Although I'm not entirely new around here like my teammates are, I figured that I would do a pseudo-introduction in my first article here on SK Gaming before leading into my first "guide." My name is Vance "Serennia" Phuoc. I previously played a warrior as my main character in the first four seasons of arena, with extensive experience and success on a druid, as well. I now primarily play a Death Knight in the expansion and as everyone here should know, I've teamed up with Ryan "Realz" Masterson and David "Sck" Quick to put together what I feel is the strongest 3v3 team I've been apart of. Well enough about me; I'll get into what I wanted to write about in my first article: new arena maps.

I didn't want to write a whole novel on my first article here on SK, so I wanted to cover something as basic as the new arena maps, because they are often not utilized to their fullest extent by arena teams. Maps can, in many situations, be the deciding factor in determining which team wins a match, particularly due to the positioning of each team. There are tons and tons of aspects with regards to specific classes, specs, and team comps that can be discussed about each map, so I'll try to keep it relatively general and maybe touch on DK-specific strategies for them.

Dalaran Arena

The waterfall here is the most important thing you need to be aware of. It's very wide around and obstructs line of sight which works both with you and against you. Many teams coordinate their burst around the timing of the waterfall coming down if they realize that the enemy team's healer will lose line of sight to their teammate (the burst target) when the water falls down. Knowing this, if a burst is expected to happen on your teammates, you should plan accordingly with them to adjust their positioning (whether it be the healer or the DPS moving) so that they don't run into this problem. Another thing to keep in mind here is that the crates on two corners of the map are buggy with line of sight. Even though it appears that you have casting/ranged LOS on targets, you sometimes don't if either you or the target are near the edges of the crates. This can obviously pose problems, so I actually recommend you test this with a friend in a skirmish so you get a feel of where the line of sight breaks are (they're hard to explain) or play it safe entirely and don't try to cut the corners too close.

The ledges are the other element of this map. Similar to Blade's Edge Arena, the Z-axis plays an important role on this map. If a player on a team is caught on the bottom while their teammate(s) is/are on top, it could pose a serious threat if the enemy team attempts a burst because there are only 2 stairs that lead up to the top platform. Before pursuing enemies to the lower level, make sure that your HP is topped off if possible, make your teammate(s) aware that you're going down, and try to anticipate if the team will swap to you as a target if you go down there. The ledges, also like in Blade's Edge, can also be used to cause pets to travel around, thus buying you a small window of time to drink if needed.

My DK tip for this map is to understand that the ledges can be your best friend here. If a mutilate rogue, for example, is killing your healer on the top platform, you can ask your healer to move toward the edge of the platform, you as the Death Knight can drop off the platform to the bottom level, and simply Death Grip the rogue down to the lower level. Because the rogue is mutilate, he has absolutely no way to get back to the healer without having to run all the way around, allowing plenty of time for your healer to heal up and/or get away.

Ring of Valor

This map strongly favors ranged/caster oriented teams such as hunters and warlocks due to the open nature of the map. It can be difficult to avoid CC;s with line of sight here, so you really have to use range to your advantage when possible and not just cling to the inside smaller rising pillars. A very useful mod to know relatively the exact timer on when the pillars and fire go up/down, as well as the Dalaran waterfall timing as well, can be found here.

Knowing the exact pillar timers on RoV also allows your healers/ranged classes to position nearby the pillars when they are about to rise and get on when they do so that they are virtually un-attackable by melee unless pulled down by a Death Knight, putting them at a strong advantage.

Players also need to be cautious of the fire on this map, as it deals 30% of a player's total HP in damage when it affects them. There is also a nasty bug where if you are crowd controlled (usually feared) nearby a pillar on this map, there's a chance your client will disconnect from the server. There's not much you can do to prevent this honestly, so just hope the other team isn't purposely trying to spam CC's on your team to accomplish that and also hope that Blizzard fixes it soon.

My DK tips for this map are to Death Grip and chains of ice someone that you're trying to burst on top of the fire so that they effectively will lose one third their HP over a few seconds of your burst time, helping you a lot with the damage. My other tip here is to be very careful when you try play offensively in the middle of the map against a hunter or warlock team, especially if your partner (assuming you have a healer) is out of cooldowns or doesn't have a PvP trinket available. This map can be deadly due to its lack of line of sight available to duck behind if your partner gets locked out, so be thinking ahead of where your partner should be going at any given time and where you as a DK can go if your partner gets CC'd by something they can't break. Be quick to swap Frost Presence and remember that it's usually better to play it safe and outlast the other team's cooldowns, rather than going for an early kill but putting yourself at risk in the open.

Sorry for a somewhat short first article, but you can expect bigger and better content from me in the near future. Feedback is welcome as always.