#0 - July 24, 2007, 4:30 p.m.
Introduction
As you may probably know, the feral druid spec is generally not wanted in arena for a well known plethora of reasons.
The scope of this guide is not to make you achieve 2500 rating. If I knew how to, I'd be 2500 rating myself. I change teams and team mates once a week too, so don't even bother checking my ratings, I am probably in another team already, changed people or more. I am still learning myself.
This guide is not for the advanced arena player. You should still go to 1700 - 1800 or so rating though. If you think it's low, browse some random druids and you'll rarely find above 1550 even in older teams.
This guide is for the above average feral druid.
This guide is mostly aimed at 2 v 2 and 3 v 3. For 5 v 5 I can write something but my experience is limited by the fact few even accept a feral druid there.
This guide requires enough braincells for a 30+ minutes reading. Take this as a friendly suggestion to stop reading now, in case you don't fall into the targetted category of mankind for this guide.
The scope of this guide is for, and aimed at:
- mitigating the "ghetto feeling" once again feral druids are imposed to by the other classes. Pre-TBC all over again. When it's hard times, your friendly Sahrokh wakes up ;P
- a "survival" guide. You need to "survive thru arena" to get some PvE gear.
- dealing with the least pain possible with arena, for those who cannot respec PvP (i.e. 8/11/42) and raid as feral every day, like in my case.
- starting an hopefully constructive discussion on how to improve it, I am nowhere the best PvPer around nor I know every combo and trick. You are invited to contribute, you are not to flame. This is NOT meant to be the one and conclusive guide, it's just a beginning and written by an average druid with no pretense at being a master of arena at all.
Before you start
This is a general set of hints for the druids who want to start arena. It's just common things but the fact most don't apply them means they are not so common after all.
If you fail at any of them, you won't be successful nor viable in arena and then don't blame the evil world for your deficencies.
The "before you start" checklist is very long, but success comes with good preparation, not just with mad skills.
Get to know your class in PvP
Yeah it's quite a broad term. A feral druid can kill VERY fast - actually faster than a rogue - but requires a superior amount of micromanagement the second he does not chain crit and proc Omen Of Clarity.
If you cannot kill random rogues and warriors easily, don't even try arena. PvP aware and geared rogues and warriors are on a totally different league but you should still have at least a 60% rate of win or you are going to be a dead weight on your team.
You have to be decently able to kill fire mages and at least a 40% chance against full frost mages.
You should not have problems killing non elemental shamans.
You should not have ANY problems killing random paladins, and have mostly "takes way too long" problems against well geared paladins.
You should be able to kill shadow priests, expecially random ones. The 200+ resilience ones, I concede it might be almost impossible in solo for the arena starters.
You must be able to kill holy priests (resto shamans and druids too) not by brute force (you won't) but by timing maim at their low hp, cyclones etc in the correct ways.
You must be able to survive 2 fears by warlocks, and this is not a small requirement.
You must be able to reliably kill hunters.
You have to know how and when to get a way to cyclone enemies and when it's best to use the trinket.
You must be quick enough and know how to get shreds off targets. Mangle spamming won't work against higher gear people.
Yes, it's a lot of requirements. Yes you are a feral druid and are supposed to be that good. Yes you won't cut it if you are a recent FOTM reroller but this guide is not here to spoonfeed you.
