! It’s about to pay off. Rocket gloves are amazing, use them for that extra bit of burst. The nitro boots are the best foot enchant as well.
If you aren’t, don’t worry.
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HotStreak
Hotter Streak
Last Man Standing

HotStreak – Win 10 Rated Matches Without Losing
This is a really easy achievement to get. If you are bad
at arena theres always ways around it. First off find a partner, make a new team.
After making a team play a game to see what your MMR is.
MMR – Match Making Rating (Left of the Points you lose/gain)
You will need to get that down to around 1000.

How do i get it down?
You can drive your rating down by simply, Joining a match, leaving, requeeing.
(Which takes around 15 seconds)
Once you think your around 1000, simply join a game play it, and see what the MMR is. If you think you can beat the players around this level then Start
Playing
I did this on my druid went 50 – 2 and anyone can do this.
(If you think your really bad then drive it down to 800 >.<)

Hotter Streak – Win 10 Rated Games with a Personal/Team Rating over 1800.
This one is kinda tricky to do. Basically your doing the same thing for HotStreak, but this time what you want to do is get your team over 1800 (Make sure personal is over 1800 as well, and I would go to 1900 to be safe)
Basically after getting over 1800, tell your partner to leave your team, and join another team to play with some else to drive MMR Down. Your partner plays with some one else and drives their personal rating down to 800 (Like we did with Hot Streak). Now after he gets his MMR Down low enough, he joins back to the team (The 1800 rated one). Lets say your MMR was 1900 and his was 800 it would go by the middle number around 1300ish.
Example – (His)1000 – (Yours)2000 — MMR would be 1500
Example – (His)1100 – (Yours)2200 — MMR would be around 1650
Now once you think your MMR is low enough to win every game, simply play 10 games and you will win all of them.
Note: You will not win many points, and if you happen to lose. You will lose around 20 points. (Only do this if you think you can win every game)

Last Man Standing

This one is pretty fun to do. Get all your 5v5 Players on, and tell everyone that you’re doing Last Man Standing. All you need to do is, face a crap team, kill all 4 members, get the last guy down to 30%, and tell everyone to leave. Simply the dots + Your dmg will kill him in 1 shot pretty much and you will get the achievement.

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What we want is the paladin to have Commanding Shout + Kings, and the warrior having Battle shout + Kings BEFORE the fight starts!

I dont know if this is a “common knowledge” but ive never seen it used, or heard of anyone using it before.

Dont do this until its 10-20seconds left until the fight starts!

1. Paladin buffs himself with might and warrior with kings.

2. Warrior use commanding shout, and Battle shout right after.

As the might has more AP than Battle, it wont override the buff and the paladin will keep Might + Commanding.

3. Paladin swaps Might for Kings.

The warrior will have battle + kings and paladin will have commanding + kings.

Hope this helps! You can try this out being in a normal group aswell, does not require arena to work!

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A friend and I have recently started doing 70 arenas after 69 twinking was killed by the new battleground XP and such. Now were not the greatest arena players at 80 and average around 1600 at 80 with our mains. at 70 with a double mage team with northrend quest greens and blues we’ve gotten to 2k relatively easily.

See at the 70 bracket there seems to be a lot less talent and a lot fewer teams, therefore you face the same team more often, gain more points from wins, and lose barely any points from losses. We reached 2k in a week playing about an hour a day on our battlegroup(ruin) with queue times in the middle of the day being constant with an average wait time of 1-4 minutes.

Our plan was to get full brutal just for fun, but when i went to Area 52 to scout the gear I realized that you could purchase RELENTLESS glad gear and 1800 weapons with our 70 2’s team rating. I now have the relentless glad staff, wand, and pants. I plan on getting full relentless (minus the shoulders because you need a 3’s rating for them) and then leveling to 80.

I hope this helps people that have level 70 alts that they plan on leveling, getting gear for them even before they start leveling pretty easily

Good luck and have fun!!

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