Twenty Ways To Improve Your Arena Play

Don't take this as pretentious; I'm just pointing out a few things. I've briefly talked about a few of these topics in the past, but this list is a little less mage-centric than any previous discussion here.

And as far as I know, in response to the replies to my last post, all dispel mechanics are now random and have been since TBC. Purge, dispel, cleanse, spellsteal, and devour magic should all remove magics randomly.

1. Keep track of your opponent's PvP trinkets. Notice when they trinket a CC and call it out to your teammates. Plan for how you will burn your enemy's trinkets and how you'll take advantage of it. (i.e . Sap the mage->poly if he trinkets->blind when he is on hypo) Pay attention to what is "strong" CC against your opponent and what is weak. Strong CC is crowd control that relies more heavily on PvP trinket. For example, in 3s, poly is strong against a team with only a druid as a healer, whereas blind is strong against a team where the only healing is a priest. This is not absolute and is relative to your and your opponent's matrix. A pally can cleanse poly or blind, but these might relatively be your best CC options when you think about winter's chill, detect, wound poison, etc. If I can get an opposing warrior to trinket a poly or a nova, even if his pally can dispel my rogue teammate's blind, it can still be very strong if wound is up or if he waits to blind till I land a CS etc. The point isn't to theorycraft, it's to recognize and react to how your team uses their trinkets, plan how you will burn their trinkets, and take advantage of when they trinket the wrong things. This needs to be done in coordination with your team especially in 3s and 5s when you might see someone trinket your poly, but your teammates may not. (I still forgot to do this pretty often in 5s -- I think it's one of the ways I can really improve my game)
2. Focus macros are not just for counterspell and felhunter spell lock. Focus->scatter, Focus->Blind, Focus->Mass Dispel, etc. Focus bars can be HUGE for healers too. If you're a priest, /focus their mage, use a /stopcasting Shadow Word Death macro to death your way out of early game poly casts to put yourself on DR quick and save PvP trinket for later in the match. Focus enemy cast bars can really help you avoid spell interrupts and also generally make it easier to heal the opposition's damage. As much as people complain about "2345" teams who just put their war on the priest, get a CS on the pally when the priest is 50-60% and hit their focus PoM and NS CL macros, it's silly to not use one of the more powerful options provided to players for gaining information on what your opposition is doing.
3. Bind "Previous target" -- I use shift+tab, it's a bit clumsy, but you need to be able to switch targets and switch back quickly without tab targeting totems, pets, and half the opposing team first. This is also critical for early game targeting which is my next point. Remember when we had to actually play the game and quickly tab CS healers before there were focus macros?
4. Do not select your first priority target before you rush in. If you're a warrior, don't select who you're going to charge and focus. If you're a mage don't target who you're going to first poly. It's bad. It lets the opposition understand what you're trying to do and quickly counter it. It's very easy to avoid that charge or opening CC when you know it's coming. Just target some fake target and quickly go back to your previous target as you actually enter the fray. This is important even when you think the opposition knows your general plan. There is a difference between "I think the mage is going to try to CC a lot this game" and "His first spell will be polymorph on me"; I know it sounds pretty silly, but if you aren't conscious about avoiding doing this, it's easy to just carelessly give away to your opposition what you want to do.
5. Have a plan B. Have plans on different ways to win games planned out. Say you run 4DPS in 5s and you plan on killing the opposing warrior with initial burst + fear on pally to force bubble, MD the bubble->silence, CS after silence. Know how to win games where you switch instead to the pally after the mass dispel. Play games where you instead kill the mage and MD the IB. Kill shamans occasionally. Damage really accomplishes two things -- it forces the opponent to heal (Duh) and it tries to kill a target. Forcing defensive play and keeping momentum is good, but if they're designed to outlast and you just put out consistent, non-spike damage, you're playing into your opponent's strategy. Move damage around to make healing more difficult and to make your damage more intimidating. Putting one target into the red zone just focuses their healing onto that target; it's much easier to get that early kill when you put two players to 50% fast. And this leads to:
6. Split DPS. Almost every team should know how to play strategies where DPS is split to different targets. To the extreme, this can almost be man-to-man, but for 4DPS teams its generally two players on one target and two on another. For classic teams this is often warrior on one target while casters are on another. Pick targets where split DPS accomplishes more than damage -- it should frustrate and harass your targets. WE Mages, Priests, and UA Locks generally make the best split DPS targets as you reduce their chain nuking, mana burning, and UAing respectively without committing to trying to kill one of the three which for the first 2/3 can be extremely difficult sometimes. It is so ridiculously easy to get into a rhythm with a 4DPS team where you simply run the same zerg one down quickly strategy every game, but try this against and the stronger 2.5-3healer teams in the battlegroup and see what happens. ^^
7. Sheep->Detect is good but don't be obsessive. I've seen people who are WAY too meticulous about this to the point where they are just wasting too many globals. Same with judging sheep. This is one of those great theorycraft things that needs moderation in play. Against a lot of players, simply starting a second poly anticipating the trinket and canceling it to detect when you see they don't immediate trinket is generally better. Also, detect is 40 yards and is super easy to pass out in the early game dancing. The 40yd range is really underused.
8. As DPS in arena, you often have moments where you're choosing between doing damage and trying to save a teammate with low health. There's no trick to this, but the more you proactively CC while still doing damage, the more you reduce the need to stop doing damage and go into full CC mode. So many locks and mages seem to flipflop between DPSOMG and CCOMG modes; that being said, take advantage of when you're left unguarded. You get good at this by understanding what your teammates are trying to do each game and communicating. If you've been able to get much damage out due to the warrior in your face, let your teammates know. If you can't get the next CS because you're cycloned, holler. Holler for when mass dispels are needed or when you need a new fear ward, shout out CS resists; this game has a lot of dumb luck, reacting to it is probably more important that coming up with good strategies.
9. I've posted this before, but if you play WE, try having two binds, one that is /stopcasting /petpassive and another that is just /petpassive. 95% of the time I just use the macro that does both, but these get a lot of use from me. In smaller arenas, when playing against a felhunter lock, target it real quick every once in a while midcast and see who it's targeting. Unlike mages, felhunters are generally targeting their spell lock target, so if it's you targeted, you know the spell lock is coming. Locks are usually a LOT easier to bait spell lock on as well due partially to felhunter dispel being on GCD along with their CS, and because locks don't have to try to win. (oops) Keep track in your head of when their CS is up and be ready to fake it. A surprisingly large number of players use auto-CS on their felhunters, and a quick cast->stopcasting just burns their interrupt. Using /petpassive to change your WE's direction when chasing someone around a pillar or moving him away from melee harm are also situationally useful, but the main reason for this is the need to quickly stop a waterbolt on a target on which your midcast poly. Wasting your long poly and getting on DR because of stupidity is...stupid?
10. Don't be afraid to CS early game casts. Generally, I find everyone is too hesitant to use some of their more powerful abilities because they feel they need to "save" them for later in the game. Ice block off MS even if your health isn't that low. Use that first pet nova->shatter combo early. BoP early. NS early. Early game momentum is important for every team whether you're 4DPS or 3healer. There are very few cooldowns that if you blow it early, you've cost yourselves the game. Very often, I'll second pet nova->shatter combo and instantly cold snap second pet for a new nova->shatter. While burst damage is definitely great for taking advantage of opportunities to get kills, realize that it also creates opportunities.
11. Hesitate before hitting PvP trinket and watch the opposing CC classes for a split second. Don't PvP trinket into a second poly or fear. Watch their cast bar and if it's a mage, trinket the poly and poly him as he starts to cast on another target. This same logic holds for druid cyclone and lock fear.
12. Ice lance early game during dancing to take out totems and get Winter's Chill out. Get good at lancing only targets that don't you have you selected for purging and dispelling. Rank 1 frostbolt is also great for this. Remember to reapply Barrier, Mana Shield (Rank 1 if you like), and a Ward each time you dance in and out early game. Be mindful of when you're put in combat by landing that ice lance and if you want to avoid an incoming sap, simply reapply rank 1 mana shield every 5 seconds to keep yourself perma in combat.
13. Some classes seem much more comfortable avoiding casts such as poly and fear than others. Even if you aren't a priest or pally familiar with LoSing these casted CC, learn to position yourself such that you can potentially avoid these casts by hopping off a ramp in BE, ducking behind a pillar in Nagrand, or strafing behind the grave in RoL. As a mage, you can very often just outrange incoming poly casts when they're too obvious, and you should! I love when mages rush in and start a poly at 30 yards on me. ^^
14. Make use of your mage's novas, both his pet and manual nova. Drag the melee on you to the the target to kill two birds with one stone. Call out for nova and CoC help and get comfortable kiting melee when they're snared. That 40% movement speed is still fast enough when you're standing still. As I've said before, save your pet novas when you can for shatter combos. If you're being focused or harassed hardcore, try to accomplish both an offensive and defensive goal with each nova and just settle for a lance. Always prioritize blinking over Ice Blocking against melee even if you think you'll be Ice Blocking soon. On a 4DPS team, realize that Ice Block is not about getting topped up but should be used to break CC or remove MS. Similarly, take advantage of the offensive potential of BoP.
    
15. It's called rank 1 poly. It saves you a LOT of mana.
    
16. Be mindful of distance and line of sight on your priority decurse targets against warlock teams, which is generally just your pally, but depending on team might be your shammy or priest or whatever. Tongues is dominating; at the same time, have your pally call out when he's going to bubble so you don't waste a global decursing for no reason. Don't cancel casts to remove tongues and don't spend more than one global at a time trying to decurse unless it's very critical. Similarly don't spend too long trying to cleanse a poly; there are times when a teammate is going to be crowd controlled for a brief while, don't obsess. Holler for when CC on you is full duration, otherwise live with it and use the time to plan your actions. Keep your eye out for the stealth detection buffs and take advantage of their ability to grant you temporary immunity to poly and blind.
    
17. Use perception intelligently. No good player is going to get caught by an early perception; rank 1 AE and rank 1 blizzard. Perception when you need to drink. The changes to sap make avoiding a sap even for a human nearly impossible so plan on getting sapped and either have your teammates spaced such that you can wait out the sap or trinket it quickly and pull the rogue from stealth. Don't hesitate to trinket and accomplish nothing.
18. Place totems intelligently. The change to Blade's Edge really takes away the earthbind at the bottom of the bridge thing, but you can still drop some nasty totems in BE. Take advantage of groundings out of line of sight of the main action -- grounding totems still bug with high frequency where they'll absorb multiple spells.
    
19. Rain of fire is a fantastic way of hitting people around corners when they don't want to come LoS to enter the fight. Talented rank 1 blizz is even better. A huge advantage is forcing the other team to commit to combat when they're conflicted. It's what leads to warriors running way too far from their healers or CC showing up way too late to the party. Taking advantage of overextension is extremely important. Punish warriors who chase mages behind pillars with either burst damage or CC.
    
20. HoJ, Deathcoil, and Kidney are your best options for denying spell reflection. As a warrior, be extremely hesitant to deathwish against 4DPS teams even when you don't think you're the focus of their damage -- you can quickly become the focus. The extra damage really adds up and turns the heals that barely keep you alive into simply not enough.
    

Remember these are just my silly opinions and I know a lot of this stuff is remedial, but everyone starts somewhere. ^^

On a total tangent, I've been asked a lot about how I think a team like mine will do with the DoT affecting resilience change next patch. If anything, I think I consider next patch a buff to our team. The extra shatter combo damage makes up for the damage lost on the DoTs and when you think of how much more burst a shatter combo and a NS EM Chain Lightning will be -- I think a lot of 4DPS teams have nothing to complain about. The sacrifice changes cuts both ways; while a team where the paladin does the majority of the healing is perhaps hit harder as we can expect it to be more difficult for him to avoid being crowd controlled, it's also true that such teams typically play for a shorter game where CC will generally be short lived until the second or third set of diminishing returns.

Oh, and a quick shout to Trounce (formerly NiP) for being #1 US 5s team right now. ^^

The mage from Trounce, Papashlapa, has began his own PvP blog which will cover mage arena PvP as well as other current arena topics, check it out.

I've been pretty much off and on the computer for only a few minutes at a time (I wrote the above on my phone while zzz'ing at work basically) and haven't been at my place except to sleep for the past few days so I apologize for lack of comments response and my general un-reachability. I hear people talk about 50 hour weeks on their blogs and am extremely jealous...so yeah. ^^ I'm much much more contactable on IRC on the weekend because even when I do check it midweek, I'm usually too overwhelmed to know where to begin.