The intent of this guide is to give players an idea of how to approach finding arena partners. I'm writing this guide because my arena partners recently left my server so I was thinking about the different steps to take when finding a new team.
1. Introduction
2. Knowing Your Goals
3. Knowing What Players to Look For
4. Options for Finding Players
5. Post-Analysis of Partners
6. After Reaching Your Goals
7. Conclusion
8. Resources & Contributions
1. Introduction
Maybe you're new to arenas or perhaps you've parted ways with the person you played with before. Either way, you now have the task in front of you of finding new partners to arena with. Depending on factors such as the amount of players who PvP on your server, finding new people to do arenas with can be a daunting task. However, by identifying certain points about what you are looking for and knowing what options are available this task may not be as overwhelming.
2. Knowing Your Goals and Yourself
You know you're looking for partners, but what type of partners do you want? By knowing what things you are looking for when you're playing arenas, it will be much easier to find people who want the same things as you. Be able to answer these questions about yourself:
How much experience in arena do you have so far? There shouldn't be much gray area when it comes to this, because people will see your experience the same way you're able to: The WoW Armory. Either through the statistics section of your profile or by showing of an early Gladiator mount, people are going to know how what you've done so far. If this is your first time stepping into the arena be honest, because your partners will recognize this very quickly if you aren't. Additionally, you will have more fun learning with people at the same skill level as yourself than having someone with more experience frustrated at you for making mistakes.
What rating are you aiming for? Are you ready to make the push for Gladiator, or are your goals a little bit smaller? If this is your first season of playing arenas, it's a good idea to set a realistic goal for ratings. The 1800 benchmark for Tier 1 weapons is a great place to start, because it'll not only show that you're a decent player but you'll be ready to continue pushing in the next season. If you've had a few seasons under your belt and you've been to a higher rating, then you most likely already know what you want to aim for.
What times can you play? This is pretty important to know in advance, because no matter how good of partners you find, if they're not able to play when you are you won't make any progress. If you have a schedule that changes frequently, consider having options such as texting available for you to communicate your availabilities to other players. Ideally, you'll want to make sure you have a few hours a week to dedicate to arenas.
What are you willing to do to achieve your goals? With the assumption that you want to be successful, you'll be looking for ways to improve. There is a multitude of resources available,and you should know how much work you're willing to do to get to your goals. The amount of effort you are willing to make is proportionate to the ratings you want to achieve, so if you are wanting to reach Gladiator you should be willing to spend a lot of time reading and learning about every class including your own.
Do you have a microphone? This is a must-have for doing arenas. Although there are players who have had moderate success without one, overall your arena experience will be tremendously more difficult if you don't have the ability to communicate with who you are playing with. Also, if you don't have one people will probably not take you seriously.
Do you have a steady subscription? People come from many different types of situations when it comes to this, but you should know if you will be able to keep your account active or if you'll a couple weeks of inactivity before you can play again. This will be an important question to ask your prospective arena partners, because having them disappear for weeks without knowing is detrimental to your success.
Are you willing to respec? There are many situations where being flexible with the spec you play might net you partners more easily. For instance, a Retribution Paladin that is willing to go Holy for a 5v5 team has a higher chance of finding partners than someone is determined to only play Retribution. If you truly don't want to play anything other than your current spec there's nothing wrong with that, but keep in mind that by having an additional spec (especially if it lets you fill a different roll) you might have better chances of finding new partners to play with.
Once you are able to answer these questions, you now have a basis for what players you will be looking for. By finding people with similar experience and goals, you have a better chance of reaching these goals and progressing beyond them.
3. Knowing What Players to Look For
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Note About Playing with Friends:
There are some big advantages and disadvantages regarding to playing with your friends. Whether it be people you know in real life or the people you frequently play with online, both can provide rewards and obstacles. I'll make a brief list for both:
Advantages:
*Playing with your friends is always more fun
*Sharing victories with your friends can be very rewarding
*Being able to communicate with your friends easily is helpful
Disadvantages:
*If your friends aren't as good as you and aren't progressing, playing with them can be less enjoyable
*It may be harder to call out mistakes that your friends are making if you are concerned about how they take criticism
*A match that leaves the team in a bad mood can create issues in other situations outside of arenas
This is not to say that playing with friends is a bad idea, but you should consider these things before you make the decision to slaughter your opponents with personal friends or people you can remain a little more distant from.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once you know what your goals are, the next step is to start looking for other players to do arenas with. With the previous note in mind, the first thing that you want to check out is what comps are viable for you. The fast and easy way to check this is by going to
http://www.arenajunkies.com/rankings/ . From here you can choose what bracket you are looking to play in and then plug in the class you play. After clicking through a few teams, you'll have an idea of what some of the more popular setups are.
For example, we'll say that your class is a Rogue and you want to start doing 3v3s. After switching to the 3v3 bracket and plugging in Rogue you'll notice that Rogue/Mage/Priest, Rogue/Warlock/Shaman, Rogue/Ret Paladin/Priest, and others are very popular. These are the comps that you will most likely want to run depending on what you feel most comfortable with and what people are available to play with.
Now that you know what comps are viable, the next thing to remember is the goals that you listed earlier. These goals should be very similar to the people you are looking for, otherwise you may find yourself being disappointed when your partners aren't willing to shoot for the same goals you are. If you are searching for people to push to Gladiator with and you pick two people who have never played an arena match before and want to just get their ten games a week in, your odds of reaching your goal are astronomically low. Most players should have no problem answering the same questions you answered above if you ask them, so don't be afraid to do a little interrogation before you start playing games. It's better to be well-educated about the people you are playing with than to go in blindly about what your likelihood of success is.
4. Options for Finding Players
So you're ready to start looking for players, but need some ideas on how to find people to play with. Luckily, there are many ways to begin your search, so let's look into some of the more common options.
Trade Chat: Using Trade Chat to find players is probably the fastest way to get your message out to a lot of people very quickly. Especially if you're just starting out, there are most likely other people in the exact same position as you who are interested in starting a team as well. Depending on your server, your success rate can be higher or lower based on how many people PvP on your server. If you're looking for a player in the higher brackets this option may not have as high of a success rate because catching another high-rated player's eye may require more effort than this.
http://www.arenajunkies.com/recruit/ : The recruit section of Arena Junkies is one of my favorite ways to find people, but it has a small problem: Not enough people use it! Higher population servers may have lots of people listed, but smaller servers may not have anyone. The major benefit of this is people have the ability to list their class, the ratings they've been to, and what they're looking for from their partners. Not every listing will have this, but that also can be an indication of what kind of player they are.
World of Warcraft Forums: If the previous two options hasn't lead you to any good partners, you may consider making a thread on your server's forums stating what you're looking for. Be sure to include all of the things that you would normally ask someone else about and hopefully you can get some responses from people who read through the forums. If you do get some responses, be sure to do the same verification you would with any other player (via the WoW Armory and talking to them) before you consider playing with them.
Dueling: This can be a little bit luck-based, but spending time in the Dalaran sewers dueling people can lead you to meeting a lot of people in addition to the practice you receive. Even if their class doesn't synergize with yours well, perhaps they have a geared alt or know of a player that would work well with your class. It never hurts to have more connections when it comes to PvP.
5. Post-Analysis
So you've found some people to play with? Congratulations! However, don't think that now that you've found someone to play with means you get to stop worrying about who you are playing with. After you begin to play with someone there are some things you'll want to keep an eye on to make sure you want to continue playing with this person:
Do any of your partners nerd rage? Some people can handle this better than others, but generally the level of enjoyment you'll have when playing arenas significantly decreases when after every game you lose you have to endure three minutes of “Oh my god that's not fair! I know I blinked out of that! I can't believe Lava Burst hit me for 12k! Why does this keep happening? I don't even know why I play this game, I hate it!!” If you notice one of your teammates doing this, you could approach the matter, but what is most likely to happen is they will nerd rage on you as well. If you can simply steer clear of these people then this won't cause any issues moving forward.
Are you putting in the effort? Although it's important to keep an eye on how your teammates are doing, be sure to keep checking on yourself too. Are you having fun playing with this team anymore? If not, try to figure out if there's a specific reason why you aren't enjoying yourself. Maybe it's not the people you're playing with, but instead you just aren't enjoying the game. Regardless of the reason, if you find that it's something that can't be repaired you may want to talk to your teammates about it. If they're putting in a lot of effort to make progress while you are lagging behind it's not fair for them to carry you along when they could play with someone who is more motivated than yourself.
Are your teammates putting in the effort? If you are trying very hard to reach the goals that you've set for yourself, see if your teammates are doing the same. If your goal was to reach 1800 for your first PvP weapons and you're reading every section of Arena Junkies daily, but Bob your partner still doesn't know what a focus macro is, you may need to have a little discussion with them about how you feel about that. Without being aggressive, simply talking to your teammates about how it makes you feel that you're putting in a lot of effort to reach the goals that you established when creating the team may help you better understand what position your teammate is in. Perhaps they're asking the previous question and finding that they don't enjoy arenas as much as they thought, or maybe something else is happening that is preventing them for playing their best. If they don't have any good reasons for not putting in the effort that you do, now is the time to evaluate whether this is a partner you want to stick with or if you need to find someone else to reach your original goals.
Are you making the progress towards your goals? Continuing with the 1800 weapon goal example, how much closer are you getting towards those weapons? Every team has a bad day where they'll tank 50-100 rating, but take a look at the overall progress you've made. If you've never been above 1400 and you're edging towards 1700 with the teammates you've found that's great! But if you've been to 1600 before and the person you're playing with struggles to keep the team above 1200 you may need to look into whether this person is good enough to reach your goals.
6. After Reaching Your Goals
The most rewarding thing about finding good partners to play with is finally reaching the goals you established when you started playing with them. Whether it's your first PvP weapon or your first Gladiator title, knowing that you've made significant progress to accomplish what you'd set out to do is a phenomenal feeling.
But what do you do after you reach your goals? This is a great point to stop and talk to your teammates about where you want to head next with your team. Perhaps you want to take that first 1800 PvP weapon and work your way towards the 2200 weapon, or maybe you're wanting to turn Gladiator into a Rank 1 title. By continuously establishing new goals for your team, there's always something tangible for you to work towards as a group, and there is a stronger sense of unity when you all are fighting for the same thing together.
7. Conclusion
Finding people to play arenas with can at some points feel very demanding, as it requires you to put yourself out there and make a significant effort to find people you're looking for. If you don't find the people you want the first day you look it's important to not get discouraged. The process of finding arena partners can take weeks or longer depending on your unique situation. What is important is after you have found the people you are looking for, be sure to have fun. Many people find arenas to be the most exciting aspect of the game, and if you have partners that you're having fun with there will be countless exciting experiences that you'll share as a team.
8. Resources
*
http://elitistjerks.com/blogs/yes/12...mates_sky.html – Used this as a basis for Section 2.
I'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, criticisms, etc., so let me know what you think!
01-31-2010, 06:56 PM
Enche 
Does anyone have ideas on things that could be improved/added/removed/anything? I'd love to hear suggestions on ways to make this better!
