The new Arena Season is just around the corner, besides sharpening your swords and stocking up on hot pockets here are a few things I think any rookie or seasoned player should be aware of. With the new changes done to Paladins and Death Knights in particular we should be seeing a change in class compositions with the new season. A huge relief since I personally think Season 5 was an imbalanced disaster where you either where a Paladin or a Death Knight (Survival Hunters and Resto Shamans also had some success) or you might as well just sat the season out on the benches.

What’s changed that’ll change the different kind of compositions we’ll be seeing?

1. First of all Plague Strike no longer removes HoTs (Heal over Time) effects. This is one little change but this ability turned the tables around in Season 5 for Resto Druids who previously reigned supreme in previous seasons. Because of this I’m predicting a revival in Druid representation this Season.
2. The next under represented class were Warriors, who simply didn’t have the face smashing simplicity of Death Knights to keep up with their dark plate wearing brethen. A couple changes have been seen to Warriors, particulary buffs to their Arms tree and most importantly a new ability:  Shattering Throw! *Insert sweet Paladin tears here* Warrior/Druid may very well be the ultimate anti-Holy Pally/DK combo now.

Many other changes have been done to other classes as well but these two changes should cause the most ripples in the Arena  class composition pool.

Besides expecting a slight paradigm shift of class combinations what else should we do to prepare?

• If you haven’t done so already, turn in all your Arena Points for Commendations of Bravery. Each Commendation of Bravery costs 100 Arena Points and grants 200 Honor Points. Why bother? Well, ALL ARENA POINTS WILL BE RESET WHEN SEASON 6 STARTS ON THE 21st! Yeah, a little part died in me as well when I found out but you might as well stock up on what honor that you can and buy any new gear you can before next maintenance. You can still buy Arena/Honor gear that requieres rating, keep in mind it will consider the rating you last had before Season 5 ended as your limit.
• Keep doing Wintergrasp every chance you get. With Patch 3.1.0 came new items to the Wintergrasp vendors including epic belts, chests, and some very attractive trinkets. There are 5 Titan Forged Rune trinkets that are like your basic “PvP Trinket” to remove CC effects but instead of resilience come with hit rating or spell power. Oh and all the new items are iLevel 213, which means they are compareable to Deadly gear.
• Expect to do more than just 10 games next week. Blizzard has decided that this season we’ll all start at 0 rating but retain our previous team ranking. Essentially if you play well you’ll be back up to your old rating in no time but if you’re horrible you’ll probably suffer more than usual and end up with a rating even further from 1500. Either way, everyone will have to do roughly 50+ games to get their rating back to where it “should be”.

Of course as with any sort of competitive game all the gear in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t get some solid practice in with your Arena partners so skirmish a bit, discuss strategies, and good luck next Wednesday! D

Tags: Arena, Arena Season 6, New Wintergrasp Items, Preparing for a new Arena Season

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 18th, 2009 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Arena, PvP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.