Arena Strategy Tips: Positioning & LoS

For most of my PvP and arena career I thought I knew what it meant to have positional awareness; to not only understand my position and my target’s position, but also the position of all other players both friend and foe. Most of my PvP experience has been as a rogue and though dropping target occasionally for a drive-by gouge, kick, or blind you really won’t be switching targets much at all.

In addition to the rogue I also play an elemental shaman on my newly reformed 5v5 team, a 2345 setup. I quickly learned and am still learning what it means to have “positional awareness”. It’s one of those things I have always been conscious of on the rogue, but I don’t think you can really understand it until you’ve played a class that requires continual target switching and awareness of your position to multiple targets.

This past week was the first for my shaman as part of a serious 5v5 team and while we did well it was anything but a simple transition. The most difficult aspect of playing the shaman has been learning to play both parts of the matrix, to go from an all out DPS blitz one minute to a conservative save the warrior and survive strategy the next.

In learning this aspect of the combo I’ve had to dramatically change the way I survey every game. Keeping myself in a position where I can LoS a DPS bomb if necessary while also staying in LoS of my healers, staying in range of the focus target for purges, and watching the opposing team’s caster movements for earth shock, all of these and others I failed to mention are certainly factors a rogue rarely needs to consider.

Above all the best part about playing a shaman in arena is the incredible utility. As a rogue the role is always damage, damage, and more damage. While damage is my primary objective as an elemental shaman in 5s there are infinitely more responsibilities I can take on to further aid my team. Hitting the rank one earth shock at just the right moment, nailing BoPs and BoFs for my warrior, assist healing when other teams try to blow up the priest, and dozens of other scenarios which can allow me to take the shaman to a whole new level. The ability to exponentially improve is a very appealing aspect of the class and a challenge I’m excited to take on.