Archive for February, 2008

Preparing Your Arena Team

Alright now that eeryone has all thier addons and macros situated, you have started grinding for that gear, its time to talk arenas.

There are few key elements for being competitive in arenas that you may have not considered yet.

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Communication

Communication is the number one key to success in arenas, the other team can greatly outgear you and if you are well coordinated and play your characters complimentary then you can still be successful. You cna also have one really amazing player solo, but if they do not cooperate with the team then they are not a good arena partner.  So just because someone is amazing in a duel does not automatically make them an elite arena player.

Players must learn what is important to communicate via voice communications, too much can cause panic and confusion, while too little talking will leave players in the dark about what is going on. Practice is what will make your team good at this.  While you are gathering up gear for the arenas you should take you arena team into battlegrounds and fight while extremely outnumbered and learn how to assist each other. Also, get into arena make a team taht you don’t care about the rating on and just use it to earn ponts each week while you try different things.

For communication you will want to pick one person who is the most calm and in control to lead you each battle, that does not mean they are the only one to ever talk.  Just means that person will call out DPS switches or when to use multiple crowd control effects to help kill a player.  They will announce changes in strategy if needed during the battle also.

The only rule about communication is never to place blame on a team member, if you think a team member coulkd have done something that would have assisted your team better that is fine.  Also remember that everyone should be able to handle constructive criticism, and that listening to others opinions only makes your team better in the end.  So have a little bit of thick skin, but remember to not create a hostile atmosphere with your team by placing blame and even name calling.

You will see once your team figures out how to communicate efficiently, your rating will increase significantly and games will be much more enjoyable to your entire team.

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I know as a newer player in WoW I was (and sometimes still am) confused about many of the in game acronyms. I mean I get the typical netspeak like LOL, OMG, and BTW etc. But the first time I saw something in chat like “WTS [Green Iron Boots] 20S PST” I was very confused! I wasn’t sure what the person was asking or if I even needed to worry about it. It was, at this point, that I decided to do some research on my own to find out what the heck people are saying in the general chat and trade channels in WoW. I did this partially because I didn’t want to feel like such a noob and also because I could tell my gamer friends were getting irritated with my constant questions.

So, here’s what I’ve done…I put together a list of just a few of the common acronyms I see in game play nearly every day to help out a few of you who are as confused as I was. I know there are a lot more than I can include this time but I will touch on some more in the future.

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How To Gear for PvP

If you read the previous portions of this you will now understand what stats will be important for your character, and you will have formed the perfect PvP User Interface and are ready to start gathering your gear for arenas.

There are actually a large variety of different ways to gather your gear for arena action, you do not have to mindlessly grind honor in battlegrounds in order to gear up.  PvP gear can be purchased from doing battlegrounds, running heroics, doing arenas, and even raiding.

So you should always try and mix it up a little bit while gathering your arena gear, experience everything that World of Warcraft Gameplay has to offer while preparing to be a domninate arena force.

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Battlegrounds

Through the battlegrounds it is possible to line every single slot of your characters equipment with epics, but if you do it in the correct order it will be much more beneficial to your character.  Here is the most efficient way to gear up your character (feel free to shift things around a little bit if you have good gear in any particular slot):

1. PvP Medallion (16,983 Honor) – Thats right, the first thing you need is a way to break crowd control, and the best trinket is the only one you should buy.  If buy the old level 60 trinket you will need to upgrade it anyways and it will have been a waste of honor in the end.  So save up and grab this trinket before you buy and pretty purples you will thank me, I promise!
2. Vindicator’s Bracers (11,794 Honor and 20 WSG Marks) – Any of the Vindicator’s gear cna be grabbed in any order, but bracers are cheap and are usually a very good upgrade for most classes.  In fact, they are often one of the best PvE items for many classes too.
3. Vindicator’s Boots (17,850 Honor and 40 EotS Marks) – You grab these so you can enchant them with Boar’s Speed. This will give you a nice boost of stamina and also a much needed run speed enchant.  If you are a class who has a movement speed increasing talent then you can simply put 12 stamina or Vitality if you’re a healing class.
4. Vindicator’s Ring (15,300 Honor and 10 AV Marks) – This is one of the cheaper upgrades for PvP also, and the rings are insanely good for every class.  So grab this and the Veteran’s next.
5. Veteran’s Ring (11,934 Honor and 10 AV Marks) – You will need a second ring and the veteran’s ring is still very very good for most classes.  It should be a huge upgrade and you should grab it as quickly as you can, especially since it is so cheap to purchase now.
6. Vindicator’s Neck (15,300 Honor and 10 EotS Marks) – All classes neck pieces are also one of the best items you can, definitely want to pick this up as soon as you can.
7. Vindicator’s Belt (17,850 Honor and 40 AB Marks) – Grab this as your last piece of vindicator’s gear since you cannot enchant a belt to make it even better for PvP, this is a very nice belt for everyone though so grab it last before you start getting your Gladiator gear.
8. Gladiator’s Shoulders ( 11,250 Honor and 20 AB Marks) – A lot of players will argue that this should come much sooner, but if you are planning to get into competitive arena’s much better season 2 and season 3 gear will be available to you in a short time.  You purchase season 1 shoulders to go with the gloves you have collected from arena play hopefully.  This will give you the 2 piece set bonus of 35 resilience which should boost you over 300 resilience rather easily.

Yes battlegrounds will be one of the main ways you can gather your arena gear, but it doesn’t have to feel like an endless grind.  There are many way to change the batrleground experience and make it more fun and enjoyable.  You don’t have to run battlegrounds by yourself, or grind AV all day just because its supposedly the best honor.

Below you will find some ways to mix it up, and maximize your honor gains.

Daily Battleground Quest

Everyday you plan to PvP this should be the first thing on your list to accomplish.  Pick up the Battleground daily, upon completion you will gain 419 extra honor and also grab 13 gold.  The gold will help you pay for repairs from PvPing and also to get new enchants when you finally get that new piece of gear you are working towards.  This will save time from farming and give you a little extra time to PvP with, increasing your honor gains over time.

Do Battlegrounds with Your Arena Team

This is an amazingly great way to practice and coordinate together.  In AV go straight to Frostwolf or Stormpike and try and take and hold the graveyard by yorselves, or go on Defense and you can try and hold back 20-30 players.  Your healing will get coordinated and you DPS will learn to crowd control and help out healrs so that everyone can do their job correctly.

This is a great test of communication and adaptive strategy for you arena partners and even top end arena teams often warm up with a few battlegrounds in order to get back in the groove before they que for rated arena games.

Join Every Battleground and Hop Around

This is the only way I will PvP, and you cna even do this in a group.  Join AV first and then all the other battlegrounds, usually the AV will pop first and you should take it right away.  A lot of the honor is AV is done in the first 6 minutes, so you can get a lot of honor while you wait on other battlegrounds to become available.

Joining every battleground and then taking the first available lets you get into a game and see what the other team looks like.  If they are a premade, then you cn just hop to the next battleground when it becomes available, or if WSG looks like a turtlefest then you can hop into AV.  This is the only way I will battleground anymore as its not good practice to go into game after game and just lose very quickly.

Start Saving Your Marks Now!

If you are like me you just buy potions with all of your marks, well in 2.4 you will be able to use all of those extras marks for even more honor.  You can use 1 mark from each battleground an turn them in for 314 extra honor.  So if you were to compile 100 of each battleground and then turn them in you could grab an extra 31,400 honor when patcvh 2.4 is realeased.

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Heroic Badge PvP Loot

Each class can get a really nice neck and a really good PvP trinket from badges.  You can farm your badges by completing the Daily Heroic Quests, or just running extra heroics, you cna also run Zul’Aman or Karazhan where each boss will drop 2 badges a piece.  This is probabaly the easiest way to gather badges, since a ful run of ZA and Kara on every instance cooldown will yields 20+ badges a week.  You could have both the trinket and the cloak within a month or less if you ran a few heroics here and there too.

Epic Gems

While running heroics you can also collect some very nice gems to put in your gear.  Anywhere from crit gems to stamina or resilience gems can be found in heroics, even if you have a piece of gear with one equipped roll for the gem and you can use it later when you upgrade your gear!

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Crafted Items

There are actually quite a few items you can craft, while some of them are not the best PvP gear they can easily fill in until you are able to get pieces that will be better through honor or arena points.

One of the main piece if the Resolute Cape and Thick Felsteel Necklace.  A full list of crafted items with resilience can be found on Wowhead here.

Instance or Raid Loot

There are actually some items with resilience that can be found within regular or heroic dungeons or even raid instances.  These items vary depending on your class, but below you can see a full listing of items with resilience from each particular instance.

Regular Instance Loot with Resilience
Heroic Instance Loot with Resilience
Raid Loot with Resilience

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Arenas

Lastly even if you have no gear you should start to Arena immediately, once you have geared up and are ready to be competitive you can reform the team to reset your record.  For now this will be a great way to just grab some points each week and to practice your strategies with your teamates.

The first item you should purchase with your points is the gloves, each classes gloves have a very nice equip bonus on them that will always help you in PvP combat.  After you have gloves you should purchase the head piece, this will allow you to socket a meta gem which can be very powerful depending on your class.  You should be getting shoulders from honor points soon so now you can begin saving for chest and legs in the furtue, or even begin to gather points to purchase season 4 gear when it is realeased.

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Gems and Enchants

Lastly, if you are looking to get Serious about PvP you can resocket and re-enchant all those PvE items you have in order to make them more suitable for PvP.  Use stamina and resilience gems, or gems with high crit on them.  Also change out enchants for stamina, run speed, or resilience.

Just changing gems and enchants can often give you another 1500 health and 30 resilince or so.  This will greatly help you while you are trying to gather honor and arena points to get even better gear, to put even better enchants on!

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Well I hope this section helped everyone and check back later this week to see my strategies and tactics for entering the arenas!

Alright I know its been a few days, but I have been working diligently to keep up with all the changes in 2.4 and also to get all these updates done for the PvP Guide.  As a side note the PvP guide has come together very nicely over the past week, all classes are now up-to-date and all have been expanded except for the Warlock and Warrior.

Check the PvP guide out if you have done so yet, with all these expansions its sure to not be so cheap to purchase later on – Spugnort’s PvP Guide.

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Gearing for PvP Combat

When participating in player versus player competition too often players undervalue stats that keep you alive (such as resilience and stamina) and overvalue stats that get you big crits (crit rating, Attack Power, or Spell Damage).  Now obviously players still must maintain the ability to damage their opponent, and be able to do it rapidly enough to kill them.  You also have to realize that if you’re dead then you can’t kill anyone!

It’s really tough trying to PvP with less than 10,000 health these days, and if you are just starting out and you don’t have any gear at all you may be down around the 7,000 health mark. Also remember that players that live longer tend to get more honor per game and per hour.  If you stay alive longer you recieve more honor since you are around for more kills.

The next part of this blog will tell you how to get your gear up so you can compete in arenas and battlegrounds, today lets talk about what stats to look for when gearing your chracter.

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Resilience – What it means to You in PvP

Resilience accomplishes three different things currently in World of Warcraft and with the coming of Patch 2.4 will accomplish four things.

1. Reduces the chance you are critically hit by all attacks.  For level 70 players, 39.4 resilience is a 1% decreased chance you are critically hit by any attacker.
2. Resilience reduces the damage of all critical strikes against you by double the amount of critical strike chance reduction.  So for every 39.4 resilience critical strike damage will be reduced by 2%.
3. Resilience also reduces the amount of damage you take from Damage over Time effects.  DoT effects are reduced by the same amount as the decreased critical strike chance.  So 39.4 resilience will decrease DoT effects by 1%.
4. NEW in 2.4 – Resilience will also decrease mana drain effects by the same amount it reduces critical strike damage.  So 39.4 resilience will decrease mana drain effects by 2%.

As you can see, resilience is an extremely powerful stat for all PvP players.  It not only decreases the chance you are hit with a critical strike but also the damage from critical strikes and DoT effects.

Let’s break this effect down with math real quick.

• Player 1 – Zero Resilience
• Player 2 – 200 Resilience
• Player 3 – 400 Resilience

Assume incoming damage of 1000 every 2 seconds with a 33% chance to crit, meaning every third hit is a critical strike before factoring in resilience. Incoming critical strike will cause 200% damage before resilence factors in. Lets calculate the average DPS a plyer will take from this simplified attack sequence.

• Player 1 – Will take 667 DPS
• Player 2 – Will Take 624 DPS, a 6.3% decrease over no resilience.
• Player 3 – Will take 587 DPS, a 12.0 % decrease over no resilience.

While this does not sound like much this is only incoming damage from one player.  The more players you add, the more damage you will be mitigating with resilience.  Think about this against a 4 DPS 5v5 team and how much 12% decrease would be, and how much easier it would be for healers to keep you alive.

Resiliene is an extremely valuable stat for all classes, 400 resilience is the generally accepted norm for high ranking PvP players and should be everyone’s goal as they start to gear up for arenas and battlegrounds. For players just beginning to PvP 250 resilience is a good point to shoot for.  Until you have reached 200-250 resilience most of your enchants and gems should revolve around stamina and resilience.

Note that resilience critical strike reduction is capped at 25% which equates to 492 resilience.  You can still continue to mitigate DoT effects and critical strike damage but not critical strike chance. As of right now it would be extremely difficult to reach this point without oversacrificing for stats.

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Stamina – What it means to You in PvP

Stamina is also an often undervalued stat.  Stamina, however, is not quite the powerhouse that resilience is but should not be overlooked. Too often I find players trying to PvP with less than 10,000 health, which generally does not go well for them.  When I attack a player on the battlefield and see their health go to nearly half after an auto-attack and a Hemmorhage I tend to remember their name and class.

They are a very easy kill, and I target them every chance I get.  There also the players that have 14,000 health and high resilience, these characters take forever to kill.  These players I avoid if at all possible, they simply take too long to burn down, especially if they are a healing class such as a Discipline Priest or a Restoration Druid.

The standard for a player just starting to PvP is 10,000 hitpoints.  Until you reach 10,000 hitpoint all your gems and enchants should revolve around stamina and resilience.

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How to Value Stamina and Resilience versus Damage increasing Stats

Many classes use a rating system to balance out stats so they are comparable by a standard value.  An example of this system is Agility Equivalent Points, which is the system rogues use to evaluate gear options.  This system takes all stats, including resilience and stamina and uqates them to a value based upon 1 agility point.  Here is a listing of values for the most current rogue AEP system.

1 AEP = 1 Agi = 1.4286 Sta = 1.5385 Str = 1.6667 Hit = 1.5873 Crit = 1.5385 AP = 1.6667 Haste = 1.5385 Expertise = 6.6667 Arm Pen = 1 Resil

This means that 1 agility is valued the same as 1 resilience and 1.4286 Stamina for a rogue wishing to PvP. This system is great for ranking gear, lets use a gear example to display how this works.

- 33 Agility (not counting enchant) = 33 AEP - 49 Stamina = (49/1.4286) = 34.30 AEP - 19 crit Rating = (19/1.5873) = 12.00 AEP - 24 Resilience Rating = 24 AEP - 40 Attack Power = (40/1.5385) = 26.17 AEP - Deadly Throw Bonus = 5 AEP Total Item AEP = 134.47

There is a similar system available for all classes, and this can be used as a great way to evaluate gear.

Giving up Too Much

Never give up too much for resilience or stamina.  For example, don’t forfeit 60 Spell Damage or 40 spell crit in order to gain 15 resilience or stamina.  This is far too much damage to sacrifice in order to gain a small margin of survivabilty.

Realize that you much still damage the enemy to beat them, so remember to keep enough damage and attackpower or plus healing to prevail in the battle.  All the resilience and stamina in the world will not save you if you can kill anything!

Rating Buster Addon

Another good tool for evaluating gear is an addon called Ratings Buster, this addon will break down all your stats into percentage values. This is a great evaluation tool for all classes.

You can see it lists all the extra benefits of agility or resilience, it also has a very nice comparative aspect. This allows you to compare any piece of gear with an equipped piece of gear, it will show you what you gain or what you lose.  This allows you to quickly make decisions on gear that would be an upgrade or not.

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Hope you enjoyed this section and check back later for the next section, which will help you find all the ways you can use to gain your PvP gear…it’s not just grinding honor!

I hope that everyone enjoyed the first section of the five part blog, and you now have your new interface all setup and ready to go.  Now we will need to make some tweaks to this interface so that it is more conducive to use in the Arenas and Battlegrounds.

The key to being successful in PvP is to not click ANYTHING, EVER!

In order to do this we will need to utilize two different aspects of our new User Interface. First we will need to use proper key bindings so everything is within the stretch of our fingers, and we can also use macros and the addon clique to reduce the amount of spells and abilities we need to have on our action bars.

If you love to PvP and enjoyed this content you will definitely want to check out Spugnort’s PvP Guide!

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KEY BINDINGS

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If you have downloaded Bartender3 or a similar action bar addon you will have a customizable setup now.  Along with this you will be able to change all the key bindings for each and every bar.  The most typical setup is to take Bars 1-3 and stack them on top of each other in the bottom middle of your screen.

Here is how I set up my action bars:

Combat Mode:

Stealth Mode:

Action Bar 1

Action Bar 1 is seen at the bottom of my screen, it has typical Key Bindings of my most used actions.  Places 1-6 are abilities I need to have very easy access to.  Now you can see at the end of the bar abilities that are usually bound to 0, -, and = are all bound to mouse actions. The normal = slot is bound to Mouse Button 4, which is the side mouse button.  The normal – slot is bound to mouse button 4 and shift at the same time, while the 0 spot is bound to Ctrl and mouse 4 at the same time.  These are all spells I use a lot while I am on the move, and my fingers need to be free for movement keys instead of spell keys.

Also you will notice that I have many macros bound to my keys.  One of the most important macros is a start attack macro for me.  I bind this to all of my start attacks, so if I am short on energy or the talent is on cooldown, then my character will still start attacking and I am not chasing someone around doing nothing waiting on energy.  This also allows me to leave a standard attack button off of my bars, and is key for all melee classes.  An example of this macro:

/startattack
/cast Shiv

This is a must have for all melee classes, and hunters!

Also you will notice that my Stealthed spells correspond directly with those on my normal action bars.  For example my shadowstep garrote macro lines up with my shadowstep shiv macro.  Obviously if I am garroting an enemy I will want a guaranteed snare on them immediately.  Think about lining up stance bars like this for easier use, and so they are able to be used with button spamming if you are lagging slightly.

Action Bar 2

This bar is bound the same as Action Bar 1 except that spells 1-6 are bound to shift and their corresponding number.  This is very easy to access even while moving your character with the movement keys.  Try it out and you will see your response time decreased significantly once you become used to this.

At first you may become frustrated with it, but over time you will become used to the setup and will begin to love it and see its advantages.

Normally I save this bar for my most used cooldown abilities such as sprint or evasion as a rogue example, or Howl of Terror or Amp Curse for a Warlock.  This gives you easy access to cooldowns without having to click them, which can keep you from moving and shorten your response time.  Which could mean  the death of a teammate, or the other person being healed to full before you can finish them off.

Action Bar 3

This bar is bound to Ctrl and the corresponding action number 1-6.  This is much like action bar two, and gives you easy access to 6 more spells while maintaining full control of your character.

What this does for you

Overall you should have easy access to at least 21 (6 on each action bar and 3 mouse binds) different spells and abilities no matter what stance you are in, which is a great increase over the normal 5 to 6 and then clicking everything else.

This means a faster reaction time to an extra 15-16 abilities, some of which you may have not even used before but needed!

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Macros

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Every successful PvP players uses tons of macros, from mouseover macros to buff synergy macros they all help you accomplish your job on the battlefield.

Cast Sequence Macros

This is a great type of macro that will help you save even more space on your action bars.  If you have two spells that you always cast in the same order then you can put those into a cast sequence macro and make two different buttons into one button.  For example, a Deathcoil into a fear macro, this is a must have for a Warlock.  A Warlock will almost always follow a deathcoil with a fear, binding them to the same button just makes sense.

Other examples would be Warlock DoT spells, often you will want to cast all your DoT spells in succession, so you can setup a macro that will cast Unstable Affliction -> Corruption -> Siphon Life -> Curse of Agony.  All your DoT Spells bound to a single button can you imagine how much that will open up for you on your action bars.

/castsequence reset=combat/target Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Curse of Agony, Siphon Life

These types of macros are also spammable for instant cast spells, you can simply just mash the button and when the Global Cooldown is over the next spell will cast.  The reset will allow you to stop in the middle of the cast sequence target a different player and it will start from the beginning of the cast sequence.  Or if you were to drop combat then the macro will also reset.

These are just a few examples of what you can do with cast sequence macros.

Mouseover Macros

Not having to actually switch targets but still cast a spell is an amazing feature of macros.  My favorite mouse-over macro is for Blind, but the same macro could be used for any crowd control effects like sheep or cyclone for example.

#show blind
/cast [target=focus,harm,exists,modifier:shift]blind;
/cast [target=mouseover, harm, exists]blind;
/cast blind

This will cast Blind on your mouseover target, or cast it on your current target if you have no mouseover target, or you can use shift and this to blind your focus.

This will also work with Hammer of Justice and any other effect you would like to use here, simply replace blind with the spell you would like to use.This is probably the most powerful type of macro you can use.  This allows you to keep your current target and cast something on a completely different target very quickly and efficiently.

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Clique Addon Usage

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This is one of the most powerful addons for use in PvP you will find.  This is mostly for use with caster classes, and mostly healers.  As a healer you can use this addon to heal your entire party without ever changing your target, in fact you can have an enemy targeted while you liberally heal and dispel your party.

You will be able to use mouse binds and key binds while over a unit frame to cast the corresponding spell on that character. This will allow you  to switch between targets much quicker than most players can by clicking on the unit frame to select the player and then click the spell you would like to cast.

To set this up go into your spell book by pressing “P”, and there you will see this addon has added an extra tab at the bottom.  Click on this tab to start binding your spells.

As an example when I play my Paladin I use:

• Mouse button 4 (on the side of the mouse) as my button to cast max rank Flash of Light.
• Shift and Mouse 4 will cast a Holy Light Rank 7, use this every10-12 seconds in place of Flash of Light in order to keep the Lights Grace buff active.
• Then max rank Holy Light is bound to Ctrl and Mouse 4.
• Blessing of Protection is the Middle Mouse Button.
• Cleanse is bound to Alt and Mouse 4.

These all increase my abiltiy to switch targets and cleanse effectively.  These are a requirement for healers in 5v5 matches where opposing teams will use a switch DPS target tactic to try and catch opposing healers off  guard.  With this addon it is much less likely that will happen to you!

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All of these ideas above should serve to increase your reaction time, and if you start using all of them you should see an enormous effect on your PvP ability once you get used to them.  In PvP, when every millisecond counts, these will make the sole difference between a loss and a win.

And we all know everyone loves to win! Check back later for Part 3……

First of all, lets explain what that big long title above means about this article.  This is meant to be a resource for players who are just starting to PvP, and wish to get into competitive arenas during season 3.  The guide will be divided into five sections, that I feel are the most important in preparing you for success in the Arenas.

1. Preparing Your User Interface for PvP
2. Prearing Your Macros and Keybinds for PvP
3. How To Gear for PvP
4. How To Acquire Your PvP Gear
5. Strategy and Communication in Arenas

Preparing Your User Interface for PvP

Contrary to what many players may believe there is a HUGE difference between the customized interface a PvP player uses versus that of a PvE player.

A player who is focused on PvE content does not need to see what his party and his raid are doing in great detail.  He is expected to perform his portion of a battle while they are expected to perform theirs. What a player does in PvE content is generally not solely dependant on the actions of his raid and party members. In contrast to that a player who is PvP focused, especially in arenas, will need to know everything about his party members.  They will need to have a focus target, casting bars for everyone, and a battleground or arena assistance mod.

All of this may seem a little overwhelming for many players upon first exposure, but just like anything after a short time of using this you will see that you become just as used to it as your old interface.

Addons all PvP Players MUST Have

All these addons can be found on Curse Gaming WoW Addons.

Unit Frames Addon

For PvP combat the blizzard unit frames will just not cut it.  They are not highly customizabel in any way, they don’t show casting bars for pary and raid members.  They are not able to show you group members targets, or the opposing teams targets.  All of these unit frames will become extremely important, as you try to coordinate your efforts with 2-4 other people while in an arena match.

There are a ton of choices, but the best overall choice is PitBull.  Pitbull is the most customizable unit frame addon available to players in World of Warcraft, players can choose from a very simple setup to a an extremely complex setup for each unit frame.

Simple Pitbull Unit Frame	Complex Pitbull Unit Frame

As you can see these unit frames are extremely different in makeup, as a competitive arena setup I prefer to use something similar to the simple unit frame on the left.

Why Pitbull and not one of the other thousand of choices available.  Pitbull integrates a casting bar into each and every unit frame.  This will allow you to monitor what your party is casting, who they are target and what their target is casting.

Why does that matter?  For example if you have a Warlock and a Druid on the same team they can easily see who is getting feared and who is getting cycloned.  They will not have to say everytime who is getting crown controlled, this is just one example of how raid frames make your life a million times easier in PvP if properly configured.

For a healer, Pitbull will also use your past healing to estimate the amount of health each of your heals return on average.  When you target a player and begin casting that heal it will display a green bar added to their health bar representing where their health should be after the heal.  This is great for healers to avoid overhealing, and to prepare for a second heal immediately following if this heal will not be enough.

These are not the only reasons why Pitbull is far superior to any other Unit Frame in World of Warcraft, these are just a few examples of its superiority.

Casting Bar Addon

The single most important addon any PvP player can have.  You will use this for your casting, your target’s casting, and even your focus’ casting.  These types of addons are krucial to timely interrupts of casting, and timely casting of your own spells and abilities.

The best casting bar addon I have ever used is Quartz.  The key to quartz is it will sample your latetency to the server and then use that latetency as a gage of the lag in your spell cast.  Meaning you can actually cast spells faster than you think, take a look at the screenshot below and I will explain how to use this properly.

During this frostbolt cast you can see the red portion at the end of the casting bar.  Once the yellow bar reaches that red area you are able to begin casting another frostbolt, or even hit an instant cast spell then.  Many players have seen as much as a 20% increase in their damage output with proper usage of this addon.

Quartz is also highly customizable and you can change the leangth and width of all the casting bars very easily.  It can also be used to monitor buffs and debuffs with ease.  This is a must have for all PvP players!

Scrolling Combat Text Addon

Once again the Blizzard version of scrolling combat text is not going to cut it for the competitive arena player.  You will need a mod that tells you where the damage is coming from, and frankly makes it look a little nicer!  You best option for a scrolling combat text addon is SCT, this addon allows your combat text to be highly configurable, which will help you situate things they way you like.

Here are a few examples:

Arena Unit Frame Utility Addon

This addon will list members of the opposition when you mouse over them in the arenas.  These addons will often also list the talent spec of the opposition so you see if you are up against a shadow priest or a healing priest for example.  The best addon for this is called Proximo, and can be seen here:

The best part about proximo is it comminucates between group members if you all have the addon.  Many of these addons will only update the opposing players health if you target them, but Proximo will send you udated health bars for all players your team has targetted.  Proximo also have the option to display each players talent spec.

The real kicker is that you can select a main assist for your group to target and that player will be highlighted with a box around them.  This way all the DPS know who to target and try and kill very easily.  Your party members can also use the announcement to say in party chat players who have low health and could be easily killed.  Overall this is great addon and a must have!

Action Bar Addon

No this isn’t an addon that helps you find the nearest location to buy alchohol to get your player drunk!  This addon will allow you to customize your action bars to a format that is more useable.  You can place the bars anywhere on your screen and they can be configured in any dimension you wish to use.  Bartender3 is most likely the easiest and most useable action bar addon and is what I currently use.

Visual Combat Log

The extracts the important information from the blizzard combat chat log and will display it to you in a much easier to read fashion.  The simplest, and most easy to use visual combat log is called Eavesdrop.  This is a spectacular addon that once you have it, you will not know what to do without it!

These are all examples of the awesome things you can do with eavesdrop.  First of all you can mouse over any of the lines to get more information as seen in the top right.  Then after combat has finished you wil get a recap of everything that happened.  The best part is, if you get a HUGE crit against someone all you have to do to link it is open a chat box and shift click that line!

This is a great visual utility that all PvPers should use!

Clique Casting Addon

This ia great addons for caster classes, especially healers.  Many healers have to take the time to select their target with the mouse then press a button the keyboard in order to cast the heal.  Clique allows you to NEVER switch targets and cast or heal whoever you want.  It will take different mouse binds and link them to a specific spell.  When you put your in-game cursor over that persons unit frame it will attempt to cast the spell you have bound to that mouse key.

Here is a screenshot of the setup interface, showing you how you can bind mouse strokes to spell casts.

You can see that three different spells have been bound to different variations of the left mouse.  This makes it very easy to focus on other things while continuing to cast spells with ease.

Time to go get your new UI!

These are the addons i feel you must have, and some players will want to add more into the mix obviously as we have just listed the basics.  Now you need to head to your favorite addon download site and grab these and get to configuring them!

Configuring these addons can be a really big headache until you figure it out, but remain patient and remember the great setup you will be rewarded with when you are finished.

Hope you enjoyed this and found it informative, Part 2 should be up on Monday!

Ok…so now i feel the need to talk about some stuff relating to WoW over the last month or so.* First off…the new commercials featuring Mr. T and William Shatner. I absolutely LOVE the Mr. T one, however when I showed it to my daughter (who is 16 and an avid WoW player) I will admit I felt a little old. She chuckled at the commercial only because I was laughing hysterically, then turned to me and said, “Who’s Mr. T anyways?”!! Let’s face it this one is definitely only for those of us over 30! The one with William Shatner, although not as funny, bridges the gap between the generations (kinda) I still see him as Captain Kirk(Star Trek), she knows him as Denny Crane(Boston Legal)…but hey, at least she knows who he is!! *Next let’s talk about the paid name changes Blizzard implemented. Ok, the good and the bad in this…you can finally get rid of that goofy name you gave your alt…after all who knew you would actually enjoy playing that class when you started?! But now think about that person in the virtual world who runs around annoying people and doing all they can to make a bad rep for themselves whether it be as a ninja or otherwise. Now when people catch on…for a mere 10 bucks they can change their name and begin anew(not good!). The best way to handle this is to put those annoying little buttheads on your ignore list. When they change their name (if they’re on your list) it will automatically update…problem solved! Now as a parent of the aforementioned 16 year old…this ability produces its own set of issues…after all you wouldn’t want to play the char you worked hard to get to 70 who’s name is “JonsBaby” when your new boyfriend’s name is Danny, so obviously you change the char’s name everytime you get a new boyfriend…teenagers (eye roll)! My suggestion is to name your characters (alts or otherwise) wisely from the beginning…after all doesn’t Blizzard get enough of our hard earned money?? *Next on my list is the online atlas. This is a pretty cool tool that Blizzard pushed live in late October. It’s a flash map with two optional settings: customized and detailed. So, if you want to see all of the flight paths available to Horde characters, just select that option on the customized map tab. Cool! The detailed map option will show all areas on a given continent and has icons to indicate certain things (like what faction is in a certain town, etc…). When you click on the icons you get a detailed description of what is available there. So, if you want to know if a certain town has a hunter trainer you can click the icon for that town and it will tell you! Or if you want the details of a certain dungeon, simply click…and voila! It’s cool! I would suggest that you turn the sounds off, they get kind of annoying. If you want to check it out go to: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/flashmap/ Well, i guess that’s about all I have to say for now…Keep checking back, after all there’s not many places you can get true insight from a cow !