My First Three Arenas

I haven't done much PvP this week, but I did queue up for a couple of games. Having been very sceptical of arenas, I was glad to see that the majority of my pops in the unranked queue were still regular warzones, however I did get into a total of three arena matches too.

The first two were on my Guardian. I don't play my Guardian very much these days, so I'm not very good at playing her and she's still wearing a lot of level fifty gear. I hadn't really planned to take her into any sort of group content to be honest, but when I went to spend some warzone commendations that she'd had saved up since forever and was just a couple short of buying the piece I wanted, I decided to bite the bullet and queue up for a game or two.

Soon I found myself teleported into the space station arena, where I immediately wanted to sink into the floor in shame, feeling very exposed in the small waiting area and with three team mates staring at me and my bad gear (though nobody said anything). I also couldn't see a timer for when the match was supposed to start, am I missing anything there? Our team consisted of three dps and a tank, while the enemy had a team of three dps and a healer - or maybe there was a tank in there as well, I don't remember - the point was that they had a healer and we didn't, which immediately made my heart sink. Surely we were doomed and they were going to outlast us? Oh well.

The enemy Sage healer was marked up and it was agreed that he should die first. "Hm," I found myself thinking, "maybe arenas aren't all bad if they actually teach people to communicate and focus fire." As soon as the doors opened, I charged in, despite my squishiness. If WoW arenas taught me anything, it's that taking the initiative and getting that first hit in is generally a good thing. Despite of blowing all my cooldowns, I only survived for a couple of seconds and then got to watch the rest of the match from the floor. Much to my surprise, my team mates actually managed to eke out a win. I'd like to think it was because I provided such an efficient distraction at the start or something. /cough.

The second round went much like the first, with me being the first to charge in and dying within seconds. However the enemy team was a bit more savvy this time around and spent a lot of time running around, which caused my team mates to split up as everyone decided that they had their own ideas about what to focus next, and we lost. The tie-breaker round was the same again, but to be honest I didn't feel too bad about losing. It was enough of a positive surprise to me that we had managed to win even one round.

The next arena I got was the Tatooine one. Again I ended up in a team with no healer while the enemy did have one. Again I charged in and died quickly, though the rest of my team seemed to be more competent this time, killed the enemy healer and defeated our opponents without anyone else on the team going down. Round two was more or less the same and we won. More than anything I was just... baffled. I honestly felt completely useless in both games and just spent most of my time watching the proceedings from the floor. It wasn't exactly what I had expected.

My third arena game was on my Commando, who landed in the Corellia arena. Well, at least I had a healer on my team this time - because it was me! I was all prepared to be obliterated within seconds (because everybody loves Commandos...), but the enemy dps were neither particularly strong nor organised and didn't even get me to half health, which apparently gave my own team plenty of time to mop up any resistance. Once again the second round was just a repeat of the first, and we were promptly declared the winners. I was happy.

So, as first impressions go, that really wasn't too bad! If nothing else, things were always over pretty quickly, which means that the pain for the losing team is kept to a minimum.