Guide to 20-24 Bracket Play: Just The Tips

[Upswag]

Just The Tips: An Upswag Adventure

First, a brief introduction. I’m Biggie. I’ve gone by a few names over the years but on TI you can find me [MENTION=540]Evocate[/MENTION], @Biggie, [MENTION=9519]ThaCarter[/MENTION] or [MENTION=20635]Upswag[/MENTION]. I currently use the [MENTION=20635]Upswag[/MENTION] handle, so PM there.

I’m a long time WoW player. Experience doesn’t mean you should listen to me, but it’s a pre-cursor, so here goes. I raided in classic in a guild called Death and Taxes, followed by Drama, The Hammer Clan and finally Relentless in BC. I’ve had good kills in raiding, but in BC I started to migrate more and more towards arena. I was an awful player in Season 1, and sub-mediocre player in Season 2, but I had the advantage of playing with better players than I am (Killars, Diziet are notable players today) and managed to get end-of-season awards. Season 4, I like to think I was a much better player and by the time Wrath rolled around, I was almost exclusively doing PvP (I quit after our Yogg ZL kill – shout out to Tempest). Long story shortened, I’ve done a lot of end game and that experience colored a lot of twinking experience.

As far as twinking goes, I’ve done 19s since classic, 20 since we could and I’ve been on AP since it was seven of us trying to figure out if Magician’s Mantle was BiS for Medanx’s rogue and whether cloth could even compete in the bracket.

I’m usually listed on “best players” lists, there are very few players at 20 that I feel are better than me (and I readily admit that they are – Wizkidone, Goldenday and I assume Riot are definitely better than I am). I’ve noticed over time that I see many “good “players who claim to “not have anything to learn” making mistakes that I’ve had to fix over years. This guide is how I plan to give back to the community.

TLDR: This guide is a distillation of ALL the tips and tricks that I know of in the F2P bracket. There will be tips that even the most veteran of players might find useful. I am not going to argue any of my points unless I feel your argument merits my effort. Your stupidity is YOUR choice, not a RIGHT you can force upon me. If you don’t agree with me, don’t listen.


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Let’s start with the basics.

Binds:

I bind using “E”, “S” and “F.” Why do I do this? Because it had minimal effect on my ability to play the game in the same manner after a week of torture (try changing the way you move in a game that you have been playing for six years) and because it opened up far, far more binds.

The first, and most simple, change you can make that will heavily alter your game-play is the way in which you play it. Most players start with WASD, good players quickly unbind the “S” key and better players replace “W” and “D” with “Strafe Left” and “Strafe Right.”

So Tip #1 : You should AT MOST have 3 keys for movement. Forward, Strafe Left and Strafe Right. You can replace going forward with your mouse if you like, but that’s a personal preference. You should be looking to your left and right using your mouse. THIS IS A NON-NEGOTIABLE.

If you do not already do this, you are 100% handicapped. I don’t care if that’s how you play, that’s how you have played for 8 years or if your daughter will cry if you change your binding. DO not read the rest of this guide if this isn’t something you are planning on changing. This guide is not for you as you do not care to improve unless it is easy.*

Don’t believe me? Go to twitch.tv and got to the World of Warcraft Streamers. The first few links should have at least a few professional players. Find me one player that does not play this way. You won’t find any. They don’t exist. Change how you play.

*I'm not saying change your binding to ESF, just the Strafe's.

User Interface Bugs

Tip #2 – You should have more control over everything you do. That means do not rely on Blizzard to make sure things happen for you. One of the most, and I mean THE MOST, frustrating things that happens to me in arenas is when I die because my healer’s heal “won’t let me heal you.” 99% of the time that player goes on to blame Blizzard. When I ask them what they use, it’s always something like “Grid, Auto-Self-Cast or mouseover.” Guess what buddy? That’s your fault. Not Blizzard. Want to make sure that doesn’t happen? Configure your addon correctly. Don’t use auto-self cast, make a macro and if you use a mouseover, make sure you have it correctly formatted. If you have never gone to the back-end of all of your add-ons do it now. Learn the options you have. You don't buy a car without checking everything right? You shouldn't be getting an add-on just because it goes forward when you hit the gas.

For example:

/cast [target=mouseover] Flame Shock

/cast [target =mouseover,harm] Flame Shock; Flame Shock

/cast [target=mouseover, harm, nodead, exists] Flame Shock; Flame Shock
Do you know the difference in these three? If not, you might be having some UI errors you are blaming non Blizzard.

The first macro casts Flame Shock ONLY on your mouseover target. If your target is a friend, if your targeting reticle (your mouse clicker) is on someone else or if you scroll too quickly from friend to foe, you are not going to be able to cast a Flame Shock.

The second macro casts Flame Shock on your mouseover target if they are an enemy. If not, then it will cast on your target. Why is this important? If you’re spamming Healing Surge on your teammate getting drilled by a hunter and a rogue sneaks by you, you need to be able to Flame Shock him and keep Healing Surge IMMEDIATELY on your teammate. If you have to target the rogue, Flame Shock, click back to the hunter and THEN cast Healing Surge, he’s going to die.

The third macro, and the macro that most people don’t use, will only cast Flame Shock if all of the previous requirements of previous iterations are met (enemy, mouseover) except it adds that the person must be alive AND must exist. That’s so if the person you target AFK’s, goes offline, dies, stealths etc. it does not bug out your frame and make it so you can’t cast.

DR's and Cooldowns

One of the biggest things I’ve noticed that many players don’t know th… quick, what’s the range on Polymorph? What’s the cooldown on Presence of Mind? How much rage does Slam cost? How much energy for Hemo? How many combo points do you get for an Ambush as Sub?

Could you answer all of these questions? I can guarantee that all top tier players can not only answer all of those questions, but they can answer that question relative to the players they are facing. What does that mean? I mean, if you ask me what the range is on polymorph, I’m not going to just tell you it’s 30 yards. That’s meaningless information. I can tell you EXACTLY where that is relative to me and/or the mage on the other team. I’m not going to get polied because I don’t plan on ever being near the mage enough for him to cast it on me.

How about the CD on PoM? Well, I have an add-on that tells me when my enemy’s CD’s are up (VialCooldowns and/or GladiatorLoSSA which are both available on Curse). I know that Slam costs 25 rage so when I see an Arms warrior with 5 rage, I know I can come in to melee a bit – once that 5 rage becomes 25+, I know I need to kite. That’s why a good rogue can kill a warrior easily, and bad ones often die. Tip #3 - Learn Other Classes

The same rules apply both ways, however. How much energy for Hemo? 30. Why does that matter?

Well, let’s do some theorycrafting. You’re a priest and a rogue opens on you. You have 1600 health, and a shield that is about 600. The rogue Ambushes you and you now have 1540 health points (HP) and no shield. Let’s review what the rogue has – he ambushed you, which is 60 energy, so he has 40 left, and he has 2 Combo Points (CP) on you. He then uses Hemorrhage (Hemo) on you, leaving him at 10 energy and 3 Combo Points, and you are not at 1300 health. Let’s review, you have 1300 health, his Hemo hits for ~200 and he has 10 energy. What should you be doing? You should be spamming heals on yourself and not faking. Why? Because, let’s say he kicks you. Fine. He has no energy, and to kill you he needs at LEAST 2 Hemo’s and an Eviscerate. That’s 30 Energy + 30 Energy + 35 Energy, in short a full bar. EVEN with poisons ticking, that’s more than enough time for the lockout to not exist anymore. 99% of rogues that kick, will kick you at this point. After the lock-out, just start spamming heals until his kick CD comes back up and fake the second that it does (you are tracking that right? - *hint*) because most rogues will be hitting that button like their life depends on it.

You see how that information can help you? How many times do you see healers just faking when the other player doesn’t have kick up, can’t kill the player even if he interrupts or the player faking has another player healing who can keep him up? Those players need to learn the other classes.

That’s my tip #4 for now – LEARN OTHER CLASSES. You are not good at this game when you have a 100% knowledge of your class. You are good when you have 100% knowledge of EVERY class. That doesn’t mean you need to be able to play that class, know the optimal rotation or anything like that – you do need to know the basics if you want to play at a basic level, advanced knowledge at more advanced gameplay.

Examples of Basics; 3 Mind Blasts to a 3 Point Devouring Plague (most burst). Explosive Shot costs 25 energy. Being frozen against a mage all but guarantees that he will crit you (Shatter is the name of the mechanic). Warrior’s Charge Stun and Paladin’s Hammer of Justice (HoJ) stun DO NOT have diminishing returns (DR).

Don’t know what DR’s are?

Crowd Control & Diminishing Returns - Forums - World of Warcraft - Enjoy!

Learn your DR"s. It'll be the reason why you sap out of fears, don't charge people that have already been charged twice and don't HoJ in the opener (you know who you are paladins).

 

[Upswag]

Class Tips

Warlock

In Battlegrounds, if the other team has rogues, you should almost always be running with succubus out. The reason is because with the voidwalker pet you will force a trinket with the disarm, but you have no guaranteed follow-up to it since a good rogue will kick your fear. A succubus allows you to control the defensive CC by seducing, re-seducing the trinket into a summon voidwalker for a disarm. If the rogue does not trinket the first seduce, cast the summon voidwalker and stop the cast if you see a trinket (avoid kick); if not, then you're casting a fear into the seduce and only disarming if the rogue is a) on you or b) trinkets. Remember how I said the disarm WILL get a trinket? Remember that. In an arena match or if you have a teammate with you on Skype, forcing a trinket might be all you need to do.

Don't just spam conflag whenever it is up. I see so many warlocks do this. Either a) wait til you have two up and use it to burst someone down or b) use it for the slow and peel your teammates or yourself. You're not doing much more damage with a random combustion thrown into incinerate spam.

If you're a goblin warlock spec'd into Demonology, practice using your goblin jump in conjunction with your Demonic Leap to get higher and further. Your goal is to abuse z-axis (diagonal, so up and over) where your opponent can't get to you. For example, if you are at the bottom of the Blade's Edge Arena map you can demonic leap from the bottom floor, and goblin jump to either ramp (depending on how you position it). For those of you that don't do arenas, that's the equivalent bottom of Horde tunnel to the bottom tier of "top of tunnel." Both are examples of "z-axis" play that immediately moves you out of danger and gives you superior positioning (use it to get to healers pillaring out of LoS for example).

Speaking of Demo, you need to be talented as Harvest Life. Why? That's your filler spell for damage (you literally have nothing else since Shadowbolt is such a long cast). Thanks [MENTION=14560]Fael[/MENTION]icious

Get used to faking with instants. That means that your /stopcasting macro needs to be something like this;

/stopcasting
/cast Corruption

The reason for this is because you don't want to waste your globals. If you spend 5 seconds just faking incinerates or fears you're doing absolutely nothing for five minutes while your opponent is ... well... killing you.

A great way to fake shadow or fire is to immediately cast a spell of the opposite type after a fake. For example, start casting a fear, fake the cast, and immediately start casting incinerate. Most players who didn't eat the fake will try to pre-kick the next fear or react immediately to the next spell because they assume it is another fear (since most players fake with the same cast). The disadvantage here is that a bad rogue that misses the kick (in other words you did juke him) will land his kick on your opposite school which is still a lockout (so you can't immolate, incinerate or combustion the landed fear OR you can't fear the immolate, combustion etc.). In my mind, if you're really good at juking, don't bother, if you're not, this can help you get the timing.

Speaking of fake casting, ALTERNATE your juke. Do not always juke right at the start or wait til the end. Good players will remember where you juke if you're also very good (which is the goal right?). You'll notice when watching a long-time arena player like Wizkidone, if he plays against his teammates (meaning one of his usual teammates is healing his opponents or DPS or whatever) he knows what they are going to do and usually tries to counter their playstyle.

Do you wonder why some warlocks top hunters in damage, and others with the same gear... don't? There's one of two reasons; a) one warlock is playing defensively but in constant pressure positions or b) one lock is multi-dotting and the other is not. Damage doesn't matter in some cases, true, but that's how it works if you want to top those meters. B) is pretty self-explanatory, A) simply means, stay near your healers. Warlocks that are good sometimes get big egos and try to 1v3 in mid and get wrecked. Sure they do some damage before they die, but they spend their time kiting, not doing damage.

Don't just Demonic Leap when a rogue opens on you. He's already expended most of his energy in just the opener + ability. Hard-cast a fear and try to get his kick so when you leap you can lead that off with a fear or some damage instead of having to just run and pray he doesn't get a crippling proc on you.

With Hand of Gul'dan, you want to place one, and then the second RIGHT as the first is about to fall off. If you do it correctly, you will have a DoT (shadowflame) that has two charges worth of damage on it.

Using Dark Regeneration (DR) increases healing received. Most of the time you want to use this anytime you use a healthstone (HS) as using DR first increases the healing from the HS significantly (1k+ crits).

Mage

If you are looking to nova, your next cast needs to be a shatter or a guaranteed nuke + shatter. In other words, a wasted arcane blast + arcane barrage shatter because the nova broke, got trinketed or dispelled is not worth more than a shattered barrage. That's not to say you shouldn't be blast + barraging, but I see a lot of wasted ones because the player gave his opponent an extra GCD or two to get out of the nova.

PoM is always the preferred CC for anything that can spam peel or CC you or anything that can dispel. This is to help ensure that you get kills in your relatively small window of burst. IE: Hunters, Mages, Warlocks, Paladins, Druids. Blazing Speed is for when you know you will be trained as the target of choice. You should never use blink or blazing speed to go forward because you're too lazy to run the distance. This is a great way to die to an enterprising rogue and trust me, we are looking for you to blink when we're following you.

To set up arcane blasts in a one on one situation, you want to use polymorph. In other words, Arcane Blast, Polymorph, Arcane Blast, Polymorph, Arcane Blast, Polymorph, Nova, Arcane Blast + Barrage would be a 4 stack Burst that also ensured that the other player couldn't CC you, move or inhibit your burst.

Get used to using Polymorph as an interrupt. Most of the time in this bracket whatever you are trying to CC will have a massive amount of Serpent's Sting on them. If you poly the enemy while he is casting and it breaks from someone else's DoT or your fireblast one GCD later, you have effectively interrupted them.

If your teammates get's MC'd at low health, poly them to heal them. Similarly, if you are at LM, you need to be using polymorph, frostbolt and nova on your teammates if they get MC'd to stop them from being thrown off the edge. This is especially effective because bad priests will stay in the MC phase while being unable to control the other person's movement allowing you a free poly, CS, damage etc.

Always keep an eye out on rogues that you sheep. Their combat will drop once the sheep falls and most will stealth immediately out of poly. You want to either hit them with an Arcane Explosion if you are close enough or hit them with an instant to keep them in combat (WTB Wand?).

Fire mages should never be casting Pyroblast. Yes, I like that we have this nuke and it's awesome when you get it once every four BGs but two fireballs do more damage than one pyroblast and they don't get ranged unknowingly. ITT: If you're doing the least amount of damage, have next to no kills and your excuse if you are a fire mage, you need to not be playing a fire mage.

When you get your hot streak proc, think before you decide what to do with it. Bad mages nova and fireblast in their haste to get a proc just to have one. Evaluate if that pyro is going to get you a kill. If not, try to fish for a pyro proc with a regular spell and then shatter the resulting pyro proc + a fireblast. The result is that nearly 100% of the time you will get back to back pyro procs. The resulting 1000+ damage is generally a lot more useful than your 400-500 pyro proc on someone with 1600 HP.

I don't know why so many mages forget this, but Frostfire Bolt or Frostbolt are not frost-only spells. The slow component is very useful and you should be casting FFB nearly as much as Fireball or Arcane Blast.

Try not playing full crit as a fire mage. The results might surprise you. My nearly BiS Fire Mage has 20% crit which means I have a 1/5 chance on average of every fireball critting. So if I need two crits back to back, and I'm not relying on a nova for the second, I have a 1/5 x 1/5 or 1/25 chance of getting a pyro proc. That's at 20%. I think even the most BiS worgen has only 25%. That's a 1/4 x 1/4 or 1/16 chance of getting a pyro proc. That's super, super low. Try playing with full haste (ignite scales with haste, faster poly and fireballs) or full spellpower and you might see that you do a lot better. I kind of wish hot streak was at a higher level so people understood that fire mage is really heavily reliant on tools and many of the mechanics at low levels are only meant to kick in/ be good at higher levels.

When blinking, you always want to go in a random direction. Good players are trying to predict the direction you are blinking and will start moving in that direction (much like with hunter's disengage and druid's shifting) the second you blink. If you are running one way and then turn and blink in a completely different direction, you'll often catch the other player completely unaware and get away scotch-free. Now keep in mind that you don't want to blink THROUGH the other player as that means you effectively cut off whatever yards you had in between you and the other player from blink.

Use player pets etc. to build up stacks. This will allow you to not necessarily be in range of the other player (so he can't hit you or stop you) and let you come out only when you have a four stack shatter ready. To do this effectively, ask one of your paladin, warrior, hunter or warlock teammates to taunt a pet to them so you can build stacks on them. Healers will often do this if you explain to them that the pet will break a majority of the CC in the game just by being on them. Of course, in the majority of games, you have 3-4 hunter pets to choose from that are likely going to be pretty close to you.

Mages excel at hiding and casting in this bracket. You should never be the one taking damage unless a) you are specifically targeted, b) you are the only person they can attack or c) you're an idiot. Otherwise you should be well back in the group avoiding taking massive damage and hitting whatever you can. Likely you can create a situation described in the prior paragraph and then only jump in the fray when your nuke is up.