New player! Keybinds, Interface, Leveling & Macros for PVP?!

PVP Arenas
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Hello all,

What is the best way to get started as a brand new WoW PvPer?

My biggest challenges:

:heavy_check_mark: Picking a main - I have leveled up and played a Paladin, Rogue, Priest, Mage to between level 30 to 50. I ultimately decided that I wanted to main an arms warrior as I really like the playstyle and the role it’s expected to play in PvP.

Leveling Strategy - Should I rush to level 60 or should I freeze my exp at level 49 so I can avoid getting dumpstered by the current 60 crowd? What would be the most time efficient? Keep in mind that I have no gear (maybe rushing to 60 to start the gear grind) but I also need to put in games to just get comfortable with performing my mechanics and keybinds.

Interface - there are so many things to do with the interface. I recently installed Elvui and attempted to started playing with it, but I’d rather just a minimalist approach to something tried and proven. Any suggestions?

Keybinds and Macros - This causes me the most stress. I look at so many other YouTubers and they have clean bars for their skills and I have rows and rows of skills that I’m attempting to find a key to put the skill on so I can start my muscle memory going and it’s overwhelming. Bajheera has an hour long video on his macros and I’m also getting ideas from Stoopzz_TV on his Arms Warrior PvP guide, but no one just lays out their exact keybinds and macros. I would get so much further by just being able to use a complete competent setup and working it to my comfort zone vs attempting to have to learn how to build it all from the start.

I’m sorry for my rant, but I’m struggling to get setup to even start the process to learning how to pvp. If you have any advice, suggestions, comments, PLEASE share.

Thank you so much!

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I’d recommend buying AH greens at 50, go threads of fate, and just level to 60.

I stress threads of fate as completing content allows you gain some renown with your covenant, typically hitting 10-15 renown by 60.

An optional step would be honor capping before you hit 60. Spamming BGs and skirmishes should get you to about level 56. This allows you to buy certain pieces of gear and upgrade them to 184ilvl.

I recommend honor capping if you have the patience, as it’s not only good practice, but additionally helps supplement gear that’s missing from your covenant campaign.

Completing your covenant campaign rewards a full set of gear, including a weapon, but not rings, necklace, or trinkets. Buying those items with honor cap helps a good deal.

If you’re looking solely for a quick rush to 60, just go threads of fate and spam dungeons.

The default UI is great. I personally play with Bartender, which allows me to clean my interface up a lot. Like you I’m very minimalist, and tend to tunnel a lot, so having only the most important things on my screen is helpful.

Regardless of what you choose, there’s several addons and modulations you ought to snag which make a world of difference in your gameplay.

Addons of note being:

  • BigDebuffs
  • OmniBar
  • Gladius or sArena
  • Ability Team Tracker
  • Battleground Targets

What you’re looking for here is something I’d be willing to help you with, but it’d be easier to just have an actual conversation.

I’m typically on evenings after 7:30PM EST, feel free to add my tag. DMH#11126

I’d be happy to give you my discord and we can hash out the macros and keybinds.

Otherwise I hope this helped a bit!

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So if you haven’t gotten 60 before, I’m pretty sure you can’t do threads of fate. So you’ll have to go through the entire campaign before picking a covenant and really being able to do end game content competitively.
The biggest problem you’ll have is gearing. If all you want to do is pvp then for the first couple of days you’ll end up just being a punching bag for everyone, but eventually you’ll cath up.
The best way to get honor conq, and get the raiting requirements for gear are rbg’s. If you can manage to play a couple a day you’ll be able to get a ton of honor and conquest. Once you do that you should try and push to 1800 in rbg’s so you can upgrade your gear to 220+. This will give you a much more even footing when trying to play arena. It’s not impossible to get raiting in 2’s or 3’s and upgrade your gear that way, but if you are new to the game it’ll be a rough start. Rbg’s just provide much better rewards and even if you suck you can put together a decent group to carry you higher than you would be able to manage qing something like 2’s where it’s much more focused on your individual skill. If you are struggling to put together rbg groups just spam normal bg’s. You still get pretty decent honor and a bit of conquest from them. You’ll be able to put together some decent honor gear after a while so you can be more competitive. Also make sure to try and do the pvp quests you get every week, they give pretty good rewards for minimal effort.

And one last thing, thats kinda important. If you don’t really have a decent group of people that you are planning on playing with you should probably play horde. Alliance lfg for pvp is pretty dead currently so it’ll be hard to find anyone to play with. Horde has way more players currently.

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Since this is the arena forums I’ll be mostly talking about it.

I changed my movement keys to s, D, f. D being walk forward. This opens up a row of keys to the left of the movement, while giving 2 bars above fingers, and keeping your hands on the home row just like typing, so navigating your keybinds becomes more like typing.

I use elvui, while it was overwhelming at first, once I perfected it I loved it. I pretty much keep all my abilities around my personal unit frame. I have 4 bars that are hidden, which where my actual keybinds lie. The bars I have showing are only abilities with cooldowns pretty much, or situationals, like I show flash heal on my visual bar even though its a spammable, because when you get the instant heal proc it shows a number over the flash heal allowing me to know how many stacks I have. This will help clear your screen up. Generally I organize my abilities by: Defensive cooldowns, offensive cooldowns, personal cooldowns, targeted cooldowns, rotational abilities (dispel and holy words go here for my priest), mobility abilities, and then a section for “left over abilities” like symbol of hope (mana regen) . It’s also a good idea to keep a food/water on your visual bar, its easy to forget to stock up, and its also used as a way to see if I’m in combat or not (pretty much to counter getting sapped).

When actually choosing what button to use for what ability, a good idea is to actually not keep similar abilities near each other, as I’ve found out, that having your defensives all near each other is a risk that accidently slipping or fat finger will fire off a CD that wasn’t needed at the time, so I try to give atleast 1 key space inbetween each cooldown. Keybind your buffs too as they can get dispel mid combat anytime. Even bind things like levitate, you never know when you need it. Keep interupts very close to your movement keys as timing is critical.

For arena you will need atleast 3, and preferably 6 targeting keybinds for party and arena targets.

I bought a razer naga for targeting and focus macros.

Gladiusex is important for arena. Pretty much a must.
Omnicc is just about as important.
Gladiatorlossa is great for learning, and may even be a staple when you are a good player. It’s basically sound alerts when certain abilities are used.

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yeah you get very little value investing in pre 60 PvP
this games almost entirely about game knowledge, meta/match ups, and muscle memory

rush to 60 and rush to gear because most experiences prior to either of those will mean pretty little in your development

i really recommend
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/sui/screenshots

it’s basically just an aesthetic update to default ui with a bunch of useful scripts/small addons included easily togglable through an in-game control panel

the only real MUST haves imo
Omnibar / Bigdebuffs

but strong recommend
Omnicc
Omnicds
Weakauras

@arena 1,2,3 is massively useful and i’d try to build muscle memory asap
it takes a little to adjust to but it’s absolutely worth it over being a focus / focus juggler

as arms you have a little more wiggle room as you don’t really need @123 for pummel the way you would a ranged kick
but for me personally i suggest pummel/stormbolt/disarm 123s and 2 [@playername1] / [@playername2] intervene macros

not sure if you have a naga but having your 123s on naga binds is actually so op

be okay with losing and be okay with sucking for a while

play alts in random content to learn how they work
game knowledge is almost everything
natural talent is so much less impactful in this game than most
knowing match ups and the current meta will take you REAL far

try to find like minded players you enjoy playing with
losing a bunch with players that you can communicate with is almost always a much better investment than trying to find better and betters players after every q sesh

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Check out the skill capped channel on YouTube. They answer pretty much all of your questions

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Thank you so much guys!
I’m working on leveling to 60, downloaded all of the recommended plugins, heavily considering switching to Horde, purchased a g600 mmo mouse, remapped a good amount of my keybinds, and got a subscription to Skill Capped to watch the videos.

Your responses helped me out tremendously. Thank you for taking the time out!

Volk I will follow up!