Mmmmm, above average

The number of the day is 1517, cuz that's my new 2v2 Arena rating.

All you PvP junkies who think that sux, well, go stuff it. I'm proud.

We went 8-2 for the week and popped above 1500, and also now have an overall winning record (by one match, mind you) for Season 3.

All I can say is I'm amazed at how hard its been for us. That really surprised me.

At first, we had no resil, so death was to be expected.

To increase resilience, we had to hit BG's. Lots of BG's. Along the way, you learn at least the basics of PvP, understanding your general strengths and learning a variety of tricks that the various enemy classes will throw your way. You run into enough 1-on-1 encounters in BG's to get a basic feel for how to handle yourself.

Bring some resil back to arenas, become a little more survivable, maybe moving from 1200's to 1300's.

Getting both team members to grind out the Medallion of the Alliance trinket, that alone probably boosted us from 1300's to 1400's.

And from there its been getting a handle of the basics of trying to control the pace of the fight and coordinate our efforts, as opposed to being two individuals acting independently.

But I'm still amazed at how much harder its been than I expected. Sure we're both PvE at heart and in spec.

Is the challenge, and inconsistency from week to week due to the queueing and ranking system?

Have we just been getting spanked by substantially better players who re-roll teams and start their rating off at 1500?

Of our 8 wins this week, 2 were total cake walks. Clearly the other teams were just starting out PvP and were steadily on their way down to 1200. The remaining 6 wins were actually pretty good matches, with some solid strategy, coordinated actions and reactions, and good communication. A few of the matches came down to only a few hundred health left on the one surviving player. Of the two losses, one was a royal beat down. They bursted me for 15,000 damage in 3 seconds. My nearly 11,000 health had issue with that. The other loss was a well balanced, close match.

So what gives with the arena matching system? I'm fully expecting to now be in a new bracket of teams, and if we eek out a single victory from the above-1500 club, I'll be happy for the week.