Call to Arms: Strand of the Ancients weekends are always fun for me, but the one two weeks back was just hilarious. I assembled a guild premade--we’re starting to prepare for the rated battlegrounds--and we ran SotA for many hours. We hoped to run into other premades: you don’t really learn anything from steamrolling PuGs. We were not disappointed.
But most of those premades were really bad at SotA. Not because they were bad at PVP, either--we were running into coordinated teams who knew how to chain CC, use LoS and focus people down, but couldn’t seem to get their head around the battleground. They’d kill us and kill us on the beach while we merrily rooted and CC’d them to peel them off the demolishers. Since we didn’t kill them, they didn’t respawn past the gates. Once the beach gates fell, it was all over--our shadowstep rogues were in position to cap the inner graveyards, so we had more tanks rolling up before the enemy could get off the beach.
I mean, god, they were using healers. What’s a healer going to do in SotA, heal a demolisher? I can dispel DoTs off a demolisher as easily in shadowform as in full holy, and that’s all you can really do for them directly. Better to be in full DPS spec to help vaporize vehicles on defense and control pursuers on offense. They were killing demolishers with no one in them! Thanks, pals, I can wait ten seconds for one to spawn at full health. Our team knew to DPS unoccupied demolishers to 10% of health and leave them. They were trying to kill the people attacking their demolishers! The damage I can do to that demolisher while you pew pew me will be plenty, friends, so thanks for not just frost trapping me here while it rolls majestically away.
Now on the other hand, the premades we fought who both knew how the BG worked and had PVP experience just creamed us. Few of my guildies have played arena beyond 2x2, so they’re still struggling with calling a switch and so on. We’re getting better, though, and learning things like how to run a good tankbusting squad and how to micromanage those critical first seconds at the docks.
I have no doubt that the people who dominate the rated battlegrounds will mostly be the people who dominate the arenas currently. But right now there’s a fair number of people who are too proud of their usual tactics to adapt, and while that lasts it’s going to be fun to plow them.