Tools to progress in WoW PvP skills

Question

I am playing a rogue and am thoroughly enjoying it. I've recently started picking up resilience gear so I can attend to PvP more often when I'm done doing my PvE routine for the week. The issue is, I'm fairly terrible at PvP and want to get better. I do understand that it will take time and lots of dueling practice to get better, that's perfectly fine.

In the meantime, I was wondering if folks can recommend critical add-ons that will help in the world of PvP?

I've also found a service called skill-capped.com that costs money, but has decent content for learning how others are PvPing. I find it terribly difficult to follow the videos. There are times you are supposed to "trinket" or do a particular action when someone opens with one way or another. I can't keep up with who is casting what, when some cool downs are available, things like that.

What are some add ons I can get that will help me in PvP?

Answer 1

For 1v1, the only way to get better is to practise.

I don't know if you are Horde or Alliance but for Horde in front of Orgrimmar you can easily find a specific class as a practice buddy and start duelling to learn the opposing class. For Alliance I'd assume Stormwind or similar.

First of all though, you need to know your own spells, which ones CC, silence, increase your attack speed or output, etc. If you do not know the strength and weaknesses of your own class it doesn't matter how many AddOns you use you will never go beyond a basic level of PvP.

Anyway, other than that, you need to learn what other classes spells do and why they use them and to which effect. You should always try to think along the lines of:

"How can I counter that skill or maybe best avoid being hit by it"

and

"What is this classes weakness after they popped they CDs and what are that classes CDs"

You also will learn then that some classes always cast one spell to enhance another that is when you might notice, "Oh, everytime he/she casts spell x I propably should silence him/her as he/she will cast y straight after which always takes half my HP.

A tool which I found very helpful in helping me to remember the skill names and helping me figuring out in which situations they are used most often and why or to which end is GladiatorlosSA.

That AddOn shouts out the names of the skills your opponent is executing which helps when you are focusing. It also helps teaching you what visuals you see on your opponent when they execute the spells and more.

Don't use the AddOn though in BGs as it is rather annoying to listen to 10 people executing spells :)

Again, no matter what tools you use, practice and making notes on classes and what they most of the time use when and why is your best bet for improvement.

It took me a few weeks of Arena and duelling before I knew a few classes well enough to anticipate and read several situations but it doesn't mean you win all the time, it simply helps you put up a good fight at a minimum :)

Answer 2

There's an addon called gladius that most of the arena community would consider essential. The addon is fairly outdated but works most of the time - it displays enemy portraits, tracks the cooldown of their PvP trinket, tracks DR, lets you set focus targets by right clicking portrait etc.

Coming from the perspective of a former 2500 resto druid, the single most important thing you need to make every loss a learning experience. A lot of people cry imbalance (which certainly does exist) but you can overcome anything at lower ratings. DKs are so op, they just kill me so easily! Why is it so easy for the DK to be on you? Should he be the kill target? Do we have enough CC on him/her? Evaluate, adapt and conquer.