PvP guides

Table of Contents

• Arena PvP
• Battlegrounds
• Duels
• General PvP

Arena PvP

• Blood Sport: Building an Arena team, part 1
  Ah, the Arenas! Where heart-pumping battles are fast and hard-hitting. Losers take a dirt nap and victors are that much closer to honor, glory and ... 'welfare epics'. In this article, we'll look at some critical things to consider when building and running a team to participate, compete and have fun.
• Blood Sport: Building an Arena team, part 2
  While part 1 looked at the classes you'll want in your team, let's look at other important aspects of running a winning Arena team.
• Arena Season 4 news
  All the news that's fit to print about the current Arena Season 4 and its gear.
• Arena Season 3 news
  All the news that's fit to print about Arena Season 3 and its gear.

Battlegrounds

• The Art of War(craft): Alterac Valley, Part I - Evolution
  Of all the Battlegrounds, AV has gone through the most changes, having received fixes and modifications with most of the patches subsequent to its release. Alterac Valley was an extremely ambitious project for the folks at Blizzard, and it was clear from the beginning that they had very high hopes for it. Did they succeed?
• The Art of War(craft): Alterac Valley, Part II - A Ronin's Guide to the Ice and Snow
  Unfortunately, there are no armies in Alterac Valley. There are, however, drifters. Ronin, if you wish. Ronin were the masterless samurai of feudal Japan. In a game of AV, what you will have, essentially, is a band of about forty ronin doing their own thing.
• The Art of War(craft): Warsong Gulch, the Broken Battleground
  Warsong Gulch is a map that's conducive to combat. It's small, straightforward, and fairly uncomplicated. Other Battleground maps are big enough to avoid confrontation. Alterac Valley, in particular, often turns into a race with minimal conflict -- even with the new changes. There are games in Arathi Basin or the Eye of the Storm where one is left guarding a node for the entire game and hardly see combat. On the other hand, it takes a monumental effort to avoid fighting inside Warsong Gulch.

Duels

• Blood Sport: How to beat a Warlock
  Do you feel a sense of dread when you face warlocks in 2v2 and 3v3? Fear not, fellow gladiator. While warlocks are known to be formidable in smaller brackets, the class does have weaknesses. Let us show you how to exploit them!

General PvP opinion and analysis

• Blood Sport: Perfect balance, the PvP pipe dream
  The idea of 'balance' is seductive - imagine WoW where you walk into every fight confident that your character can beat any opponent. Is balance really about that? Is balance achievable? Even if we get it, do we, as players, really want it?
• The Art of War(craft): A Resilient Argument Part I
  If you're interested in PvP in any way whatsoever, you've probably heard of a little statistic called Resilience. Introduced a little before The Burning Crusade was released, Resilience reduces the chance a player will be struck by critical strikes from spells or attacks. It also reduces the damage taken from critical strikes and Damage-over-Time (DoT) spells. It is a landmark change in PvP mechanics, qualifying as the most important improvement to World of Warcraft PvP since the game was launched. With the introduction of this new item property, PvP became less a matter of damage output -- although that's still important -- and more a matter of survivability or, well, resilience.
• The Art of War(craft): A Resilient Argument Part II
  Resilience will allow combatants to survive just a little longer against focus fire. In matches that sometimes last under a minute, an extra second or two of survival can make a big difference.
• Twinkage Part I
  In the wild and wooly world of WoW PvP, there's one interesting subcategory that deserves mention -- the twinks. Defined as characters who are disproportionately powerful for their level, twinks are either loved or hated. On one hand, if you have a Level 70 character (or a few max-level friends), it's rather easy to 'twink up' another toon. On the other hand, many players who are leveling for the first time may find their Battlegrounds experience diminish when they encounter (and consequently have their faces smashed in by) ridiculously-geared and enchanted opponents on the field. In fact, twinks are a subculture of their own, with more than a few guilds set up exclusively for twink PvP.
• Twinkage part II
  Last week, we discussed the matter of twinks and PvP. In many occasions, twinks exist purely to PvP, dominating lower-bracket Battlegrounds with their über-gear. In fact, there is no shortage of twink complaint threads on the World of Warcraft forums. Whatever one might feel about twinks, it's an ongoing phenomenon that shows no signs of letting up. I'm not a big fan of twinkage myself, but it's such a distinct subset of the PvP crowd that I feel compelled to write about it. Twice. Oh, and for the record, I am quite aware that 'twink' is a homosexual slang term. I prefer to think of the Hostess snack, though.