With Druid’s Cyclone tuned down to 20 yards untalented, the state of 3v3 Arena is quite interesting. Even through there are still teams that clearly have the advantage against another, most of the proven team lineups can usually still pull out wins when odds (team lineup) are stacked against them.

I very much look forward to the upcoming 3v3 tournament as it will push the Arena aspect of WoW to another level. Up until recently, Arena strategies have been formulated without backup in mind, most strategies are assume to work under every circumstances vs said lineup. I believe this will change very soon - proven strategies will soon have proven counters to them, and counters of the counter strategies will be created as well. Teams will have to act and react fast enough to different paths of strategies and adopt through the matches. This will be the height of sports like competition, something many of us have been looking forward to.

With the 3v3 Tournament around the corner and 2.4 patch releasing soon, we too have some things in store. We have prepared to shift focus and have in-depth coverage of the upcoming 3v3 tournament in detail from the best of the best as well as providing new format of videos 10 times more useful than the current commentary ones!

I won’t give more out tonight but trust me, excitements are on the way.

Tags: Rants

One of the important things most people tend to overlook is their own key bindings. It’s very easy to get used to some terrible key bindings just like how it’s very easy to get addicted to smoking, both are bad habits and both are hard to change.

There are 2 KEY issues to consider when binding for Arena.

Key issue 1: Key spells/abilities interfering with movement.

Assuming you move normally with your fingers, A W D would be your primary movement keys (please avoid back pedaling with S). This requires your index, ring and middle finger doing most the work, leaving your pinky and thumb used for modifier keys (shift, ctrl, alt). Because the nature of the game, A and D are used the most during movement while spamming primary attacks. Which means your middle finger will be the one that’s free during combat - considering there are alternative ways for moving forward like auto-run or holding down both mouse buttons. If you play around with your middle finger a little bit, you’ll notice that in order to stay in “form” with A and D both under your ring and index finger, your middle finger can only comfortably reach 2 and 3. So how many of you still have your main attack bound to 1? Or age old-expired ability like Eviscerate still bound to 2? Well I too was in that situation not too long ago…

When Shiv was introduced the Rogue class, it was quite late in our Rogue career. Unlike Warriors whose been using Hamstring since level 8, Rogues didn’t have this spamability until 70! That means most of us(unless you were brilliant and planned way ahead) really didn’t have a place on our keyboard for it from the whole journey of 1-60, and 60-69. It’s no wonder some Rogues end up putting Shiv on an awkward binding like… Shift+E (that’s me!). Unfortunately, I was able to get used to this binding before heading for S1 Arena. It wasn’t until early S3 when Mattyo constantly barraged me with verbal harassment whenever I failed to stick on a Druid did I finally break this habit. Looking back, there would have been dozens of games we could have won, had my Shiv been a less of an interference with my movement (especially during Sprint). So the lesson? Bind your primary attack and snare to 2 and 3.

What about interrupts? Those are one of the most important key if not the most important for some classes. Now again we go back to our hand. Which finger has the highest dexterity and speed? The inventors of mouse have already answered this for us, your index finger is by far the fastest and most accurate in execution. Using this logic, it’s only smart to bind something as important as spell interrupt to your index finger. Make a small circle with your index finger at the default D position and you’ll notice the choices are E, R or F.

Key issue 2: The dreaded push-to-talk key (voice communication).

Ever had a teammate who cuts off during the battle while communicating game breaking information? It’s most likely that person is a victim of the push-to-talk key. Not only does this problem interferes with your game play, it could also cause someone to fail communicating effectively or even drop to a mute during key moments.

Although the best option is to create a hands free environment, this simply isn’t an option for the most of us. Too often are the push-to-talk key bound to restrict your abilities. Modifier keys such as shift, ctrl, alt all puts a huge restrain on your hand movement (hold one down yourself and try to move your hand around), and binding it to the middle mouse click can sometimes interfere with target selection or camera. If you kept yourself updated with modern computer ware, you should have 1 or 2 keys on your mouse placed nicely under your thumb. I have found them to be the most effective keys for voice communication as I can hold them down for long periods of time without fear of hindering or interrupt my game play.

Now I know most of you are already very used to as well as comfortable with your current key bindings, but if you want to take your competitive Arena gaming to the next level, your key bindings would be the first place to look at.

Tags: General · Articles

As you may or may not have noticed, I haven’t been around much lately and there has been a lack of front page updates. There are a few reasons behind this… For starters, work has been extremely overwhelming lately and I haven’t had the time or energy to keep things in check here or play WoW myself.

Our regular PvP News reporter Magog has left us to pursuit greater happiness and between forums and creating other contents (articles/videos/strategies/podcast/new tools), we’re extremely under staffed. That said, I would be very happy to hear from anyone that is interested in writing about WoW PvP as well as providing general help to the site. You may contact me via PM on forums.

On another note, TTR(Tournament Test Realm) has been enjoyable as ever. I have a really good feeling about Shamans as well as Rogues in the upcoming tournament. Shamans have received by far the most buffs patch 2.4 and having tested one out myself, I must say it’s quite amazing. With totem GCD greatly reduced and Bloodlust reducing GCD (which grants you much faster Purges), instant Ghost Wolf combo with 50% reduction on snares are just icing on the cake. Getting away from Warriors is more than possible with Piercing Howl a joke at 2.5 seconds and Hamstring at 5 seconds, and the amount of Shivs you must spam just to keep Crippling up on a Shaman with Endurance causes as much as 25% in DPS decrease(with Shiv doing much less damage per energy than your primary attack). In the hands of an experienced player, I wouldn’t be surprised to see R.Shamans replacing R.Druids in many cases to create a more offensive version of the lineup (very close to a 3 DPS setup).

As for why I felt good about Rogues, you can get some very nice offensive stats with the right amount of PvE gear and if you choose to go with ShS it’s possible to sacrifice even more Resilience. A must have would be the Rod of the Sun King in main hand, this baby clocks at higher damage (not DPS) than even the season 3 ice cream cones and the lack of stats is some what covered by it’s nice little proc. I really enjoy the synergy 41 Combat Rogues have with Shamans, the amount of burst you can put out on someone after EA SnD BF AR and Bloodlust is unbelievable. A well timed shock with another interrupt (which leads to another shock) can secure you a kill very easily during this burst even if your 3rd member is locked down.

ShS Rogues however, do concern me very much in the mirror battle. Not only do they have the best stealth for Sap/openers, I have also noticed ShS sustained damage have surpassed every other spec (especially when the target ever gets in to Dirty Deeds range) with extreme PvE setups. Until fixed, Cheat Death can buy them more than enough time to survive on 200-300 Resilience when backed by competent Druid healer and the recent Shiv ‘bug fix’ only favors them further. Double Evasion will make it impossible to land combo points on opposing Rogues running Evasion in your face, especially without Prep for the extra Vanish > CS combos and Mutilate (without Renetaki or BT trinket on TTR, they’re quite weak) is completely screwed in the toe to toe match vs ShS. Now this would have been fine and dandy if ShS didn’t have so many weaknesses in the 3v3 environment. Unlike AR/Prep in it’s finer days, ShS does not function well in many lineups that are great with other Rogue specs.

One of the biggest advantages of the Rogue class I mentioned last July was how we had so many choices in terms of spec, hence we can maximize for the lineup we play for. This advantage is being destroyed by the importance blizzard have placed on stealth openers (the so called gimmick 3 DPS lineups isn’t so gimmick anymore when you just replace one of them with a Druid). Rogue class is being pigeon-holed into ShS as their only viable spec just because ShS Rogues counter other Rogue specs so hard. Even through I’m still fighting it, changes like the so called Shiv ‘bug fix’ definitely don’t help.

Tags: Rants

Looks like patch 2.4 should be around the corner with PTR disabled and the patch on the background downloader.

In order to gather additional logging information for the Tournament Test realm we will be taking down the regular 2.4 PTRs until further notice.We encourage everyone to check out the TTR to help us test our new hardware configurations.

You can find more information regarding the TTR and post your feedback in the Tournament Test Forum. - Hortus

Some final PvP changes:

Druid: The range of Cyclone has been reduced to 20 yards. (was 30 yards before)

Rogue: Shiv can now be dodged and miss.

Some funny responses when the Shiv change was reported, shows how lack of game knowledge/awareness (Shiv has been this way since 15 months ago) blizzard employees are…

Unless you have a different version of Shiv than I do, the ability doesn’t say anything about not missing or being dodged. As it is not a finishing move Surprise Attacks does not apply to it either.

Am I missing something here? - Hortus

Later the guy comes back after a quick trip to the other building:

I’ve spoken with the devs and shiv not being missed or dodged is a bug and was never intended. The changes to the combat log revealed some problems with how this spell is coded and it is being worked on. - Hortus

For those of you that wanted to see Season 4 already (many being decked out in S3 for over a month), you won’t be getting it any time soon

One thing that’s more certain is that Season 4 isn’t going to start for quite a while. - Drysc

Oh and if Shadow Priest is your thing, here’s something that’ll make you want to kill or cry:

I do pretty well in battlegrounds(LOL?) with mine, but if I’m going to want to be viable in higher end competition then I would be well advised to respec. That isn’t to say that shadow priests won’t one day be more viable than they are now in PvP, or that changes may not come for other specs to help them become more viable. The point is that not every spec for every class should be expected to be as viable as the next for each aspect of the game.

[edit]I’ll qualify this statement and say that this is our general take on spec viability for now, and isn’t necessarily intended to be taken as the end all look at spec comparisons in various aspects of the game for all future balance and development. That possibly was not made as clear as it should have been in my original post in the other thread, and certainly not very clear in this one. - Drysc

So for those of us that actually spend MONTHS getting full Shadow gear, apperently we were never intended to be viable!!! Why don’t they just remove Shadow gear from the vendors then? The “zero exceptions” rule their lovely in-game GMs have on replacing gear doesn’t help a bit neither.

Tags: PvP · News

Thought I would make all your lives easier after seeing so many LFM and LF Teams on the TTR…

Get listed Craigslist style at our LFM tournament player section (most left link on menu) - http://www.pvpsource.com/lfm, and find the player or team that works out for YOU!

Tags: Site