Do Reflexes Even Matter in Gaming?

Back when I was obsessively obsessed with CS, that's Counterstrike not Computer Science or Chinese Syphollis, it was nerdcool to obsess over reaction times -- the belief was that if you could improve by even a few milliseconds, it could be gamebreaking in competitive play. Gaming "conditioning" for lack of a better word has never really gotten much traction though -- all top players across most games (of any genre) basically just stick to a "play a lot and you'll improve" mantra. Or dogma?

If you really think competitive gaming is an "eSport", why is there no equivalent of athletic conditioning? You don't "just play" football or basketball, you spend the majority of your time conditioning and working on drills.

What would the gaming equivalent really be? Reaction time and strategy study are probably the most obvious. I'm not sure APM is really a metric as it's sort of a complex measure of speed, but I think similar measures could certainly be predictive in performance.

With regards to reaction time specifically, in many games, this ends up playing out in a binary fashion -- are you fast enough to react to X? If yes with a high probability, then it is strategically sound to plan to react to action X, otherwise, you know you can't reliably counter via reacting. What's interesting to me is that no reflex tests I can find online really test for this, and the way that most nerdgamers approach reflex training is simply trying to get the best possible TOPSCORE. I'd argue that for most purposes, low variance is equally valuable to high speed -- or consider games where you're given a 1/2 second window to react an event, do you really always succeed in countering? Obviously not, you're distracted. It's my belief that top players, the people who look like they have "amazing" reaction times are not really any faster, they just have better anticipation. My ability to counter that 1/2 second move is basically flawless if I know it's coming in the next 2 seconds. (And so would anybody's)

Perhaps this nerdotry will get me back into gaming...

Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku

#showtooltip
/target Focus
/cast Kick
/targetlasttarget
/target Arena1
/cast Kick
/targetlasttarget
/target Arena2
/cast Kick
/targetlasttarget
/target Arena3
/cast Kick
/targetlasttarget
/cast Kick

TORNADO KICK SOME NERDS

Stacking Debuffs

A consistent concept in arenas has been the idea of using stacked debuffs to frustrate dispels. By "covering" a Polymorph with Winter's Chills or "protecting" a Wound Poison with a stack of Deadly, the idea is that all these junk debuffs make dispelling the important debuff more difficult.

Sadly, this doesn't exactly work the way people think it does.

It works in the sense that by having Winter's Chilll (or whatever) on the target, the chance of getting that CC effect is lower, but the amount of stacks is irrelevant. Dispel targets debuff by slot not by a total count of debuffs. If you have polymorph and 5 WC's up on a target, their odds of dispelling the poly are 1/2 not 1/6. (On a single dispel) The same holds true for poison cleansing, etc.

Functionally, this perhaps makes no difference. The "correct" way to cover a polymorph doesn't change. You either rank 1 frostbolt, rank 4 frostbolt, or CoC before polying to get 3 debuffs on the target. The oft heard complaint that a frost mage + dot class is a pain because "WC stacks make it impossible to get the dots" (think 4dps 5s) is really probably due to the fact that WC is just being reapplied constantly.

For priest dispel, stacking has some slight marginal benefit in that the priest might get 2 WCs instead of 1 WC and something else.

Unrelatedly, Hellfire does break all CCs that break on damage if timed correctly. The second tick of the Hellfire must coincide with the CC effect. (The first does nothing) Hellfire will not work on glyphed polies.

Back to dicks.

Stoneclaw Totem + Others

The pulse from Stoneclaw is currently able to destealth. (Since 3.0.8)

Magic eater lasts into arenas. (GAY)

You can also do some pretty gay macro sploits currently that I won't yet get into. (Gimme a day)

lol pve nerd

Watch more video games and play free games at WeGame.

http://www.wegame.com/watch/NERD_PVE_GRINDING/

BTW

POLY GLYPH > SHADOW WORD DEATH FOR U BADS

Mage/Priest Guide (Part I)

Druid::Warrior

Summary:

This is the most simple matchup in some ways. The war will be on your priest to inhibit his ability to mana burn and to prevent his CC on the druid and also, well, to avoid being kited by your mage. You will be sheep-locking him. Full poly into half DR poly into nova. It's 22ish seconds of lockdown for you and your priest to do as you wish. A rank f1bolt at some point during the end of the nova for a chance to extend it into a frostbite and to give your priest some extra time.

Notes:

Some mages do retarded shit like full DR sheep->nova->half DR sheep. They then poly again for 2 seconds and poly into immune like retards. I see this in vids all the time. Are you fucking kidding me? Kill yourselves.

Both teams require RNG to win or the game just goes on forever. They need a mace stun or huge crits; you need crits or a bite proc. You can definitely lose this matchup with bad luck and good play on their part. Fortunately, almost nobody plays this correctly against mage/priest. Spell reflecting frostbolts and trinketing a random poly for no reason isn't going to get it done. The war should save spell reflect and CDs until he's on poly DR and then hop on your priest while the druid tries to CC the mage. Good crits and mace stuns plus a spell reflect on a poly, and a trinket should potentially give the warrior time to land a kill. I've yet to really see this done well and often you can keep up enough pressure where the war is spending most of the match just trying to stay alive.

Start with frostbolt spam on the war, shatter any bites you get. If the war drops below 60% and is relatively in the open, summon a pet, and be ready to silence the druid. Be mindful that the wars first action will probably be intervening his druid.

Basically, you're looking to put the druid way behind. You do this by silencing him and then dispelling hots and by putting him in risk of eating a fear. This is only possible if well positioned; if you chase the war around a pillar while he beats on your priest, you will fucking lose you baddy.

In Nagrand, sit in the center and wait for them with your mage out in front and your priest mounted. Harass with rank 1 blizzard and lances on the war, if need be, wait for eyes. Fight exclusively in the center and your priest should be mindful of when poly DRs are up and can hopefully outrange intercepts a bit. In Blade's Edge, hold the center of the bridge. In Lordaeron, try to pull the warrior out to behind the grave on the hill between the gravestone and the wall. It's horrible LoS for the druid and makes landing a fear ridiculously easier.

If at any time, you don't like where they are taking the fight. Don't chase. Eat/Drink. Never let yourselves get low on health or mana. Eat/Drink even when you don't really think it is necessary.

Don't obsess about mana burning the druid and "winning the mana war." Druids are imba and homosexual and between second wind, lifebloom, and terrible mage DPS, he can keep the war up a long time.

You win when you create a window for a kill. This happens when you get a fear into mind control on the druid along with a crit frostbolt leading into a shatter on the warrior. It's obviously difficult to get a fear on the druid if you eat a hamstring, so just sheep and reset if you can't see a fear happening.

There's no real "trick" to beating druid+warrior. Manage DRs well. Burn their cooldowns and use yours at good times. Use Imp CS aggressively along with dispels on hots during the silence. If the war ends up on your priest and things look shitty, and the war is on poly AND nova DR, rank 1 frostbolt + r1 CoC are your best options for your first two globals as a bite proc is the best save for the situation.

Mind control rapes Blade's Edge. Have your priest sit on the pillar with his back to the corner to prevent intercept. When you need to reset, sheep twice, and then MC about two seconds into poly. Toss war off. Med up. Any non retard druid will avoid the center of the bridge as it puts him in a bad position to eat a fear into an MC off the bridge. At some point, he'll get frustrated and have to come in to assist his warrior with CC and feral charges/bashes which you can take advantage of.

I think blinking charge is optimal versus this team if you can't deny it; almost nobody will agree probably, but if the war is dump enough to burn intercept on you, it can lead to a very fast win as your priest is not hamstringed and free to fear the druid. If you think you can pull this off, shatter the warrior, imp cs the druid during the fear, and have your priest mash dispel as the druid trinkets and try to grab the NS. (You'd be fucking appalled at how often you can get this) Another embarassing way to humiliate bads is to fear the druid, pain him, and then MC the warrior after the shatter and watch the druid trinket and intend to NS the warrior but auto target himself and NS the pain tick. (Yup...)

You can double shatter with relative easy against this team, and it's really the only team you can pull it off against, so it's worth trying if the opportunity arises. With IV+PI+MQG, frostbolt->pet nova->lance->lance can be pulled off at 25ish yards with relative ease and is pretty nasty damage.

It's pretty important you get comfortable playing against druid/war because it is totally ubiquitous in every BG in every rating bracket. It also teaches you to play the comp pretty well as the games are moderately long, somewhat lopsided in your favor, and give you lots of opportunities to try new shit.

I use mind control a ton against this team when the war spends time on my mage, which is questionable, but is interesting. Just don't do it with full hots on the war and your mage midcast. I generally just do it to give my mage some room and to put the war in a more useful location, but it has the advantage of screwing up the bloom stack and generally freaking out bad druids. It is an awful waste of time with stupid resists some games though -- as a priest, there are times where there isn't a ton to do against this comp though and spamming smite just doesn't get it done.

Spellsteal in 2.4

I made this point to a few people individually, but here we go:

In 2.4, Spellsteal will not steal buffs of which you currently have a longer duration version.

Against mages, you won't steal their armor, dampen and int. You'll be able to get Barrier, Wards, Arcane Power, etc. No big deal really.

Where it gets interesting is in 3s, particularly mage/lock/druid. With both lock and druid buffs, you'll ignore thorns, mark, underwater breathing, detect invisibility, along with the mage buffs. This really opens up a few things obviously, especially against teams with weak offensive dispel -- war/rogue/druid, war/lock/druid, war/hunter/druid etc.

This change along with the rumored 50% reflection on Frost Ward should change up how RMP mirrors play out as well.

I'm not going to theorycraft too much on stuff that isn't even on PTR -- but even this "junk" spellsteal change has some interesting potential.

Riffraf? Streetrat? I Don't Buy That

I've been told that WoW arena can be simplified to the point where half of the outcome is dependent solely on choosing the right target to focus in a given situation -- this might be a significant understatement. With season 2 games typically running shorter and being more unforgiving of ignoring DPS classes, the need to choose targets wisely is paramount. So, from a 2345 perspective, he's how I think about the following three common matrices:

Mirror Match:

Early Game - Mage

While putting your warrior on a deep frost mage with good survivability and Ice Block might not at first seem appealing, your goal initially is not to kill but to disrupt. With enough pressure, you can totally prohibit casting of not only Frostbolts, but deny the ability to Polymorph spam your team's DPS classes. While the mage is reapplying Ice Barrier, Blinking and using instants he's spending an enormous amount of mana, which coupled with a few mana burns will cripple his overall damage for the game. Moreover, putting your warrior on the mage frequently makes killing Water Elementals when they're summoned much quicker which is a huge priority in this matchup.

Ideally, you can force their mage to Ice Block without using your big cooldowns and either land a mass dispel for an early victory or rushdown during hypothermia with a Counterspell and some EM NS+CL cheese. Often you're left with the choice of using cooldowns to force the Ice Block or simply switching to a different target. If BoP or Divine Shield has been used already at this point, switching to a new target is generally best as they've used they're defensive cooldowns and are still playing catch-up healing the mage.

Middle Game - Warrior

So both teams have made it to the point where the opposing mages were not going to die, perhaps they've used their first IB but a rushdown during hypo is out of the question. Mana is getting thinner on everyone except the paladins and if you're playing a team who likes to pressure your priest instead of mage, his ability to tank the warrior's damage is starting to fade. While trying to spam CC the warrior at this point is tempting especially since you're on fresh DR most likely or will be soon, you're often dealing with a horny warrior with Deathwish up... a perfect burst target. One of the real strengths of 2345 is the ability to insta-gib a target, and this is pretty much the perfect time to try.

If the warrior is clearly not going to die, and you should know in 5 seconds if its happening or not, you're going to need to get back on the mage, CC their shaman, keep their priest in combat, and CC their warrior when the shaman is free. Your three goals are keeping their team in combat, their mage taking damage, and allowing your priest to escape to get some drinks. If they've been on your priest the majority of the game, the mana war is likely way in the opposition's favor, and you're looking to lock in a win sooner rather than later. (i.e. take risks!)

Late Game - Mage

Deny evocate, get one last good burn on the mage and while he still may Block, you should be able to deny his ability to poly with solid pressure from your DPS. An out of mana mage will die very fast to a shatter combo and Skillherald. Their shaman should be only a moderate DPS threat at this point, keeping their team in combat and your healers safe from their warrior will win the game.

How All of the Above is Countered:

The thing with mages is that they can be quite elusive. After getting focused the whole game a few games in a row, they're probably not going to ride up into you and try to drop novas and CoC your team as they rush. Moreover, their healers will be well prepared and basically pre-healing any damage you dump into the mage at the start making it very difficult to get an early IB. Their mage can harass from the outskirts of the fight to the point where it isn't effective to overextend your DPS to try to get to him.

What Not To Do:

Don't focus priests as 2345. You want to put your warrior on a priest to deny mana burns and play a long game where you burn and outheal their damage? Fine. Your mage and shaman should not be dumping mana and damage into a target immune to their burst though. (BR is cool) Moreover, since priests usually only pop out briefly to manaburn or dispel, they're extremely capable of using LoS to avoid the majority of your caster damage -- Stick to targets you can hit: warrior, mage, and shaman.

Classic+Lock

It's hard to summarize how to play against this matrix as there are two drastically different ways this team plays. They either use their abundant CC and caster DPS to land a quick kill and strategize accordingly, or they play super turtle and just mana drain and mana burn your team to take advantage of their bottomless mana pool DPS.

Aggressive +Lock - Early Game - Mage. (Lock if UA)
Turtle + Lock - Early Game - Mage (lock will not be UA)

The early game is nearly identical either way -- you're going to get on their mage as generally polymorph is a much greater concern early on then fear. (Tremor and Fear Wards!) However, the warlock that you're lightly CCing and generally not pressuring is a much greater concern than an elemental shaman and at some point as wards are burnt and you're failing to make progress on their mage, you have to switch things up. Switching your warrior to the lock, even if SL, pretty early on isn't a bad option. You reduce the lock's damage and CC capabilities hugely while your warrior isn't poly'd or rooted and you put indirect damage on the Felguard which your two casters can quickly kill once its down to 60-70%. It's important that you're shaman is either shocking poly while you're on the lock or you're sheeping the opposing mage hardcore.

Midgame - Mage

If their lock was UA, he died to your warrior because that's how life is. If not, your mage or priest is emoing out about faggot warlocks and how stupid felguards are. "I'll just r1 CoC this thing off me...OH WAIT...or frost nova it...OH WAIT. Coolio." Even if your CC on the opposing mage has been good, he's hitting DR at this point and you can't have him chaincasting into your teammates. Use this time to get CC on their warrior, and put cooldowns on the mage to at least guarantee an Ice Block. When mage blocks, look to kill felguard, which, if it is the second FG, is huge as it not only removes about half of the lock's damage, it allows your priest to mana burn more effectively and also get out of combat for drinks. (and no more SL)

Aggressive +Lock - Endgame - Warrior (or lock if no pet alive)

If you still have burst options available, their warrior is the best available target. You've hopefully neutered the mage's damage through burns and pressure and the lock's by killing pets. You're team is extremely oom and you're going to win by bursting their warrior while keep yours up. If you can trade one of your players with the exception of your paladin to kill their warrior, the 4v4 should still be very favorable. If you were actually able to kill both FG which is pretty reasonable in this matchup, the lock is extremely fragile with no SL and is a solid option if getting a kill on their warrior isn't happening. (not enough caster burst or mana remaining) The goal is to kill one of their two "unlimited" DPS classes.

Defensive +Lock - Endgame - Mage

Wear down the mage and just try to CC for the win. If this game goes this long and you're still on their mage, you're probably looking at a loss as you've been eating mana burns and drains too heavily. Even if you spent some time harassing the priest and did well shocking burns, their extra drains with their lock coupled with the FG prohibiting drinks is leaving your team looking REAL bad blue bar vs blue bar.

How They Counter the Above:

Mage hides and uses LoS heavily. Warrior is careful with Deathwish up and uses Spell Reflect well. (read luckily) They put felguard on your mage, their warrior on your priest and park the two on those two targets the entire game. Their priest mana burns extensively and harasses with mind control.

What Not To Do:

Same as before, don't focus their priest. Don't try to outlast and win the blue bar game against the defensive version of this matrix. Do not lightly harass their mage, try to really kill the mage. Don't forget that you have huge burst potential and they are often really working with only one healer. (Their priest is very focused on burning)

4DPS LOL

Early Game - Split DPS

This sounds a bit crazy, but if they have a rogue, your warrior is extremely limited in what he can hit. (mainly the rogue) Even if they don't, your warrior priority is doing as much damage as possible while not opening himself up to get gibbed. Shadowpriests are the highest priority target followed by UA locks and then rogues.

Later Early Game - Shadowpriest

Your shaman and mage should have put some real hurt into the spriest by now. Ideally, your warrior can intercept over and you can 2345 yourself to victory. If this isn't possible, you no longer can spend any of your globals doing damage and you must switch to hardcore defensive. Poly juggle, have your shaman heal to get through the shatter/AR/whatever. It is better for your shaman to be healing and your priest to be manaburning -- shadowpriest and then mage. Often you can simply survive this stage and you're left facing an oom mage and an oom spriest for an easy win.

Midgame - Paladin

4DPS teams bubble early -- they have to or they lose a DPS too early and its game over. (Game Over get it?) Often you'll be in a situation where its still 5v5 or maybe it is 4v4 and you've traded warrior for spriest. If its 4v4, if you don't kill the paladin, you will lose as the warlock will simply dominate. If it is still 5v5, switch from shaman assist healing your warrior to priest assist healing your war and have your shaman DPS their paladin with your warrior. Mage should CC with a particular focus on controlling the rogue who will reduce your warrior's damage output.

End Game - Warlock

The mage and spriest should be out of CD and nearly oom. The lock is the remaining threat and the rogue should be out of cooldowns and quite snarable/controllable. Your casters are also out of mana so you really want to kill the lock and take advantage of how your warrior is not mana or cooldown restricted in his damage output.

How They Counter the Above:

They kill your warrior in 10 seconds no matter what he or you do. They fail to kill anything and, despite being burned heavily, still win the mana war because warlocks are imba.

What Not To Do:

Don't have your warrior running around in defensive with a shield out all game. Don't ever get on 4DPS mage or Elemental Shamans. Don't ignore the rogue. Don't miss Counterspells on cyclones. Don't think you've won just because you killed their shadowpriest -- they can still 4v5 you.

Test Server Duels

Thanks to everyone who came out last night. ^^

Overall, it is a pretty frustrating test server on which to duel compared to some of the previous test iterations. One significant problem is that the PvP trinkets are bugged for some classes and only remove their old effects; this led to an extremely pissed off Valanmor. I spent the majority of the night dueling the other FH out on the lake (there must have been 15 of us), which was fun although more variety would have been nice. (I can duel FH players anytime!) Love to Chaq and gh0st for the few duels despite the griefing alliance.

I've been dueling resto druids and resto shamans significantly differently than I have in the past, and I havent' really seen other mages play it the same way so I'll explain.

Against resto shamans, I like to:

1. Lance the pre-duel grounding as I eat the first purge and dance out of range
   
2. As we collide back into range if I lanced before the purge hit, start a poly. If he was sluggish on that first purge and goes to purge cockily, you just landed a free poly. (always rank 1 btw)
3. The above won't probably happen, he'll grounding, and probably get 2 purges while you stopcasting lance the shaman to hit the totem instead.
   
4. Now he'll play keep away at range to avoid you trying to poly outside of shock range and won't close the distance probably until he has a new grounding. Don't waste mana nuking at 36, simply r1 fbolt, steal ES, and when you can and try to move in for a poly.
   
5. Eventually you'll probably fail at landing the poly, he'll move in with a grounding as protection for a frost shock, you'll nova to try to 30yd poly outrange his shock, he'll trinket it WITHOUT first wasting a grounding on it. (It's not a big deal, but everyone I duel drops a grounding on the nova first, which I don't see the point of really)
6. People watching the duel think you're getting ripped as you've taken decent damage and have been purged naked and have failed to do anything. (But you've burnt PvP trinket!)
7. R1 bolt as soon as he trinkets and quickly lance down any searing totems he's dropped as he closed in. (the ones at 40 yds from the start of the duel probably don't matter) He's going to try to get in close and flametongue/earthbind gay you, you have to kite him like melee to avoid this. With 3/3 perma, you're snare is just as good, and every time he frost shocks, consider a poly or fake poly to eat that grounding. Some players reapply ES, steal it but don't fall for ES->grounding to waste your 750 mana. (FILTHY)
   
8. Either you'll get a frostbite proc early, which depending on how he used groundings is a guaranteed sheep, or you're second nova comes off CD and you should be able to land a poly, often I've taken 4-5k damage and dealt none at this point. I've spent 1k mana, he's spent probably 2k. Bandage immediately as you avoid or take down searings. Resheep, summon pet, damage trinket and land a WELL-TIMED shatter combo. (this isn't really that pivotal tbh, I mistime it and get screwed by a fast grounding often)
9. As soon as lance leaves your hand, you should be running away, the goal is to get out to 30-36, he might try to chase or he might just grounding->heal.
   
10. Don't even worry about CSing too much, if he is spam healing himself and you're spam bolting at 35 yds with no grounding to deal with, this is great, you might even get a frostbite to generate additional burst and you're wearing down his mana hardcore. At some point, if you can, CS a heal that you think isn't bait, and try to force the NS; the goal of this nuke and this WE is to burn a few thousand mana and NS. As soon as you accomplish that, it is back to r1 kiting. R1 kite to space max rank fbolts, take out searing totems and groundings as necessary. Shatter combo second time.
11. Basically just r1 kite and abuse frostbite for damage, he'll start going hardcore mana conserv, watershield+r1 shocks. You can kite all day though with rank 1 bolt, and the lances you generate with bites are still more efficient damage than what he can regenerate with watershield. Often you'll slip up and he'll close the gap on you, this is no worry. Treat the duel as fresh and work on establishing a poly->bandage. If you kite the whole 2+ minutes until your first pet is off CD, you win as he can't outheal consecutive pets with how little mana he'll have. Just don't let him outrange/kite the pets.
    
12. It sounds pretty gay and it is, but it is quite effective even against players in BT/S2 resto gear. ^^ It's also sorta cooler than sheep -> shatter -> imp CS -> hope to crit that I see most people using.
    

Against resto druids:

1. Not start with pet. This is really debatable; the earlier your first WE is out, the sooner he is back off CD, with no Imp CS (I'm dueling as 0/18/43 with MoE as my generic dueling spec right now), you are not going to get an early kill on a skilled player who's remotely ready for it. Therefore, I like to play the fight REALLLLLLY slow and escalate the damage output increasingly as the duel progresses. Never blink out of pounce. (duh?)
   
2. Some druids like to just moonfire lightly and melee you in caster, don't use Barrier too much here. If they like to harass in travel or cat, IB to reduce damage and get more consistent frostbolts out. For the first 15-20 seconds of the duel I simply frostbolt and let MA do it's job, if you get a full DR impact proc (FULL 2 SECONDS YEAH), you can quickly nova->lance, this is nice as you almost always get the bonus damage while forcing the mana spent on shifting.
3. After you've both spent about 1k mana, hit a citrine, and start novaing when its up to force shifts. CS any early cyclones, and even use fireblast for additional damage after landing a CS. Obviously fake cast feral charges, don't blink or IB bashes, just let him heal.
   
4. When you start taking enough damage (after 3-4k for me usually), it usually means you're doing well on the mana/attrition war, and it's time to WE and push for momentum. Try to manual nova, he'll shift, and start bolt cast, shatter combo with good timing. If he cyclones early into your pet, IB it and keep the pressure up. If he does hardcore cylone you (immune), cyclone pet, and cyclone (you) again, don't trinket this unless you can CS a hard cast. Otherwise look for an opportunity to trinket->CS.
5. Your second nova is really where you're looking to kill if its going to be a fast duel, the first is just to keep him in the 2/3 health range to make such a thing even possible. If he starts playing keep away and just tries to kite the pet, make sure to r1 bolt to help keep him soaking up pet damage. If he keeps trying to shift/run away, keep r1 bolting, this is a BAD situation for him. It's too much mana on shifting.
6. If he get's too cocky and goes to bear with around half health and backs out to feral charge a bolt, this is a good time to use pet nova, use it early in the bolt cast, if he panics at being unable to FC that bolt, its probably GG; he has to shift and SM, if SM is still on CD, he probably has to NS.
   
7. After pet dies if you fail to kill, r1 bolt kite if he plays the slow game, and just wait for second pet. When you get it, use pets in succession for the win. If he starts to get aggressive, you might be forced to snap for second pet earlier, but don't do this till he wastes a lot of mana on moonfires or aggressive shifting.
8. This wasn't in much detail but I'm very sleepy. ^^ Oh, obviously IB before you Evo. If you start getting lamed by guy who never leaves caster, consider r1 poly spam on him.
   

I know most good mages play these fights pretty differently than me; I'm not saying these are the "GOOD" ways to handle the two gay resto matchups, but I find they work well, and they are fun strats to play/watch. It's pretty frequent to see 3-4 minute duels where you win almost no heatlh or mana but have set up that inevitable good shatter combo or simply won the mana war of attrition. These are some of my favorite fights to play; minute execution isn't pivotal -- you can miss a CS or mistime IBing a cyclone and still easily pull out the victory. The challenge is consistently being mindful of their short CDs (shocks, grounding, SM, cyclone DR) and adapting a lot during the duel to the current health/mana/cooldown landscape.

Anyways, gd to everyone who came out. I thought it would be frustrating to duel in my 5s gear, but the lack of stam/resil will probably only be a huge problem against locks and rogues.

I just discovered that GameRiot is pretty cool; I found a bunch of good blogs finally -- it is a bit intimidating to use as there are 6.022x10^23 emo blogs about nothing...oh wait. I didn't realize that quite a few of the players I highly respect run pretty active blogs on GR.

More Mage Arena Thoughts

On Castbars:

I use Quartz for my castbar as well as focus and target bars; I do this mainly because I use it with macros for /stopcasting + frostbolt and /stopcasting + ice lance. This takes a LOT of getting used to in arena play, but is huge when you get used to it. I know this sounds like PvE nonsense, but it will dramatically improve your play once you get used to the clumsiness.

I also use a /stopcasting and CS my focus macro; for both this and for normal stopcasting + CS, I find Quartz great as you can sometimes squeeze in a cast you normally coudln't if you stop it during the latency and still snag the spell lock.

/focus target and /stopcasting/cast[target=focus] Counterspell are the two main focus macros I use

On Specs:

I do believe 17/0/44 is the strongest overall spec, and I don't feel that what you get in deep frost makes up for Imp CS. I believe in taking Perma and Winds but passing on Empowered Bolt; I don't see much benefit in investing further in frost unless you want talents like Frost Channeling or Improved Blizzard -- both are talents that I feel are overrated. Silence can win games a lot, spell locking isn't what it used to be, and clearcasting makes up for any efficiency gains of deep frost. Improved Missiles is actually quite useful too especially with the focus gem as you can still cast missiles when you get the proc and then recast missiles right as the buff fades to get 8-9 missiles in about 4 seconds, which is quite a lot of damage that can't be LoS'd or frost resisted.

Advanced WE Control:

You NEED a macro that does /stopcasting /petpassive. You should use it for your fakecasts instead of trying to move or (please don't do this) jumping. It is a much safer way of baiting interrupts as it is much faster, can bug the interruption display (the spell will appear as interrupted on their side, but you will not have your school locked) and using one key to do both these actions allow you a quick way of turning your pet's autoattack off in case of it being midcast on a target being CC'd. The best part of this is that your pet will return to your side when you return him to passive. This lets you move your pet toward you quickly away from danger. Say you have a rogue snared and he is heading toward your pet, simply passive your pet and run so as to path the pet far from the rogue's direction. As you play with this, you can also get much better at pinning players behind pillars as you can get your pet to go one direction as you go the other.

This isn't going to always protect your pet from aggressors in arena and a lot of healer heavy, melee matrices are going to gun for your pet especially if you're on a traditional type matrix. There isn't necessarily a lot you can do, but avoid summoning your pet and attacking with him in the middle of the fray. On a DPS heavy team, you should definitely be doing enough offense to make going after your pet simply infeasible in the face of the damage and CC you are putting out.

Decision Making:

Every class lives and dies in the arena by decision making; you cannot plan everything out and execution is only part of the game. Should I Ice Block this fear after just trinketing poly? Is this HoJ worth blinking or should I eat the stun and not risk getting intercepted after Blinking?

Every game I try to think about not what happened, but what choices I made; I find that on days when I feel I'm playing well I can remember the choices be they mediocre or solid, but on days where I'm sucking, I can't even really recall what I was deciding between during the game. I'm very much the type to go against my planned strategies with on the fly improvisation, it's very alluring to play the flashy game and you tend to remember the games where your fancy play paid off better than the ones where it risked games that your conventional strategies would have locked in.

Status Update:

An interesting night of arena where we played some pretty good teams, lost a ton of points, got pissed off and emo about it, then recovered it all back with our best play of the season. Magdain's healing heavy team is going to be a perpetual nuisance, but the surprise has been that we play much better against 4DPS and 2.5healer teams than the classic matrices as of late. I wonder a bit if perhaps the classic teams have been sold a bit short in how viable they can be.

Ten Random Little 4DPS Mage Stuff

Pretty obvious to some but:

1. Shadow reflector is a decent way of defending your frostbolt casts to guarantee shatter combos especially when you know that the opposing lock likes to defend you. A lot of people would say to never waste a trinket slot on something like this, but it is actually pretty good especially against lock heavy 4DPS opponents. (like the double lock/priest/rogue style)
   
2. Generally, a target below 75% should be shattered if its up, otherwise hard cast and save nova for next cast. You certainly won't do 75% even with a double crit and a fireblast, but your goal is not always to kill targets but to force defensive play and healing.
3. This is going to sound a bit scrubby, but LOOK AROUND while hard casting. Even with heroism or lust, you're not kiting, so you should be surveying and planning your next few moves. Generally, casting is the best time to think about your next move as you can't really plan ahead anywhere near as well in 5s.
4. Consider using Imp CS as a silence only when casting on targets below 60% when you're about to shatter. Factor a global on bubbling and another 2 seconds on that Holy Light Cast and you have plenty of time for a shatter combo before a heal can land, which is often all you need.
5. Playing 4DPS is not about just dumping your CD into one target and hoping to win. HOWEVER THIS DOES WORK PRETTY WELL EVEN AT THE HIGHEST RATINGS. I think as we get more comfortable, we learn to move damage around a lot, and I see one of the major advantages of a caster-style 4DPS setup as the ability to switch between targets VERY quickly. The advantage to being Water Elemental comes from the frequency you can use shatter combos compared to just a single AP-PoM-Pyro-Fblast.
6. I've said this many times, but you should never be using your pet nova defensively. Sheep and use personal nova to protect your teammates, your pet nova is the entirety of your burst. You should never be trying to manual nova for shatter combos; there are always better things to do than use a personal nova "for damage."
7. You can always check my armory for gear and spec, but for those who don't care THAT much, I favor damage heavy gear with a balanced spec -- I don't run around with Emp Bolt instead of Perma or AW. Perma is extremely strong in 5s, it's the most underrated frost talent imo. You can very often rank 1 bolt while your lock dots at the beginning of games when teams like to poke at each other and often you're getting a good length snare on a target that can't be safely dispelled as combat actually begins. Plus CoC > hamstring. ^^
8. When 4DPS play 4DPS, sente is critical. The team who sets up CC and their first offensive has a huge advantage as neither team is designed to be on the defensive or recover from being on the defensive. That being said, the CC aspect is more potent than damage in 4DPS vs 4DPS, whereas I don't find this to be true against more conventional teams. That is to say, you gain momentum against normal teams by putting out damage and forcing defensive play, but you can momentum against 4DPS teams by getting out the first CC and forcing them to dispel and adjust while setting up your damage.
   
9. After second pet nova, you should be summoning your next pet; it's pretty sad how often I play against 4DPS teams and see mages not snap-second pet till the game is WAY over. Especially when your pet has heroism or lust, he will go OOM fast, 13 bolts per pet generally either way, so might as well get that second pet out early and keep or retake control.
10. Lock+Classic is surprisingly effective against 4DPS caster; the idea is to CC spam to stagnate the damage effort of the 4DPS team and to protect the warrior from too much initial burst. Once a few offensive cooldowns are wasted or opposing healer control is down, the team shifts to the offensive by leaving the lock to CC the pally while the mage and warrior burn down the weakest link on the 4DPS team, which is generally the elemental shammy or shadowpriest. Trying to just zerg damage is not going to win this with any consistency; you need to counter the opposing CC and this can be done by having your shaman use grounding and tremor to protect your lone healer while you control the opposing mage. You should definitely get first pet out before you get into a poly war, but worst case, you waste a few seconds and put both you and the other mage on DR, which is great for you as you just wanted to reduce the effect of CC on you while you do your initial damage. Of course they can use spell locks and CS on you, and you should expect this and adapt accordingly by letting your teammates know quickly if you're locked and quickly switching to missiles and fireblast for damage. If you're a baller and it's a good time to snap anyways, don't forget snap removes spell lock.

That's all I have on my mind that I can quickly jot down for now. ^^

This week is going well for us, went undefeated in 3s and 5s again tonight, and generally I'm having a lot more fun playing these damage oriented teams than last season's "CC and manaburn till they lose their will to play" type of games.

The WSVG finals are up on WCM and are definitely worth a watch for anyone amazingly out of the loop. It's a bit hard to learn much from the fights because of the persistently changing camera perspective, but they're entertaining to watch at least.

5v5 Discussion: Matrix Comosition Analysis

Figured that I'll do a "brief" rundown of the absolute most common 5v5 matrices before moving on to more discussion topics focused on strategies.

The whole "Raddy's Score" thing is just my opinion on the overall team strength; it really isn't very meaningful, but I've played on and against these combinations a lot this season. (except never played on 2xWar)

"Classic Matrix" w/ Hunter

Composition: Warrior, Mage, Priest, Paladin, Hunter
How They Win: They either play to mana drain and outlast or try to use synchronized crowd control with scatter/silencing shot and counterspell pom+fireball to burst down a target. The beauty to this team is that even if you fail to get the kill during you window of burst, you can still win if you play defensively and let viper and mana burn do their thing.
In More Detail: Priest manaburns enemy priests to remove opposing manaburn if possible, otherwise the priest manaburns in order of priority: elemental shamans, hunters, paladins, and then the rest. Mage is most frequently AP/frost, he has focus CS on paladin, and sheep juggles opposing CC and DPS until warrior calls for burst. If mage is WE he will try to more actively put out damage to wear down opposing healer mana and will spend less time CCing. Warrior will generally focus opposing priest to prohibit mana burn to make the mana lasting power game more lopsided; occasionally, warrior will instead focus high priority targets such as UA locks. Paladin does all the healing and juggles between using freedom offensively and defensively; HoJ is generally defensively used to aid hunter or priest if they're taking heavy focus. Hunter sets scorpion pet on an opposing healer (not pally if possible) and uses viper + poison stacks to quickly mana drain that healer. Coordinates CC with mage to control opposing healing and CC, while mage focuses on controlling opposing DPS.
Weak Points: Hunter and Priest are "soft" targets against teams with warriors. Warrior becomes a huge soft spot against 4DPS caster teams as he's often forced to pursue into bad LoS if not careful.
Favorable Matchups: 2xWar. "Classic" w/ Rogue
Underdog Against: 4 DPS (caster), "Classic" w/ lock
Raddy's Score: 6.5

"Classic Matrix" w/ Lock

Composition: Warrior, Mage, Priest, Paladin, Warlock
How They Win: Use dominating crowd control to create windows for damage while wasting opposing cooldowns. Once BoP and Bubble are out of the way, they look for a kill when the warrior has a target pretty low. This team is in no hurry to end games and while it cannot play the long mana-draining game as well as other teams, it is very powerful in medium length games once the opposing paladin becomes controllable.
In More Detail: This team changes a bit depending on whether the mage is AP/frost or WE and whether the lock is UA or FG. Currently, it seems that WE mage and FG lock are most popular; they're also best suited to longer games. Warlock begins by getting tongues out and doing what he can to harass paladin to force bubbles while performing crowd control on opposing DPS. Mage puts damage on main assist with warrior to hopefully draw the early BoP and the mage also puts heavy CC on opposing DPS. Priest manaburns if free, but it is extremely unlikely this will happen as most teams will focus the priest. Paladin is the same as in the hunter version of this matrix as is the warrior, but the warrior is now required to do a fair share more damage to the main assist taregts to actually bring them down.
Weak Points: If ran as WE mage and FG lock, the only soft spot is the priest. He will always be the target.
Favorable Matchups: "Classic" w/ Hunter, 2.5 Healer
Underdog Against: 4 DPS (caster), 4 DPS (rogue), 2xWar
Raddy's Score: 8.5

2.5 Healer

Composition: Warrior, Mage, Priest, Paladin, Shaman (Elemental)
How They Win: Windfury + warrior gets on opposing softest target. Mage plays extremely heavy CC, often doing nothing but CC for most of the fight. When war gets a target reasonably low, heroism is popped, and mage and shaman burst collapse on target. If target is not bursted down, the momentum of heroism is used to continue to put pressure on target until it's finally brought down.
In More Detail: Priest manaburns and mind controls very actively. Paladin is generally the same as ever. Shaman starts by applying pressure to the main assist with warrior, but is really watching to be useful with heals in early game. Lots of times you'll see the shaman healing for pretty long windows early game. Warrior is on main target with freedom and aggressive dispels on his target by shaman and priest. Mage is typically Ap/frost, though I think AP/fire and WE are stronger for this matrix. Mage plays keep alive if AP/fire while CCing as best he can and then rips the target with ap pom pyro fireblast along with shaman burst. If a less focusable spec, mage will still do little but poly juggle. Because this team does not rely on crowd controlling healers to kill a target, often mage will use CS to limit opposing offense.
Weak Points: Mage if he's AP/fire, otherwise elemental shaman and priest.
Favorable Matchups: "Classic" w/ Hunter
Underdog Against: 2xWar, "Classic" w/ lock
Raddy's Score: 9

4 DPS (Caster)

Composition: Warlock (UA), Mage, Priest (Shadow), Paladin, Shaman (Elemental)
How They Win: Ridiculous crowd control and burst damage. Horrible survivability beyond early game, but the second most potent common team in the first 30 seconds. Paladin aggressively uses Bubble, BoP, and BoF to keep his casters alive long enough to do their damage. After a target is down, overwhelming CC lock in the victory. Enough interrupts and silences to totally lock down enemy healing for the window needed to get the kill. While it would seem this team is screwed if they don't win early, that is absolutely not the case as often the very act of surviving the damage wastes all defensive cooldowns and the majority of healer mana.
In More Detail: Priest does not manaburn but actively nukes main assist spamming death if not the focus himself and is also responsible for silencing a healer. Warlock is UA and UA is effectively the main assist as it is the target not getting dispelled. If the target is a warrior, Death Coil is used as the targets gets low to prevent Spell Reflection. The warlock coordinates with the mage to have a different Spell Lock focus. Mage is either AP/fire or WE. Either way he simply tries to put out massive damage early, and if he's WE, he tries to keep the pressure up even if a kill is not made. Typically mage handles the paladin as his CS target, and often can simply uses the silence instead of waiting on a cast when Counterspelling. Shaman assists the warlock and when the target drops low, NS EM CL is incoming. Shaman also watches for a target to control with earthshock, this is typically an opposing priest trying to manaburn or a enemy mage trying to CC.
Weak Points: UA lock, Priest, Elemental Shaman, Mage (if AP/fire)
Favorable Matchups: All "Classic" teams
Underdog Against: 4 DPS (Rogue)
Raddy's Score: 9

4 DPS (Rogue)

Composition: Rogue, Mage, Priest (Shadow), Paladin, Shaman (Elemental)
How They Win: Rogue guns for softest target with full CD while the rest of the team play the fight as if it the caster 4DPS team. This is the strongest early game matrix.
In More Detail: The main difference between this and Caster 4DPS is the rogue's early damage is huge in taking out a single target quickly whereas the UA lock grows stronger as the game drags on.
Weak Points: Mage if he's AP/fire, Rogue, Elemental Shaman, Priest.
Favorable Matchups: All "Classic", 4DPS (Caster)
Underdog Against: 2xWar
Raddy's Score: 8.5

2xWar

Composition: Warrior, Warrior, Druid, Paladin, Shaman (Resto)
How They Win: Warriors play harass and split DPS in the middle while healing crew avoids CC with LoS and heals intermittently. Warriors retread to healers out of LoS for big heals and then get back to harassing. The goal is to completely wear out opponents until warriors windfury or crit enough to collapse on a target for the kill.
In More Detail: Druid heals defensively far away from the actual combat until opponent grows oom or out of CD then comes in for aggressive cycloning. Warrior do their best to force healing of MS'd targets and waste enemy CD by intervening out of danger to their hiding teammates. Typically one healer will aggressively look to be drinking to make manaburning the healers even when they are visible not very effective.
Weak Points: None, maybe resto druid if he exposes himself
Favorable Matchups: 4 DPS (Rogue), "Classic" w/ Rogue, "Classic" w/ Lock
Underdog Against: 4DPS (Caster)
Raddy's Score: 9

5v5 Discussion Topics: WE Mage in Classic Matrix Matchups

I'm thinking that it would be fun to approach discussing 5v5 strategies in a similar framework as dueling guides; of course, there are problems with this. If one can complain that a "dueling guide" makes little sense because there are often so many variables, 5v5s an exponentially more complex. You can't follow a strategy you read online and get guaranteed results. But I do think that in the process of going through what we routinely do, we can pick out that things that clearly are not very good and integrate ideas that sound like they would work well. Enough pandering to the haters.

WE Spec 17/0/44

Matrix: MM Hunter, BR Priest, Pally, War

Our Game: We have dominating crowd control and mana burn. Any game where we can live long enough to let viper sting + scorpion and mana burn do their thing, we will dominate; to do this, we must protect our priest and hunter, who will surely be the eventual targets of opposing assist trains. We have lasting damage in the form of WE Mage and War, and mediocre burst.

Opponent 1: FG Lock, WE Mage. BR Priest, Pally, War

Their Game:

This is the new "classic" matrix on our battelgroup; it is quite challenging. They have no soft spots and have powerful lasting damage, moreso than almost any other matrix. They have ridiculous crowd control; they win by either creating a window where they can burst someone down through their vast CC which includes tongues, fear, scream, shout, poly, and CS. If they know they cannot burst someone down, they will attack the blue bars with drain mana and mana burn.

Pre Game:

This is a matchup that is very unfavorable. You do not have the damage on your team to reliably burst down any target quickly, though the priest is really your only option. Your hunter traps and frost snares are not likely to do a ton in preventing them from being all over your priest making it impossible for him to manaburn. If you ignore their priest and go for their mage or lock, their priest will dominate your pally with manaburn, and your priest will collapse to their assist train before you can hope to take out a SL lock with huge health/resil or a similarly high hp/resil WE mage.

Isn't our hunter team built on outlasting and crowd control, so this matrix is just better than ours, right? Yeah, it is, because they have a warlock -- if you want to win, bring a warlock. Well, actually, there are ways to win this fight and you have some advantages they do not. They are extremely dependent on their warrior for damage, if you can put out moderate harassment on the SL lock and WE mage, you can really limit their damage. Moreover, if you can take their pets out of the game, you really neuter what their team can do. Look for opportunities to kill the FG, and most definitely go out of your way to kill WE. Your hunter and you as a mage can quickly fireblast, autoshot, arcane/mutli a WE down, and this basically saves you at least 10-12k damage per WE you kill quickly.

WE mage should have focus set to pally, hunter should have focus/scatter on priest, but should use silencing on either pally or mage situationally. Hunter should have pet and viper stings on their priest until pally bubbles, and that point he should pet and viper to their pally, or situationally their mage. Your priest is going to do manaburn opposing priest if at all possible, probably not though. You are going to spend a LOT of time removing tongues; this is where I whine about warlocks again.

How You Play It:

CONTROL THE MAP. Harass with viper stings and multis and avoid getting DoT'd up best you can. Drop trap in strong location where you know their war has to pass through. When they eventually charge, first poly on the war hopefully inside the trap, if you're well positioned, rank 1 fb->poly->detect, and you got a nice stack for them to dispel, YOU SHOULD HAVE WC OR I HATE YOU) High level arena is very much like a duel, you MUST be using every one of your globals wisely, and with that in mind, you should be casting bolt on your target as soon as that poly cast finishes. Fireblast after the bolt and use the global to readjust positioning. This is just a good general way of maximizing doing something while getting into position; I do it as most specs against most teams I guess lol.

Their war should be dispelled at this time and all over your priest, don't concern youself about it, there's nothing you can do. Poly their mage as soon as your well positioned and off fireblast global as hopefully tongues** isn't out yet, if it is, make sure you learn how to stay near your pally and remove it promptly, if you get poly'd here (as some mages like to poly mages before wars or are just faster than you cause you had to waste time on tongues), trinket it and poly the mage as you come out. Don't suck and get poly'd by him a second time before you poly him. If you have to sit in sheep for an extra sec to watch his cast bar, do it, it's a huge handicap to eat a poly here and your pally cannot afford a global dispel you, especially not the 2-3 it might require if he did something gay like rank 1 coc, poly, detect you. Summon pet as soon as you poly their mage (or lock if you can't reach the mage, it's not big deal, but the mage is MUCH better)*

Drop your pet as soon as you can, and get on your assist target, your hunter should be watching their mage; goal is to silence the mage as soon as he trinkets poly or is dispelled. He must do this while still doing damage to the main target. If you can CS now and go for the win, do it, you probably cannot as their priest is going to be above 50%. If priest is above 50% still with no BoP, silence, yes silence the pally and shatter burst the priest. Your priest should be dispelling him while getting focused by war btw to ensure no freedom. (God it is hard to keep track of everyone!)

"Well the pally bubbled because I didn't hit the tree and the priest lived, nice advice." But you forced the bubble! Your priest should be doing fine as their mage is just coming out of silence, but your now in a world of trouble as your pally is now getting CC'd by their lock. But DR is now up on their war, and you can sheep detect the war to buy your priest some breathing room. Quickly get back to casting on the priest who should still be moderately low; now here best case is what happens, the pally comes out of bubbles and has yet to BoP the priest as he's midheal and is "saving it", scatter the pally and kill their priest. More likely he used BoP during bubble; you can work in some mass dispel madness in here, but we never found it to be reliable really.

If it looks likely they will be able to kill your priest (i.e. mage is casting openly and war is coming out of poly ready to rip), you need to get more CC down. This should be a new sheep on the mage and if possible a nova (NOT A PET NOVA) on the warrior. Try to do this without spending a half hour of wasted globals.

You still have a 5-6 globals at least before your CS is back up and a few until your second pet nova. You can sheep juggle here, though you only have 1 more tiny sheep on each most likely, alternatively, you can sheep the lock, which is probably the best option most of the time. Before getting on priest again, look to kill opposing WE and FG. Coordinate with hunter! After you succeed, pump damage into the priest, and use hunter silence on mage again when it is up, pet nova shatter combo priest and CS pally for the kill. This game is actually still not over, as you still have a full health lock, a full health mage with decent mana remaining and no matter what you do, your priest is going down pretty soon. Doing damage at this point might seem pointless because of SoR, but WTF else are you going to do. Pally is next target as he's their freedoms and the warlocks mana source, he has no bubble, you must snap second pet to kill him FAST because this is a 4v4 you will lose.

* Sheeping the mage early limits his ability to CC AND do damage while the lock is really only doing CC for their team. He is putting out some damage, but not the type of damage that is going to give them momentum. Plus poly is more dangerous early game CC than fear due to WoTf and fear ward etc. (but is worse later game as you don't want to be healing people lolol)

** Some mages are meticulous at decursing their teammates. It is VERY important; you should prioritize decursing your pally over everything but full DR sheeps on opposing war and the times when you can shatter combo. Decurse your priest teammate with much lower priority -- I decurse myself first actually. ^^

Now the Reversal:

Assume you are the FG lock version of the classic matrix.

Pre Game:

Play well and you will win. There are lots of ways to win this:
1) Attack the hunter's mana pool while DPSing priest
2) Attack the priset mana's pool while DPSing priest
3) Straight DPS priest, BoP your priest and mass dispel their pally, CS after bubble is MD'd, kill priest

I'll go with #1 for now. Their weak points are the small mana pool on their hunter, their priest as a squishy DPS target while traps don't help much, and the reliance on their mage controlling you better than you control him as he is the majority of their effective CC against your matrix.

How You Play It:

Outplay their mage. Let's play it fancy too ^^

Rank 1 fb, poly detect on their war to start. Frostbolt->fireblast on their priest as you move into position. Summon pet quickly, pref before their mage looks to poly you. Your CS focus is of course the pally, but if you can get a CS on the opposing mage's arcane tree the beginning, take it out. You aren't going to need that CS for a little while.

Mage won't IB the silence unless he's a total baller. Now, you're a lot less concerned with DR than the other matrix because you have fear and DC. Frostbolt, and then frostbolt shatter combo their priest while your lock fears and harasses pally. Pally will have to bubble. You will now be getting poly'd most likely, trinket it and sheep the mage because you're gay like that. Your pet should still be on the priest who is getting healed to full by pally. Your lock is now fearing and harassing the hunter while their war struggles to prohibit manaburns. Either their hunter will silencing shot your priest to protect his manapool, or he'll hit you here. You can actually IB this probably, but I'm not baller enough, so I just eat it. Use the time to get good positioning.

However, most hunters will SS the priest, if he does, DPS the hunter with your lock teammate while war hangs out on priest. When pally switches to healing the hunter, quickly get back on the priest, and shatter combo->CS pally->deathcoil pally if need be for the kill. They really don't have tools to stop this. IB a poly if you get poly'd mid DPS here.

It is better for the hunter to Silencing Shot the mage IMO, if he does and their war can control your priest, they now have a window to kill your WE and deny you that second nova combo. They can even work on the FG during this time. Alternatively, he can silence priest and scatter you or something. Either way you are getting CC'd and probably can't justify the risk/reward of IBing it. (it lets them go for a zerg kill on you during hypo which is pretty much GG and you don't want that) When you come out of CC, repoly the war. This buys priest time to finish manaburning the hunter, your pally should BoP before bubbling of course, and between BoP and pally Bubble they should not be able to kill your priest here especially with you harassing their war with poly (you can repoly until immune here) and your lock fearing the hunter.

As your priest gets that sickening heal to full and their DPS has that "oh balls we didn't kill him" thing going on, you should have their hunter floating around 40-70% from lock dots and harassing, their pally at 50-70%, their priest at 75% ish, and their mage and war full up. You now have the option of going for the priest or hunter. It is up to your warrior, don't argue, just adapt. Either way, if your pet is dead or too oom to use second nova, snap a new pet -- in fact if you get silenced of scattered and they killed your pet or you just know you'll need a second one before you can shatter combo, IB that CC. Moving on...summon pet and shatter combo target of choice, focus CS their pally and you know the gist of getting the kill here. This fight is totally dominated after their priest dies, get on their hunter next, and let your lock fear/tongues harass their pally (even if the mage is dispelling it, its still good)

Between BoP locking out two of their DPS and healthstone, its very hard for their matrix to gain sente (momentum) and even though you have very little burst with this matrix (which generally means poor momentum), you should have control of this fight. As a mage, you're looking to limit the effectiveness of their CC by keeping their mage under control while your lock controls first their pally and their hunter -- you then take over on the pally. You do this while CC'ing the warrior and putting out as huge damage as you can on the priest, which they can do little about. Even if the game goes to a long game, say the priest uses LoS very well or gets good resists etc., you should still have the edge as long as they didn't succeed in killing your pets and taking you out of the fight for too long. It's important in matchups like this to take advantage of the fact you aren't being focused, limit their ability to CC you by CC'ing the mage who is tasked with controlling you, and making the most of your damage potential as you are the lion's share of the team's burst.

Well, I need a break. I'll continue with more on this matchup including mixups, fakeouts, and split DPS variants; I'd then like to move on to other fights.

Mixups:

I find it pretty common that you can't always get on your target of choice off the bat, so you're forced to either play defense till you can or pick a second target to go after with your assist train. I definitely favor playing aggressively (why I play on a 4DPS team now, DUH) and I'd much rather pour damage into a non-optimal target than spend 10 seconds CC juggling.

For the FG lock team, you clearly are going after the hunter as a secondary target. He has good tools for playing keep away from your warrior, as once he gets freedom, he's extremely slippery which is one of a few reasons to not have him be your primary focus. The other reasons being the fact that damaging a hunter accomplishes basically just doing damage to him whereas damage a priest prevents that player from doing much along with the huge health pools that hunters have and a nasty physical snare. Hopefully by the time the hunters gets freedom, you can force a BoP despite the freedom or even a bubble. Worst case the priest should be exposed by now and you can quickly switch targets.

If you're the mage on the hunter's team, your options for a secondary target are more limited. The pally is always an option but often they are equally difficult to focus as they're going to play duck and hide with the pillars. If he's out of the question, you're left a SL lock and a WE mage, two classes specc'd entirely to take and withstand a beating. The WE mage is the better option of the two as at least you limit the early game CC and chain casting threat. Hopefully you can force an early IB and maybe even continue the pressure when he's on hypo, though the majority of the time you're going to be better off switching back to their priest as they still have BoP and Bubble to keep the mage alive.

Either way, it is tempting when DPSing your non-optimal target to half-ass damage and focus more on CC thinking that even if you fail to really get the target low, at least you'll thwart the opposition's offense. This is a dangerous mentality; the point of casting into that target is to get him low enough to force use of defensive cooldowns, if you aren't doing this, you're wasting time and letting your opponents accomplish their goal of using your defensive cooldowns. If you can't do enough damage to actually generate sente, you're better off poly juggling and playing keep away.

From either team's perspective, your tasks are always:

• Reliable CS on Pally
• Control Warrior with Poly
• Burst on MA when needed
• Sustained damage through WE
• Control Opposing Mage

If you're on the hunter team, you are likely going to need help controlling the opposing mage as you have the additional duty of decursing that he does not have. If you have a lock teammate, make use of the fact that tongues really injures both their healers and their mage, and recognize by controlling their mage you're also controlling their decurse; don't waste time using poly on other targets.

Split DPS:

At some point with teams like this you realize that as you play better opponents, you can't leave as many people unguarded. Priests, mages, and warlocks go from strong to powerhouses if you let them pump damage and CC without harassment. You should also think about their play is going to change when you start harassing them; a priest with a warrior on him won't be healing or manaburning but he will be dispelling. Any good player is going to make use of his globals regardless of pressure -- this is why I've always felt focusing SL locks is a mistake. A focused SL lock can still freely tongues, shadowburn, and DoT up as he likes. You don't gain as much by guarding him as when you pressure a mage. (This idea is the whole reason why 4 DPS is so effective IMO...well that and zerging things down)

Okay, so this is how split DPS variants work in slightly less detail than above, and how the WE mage adjusts.

WE Mage on Hunter Team:

Your team is probably running the pretty common: Viper and scorpion pet on their priest along with warrior, Hunter on the Mage with all silences going to the mage and scatters going to their war, Priest looks for window to MC war actively otherwise manaburns their priest, Pally heals and uses stun on second lock fear (fear ward first and third!), what do you do?

Control the war. It would be great to time scatters for when poly is on DR or something, but that level of control isn't really possible...well for us it wasn't. Just poly the war until immune pretty much every time he isn't immune, obvious juggle them to the pally so that they aren't super easily dispelled.

So you're poly juggling the pally and War as much you can, you've got your hunter frustrating their mage (unless he has 2 pc t4, thx PvE gear), and you've gotten all your mana draining on their priest who is prevented from mana burning by warrior and pet on him, who do you damage? Still the priest. You want to be putting damage on the target with MS to force them to heal the least efficient target, however now when BoP hits, both you and the war can hop on the mage who should be pretty much instantly forced to IB due to the harassment from the hunter. So nova combo the priest once CC becomes no longer an option (they go immune), and then hop on the mage with normal frostbolt-fireblast-CoC type of burst. Get the IB and go back to the priest briefly, if the priest gets to be totally oom at this point, get back on the mage and look to finish up the game during hypo.

WE Mage on Lock Team:

More variety here, but something like: Warrior on Priest with Felguard as well, Mage/Lock on hunter, WE on Priest when it's out, Priest manaburns hunter and then pally, Pally like heals and stuff.

Basically, you're wearing down two targets and will go for the kill on whichever gets the worst healing. The priest is likely the target to dip the lowest due to MS, but mage/lock can sometimes tear through the hunter HP pretty quick especially if opposing healing is distracted a lot by tongues and dispelling CC. You don't put the felguard on the mage because doing so does nothing if he's 2 pc t4, and otherwise just forces him into decursing more quickly, which isn't something you really want either. Plus with traps down, your war might not always 100% be on their priest and you don't want manaburns getting off.

Because the priest will probably have freedom as they try to keep him from the warrior, the hunter will not, and you'll have reliable access to shatter combo him with your pet. This can often kill the hunter if you get a good CS on the pally.

Mirror Match:

People always hate mirror matches in pretty every game and it seems to be basically true in arena as well. I actually really enjoy mirror matches in arena though loathe in duels, riddle me that hypocrisy. Actually, it's pretty clear that I hate mirror matches in duels because if I lose I don't have my class or my teammates to blame. ^^

Hunter Team:

Remember that BoP is going to be really effective and just because you get something low, a kill might be a ways off. If your team overextends trying to get the kill here, it's going to be punished; your trying to outlast here more than ever and your job is to facilitate that while frustrate their attempts to outlast you.

One common strat we ran was something like:

• Hunter and Warrior on the Priest along with pet and viper sting (holy zerg)
• Priest Manaburns hunter
• Mage controls warrior and opposing mage
• Pally stuns something or other

That's pretty basic...but this isn't THAT different than the above fights. You're still using your pet to try to burst down the priest while CC'ing mage and hunter. You're going to want silencing shots on the opposing mage to help you out-CC him and reduce his damage. Killing the WE is a MUST in this matchup as you're not trying to burst out the kill, you're trying outlast -- LIVING WATER ELEMENTALS != OUTLAST. You can try fancy stuff like silencing shot->imp CS->scatter on the pally to force bubble and then stall/CC till they are back up for the kill. The priest can dispel the silences though not quickly enough generally. You should mix stuff like this in just because it keeps your opposition honest and forces them to try to keep the priest topped up through the MS debuff. They will probably just counter by scattering your war, and CSing you, so don't be OMGSCARED when you don't get the kill.

The team who wins this is the team who keeps their priest most free to manaburn; this is largely your task and you have to do what you can to keep the opposing DPS off your priest. You can try strats where you sheep juggle the hunter as well and manaburn the priest only, and there are advantages to this (hunter is often far away and hard to dispel poly off of, hunters can't...err well couldn't trinket poly), but I think as a generic plan you're better off going after the hunter's mana pool simultaneous to the priest's. You free up your priest most effectively by never using poly 3 times on the same DR; use it twice and not again for 15 seconds. If you're working on poly on both the warrior and mage, plus pumping out frostbolts in between (plus getting CC'd yourself), you shouldn't be too bored waiting on DR to come up. If you know you aren't likely to kill the priest anytime soon, CS'ing the opposing mage's Arcane tree isn't bad particularly when your War is off of DR.

Warlock Team:

This is really the silliest of them all because it boils down to mage v mage and lock v lock epeen. All of the CC is trying to out-CC the rest, typically with locks on locks and mages on mages.

Off the bat, you're best trying to poly opposing mage instead of the war; if they charge you, you can still rank 1 bolt the incoming war but get on their mage as fast as you can. Hopefully, you can poly their mage before he even can poly your war; this is the goal! Otherwise, poly their mage and as soon as that cast finishes, immediately poly their war. Their mage will likely trinket and poly you, but at least you got the war sheeped before you were sheeped. Now you can hesitate a bit here; if their mage is guarding you waiting on you to trinket, make sure you can trinket CS and not get sheeped again. Or if he decides to sheep your war, trinket poly and CS the poly. If he does neither, trinket poly, but do not CS the mage even if he goes to poly a few seconds later. The goal is to give your team momentum by making their CC delayed, you've accomplished it from your side already, don't waste CS.

Get your pet out and damaging their priest, and watch the two locks gay each other while trying to harass opposing paladins to bait an early bubble. Likely all they will bait is an HoJ and then a fear as it wears off, but whatever. If you can spell lock the pally here, for whatever reason he is able to cast, take the early CS on him and try to put damage on the priest to warrant at least a BoP as CS wears off if not a bubble. This is going to be challenging because you're going to be forced to remove tongues and pretty much only have time for a shatter combo, and even, you're likely to get sheeped out of it. If the kill on the priest isn't happening after you blew CS, don't cry, turn your attention to kill opposing Water Elemental while protecting your priest. Kill WE with aid of lock shadowburn, you should use AM to kill the pet + fireblast. 6.5 seconds of your life gone.

Things were probably briefly hectic and then got quiet again as no team should have been able to make a great play at killing a priest unless there were huge crits involved; if there were, then bubble or BoP has been used, but it doesn't change much for you as a mage. Decurse your pally, and then sheep opposing war off your priest. Poly juggle the warrior and mage until you're second pet nova is up, use this burst opportunity + CS on the pally to go for a kill. Most of the time you should get it, but it's quite possible the opposing mage has sheeped your warrior and silenced you (which you should do if you're on the other side of this!), this did waste his CS, but it should have given him time to escape death, and the pressure is back on your priest. You have a few more seconds probably until DR is back off, so use this time to get good positioning and put light damage on the priest. If you get poly'd here, you can freely IB it, just be a little careful of the assist train switching to you.

Poly juggle the mage war and snap to bring out second pet. At this point, your DPS push on the priest should succeed as the pally should be out of CD and your shatter combo + shadowbolt/burn + war should finish off the priest. These games can drag on pretty long, remember that your pvp trinket is coming back up imminently.

Sidenote: Against this matrix, you'll find your personal frost nova pretty useless as it is generally hard to keep freedom off the warrior and be close enough to your priest to really help him with nova unless you waste a LOT of time. You can use nova on the mage to force blinks and waste mana. Just nova, wind up a bolt, and let him blink out of it; follow it with a pally stun if you want and your pally has a few seconds of safe healing.

Quick Clip of Arcane Missiles

Going to add to this later, but for now check out:





While YouTube is being slow, you can DL it (it's only 5mb) HERE.

This isn't exactly anything new btw, I'm not claiming it is!

In case it is somewhat hard to see what's happening here:

1. Quickly hit AP/Trinket as soon as focus proc occurs.
2. Quickly cast Arcane Missiles.
3. Watch your focus buff, as it ticks to 0 seconds, quickly cast Arcane Missiles again.
4. Basically, you're getting 3-4 missiles of the first cast at double speed and then a whole cast of 5 missile at double speed.

So, in about 5 seconds, here we see with NO crits (last missiles don't even hit because the mob dies), 9 missiles X 930 damage, or 8370 damage.

You can also use a fireball or frostbolt instead of the second missiles -- I haven't really thought too much about when it would be advantageous to do this instead of a second missile.

Now of course, this requires a 5% proc, a bunch of CDs and to not be quickly interrupted, but it pretty much the most on-demand damage you can currently get. However, heroism + MPQ isn't THAT far from this level damage. Also, this damage scales DRAMATICALLY with gear; swap up some gems and pick up a few hundred damage at the cost of resil and stam and it's not too hard to imagine, 1100ish missiles with 2k crits before misery, deathwish, or zerker stance.

Is this practical for arena? For most teams, no. Mages are generally not left unguarded, spell reflect has been fixed to correctly reflect missiles, missiles have atrocious range and cancel as soon as your target runs beyond 30 yards, and the huge mana cost are all reasons why this type of thing is just theorycraft...or is it?

AP/frost was once hugely popular, but it was mainly for the huge pom bolt crits; a few players made some use of Arcane Blast with AP up, but it was never really as good as it sounded on paper -- even as I say this, I realize that the two piece tier 5 bonus wasn't around then. But why not run 40/0/21 and focus on missiles instead of frostbolts? It isn't generally isn't feasible to use counterspells/spell locks on non-healers for most teams, pets and ranged damage isn't mitigating the missile damage, so you either need earthshock/silence or melee interrupts on the mage. I'm not saying these counters aren't enough; I think they probably are, but a spec like this makes you a HUGE threat unguarded (much more so than even AP/fire) and you still have IB and pom bolt for when you need them. With more teams moving towards matrices where they fill the lineup with "must guard" targets, perhaps 40/0/21 will see renewed attention.

Warlock Dueling: Affliction Locks (INCOMPLETE)

I'm not really doing these dueling guides in any particular order, and they are all works in progress that I'll come back to as I learn new things, so keep that in mind!

Okay, it's time for -- (Oh Verona theme from R+J) WARLOCKS!

Once again, I'm going to use the format: Their Game, What You Need To Do, How We Win, How They Counter Us, and Mixups.

And as before, I believe that against non-SL locks you can play competitively without Cold Snap, but to beat top locks (even affliction), you will need a full set of cooldowns. With that said:

Deep Affliction Locks

Their Game:

What I see a lot is: Immolate, Corruption, Syphon, CoA, FelHunter Silence into a fear, when fear is trinketed, howl, UA, reapply CoA, and then kite the WE. Best case the lock wants to howl both you and your pet. Your first nova will be spellstoned, then they can either try to use the felhunter to dispel novas off themselves, or they can use it offensively to destroy your Ice Barrier, Fire Wards, etc. Best case is they force you to IB before they use Death Coil, then they can DC and DL to bate the CS, fake it out, and then fear and drain for the win. The goal is to deny you IBing Deathcoil, to remove your pet as a factor by kiting it, to avoid being CS'd by faking and not doing open shadow school casts, and once CS is down, Drain Life for the win.

What You Need to Do:

1. Force the lock to Deathcoil early, while you aren't on hypothermia.
2. Do NOT miss a Counterspell, it is better to eat a fear or a tick or two of Drain Life than risk interrupting a fake cast so the lock "knows" he can safely spam drains.
3. You must keep the pressure on, the DoTs are destroying your health pool especially if the felhunter is aggressively dispelling your shields.
   
4. Use you globals wisely.
5. Remember you probably have mana to burn against an affliction lock, mana shield IS viable.
   

How We Can Win:

Summon your WE as the duel timer ticks, nova and opening lance as the duel starts. If he opens with immolate, your fire ward eats the damage, and hopefully you've done some okay damage, taken some damage, and he's burnt his spellstone at the end of one global cooldown. If he doesn't stone the nova, lance again if nova is still up, and lance a third time if nova is still up. You will eat corruption and a shadowburn as you lance and close the distance.

As he puts up Syphon and Agony, Cone of Cold and Fireblast. Hopefully between these instants and your pet, the lock is at 60-70% while you still have near full health, though are quite DoT'd up. If the lock goes for a fear at a time like this, it IS a fake. Eat the fear, and trinket it to keep pressure on. You're going to nova, lance next. Then another lance if the nova holds, Cone of Cold if it comes up (depends on your spec) while the lock is still frozen. So basically, you spend 3-4 globals pumping in damage while he either: fake-casts fear, fake-drains, burns howl, or tries to just trade damage with searing pain/immolate.

If he tries to just outdamage you, he will lose as long as you spend your globals intelligently. Decurses agony in between the cooldowns of Cone of Cold and Fireblast. Use this time to reapply Barrier, Mana Shield, or Fire Ward as they come up or as they are needed. If you know he's set to autodispel you, Mana Shield before you Barrier each time. Reapply shields BETWEEN Cone of Cold and Fireblast cooldowns, as you need your high damage instants to keep pressure on. It sounds pretty lame to just reshield, spam instants, and let your pet do damage, but you're dueling a WARLOCK. Remember that Cone of Cold is VERY important not just for the damage but to keep him close so that your pet is able to do solid damage.

If he starts legitimately trying to drain you, CS the drain because you have to, you should be able to force the healthstone during the spell lock, as he comes out he'll try to howl, avoid it if you can and force the deathcoil. IB the deathcoil best you can, if you're on global or are too close to react fast enough, too bad, but it doesn't cost you the duel. Sitting in block full duration is VERY dangerous here, if you sit full duration, and he silences you with felhunter shortly after coming out, you're going to eat a fear, as he'll either howl into silence->fear or silence->fear into howl. If he gets this, the lock has a solid 6-10 seconds to Drain Spam you, which really is pretty much GG. So hop out of block moderately early, and keep the pressure up. The goal is to burn him down before felhunter silence comes back up, if it does and he lands a fear->Drain, your pet nova should come up as the fear ends, so you can get one last attempt to burst him down before his DoTs kill you. You'll have your second CS here, if you can last to your second CS after him spending Deathcoil, Howl, and his most recent Felhunter Silence, the fight is likely yours.

If the lock deathcoils early after your initial burst, drop the IB instantly after the DC and keep up the pressure, if the lock doesn't get a long fear on you VERY fast after an early DC as affliction, he's done to your instants and pet.

If the lock after your initial burst starts fake-casting fears, let him fear you. Trinket the fear and keep up the pressure. If he lands a howl->drain, Ice Block QUICKLY. He'll like DC you, but it is better to eat the DC than a long fear+Drain Life. Sit in block for a moderate amount of time, Cold Snap when you come out and keep Counterspell in the bank to deny Drain spam. Let your pet do your damage while you perform your instants and shields rotation. If he kites a lot and you have a hard time keeping him in range, don't hesitate to bring out your second pet and NEVER hesitate to use cooldowns against any lock with the improved drains. A small amount of health can go a VERY long way when he's draining you.

What He Does to Counter You:

He will either: kite your pet if he's confident he can or he will kill your pet. Fearing and banishing the pet is not very effective for an affliction lock as eating the Counterspell even with a decent chunk of health remaining can be GG. It's safer to kite the pet or kill it with shadowburn and powerful DoTs. Alternately, the lock can howl you (and pet if he can) and as you trinket fear, he can silence->fear, corruption, shadowburn, deathcoil your pet and run. This trades deathcoil for your first pet basically, a trade that he can afford to make as it pretty forces the mage to burn an Ice Block if he wants to get his second pet out. And while I complain about how overpowered locks are, there isn't a TON he can do to counter what you're trying to do against him here.

Mixups:

Hypothermia means you REALLY need to put the lock on the defensive before you hop in your first Ice Block. Even though an affliction lock lacks the survivability of SL, his dots do huge damage, his felhunter is even more a nuisance than a felguard, and he's perpetually trying to outrange you and run away while his DoTs destroy you. You must keep him snared and close to you to maintain damage for both you and your pet.

1. Save your pet nova until after he burns hunter silence->fear on you. When he does, trinket and quickly pet nova, try to cast a bolt on the lock. This denies howl pretty well and puts the lock in a strange situation where he needs to get close to howl, but needs to stay far away to kite your pet. If you space yourself away from your pet and deny him the howl by keeping range as you run from him, even if he Spellstones that nova, you can get a lot of damage in as he tries to land that howl.
   
2. Time to go see Knocked Up, I'll add to this LATER!
   

Water Elemental Basics

Random Thoughts on WE:

Double up on stopcasting bind. It is pretty reasonable to macro this to be:
/stopcasting
/petpassive

This ends up being versatile in a lot of situations and it is pretty rare you want to do one and not the other. Basically becomes, a stop button for everything you're doing. (Say your rogue teammate lands a blind on your pet's target)

Bind petattack to something intelligent and don't use scrubby pet assist macros. WE does a lot of dmg, it is great for secondary damage in arena if you run staggered or split DPS. You should be comfortable at switching targets with WE as if you were simply tab-target fireblasting to assist the DPS train. A lot of people just summon their WE on the target their team is nuking and leave it autoattacking a target getting spam healed all game; without getting into if this is good or bad (it does keep moderate healing pressure up), realize at least when you switch targets you're leaving a good chunk of DPS behind if you don't control your WE well.

You should pet nova with about .5 + your latency seconds before your frostbolt finishes to bolt->lance combo off the pet nova. A LOT of people nova sooner than necessary and I watch nova gets dispelled before they get off their lance. (The bolt will still get shatter bonus even if the dispel occurs midair, shatter is calculated when the bolt leaves your hand) This comes up not very often against casters since they often have multiple debuffs or are on global, but against rogues, who have many ways of escaping nova, gnomes, or druids, you should try to be reasonably "tight" on the window you give them to escape the nova. It is a pretty big damage loss if you don't get the shatter bonus on both.

You need to be at 8 yds or more to shatter combo reliably. Why do people try this on people literally on top of them?

At 25+ yds, you can get shatter bonus on all three spells: frostbolt, ice lance, and fireblast. This is of course easier with gladiator gloves. I've heard you can get this even at much shorter distances, and I haven't really confirmed it either way, the point is that distance is your friend when pet nova comboing.

Be wary of Psychic Scream or Affliction Howl of Terror. Some teams will save this stuff for pet summon, there isn't necessarily a ton you can do, but stall on summoning pet until you can be well spaced. You both eating the fear is pretty bad news for your team.

WE obviously benefits a good deal from activation trinkets, you of course should be using them when you are confident you can land a good pet nova combo. A lot of people go for their WE burst, see the target doesn't die, and then pop trinkets and just try to chaincast (perhaps with heroism), recognize that you lost a few hundred potential burst damage by not using it sooner.

Do not rely on the AI to avoid CC'd targets. This is pretty obvious, when you poly, switch your pet target manually, if your pet is midcast, its not horrible to use the aforementioned stopcasting bind as you change targets, the split second doing this is better than repolying and wasting 6 seconds of potential poly to DR.

Don't kill other mages WE. If you're a WE mage, you of course realize that your pet is a lot of your damage, and are more likely to advocate killing opposing mage Water Elementals. If you're 17/0/44, you are horrible at doing this, and you could spend time doing better things. Your teammates are MUCH better suited to killing a frost immune target than you. You can finish them off or help out a bit with a fireblast, but don't sit there scorching or missiling or blasting or whatever.

Save your own frost nova for defensive purposes and use the pet's nova for shatter combos. Good shatter combos are not much weaker than AP Pom Pyro+Fireblasts, but you can do it 4 times, while they get to do it once. Thinking of your pet nova as your "pom pyro" equivalent is important or you are not a burst damage threat. Moreover, it is extremely rare you'll get to use your own nova and frostbolt someone in arena, more often than not, you're just getting an Ice Lnace off that nova, why not save your teammates with it instead?

Just because you have your pet out does not mean you let your pet do your damage while you spam CC and poly juggle. AP Frost is better suited to playing this way, you want to find opportunities to draw fire or outright cast bolts on people. CC when you can, but you are there to deal damage, and you should be threat if you're left unguarded to openly cast. I don't like to switch to hardcore CC until after the first kill, because it really gives up sente. By the way, you should never cast non-rank 1 poly.