Learning your skills

Use it or lose it, maybe you’ve heard you dad or granddad say that. The same thing is true with the skills for your character. Often times it can be hard to be really prepared for the level 70 dungeon runs unless you and every single member of your team is a really polished player.

Heres why. End game content such as Shattered Halls, Steamvaults, and other instances that require level 70 teams are a lot like trying to solo a level 20 elite at level 18 or 19. It’s not that bad if you know how to counterattack, it can certainly be done, but more often than not it’s going to end in you getting killed and having to spend some coin on repairs.

Before you high-level players begin to flame me for being a total noob, keep in mind that you probably didn’t “pwn” your first deadmines run right after the game came out. You learned to play and are probably playing with friends you’ve made out of mutual respect for their skill. But not everyone is that good. Not everyone has high powered guild mates to help them farm dungeon set gear. Most people who play wow are casual gamers. They don’t play more than an hour or two a few times a week, so they might never see the inside of Kara.

I play WoW quite a lot, but I am humble enough to still know I am a totally clueless about some things. Anyone who thinks they know it all is full of it. But one thing that can really help you as your character grows is learning how to effectively use your skills. The way to do that is deceptively simple. This may sound pretty dumb, but you’ve got to use all your skills all the time or you will forget to use them when you should.

Heres the trap. You’re out questing for something on mobs several levels below you. If you’re smart, you are usually questing only on green level quests or with a friend (more on that another time). You are blowing through mobs with ease, so you ease off on using some of your more powerful skills. After a few levels, you get even more skills. Now the problem gets worse. The skills you were ignoring before have become sort of left out of your repertoire of moves. You begin trying out your other new moves and find a favorite or two and stick with them. Everything is going smoothly – you are cruising your way to 70, rushing through instances with your friends, you begin to think you are invincible. Then you hit Shattered Halls.

Now, instead of pulls with 2-3 mobs, they can be pulls of 5or 6. And the mob groups are as well balanced as your party with a tank, a healer, a caster with Aoe, and sometimes they even spawn non elite adds like pets. Were talking wipe city your first time in. Is it because your character is the wrong spec? Maybe, but most characters who have spent the majority of their points, say 40+ in a single tree can play a valuable role in any group. Is it because your gear is terrible? Probably not, if you can’t do the high level runs because your gear is crap, your gear is always going to be crap. More than likely its because you have about 5-10 skills you have never really used consistently so you are not really that good at using them when they would really come in handy.

The way to avoid this is to go all out on every battle. Even when you are killing chickens do it with authority. By using all of your skills all the time, you never forget to use one buff or another, or change skills when you need to. The second part of this is that you really need to spend some time in the battlegrounds. The better you get at pvp, the better you will be in high level instances because you will know how to counter attack, instead of just attack. In order to counter attack well, you have to learn how to neutralize the attack they are using against you and then attack them at their weakest point. This means knowing your strong and weak points and how they stack up against every other class in the game. Sounds hard to do, but its easier than you might think if you will run the battlegrounds fairly regularly.

If you want to get seriously good, you better play the arena matches. No other place in the game will test your use of skills like going up against real people with points on the line. There are many skills that have a very small impact in PVE situations, but in arena matches may be the difference between winning only one match out of ten or being the team that wins 9 of 10. In arenas, it not only makes a difference which skill you use, but when. Arena matches will not only make you use all your weapons, but you will have to have almost perfect timing.

A good example is the time you got completely ganked over and over again by that 46 paladin when your toon was level 50. It shouldn’t be that way. Two level 50s should be a fair match, but 50 vs. 46 – you should be able to wax the floor with them. So why did you lose so badly? They just had more experience using their skills with great timing to counter everything you threw at them. Everything you tried to do seemed to hit a brick wall for a reason. At the same time, they were damaging you and stopping you from damaging them. It all boils down to skills and timing.

So never go easy on those mobs, pour it on, it will keep you in much better shape for that end-game content. Next lesson, how a hunter learned this the hard way.

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