ADVICE FROM PROS

ADVICE FROM PROS INTRO

Today we're going to be talking about GOATS. No, not those.

We're talking about some of the greatest players of all time and asking them what it takes to be great.

We sat down with some of WoW's biggest legends asking them what it takes to really improve as a player and they gave us some insight into the three things you should be doing right now if you truly want to reach your potential.

So if you want to see improvement this season and hit your rating goals, be sure to stick around because this one is for you.

FOCUS ON THE BASICS

If you want to get better at WoW, then you should focus on the basics. This is fairly intuitive, but it's one of the biggest reasons players fail in Arena.

Your basic fundamentals come down to two things, your rotation and character control. On the throughput side, you need to be able to follow a fairly optimized damage or healing rotation, and pro players seem to agree that this is probably the most important skill to build.

So your damage rotation, obviously going to be a really important and crucial part of your class. I mean, if you're a damage dealer, even if you're a healer, learning how you can assist and optimize your damage.

You know, if you find yourself in a situation where you're not optimally doing your damage and you can get your opponents consistently down to, you know, 20% health, if you had optimized your damage, you might just outright win the game.

So I think knowing how to do kind of your basic rotation just for the most consistent damage, and then also learning how to maximize your burst windows. So doing the most damage possible in the shortest windows is something that I think is really fundamental and important.

Yeah. And wow.

One huge misconception when learning your rotation and how to control your character for PvP is that you need to do it in arena or in a battleground. This simply isn't true.

Venruki told us he learned the fundamentals through dueling. I know for me and a lot of others, the way I kind of started off learning the game was through dueling.

So there's so many different interactions in WoW. I think it can be really kind of jarring to just hop into like a 3v3 game or, you know, a 5v5 game if you're playing the game.

I think it's really important to kind of understand what's going on. So I think starting off small scale, one on ones, seeing how your class interacts with other classes is really important.

And I know that was a huge thing for me, you know, learning how to kite a warrior in a 1v1 and then using what I learned in that duel in 2v2. If I'm playing like Priest Mage against like a Warrior Druid, all of a sudden all that practice I have kiting a warrior, I can implement in the arena.

I think just kind of baby steps starting off small scale, you know, starting in duels. Then maybe into 1v1 or 2v2, then into 3v3 and whatever you kind of want.

I think it's kind of a natural progression to learn the game. Outside of dueling, all parts of the game, especially demanding PvE content like Mythic Dungeons can help you practice character control.

We also asked Mero what he thinks, and he said optimizing your damage rotation is crucial in WoW PvP and it helps build your technical mastery of the game. Part of it is also just mechanical skill, like just being better at like being fast at pressing buttons.

I don't think reactor time is necessarily the most important thing in WoW. I think having like kind of high APM and not really struggling with globals and wasting globals, not having death globals, these kind of things go a long way.

You would be surprised just at how far you can get in arena by simply doing max damage. But yeah, min-maxing damage is definitely the most important thing, especially in the last two expansions I would say.

I think Legion and BFA and Shadowlands were definitely the expansions where it was kind of easy to pick up classes you just have to be, as long as you're min-maxing your damage you can kind of just do fine. It seems like top players from all eras agree.

If you want to get better at PvP, start with the fundamentals and learn how to optimize your rotation. So, I'm going to go ahead and start with the fundamentals.

I'm going to go ahead and start with the fundamentals. I'm going to go ahead and start with the fundamentals.

I'm going to go ahead and start with the fundamentals.

IMPORTANCE OF GAME KNOWLEDGE

Once you have some level of technical mastery over your own character, it's time to learn about other classes. One thing we've repeated over and over in videos is that WoW Arena is a game of knowledge.

It's not simply knowing your own character, but knowing every way you can interact with other classes in the game, which makes it feel more like chess than anything else. Intricate game knowledge can only be learned by immersing yourself in Arena, but you can use other resources to learn the game.

Now that, you know, streams are available, YouTube videos are available, there's way more information on, like, the armory, on exact builds, exact conduits, things like that, and I think that's the kind of information you want to be looking for if you are, you know, watching a stream or watching a YouTube video in order to get better.

Eventually, you will begin to recognize patterns in Arena by learning what causes you to lose matchups, and more importantly, what allows you to win. Sometimes this is called learning the script, but what does this mean?

Because more and more classes have a bunch of defensive cooldowns, and more and more classes have a bunch of offensive cooldowns, the script and sort of the meta of the game is getting through defensive cooldowns while you still have some offensive cooldowns available and just kind of making those efficient trades.

Looking for ways to efficiently trade your defenses is fundamental to your success, and Mero explains one type of trade he makes. A good example for me would be, let's say you're playing Mage into Kyrian Warrior, and he uses his Spear of Bastion.

The best thing that you can trade for that is Alter Time. That's kind of a script you got to get used to.

It's a good way to get used to. You're learning and you got to get used to holding it into Warrior Comps because sometimes it's tempting, and there's even situations where it could be good, but generally speaking, you do want to like hold it and just trade that CD one to one.

So just to recap, if you want to get better, you should focus on trading efficiently and optimizing your rotation. That's all you need, right?

Well, not so fast, because there is one final element to improvement that holds many players back.

BECOME CRITICAL

Once you master the fundamentals and reach a certain level of game knowledge, the next step is to review your own gameplay. This is something we covered in a recent video, so if you want to know exactly how to watch your own clips, be sure to check it out.

In any case, nearly every pro player will tell you that becoming better requires some humility. Sometimes you will run into situations where you can't really pinpoint what made you lose a matchup, which is where strategizing comes into play.

If you're playing well this game, then I would look at strats. That's the next thing I would look at.

If there's anything we could do different strat-wise, maybe we could hit different targets, maybe we could swap around more.

Maybe it's a bad, I don't want to say unwinnable matchup, maybe it's not a favored matchup, then you maybe have to take a little more risk and maybe hit people that, generally speaking, don't really make much sense to hit. And yeah, that's kind of how I go into games like that.

And if I feel like I tried every single strat, we all played good in the games, we couldn't have really done much more, then I would look at strats.

I mean, then you get to a point where, okay, then there's probably not much we can do in this matchup, but I feel like it takes a very long time to actually get to that point. There's always something you can improve on, always small things you can do better.

If you want to fix your biggest mistakes, start hitting that record button. Every game you will have something to learn.

OBSTACLES TO OVERCOME

Moving on, there is one giant obstacle some of you have already experienced, and it's finding people to play with in the first place. Unfortunately, there's no easy solution to this until Blizzard reworks the entire LFG system, but Vanguard's had a few things to say.

And then once you have all the basics, the main thing is just, once again, finding teammates, and that can be tough, but you know, like, be a little more social.

If you're really social already, then that's an excellent skill to have in WoW arenas, honestly, because you have to be kind of outspoken to almost find teammates.

And, you know, you make sure to, like, add them on Battletag if you find someone that you can play with that synergizes well, build up your friend list and network. It's almost just like real-life skills being applied in a way, in a sense, for sure, for just getting friends and getting people to play with.

Finding partners might be tough, but right now is the absolute best time to improve as a player. Whether it means watching streamers or subscribing to skill-capped.com, there are so many ways to learn!

Even the best of the best have learned things from other players, and with over 15 years of experience, VanRookie thinks there are some common threads between the greats of WoW. What makes a World of Warcraft player so great?

I think there's lots of different traits that lots of different players have, and some of them have all the traits.

So the traits are, like, being very analytical, you know, knowing exactly what your win conditions are and how you can actually pull off wins in a match, your communication skills, the way you actually execute, you know, doing your damage.

Like, your actual mechanical ability in the game, your ability to kind of improvise and come up with new, unique strategies.

I think there are certain players that only have one or two of those characteristics and they still do really, really well, but the absolute greats who are just so super consistent are always well-placing. They've been fantastic for such a long time, and that's the reason why.

3 STEPS TO IMPROVEMENT

It's no accident that some of the best players of all time have a lot of things in common. Venruki and Mero might represent different eras of WoW Arena, but they seem to agree on what it takes to become a better player.

And just to recap, here are the things you should be focusing on now. Fine tune your damage and healing rotation, learn more about the game, and finally start critiquing your own gameplay.