Update: Apparently I need more sleep or coffee (or both), since S3 ring already have armor penetration ><. So yeah, it makes Angelista hardly an S4 item, still a decent replacement for S2 ring till the end of S3.

The forums are currently stormed by a bunch of whiners QQing about S4 having high (like 1600 for a chest is high) rating requirements, but that’s not what I’d like to talk about.

Patch 2.4 along with it’s badge rewards introduced one nice item: [Angelista's Revenge]. Some people might compare it to [Veteran's Band of Triumph], I’d rather compare it to [Vindicator's Band of Triumph], as with S4 we will have access to S4+S3 rings. So, let’s look at the stats, the difference between Angelista and Vindicator’s Band are:

- 6 stamina
- 22 resilience
- 0.3% crit (-26 crit rating + 29 agi = 0.88 -1.18%)
+ 14 attack power
+ whooping 126 armor penetration
+ 70 armor penetration

So yeah, the ring is pretty cool, kinda suboptimal for PvP if you consider the lack of resilience, but 126 armor pen is half of the whole S3 set. How much damage is 126 armor pen? Nothing really hard to count, against an enemy with 5k armor:

Armor reduction without reduction: 32.14%
Armor reduction with reduction: 31.58%

DPS increased by 0.82%

Obviously, that % is going up the more armor pen you stack and the less armor the target has (and vice versa), executioner, sunders and armor penetration gear all work perfectly well with each other. Pretty decent ring, I might not want to force myself to do heroics for it, but since we now can get badges from dailies, I’ll probably get it sooner or later.

Update: Just noticed I never linked my Armor Crab Calculator, so there you have it, for all your crabby needs!

Terhix

Yesterday, I managed to grow cotton and to pick, gin and bale it (aka did all daily). After that I was greatly bored. I looked up my friends list and there was this Shammy that asked me to play 2v2 some time ago. Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to try duo with him. Previously I only played with Druids and Paladin.
My guess was that we will get like 1800 and after few lost games we will stop, but hell its better than nothing.
We took some 1820 team and decided we will see how it goes. And than miracles begin.
I cannot stress this enough, how much in shock I was. We steamrolled every single team we came arcoss.
I never thought we can perform that good, offensive playstyle of Shamman perfectly fits my blood thirst. We were able to instagib priests thanks to mass purge, wf, bloodlust and its was a joke how easy that was. We did lose some games against shadow priests, but still we got 2k in now time with 13-4. After that, we gave that team away and decided to start new one to see how much further can we get if we start using ventrilo. We played for another 3h and managed to reach 2022 in 47 games, with one disconnect, we could prolly do it in 45.
I underestimated this setup and never really wanted to try it, but after yesterday I have to say this is by far best setup in 2v2 for warrior like me. Im not much fan of entire “lets outlast them”, i hate to turtle and kite.
Shaman is by far most offensive and one of the toughest healers you can get. He can tank s3 warrior with no mana loss or dish out decent dps with support of purges and wf. If you never concidered playing with shammy because “War/Druid pwns” try it, its really worth it.

Your master, S.

PS.

Ming is a tool.

SandMan

Warning, HUGE blog.

Name: Get a cool and short name, like Leh or Lemo, so people can armory or remember you easier. Thus, getting some attention and maybe a good healer.

Racials: Gnomes, Orc, Tauren, or reroll. Every little advantage helps… like getting out of the frost nova, resisting the intercept stun, or winning a match with 100 hp.

Hotkeys: You need them. Read previous blogs.

Macros: I personally use only 3 macros.
1. /equip “your shield here” /equip “your 1hander here”
2. /target focus /cast intercept(rank5)
3. /cast defensive stance /equip shield /cast spell reflect /equip 1hander

Internet Connection and Computer: Get good ones because graphical or internet lag will cost games.

Addons: NECB, a cool down count (I use OmniCC), a focus frame mod, and Proximo.

Weapon choice: Mace/Swords for 2s, 3s. Most prefer maces. Sword is probably better with a shaman.

Talents: 35/23/3 or 33/28, I’d socket Crit for either of the build because “burst is king.” I went crit and this is my build http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LV0xdGbqMhkbZVVzu0xRZc.

Gear/Enchant: Highest item level value per slot. IE 5 strength + 4 crit rating gem > 8 strength gem or 8 critical gem. 24 ap and minor speed meta gem + Surefooted boots enchant. 15 resilience > 6 stats. Executioner for 2hander and Mongoose for 1hander with 12 resilience to shield. I think I’ve covered the important ones.

Gems: I’d like to go over why Critical Strike Rating gems are better in arena than Attack Power gems. First, most of your burst is from intercepting a target, a white swing, then Mortal Striking and Whirl winding. If you take a look at this scenario, attack power helps white swing the most and is reduced on MS or WW because of AP normalization. However, critical strike rating helps all 3 attacks equally. The key word is “burst.” There’s a higher chance of you and/or your team down a target if you get critical hits (especially 2 or 3 in a row) on your target. If your white swing crits then you’d have blood frenzy or flurry for the next few attacks. Critical strike rating helps with other special attack such as hamstring, pummel, and execute. Maybe you’ll do 20 damage less each swing or 500 less damage after a match is over, but it’s the crit that wins games.

Professions: Jewel crafting and Enchanting for 24 attack power and 12 critical strike rating gems along with +4 all stats to each ring. Every little advantage adds up.

Cup of Shut the Beep Up: In case you lose you won’t be able to make up some excuse why you sucked or blame your team mate. Remember, you can’t arena alone. I prefer water in this case.

Duels: Dueling is not PvP? It helps a ton with reflexes, teaches you how to adapt to certain situation, and how certain classes react to you. If you got some time waiting for those 2on2 queues, try dueling. It gives you a better understanding of the other classes you don’t play.

Strategy: You need one against different make ups. For each of those make up you’ll need different strategy depending on what target they are on. For example, as a Arms Warrior/ Holy Priest vs Shadow Priest and Shadow step Rogue
If they are on my priest, I would stick on their shadow priest
Call for dispels whenever power word shield is up
I would pummel the mind blast
Intervene into hamstring / disarm rogue
Intercept back on the priest during a cast

If they are on me, I put on a mace and shield and reflect mind blast
Demoralize/Thunderclap/Mortal Strike/Overpower the rogue
Shield block if you have the extra rage
Go to berserker stance then intercept the priest if he mind blasts if you sucked and reflected something useless.
Disarm only if the rogue’s evasion is off.
Use your battle master’s trinket or fear to save yourself.

Winning = arena points/ratings
Losing = develop strategies, stop queuing because they are your counter-comp, or counter-comp back.
Counter-comp is part of the game, learn to adjust to it.

Counter spelling as a warrrior: (mainly for 2s/3s)
Regardless of what others say, you can lock down healers. We have a counter spell, the macro for it is
/target focus
/cast intercept(rank 5)
Always set a focus target during the match.
Work on your communication with your team so you can lock down a target longer.
Example: Warrior Mage Priest
“I’m going to get the first interrupt” your pummel interrupts holy light
“I’m going to counter-spell his next one” Mage counter spells Paladin’s flash of light
“I got the next one” I would use the focus/intercept macro and interrupt the heal
I then stand right next to the healer and wait for the stun to wear off so I can pummel while my teammates are beating down a target.

Here are some useful arena tips:
Say something when you’re going to pummel so your team don’t waste their interrupt
Spam Hamstring (Mace stuns) if your healer needs to peel off something
Shield reflect something useful
Call out “druid’s innervated, dispel or purge”“going to get sheeped, dispel”
Throw at the caster if you know they are going to drink
Be aware of your/healer’s position, put up raid icons so you can see them easier
Don’t disarm when the rogue is evasion’d unless you’re behind them/they’re stunned.
Innervate your team if you need to reposition/save yourself/teammate
Get anger management / imp hamstring/ imp overpower
Taunt pets to buy time for your healer to drink
Arms warrior can tank almost any heroic instances, being a good tank might help you play better when being focus fired (ie spam defensive abilities/trinket/health stones)
LoS sheeps/entangles if you think it’s coming
The shoulders, gloves, and throwing weapon are poor upgrades, get them last
Predict whether the druid is going to cyclone you or if the paladin is going to heal, run to them and get ready to pummel. You’ll need intuition or experience here
Get known by dueling/performing well in arena/or pay to play with top players and hope they notice you then people will want you on their team
If your target runs right next to a caster, be ready to quickly switch target and pummel
Hotkey everything, including your trinkets and macros
Pummel that frost bolt, lighting bolt, or mind blast. Why? you’re also stopping that ice lance, earth shock, or shadow word death.
Piercing Howl when people are bunched up.
Fear when something is about to die, offensively or defensively
Pummel, intercept, and then pummel can lock down casters

Post advice in comments and I’ll be sure to add to this list. Any other comments, suggestions, requests, or corrections are welcomed.

Leh

Yesterday, our 5v5 team got a new warlock and we were one win away from hitting 2k rating with warrior/warlock/ele shammy/priest/pala setup, considering most of our guys are not gear-capped and we played this setup for the first time, we have huge potential here, and it’s a blast comparing to 2v2 (as my pally says: “I’d rather hit the desk with my head than play 2v2″). The team first played 10 games with “secondary squad” so everyone can get 30%, they dropped 1866 to 184x or something, no hard feelings, everything working as intended. Then we played our new setup for the first time and in 20 games we had 13 win streak, giving us total of 17 wins and 3 loses, too bad those 3 loses were for 20, 19 and 26 (that was our last game, bad mistakes happen when people get tired), ended at 194X which is still a huge jump in rating comparing to last week, could still play 3 games today without people dropping < 30%, but we wouldn’t do 2k unless those 3 games were wins for 20 points. We managed to beat one supposed to be good team on our realm (hi2u Wolowin ;]) for 20+ after they won with our 2ndary squad 5 times during those 10 games they played, felt good. Either way we can always get 2k early next week to get our shammy and priest new shoulders (they, like me, will upgrade S1 to S3).

5v5 is not only better balanced, but it’s much less stressful, when playing 2v2 in a setup that has very low mistake margin, a single mistake of one of you can decide on the result of the game. In 5v5 there is always backup healer, or backup dps. If I stand in nova and out of LoS from pally, there can be still a priest around to dispell me and so on. Basically instead of swearing and doing drama, we had a really good time yesterday, even when we lost. We are also starting to get serious points per week so guys from the “secondary squad” will get geared up faster and we can try different things (were doing really fine with hunter instead of the lock, our new lock got much better gear than the hunter tho).

Terhix

UPDATE: Added MatsT’s comments

Why would you pick a Paladin and not a Druid? I don’t know, you might know someone you used to play for months in wow or even before who got well geared Pally (my case), you might not know any Druid, or all the Druids you know already do 2v2 with a warrior, or better yet, a warlock or hunter. Either way, you are foolish enough to want to get your ass up on the ladder with what you have, since if you don’t have what you like, you like what you have. So here is a short list of tactics for most popular 2v2 teams you might face:

WARRIOR/DRUID
Status: winnable

It’s very unlikely you will win a mana war with such team, since it’s very easy for druid left alone to drink, while hots keep his warrior alive. What we did against that setup was simply killing the druid, you will need Mace Spec for that, a bit of luck, good timing on pummel, good to have freedom under your feet, and the druid MUST have Judgment of Justice on his ass. Since the druid starts in stealth, start on the warrior but don’t beat him too hard, get as much rage as you can for when the druid shows up. You can trinket one cyclone and than you have to pummel all the rest.

Warrior/druid: You are partly right here, as killing the druid is the way to go. However, it’s quite a bit more complicated than you make it sound. Against a good druid, you have little to no chance to catch him and kill him straight up, even with a JoJ. In order to win, it is imperative that you can also help your paladin to drink, until you finally get that lucky crit+mace stun streak that will kill the druid. Sometimes, a simple hamstring+freedom can let paladin get away and drink on other side of pillar. Sometimes, you will have to wait until druid tries to drink, then nuke warrior hard, to force the warrior into turtling and meeting up with his druid, while your paladin drinks. We have never lost this matchup in season 2 nor 3, but the wins often take as long as 15 minutes, when trinket+NS is on cooldown and i i get lucky.

WARLOCK/DRUID
Status: pain in the ass

Basically same thing as with warrior/druid, except this time you are killing the druid with a timer, that timer is your pally’s mana being constantly drained. You can also try to do it the “normal” way, push on the warlock, kill the pet, back on the warlock, kill another pet, your pally can drink now, push on the warlock and if they do enough mistakes you have a chance to win. Pummel all fears and mana drains you can.

ROGUE/PRIEST (HEALER)
Status: this is your day!

Try to get in combat, find the rogue or do whatever not to get pally sapped. Picking your target depends on what the rogue will do, if he goes for your pally you have to go for the rogue, if he goes for you, you can go for either priest or rogue. If you decide to go for the priest with rogue on your back (not good idea if it’s dagger rogue btw), prayer of mending will heal for some nice amounts every time you use whirlwind, there are two solutions for that: a) don’t use whirlwind or b) use sweeping strikes, I prefer b, you will have tons of rage anyway from rogue beating you. If you stay on the rogue and your pally is smart enough to LoS mana burns, you will win mana war, the priest can’t really do many mana burns since after evasion fades he will have to drop heavy healing bombs on the rogue. It’s good idea if your pally will assist you with hammer of justice on the rogue when he use evasion, also use intercept to stun the rogue whenever you can, stun means he can’t dodge, and dodge is what makes keeping MS debuff on him difficult, either way you should deliver him a lot of pain.

Rogue/DiscPriest: After the HARP nerf, this is one of the better matchups. However, it’s not nearly as simple as sticking on the rogue and winning the mana war. If your paladin can stand still and keep you up with flash of lights, yes, his mana will last longer. However, the other team won’t let him do this. The priest can easily keep the rogue up while still having plenty of time to chase paladin with fears and mana burns. If the paladin is forced to use holy lights to keep you up between LoS-ing mana burns, the priest’s mana will last longer. In addition to this, keep in mind that even ONE dodged mortal strike will cause mortal strike debuff to fall off for at least 2 seconds, which is more than enough for their priest to land a greater heal. The strategy to winning usually involves staying on the priest whenever there is an opportunity to do so. Your damage output becomes a lot higher, and your paladin will have a lot more freedom to stand still and heal, or even drink. Once their rogue manage to peel you from the priest, you usually have no choice except hitting the rogue, especially when pillars is involved. The priest will typically heal himself to full and try to drink. If you can not follow him, you must instead nuke the rogue to force the priest to come back. This may be a win opportunity if you have HoJ and/or intimidating shout to cc druid while finishing rogue with paladins help. If you don’t think you can pull it off, intercept the priest as soon as he comes back into LoS. This will put pressure on the priest while the rogue is still on low hp. Hopefully, the priest won’t have enough to heal both himself and the rogue and still get away and drink more. Eventually the priest will oom and die.

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Terhix