Weekend PvP Update!

Thursday night we decided to try some 3v3 with the new comp we want to run. Last season we did Jungle, which is basically Hunter (random), Feral Druid (me), and Healer. Given that my brother plays a priest, that worked out pretty well. We had some success with it, getting to around 1900 rating at our peak. I think both of us had varying degrees of frustration with the comp for different reasons.

For me, it was a combination of feeling like I wasn't as effective as the Hunter (basically any DPS class can perform decently when paired with a Hunter and a Healer because of how powerful hunters are), and feeling incredibly squishy when focused - which happened fairly often. For my brother, I think it was just the frustration of healing on what was considered one of the lower tier classes.

So this season we decided to switch it up and try out God Comp - Shadow Priest, Mage, and Resto Druid. This comp relies heavily coordinated CCs - between the sheeps, cyclones, roots, stuns, fears, horrifies, and two silences, there is an awful lot of CC! It is a top tier comp and has been for a while.

As you may have noticed though, this represents a role reversal from the last season. I've switched from melee dps to healing and my brother has switched from healing to DPSing. Both of us have performed these roles in Rated Battlegrounds before; in fact, they are the preferred spec for each of our class! Shadow, in particular, is very popular in RBGs now (and was toward the end of season 1 as well) - I actually think most teams prefer having 2!

But still, having played that spec in a 10v10 environment compared to a 3v3 environment is completely different. As a healer this is especially apparent to me. It starts with the basics of knowing when I need to use my cooldowns (in RBGs there are two other healers keeping people up, so it's very different than being the only healer), but extends to positioning as well. Positioning (to escape CCs or even DPS) is far more important in Arenas than it is in RBGs. If I get a sheeped in an RBG there are two other healers who can dispel me. If I get sheeped in an Arena? Uh oh.

So Thursday night we gave it a shot. We started off around 1500 mmr which seemed reasonable. And uhhh, we went 0-5. It was brutal. After the 5th game we all agreed to give up and we did some 2s to feel better about ourselves.

Sunday we decided to give it another shot. This time the mage that joined our group hopped in voice chat with us which was immensely helpful. The amount of communication and coordination was much better and we ended up going 10-6. There were certainly a number of games that we lost simply from lack of experience. "Ok, priest is at 75% health, I can sit in this stun ... oh he's down to 40% I should tri- oh. he's dead. Crap." There were at least two games that I can think of where one or more of us didn't use a defensive ability or a trinket or something that would have allowed us to survive ... and we simply died. Still, overall it was a very encouraging experience.

After doing 3s, we decided to try and raise our 2v2 rating high enough so that our weekly cap for Conquest will allow us to hit 7250 for the season - the number required to buy the weapon! Despite some internet issues that cost us a game (and close to half an hour?!?), we managed to go 9-5 and push our rating high enough. Epic weapons, here we come!