Arena: still mostly hopeless

This week's Arena record: 2-8. And yet, we still get the occasional gem like this:

Shadow Priest and Prot Warrior — there's a reason our Arena team name contains the word “ludicrous”.

I am trying to figure out if it would be worth it to respec for Arena matches. If nothing else, the lack of Silence in my raiding spec is a major handicap. But if I'm going to respec, why not go Disc so that I can last longer than 15 seconds? Is it worth 100g for the pair of respecs? Napkin math says probably not — at least not until we get serious about Arena and actually care what our rating us. Until then, we're just farming points, and the gold could be better spent elsewhere.

Oh, and this just in: you might want to equip your PvP trinket for Arena matches. Maybe.

First Arena: 1-9

I am a squishy SPriest, and I have the resilience of tapioca pudding.

In 9 of 10 matches I was the very first target. Normally, I was stun-locked and dead before I could get a spell off, my Shadowguard being the only thing to produce damage. I did manage to get a single kill—a paladin, i think. SWD FTW.

After a few matches I did start to last longer than 10 seconds. I got my head on straight enough to Mass Dispel a Paladin bubble and an Iceblock. I finally remembered to Fear whenever the cooldown was up. Chain-dispelling Druids is fun.

But the one thing I am having trouble with: not tab-DOTing everyone there. I know that if I do that then the CC efforts of my team are in vain. But ... staying still and uninterrupted long enough to get off a MB? Riiiight. I did get a few MFs off, but the big blue frickin' laser beam made me a target every time. "Oh, you're still standing? I can rectify that."

And Proximo went crazy on our last game. I'm going to hope it was just a bug and not a hack, but it effectively disabled us as our coordination went out the window.