Arenas ... I'm Doing It Wrong

Let me preface this with the fact that I like PvP. There are several things that I like about it.

• You get to smash people in the face.
• No need to find 4 other people.
• Relatively quick and easy to get in and out and keep yourself occupied.
• You can take care of other little day to day tasks while in queue and not feel like you're holding anyone up.
• Smashing people in the face!

With most of my characters, I feel comfortable and completely at ease in battlegrounds. I have to say my shadow priest would be top ranking as my favorite; running in Warsong Gulch melting faces and capping flags. In fact, I love it. To the point that my friends thought I was a tad off and wouldn’t even try it with me. I simply talked about it too often. (I find out now that they’ve since discovered the wonders of PvP and are happily playing without me. /sigh)

My problem with Desdarii is I didn't PvP with her from the beginning and I'm out of practice. I flip out and don't remember all the skills and talents I have available to me. I can get away with this sort of behavior in the battlegrounds. Eh, so I die again. It's a quick reminder that I have ice block and should use it. I dust myself off and go back out and the overall goal of the BG is marginally effected if at all. Plus I'm familiar with the battlegrounds. I've played many different class types through them. I understand what's going on and feel I do what I can to make myself useful.

Enter the Arenas

First a little history as to why the Arenas are so new for us. Keste and I quit playing WoW last year right before the Burning Crusades came out and returned in December of 2007, leveling up horde characters on Khaz Modan. This whole concept of Arena was new and wondrous to us. We never tried it with our horde 70s and decided we wanted to try it for sure with our Mage and Druid. We expected to get killed but we really wanted to see it. Plus, we came up with a really cute name: We Will Rawr Pew! Ahhh… it still makes me giggle.

So Keste goes through the process of setting up our 2v2 team and one evening we set some time aside to give it a try. Like I said, we expected to get killed. We were doing it for fun. The experience of something new. That is why it came as such a shock to us that we logged out angry and upset.

We weren’t killed. That is really not a good description of what happened. We were decimated. My mage honestly could not stand up for more than 2 seconds in any match. Keste didn't fair much better but at least he got to live long enough to watch me die. It was several matches before I even could claim I at least caused someone some damage before dying quickly. That was it! I was proud I could damage something before dying.

How Do We Compete?

I’m sure Arena pros out there can give me a million different reasons as to why we experienced this but we're really stuck as to what to do now. Here are some of the thoughts Keste and I were throwing around.

1. We are totally new and unfamiliar with the setting. In one match Keste and I were facing the wrong way and didn’t see the doors opening behind us. /blush
2. We are severely under geared compared to these teams. We have gear that has us about Karazhan entry ready while our opponents are in PvP purples.
3. Mage/Druid combo may not be the best. Not really an option to change it. We Will Rawr Pew!
4. It is very close to the start of Season 4. As I understand it, everyone’s ratings are reset making even the heroes of season 3 at the same rating as us. Probably not the best time to try to break into the Arenas.

There may be other reasons but these are the ones we could think of. That night we left the Arenas claiming that it just wasn't fun and we'd go back to doing things we liked. I think I even exclaimed hatred for the Arenas, but I'm prone to extremes at times. We've since cooled down from the defeat and are willing to give it a go again. What we are left wondering is, how do we compete?

We talked about trying again in a month when hopefully the better teams will rank up and we’ll have others just breaking into Arenas similar to us to match against. Perhaps giving us at least a chance to kill someone. (Baby steps here. We don’t have to win; we just want to kill someone.) In the meantime, how do we go about preparing for this task? Should we be running the battlegrounds to get the PvP gear available with honor? Will that be enough to give us a shot? Or is it simply too hard to get into the Arenas now that we’ve waited until season four to jump in?

I leave that open to anyone willing to give advice. We certainly need it.