Blood Sport: Beginner's Guide to Arena, Part VI
by C. Christian Moore 
Feb 1st 2010 at 7:00PM
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: The Knife with "Heartbeats." My wife has been recommending this song for maybe a month or two now. Even though she doesn't play WoW, she loves reading WoW.com. Valentine's Day is coming up, so I figure I should start laying down the sweet. Hello, love. Your favorite song is featured today. I like it too. Hopefully our readers do as well.
Last Week: We finished up our two part series on resource mechanics in arena. It's been a bit of a hiatus since we last looked at some advice for arena novices. With the new arena season starting tomorrow, there's no better time to define some terms.
This Week: I've been getting comments asking to describe some terms in these arena articles. Arena terms can be quite confusing, even to a hardcore raider! Tanking, for instance, means completely different things. Read on to see what they are!
Arena PvP glossary:
Potentially confusing team names:
We'll probably be going over positioning and some arena specifics. The positioning article might need to be split up into several because of all the different arenas and possibilities. Expect to see some terrible MS Paint skills. If I missed any terms, please let me know in the comments below and I'll edit them in. Thanks!
Want to ascend the arena ladders faster than a fireman playing Donkey Kong? Check out WoW.com's articles on arena, successful arena PvPers, PvP, and our arena column, Blood Sport.
Listening Music: The Knife with "Heartbeats." My wife has been recommending this song for maybe a month or two now. Even though she doesn't play WoW, she loves reading WoW.com. Valentine's Day is coming up, so I figure I should start laying down the sweet. Hello, love. Your favorite song is featured today. I like it too. Hopefully our readers do as well.
Last Week: We finished up our two part series on resource mechanics in arena. It's been a bit of a hiatus since we last looked at some advice for arena novices. With the new arena season starting tomorrow, there's no better time to define some terms.
This Week: I've been getting comments asking to describe some terms in these arena articles. Arena terms can be quite confusing, even to a hardcore raider! Tanking, for instance, means completely different things. Read on to see what they are!
Arena PvP glossary:
- Balanced Composition: A 3v3 consisting of a melee dps, spell dps, and healer.
- Blanket, Silence, or Blanket Silence: Any ability which places a silencing debuff on an opponent. Silence, Strangulate, Spell Lock.
- Burst: A damage spike, or a team that specializes in killing things very quickly.
- Cleave Team: A predominantly physical-damage or melee-heavy 3v3 / 5v5.
- Composition: The class makeup of an arena team. Rogue-mage-priest is the composition of a popular 3v3 team.
- Crowd Control: Spells and abilities which limit an opponent's ability to fight.
- Drain: Any ability that removes mana from an opponent. Mana Burn, Drain Mana, Viper Sting, etc.
- Faceroll: A class, spec, or composition said to be very easy to play. Ex: "I could faceroll my keyboard and get gladiator with that composition."
- Farming: Gaining a large amount points off a single opposing team. "We farmed Xyz's team for 100 points yesterday."
- Gib/Global/WotLK: To kill an opponent extremely quickly.
- Interrupt: Any ability which forces a school lockout. Pummel, Kick, Counterspell.
- Juking: Stopping a spellcast to avoid an opponent's interrupt.
- Kite: To limit an opponent's damage by keeping out of his range of offensive abilities.
- Mana War: A type of arena battle that is won when an opposing healer goes oom.
- Metagame: What other people are currently playing and how it affects the tournament ladder.
- MS: Originates with Mortal Strike; any healing debuff. Mortal Strike, Wound Poison, Aimed Shot, etc.
- Opener: The initial spells and abilities which start an arena game. Especially important with rogues.
- Peeling: Using crowd control to keep opponents from damaging your teammates.
- Pillar Humping: A defensive strategy which involves avoiding the opponent by running behind pillars.
- Pressure: High constant damage.
- Queue Dodging: Trying to purposefully avoid other arena teams that are also queueing. Queue dodging is legal, but often frowned upon.
- Reset: Both teams purposefully remove themselves from combat and healers are mutually permitted to regen to full mana.
- Spy: A level one character created on another realm to 'spy' on the whereabouts of an opposing team. Spying is legal and often an aspect of queue dodging.
- Tanked/Tanking: Losing a large amount of points in a short period of time. "We tanked from 2400 to 2100 tonight."
- Train: All members of the same team attacking the same target.
- Tunnel Vision: Ignoring powerful opportunities to benefit your team by being too focused on one aspect of the game.
- Turtle: A slow and boring game. Usually created by opponents who play defensively with the goal of outlasting their opponents.
- Win Trading: Two or more teams engaging in collusion to gain an uncompetitive advantage or benefit through the arena queue system. This usually includes a team purposefully losing to benefit another. Win Trading is against WoW's Terms of Service, is cheating, and can get you suspended or banned.
- Zerg: An aggressive opening strategy. The term originates in Starcraft.
Potentially confusing team names:
- 234: The popular core of many 5v5 teams. Discipline priest, holy paladin, arms warrior (or hunter), elemental shaman.
- 2345: The above composition with a frost mage.
- 2346: The above composition with a warlock substituted for the frost mage.
- Euro Comp: Rogue, warlock, mage, discipline priest, resto druid.
- RMPLS: Rogue, warlock, mage, discipline priest, resto shaman.
- JAC: Rogue, warlock, mage, shadow priest, resto shaman.
- Drain Team: A 3v3 or 5v5 team with the primary strategy to oom opponent healers.
- Team Asia: A drain team popular in The Burning Crusade. Warlock, hunter, discipline priest, resto druid, holy paladin.
- Beast Cleave: Beast mastery hunter, enhancement shaman, healer (usually holy paladin).
- Shadowcleave: Death knight, affliction warlock, healer (usually holy paladin or resto druid).
- TSG: 3v3 team consisting of holy paladin, death knight, arms warrior.
- Wizard Cleave: 3v3 team consisting of two spell dps casters and a healer.
- DR: Diminishing Returns.
- LOS: Line Of Sight. When an opponent runs behind a pillar to avoid your spell, he is said to have 'LOS'd' you.
- Mp5: Mana (regen) Per 5 seconds.
- OOM: Out Of Mana.
- RNG: Random Number Generator.
We'll probably be going over positioning and some arena specifics. The positioning article might need to be split up into several because of all the different arenas and possibilities. Expect to see some terrible MS Paint skills. If I missed any terms, please let me know in the comments below and I'll edit them in. Thanks!
Want to ascend the arena ladders faster than a fireman playing Donkey Kong? Check out WoW.com's articles on arena, successful arena PvPers, PvP, and our arena column, Blood Sport.Filed under: PvP, Blood Sport (Arena PvP)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Hades Feb 1st 2010 7:10PM
nice article
may want to consider changing your definition of "Cleave Team". There are enough examples of comps that do not focus on just physical damage: Wiz Cleave, Shadow Cleave, also Beast Cleave is titled that because of the wolves and BM hunters pet, not the physical damage. TSG is a form of Plate Cleave, etc... Maybe defining it as a team where the dps players have a common niche as apposed to a traditional "balanced" team.
Hades Feb 1st 2010 7:15PM
opposed*
before the spelling police come rollin' up on me
C.Christian.Moore Feb 1st 2010 7:36PM
Hi Hades. Thanks for the comment.
I did define Wizard Cleave. I'll edit in Beast Cleave and Shadowcleave later. A "cleave team" was originally defined as two melee dps + a healer, but has evolved a bit since then.
When talking about a "cleave team" with no prefix before cleave, arena players talk about a physical-heavy or melee-heavy composition.
Enhancement shaman + beast mastery hunter + holy paladin, while being coined "Beast Cleave," is also a "cleave team."
Hades Feb 1st 2010 9:11PM
"originally defined"
Oh... you're gonna go all Old Skool on me huh? LoL
I definitely think the term has evolved enough over time to warrant a change to the definition, but it's very possible the connotation changes depending on the server/bg.
calvport Feb 1st 2010 9:41PM
In my battlegroup we say a cleave team is a team with all physical and no ranged dps. And then wizard cleave would be a team with all casters. Basically a cleave to us is just a team made up of all similar classes.
Nahl Feb 2nd 2010 4:07PM
Does anyone actually know what the TSG in "TSG team" stands for?
Miir Feb 4th 2010 2:52PM
TSG as the comp is named after the team which was called TSG which basically popularized the warrior/DK/holy pally setup after the Blizzcon finals in 2009. The name stands for Teh Supah Gosus (or something like that I forget Zilea told me a long time ago), Teh and supah are fairly straightforward in what they mean, Gosu means pro in korean I believe so basically their team name meant the super pros.
This name was applied to the comp as a whole to mock the fact that each individual class in arena wasn't particularily noted for requiring much skill to play successfully. Basically the setup works like this: Warrior establishes on the kill target and applies MS while the DK CoI's the target so they are rooted, then the warrior bladestorms on top of the target and the DK silences the healer and then starts damaging the kill target which in most cases meant that if there weren't significant damage reduction cooldowns used the target would die, and sometimes they would die through the cooldowns also. The paladin throws a HoJ here and there and is basically free to spam heals because of the pressure the warrior and DK are putting out. Another noteworth point is that the DK will usually pop AMS/Lichborne/IBF to prevent stuns or other forms of CC and the warriors is obviously immune during bladestorm making the pressure extremely difficult to deal with.
Lychiles Feb 1st 2010 8:49PM
Thanks again Mr. C. Christian Moore.
Your beginner guides to arena have helped alot. On my server it is near impossible to find a good 3v3 team and we probably don't even have a single 5v5 team. But now, thanks to your help, I am leading a 2v2 and a 3v3 team and we plan to go to the top.
I would love to see a article on kill order and basic strategy. One of the biggest problems that our team has is figuring out what to kill and when to kill it. Now obviously we need to kill everything, but in what order?
P.S. When pvp'ing my favorite songs are:
Worries - Langhorne Slim
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Daft Punk
Baud Feb 2nd 2010 2:56AM
Love the knife. Excellent choice. I leveled my DK exclusively to School of Seven Bells. (If you like the knife you'd like them, probably).
That is all!
Kyrro Feb 2nd 2010 4:48AM
I'd say that José Gonzalez' version is alot better than The Knife's.
Another cool song is Neon Snakes by a swedish band called Fontän. Go check that out if you like to feel cool while pvp:ing.
Kaavi Feb 2nd 2010 12:39PM
Rather than using Paint, use GIMP or Paint.NET. Both are far better than Paint. GIMP is basically Photoshop but free (lacking a few features that you won't miss) and Paint.NET is a much lighter alternative that started out as an alternative to Paint but has evolved to be quite good.
GIMP runs on nearly every OS, but the learning curve is fairly steep. Paint.NET is Windows only and supposedly (I haven't used it myself) easier to use.
Sepkoski Feb 5th 2010 11:05AM
This is a fantastic series. Please keep up the good work!
James Feb 12th 2010 10:31AM
What does 'unhealable damage' refer to?
Thanks
hiwut Feb 16th 2010 5:35PM
Damage that is so ridiculously high or constant that it is, for all practical purposes, unhealable. The healer just can't keep up with the damage, and even if the healer does manage to keep up with this damage, all possible cooldowns were likely used and won't be ready in time for the next batch of unhealable damage.