Epic Arena

OMG We had one hell of a marathon arena last night. We started with a 2v2 rating of 1268 and an unknown quantity of arena points, But what I do know is that I need around 250 arena points to be able to buy a piece of Brutal Gladiator gear. That will be very nice.

So we started off with 2 wins against a Shaman/Warrior team and then beat a Hunter/Priest combo to reach 1313 rating.

The Marathon.
The fourth match began facing that same Hunter/Priest team. The priest was going down and I got silenced and I was spamming the Holy Shock waiting for the silence to wear off and finsih off the priest.

The First Mistake.
What I didn't notice was that TiceNits was getting her arse handed to her by the other hunter. She and the priest went down simultaneoulsy. Oops.

Leaving me with the hunter. I spent a little while being kited by him nad seeing the interupts caused by his pet. I actually probably spent too long doing this before deciding to despatch the bloody annoying cat.

Nigh Night Pussy.
I focused on the cat and went all out kiting it around a pillar to keep the hunter out of LOS of his pet so he couldn't mend it. It worked a treat and it went down pretty quickly leaving just me and the hunter.

So the hunter starts kiting me around the arena, throwing arcane shot on me and I'm Holy Shocking him. We are both soon out of Mana and it looks like a war of attrition is inbound. I'm trying to melee him down and he's trying to keep me at range with some slowing shot and viper traps.

Bloody Arcane Shot.
It took me quite some time to realise that it was his Arcane Shot that was knocking off my Blessing of Wisdom all the time, but I eventually learnt to keep an eye on that and reapply if I had the mana.

His viper traps were annoying and I could either just ignore them and keep after him or drop a rank 1 Consecration if I had the mana.

Mana Issues.
His shots were wearing me down but I had just enough MP5 to be able to pop a quick Flash of Light when health dropped too low. Soon into the fight I realised it would be won or lost on how much MP5 I could get so I was try to get SoW up as soon as I had mana and before he could drain that 1 pixel of blue from my mana bar with whatever bloody annoying shot does that.

At one point when I was playing the LoS to try and get enough mana for a BoW, SoW and a judgement I realised he wasn't following me around the pillar. I looked at his portrait and thanked god I had enemy casting bars on; he was trying to Revive Pet. Knowing it was game over if he succeeded I had to close on him fast.

I ran straight into a slowing trap but had enough mana for a bubble and thankfully it was off cooldown. I got to him in the nick of time and stopped that cast.

The Next Mistake.
There followed a lot more kiting and running and viper traps and arcane shots and slowing things and then I got behind a pillar and he stopped following me. Then he dropped from combat and I lost mytarget on him.

At this point I just stood there for a few second trying to get some mana up. I soon realised that if I couldn't see him I couldn't tell if he was trying another revive pet so I had to get back to him. By the time I had him retargetted he had about 20% more mana. Ouch, thats gonna hurt.

The Finale.
We have some more kiting fun and he is now dropping a lot more viper traps and I haven't got the mana to bubble or heal much. Then when I am on about 10% he must have got lucky and pathed me into a trap just as his cooldown came up and I went from one trap into another, with no mana for bubble, heal or even a rank 1 Consecrate. He got me the bastard. Just before I dropped I managed to get a /dance off.

Lessons Learnt and Questions.
I realise now that the first thing I should have done is swapped from mace and shield to my Hammer of the Naaru, I was hitting him for less than 100 white damage, the 2 hander would have done him for several hundred. It would also have a better chance to proc the mana return.

Can you drink in arenas? I couldn't use potions but he got a lot more mana back that 5 or 10 seconds we were out of combat than I did!

I never popped avenging wrath once. If I'd popped that and had the 2-hander up at the start of the fight he'd have been in a lot worse position when we got to our attrition race.

I also never popped the Talisman of the Alliance that I had just bought and even put onmy hot bars. DOH!

I could have won that easily. The fight seemed to last half and hour. TiceNits got up after about 10 minutes and went and watched TV!!

The Rest of the Evening.
We never met them again for the rest of the evening. We lost the next 2 matches to a Shaman and a Priest, then beat a rogue who came in on his own. Then we lost the last 3 matches taking our rating down to 1230. Ouch!

So the end result was a 6-4 loss but the matches were a lot better and my 350-odd resilience really showed with much better survivability.

3v3
Later on I got Boredom the Mage and a new team member (a non raiders warrior alt) into 10 3v3 matches.

This went much better than our 9-1 drumming a few weeks ago, we actually went 5-5 but overall lost 3 rating points so the 3v3 rating is now 1379