PC Gamer - January 2012

Massive Attack

make it to your family. Do you want your
children to grow up fatherless?”
I like that James doesn’t sugarcoat it.
Furthermore, his advice is applicable to
anyone who’s stepping into the Arena:
coordinate with your teammates to pick a
target for crowd control abilities, but don’t
get tunnel vision.

I felt more confident than ever stepping into the Arena after that. All it took was a few conversations with a good friend who was able to watch what I was doing and provide personalized feedback. I still have a lot to improve on—I didn’t quite break even with my total win-loss record—but at least next time I’ll remember to Ice Block.

The Five Steps of Arena emotions: pain, rage, guilt, depression, repeat.

Another side of Warriors

Marty Cortinas On the live World of Warcraft servers, I’m a Warrior. A Protection Warrior, usually, tanking for my guild against the likes of Arthas and Deathwing. This, I understand. PvP situations? Not so much. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Battlegrounds using my Protection spec to carry flags and to be annoying.

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JANUARY 2012

The FAQ had a ton of information about
specs, equipment, and tactics. There was a
detailed discussion about maximizing
damage output once your victim was in
your grasp. It was a lot of new information
to digest, and this was about a class I’ve
been playing for years. The notion of
learning a new class was shelved so I
could concentrate on bashing
heads as an Arms Warrior.
When we played, we either had a
three-DPS lineup or a two-DPS/
one-healer lineup, which changed
the way I played matches. With the
DPS only, we’d make a kill order, and I
tried to cause as much pain as I could. With
a healer, things become more complicated
and more communication was required.

Having a healer added two things to my plate that I learned about the hard way—by one of us dying. The first is that line of sight matters a lot. I found creative ways to accidentally get out of our healer’s line of

We learned to cherish the rare moments when all three of us were alive together.

sight at crucial times, killing myself and dooming the team. So the tunnel vision I’d developed in the all-DPS lineups was replaced by a more careful approach. Are there pillars? Where is Jessica? If I drop off this platform to hit that Death Knight, will I get healed? I still made a ton of mistakes, but at least I was aware of them.

Save the healer

The other matter was keeping the healer safe. A dead Priest casts no heals. Sometimes Jessica would call for help, but I found it was better to keep one eye on her to see if she had picked up an attacker. Awareness of the whole team’s situation became a larger priority for me.

I also learned that it doesn’t pay to underestimate Warrior healing. When our composition was three DPS, I found I was a big target for the other team, given that the Rogue was in stealth and the Mage was invisible. The first few times this happened, I would be whacking away at our target then suddenly drop dead.

I learned to use Enraged Regeneration every match. It paid off in a game against a Druid-Shaman-Rogue lineup. We focused down the Rogue, then killed the Druid, but not before the Shaman took out our Mage and Rogue. That left me to battle it out with the Elemental Shaman. He did his best to keep his distance and burn me from afar, but Second Wind and my new favorite trick—activate a stamina trinket, then hit Enraged Regeneration—returned almost 130,000 health, and I was able to kill him.

I’m still definitely not using my entire toolbox. I don’t change stances as much as I should, and there are things I forget, like Recklessness and Retaliation. But I’m learning every time I step in the Arena.