Our Guilds' Arena teams and U

[Padishar]

Information Information Miscommunication and more Information.

Some time ago, some of us tried to help folks understand that the arena was some of the easiest ways to get high end purples.
Whether you like PVP or not, you can lose every time and eventually will be able to snag you a nice piece of whatever you want.
Luckily Blizz has changed it so you now have more options (ie. you can do daily quests, snag ever increasing badge loot, do new dungeons etc), for those that don't want to pvp.

Another aspect of it that we touched on in the past, is that the Arena IS ladder based,
and some of us wish to compete in it. I am explaining this because we constantly have new people and misunderstandings arise.

Now anyone at any time can form an arena team.
With what ever make up or rule set or game-play style that they want to,
and many people do have there own personal teams.
Now as a guild, we also wished to have available main guild arena teams, but we all know there are different play-styles for different types of people.
So what did we do? We formed 2 main guild 5v5 teams.
A casual one and a competition one.

The casual one I believe is self explanatory as it is made up of people of all gear lvls, classes and even of those that don't ever pvp.
They can roll when ever they have enough people on.

The competition one however has a direct goal... to compete.
Does that mean we have to win at all costs?
Of course not, but we are striving to give it our best shot and are 'trying' to actually compete.

Now with our casual style of play and family oriented laid-back guild,
how do we accomplish this?

Well first, This is how Blizzard has set up the arena tournements:
The largest competition team (5v5) can only have 10 people in it ,
on top of that only 5 people can compete in a match at the same time (hence the 5 versus 5).
To be eligible, the team has to have finished at least 10 matches that week.
Then each individual to be considered as participating has to be in at least 30% of all matches played that week.
All matches have to be finished before 3AM EST Tues morning each week.


So again, how do we accomplish our goal?
First, the only requirement to be on the competition team is the agreement that:
yes you wish to compete,
you will be apart of the team
and you will put the effort forward.
Thats it... your personal skill lvl is NEVER an issue and everyone will get to play and have the same rank.

Now just like in many sports, there are multiple positions to be played.
We have the same. I will use soccer as an example (you reading this SPENCER? hehe).
In soccer you have an offense (DPS), a middle (Hybrids) and a defense (Healers/CC). We need a solid mix to compete properly.

When it comes time to actually compete, we first try and get at least a good balance of offense (O) and defense (D) first.
As class balance is the most important thing in the arena, follow next by gear lvl. Gear IS important, Bliz set this up we didn't.
If we have a good mix of O and D on, we then co-ordinate who has the best gear. This is only for the first 10 matches mind you, as EVERYONE will get at least 30% play time, whether you are geared or not.
We all move forward as a team. Just by competing our gear improves, so as time goes by this becomes less and less of an issue. If everyones gear lvl is close to each other, then those individuals decide who goes first and who goes second. As we are all working together, there has been 0 issues of people letting another teamate of equal position (O or D) and gear lvl go first. It also helps that matches only tend to take a couple of minutes at a time

[Padishar]

Ok, I wanted to get all this out as a reference, I may add more to it or less. Or edit it a few times as it is getting huge.

One thing I did wish to clear up confusion wise about the main competition arena team, is when it gets to be the end of the week.

If it is Mon night and we have still not gotten our ten matches in before the Tues morn deadline, then we usually just grab whom ever is on and get our matches in to still get the arena points for the team (and not worry about our tournament rank that week).
RL (real life) should always come first and we cannot always get all the matches and practices in like we should.

I think this has lead others (usually some of those unfamiliar with the teams) to then believe that anytime during the week, when enough people are on (but not the right mix of O and D) we do the same and just grab anyone, and we don't.

Also, everything stated in this thread has NOTHING to do with how we raid in PVE, this subject is only in relation to the main guilds competition arena team.

Ok, think I gave people enough to read for now, I used to write book long posts back in the SSC days all the time, good thing I stopped eh? (or did I? hehe)...

PS. We may at some point want to re-evalute the two teams we currently have, BTW. Cause we have some seriously geared folks in both groups now who pvp weekly. Though we are still short on D classes that can make it each week, I think. But, I am not going to get into it now as I think my fingers are beginning to bleed from all the typing (kidding).

[Idaten]

Nice post Will

I'll just say a few brief things about the current casual team.

The casual team is, well, casual.
We tend to play every monday night as we tend to get at least 5 team members on at that time.
We'll also run other nights if we're bored or someone can't make the usual schedule.

This can result in someone not getting their 30% in a week if they miss the run and there aren't enough on later.
We try to accomodate everyone, but that's part of the nature of being causal.

We don't necessarily win. We prefer it, but we really just want our 300 pts. They add up.

So that's the causals.

Now is the time to switch teams if you prefer a more casual or pro outlook.
We'll try to accomodate as many as we can.

Idaten