CHAPTER 6: KITING

KITING TO YOUR HEALER

Hey, quick question. If you're taking too much damage, you should kite to your healer, right?

If you think the answer is yes, we got something to teach you. In today's video, we will be breaking down some of the biggest mistakes low-rated players make when kiting, and spoiler alert, running to your healer is one of them.

But not to worry, because we will be giving you some tips from pro players that are guaranteed to fix your biggest problems. Let's start off with one of the biggest mistakes we see at lower ratings, and that is kiting to your healer.

When you first learned to arena, you probably played with one or two healers that would always scream for you to get in their line of sight. And while this is certainly not a bad idea at times, it does create a really bad habit.

You see, many new players assume that the safest place for them to retreat is right on top of their healer. I mean, it makes sense, right?

That way, there will be no way that you can outrange or line of sight your heals. Unfortunately, this creates some massive problems.

For one, it exposes your healer to any cleave damage the enemy might have. With the popularity of kiting, it's a good idea to kite to your healer.

With the popularity of windwalker monks, arms warriors, and ret paladins, there's a high chance the enemy team will have some sort of cleaving melee class. Meaning, now your healer will have to deal with two health bars if you are stacked.

More importantly though, stacking on your healer exposes them to the threat of CC and interrupts. With every DPS class in the game having an interrupt, standing directly on top of your healer puts them at risk of getting kicked on their casts.

And to make things worse, many comps have one or more AOE CCs, meaning you give the enemy team free cross control when you're all clumped up. To understand this better, let's see it from the point of view of the enemy team and see just how much pressure can be built when running to your healer.

The enemy windwalker monk has chosen to kite away on top of their paladin, which in turn allowed our mage to blink in and polymorph. And in this position, our mage is able to channel a full shackles cast since the monk is already there next to their heals.

As you can see, kiting on top of your healer can be a huge mistake, especially against highly mobile ranged classes like mages, since it puts them in a position to deal damage while making them feel like they're in a position to deal damage. While maintaining control over your healer.

One fix to this problem is kiting with your healer and not to your healer. This means moving in tandem with their positioning, making sure you can stay in line of sight while not exposing them to cleave damage, interrupts, or CC.

Here, our rank 1 mage is about to be under pressure from a TSG. Note that the DK has a ranged interrupt, meaning that we need to avoid kiting on top of our healer.

Once our mage starts taking damage, he immediately looks for a safe area to kite. But notice the position of his healer.

If he kites to the left, he will be putting them at risk to take damage. This means that he will be able to take both cleave damage and interrupts, but kiting to the right will keep him in line of his healer, while also dragging the DPS in a way that forces their healer to reposition.

Our mage sees this and kites in the general direction of his healer, making sure to stay far enough away that interrupts can't be used. And now with this positioning, our mage can safely get heals while protecting his healer from the threat of the melee cleave.

A more advanced solution to this mistake is actually counterintuitive, and it involves kiting towards the enemy healer. You might be thinking, skill capped?

Are you crazy? Why would anyone kite to the enemy?

Well, just think about it for a second. You know just a minute ago we said one of the worst things you can do is group up as a team while under pressure?

Turns out, you can force this onto the enemy team if you simply kite to their healer. Whether you are a melee or ranged DPS, this strategy works.

As a melee, this now puts you in a position to cleave or interrupt, and as a caster, this now puts you in a position to get CC. Here, this will come into play in a highly volatile melee cleave matchup.

As you can see, our red paladin is under a lot of pressure. We're forcing our team to AOE CC the enemy melee.

Instead of kiting to his healer, which would expose them to kicks and cleave damage, our red paladin kites towards the enemy resto shaman. This will shift the balance in our team's favor, and will put the pressure on the enemy healer to reposition, preventing them from easily casting heals or using CC.

And, as you can see, this aggressive kiting to the enemy shaman pays off, as our red paladin gets put into a position to get a really clutch interrupt on hex. Without this, we could have been under a lot of trouble.

So, by now, you can see why kiting to your healer might be a bad idea, and we've now given you a few workarounds. But what if you were the healer?

Where should you kite?

LINING YOUR TEAM

Our next mistake while kiting is lining your teammates. This applies to both DPS and healers so hear us out.

You know what is the most powerful trap in arena? It's not this, it's this.

Many players and especially healers get trapped into thinking that kiting means running the enemy team around a pillar over and over. This might work at reducing damage momentarily, but you might also be kiting your own teammates in the process.

Nothing is more frustrating as a ranged DPS than trying to peel for their healer while they are running laps around pillars in arena. They might be surviving, but they make it impossible to land casts.

This is one thing we see often in our viewer submitted clips. Here we have a resto shaman playing with an affliction warlock.

The only real peel we have is our warlocks damage since the enemy team has multiple fear immunities. If our shaman runs behind this pillar they might avoid some damage, but then they will line of sight their warlock in the process.

This is really tempting to do while kiting and it's no surprise that many players get baited into seeing the pillar as the safe place. When instead, playing in the center of the map is actually safer since it allows our ranged DPS to peel and deal damage.

A better solution is to try and kite enemy players across the map into the open when you are playing with a ranged DPS. This will allow them to get out important damage and cc casts while usually forcing the enemy healer to reposition.

An advanced strategy while kiting is to kite in a way that forces the enemy healer into a bad position. This works really well when you are playing a ranged DPS and are struggling to land cc on a healer that is camping the pillar all game.

Let's play find the healer for a second. Can you see where they are at the start of this game?

Ah yes, tucked away in the corner like a scared cat of course. So how do we bait them into the open?

The best way to do this is to move in a direction that forces the enemy DPS to be out of LOS of their healer. This can be a bit tricky to learn but pro players do this constantly.

If our mage moves here this will now force the enemy priest to move from their safe little corner since it will drag the melee out of LOS. Then once the melee are repositioned.

The trick is to do this again until the healer exposes themselves while trying to readjust their lining. Once again this is one of the most common strategies used by high rated players and against better opponents it is absolutely essential.

Eventually your goal will be to have the healer fully exposed in the open. And once they are that is the perfect time to reverse pressure with cc since now the healer will be more vulnerable to your control.

You can also set traps for enemy DPS by baiting them behind pillars while kiting. If you are able to successfully drag a player out of LOS of their healer you can try and keep them pinned.

This is a good way to keep them pinned away out of LOS by using a cc like a root to keep them far away from their team.

EXPOSING YOURSELF TO ENEMY CASTS

Next up, let's look at a general mistake that all players make when kiting and that is staying in LOS of enemy casters.

It should go without saying that kiting is meant to reduce the damage you take, but sometimes players don't actually reduce the damage they take while kiting, and instead give the enemy team free damage.

In this viewer submitted clip, our warrior just stunned the warlock on their unending resolve, which is really smart by the way, and this will force the warlocks trinket. After the trinket, the enemy warlock will pop their biggest offensive cooldown, dark soul.

Don't worry because we have our interrupt ready right? Unfortunately, our warrior tries to kite but runs directly into the open against an affliction warlock and elemental shaman with cooldowns up.

Huge mistake because now they are just going to get blasted with damage. On the other hand, pro players prioritize lining casters, but they don't kite for infinity.

They recognize that every second spent kiting is a second not doing optimal pressure. Instead they kite at really precise moments, like when their healer is stuck in CC and the enemy team is popping cooldowns.

Here our pro player has built some pressure. But now our healer is polymorphed while the enemy shaman is popping cooldowns.

Seeing that they are about to be in trouble, our ret paladin kites to the pillar. He then adjusts his camera to get a complete view of the enemy team.

This will allow him to readjust his positioning if needed, depending on the direction the shaman chases him. And now the goal is to continue avoiding the shaman.

But keep in mind your primary threats might change an arena, so sometimes you will have to change who you are kiting depending on whoever is posing the biggest threat. Here for instance the priest is casting mind games, so they become the primary kiting target.

Seeing this, our paladin lines the priest on the fly, preventing the cast from actually landing.

DOING NOTHING WHILE KITING

Finally let's wrap things up with one of the most basic mistakes players make while kiting and that's simply doing nothing. Ideally while kiting you should still be pressing globals.

One mistake we see over and over from low rated players is thinking that simply running away is enough, nothing else needs to be done. While your damage and healing rotation might be a bit limited while moving, you should still focus on doing as much as your normal rotation as possible.

On top of that you still need to pay attention to enemy positioning while running. Try and keep your camera angled in a way where you can see enemies using nameplates to peek behind pillars.

And as always you still need to keep track of enemy cooldowns, ideally with an addon like weak auras to let you know if you need to evade more damage or if it is safe to go back into the fight. And that wraps it up guys, hopefully by now you have a better understanding of how to kite in arena.

As always though thanks for watching, see you soon.