BLIZZCON CHAMPION EXPLAINS THE 4 LEVELS OF MELEE IN WOW

BLIZZCON CHAMPION EXPLAINS THE 4 LEVELS OF MELEE IN WOW INTRO

Have you ever thought to yourself, man I would love to earn a rank 1 title or be as skilled as the wow players you see streaming? You may think to yourself, it's just too much time and effort, it'll take me years to get that good, but in actual fact, you can achieve a gladiator title in just one season.

Remember, every pro wow player, even blizzcon champions had to start somewhere, even though they became some of the best players the game has ever seen. So how did they climb up the ranks?

Well we sat down with 2015 blizzcon champion Joe Fernandez to reveal the biggest secrets that allowed him to become one of the best warriors of all time.

We will cover what it takes to be a great melee player at 4 different levels of complexity, starting with what being a melee is like in the eyes of a beginner as we work our way up to understanding how to play melee in the hands of a pro.

LEVEL 1 MELEE: UNRANKED TO COMBATANT

If you feel like you're at the novice stage in WoW PvP and find it daunting to try to climb, then bear in mind that every professional multi rank 1 player started at this point as well.

A trait that most melee players begin with is picking a target at the start of the game and typically tunneling them until they win or lose.

While this strategy will often work for a while, these melee will eventually reach a level where enemy players, especially casters, are no longer overwhelmed just from being targeted, and this is where the need to swap around becomes important. In addition, these beginner melee usually have poor target selection.

Choosing the right target plays a major role in your gameplay as it determines whether you can land a kill more easily compared to the other targets in the arena. By focusing on the right target, you can also mitigate the damage inflicted by the enemy team, which can be considered a form of peeling.

This will facilitate your team's survival and enable them to prolong the game if necessary. In addition, it will also enhance your damage output as a melee player.

Keep in mind that certain classes can kite you, so switching targets or focusing on targets that you can keep up with will be a good way to keep your team alive. Another crucial trait is the ability to maximize your DPS during arena games.

While you may have a good understanding of your rotation, the biggest mistake here is not being global efficient. Frequently we come across VOD reviews of players who constantly make mistakes in their rotation and even waste global cooldowns, which significantly reduces their damage output.

We'd even go as far as to say that if you're stuck at the beginner level, you should record your gameplay and take note of your globals, and if you notice moments where you're not pressing anything or are messing up your rotation, you should be careful.

We guarantee this will be the easiest and fastest fix to improve your damage and move on to the next level.

LEVEL 2 MELEE: CHALLENGER TO RIVAL

This next level is comparable to the challenger or rival range, where the melees start to swap targets more often in order to maximize their damage.

However, while doing so they won't always hit the correct targets at the appropriate times throughout the game, causing them to miss out on the opportunity to create stronger win conditions.

In addition, at the challenger and rival level, melee begin to understand the importance of being more GCD efficient in terms of their damage output, which results in increasing their pressure in the arena.

Despite this understanding starting to improve though, melee at this level still don't truly grasp the importance of consistently dealing as much damage as possible throughout their games, which could easily be enough to elevate their gameplay to the next level.

Players at this stage will also tend to stop losing games without pressing defensive cooldowns and will typically throw out trades as they drop low on health and are about to die.

While trading cooldowns like this can be good to do, players should also be aware of good cooldown trades that are favorable for your class to make it easier to deal with enemy offensives by trading defences before you actually drop them.

If you're not ready to play a melee, you can also play a melee with a melee that is more effective in dealing with enemies and can drop super low on health. A good example of a defensive cooldown trade can be a rogue using evasion against a hunter's coordinated assault.

They are both a 2 minute cooldown and using evasion will nullify the hunter's pressure during one of their deadliest moments. You may not always trade like this, but knowing the trades for defensive cooldowns in a similar fashion for your class will help you in any arena game.

Now even though players at this level begin to make these defensive trades to stop themselves from dying, they will generally still fail to peel for their teammates when needed. This is generally a consequence of melee at this level focusing too much on their own health and their own health.

This is a good example of a melee that can be used to prevent your teammates from dying. This can result in inconsistencies, since while there will be instances wherein your partner may not require any help, as you climb higher you will increasingly realize the crucial role of peeling to ensure your teammates survival.

LEVEL 3 MELEE: DUELIST TO GLADIATOR

That's where the level of a duelist and gladiator player comes in, as they begin to understand how a melee should play throughout any arena game.

Their target selection is on point, they understand how to min-max their damage, they peel for their team properly, and they even know how to set up kills with their team, combining damage with CC.

Not only do the players of this level continue to find the right target at the right time, but they also begin to have a much better understanding of how to identify win conditions by keeping track of the enemy team's defensive cooldowns, trinket usage, and even if they're positioned poorly.

All of this together is what allows players at this level to consistently hit the right target by swapping around whenever needed.

Players at this level also continue to further develop their ability to deal damage, this time with duelists and gladiators typically being known for doing as much damage as a rank 1 or pro player.

However, the underlying issue is that players at this level haven't developed the muscle memory and ability to autopilot their DPS rotation without the need to focus on what buttons to press next.

This results in them wasting mental resources and energy, and they don't have enough resources on their DPS rotation which holds them back from excelling in other areas, or simply causes them to make mistakes they otherwise could have avoided if they were not so focused on dealing damage.

While they understand who to hit, they lack the fundamentals to create win conditions in most matchups.

This means they'll often simply try to win games by either playing super defensive and relying on the enemy healer's mana bar running out and dampening in order to win, or they'll be on the offensive from the get go until they run out of juice.

The best melee have a great understanding of both strategies, and more importantly, playing defensive or offensive at the opportune moment to help support their team in the correct way whenever it's needed.

As for a duelist or gladiator's defensive playstyle, they will understand the need of rotating defensive cooldowns within their team to keep everyone alive.

By using their tools to keep enemy players off of their teammates during critical moments, these higher level melee give their teammates a chance to survive without always needing to trade defensive cooldowns. Another concept players at this level engage in is cross crowd control.

They will hold onto important CC tools to create small or big crowd control setups that will significantly help in landing kills. These setups make their pressure more formidable, often forcing defensive cooldowns or securing kills against their opponents.

Unfortunately, even though melee at this level start to do a good job of coordinating consistent cross crowd control kill attempts, these setups will often be far too telegraphed, especially when up against advanced players who are able to anticipate the incoming setup and outplay them.

The last main difference between a gladiator player and a rank 1 player is the lack of adaptation in their playstyle. While there are moments in a game that can be scripted, rank 1 players understand that the main strategies should be seen as a blueprint and not a rulebook.

Nearly all games involve people making minor and even major mistakes, so adapting different strategies as these mistakes happen can often be the deciding factor between winning and losing a game.

Despite this though, gladiator and duelist melee will rarely deviate from what they think is the correct strategy in their games and will often lose a matchup they could have won if they had just played around enemy mistakes.

LEVEL 4 MELEE: RANK 1 PRO

This leads us to the final and highest level melee of multi rank 1 and pro tournament level players. These players will never have to think about their rotation as it's all on autopilot.

They rarely need to glance at their action bars for damage as they can consistently deal maximum pressure without needing to think about it. This allows them to focus on other crucial aspects of the game, resulting in more consistent gameplay.

One of the perks of autopiloting their rotation is that the best melee will almost always use defensive cooldowns to keep both themselves and their team alive at the right time without failure.

This is also the foundation for teams to avoid overlapping defensive cooldowns, which therefore results in good melee making their team incredibly durable as enemies will find far fewer windows where a top melee's team doesn't have the tools needed to survive a kill attempt.

These high level melee also won't often fail with their own offensive setups. Their setups are executed with precision and at a much higher pace, resulting in more frequent setups than lower level melee.

And of course, having more setups generates more winning opportunities. This is a great way to get your team to be able to play more aggressive.

The best melee will also help you deal with the most powerful enemies, as you will be able to force defensive cooldowns at a higher rate. One of the key traits that help with their offensive and defensive cooldowns is by budgeting their cooldowns to perfection.

At higher ratings, players can't make the mistake of trading cooldowns at the wrong time because it's more noticeable to skilled players who will punish them.

The best players make the enemy team work for their cooldowns because they know if they waste them against other great players, they will simply be punished for it and it could cost them the game.

This will be the main difference that separates the highest level melee from the rest, as they treat their main abilities like they're just gold dust, using them with purpose and meaning.

In contrast, lower rated players often use their toolkit without much consideration, as they may not perceive its impact at their current level of play. They can afford to make mistakes with certain cooldowns, such as mobility cooldowns, without it being exploited by the opposition.

This is why lower rated players tend to hit a barrier with their progress, since what was working for them at lower ratings no longer gives them the same success. This forces them to start using their important spells properly in order to keep progressing.

Adapting on the fly is another incredibly important concept for melee, at this level. Thanks to their understanding of each matchup, the best melee will typically approach each game with the right strategy.

However, if their initial strategy proves ineffective, they are quick to adapt and learn during the game, implementing new strategies to find the winning formula. This can be excellent, especially in matchups that are unfavorable.

Being able to play solid throughout the game and potentially adapt to big mistakes from the opponent can make your team win. A good example of this can be shown here by Bicmex and his team, who originally create a setup on the moonkin.

With triple CC secured, they create a good opportunity to go on the moonkin, but the druid pre-bear forms the kidney shot, while using bark skin.

Lower rated players may try to kill through this, but Bicmex's team knows that they won't kill the boomkin or force additional defensive cooldowns in this situation, so they swap over onto the rogue with their pressure, forcing out the rogue's trinket.

This is huge, as they now have forced even more defensive cooldowns from the enemy team during the same setup. Fast forward to the next setup, again creating a 3v1 scenario, but this time they kidney shot the moonkin outside of bear form, and the rogue is now able to kill the boomkin.

And the rogue now has no trinket to help peel. Moonkin also has no bark skin, having used it from the earlier setup.

So now the moonkin gets completely annihilated by their pressure, without the enemy team being able to stop them. Another thing that can tie into consistent gameplay, as well as your adaptation skills, is the ability to make preemptive plays.

These include some of the high level plays that can turn the tides of a match in your favor. For example, melee that are able to disrupt a setup with a preemptive play while their team didn't have the defensive cooldowns to survive, can eliminate their opponent's momentum.

A good example of this can be on an arms warrior, using a preemptive blade storm before a setup. Here we see a holy paladin get sapped while joe fernandez is in the open, knowing the rogue will most likely stun him in the opener.

So he pre blade storms the stuns, then eventually lands a storm bolt on the rogue to bypass the evasion effect and stop the rogue's pressure. The rogue trinkets this but gets coiled on their trinket, while the warrior uses trinket plus parry to reduce the pressure from incarnation.

By pre blade storming the opener, the warrior was able to win in the opener. Even though the trinket parry combo was used, this is a good trade considering the rogue used an offensive evasion, shadowy blades, and trinket, while the moonkin popped incarn.

If it wasn't for the pre blade storm, the warrior may have had to trinket in the opener, and the moonkin probably would have held incarnation for later, which could be difficult for the warrior to live in the future.