Arena Oct 13-20 Part One: 5v5

I'm actually going to break down this week's arena thoughts into two posts because, lo and behold, I got to do two different brackets this week-- the usual 2v2 and 5v5! I'll start chronologically with 5v5 for this post.

So last Thursday (I think it was Thursday, maybe Wednesday, either way, it makes little difference) my usual arena partner and I decided to ask the guildies if anyone else was interested in running some arena just for points and sure enough we had enough interest to pick up 3 more and run some 5s. The team makeup began as me (frost DK) my partner (holy pally) a mage (arcane) another DK (blood) and a feral druid. After a few matches of getting facerolled, the mage decided to bring in his DK too (unholy, now we had every spec for DK represented) just because he was tired of getting destroyed and wasn't pvp geared in the mage-- a decision I can totally understand.

Even after the substitution we were getting decimated. I'm not entirely sure why, but the matchmaking system was way off. This 5s team had not seen any action this season, so our team rating was a big fat 0, yet we were clearly getting thrown up against teams who were rated (though of course we didn't face any 1500 or 2000 rated teams, but still, these guys were way more geared than us).

So after a few more frustrating attempts, and based on the fact that we were just there for points, we decided to make things more fun. Four of us stripped naked except for our tabards, equipped our jousting lances from the Argent Tournament and mounted up in the waiting area. The fifth (our druid) stealthed. Our goal: to run around, piss off the other team, and possibly, using the druid's stealth, force a draw.

Well in all our subsequent attempts we managed to do 2 out of 3 of those goals.

We never lived long enough to nab the shadowsight buffs to keep our druid safe (with the exception of once), but we did manage to run around, and I'm sure we pissed off the other teams. There was one time for sure when we went down FAST (under 10 sec) and then they stopped moving, with a clear "why the hell haven't we won yet?" look. Of course, the druid was still chilling in stealth, so we spent the next few minutes on vent running around in ghost form yelling "run man, run!" "that priest is AOEing near you!" etc.

We even tried various strategies. In the Ring of Blood arena, (the one with the platforms and stuff) we all grouped up, used the pally's Crusader Aura and ran in circles. In the Lordaeron arena, we basically just scattered and tried to stay away from each other-- some strange pvp version of mounted keepaway, I suppose.

all in all, I think those 15 matches (had to do extra to get the DK replacement his weekly 10) were some of the most fun I've had pvping in awhile. We were laughing and joking on vent and not getting overly serious about the fact that we were losing horribly.

I guess this goes to show that if you can't win, piss the other team off.