Alternative Arena

Last weekend we had some time to do Arenas and decided to start off with our alts first, and then go to our mains. I played my priest and my partner played his rogue; at first I started off shadow, with the idea that quicker games would be ideal.

Let me tell you, shadow priests with only a few pieces of PvP gear (and not even the 2 piece trinket bonus!) die really quickly. Heck, I didn't even have the CC breaking trinket at the beginning! I would get hit by a stun right away and be practically dead before it wore off.

After 4-5 games where I fell over dead just because the other team looked at me, I switched to Discipline. We did pretty well with that comp, even getting our MMR up into the 14-1500 range! We ended up cranking out 40+ games on our alts and never even switched to our mains. We went 27-17 overall, so probably won about 67% of our games as Disc/Rogue.

Boy is he ugly right now

Given our experience (one day!) and lack of gear, I was pretty impressed with the results. I did end up earning enough conquest by the end to purchase a trinket (2 piece bonus! - 15% reduced damage) and two pieces of armor to get the 4 piece bonus, but I still had a good 4-5 pieces that were just random blues from leveling up.

I actually sold the 2 armor pieces back at the end of the day (you have 2 hours after you purchase them) so that when I earn enough conquest overall I can buy the weapon right away (you can't buy the weapons until you've earned 7200 for the season). It's a neat little trick - help yourself out in the short term and the long term!

It was definitely a different experience, being on the other side of the dps/healer combo we usually run. I really felt the lack of CC though - all I have is fear which is on a cooldown. On my druid (both feral and resto), I have a stun which is on a similar length cd and also roots and cyclone, neither of which have a CD.

Once I get more used to the priest play-style, it will be interesting to see which healer pairs better with a rogue!