I dip my toe into the PVP pool...

I have to confess, I am not really much of a PVPer. I do play on a PVP server, but the random ganking that passes for PVP I just find pointless and tiresome.

As for battlegrounds, they are a mixed bag. I enjoy what I consider the real battlegrounds (WSG, AB, EotS) to some extent, but my enjoyment is almost always based on the situation. If I am with a random PUG group it is usually an excercise in frustration. I swear half of the other Alliance players are retarded. People not sticking together, not defending objectives, or ignoring the whole point of the BG and just fighting players in a corner drive me nuts.

However, if I am in a premade with some guildies, suddenly BGs are a ton of fun. It is nice having people follow a plan and communicate on vent. 95% of those games we roll a random PUG, but the times we come across a horde premade are a blast as well. The other 2 BGs are a bit too gimmicky for my taste. AV feels more like a weird PVE race, and I just am not sold on the vehicle combat stuff in SotA.

This brings me to Arenas. Arenas are fun and frustrating at the same time. I have never been a big arena player. I used to play on a semi-regular basis way back in season 1 on my Warlock. Since then, I have basically ignored them on the shaman. I had never even set foot into an arena at 80 until 2 weeks ago when I did a few games for the hell of it. However, this weekend my best friend (Holy Paladin) asked me to put a bit of time into trying a 2s team with him. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. We went about .500 and worked our way up from 0 to close to 1000 rating over an hour or so. I was not unhappy, considering I have barely any PVP gear. In fact, what I do have was mostly some resto peices instead of ele, but I still wore it for the resilience. I believe I was sitting at around 300 resil, with 19k health. Almost every team we played had quite a bit more health and resil, so working at a disadvantage we held our own. Here are my impressions of playing an elemental in arenas.

First, our burst can be very powerful. I am pretty sure we won several games just because I caught the other team's healer offguard with my burst ability. I would generally pop Heroism immediatly to start the fight and hit ele mastery. A Flame Shock > Lava Burst > LB > LB combo could easily drop someone if they all crit and especially if a LB overload procs. Our pally would typically watch their healer and stun him as he tried to get off his first heal. It then became a matter of if my burst was going to be enough to finish them off before the healer could stop me. As an ele shaman, I do not play very subtle. I am going all out the entire time to try and overwhelm the other team with damage. I also found it useful to mix a Hex in during a rotation, especially on a healer. Our best healer kills were usually a pally stun opener, followed by my initial burst attacks, then a Hex, then finish him off.

Survivability as an elemental shaman I would put as not great, but not terrible. I have to give most of the credit to my pally, as he is quick to react with BoPs or Sacrifices to keep me alive. He also pops aura mastery to allow me to get my burst off without getting interrupted. Our two big tools as an elemental for survivability are the earthbind AOE root and the thunderstorm knock back. They are very nice to use in combination to get a pesky rogue or warrior out of your face. The earthbind is really great to catch a stealther as well. It should also be noted that one of the arenas you begin on an elevator and the opponents come up in another. That is within the range of an earthbind root, so always open with one right as you hit the top and you can usually catch a rogue out of stealth.

Our team seemed to have the most problem against priest teams. Disc priests seem to be super hard to take down, and excel at kiting in and out of LoS while keeping themselves and their teammate alive. I also decided DKs are the most annoying class in the world. Do they really need a pet that can stun, antimagic shield, a root, a pull, 2 different silences, plate armor, DoTs, and an overpowering smell? It is a little crazy how many tools they have to make my life difficult.

Overall, I will maybe keep up with the PVPing on the side and build a real set of gear. I think as we get some gear and practice, we will only improve. I will post an update on our progress after a few weeks, assuming we keep it up.