Project: Arena Pandemic!

10:30AM on 28 Aug 2009 by shieldbreakr
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Some of you may have noticed my arena teams changed at the end of season six. A late edition called "MyWifeWantsToArenaLOL" happened in the second to last week of the season. Well, actually, it's not a joke. She has finally decided to try her hand at arena-lock. As any other warcraft husband would, I immediately formed a team [with a name which informs the enemy of exactly what they are up against] and proceeded to queue. After two weeks of 20% win ratios (4-16), I was actually fairly happy with the result: 522 arena points, enough for her to buy two pieces of gear without me having to help farm out another 60k honor. However, this got me thinking: why are we winning any games at all?

So, being the sort that likes a challenge and having been burned out on arena before [season 2 and 3 gladiator w/ my rogue]. I decided to issue both myself and my wife a wholesome challenge: 2000 rating in the 2v2 bracket. In so doing, I can explore the various abilities of a death knight to take on two opponents at the same time [as is happening right now], to hopefully document some of the more noteworthy discoveries, and to possibly turn my wife into a face-rolling murder machine.

Right now, she is anything but. Wrong spec, wrong clothes, wrong pet? She was running arena with me as 0/13/58 PvE destruction. Just a blast, blast, blast spec that seems to have a lot of damage and no survivability built into it that I can find (or shadowfury). Combine that with the fact that she has not a single piece of PvP gear and was running around with the imp out for the first few games and you'll start to appreciate exactly the predicament I have entered myself into (did I mention she hit lvl 80 with this warlock two weeks ago?). Still, my wife is a smarty pants that learns fast and can do just about anything she puts her mind too, so I have high hopes for season seven. Plus, she's been playing warlock her whole WoW career, so it's not like I have to teach her where the fear button is.

My situation is slightly better. I have a full set of deadly armor from my prior endeavors and have been honor capped for quite a while. My 522 arena points went into 5 honor tokens [for 10k honor] to spend on the new bracer/belt/cape/neck when it comes out next week. I plan to arena as 13/55/3 DW PvP Frost with endless winter and icy reach though I might change that to 0/17/54 classic unholy arena build with AMZ/Ebon Plaguebringer and glyphs of Ghoul/SS/DD.

I anticipate we will have problems with a few match-ups:
- Rogue/Rogue: She's dead so fast that I don't know what advice to give her. Trinket the stun? Then she's chain blinded while I take the beating. Don't trinket the stun and she's dead before DR even starts. If I take the beating, I trinket stun after she's in blind, then I can IBF and hopefully fend them off for a bit, but I just don't see me winning DK vs 2 rogues, even with them taking a GCD to re-CC her. This might just be a loss.
- DK/Pally Healer [of some sort]: Nightmare. All of my tools plus a pocket healer that can go immune to burst. If someone has a nice way to lure the paladin into using HS, I'm all ears, but this just seems futile without a MS effect. Not to mention this is a high percentage matchup considering there are 5001 DK/Pal 2v2 teams in my group.
- DPS/Tree Druid: Right now, tree druids are just immortal. I can't take one down alone and she doesn't live long enough to help me. I think this might just be a "Learn to control the felhunter better" matchup that will get easier as we coordinate our CC's and interrupts better.
- Caster/Caster: If it's warlock/warlock, easy fight. If it's Mage/ElemSham, she's dead so fast I can't figure out what went wrong (sensing a trend here?). I'm a DK, master of caster disaster, and two of our wins were against F.Mage/Caster pairs where she died to the alpha strike and I basically 2v1'd the pair. If it's caster/S.Priest, fergetaboutit, he drops out to heal after she dies and I'm left beating a gimpy healer and some dps class with suddenly extended life.
- D.Priest/Rogue: One of us dies to the initial rogue attack. Not much I can do about it except peel, peel, peel and hope we burn down the priest fast enough. Again, this might get easier as she learns felhunter control and I stop being such a bad magician with strangulate. However, that rogue damage is pretty bad ass against both of us right now.

Season Six rating: 170. We could only do better next season considering the minimum rating to start losing points.

Tags: arena season6 2v2 13/55/3