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Blood Sport: Become a 5v5 master (4 DPS/1 healer teams)
Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column. Listening Music: Talking Heads with "Psycho Killer." I love David Byrne. I've been playing Cataclysm beta for about a week and a half -- well, if I can call it playing. I've done a few quests in Hyjal. I'm still level 80, about 25 percent of the way in. It's been fun, but I haven't been able to break away from arenas and battlegrounds on the live realms. Oh, how I've missed thee, my beloved PvP. Offense vs. defense 4 DPS teams are offensive quintets (even the healers participate in damage most of the time) that use incredible damage to accomplish quick wins and losses. They're often referred to as "zerg teams." Silly StarCraft references. When I first started playing arena, a friend much more PvP-experienced than myself explained to me the difference between two-healer team and 4 DPS: "A two-healer team is a balanced fighting force, using positional and defensive advantages to their advantage. Think of a castle, fortified with archers and boiling oil. A 4 DPS team is more akin to a juggernaut, barreling through walls and relying on brute force. Sometimes the castle wins; sometimes the battering ram is successful. The lines of attack and defense are much different, however."
Blood Sport: Arena for dummies II
So you want to get into Arenas, eh? You're a bit late coming into the game, but that's alright. Whether you want to be truly competitive or just try Arenas out for fun, maybe even with friends, it helps to have a little bit of knowledge about what you're getting into. Before anything else, however, we'll take a look at some commonly used terms in the Arenas so you can insert some your vent communications so you can sound like a Pro... or at least not get lost in the discussion.2345A team comp (composition) consisting of an MS Warrior, a Discipline Priest, a Holy Paladin, an Elemental Shaman, and a Mage, usually Frost-specced.This is a 2-healer 3-DPS cookie-cutter composition that supposedly originated from the Bloodlust Battlegroup (BG9). Unlike basketball, where the numbers refer to positions (or classes) on the team, 2345 actually refers to the head-rolling-on-keyboard reference of mashing the buttons 2, 3, 4, and 5 repeatedly throughout the match. Roughly, this translates to unloading all offensive abilities based on, or during, the Shaman's Bloodlust / Heroism. The basic strategy is to assist off the Warrior who applies Mortal Strike on a target and burst damage coming from the Shaman and Mage with Shatter combo often with Nature's Swiftness, Elemental Mastery, and Chain Lightning. The Shaman and Priest also work off offensive dispels, removing shields and immunities, while the Paladin plays main healer. This composition can and does switch targets often throughout the course of a match.
The post-game analysis
Our team got rocked last night. Coming out the gate, we faced a full S3 team that rushed us over the tomb in the Ruins of Lordaeron. Quickly scanning targets, our DPS called for focus fire on the Shadow Priest. It wasn't until about five seconds in that I saw our Warrior dropping down to 50%, then 30%, and I had lost him in my Line-of-Sight. By the time he had sprinted out of the starting room, the opposing team had swapped targets to our Feral Druid and dropped him in under ten seconds. We'd been had. Running triple melee, we were confined to too much of an offensive mindset to notice the fact that we were up against a 4-DPS team who went directly for the Warrior instagib. The only person who saw this early enough was our Warrior, who retreated back into our room to slow down the opposing team's offense. By the time we'd picked up on what was happening, our Druid was dead and our Warrior was running around the coffin with a sword and board Spell Reflecting and trying to stay alive. By then it was too late and in less than two minutes we were handed our first and only loss for the night.
