The Journey To Rank 1

The Rank 1 Push Experience
By Irreplacable

 

As I logged on this Tuesday to see my Relentless Gladiator title, I was happy and relieved at the same time.  While throughout the season I was confident that our team was the best the Battle Group had to offer, there were roadblocks in our way, particularly the last few weeks.  This experience, being my first time doing the rank 1 push was something I will likely never do again, but was also a really fun game experience.  It has given me a different outlook on the arena community as well. 

 

 

My team in 5v5 started out as the remnants of my s6 5v5 squad.  We had 2 transfers from our old team, and we were looking to expand.  We envisioned running Ret/Hunter/Ele Shaman/Druid/Priest.  While we attempted this, we eventually came to realize quickly that we couldn’t find a solid replacement for our old shaman and hunter that left us.  While just about ready to give up on 5s, we decided to just run with people that we knew and abandon the fact that we might not find a winning comp.  Well, needless to say we lucked out and discovered early on in the season that Protection Warriors bring A LOT to the table.  We picked up an arms warrior friend of ours who is on a lot, and our friend Mistaclean, a gladiator arms warrior who was gearing up protection from his PVE raiding.  We played, and 50 games later, no losses….fast forward to the end of the season 153-8.  No one was even close to the dominance we had.  We easily passed the #1 team and pushed to 2682 weeks before the end of the season.  Rank 1 seemed to be ours.  However, a team of 4 casters and a paladin started leveling a team very quickly.  They were fed points early on with another team on horde that gave them lots of Matchmaking rating.  Teams that were inactive for a long time magically started queueing up.  We watched, but knew this wasn’t legit.  A week later, they were within 80 rating of us.  On their way up, they didn’t count on another team in the top 5 completely destroying them.  So to keep this as short as possible, the end of this going into the last weekend of s7 was this team was able to pull out a tie with us at 2682 for first place, the cheating team back down to top 5.   At this point, my team knew we had rank 1 clinched! 

 

I logged onto the servers on Monday at 3PM to mass tells.  “THEY WINTRADED”, “RANK ONE IS NOT US ANYMORE”, “THOSE @#$#$@#$# WINTRADED”, etc.  I checked arenajunkies Battlegroup forums, the hotbed for battlegroup smack talk and e-thuggery to discover this information was true.  The inactive 2^nd place team we passed weeks ago was fed by the other cheating team almost 100 points at 8am in the morning, putting them in 1^st place.  I was furious, but determined to stop this.   After we all put tickets in.  A mass meeting of my 5s team and the other 5s team that tied us occurred on ventrilo.  We decided that win or lose, we weren’t going to just let the cheaters win.  We decided to queue up all night and attempt to get our ranks back.  As angry as we were, we had hope. It all felt kind of epic actually for a video game.  Showdown: Good vs. Evil (wow I’m a nerd I know). 

 

 

The queues were slow at first, but we kept playing…once you are high rated, losing is crippling, and winning offers maybe 3-4 points if you are lucky unless you get a team at your rating as well.  However, the cheaters learned we were queuing and decided to have a final showdown in hopes to thwart our attempts to bring them down.  The game was epic, but we won in the end.  They may have been good players, but they were not the better team.  The cheaters tanked to our friends we met with earlier as well.  However, the other team got better queues and took quite a lead.  My team was worried, but we played for hours, grinding one point teams, and finally landed at a 2716 tie.  Tying the rating was not the glorious rank one finish we envisioned, and it is not what we wanted when we started playing.  May the best team win is what we wanted.  But no one queuing up and hours dwindling, and teammates worrying about their rank 1 in 3v3 (there was the threat of win trading there too, way to go Nightfall!); our greed for the title was too much.  We knew that we were the best and earned that title; that was enough for us.   As for the fate of the cheaters, they didn’t get their teams reset, but many left the team and didn’t prosper from their cheating. 

 

 

As interesting as all this is to me, why blog about it you might ask?  Well, I think that as I once did, that people put Rank 1 titles and even gladiators up on a really high pedestal when you go into an arena against them.  I want to show to you all that there is a lot more to obtaining these titles than you may think.  You have to deal with cheating, conspiring on all levels.  This happens on most battlegroups and if you don’t concern yourself with it you will get burned.  The teams that get the titles are usually very good players, but not towering over everyone in skill.  If you are heading up to that rating, do not be intimidated by them.  We were once noobs ourselves, learning as much as we can about the game, but in time and lots of practice, improvement comes.  Take your comp and partners and games seriously, read up on strats, class guides and all you can and you have won half the battle.  The rank one experience was overall not as epic as I once thought, and being a Relentless Gladiator doesn’t give me any special powers (besides a nice mount ).  I am very happy to be where I am, and learned a lot along the way, but as far as a push in s8?  Probably not!  Sitting up till server resets almost every day the last weekend of the season was rough and very stressful.  Props to the people able to achieve it season after season!  Also congrats to arenapwnage.com’s own DK Lafu for his rank 1 title in 3v3.  He was the only DK in the U.S. to do so and he really deserves his title.  His win record was as impressive as my 5s, and it is much harder to get that in 3s, so congrats!

 

 

If you want a little more entertainment value out of this subject, the ret paladin in my 5s made a pvp video with footage of the last day of the season.  No 5s games sorry, but there is lots of funny world pvp moments as they tried to gank the cheaters while they were committing the act!  The link can be found here: Hofflerand 7

Looking to Season 8

 

Season 8 looks to be really interesting and possibly the best Wrath season yet.  The new resilience buff seems to have slowed the burst down a decent amount and I hope that will slow the pace of arena down a bit as well.  Healing looks to be too powerful, but nerfs are probably on the way for that.  Either way, it should open my priest to be able to play more comps.  I will probably play on my 5v5 for points every week, and try to experiment with both shadow and discipline specs in 3v3, playing lots of setups with friends.  After being so serious last season, a little fun will do me good.  I also will like to really be more serious about my mage and shaman. Hopefully hunters and the prot specs will take a backseat to more skillful comps.  I am also looking forward to the site expanding so I can blog more freely and interact with a larger community.  I am really enjoying seeing the site improve and props to Snake, Payne, and Pig for putting the work into it.   This blog is far too long now, so hope you all enjoyed, leave feedback on the forums, and good luck to your teams in s8 next week.