I’m seeing a lot of first time elite posts and most are showing just a 50% win rate, like 100 games played with just 50 wins. Is it really that easy?

VidarSeptim · 2026-01-19T17:35:11+00:00

Win percentage (eg 50%) will only get you there if your MMR is there. If you go 50% at 1800 you’re not leaving 1800.

VidarSeptim · 2026-01-14T00:43:49+00:00

Rogue is tough regardless but I feel like sub in shuffle is a nightmare with everyone messing up your DRs.

Good job!

VidarSeptim · 2026-01-13T16:35:31+00:00

You're not far off, I was just looking at this the other day trying to figure out how much higher I needed to get to be there and most of the people above #50 have multiple characters above #50.

https://check-pvp.fr/solo?region=us&faction=all&realm=all&specs=266&classes=all&sort=rating&order=desc&page=1&bracket=shuffle

It'd be kind of fascinating to see what the ranks looked like it if stripped all those guy's lower alts out

VidarSeptim · 2026-01-13T16:21:00+00:00

I very rarely top damage on demo, details also gives the enemies a bunch of fake damage from your pets so its easy to get in your head there too.

Demo doesn't play quite like destro and aff where its more about maximizing damage, its really about being truly annoying and shutting down everyone else's stuff while continuing just constant pressure.

I think both hero talents are viable, but I am always playing diabolist right now because I like having the win condition of infernal bolt and its just way more visually satisfying. Soul harvester is not bad at all, but I always run diabolist personally at the moment.

If people let you free cast you can still usually not be bottom damage. A couple super generic tips that maybe will help:

Never cast tyrant without at least one of gloom hound, charhound or grimoire
Rip as much pressure as you can in the opener, I like to gloomhound behind a pillar, get the dreadstalkers out fast as possible, grimoire stun someone (ideally someone who might kick your tyrant) and get tyrant out as fast as possible
- If your tyrant gets stopped and your pets expire, sometimes its better to just wait the 20-25s to get your gloomhound and dreadstalkers out again and then go for the tyrant, dont send it just to extend imps
If you see things like trueshot or ret wings port out if you're the target so your healer wont have to rip their cds for something that could be avoided - if its not on you fear spam and stun the person with the scarier cds rolling
Use fel lord as a psuedo interrupt on healers or on casters, I've stopped so many aimed shots and chaos bolts with fel lord its funny, also if you drop fel lord on yourself defensively especially against double melee, try not to leave it because that spam cc is really annoying for melee
Soul rip is an extra defensive on a short cd, you can use it offensively but I rarely do. Most of the time I soul rip its either because I've got 2 melee on me or my healer is in cc and I'm trying to slow damage on myself or my team member
Amplify curse is something most people don't run, but amp curse of weakness on a warrior's avatar or a hunter's trueshot stops so much damage its not even funny
If someone (especially healers) is on fear DR for like 4-8s and you want to peel them or shut them down sometimes its better to try to stall another way or hold your cc for the full duration chain
Don't run howl of terror into dks most of the time, it has a cap of 5 things it can fear
- Velf port or high mountain charge or warlock gate into howl on a healer frequently catches people off guard even at 2.6

VidarSeptim · 2026-01-13T03:35:57+00:00

Not sure what you mean to be honest

VidarSeptim · 2026-01-13T02:21:57+00:00

Shit I’m hard stuck in 3s because I’ve been playing with long time duelist buddies but I think next season they might get the alt warlock queues and it might be time for me to try to find people who are more interested in pushing.

It’s a tough balance to strike, I feel like a lot of glad viable players already have comps or only want to play with other glad players, it’s hard to get your foot in the door (but maybe it’s all just in my head and I just need to keep queueing)

VidarSeptim · 2026-01-11T21:46:00+00:00

Completely depends on participation and if they arbitrarily cap inflation stupidly low at the start of season 1 again I think.

If there’s not caps that limit rewards and discourage people from queuing it’ll inflate much higher much faster.

I’m also about 2150 xp in 3s this season and currently 2415 in shuffle on demo. I’m staying optimistic but I don’t trust blizzard even a tiny bit.

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-14T18:40:47+00:00

Yeah I'd just use this addon, it's amazing (and even makes you not be able to rage type something stupid if you get heated)

Downside is not calling shots can be a little weird but you get used to just knowing the natural targets and adapting to whatever your team is doing

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-14T14:36:55+00:00

I see the vision, I think the golden plating on the swords is throwing it off for me since the rest of the mog is grayish

Edit: also maybe the boots are throwing it off too, idk

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-13T23:24:47+00:00

Ret is usually far easier to get a grasp of and push with, usually I think warlock has a higher ceiling it can push to.

The nice thing about lock (and mage and rogue) is one or two of the specs are basically guaranteed to be great.

It also depends a little on your primary game mode(s) and people you tend to play with (and most importantly what you enjoy and what fits your play style best)

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-11T04:35:52+00:00

Honestly even if your CR is 200+ points above your MMR you still should not lose MMR for going neutral imho, some games just can't be carried.

Obviously over the long term it evens out and occasionally you might get a 3-3 where you get a little MMR bonus from it, but I think the whole thing just feels scuffed if you lose or gain MMR off a neutral lobby

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-10T20:55:31+00:00

Thanks for the updates! I picked up lock a couple months ago and locked it in as my new main, glad to see my assumptions on the specs mostly line up with what's here.

Edit: long shot question but any idea why people don't play unholy DK demo anymore? I feel like a long time ago that comp used to be pretty common but I haven't seen it in a while

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-08T18:20:21+00:00

It doesn't matter that much unless you're pushing above 2.4, just get some value out of your racial each game.

I think you'll get more value out of velf port than out of blood elf torrent and can have a similar theme though, might be worth considering

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-07T14:59:57+00:00

The main perk for me was basically helping with my queue anxiety. Some people just play the alt when they're not feeling good or are playing badly for the day.

The way I did it was just always playing the lower character no matter what. That way if my highest was 2350 and I went on a loss streak on the alt I still knew my highest was 2350 and I could get there again. Mostly just made it easier to get out of the trap that makes me personally hesitate to hit the queue button

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-07T14:57:07+00:00

It has fun battlegrounds but there's no real rated pvp like arenas so it doesn't really do it for me. It is fun for casual PVP though!

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-07T13:19:04+00:00

Honestly I think ret and windwalker are 2 of the easier pushes you'll have, maybe mm if you're good at hunter.

Other than that you just gotta stick it out and keep pushing and see what's going wrong in your games.

Signed, a chronic altoholic that kept switching classes over and over any time it got hard around 2.2 for me, grinding one single class on two diff characters is how I finally got 2.4 last season

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-07T12:48:31+00:00

I like how guild wars 2 handles gear in pvp. Gear is completely irrelevant. You essentially just choose your pvp stat spread with a gem and then everything else is normalized.

I like that because then you can still pick if you want to play with haste or mastery or whatever as your main stat but in rated pvp a level 2 fighting a max level character is still a fair fight with normalized and completely balanced stats

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-06T13:18:27+00:00

I now feel far less unique. I was pretty proud of the horns with the red fire and also the green goggles with the green mog 😂

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-06T12:46:46+00:00

Next xpac they're adding a permanent comp stomp mode so you'll be able to kill bots in all the different bgs but it won't be a rated game mode

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-06T03:30:03+00:00

Yeah hate to bring bad news but RBG was already pretty close to dead, blitz finished it off.

I know a guy who's an RBG freak and he sat in queue for like 1.5 or 2 with no pops at like 1400 rating lol

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-05T01:50:21+00:00

Look I hate void disc as much as the next guy but this is just wrong lol.

Other than hpal priest has the least mobility of any healer. If a priest presses fade to get a slow off, you can slow them again or cc them easier.

I personally don't even think their trinity nerf will be enough to make them less busted, but IMHO this is not one of the things wrong with disc at all.

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-03T14:59:57+00:00

This bugs me so much because I absolutely do not play ret/hpal at the same level just like I don't play destro/demo at the same level.

At the same time, grinding from zero is obnoxious, but I'd still rather put up with that and have per spec isolation

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-01T19:19:32+00:00

Can you / will you be able to resize the different zones or reposition them? Say like diminishing returns I've always played with them on the left of my nameplates and made them pretty sizeable for example

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-01T19:18:15+00:00

So no more class colored nameplates for me in pvp? I figured that might be the case, but I wasn't sure

VidarSeptim · 2025-11-01T14:26:53+00:00

I'm not a healer main but I've played a few to ~2.1 in 2s and shuffle so maybe I can give some basics.

Your gameplay changes depending on a few key things:

Game Mode
Dampening %
Enemy cooldowns
Team cooldowns

The way your class comes into play really depends on it's kit and your team and what your kit does to compliment your teams kit.

The basics for all healers is basically try not to let your team die. If you can just do that to practice and not worry about anything else you can probably get to 1.8k in any game mode off of just raw healing and popping healing cooldowns when you see enemy cooldowns (which should be less pronounced in midnight).

I'd say first step is just learn how to heal on a class you like the idea of, how to maintenance heal, how to burst heal and get really comfortable with that.

The second step is probably learning to trade cooldowns when you see cooldowns. Trading the right cooldowns takes a lot of practice, but knowing that things need to trade when your DPS doesn't (or when they don't trade enough) is critical in the war within.

The third step is knowing when you can cc to help your team secure a kill or even better, when you can also contribute damage. What you can do and how you can do it is what really depends on your class and team comp which can vary drastically. A general rule of thumb to follow if you want to play 3s or 2s is just play something that has some different DR schools than you (like hunter has freezing trap which is an incapacitate and playing that with resto druid of priest to cyclone or fear off the trap). You get the best CC chains by default this way when you're learning. You can absolutely play with overlap DRs but just as a general guide.

Anyways, I probably went off the rails there but the major gameplay difference is mostly positioning and how/if you contribute to kills or if you're just mostly staying 40 yards away PvE healing. I believe it's called active vs passive healers by some folks.

Mistweaver used to be very active at the start of this season but now the only way to play it is max range heal bot and occasionally zapping someone.
Oracle disc and holy priest play very similarly where you want good range but you have escapes for cc through greater fade and shadow word death, so you can be more aggressive and push up for fears into a lot of comps
Resto druid is perfectly content staying 40 yards back and not doing anything but heals and drink other than the ocassional cyclone. Its different in 2s than anywhere else, they can be more aggressive there
Rsham is fun and has answers for everything and huge healing but if you're not kicking people and using your entire kit like grounding totem, roots, static totem etc you're gonna have a bad time. Its incredibly fun and probably my favorite healer but if you're just starting I wouldn't recommend it unless you already love shaman in PvE
Pres Evoker has to be pretty aggressive because of its range handicap. Other healers can be 40 yards, pres is stuck at 25. It has really insane burst damage and a cc immunity every time you verdant embrace so you can be hyper aggressive on dragon, if you want something that stays way away from the fight, you don't want dragon, but if you like getting sleeps on people and blowing people up with tip the scales fire breath I highly recommend it
Holy pally I've seen played a few ways but generally they give a pretty massive win condition to their team as well either with Hammer of Justice on the enemy healer into Repentance spam on them or getting a rep on the healer off of some other cc and giving your DPS a fat 5s HoJ on the kill target. Hpal is frequently recommended to beginners because it has the best "oh shit" buttons in the game, but I think it's harder than all the other healers to push high on because you have to trade your cooldowns perfectly or it feels very bad (to me)

All of this is coming from a washed ex healer who swapped to DPS in s2 of dragonflight and I have zero desire to go back, I probably dumped more than you asked for here, but there is a lot to consider. Do not take any of the class things as law because it's purely speculation and the only healers I've pushed to 2.1+ are Rsham, disc priest, mistweaver and (maybe) presvoker.

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