What would you have done? Arena DuelFollow

Just as a preface, I will say this. No I am not PvP geared, in fact my goals are essentially all PvE based. But to pass the time I have joined a 3v3 and 5v5 Arena team. I'm not a PvP noob though, I pretty much went exclusively PvP when I originally started playing my Warrior(which was my original main, before I fell in love with playing a hunter), so I'm pretty secure in what I am suppose to do in situations, as well as know what to expect from my adversary.

Yesterday, I was reminded why I hate fighting Paladins. Our set-up was 2 BM hunters and a Resto Druid. We had a pretty good run of 8-2 yesterday, but that's not saying much considering our rank.

Anyway, we were fighting a group that had a Holy Paladin, MM Hunter, and a Frost Mage. Fighting in BEM Arena(I think, the one with the catwalk in the middle).

Our strategy was to Cyclone the Paladin, focus on the mage, and try to trap the hunter. It worked out well enough at first. The mage went down, but we lost our druid as well. So it came down to 2 BM hunters vs A Holy Paladin and MM hunter. We droped the hunter.

The aftermath of us dropping the hunter, left me with 0 mana and 50% health, my partner with 0 mana and about 1% health, and the Paladin at about 50% health with about 30% mana.

Needless to say my partner dropped in a few hits. So the duel is on, me completely mana depleted, him mana drained but not completely. So I play the kiting game. Him still having mana was my primary focus, so I shoot him with Viper Sting(already on Aspect of the Viper).

Hit him with a concussive shot and run away. My pet hitting him, me running around, with no mana. I'm going to save all the individual details of what happened and sumarize it. With me having no mana I had to make a choice with each shot I made. I could either, use my mana on a damaging shot, or use my mana to keep the paladin slowed down so he couldn't catch up to me.

I choose the kiting shots/traps, in hopes that my pet would do enough damage to wear him down. It was working, but then the problem became that I couldn't keep Viper Sting up so he would regain enough mana to use a lesser heal(or whatever small heal a paladin has) to regain health.

It really came down to the wire we both were pretty much on our last leg, this fight had gone on for long enough to get 2 intimidates off, it really was intense and probably one of the most enjoyable fights I've had in a while. I did wind up losing, I had enough mana to get off a consive shot, and an arcane shot, that probably would have killed him, but as soon as I went to jump shot to hit him with a concussive shot, he must have gotten in range to use his Hammer of Justice, because I got stunned and the two hits he got on me was enough to finish me off.

In the heat of the moment it is hard to think about these things thoroughly, but given some time(like the 10 or so hours it has been since the fight), you get time to think about what happened and things I could have done to win that fight.

One thought that stands out was my choice of traps. I was working out of habit and instinct, and that is to lay a frost trap to slow their movement. Thinking about it now, that was probably where I screwed up.

See I was laying the frost trap at the bottom of one of the ramps leading up to the catwalk. I would run about 1/3 to halway across the catwalk, jump down and run back to where I had layed the trap essentially getting them caught in the same trap they had already triggered once, even if it was only for a second or less it was still effectively slowing their run speed giving me precious time to regain mana.

Thinking about it, my other trapping options probably should have been better utalized. Like laying a Freeze trap at least once to get a few ticks of a bandage to heal up some.

Use a snake trap instead of frost to effectively slow down the pally, and have lots of attacks on him to keep him from casting any type of heals.

Or even possibly used an immolation trap closer to the end of the fight, for a big burst damage that possibly could have been enough to kill him.

I think you handled it pretty well from how it sounds. I personally play MM in Arena, but leveled BM and started my PvP experience as a BM hunter so I understand how they work. Yes, if you could have got him into a Freeze trap, that would have helped so you could have bandaged. As for the snake trap, I never use them against Paladins since they can just Rank 1 Consecrate (I think that is the name of the spell / skill) and kill all the snakes, but at the same time him using that would've used some (not much, I know) of his mana.

Actually the more I think about, freezing traps would just be better in general against a Paladin in that situation in my opinion. It would allow you to heal (Not sure if this is still possible due to the last patch, but maybe even FD and get a few ticks of a drink down), get to full range, or hit him with a Aimed Shot for some nice damage and a healing debuff. I would have also been hitting him with Arcane Shot once in a while to remove a buff of his, hopefully BoW so Viper Sting could do some serious damage to his mana pool.

But either way, you're right, I hate Paladinstoo. Not really because they are a hard fight, because I don't view them as one, mainly because they take FOREVER to kill.

I don't know very much about arena, but I have heard snake trap is a good idea. It can slow, dps, and slow their casting time all at once. Sure he can cleanse the poisons, but that takes mana, which was at a premium. On the surface it looks like a good choice, but that's without experience.

Maybe. The big question here would be: Was the pally blowing his trinket on any of your abilities? Most pallys won't use their trinket on anything but freeze, because none of our other abilities would slow them down enough. Freeze might've been a waste of mana...

...but would still be worth trying at least once to see if you catch the pally asleep, because a full freeze trap duration would be enough time to cheetah to the other side of the arena and feign-drink while the pally is stuck trying to get rid of your pet (admittedly VERY easy to do on that map, but it's suprising how few people know how to do it). It woulda been a different match entirely from there...