PvP in World of Warcraft is very challenging and has a high learning curve to become better at, especially if you are so used to the PvE elements and just starting out with Battlegrounds or Arena’s.

Fortunately there are a lot of different ways you can increase your skill in PvP, and this article will focus on doing so by utilizing the best add-ons.

Add-ons are a set of tools used to provide you with data and information so that you can make an intelligent split second decision. The reason why some players are more skilled than others is due to the fact that they utilize all their classes abilities at the right times, saving their survivability skills until they are completely necessary and their most offensive damaging or CC abilities when the enemy is most vulnerable. Add-ons are able to show you when this can occur.

Here is a list of the most essential add-ons any PvPer and Arena player should have:

1. Gladius

Gladius is a window pretty much exactly like Proximo for those who have used that. It starts off empty at the beginning of an arena match and when the gates open it detects who your opponents are and lists them in the window, showing an icon for their class, and the amount of health/mana they have.
This is extremely useful for a few reasons. You can make your strategy and coordinate your CC target and main target right away, you can tell what spec some classes are by the amount of mana they have, and if for some reason you lose your target (hunter Feign Deaths, or mage Mirror Images) you can click on their name in the window and it will target them again instead of you trying to click their character.
Note: Rogues and Druids (sometimes Mages) will start off stealthed/invis so gladius won’t pick them up until they come out, a good way to tell who someones partner is in a 2v2 arena or 3v3 is by their buffs. If you see a Mage and a (blank) but you notice the mage has Mark of the Wild buff on, it is pretty safe to say his partner is a druid.

2. Parrot

I would have to say out of any add-on I’ve used, this has increased my PvP skill and level of play the most.

Parrot is a floating combat text add-on that is highly customizable to show you pretty much any event that occurs between you, your target and your focus target. You set what abilities or conditions you want it to recognize as the trigger, set what you want it to do when that condition happens (play a sound, show text in a certain color, in a specific area on your monitor)

So for example, say you want to know the second a paladin bubbles, you just set the trigger as Abilitiy Divine Shield, make it display the text “Paladin is IMMUNE don’t attack!”  and play a sound at the same time (from a list of 10 different sounds built in). Then you can make a separate trigger for when the Divine Shield fades! “Paladin is vulnerable  attack!” Here are a list of some abilities and conditions I’ve set parrot to notice:

- Rogue Shadowstep, Mage Ice Block, Hunter Feign Death, Deterrance,

-Target Counterspelled/kicked

- Ice Barrier Fades (Set it to know when your essential buffs or abilities wear off)

- Water Elemental Pet, Evocation available (Set it to notify you when the cooldown is finished on important abilities so you can use it as soon as possible)

And so on, if there is enough interest I will make my parrot config available here for download since it takes a while to get every ability set up the way you want it to. When you get it set up properly this gives you a huge advantage to use your clutch abilities as soon as they become available and instantly react to any game turning abilitites your opponents use and instantly know when they become vulnerable again.

3. Natur Enemy Cast Bar

This add-on keeps track of all abilities/buffs used by yourself and your target in a castbar type of display. I have found this very useful for tracking diminishing returns (I’ll wait out the full 10 seconds betfore sheeping a target again so it lasts the full duration) and also NECB tells you when an opponents important abilities are ready to be used again, so you know that a mages counterspell is on cooldown but will be available in 10 seconds so get off that big heal now!

Those are the three major add-ons I suggest you get for PvP, are there any other add-ons you use strictly for pvp that has improved your skill?

How is your arena team doing so far in WOTLK? Aside from gearing up for PvP and picking the right PvP talents the only other element (and most important) you can change to get the highest rating is choosing the right arena partner.

With the way WoW balances classes it is a given that some classes will have better synergy with certain other classes. While it is great to just pick an arena partner based on friends and whoever you’d like to play with, this can really limit the potential you can achieve rating wise (Imagine a warrior/warrior team? yikes)

Keep reading to find out the Highest Rated Arena Teams

Take this with a grain of salt right now, PvP is currently unbalanced because it’s early and blizzard can not start the balancing act until it sees the results in the arena and can do further testing to bring everything into line.

However, this resource will always be the best place to see who the current top 100 rated arena teams are in every division (2v2, 3v3, 5v5).

How To Find The Highest Rated Arena Teams

Go over to http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/ and you will have a very powerful tool at your disposal.

This database takes data from the WoW Armory and extracts the top 100 rated players, teams for each division and also the pvp specs each class from those teams use!

Here are some interesting pieces of data I found from my research:

Highest Rated 2v2 Arena Teams

Paladin/Death Knight (40.8%) – That is huge… shows this team has a huge advantage over any other team regardless of their gear or other factors.
Rogue/Priest (10.2%)
Paladin/Hunter (8.2%)
Paladin/Druid (6.1%)
Death Knight/Mage (5.1%)

As we can see from the top 4, these teams utilize a strong DPS class, such as a ret paladin, rogue and hunter while bringing on a utility/healer. Double DPS teams will have a hard time bursting down any paladin since they have their bubble and can heal their team mate at the same time. Ret paladin and healers are a deadly team for double DPS as well since Ret Pallies can deal out large dmg and heal their partner if it’s really needed.

Highest Rated 3v3 Arena Teams

Rogue/Priest/Mage (19.2%) – Combine great CC (sap/sheep) and a priest who can not only heal but has mana drains, power word shield, and you’ve got yourself a tough team… The only Top 8 Popular team without a Paladin.
Paladin/Hunter/Death Knight ( 11.1%)
Paladin/Rogue/Death Knight (9.1%)
Paladin/Warrior/Death Knight (7.1%)
Paladin/Warrior/Druid (6.1%)

Paladins seem to dominate the 3v3 arena while interesting enough the highest team composition doesn’t have one, Paladins ability to survive while his team mates deal ridiculous amounts of damage gives this team a huge advantage.

Highest Rated 5v5 Arena Teams

Paladin/Hunter/Priest/Death Knight/ Mage (5%)
Paladin/Rogue/Shaman/Mage/Druid (5%)
Paladin/Warrior/Death Knight/Shaman/Mage (4%)
Paladin/Warrior/Hunter/Priest/Mage (3%)
Paladin/Warrior/Priest/Death Knight/Druid (3%)

So, you NEED to have a paladin in your team if you are hoping to get above 2,000 rating. they are in EVERY team. Very interesting thing to find out if you are a part of a struggling 5v5 arena team without a paladin.

This resource has been very valuable to me when I am looking at current trends in the arena and I’m sure blizzard collects stats like this when considering how to balance classes.

Almost every team will have a possibility to get into the top 100 but it’s definitely an uphill battle compared to picking teammates which compliment each other very well from a game balance standpoint.

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