I’ve been doing well in arenas lately on both my 2s and 3s team and have also gotten some emails about it, so I thought I’d post some more arena tips.  I know I probably mentioned many of these before but I’ll just put whatever comes to my head.

Add-ons and Partners

I use Healbot, Gladius and Decursive in the arenas.  I mentioned playing with a survival hunter earlier, but I actually haven’t played with the him that much lately.  Most of my recent success has been with Ret Paladins, Death Knights and Warriors.

Awareness

One tip I have is to try to keep your partner’s target targeted at all times and use Healbot to heal.  That way you can always see what your target’s health is and how the match is going.  You can also see this in Gladius, but sometimes its easier to see it on your target and its also easier to get some burst damage on them if they’re already targeted.  A lot of wins come when you aren’t just focused on your health bars but are also aware of the enemy’s health levels, positions, cooldowns, etc.  Gladius can help with that by showing some of their ability cooldowns.  Wins usually come when you take a risk and let your team’s health get low so you can do some dps and stuns at key moments to get the kill.

Saving your Partner

Make sure to use all your abilities.  If your partner is getting burst down, hit him with a Holy Shock, then put Sacred Shield on him (if it isn’t already), then use Divine Sacrifice or Hand of Sacrifice (never both at the same time) then start up a flash of light and keep spamming that and Holy Shock and maybe a Holy Light if you have to (and have some time).  You might want to do the Flash of Light earlier if you got a Holy Shock crit since its instant and to get the HoT up.  If your partner is going down fast, you can run over and hit the enemy dps with a Hammer of Justice to give you some good breathing room and time to heal.  Use Hand of Protection as a last resort unless your partner is a clothie.  Don’t use it if the enemy are all casters.  Make sure to use your trinket if you get CCed and even bubble if you have to to break a CC.

Always get Sacred Shield on their focus target right away, it helps a ton.  You should be moving a lot during an arena, but don’t be afraid to just stand in one spot and spam Flash of Light and Holy Shock as fast as you can (usually on your partner).  Its amazing how much burst damage you can heal through and lives you can save if you just hunker down and spam those buttons with no time between casts.

Saving Yourself

If you are being focused you can use Hand of Salvation on yourself with the glyph for a 20% damage reduction.  Hand of Freedom can save your life a lot against melee dps or even ranged since you can line of sight them easier.  Don’t forget about Divine Protection for a damage reduction if your bubble is down.  Avenging Wrath can help too after you’ve used your bubble.  Also, if you have herbalism, Lifeblood can give you a little breathing room.  

Problem Classes

Shamans, Warlocks and Discipline Priests will probably give you the most trouble.  Be afraid if you get all 3 at once.  Try to Cleanse the shocks and other debuffs right away, especially Flame Shock.  Watch closely for them to purge or dispel your buffs and make sure to reapply them.  Blessing of Wisdom, Sacred Shield, and Improved Righteous Fury are all important buffs to keep up.  A buffless paladin might as well be naked.  Make sure to cleanse a Warlock’s mana drains quickly and get as much mana as you can out of Seal of Wisdom procs on their pets.  Mana can be a big problem against these three classes so use it wisely and leave the dps up to your partners most of the time.

Practice, practice, practice!

I know this is a lot of buttons to push and sometimes you just don’t have the Global cooldowns to do what you need to, but if you get your keybinds set up right and memorize where they all are and when to use them, you can usually get off what you need to at the right time and save the match.  A lot of PvP just takes practice.  Often having quick reaction times and doing something a split-second faster will save the match.

Good luck!