The Ring of Valor is the most complex arena to date as it adds even more for you to keep track of while playing arena, with the addition of both the moving pillars, and the walls of fire which rotate periodically. There are many ways these obstacles can be used for or against your team, and I will discuss some of the ways you can utilize them in order to give your team the advantage in this map, part by part.

The Elevator / The Start of the Fight

The arena itself starts in a new way, having you zone straight into an elevator shaft where you’re given the standard buffing and prep time before it raises slowly into the arena.



Once at the top of the elevator, the gates drop, and the fight begins. Both teams are extremely close to each other, which can work for or against you depending on how quick you are, and the makeup of the other team. For example, a subtlety rogue can easily Shadowstep in and sap a player before they get a chance to move. On the other hand, if they’re not careful, a hunter can just as easily Flare them out, or a mage can Blink in and Frost Nova on top of the other teams platform, knocking all of the enemy players out of stealth.



The opener on this map is very important and can easily dictate the course of the game. With both teams starting directly on top of each other, a strong opener can mean the game is already over before it even started. Since forcing a trinket only seconds into a game can spell disaster for many teams, and getting knocked out of stealth for a rogue on a 3 DPS team for example, the game can end very quickly for their team.

The key here is to know exactly what you want to do, and be able to adapt quickly, either moving in, or moving away before you can get taken advantage of. If you’re a class who isn’t going to be looking to CC or knock out a player from the other team right at the start, you should be mounted and at the back of your platform ready to move away into a better position. If you’re stealth, make sure you stand in a less predictable area, such as one corner or the other and moving straight out away from the platform so as to avoid early AoE’s and other things which could knock you out.

The Pillars

Once the fight has begun, there are two major obstacles you must be aware of and use to your advantage if you want to win the fight. The first and foremost being the two pillars on opposite sides of the arena.



The pillars rise and fall periodically, giving not only the ever important LoS, but also something which you can get on top of and ride it up to relative safety. This allows you to not only LoS casters but to get out of range of melee classes, making it a very important spot to have control of when the fight is around the pillars. There are many ways to gain control of them, and through coordination with your teammates, it can get you a huge advantage. Having your healer, or a caster up on top of a pillar in a position where they can escape a lot of damage and possibly cast without interruption, can be exactly what you need to win you the match.

To gain control of the pillar, and peel your opponents who’re also going to want to get on top of it, it can be very advantageous to have a “CC” or crowd control ability or a stun ready for the other team when the pillar is about to go up. An AoE fear, frost nova, kidney shot or hammer of justice are a few of the many ways to prevent an enemy from getting on the pillar while you take it up to safety away from the enemy warriors, rogues, feral druids, enhancement shaman etc.

Similarly, if you are followed up onto the pillar by an enemy player, it is a great place to sheep, trap, or similarly crowd control them as they are almost guaranteed to be out of line of sight from anyone on their team who could remove the crowd control from them. In WoW 3.0, sometimes the only way to survive is to avoid the damage altogether, as at times it is simply not possible to heal through, and the pillars are a great way to do this.

The Walls of Fire

The walls of fire raise and fall opposite to the pillars. While the pillars are up, the walls of fire are down, and vice versa. They do significant damage to whoever is unfortunate enough to get caught in them, or be forced to walk through them to get to a teammate or enemy.



Walking through them applies a DoT effect called Flame Trench which deals ~550 damage each second to me on my rogue with 416 Resilience (one thing to also note is that although you still take damage from the debuff, it does NOT break you out of stealth interestingly enough, which I assume is a bug). The debuff itself is not magic, and the tooltip says “Deals 10% Fire damage per second”, although it’s doing nowhere near 10% of my HP. So I’m not sure if it’s a bug or just severely toned down by Resilience.



Either way it does enough damage that you don’t want to get caught in it. Capitalizing on an enemy player crossing it can easily make the difference between them living or you getting a kill in a game where people constantly survive with only a few HP remaining. If you’re able to stun or root someone on the flames, it continues to do damage until 3 seconds AFTER they’re out of it. Meaning in a HoJ to Kidney Shot, or Kidney Shot to Deep Freeze, it’s adding a ton of extra damage. In a Kidney Shot to Deep Freeze, you’re looking at 11 seconds of them being stuck in place, plus the additional 3 seconds of the DoT ticking after they have gotten out, for a total of 14 seconds and ~7700 extra damage from the DoT alone. Add that on top of the damage a player will be taking already in those stuns, and the chances of surviving are quite low. One thing to also note is that although you still take damage from the debuff, it does NOT break you out of stealth.

With the addition of Death Knights in WotLK this will be even more interesting, as they’re able to pull players to them, making them able to pull enemy players onto the fire setting them up to be stunned there, and possibly killed quite easily. It’s definitely something to watch out for.

Dalaran Arena on the next page