I want to get better at pvp but i feel like i just get destroyed no matter the class im fighting. How do you get better at pvp and learning to defeat other classes? I play a frost mage and whenever i go against a mage playing my alt i get ruined lol
Focus on everything but damage, dgaf about contributing damage for maybe like the first 10 hours of play. Then when you have a sense of what cc/utility is useful/wasted in what scenarios, and you start to have more open globals in bigger fights start throwing damage around. If you get caught in a solo just try and live / waste the other persons time, treat it as a game of cat and mouse, bonus if you find two cats.
poly spam interrupts on a healer to land a kill, blizzard peeling a teammate, knocking caster, klepto dispels will all help team fights more than just padding damage randomly. Its suboptimal to focus entirely on one aspect of combat, but if you’re doing something like a 90/10 damage/utility split then you’re not going to optimize closer to a 60/40 by just winging it, you have to commit to forgetting about damage for a bit, you’ll start to notice scenarios where an extra 20% of pressure on an enemy would’ve landed a kill, as you notice those trends use that knowledge for future fights when you are putting thought into damage and utility.
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Wow thats great advice! Thank you so much! And would you say over time of playing against other players ill slowly but surely learn other class abilities to watch out for? I heard a streamer say to play all other classes to learn their play style but i dont really vibe with other classes like i do a mage. And really want to get good on my main first
Its probably worth at least looking at the pve guides to figure out what cooldowns different specs have for damage/healing. Damage cds will usually be stacked in the pve opener so its very early in the guide where they run over what they are.
Eventually you’ll get the feel, so say you’re going against a rogue and you don’t have block, if they use shadowblades it may just be better to take the L, grab a quick gy respawn and come back instead of wasting cold snap/anything else. You could run gy timers so for example dieing in a casual bg but if its about to be a 2s res then it is better than living 5s and having a 27s res.
However in rated the gy is fixed time so I think its better to just habitually play around a static timer in all content, if you happen to get a short timer take it as an added bonus in casual bgs. The only time I’d really delay a sure self death in rated would be if its over important ground about to be reinforced or its >1v1 and you’re just wasting multiple enemies time.
Defensives are probably more complicated to learn about in a bg setting as sometimes they’re good to trade 1:1 for offensives, and others they’re worth using in a 2/3v1 to delay.
I actually think mage is a class that tests your awareness more than it hones it. Its very fast / requires quick judgement calls so if you’re trying to learn positioning while playing the class that is supposed to blink/displace/alter time around a fight, you’re not really not giving yourself a lot of opportunity to slow your mind and watch things, like you would with something like an ele shaman where your mobility is more “natural” but you still have a lot of utility / cc that overlaps with the mage class.
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Watch other players play. What are they doing different? Being good at pvp is about having a high awareness of everything going on in the game. You should generally understand your opponent and what spells/abilities they’re using as they’re using them. When an enemy mage pops alter time do you know immediately know and start spellstealing it? Addons are crucial. Optimizing your keybinds and graphics settings is great too. Watch lots of guides on YouTube. You could spend a single weekend just watching videos and setting up add-ons and your UI and this will boost your gameplay significantly, however practice is what will take you across the finish line. For playing mage, I would specifically recommend watching Aeghis and Xaryu videos.
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I’d say the opposite to be honest. It’s important to learn how to deal the highest amount of damage and even more so while under pressure. You need to know your offensive global usage without thinking. It’s also the easiest to learn compared to many other aspects of PvP. Once you can do this blindfolded then you should focus on defensive CD usage, when to trade them against your opponents, CC usage and DRs. They’re all important but in a lot of situations being able to maintain pressure while under pressure can be just as important as defensive usage and CC. Sure you can get kills when you’re trading defensively and chaining CC well but you’ll get way more if you understand your damage rotations and kill windows while doing so.
Always be casting.
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sorry if this is a dumb question, but how do you find comfortable keybinds? I have watched multiple videos about how to efficiently keybind and learn your keybinds. Is it helpful to find binds for all spells and practice against a training dummy, do i find what comfortable and throw them into practice in a BG for example? i have reworked my binds according to a skill capped video and trying out what they recommended to do
There is a very recent skill-capped video on key binds. It also goes over proper movement and other basics like camera settings. Would suggest that you start with that and ensure that you have a solid setup. Everything needs to be key bound (no clicking anything), no keyboard turning etc. My 2 cents is to bite the bullet now and get a strong setup, even if it feels weird at first.
Beyond that. lots of good advice in here, so i won’t regurgitate it. I’ll add to keep in mind that WoW PvP is pretty hard, and you’re often times competing with people that have decades of experience and thousands upon thousands of practice reps. One big thing is to persevere and get a lot of your own practice reps in. There is no corner cutting practice in this game. its like a fighting game in that sense. you just have to grind it out and slowly get better.
I see that you talk about watching the skilled capped video. There are two layers to it imo. There are keys that are naturally comfortable like the 1 2 and 3 keys, and then binds that are decently easy to access but will not feel natural at first. For example, if you use shift mouse wheel up, this may feel weird at first since your brain hasn’t built that connection yet, but once you get used to it its a great bind.
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what modifier is better shift or alt or ctrl? ive tried alt and shift but ctrl feels so far. i also have a gaming mouse with the extra buttons on the side
I use all 3, but with limitations on alt and ctrl. Shift ill use with almost anything. Alt i do 1, 2, but not 3 since it criss crosses my fingers. then i use alt qwe, alt asd, and alt of all mouse binds. Ctrl, i only do qwe and asd. Can add it to mouse binds as well but i just dont need them.
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I always try to place my frequently used buttons on my “easy” binds and then work out from there. And always try to keep my defensives and trinket in something I can quickly access. But it really all comes down to personal preference. There is no right or wrong, just guidelines.
When I was first learning my keybinds I’d just add in 1-3 or so at a time. And play like that until I felt comfortable, and then added more.
I treated gameplay the same way. Ideally I’d get a details log of a good player and I’d just look and see what buttons they are pressing and try to understand why. Or watch streams/videos to see what other players are doing. Then pick one single thing, i.e. chaining poly on a healer while doing damage, and focus on improving that one thing until it was second nature.
Eventually you will have your class figured out and can start focusing on others more. Like start focusing on kicking/ccing healers. And just keep building and building.
As stated previously, I personally believe learning how to do MAX damage will be more to your benefit than anything. The more damage you do, the more defensive your opponent has to play, the more time you have to think/make decisions. That is a good base to build upon.
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Thank you all for the advice! i will try it all! i appreciate the guidance. 
skill-capped is a great cite
They have lots of great videos from general strats to playing different classes. They even have an Add-On specific for pvp that’s awesome. I watched some of the frost mage series and found it helpful.
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That skill capped video is great and you should meticulously follow their advice for keybinding because every tip there is on point. Remember it’s best practice to use a shift modifier for focus abilities.
When I’m playing I always assign a focus target, generally a healer. I have counterspell on my mousebutton 4 . I have focus counterspell on shift mousebutton 4 so I can watch for my focus target to cast out of the corner of my eye and kick his spellcast without changing target.
Besides left and right click, my mouse has 8 buttons I use. Yes 8. It has middle mouse button, scrollwheel up and down, mousebutton 4 and 5 on the left side. An additional thumb trigger button on the left side, and a couple more auxiliary buttons on the top (I don’t use these two often). Your most important spells should go on the mouse. Why? Because you have quicker and more fluid reaction times with buttons on your mouse. It also just mentally helps to have your spells divided up between both hands instead of all on one hand. I put all my cc, including spell interrupts on the mouse. Movement abilities like blink go well on the mouse (personally I’ve always used G for these however). Abilities that require you to click and place go well on the mouse like flamestrike.
One quick thing about targeting. I don’t use tab to cycle targets, I personally use B for this because it’s right where my thumb rests and it’s always worked well for me. (Use what is comfortable for you, a mouse button would probably be good too). Regardless, I would go into keybindings and change your tab target from “target nearest enemy” to “target nearest enemy player”. Now you won’t have to cycle through tab targeting pets or totems. I use shift-B to tab target friendly players, if for instance I want to rescue someone on my dev evoker.
For assigning focus, I made a macro to mouse over an enemy player (it has to be hostile and it has to be a player so I can’t focus an NPC or a friendly player by mistake) and I assigned this to middle mouse button. This has been massive for me as I can easily change focus in the heat of a battle flawlessly. For arenas many players use arena1, arena2, arena3 but I find this too cumbersome and prefer focus targeting. I use NeatPlates addon and there’s a setting to increase the clickable size of nameplates which I maxed out so it’s hard to misclick. I also used NeatPlates to enlarge the nameplates of my target and focus target and it even puts two little indicator arrows on my focus targets nameplate so I can clearly see who my focus target is. I also used an addon called cursormod to increase the size of my cursor and make it where it doesn’t disappear when dragging the camera so I never lose track of my cursor in a fight. This stuff has helped massively for me. Every split second counts and you should be able to effortlessly change targets without wasting global cooldowns and feeling frustrated.
One last thing, that I’ve done for over ten years: Most PC games have movement bound to WASD. However, I once watched a video that got me to switch to ESDF (D and F are changed to strafe, not turn). This adds a row of convenient keybinds on the left side of your hand (Q, A, and Z) as well as makes it more comfortable to hit Shift and Ctrl modifiers with your pinky. With a final benefit being that your keyboard has a little nub on the F key that your index finger is supposed to rest on. This way you can literally feel when your hand is in the correct position and your hand will also be in the correct typist position if you know or are interested in learning correct typist fingerings on a computer which helps with quickly typing in chat while playing a battleground blitz for example.
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Wow thank you! So ive have my rotation attack abilities keybinded on my mouse witht he side buttons. But do you think you think its be more efficient to have rotation abilities on the keyboard instead of moving my thumb back and forth trying to get roation damage out?
I have a mmo mouse, so basically I do basically everything with my thumb and the keyboard just supplements. There is really no right or wrong, just gotta do whatever works best or is the most comfortable for you.
Don’t forget to use your mouse wheel as well. Very handy for things that you spam and can easily be used with modifiers. Middle click too! 12 keybinds right there by itself, more if your middle mouse also does left/right clicks.
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Focus on playing your character. Make sure you’ve keybound all of your spells and get used to using them a couple at a time. An mmo mouse helps a ton. In between Que pops spam your damage rotation until it becomes second nature. Most of your damage is all instant so it help to just know it by heart. Remember you can bait an interrupt with poly and then just go ham even if you don’t get precog. I would look frost mage up on YouTube, you’ll find pointers there. There’s even one about 15 mage tricks or something.
Edit: good luck homie!!!
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What the other guy said. Do what works for you. I’ve never like those razr mouses with like 9 little buttons on the side because my thumb is big and I simply can’t hit those tiny buttons. If you are comfortable with those then more power to you. However putting your rotational spells on your mouse isn’t in agreement with the skillcapped keybinding video but it’s all about what’s comfortable for you. What makes since to me is putting more of my damage and defensive abilities on my keyboard and things that are utility oriented like ring of frost on my mouse. I’ve always put my cc on the mouse scroll up and down wheel. For instance, polymorph is scroll up. When I play rogue blind is scroll up and sap is scroll down. If I want to sap my focus target then I just hold shift and scroll down. Camera zoom in and out are hardly something you ever need to mess with but I did keybinds it to shift arrow up and shift arrow down. I also keybound autorun to backspace in case I need to turn on autorun and I keybound toggle run/walk to shift “/” so I don’t accidently press it.
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