Blood Sport: 5 frustrations of PVP and how to overcome them
by Michael Gray 
Oct 18th 2011 at 6:00PM
WoW is a big, big game. In most of the game, you get to hang out with friends, do your best, and eventually see all the content. Even if it requires extra levels, raid nerfs, and gear improvement, chances are you will eventually get the chance to kill every boss in the game. Play long enough and keep working hard enough, and you can be guaranteed to see all of the player-versus-environment content.
PVP doesn't work that way. PVP is a zero-sum game. In order for someone to win, someone has to lose. The Arena doesn't end until one of the teams suffers a total defeat. In the Battlegrounds, one team achieves its objectives and the other team fails.
The result of this zero-sum situation is that PVP can be very, very frustrating. We have some tips and techniques that will help you battle these frustrations, either by managing your emotions or overcoming the most annoying aspect of PVP.
5. Your PUG Battleground isn't up to snuff.
We've all heard the legendary frustrations about random Battlegrounds. Folks fight miles away from the flag, do battle in the road, and keep pulling Van while the towers are still up. Joining a random Battleground does have the advantage of making you feel like a superhero, because it feels like nobody is performing as well as you.
How do you fight this frustration? Remember that everyone else in the PUG probably feels the same way. The reason PUGs don't come together is that PUGs don't coordinate, aren't all on the same wavelength, and have wildly different approaches to success. Keep that foremost in your mind.
When you have no hope of winning a PUG Battleground, get laser focused on your own performance. Whether that translates into racking up your personal honor kills, accomplishing achievements, or just being the best player you can be, stay focused on your goals and exceed your own expectations.
4. You just can't beat this team.Some nights you log into the Arena and it feels like if you bought a duck, it'd drown. You keep getting DK/druid team after DK/druid team. You couldn't peel the enemy warrior if he were a banana. The only healers you see wear plate armor, and they're all handy with the bubbles. Even after dozens of matches, you don't feel like you can win more than one or two.
This happens. That's all there is to it. Off nights happen. If you can't seem to win a match no matter what you do, it might be time to take the night off. Come back to the Arena the next night when you're refreshed, energized and ready to fight.
Obviously, take the time to chat through all of your failures and make sure you know went wrong. But if the only answer you can think of is "This isn't working out tonight," take a walk and let it go.
3. Your gear is holding you back.
Especially for folks who are just starting in PVP, it's easy to feel like you're wearing tissue paper in the Battlegrounds. I've seen plenty of people talk about wearing plate armor as if it were some kind aegis, but the reality is that in PVP, resilience is your only meaningful damage reduction.
If you fall over dead the second a rogue comes out of stealth, then you might need more resilience. (It should take at least 4 seconds.)
Build up your resilience as much as you can. You can gather immense amounts of resilience at this point in the expansion. While valor points are capped on a weekly basis, there is no such limitation on honor points. Keep queueing up for Battlegrounds and fighting in Tol Barad; before you know it, you'll be packing enough resilience to mitigate 33% of the damage you take from other players.
2. It doesn't seem like it's getting better.You've been fighting in the Arena every week, doing all the Battlegrounds you can, and things don't seem to be getting any better. You still feel like you're a walking target, and you aren't winning half of your matches. What do you do when you're at the quitting point?
If you haven't been already, this is a great time to go hit the PVP blogosphere and start doing some research. Talk to folks at Arena Junkies, do Google searches about the compositions that are giving you trouble, and generally just read everything you can.
The hope here is that you can find out what's going wrong and take steps to improve. You know what they say about the definition of insanity; network and meet other PVP players so that you can talk to them and change your ways.
1. Experiment with another class.
The inevitable final step if you're frustrated with how things are going in PVP, go ahead and give another class a try. This will do two things for you.
First, there's no way to learn the ins and outs of another class like playing it yourself. As you level up a new character, learn its abilities, and try out its capabilities, you'll learn how to defeat it. If a paladin is constantly smashing your face in, leveling and playing a paladin can help you find ways to defeat one.
Second, you might just find you're better in a new class. Not everyone is at their best with every class. Switching things up might land you someplace better for your own playstyle. It's not a perfect solution, but you might just find yourself happier.
Want to ascend the arena ladders faster than a fireman playing Donkey Kong? We'll steer you to victory with the best arena addons and let you in on some rank 1 gladiator PvP secrets. Be sure to check out our guide to PvP keybindings.
Filed under: Blood Sport (Arena PvP)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Skyburnone Oct 18th 2011 6:34PM
"Want to ascend the arena ladders faster than a fireman playing Donkey Kong? " Hehehe... I laughed in real life.
Marcosius Oct 19th 2011 9:50AM
..Where else would you laugh?
taedrad Oct 18th 2011 6:34PM
So true. My main raider (and primary character) is a Healadin, but I hate PvP on him. PvP on my Druid and Rogue however is ridiculously fun.
solojuego_2 Oct 18th 2011 6:46PM
Nice article. Thanks I do feel like crap sometimes when it comes to PvP.
Matthew Oct 18th 2011 7:05PM
So true. two things
1) When I lose I tell myself "I wanted to win which means someone else had to lose. Me winning is someone losing. So me losing means someone wanted to win. I wanted to win, its the same universe". Kind of a zen thing. Makes me feel much better
2) When I lose a few times in a row, I play alternate faction alt. Amazing, it really works!
ambermist Oct 18th 2011 7:27PM
It's only been since mid-Wrath that PvP really came into scope for me. I like bg's on my druid, but I am pretty awful in the arena. I wanted to get a lot better at PvP on the whole, though; so I rolled a character (rogue; surprise, surprise) with the intent of doing very little besides PvP with her--practice, practice, practice, right?
So far she's level 57 with about 8k HKs under her little gnomish belt. I haven't done any quests (save a few dungeon ones) since she hit level 10. I bg on her until she hits the lowest level of the next bracket. At that point, I take a one level break, hit a dungeon or two to try to get some better gear, and then get right back to it. I've learned a lot, not only about PvP itself, but about how to distance myself from the nerd raging bg'ers and focus on objectives (or if that's failing, killing as many priests as I can find...), and how to be confident that I know what I'm doing in there.
Great advice; I wish I had seen something like this before I walked away from PvP the first time!
Bronwyn Oct 18th 2011 7:38PM
Great article! I've been trying to be more "zen" about the whole pvp thing because I know that not only is death inevitable, but losing as well. I try not to let it get me down.
Goradan Oct 18th 2011 7:42PM
Switching classes saved the PvP game for me. My main in all other aspects in my Prot pally that I went Ret to do PvP with - and I hit walls in the 1500 ratings that I couldn't get past.
Eventually I swapped to my warlock - and things got so much better. I'm loving the game, and maybe thinking about playing my Paladin as Holy.
Good advice! The "walk away" is the hardest to do but probably the best thing to do when you're caught in a chain of losses, especially in Arenas.
vocenoctum Oct 18th 2011 7:54PM
I don't take pvp too seriously (just do some bg's, no arena), but a couple friends that swear off pvp taught me a simple lesson they can't seem to understand.
in PVP, death isn't automatically bad. You're part of a team, if your death means the team advances, then so be it. You aren't losing durability, you're not losing honor, you're just losing time. It's like any other commodity.
Not that you should just jump into a fray with no chance of doing anything except dying, but if I can hold off a few players from capping a place long enough for reinforcements to come, the fact they kill me as the others arrive doesn't mean I suck or that it's unfair since they ganged up on me, or...
Anyway, some people get really frustrated when they die. They take it as a mark of failure. It can be, but it's not always...
Sunblade Oct 19th 2011 2:34AM
I agree; I'm not the best rogue out there -by far- so I adapt my play accordingly.
BG's are a team game and if I can keep the healer occupied even when he is surrounded by red, or jump in and stop someone capping the flag even though I know I'm going to get zerged and die, well to me I've helped the team.
Even when the guild I am in (all rogues) go out hunting, I'll stay stealthed last because another alliance is bound to appear and if I can get that cheap-shot in, might just save a guildie. Besides, there is a satisfaction when the oppononet think they have unstealthed the group only for another one to appear from nowhere :)
jojobohobojobo Nov 4th 2011 10:10PM
I agree. I play a rogue and I pride myself on focusing primarily on making game-winning moves. I lock down healers. I cc (sometimes sapping and never opening) just to allow my team to catch up to the flag carrier. I stand all by myself at lumber mill stealthed and call incomings. When this doesn't work, however, and the herpaderpery is at an all-time high. I watch tv and relax, because hey, rogues and druids can do that and above all, it's just a game and not worth getting mad over.
DarkWalker Oct 18th 2011 8:05PM
I'm not really a PvPer, but I think I should mention something regarding points 5 and 3:
* 5
There's a situation I step into BGs against my will - when some non-PvP achievement requires a PvP step. Whenever that occurs, I enter the BG to do the achievement; I'm not playing to help the team, to kill the opponents, or even to win: I'm going to make a beeline to whatever task I need to do for the achiev, and only help my team if/when it helps me get the acievement. In this situation I make sure to let my team know that I'm playing just for the achievement, and I actually want the rest of my team to complain about me; the more players complaining about achievement-hunting PvErs ruining their games, the lower the chance of Blizzard doing more such achievements.
Also, whenever there is a PvP piece that would help my PvE gear - and is easier to get than the PvE equivalent - I go after it. The difference is that, in this situation, since I'm playing of my own freewill, I will do everything in my power (within reason) to help my team. Of course, even then I'm still a player with little to no PvP experience or gear.
* 3
This is the main reason I don't play WoW's PvP for fun. I actually like objective-based PvP, but I refuse to play when there is an inherent, character-based handicap - such as the gear progression in WoW.
It's not only that I don't want to play against better geared players. I also don't like facing worse geared players - it feels like I'm cheating when I feel like I won just because I had better gear. In the end, for PvP, if gear > skill, I don't want to play. Plus, I'm not really into having to organize groups to play - so Arenas and Rated BGs, where the gear disparity would be minimized, don't hold any attraction over me.
Thus, I do my PvP in other games, and I'm enthusiastically waiting for GW2 - it will feature arenas where everyone is given the same quality gear, and open world PvP where the game equalizes the power of the different characters. The absence of gear progression makes me much happier in PvP, which leads me to spend many fun hours happily blasting away at other random players.
Natsumi Oct 18th 2011 8:52PM
I'd just like to point out that if you're upgrading PvE gear to PvP gear for PvE content, you're not actually upgrading, you're faking your ilvl. A 353 PvE piece is better than a 371 PvP piece as it has more USEFUL stat points. Resilience is completely useless in PvE, it ONLY affects damage caused by players, so the points allocated to Resilience on your gear is wasted, thus lowering your effective gear level. You may have more Strength, Agility, Intellect, or Spirit, but you won't be performing any better than you were in those 346 blues due to your lack of secondary stats.
Bellajtok Oct 18th 2011 9:05PM
Actually, Natsumi, that's not quite true. If it's a large enough ilvl difference, the extra stats will make the PvP gear a better option. Especially for Int- using classes, where Int is everything. At the point where it's 40+ levels greater, you're probably getting a boost. Although it's hard to say for sure, obviously.
antonyp Oct 18th 2011 9:12PM
Bellajtok is stupid.Lul
Bellajtok Oct 18th 2011 9:47PM
Obviously, it's rare that, with VP and JP, someone would have a slot with such a large ilvl gap, but it could happen- most likely when people are just starting in Zulroics and still have a few quest greens laying around. It happens, and if you happen to have some honor lying around from leveling, buying one or two pieces of PvP gear is an acceptable solution.
Eregos ftw! Oct 18th 2011 11:13PM
Before anyone calls me an idiot, let me make a case for you. For the vast majority of specs, pvp gear is generally worse then pve gear. The one exception i know of is bears
For bears (i has mathz on my computer, on my ipod right now), agility is ridiculuously good. As such, secondary stats (esp. non mastery) arent great. Because of this, one tier higher pvp gear is actually the same as a tier of pve gear below it ( 371 is actually a tier and a half above 359 because of s9 and thus is better) qnd any higher is better. So, 384=371 gear. If the 371 ( or tier below pvp gear) has mastery and the pvp gear doesnt, the pve gear is slightly better.
If you are really persistant on calling me an idiot i will bring up math for you guys onfe im on my computer.
Emophia Oct 19th 2011 12:31AM
Except no Natsumi, you;re wrong, on my alt combat rogue The ruthless glad helm SIMS better for damage than both my 359 Tsenga;s helm and the 353 troll hc one.
So no you;re wrong, suck it..
That said it is the only PVP piece I use across any of my chars.
marcuswauson Nov 8th 2011 10:27AM
Natsumi that ideology is a fallacy of many PVE players, there are several PVP pieces that give several different classes upgrades that they would otherwise be starved to find. Look at Resto Druid, its almost impossible to find leather bracers with good stat's, so you could run around forever with your 333 crap or you could run 3-4 random daily BG's and pick up a 371 pvp bracer that is way better than the 333 crap you've been carrying around.
My druid tank has on 365 pvp pants which give him significantly more stam, agil, and dodge than the 346 pants I had before, being that those are the only real stats you care about as a bear unless your sacrificing 200 points of mastery for a 10 point increase to agil(which I'm not) the pvp pants are better.
Another important thing that people that only focus on PVE sometimes don't realize about PVP gear is that often you sacrifice a somewhat useless stat for your class in order to pick up significantly more of a very important stat such as Hit rating where with the PVE you might have found it almost impossible to pick up another 200 hit rating to reach hit cap, getting that one PVP piece with 190 hit on it puts you where you need to be.
DarkWalker Oct 18th 2011 9:34PM
@Natsumi
It's not common, but it occasionally happens - more so with tanking alts, due to STA being more useful to them. After all, players can purchase PvP gear for all slots, something that is not true for PvE. Due to loot RNG, It's quite possible to go through two content tiers in PvE without seeing an upgrade for a slot or two.