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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Strategy

Before you enter each arena game you should lay out a strategy for each of the different types of teams you will meet.  For example, you should have a different strategy for caster heavy teas, healing heavy teams, melee heavy teams, well balanced teams, or all/high DPS teams.  Each of these teams will require a slightly different strategy from your team as a whole.  Once may require more healing or crowd control while another may leave your healers free to mana burn or crowd control too.

It is important that your team talk about what you plan to do before you even join a match.  Once in the match and you can see the other team take a quick second to talk about what you would like to do against this team.

Before you enter the match you should establish sho is going to your main assist for all DPS, so that if you decide to call a switch of targets everyone knows who to follow.  Plus everyone can set macros to assist that person when they are changing targets to crowd control or heal.

Be Adaptive

If your strategy is not working don’t keep beating your head against a wall.  Change it while in the arena, call a switch of target for DPS or call for more crowd control.  Shift crowd control from DPS to healers, these are all things that are very easy to change during the course of battle.

Talk it over afterwards

Even if you win a game extremely easy you should always evaluate every single match.  Talk about what went right and what you think you should continue doing.  Talk about some things you might have gotten luck yon, that could come back to bite you later on.  Also remember to talk about what went wrong, and what could have been done better individually and as a whole.

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If you take these ideas to heart and truly execute them while playing in competitive arenas you will surely see an increase in your record and rise in your rating.

I hope you enjoyed this series on getting into competitive arenas, if you enjoyed this I highly suggest you check out Spugnort’s PvP Guide!