If you go into youtube and type “pvp guide for class X” you’ll find a ton of videos that will show you what race to play, what talents to spec into, which covenant abilities to pick up, and what a rotation might look like. But very few of them (at least, very few that I’ve seen) actually offer practical gameplay advice. Based off what you read on these forums, tons of people say things like “you just need a ton of experience to learn the game” but I also feel like this is bad advice. If you’re doing the same thing over and over again, you can’t expect to just magically improve. It’s like the flawed old adage that says “practice makes perfect” when it’s actually “perfect practice makes perfect.”
To preface this, I’m not some elitist pvp god. I’m a normal casual player who was around 1470 after 137 games of 2v2 (ilvl 203). I became aware of the mistakes I was making, made the adjustments, and saw a dramatic improvement rapidly. After the first 137 games, I had about a 52% win rate. This week, playing 33 games, my rating has improved to 1611 with a 64% win rate, and our MMR was just under 1700. I don’t for a second believe that this improvement came from the experience of those first 137 games but rather what I learned to improve my gameplay. Here’s what I implemented, hoping it can help some people here.
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In order to be succesful in rated arena, you have to understand the other classes. It’s not enough to know your own class inside and backwards. You have to know what cooldowns your enemy has both offensively and defensively, and what utility they have, and the mechanics of said abilities. It doesn’t matter if your talents, gear and rotation is the same as the pros. If you’re pumping DPS into a monk’s karma or with mindgames on you, you deserve to lose. This ties into the next thing which is;
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Rated pvp is all about CD trading. You have to know what to do when your opponent pops whichever CD. A defensive for an offensive is usually a good trade (IE popping a ‘wall’ when a mage combusts if you’re healer is stuck in a CC) What seperates the “goods” from the “bads” is good decision making when it comes to CD trading. A perfect go or kill window is when the opposing team doesn’t have anything in the way of a potent CD to stop you from killing them. Knowing that a ret can crush you when wings are up, or that hitting into iceblock when bursting is a bad move is essential.
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Awareness is the mojo that ties it all together. You can know all the class CDs, you can know what to do when those CDs are used, but it isn’t going to help you a smidge if you don’t know when those things are happening. There are many ways to learn the CDS (spell animations, sounds) but the simplest solution is weakauras. You can make weakauras that will notify you for every important CD in pvp. Hell, you can even make weakauras that help you know when you should use certain utility (ever play with a ret who specs into blessing of sanc but never presses it? maybe a warrior who doesn’t use intervene? someone with a battlemaster trinket that never uses it? You can make weakauras for anything). You can also use omnibar for tracking said CDs (helping you set up the kill windows and make better decisions).
If I hadn’t made the effort to make these adjustments to my gameplay, I’d still be that 1470 guy for the next 130+ games. Instead, I made some adjustments, got a little addon help, and got nearly 150 rating in a single session of 33 games. The most satisfying part is that I didn’t have to grind away hours without getting better, and I was able to drastically up my ilvl by reaching the next tier. Now that I understand the mechanics of arena a bit better, I expect the “experience” aspect will play more of a role than it did before. My ilvl is now 210 and I look forward to trying to reach the next plateu (1800, my eyes are on you). However in a very short amount of time I was able to get much better without an extreme amount of effort. It’s not about grinding, it’s about smarter gameplay and decision making.
EDITS: Some things I forgot to include. Watching streamers of the best players of my class helped tremendously. Seeing what they do in actual arenas and how they react to certain things is a great learning tool. Another thing is that, I think the most valuable thing experience can give when it comes to arena is having the knowledge of what mistakes you made during a game. It’s incredibly frustrating not knowing what you did wrong (or what your teammate did wrong) because you don’t have a solid base of understanding mechanics. Which is why I think taking the time to learn other classes is so important. Being able to identify which mistakes you made in a game is the only way to correct them moving forward.
Lastly, I realize none of this is groundbreaking nor particularly interesting for people who are already good at pvp. Just thought it might help some casual players like it helped me.
