Why do I suck at arena healing??Follow

I don't do much PvP, but like you said, it really looks like you could use some better gear. This late in an expansion a lot of people are really decked out in some powerful stuff, and in arena you can die fast if you aren't rocking some quality items.

If you want to enjoy PvP more, have you guys tried working together in a battleground? I mean at least until your gear catches up a bit more...

I have 900 resilience, 30% damage mitigation when I get stunned in Cat form, 20% additional mitigation when I pop Barkskin, plus -25% chance to be critically hit when I pop Barkskin.

If I get focus fired, I still drop in seconds. Shadow Priests and Lolstorm Warriors are the worst. Shadow Priests because apparently their DoTs completely ignore my resilience and Arms Warriors (Lolstorm) because they just run around until their trinket proc and then they pop Bladestorm (Lolstorm) and win.

I've given up on Arena for now. Out of 20 matches, I think Aeth and I won three. One of which was a 20-minute endurance fight against a Death Knight and a Holy Paladin. I'm having a blast in Battlegrounds, though. With enough resilience to survive 1-2 hits more than the 0 resilience sheep in there, I've managed to go through several battles without a single death.

Now, I'm Feral, so I have to sacrifice some resilience for DPS, but as a healer, I'd imagine you can just go overboard on resilience. Pick up the PvP gear you can buy from Emblems of Triumph. Gather honor points (weekly Wintergrasp goes a long way) and get the ilvl 264 cloak and necklace. Then work on your rings and you'll easily go beyond 1,000 resilience, at which point the scale just tips completely your way and you become an invincible annoyance in almost any way.

Our communication is pretty good. My wife sits next to me, and we talk to the rogue using vent. I use spartanUI. Its pretty clean and all my needed spells are all next to each other. Although I seem to be having lag issues with healbot. Ive been doing bgs in between queues, and Ive noticed during most fights there is a lag between my click and the spell being cast. Even though its not a long lag, it seems that it could be the difference between landing a spell and my target dying. What are some other healing addons out there? Or should I forget the addon and go back to healing the old fashioned way? As for target swapping it is simple, takes me less than a second to target who I need to. I try to keep one of the ranged opponents targeted so I can cast cyclone in between heals. It missed about 13 out of 16 casts according to recount. But when it hit it was a noticeable drop in the damage we took. I think I need to get a few pieces of gear with hit on them to help cyclone land more.

Thanks again for your responces and your advise. Hopefully this week things will go a little smoother for us.

I think your right about our CC. Thats the one thing I havent gotten coordinated yet. I dont know a thing about rogues accept that I hate them with a passion. I guess im gonna have to do some research on them to see what I have available. Ill get on my wife about fear juggling more and using her void instead of the succy. Ill keep doing WG and Bgs to get more honor to continue updating my gear, and to play around and see what other tricks I can find. I like the one you mentioned. I know Ive done it before, but its been a year since I was in an arena and have forgotten way to much.

Thanks again

Ill recheck mine and my wifes spec. Im pretty sure they are PvP, but maybe we changed them for some reason. As for the rogue Ill research PvP specs for them and compare them to his spec.

Thanks for letting me know about the rogues abilities. I just thought they had 2 abilities, Permastun which the tooltip reads "stuns target until they die", and another Instacoward that reads "press this if your target gets help. You will instantly hide like a scared little girl until the help gets bored and leaves, then you can cast Permastun again on your lonely target"

[I'm not currently playing WoW so big theory and pvp tactics posts like these are my methadone treatment :P]

25k hp and 700 resilience sounds like a lot, but this far into a season where 10 5v5 games can buy you a piece of relentless gear every week/every other week.... and as little as 1400 rating can buy you full WRATHFUL offset pieces like belt boots and so on...it's actually not that much.

The warlock really needs to use demonic teleport well though even if they were amazingly geared. Drop it somewhere crafty within seconds of each match starting. Its a godly survival ability. Not just to create distance, it breaks snares and movement impairing abilities. If a warrior is riding your *** and you're hamstrung, you can strafe say, left while dotting him then immediately switch to strafing right and in the same instant tap demonic teleport. By the time he realizes where you are, you'll be 20 yards away (no longer snared) casting haunt and fearing one of his teammates. Or on the bridge on blades edge, drop down to escape melee-lol teleport now you have about 20 seconds of breathing space. It's really one of the best abilities in the game.

Resilience is a weird stat like armorpen, it gets ridiculously good the more you stack. Even very offensively specced and geared dps wouldn't go below 950 resilience if they are planning serious arena (perhaps pushing for 1800 rating). Many people, especially those starting out will feel much more comfortable hovering around 1000 - 1100. Sounds like a lot to aim for, but, if you do 10 5v5 a week for ~340 arena points, and the daily BG quest every day you'll quickly be outfitted in full furious, maybe relentless hands or shoulders and some wrathful offset stuff. Do WG quests and batles for honor and maybe the 251 lv shoulders. Do voa 25 and 10, i managed to get wrathful legs for my pally there. Then it's just down to practice, practice, practice. In bgs and arena games and duels.

Research specs and what particular gear and gemming setup is best for each member of the team, www.arenajunkies.com has great info in their class forums though you'll need to wade through a lot of elitism and ****-waving. Rogue lock druid can actually be a really powerful team when you start getting comfortable with it. You can open with a lot of cc and gain great momentum. Sap someone and have blind or cyclone ready for when it wears off then an instant howl after the trinket. A rogue going all out on a fully dotted target can create incredible pressure. The lock then has the best execute in the game too in the form of drain soul, make sure they have some way of knowing when an opponent is below 20% hp (addons?). Even if they are healed above that 20% threshold the channeled drain soul will continue it's horrendous 7kish ticks. Through walls :D Haven't played warlock in some time, i believe the execute channel of drain soul gains a lot of bonus damage for each dot active. DoT ticks plus drain soul means the rogue really only needs to sneeze on the target to kill it.

Fear pathing is also hilariously random and will sometimes fear a target waaaaay out in the open where they can't possiby pillar hump and you can blow them up very easily. Unstable affliction protects fear so it can't be safely dispelled, feel free to add insect swarm and moonfire and wrath spam when it's safe to do so.

I can't think of many rogue tips for the comp. Practice getting good clean saps to set up your teams opener, never end a match with cooldowns available etc. Envenom spec would probably work really well as the rogue is often free to pour damage on their target in this team. The lock can use fear on one target til it's fully DRed, then do it again to a different target, so the rogue wont get harrassed too much. Warriors are trouble, so they'll likely want glyph of preparation giving him two dismantles (one for bladestorm, one to 'dispel' shield wall if you're killing the warr). DoTs will likely be on everyone, so frequent target switching will always create pressure and keep the enemy healer unbalanced.



Edited, Jun 26th 2010 3:23am by ArtemisEnteri

DK's are pretty squishy from my experiences so far.
CCing the holypal and a DK while having your rogue on the other Dk means that you can drop your target much faster as it's not receiving healing and that DK will be slowed/stunned and he'll have to use his cooldowns to survive instead of using them so he can keep chasing/hitting you.

Edit: And the paladin will blow his bubble if you CC him long enough to save his DK.
At that point chain cyclone the DK so he can't be healed into a full CC cycle on the paladin as soon as bubble is gone.

Edited, Jun 26th 2010 6:58pm by Aethien

Rogues can feint and dismantle, locks can teleport/sacrifice, you can barkskin lolstorm.
I think you can dismantle each lolstorm, couple that with poisons and roots and the warrior should be cake.
If there's a holy paladin with the warrior, chain cyclone him when he gets BoFreedom.

Improved insect swarm does a lot of damage, it's a really powerful dot. That plus moonfire on a target will actually do really good dps along with lock dots. And like i said before no one can dispel it because of unstable afflicion. Here's an example build from a very high rated resto druid with both imp. IS and the glyph of IS also: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Stormscale&n=Xylae

I probably wouldn't drop treeform just because starting the game with everyone pre-hotted with the slightly more powerful heals will save you from a loss if it's a crazy rushdown team like dk warrior healer, or mm hunter, dk, h pally. The extra armor will save you if you're strangulated in bladestorm.

I'm leveling a resto druid myself atm. A random tip i heard is to start the game pre-hotting everyone including you, then drop to stealth before entering combat and cyclone someone from stealth. Your hots should keep people healthy for the time it takes to do this and because the cast happens as soon as stealth drops you'll find most people wont be nearly fast enough to target you and interrupt it. Sounds like great early pressure. If someone is sapped too it's 3v1 for a few seconds (or more likely a guaranteed trinket blown very early).