Your palms sweat and your heart starts pounding. You hear the chime as the queue starts. The box appears and you click accept. You find yourself locked in a room with your team mates. You all buff up and get ready. The warning message comes up counting down from ten. The doors open up and you carefully step out into the arena checking for the classes of the other teams. Welcome to the arena!

This can be one of the most frustrating yet funs portions of the game. Unlike leveling and gold, this is completely voluntary. There are 3 types of teams, 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5. I belong to one of each, although it is hard to get the 5v5 team together as schedules have to match, and everyone has to be doing nothing else at that time. My 2v2 team is a Resto Druid and my Hunter. Unlike most hunters, I use a cat for arena, Scorpids are good, but the cat is a better spell interrupt. My 3v3 team is a Resto Druid, a Feral Druid, and my hunter. In both cases we aren’t great, but we aren’t bad either. We have also just started doing this so going 5 wins and 7 losses is not a bad day for us. The 3 of us have only ever played maybe 20 arena matches total ever. I have a feeling this is going to change.

There are several methods and strategies that people employ I have noticed, the main one being to kill the healer first. If there is no clear defined healer, or more than one, kill the softest one first. (Sapphire loves to chew on clothies). The other advantage that we have over other teams I have noticed is that we work well together. Neravan and Leonnis are two of the group of 5 that leveled together, and however we don’t always raid together anymore, we spent a lot of time playing together. We also talk on vent. When Leonnis or I change targets, the other does as well. It’s done as smoothly as Sapphire changing targets with me.

Arena is all about team work that is the difference between winning and losing. That and gear. The thing about our record is we are in PvE gear only. Leonnis has some BG gear, but his resilience is not much higher than mine or Neravan’s. I hit like a Mac truck, and the cat is not far behind me. I critted a mage last night for 2300, which is about 1/3 of his health. That’s a huge dent in their ability to fight back; it also makes their healer put full attention on them. Add in the damage that Sapphire and Leonnis do at the same time and all of a sudden it’s difficult to heal through it.

I think arena is something that is going to be a lot of fun going forward, and something that I would like to try and do weekly, well make a point of it really. There is nothing like standing toe to toe with the opposing team side by side with two great friends. Let the deaths continue!