Back at the release of the arena system and throughout the duration of season 1 there was one rule of thumb, DoTs were king. Resilience never used to reduce DoT damage and as such warlocks and shadow priests dominated almost every bracket due to overwhelming amounts of shadow damage.

A counter however was found as people began to access The Black Temple. Shadow resist kit began to see widespread use throughout top end arena which caused the end of the domination of shadow caster classes.

As time has gone on though it is no longer possible to swap into resist sets mid arena fight and resilience now affects DoTs. But is the same principle still applicable? Can spell resist be just as effective now or in the future for high end PvP?

While it is no longer possible to equip yourself with pure resist kit specifically tailored to the opponent you are fighting, there are a number of options available to you for increasing your spell resist without significantly reducing your combat capability.

The first consideration before thinking of going for a spell resist build is your basic resist level, paladin auras, shaman totems, certain buffs, racial traits and other class abilities all act to provide a good base level to work off when aiming to resist a single spell school. Should you not have access to these skills, it is very hard to reach significant levels of resistance and as such will probably not be worth your while.

The second consideration is just what spell school you would like to become more resistant to. The most potent options are shadow and nature. The other spell schools, while effective in the right situation, only generally apply to mages who have many spell schools to rely upon for damage in an emergency.

Being able to resist shadow spells will give you a degree of protection from mana burns as well as a chance to resist the application of DoTs to yourself and each individual tick of damage, while becoming nature resistant will enable you to resist a druid crowd control along with poisons and a bulk of the damage from elemental shaman or moonkin.

If you have chosen a spell school to aim your spell resist efforts at, and have access to a decent baseline resist, then it is time to work on your equipment. The main way of increasing your resistances is through the resist all stat. This can be found on numerous enchants along with void spheres created by enchanters.

Each void sphere will provide you with 4 spell resist to every spell school and you are able to enchant your cloak or shoulders with a further 7 each with an additional 5 resist to your shield should you have one available. As a blood elf holy Paladin for example it is currently possible to reach a basic 56 resistance to all spell schools with little trouble.

The next step is spell school specific enchants, a glyph on your helm will add 20 resist to any single spell school of your choice. Armour kits with 8 spell resist to a single school are also available for your chest, legs, hands and feet, though your normal leg and hand enchants are more valuable.

By utilizing these single spell school enchants you can reach around 90 spell resist to a single school without buffs or 160 with an aura effect active. This level of spell resist is enough to resist around half of the incoming damage from that spell school and significantly reduce the chance of non damaging effects landing on you, all without using any pure resist equipment. Add the effect of any spell mitigating abilities such as a higher fear resist chance and you can become a formidable opponent for casters which used to be your nemesis.

Unfortunately, with current arena itemization most casters can pickup 74 spell penetration without any real effort severely compromising this tactic for now. With Wrath of the Lich King however, all spell resist abilities will continue to scale and we may see reduced levels of accessibility to spell penetration, possibly allowing for a return of spell resist to competitive PvP.

For now however, the ease of gaining spell penetration prevents its widespread use outside of PvE content.

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6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

If you have been following my arena guides lately then you should now be entering the arena with a strong team setup coupled with a sophisticated communications setup to enable your team to perform to its best.

But all that planning is for nothing if you cannot execute your attack in the right way, as with the preparations you make before attacking, the way in which you initiate your attack is vital to winning in the arena.

Should your team end up confused and scattered in the attack it is a fast road to a lost match, likewise should you be able to force confusion upon your enemy it can make your wins easier to obtain. The trick is to force the other team to play into your own hands and style; make them dance to your tune and victory is assured.

One basic and effective opening tactic is a rush, this favors high burst dps teams to take advantage of the confusion for an easy first kill. The plan is simple, hit the other team hard and from an unexpected angle before they have a chance to identify what composition they are against.

An example of an effective place to rush is Blades Edge, most teams generally line up at opposite ends of the bridge and spend some time scouting out the other team, an effective rush will instead mount up and ride to the opposing teams ramp up to the bridge to hit them in the side.

The big downside to a rush is that while the other team will not have time to scout you out, neither will you have time to identify an effective target to nuke and so it is easy to end up with your own team confused without proper leadership.

A second effective opening tactic, and my personal favorite is harassment. This generally relies on having dispell classes move forward and purge one or two of the enemy buffs before backing off again quickly. In this manner you can weaken the enemy without fully engaging them and try to make one of their members panic and charge you.

If harassing, remember to land an attack from a distance on warriors in order to put them in combat; this stops them from utilizing charge against you which is the most common way you will be chased down as a harasser.

You can also harass with mana drains such as viper sting and by utilizing low rank DoT spells which cost far more mana to be removed than they do to cast. Further harassment tactics extend to the killing of hunter and warlock pets; these are sometimes left on aggressive stance and will charge out when attacked, enabling them to be killed alone.

The third tactic involves mass AoE crowd control and is effective when combined with a slightly delayed rush.   What it typically involves is a class such as a rogue sapping enemy healers or a mage polymorphing them before/as you charge in. This forces them to trinket in order to begin healing.

It is at this point that you hit the entire team with an AoE fear such as intimidating shout or howl of terror. The healers, having previously trinketed will now be out of control and likely to run out of line of sight of their team mates, causing chaos in the enemy’s organization.

This tactic does however rely on the other team being bunched up and you being the attacker.

The final opening tactic is the stealth hunt, if you know the other team has a stealth class, especially a rogue, then the chances are high that they will be sniffing around your team scouting you out. If you can catch them out with a low rank AoE to detect them or by utilizing the shadow sight gems then you force the other team to attack in order to rescue the stealth member.

This can lead to the opposition lacking organization in their attack making them much easier for you to dominate.

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4 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

We walked you through getting to Nat Pagle for this quest, and it’s high time I showed you how to catch those four fish.  Before you head out, be sure to bring along your shiny baubles otherwise you’ll kick yourself when you get to the first fishing hole!

Here’s the link to the Quest on wowhead - http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=6607 Nat asks you to go catch four fish and then return to him when you get them all. What we’re going to do is show you the fastest order to go get these fish, and the best spots to fish.  For reference, paths in yellow are for Alliance, and Horde is red.

FISH #1 - Feralas Ahi

For the Feralas Ahi just fly to Feralas (Feathermoon for Ally, Camp Mojache for Horde) and run to the little lake in the middle of the map to catch the Feralas Ahi. The map is pretty easy to follow here. Just run down to the bridge that crosses over the waterfall and jump off the road. There’s a little spot that sticks out into the pond with no roaming mobs. This one is easy for both factions.  I normally get the Ahi in just a few casts.

FISH #2 - Sar’Theris Striker

After you get the Ahi, fly to Desolace for the Sar’Theris Striker. Horde will only have to get off the bird at Shadowprey Village, run a bit south down the coast, and fish.  Be sure that you leave Shadowprey village completely, your sub-zone on your minimap should read Sar’Theris Strand, you cannot catch this fish while the zone map reads Shadowprey Village. Ally have a little longer run from Nijels Point down to the coast.

FISH #3 - Savage Coast Sailfin

Now fly back to ratchet and take the boat to Stranglethorn Vale. As soon as the boat lands, just hop off the north end of the dock and swim over to the first place you can stand near the little camp of pirates. This fish, the Savage Coast Blue Sailfin takes about 2 minutes to get. You might even try to catch one right off the end of the dock.

FISH #4 - Misty Reed Mahi Mahi

Now for the last (and hardest) fish to nab, the Misty Reed Mahi Mahi. Horde toons can fly to Stonard, but Ally Chars will have to fly to Nethergarde Keep in the Blasted Lands, or to Darkshire in Duskwood and run around Stonard to catch up

When you get to the beach, avoid the Murlocs and you’ll find a little spot just after the sand ends where there are no giant crocs or Murlocs patrolling and you can fish in a little peace. Once you’re done here, hearth out.

Now all you have to do is go back to Nat Pagle and turn in your fish, and you’re done! Congratulations and happy fishing! Oh, and always remember to Dominate.

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6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

I OWN THIS AUCTION HOUSE - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

There’s a new commercial out for a video game where this guy jabbers about crushing his peeps in a game of video football.  At the end of it he says: “Doing things like that makes you wanna say things like - ‘DUDE, I own you; pass me that soda!’”

How would you like to so thoroughly Dominate the AH that there just isn’t any argument left.  You can just tell other players you own them and pass the Mok’Nathal Shortribs!  It’s pretty hard to do, but there is a way it can be done if you have the knowledge and gold to pull it off.

A lot of you probably won’t like this.  Many of you may not be able to do it on a large scale.  Most of you will need to practice before you can really use it like the serious weapon that it is.  Almost none of you will have the patience to wait for the right timing.

BUT - if you don’t mind being an uber-greedy capitalist pig, have a decent amount of gold to play with to begin with, a lot of experience working the ah, and can wait like a ninja to strike; I can guarantee you there is simply no faster way to make enormous piles of gold, period.

All of our amazing gold-making secrets are in our Auction House Mastery guide (Which we will be releasing as soon as it’s perfect)  This little tidbit is only a small section.  What I’m going to tell you how to do today is how to corner a market segment and watch the gold pile up in heaps.

Cornering A Market

Depending on the size and prices of the AH on your server, don’t even try this unless you have between 5,000 - 10,000 gold you can blow.  In order to do this properly you are also going to have to use Auctioneer Advanced and have several months of daily scans in your database.

You will also need to have the ability to watch the AH like a hawk.  That means logging on every few hours to your banker to peel the newly posted items off the market before anyone else can buy them.

This technique is only possible because the WoW economy is a closed market with limited fluctuation.  What you’re going to do is pick a niche of the market and OWN it.  At least for a couple of weeks every month or two.

Here’s how this works - Pick an item type and buy out every single one that gets posted during the week (suck up the entire supply) and then stick it back on the market on Friday at +200% markup.  In order for this to work you really have to be the only guy at the AH with that item type for sale.  You have to buy every single thing so that you completely control the market segment.  You have to have absolute and total power over supply.

I normally pick enchanting mats.  I have the most experience with those and the market tends to be fairly stable for these items.  This technique also works best with the very highest end items, thus the need for so much gold in order to begin.  In order to truly make this effective you need to buy up a complete niche such as Large Prismatic Shards, Planar Essences, Void Crystals, and Large Brilliant Shards - basically all of the high-end enchanting mats.

You’re also going to have to figure out what things actually go into a niche, that is why this is really risky unless you have a ton of gold already and don’t mind losing a big bunch of it if you guess wrong.  In my example above I found out that on several servers Arcane Dust just has too much supply feed to corner, it’s almost impossible to do.  But keep in mind that not every server is the same, so you’re going to have to be a real gambler with serious skill to guess right every time.

You will sell a few things the first weekend, and maybe get back 50% of what you spent the first week buying up your niche.  You have to keep it up for at least another week.  Keep buying everything and post it all up the next weekend.  The next weekend you should clear back what you spent plus a hefty profit to boot.

Why does this work?  Because people have the attention span of gnats.  When they need something, they would rather pay 2-4 times it’s market value than wait a few weeks hoping prices will drop.

Yes, it makes people mad - laugh at them and shrug while you make thousands of gold.  You can snicker at the people yelling in trade chat about the jerk who is jacking up the market with his stupid inflated prices and giggle when you open your mail full of big piles of gold.

After two weeks of this, stop buying and just sell.  Those folks who post the same stuff will by this time tend to match your new price and only undercut you a little bit.  You will normally find that prices will re-stabilize at your much higher rate for some time.

At this point sell down and stop buying for a while.  You can watch while prices continue to drop until they reach the level they were before you did this.  Now it’s just lather, rinse, repeat.  When prices return to historical averages, you can do it again.  This is where the waiting part comes in.

You see, as prices rose, you need to stop buying everything because your profit margin is shrinking.  Once prices drop again the margin returns.  When prices spike, you can move on to a new niche if you like, or just take a break and do other things for a while.

If you couple this with rare events such as a patch or the recent Season 4 arena start, it can mean wicked profits.  We posted the experience of our editor - Lawbringer, doing exactly what we’re talking about here during the Season 4 opening in Lithanial’s article “Season 4 - A Unique Opportunity.”

Lawbringer began with 5,000 gold to work the market.  He cornered the enchanting mats mentioned above and was able to turn 5,000 gold into a little over 12,000 in two weeks.  Now, during the sell-down phase it’s closer to 15,000.  That means he tripled his gold in right at two weeks - not bad!

We’ve also done this with Darkmoon decks right before the Faire hits town, epic recipes, high-end cloth items, and on and on and on.  The possibilities are vast.

We also have developed a system that makes us over 1,500 gold every single week with less than 2 hours spent working the ah.  Oh, and I don’t ever farm - I mean EVER.  Nor do I grind out dailies for chump change, dailies are for rep and the itty bitty bits of gold that go with them are a bonus.  Why spend 2 hours a day to make a hundred gold when I can make 1,500 a week in two hours at the ah?

I also used this technique when Shaman got dual-wielding in a previous patch.  I bought up all the axes for a few weeks before the patch and marked them up severely the day of the patch.  I made about 4,000 gold in two days when all the Shaman rushed to the AH to get another axe.  Once you get the hang of this, it’s almost too easy.

So get out from behind your farming plow and join the world of the power AH broker.  The cars are faster, the gold piles are bigger and you can walk with that extra swagger that comes with Dominating!

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18 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

With a little over 50% of the vote, the winner is Fran Molina!  Her torch-tossing heart dominated the competition. Fran wins a $50 gift certificate to Amazon, now we just have to figure out how to get the card to Brazil!  Congratulations Fran, I guess you helped all the guys find their romantic streak!

The Contest is over - and you better believe this: girls rule.  I guess all you guys lost your artistic streaks in all the bone-crunching testosterone of mangling fires.  Or maybe you just forgot it like we all do birthdays, anniversaries, our wallets . . . what was I saying?

I digress.  There were only three entries in our little competition and unfortunately nobody actually got a shot of the fireworks.  Gavin had me working like mad on our next project so I missed the show as well.  There’s always next year right?

The nice thing about having only three entries is that it’s going to be pretty easy for you guys to vote on the winners and we’ll have a clear 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place.  So let’s show you what the lovely ladies sent to us and you can be the judges.

ENTRY #1 - Fran Molina

Fran hails from Brazil and took this terrific shot of the torch tossing event that was one of the daily quests during the festival.  As you can see, this took some planning and coordination between Fran and three of her friends.  Vote Fran if you love girls from Brazil!  (Oh, wait - vote Fran if you think she’s the greatest WoW artist at DYS)

ENTRY #2 - Eleanor Anderson

Eleanor submits this fabulous display of herself and four others dancing around a brazier of dancing flames in the throne room of Lordaeron.  Chicks certainly know how to make friends and influence people!  A vote for Eleanor may also be “FOR THE HORDE!”

ENTRY #3 - Ellimace

In full fire festival regalia, including the Crown of the Fire Festival, Mantle of the Fire Festival, and Vestments of Summer, our night elf princess Ellimace watches over her Brazier of Dancing Flames.  It certainly took the effort of visiting every bonfire and dousing all the Horde capital city fires to acquire all that gear.  A vote for Ellimace and this goddess will watch over you!

Leave your votes for our three lovely ladies as comments in this post, and may the best woman win!

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67 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Hybrid classes form the backbone of many an instance group or PvP team, acting as the essential supporting mesh that pure classes rely on - often being the unsung heroes within the group.

Playing as a hybrid requires a great deal of skill to master compared to a pure class, especially in PvP and as such can take a while to learn for new players; however if you are up to the challenge then a hybrid class can be far more powerful than their pure-bred brethren.

There are two main play styles within the World of Warcraft that each hybrid class fits within which can loosely be described as an offensive style or a defensive style, below is a description of each and pointers to help you get the most out of your hybrid.

Offensive Hybrids

An offensive hybrid is a damage dealing class primarily and a backup healer as its secondary role. Examples of classes that fall within this category are shadow priests, Moonkin and Shockadins.

The trick to mastering these classes is to know when your healing abilities are required.  Far too many new players achieve a state of tunnel vision towards the damage dealing aspect of these classes; which is only a portion of your potential.

Nothing emphasizes the strength of an offensive hybrid more than arena play. At the start of a match an offensive hybrid is able to analyze the other team to assess just how pressured his own healers are going to be; and as such, how much he will need to support his own team as opposed to applying pure damage.

A simple example is the choice a Shockadin must make in 2v2 arena - if he should use avenging wrath or his defensive bubble. By analyzing the other teams’ damage output he can choose to either go all out on the attack with avenging wrath (should the other team lack damage) or play it defensively with his bubble against burst teams to try and simply outlast them.

Options like this simply are not available to pure classes but dramatically increase the range of team compositions with which you can effectively fight within the arena.

Similarly in PvE many late game encounters such as Archimonde can cause raid members to become separated from their healers while taking significant damage; nearby offensive hybrids can act as an emergency response if they are attentive.

Defensive Hybrids

A defensive hybrid is primarily a healer and offensive support is their secondary role. With the introduction of free spell damage on all healing kit each healing class fulfills this role - though some better than others.

Good examples of the most effective defensive hybrids are the Restokin build and holy paladins. In contrast to an offensive hybrid, the defensive hybrids’ challenge is knowing when to put its offensive potential into play.

While an offensive hybrid is more about assessing the overall situation and deciding if you need to play it safe, playing a defensive hybrid to its potential is much more about the timing and reactions needed to exploit a situation.

Similar to an offensive hybrid, many new players focus solely on the healing aspect of a defensive hybrid to the cost of all else, but when they become more comfortable with their class they can begin to bring the offensive aspects into play to push their class potential to the limit.

The arena is, once again, the place where bringing your offensive potential to full effect shines the most. A holy paladin who only focuses on healing may eventually succumb to crowd control or loss of mana when playing it safe; leading to a slow death.

However should that same paladin take to the offense at key times by using his hammer of justice to stun an enemy healer to prevent heals while unleashing supporting damage in the manner of a Shockadin; then he can at the very least put the other team on their back foot, if not force a kill.

By utilizing both the offensive and defensive aspects of your hybrid you ensure a level of unpredictability and adaptability in your actions, becoming much more of a threat to help ensure your domination of others.

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14 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

On July 3rd, Blizzard made the above post at www.worldofwarcraft.com This is big news from Blizzard for WotLK since the Beta for Burning Crusade was a closed event.

Hurry over to the home page and register your accounts for the Beta opt-in.  Now, registering an interest in being invited to the beta does not guarantee that you will be included in the Beta by any means, just that you will at least have a chance at getting into the Beta.

The only way to guarantee a spot in the WotLK beta is to buy a Beta key somewhere.  As of this morning there were 8 Beta keys available from people who attended Blizz Conn in Paris that listed their beta cards on ebay, if being in on the beta is worth $600 bucks or so to you.  Of course, these beta keys also come with a murloc suit or a Tyrael pet (which is an awesome thing to me being a monster D2 fan!) but the price is a bit on the - well, silly side of enormous.

Normally when Blizzard announces an opt-in for a Beta, the beta itself is not very far away from starting.  Sometimes it is a matter of a few weeks between an open Beta announcement and the start of the beta itself, which is pretty exciting.  This announcement means that we can be pretty sure that the full retail release of the WotLK expansion will be before the end of 2008.

We try to not only help you be prepared at DYS, we also want you to get so far ahead you can Dominate!  What better way to dominate WotLK than to know it before anyone else does.  Register right this minute - if you get in on the Beta, be sure to post back here with your toon names so that you and other DYS readers can team up and crush everyone else from day one in the Beta and beyond.

Good luck, and always Dominate!

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11 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Previously I have covered how to go about creating your arena team to give yourself a good chance of success, however going into an arena match with a strong setup and basic plan is only one small aspect of the battles within.

There are many steps and tactics that you can undertake to improve your teams’ chance of success before you are even engaged with your opponents; indeed many matches are won or lost by the preparation made right at the start.

Arena combat is highly competitive and so you must give yourself every possible advantage to be able to keep up; you can guarantee that your opponents will be utilizing every possible means they can get to improve their game play and so, you must do likewise.

The first thing to work on is improvements to your teams co-ordination and communication. To that end, one of the most important things to have for any serious arena team is voice communication.

The in game voice chat is unfortunately not too great - often having problems with its volume being much too quiet even when set to its maximum output. The two voice chat applications generally used throughout any competitive game play worldwide are Team speak and Ventrillo.

By making sure your entire team is connected to a voice chat server and has working microphones you instantly boost your performance due to being able to watch each others backs far more efficiently.

For example, healers can call out when they are silenced allowing hybrids to provide emergency backup healing as needed, and the DPS classes can co-ordinate their attacks and crowd control with much more speed to put some serious pressure on the opposition.

The second means to boost your team co-ordination is so simple and yet missed by many players. Arena combat can get very hectic and your team can end up scattered leading to confusion as to where the rest of your team is at any one time. This can lead to players becoming isolated from support.

The solution is simple, assign everyone in your team a raid marker. This allows you to easily track exactly where your team mates are at any one time, even through walls; a vital piece of information to ensure that you don’t end up accidentally getting out of line of sight of your healers.

With team communication and co-ordination improved, the next step is to improve the information available to you about your enemy. A fairly standard arena management mod is Proximo ( http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/8291/ ) and what this lovely little mod does is provide a target status box for every member of the opposing team that you can target them by. But more importantly it shows this information the second anyone in your team with Proximo targets an enemy player.

This allows you to very quickly know at the start of an arena match just what you are up against in order to form an effective plan. And if you don’t manage to target everyone in the opposing team then one of your teams stealth classes, if you have one, can go and “scout out” the other side with ease.

Be warned however that hunters have discovered a nasty way to bug out Proximo. When you target someone via Proximo it targets by name, and hunters have taken to naming their pets after team mates to mess up your targeting.

Now, fully prepared to dominate, it is time to prepare your attack!

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5 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

One of the key skills required for success in a group or raid for any damage dealing class is the capability of the player to manage their own threat levels and this is a skill best learned early on in your gameplay.

When you start out in early instances such as Deadmines and Wailing Caverns, mobs don’t have a huge amount of punch to them and so the penalty for poor threat management is low. However as your progress through higher-end content you will quickly find out one simple fact: if you pull aggro, chances are you will die and in the process may take other players to the graveyard with you; obviously this is something best avoided.

Luckily threat management is a simple skill to pick up, and there are numerous things you can do to ensure you do not pull aggro, ever!

The first measure any player should take is to install a threat meter into their UI, there are several out there but most rely on the other players in your raid or group to have the same meter installed for it to work properly. The best advice here is to ask other players in your guild or server what addon they use and then choose the most common one.

Failing that my personal favorite is Omen, which can be downloaded at http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/9101/

What a threat meter will do is provide an accurate visual representation as to how close you are to pulling aggro from a mob.

At its most basic, threat management is simply making sure you never exceed the tanks’ threat on your meter but in reality that can cause your DPS to drop should you reach the point where you must stop nuking to avoid the buildup of threat.

As such there are various tips and tricks you can do to give you an easier time of controlling your threat till you feel confident that you don’t even need to look at your threat meter anymore.

The first trick is to think carefully about what spells and abilities you open up with against a mob; using an attack which causes a large amount of instant damage as your opening spell is a very bad idea!

A much better idea is to open up with DoT attacks and debuffs, for instance I tend to open up with insect swarm. This way you can still deal a large amount of damage right from the start of a fight but you delay the threat from it until your tank has had time to build up a decent amount of threat himself.

A second trick is to bring a paladin along with you, they can give you a buff called blessing of salvation that will reduce all threat you produce by 30%, it is quite rare to be able to pull aggro with salvation on unless you are deliberately attempting to do so.

The third trick is to utilize threat reducing talents and skills such as feign. However this measure should only be undertaken after trying a few instances without such threat reduction.

Talent choices for threat reduction or spending time actively reducing your threat will reduce your DPS and so should only be done as a last resort. It is much more preferable to manage your threat through other means.

Finally, certain classes get methods to completely reset their aggro. Mages can ice block or turn invisible, Rogues can Vanish and hunters can feign death. If you find yourself climbing the meters or actually pulling aggro from the tank then do not hesitate to use either one of these skills.

With these simple tricks you can ensure the ability for you to DPS mobs down without fear of reprisal, allowing smooth dominating runs throughout any instance in the game!

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22 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Arena season 4 has now officially begun on all servers, and with it the new Brutal and Guardian PvP items are now available. The big twist this season however, is that team selling has truly been stamped out and most items now require a player to have a high enough personal rating to purchase them.

The quality of the items available however is extraordinarily high; high enough to match or exceed the power of loot obtained from heroic badges and so it is well worth players to look at entering the arena in order to gear up.

Most of the items available require a personal rating of 1700 and this should be an achievable goal for many players if you enter with a favorable team setup and a solid plan. Outlined here are some basic pointers in assembling your own arena team to help you hit that 1700 target.

Which Bracket?

The first question you should ask yourself is if you want to be playing 2v2, 3v3 or 5v5 arena. It is much easier to assemble a 2v2 team but your team setup is critical to success here and this bracket allows for few mistakes. 5v5 allows a much broader range of successful team setups since each player can compensate for their teammate’s weaknesses -  but it can be a large hassle to schedule times when your whole team can play.

3v3 is a comfortable medium between each bracket being both relatively simple to organize a team and allowing a reasonable variety in class composition. If you are fairly new to the arena, I would highly recommend the 3v3 bracket to you.

Forming the Team

The first thing you need to keep in mind first and foremost when forming your team is each individual’s survivability since this will have a huge impact on your tactics.

As an example, having a subtlety rogue in your team allows you to play rather offensively since he is difficult to directly attack and highly mobile, as such he will require little healing which allows him to successfully partner with a DPS class stacked team or a more offensive hybrid healer such as a moonkin or shadow priest.

In contrast a warrior has little in the way of escape measures but hits like a freight train to compensate, if he went with a fully offensive team he could easily be burned down and as such a warrior is best accompanied by a healing teammate.

By keeping in mind the survivability of your teammates you can ensure that your team composition supports each other to counter your weaknesses rather than just compounding the problems.

Making a Plan

The second most important thing in arena is to have an overall plan as to what the team strategy is to win and select classes that will accomplish that. There are several highly successful strategies common place in the arena that will work well for newcomers.

The first basic strategy is a drain team, this relies on having mana draining abilities available and in order  to accomplish this you require a hunter, priest or warlock present. The main idea is to have steady damage on the opposing team to wear them down while directly attacking the enemy healers’ mana. If you can make the enemy healers run out of mana before yours do then you can easily start killing off his team mates.

A similar strategy to this is a grind style team. These teams tend to have a high number of healers accompanied by a dps class whose damage does not ever “run dry” - usually a warrior. The goal here is to be so survivable that nobody in your team can easily be killed while slowly chipping away at the enemy team until something gives way, usually the enemy healers running out of mana.

The final basic strategy is the burst team. This style of team is very risky but can be quite effective due to its instant shock value. The trick is to take 3 dps classes that can dish out horrendous damage while supporting this with a high amount of crowd control and silences. What the plan entails is to hit one person as hard as you possibly can while stopping him from being healed.

The big risk however is that if your burst does not succeed then without a healer your team will gradually be picked off, as such it is vital to pick the correct target. Attacking someone who has an escape measure such as a paladins bubble or a mages iceblock will cause your attack to fail.

Attacking a class such as a warrior or shaman however yields a high success rate.

With these simple tips you should be able to construct a strong backbone to your arena team and be ready to dominate your way to that 1700 rating target.

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