HOW TO BE AGGRESSIVE

HOW TO BE AGGRESSIVE INTRO

Welcome to our course on how to play aggressive in PvP. Look, there is no better feeling than dominating your opponents, hitting them so hard and so fast that they feel like target dummies.

Now wouldn't it be nice if every single game was this easy? Aggressive play is more complicated than most people realize, and anyone can do it, not just DPS.

In this course we're going to break it down at three different levels, from beginner to advanced concepts. And by the end of it, you're going to learn that playing aggro requires more finesse than you thought.

So stay tuned, and we hope you enjoy the course.

WHY THIS STRAT WORKS EVERYTIME IN LFG

If you randomly found yourself in a boxing match, you would probably be a bit stressed. Unless you already know how to fight, chances are you would start feeling the pressure immediately.

And if your opponent started rushing you, that might be lights out. But what does this have to do with WoW Arena?

Well, in many ways, the same things that cause stress while boxing also cause stress in games. When someone is aggressive and in your face, it can be a bit scary unless you know exactly what you're doing.

By understanding this, you can take advantage of human psychology by learning how to overwhelm your opponents. There are both good and bad ways to be aggressive, and learning the difference between the two is important no matter what you're rating.

Today's video is all about aggression and the three different techniques you can use right now to dominate your opponents in LFG. Let's kick things off by looking at the most obvious way to play aggressive, and that is with your damage and offensive cooldowns.

Just to show you how effective aggression can be, let's watch some of the highest rated players in the world play aggressive. The D.H. is obviously under a lot of pressure, but the low rated warrior is doing work on our rank 1 mage, while following up his stun with a full fear.

Both teams have gone full aggro mode in this opening exchange, and our mage is about to drop insanely low. Luckily for him, he is playing one of the tankiest classes in the game, and if he was playing any other class, he would probably die.

And as you can see, by just pressing all of their offensive cooldowns, this low rated team is able to drop our rank 1 mage to 438 hp. And if it wasn't for his altar time, our mage would have been forced to block merely 20 seconds into the game.

But the aggression is not over, as the enemy paladin is casting ashen hallow while his melee partners chunk through our mage's health once again, forcing guardian spirit from our priest. I hate to spoil things for you, but this 1600 rated team does not win this match.

But they got our rank 1 mage to 1% hp, which easily could have spelled death for any other class. So what can we learn from this matchup?

First of all, understand that even the best players can crack under pressure. We just saw a 1600 team nearly beat some of the best players in the world, just because they all pressed their CDs at the same time.

This is something we will repeat often throughout this guide, but if something works on high rated players, it probably works on low rated players too. Your offensive cooldowns are obviously your main pressure builder, and by pressing them as a team, you can instantly gain control of a matchup.

Being aggressive with your offensives works incredibly well in LFG, where teams are generally worse at using their defensive cooldowns. One of the biggest reasons lower rated players struggle is that they are simply bad at surviving.

Simply pressing your offensive CDs in the opener is one of the most basic but fundamental strategies when playing games at lower ratings. Damage is just the most basic form of aggression though, and your next step is to combine it with control and positioning.

Damage and control are the bread and butter of arena, and one area where many lower rated players struggle is combining both for maximum pressure. Assuming you are going to be aggressive in the opener with your damage, you need to combine it with aggressive control, but what does this look like?

Here we have a rank 1 mage in the opener of an RMP mirror, but pay attention to his positioning. He is pushed in aggressively on top of the enemy team.

This allows him to be in line of sight of all three enemy players, meaning he is currently in a position to damage, control, and position. This is a very important skill to have in a matchup.

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He is also a very important skill to have in a matchup. This might seem reckless, but it's start of the game and defensive cooldowns are still available, and this positioning will allow our mage to get perfect control.

As he lands a dragon's breath on all three players, putting his team in a massive offensive advantage only a few seconds into the game. We know what you might be thinking though, this is a fire mage, of course they can be aggressive with their control, but what about my class?

The truth is every class and every comp in the game can benefit from aggressive early game control at lower ratings. Even paladins who have the fewest CC abilities of any class in the game will benefit by using them as early as possible.

Take a look at this mirror match at super high MMR. Let's look at the clock to see how fast our rank 1 team uses their control.

Don't blink because it's about to happen. And there you have it.

We are only 6 seconds into the game and our team has already used two of their control abilities. I'm not sure if there is a category for this, but this might be a new speedrunning record.

And if we roll the clip another 5 seconds. We will see our ret paladin set another record with offensive cooldowns, as both seraphim and avenging wrath get used only 10 seconds into the game.

It's no accident that rank 1 players are this aggressive with their damage and control. You might think you are doing everything right by holding onto your CDs for the perfect moment, but this might be what is holding you back.

And remember, if something works at higher ratings, it will work at lower ratings even better. By using our CDs early, we get more opportunities to use them again, and chances are the second time we use them.

There won't be nearly as many defensive CDs ready for the entire team. And that all starts by using our damage and control early in the game.

So far we've only focused on the offensive side of aggression, but an advanced strategy is being aggressive with your defensives. This might seem like an enigma, how can you possibly be aggressive with something meant to be defensive?

Think of it like this, in arena your offensives are kind of like a sword. You can use them to attack, but without a shield you can't attack for very long.

But once you equip a shield, you can stay in the fight much longer. Allowing you to continue your attack.

This is why you see many rank 1 DPS use their defensives really early into a game, because it allows them to stay in the fight and actually be aggressive. In this matchup, the resto shaman is the kill target, but right now our paladin is getting peeled away while the enemy team is popping offensives.

We need to find a way to continue pressuring the shaman or else we will fall behind. We have already used our main offensive CD, so kiting away would be a total waste.

The solution is to use our defensive cooldowns to stay in the fight. Our paladin uses both BM2 and BM3.

He uses both BM trinket and shield of vengeance in order to keep up pressure on the shaman. This allows him to get full value out of his offensive CD's and allows his team to keep up momentum.

We should make one thing very clear though, you shouldn't use your defensives only to be aggressive. Obviously, there are times when you will need your defensives to live, and proper defensive cooldown trading is important no matter what you're raiding.

But sometimes you can use your defensives in order to be the aggressor while also minimizing damage. These situations even happen in matchups where defensive cooldown trading is needed, like against jungle cleave.

Notice how our rogue has just used evasion despite not being under any immediate pressure. Was this random?

No, because it allowed him to dodge bash from the enemy druid. Eventually this will force the hunter to waste his stun on the rogue instead of using it on the priest for trap.

And despite a close call, the early evasion from our rogue allows him to keep up momentum on the enemy team during a crucial moment when there was a very clear path to victory as pressure could be maintained.

And as a final note, it is really important to get the most out of your cooldowns by combining them with your trinket when necessary. Here, we can see that our entire team has been put into a stun, but we cannot allow our opponents to gain too much momentum.

Instead of sitting in the stun, our paladin instantly used his trinket to both sacrifice his healer out of CC while also using his own defensive cooldowns now that he is under pressure. Now that he is on DR for stuns while also having some defensives active, it's the perfect time to use his own offensive CDs.

He is now durable enough to tank some damage while also being temporarily immune to stops now that he is on stun DR. So if you want to make the most out of your cooldowns, you can use trinket to both sacrifice and heal your opponent.

If you want to make your cooldowns at lower ratings or in LFG, try combining them with your trinket so that you can get full value from your aggression. By now some of you may be thinking, wait a second skillcapped, I've seen tournaments and I know for a fact that pro players don't play this offensive.

Well while it may be true that pro players tend to play more defensive in tournament, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the right thing to do. Take a look as we are almost 30 seconds into the game before either team decides to interact.

As this game goes on, our melee cleave will play super passive, often hiding behind pillars to avoid as much damage as possible. This might seem like the safe thing to do, but is it really?

By hiding you might be allowing your own cooldowns to come back up, but you are doing the same thing for your opponents. And in this game, which took over 12 minutes, it's exactly the super conservative strategy that caused our melee cleave to lose.

They hid for too long, eventually allowing their opponents to regain offensive CDs and secure a kill. But in a later game on match point, our melee cleave decided that this defensive strategy wasn't going to work, so instead they spent the entire game running at the mage and applying as much pressure as possible.

And by doing this, they came out on top, despite being in a bad matchup. It seems like a focus on aggression works even at the highest level, and as we've said before, if something works at higher ratings, it works at lower ratings too.

Anyway guys, that about wraps it up. Hopefully by now you realize the power of aggression and how you can use it to dominate arena.

And of course if you want to learn more, be sure to check out skill-capped.com slash wow, where we have damage and playstyle guides showing you exactly how pro players maximize their pressure. Thanks for watching, see you soon.