How to build a 5v5 team - Part 2

5) TEAMMATES
For this I will use the ‘2-Healer’ build for my model since it is the most common and easiest to play. First off you will want to find teammates that are around you in age, basically don’t get anyone in high school that has to go to bed at 11 PM when the rest of your team is in college and stays up until 4 am. This is what you will want to look for in your teammates:

Warrior – Find your self a good warrior, the core of every good 5v5 team will have a good Warrior, Caster DPS and Paladin. For this role you will want someone that is an ‘Alpha Male’, who is usually egotistical and likes to do lots of damage and kill people. Your warrior should be extremely outspoken seeing as he will be the natural leader of the team, he should be calling out assists and what your team should being so finding someone knowledgeable about the game and PvP helps a lot.

Caster DPS (aka Mage) - Unlike your Warrior your caster DPS should be someone who is really mellow and wont easily get flustered, as he will be one of the major components of your team. He shouldn’t worry too much about doing damage as much as he should be controlling the flow of the match with his crowd control abilities. This role is most easily filed by a Mage, but can also be done by a Warlock but not as efficiently.

Random DPS – This person’s personality should be somewhere between that of the Warriors and Caster DPS’s. You’ll want someone who can be egotistical but not as much as the Warrior seeing as he won’t be in the limelight at the end of the match, the Warrior will. He should also be able to take over the roll as the in-game leader if the warrior happens to go down early. So having a back up in-game leader is always a safe option, someone the other people on your team will listen to if things get chaotic. Do not use another Melee to fill this roll whether it is another Warrior or Rogue, seeing as you will only have one Paladin on your team, which equals one Blessing of Freedom, which can put you at a disadvantage using two melee against any heavy crowd control team.

Healers – First and foremost find your self a Paladin they are part of the holy trinity that includes the Warrior and Mage. A good Paladin is not hard to find and will be one of the easier parts of filling your team, another great advantage if you are a start up team your Paladin will not require as much gear as the rest of the team seeing as he will be able to use a lot of PVE gear in the beginning. As for your secondary healer, it doesn’t really matter what or who you pick the best choice would be a priest but they require a lot of gear seeing as they will usually be the focus of the other teams attacks. If you cannot find a Priest with amazing gear a Resto Shaman with decent gear can easily fill this role.

Also it helps to have a back up player or two, if you don’t feel a certain class or member is performing poorly versus a team or group composition you are playing sub someone in. Try to have a secondary healer back up and one or two back ups for your ‘Random DPS’ slot, your team should consist of at least 7 people on it. If you do have 7 do not make it a goal that everyone gets 30% even if they are your best lineup, once you have established your best lineup play with it and often.

6) GEAR
As much as I hate to say it, gear is an extremely important part of the arena with out it you could lose to inferior teams who do have better gear, which can be extremely frustrating. Find players who already have a few pieces of Arena gear and pieces from farming Honor. If they don’t have this gear make sure they are willing to farm honor to make sure they have the best possible gear in every slot. PVE Gear doesn’t work in 5v5 Arena unless you are a Warrior or Paladin, every other class must have the MAXIMUM amount of resilience possible once your team gets near the top 50 in your battlegroup.

Make sure that all your members have a high ranked 2v2 or 3v3 team that they can fall back on to get gear from if they have to sit for a week and not get arena points from your 5v5 team.

7) GOALS
Once you have your team set up, set some goals. Determine what you want to do with this team, do you just want to get gear every week and play 10 games? Do you want to have fun and play all the top teams in your battle group every week? Or do you want to be the best team on your server.

Set realistic goals, if your team is brand new with mediocre gear the chances are you wont be #1 any time soon or even in the top 10 in your battlegroup if it is highly competitive. If you are a experienced players with almost all the top gear available then set the goal as high as you can, and once you get to it set a new one whether it takes you 1 day to reach it or a whole season.

8) SCHEDULING
This depends completely on what the goals for your team is, if you want to be the #1 team on your battle group you will most likely need to assign 3-4 days a week that you can spend a few hours a night playing on. If you just want to be a team that does good 1-2 nights will be sufficient so long as everyone shows up on those nights, if you cant make it tell your teammates in advance so they can line up the 2-3 back-ups you have set asides. In the end make sure everyone knows what days you are playing and at what time, make sure some of your backups are available during this time too just in case.

9) COMMUNICATION
I cannot stress this point enough; with out good communication your team will not do well in the Arena.

1) Make sure everyone on your team has a Microphone
2) Use a Vent or Team Speak server, go in a private channel so you are not distracted by other guild mates or friends

If someone on your team does have a microphone but refuses to talk or communicate while in game give them a few weeks to get adjusted to communicating while playing, if they don’t REMOVE them from your team. Players who don’t have microphones or refuse to talk to you while you are playing are extremely detrimental to a team.

A great example would be a mage who has a microphone but refuses to talk, when this person counter-spells the opposing healer it would be a good time to let your teammates know that the other team wont be getting heals for 5-6 seconds which would be a good time for them to use cool downs to do more DPS and maybe kill something. If the mage never says anything then the team will never know, and this is just one of the many ways having a non communicative person on your team will hurt you from being at the top. Also it doesn’t hurt to call out for heals and dispels because healers some times get tunnel vision and don’t always see what’s going on so letting them know never hurts.

10) HAVE FUN
Chances are you are going to lose a lot of matches, remember you will not be the #1 team over night it will take time. Do not get frustrated over small things and call out teammates and make them feel bad. Take EVERY loss as a learning experience and try to improve on what you did wrong. In the end, have a positive attitude, and have fun!