[Paladin] Arthas, Tacos, and Murlocs, Oh My!

It feels like time for a light-hearted name for a topic after my last post and not writing anything for a while. I've been busy with work, busy recruiting for my guild, and busy with Dragon Age (why yes I play games other than WoW). But rather than talk about the busy stuff, let's talk about what Arthas, tacos, and murlocs have in common, mainly that they're a component of my new arena team's sense of humor.

I hadn't been trying very hard to find a 5v5 team. I probably should have, but I've never been very good at pimping myself out in Trade; "Holy pally looking for 5s team. Experience at 1750+." It just makes me feel desperate and a bit sleazy. "I'm so hard up I have to resort to Trade!"

A former guildie of mine decided to pull the trigger though and start up the 5s team he'd been talking about. It sounded like it would be mostly a just-for-fun team, as he wasn't talking comps, strats, or anything, but I said okay. My last fun team did well enough for my Challenger title after all, and it's more fun playing with friends than strangers.

We ended up with a DK, a hunter, a ret pally, a holy pally, and a priest. We were thinking this could be good. The priest raids as disc so we were having sweet snacky dreams of Penance and Pain Suppression. Three dps and two healers. All good.

First order of business was to choose a name. And as anyone who's ever made an arena team knows, choosing an arena team name can be srs bzns. The DK suggested Be Your True Wipe, as a play off our guild name of Be Your True Mind. We were at one point considering Arthas Took My Candle as a guild name, so the ret pally suggested something to do with Arthas. The DK came back with Eat My Taco, which morphed into Arthas Ate My Taco, and then Murloc Ate My Taco, to Arthas Ate My Murloc's Taco.

Yes, arena team names are never glamorous.

There were many permutations involving Arthas, tacos, and murlocs until finally we ended up with Arthas Ate My Taco, and only because Arthas Ate My Murloc's Taco was two letters too long (can't say we didn't try).

Then we stepped into the arena, and we got plastered.

No problem. New team, just getting the kinks worked out. Priest has got to get better at staying alive so I'm not solo healing.

Rounds 2 and 3 saw us getting wiped again. Priest keeps dying and I don't mean worn down. I mean insta-gibbed. I'd seen him PvPing in BGs while outside of raids, but when I finally looked at him he's the only team member who is primarily in PvE gear. His resilience is probably less than 100. Apparently he's just getting back into PvP and hadn't done it since TBC.

Well, it's a just-for-fun team, I figure. I'll deal.

It's then that our hunter whispered to me. He'd noticed in the last fight that the priest was in shadowform. Turns out that yep, his PvP spec is shadow. Somehow this hadn't come up while we were putting the team together. I'd been solo-healing this whole time. Not that being shadow instead of disc really would have changed that. He still gets gibbed right off the bat and I don't think it would have mattered what spec he was with the gear he had.

We manage a few wins, priest is dead at the end of every single match except for one, which he said he lived through because he never got off his mount (I didn't check whether or not he was joking). We're essentially 4-manning every win and I'm solo-healing the whole thing.

On the bright side, it's surprisingly not too bad being a solo-healer, even as a paladin. The rest of the team is pretty sturdy. The rest of us already have 2s and/or 3s teams and sport a decent amount of resilience. We didn't have too many matches where we totally got blitzed down, even when we ran into a 2000 rated team and our priest was predictably dead in the first five seconds. But there are more issues to work with as a solo healer on a 5v5 team.

First of all, it's harder to keep track of everyone. I have no backup. My team members have to be more aware of what they're doing when they run away from me to chase after someone else. The worst instance was in Blade's Edge where half the dps jumped off the bridge to chase and the other half did not or could not. I can't heal people underneath the bridge while I'm healing people on top of it.

So I did what any good healer should and brought it up between matches in vent. It's all part of getting the kinks out of the system. If people want to jump off they just need to be aware of what it's potentially costing them and to let me know so I understand where they've gone. I try not to fall into tunnel vision, but sometimes it's hard to stay situationally aware of the locations of four teammates, five opponents, and who I have LOS on, and if I get a LOS error message I want to know what I can do to correct it, or know if it can afford to be corrected under current circumstances.

I'm not sure this team will amount to anything, the priest definitely needs better gear no matter which spec he uses for PvP, and it might be interesting trying a 4 dps, 1 healer setup, but for now it's just for fun. Arthas, tacos, murlocs, and all that good stuff.