Does PVP bring out the worst in you?
Hi all,
I play a disc priest in pvp. Im terrible at it. I more often find pvp a frustrating and stressful experience vs a "fun" one. Yet I cant stop playing. It is like being with an abusive partner. Often when I play arena my hands start shaking, i get tunnel vision, forget half my abilities, and just start mashing keys out of panic.
Often in arena there is a angry red northrend creature (from trinket proc) on my screen with shadowmourne graphics swirling around,it as it mercilessly attacks me while I pathetically try to heal my way through its burst. My partner on discord yells at me to dispel the palladins bubble but my situational awareness is reduced to mashing three keys over and over again, praying to survive the burst, forgetting the GCD timer makes such tactics futile.
As i have geared up and reached the impressive rating 1350 in 2s, I kept telling myself as I get better gear this will be a more enjoyable experience, but as I sit at 6k gs, I am beginning to realize such thinking is akin to a herion addict deluding themselves about their addiction getting better.
I often emote spit over and over on a plate wearer with the purple shadowmourne graphic around them as they tunnel me. I often do this to players that outgear and "outskill" me instead of trying to counter them. Afterwards I realize that i was just standing in WG spitting over and over on 2 warriors beating on me instead of actually trying to counter them with my abilities. I often ragequit BGs as soon as i see a BIS warrior or pally come after me. Ive deleted my characters only to contact warmane staff to restore them a few days later.
Ive developed some really bad responses of panic, tunnel vision, followed by anger during pvp. My struggle now is to unlearn these responses. I dont feel good about myself letting down my teamates as a healer, nor do i feel good about myself after spitting on other players.
I used to play DPS in pvp back on retail and i prided myself in my pvp "skillz". I would mock noobs and teabagg their corpses as i gloated over their misfortune. I mention this because for me there is a lesson here ten plus years after retail Wotlk was over, and i get to revisit it now. For you to be a pvp pro, you need to have others less skilled, competent, and less geared to a certain degree.
Forgive me if I didnt articulate my story better, this post is just myself venting my inadequacies and frustrations, I have just been experiencing a lot of negative emotions in pvp and it creates a negative feedback loop, just making it an unwholesome and self depreciating experience. I often find myself obsessing over it as well when i am not logged on.
If anyone else would like to share how pvp brings out their shadow, that would be great to read about. Also to clarify a few things before closing; this is not so much about imbalance in pvp, or GS, shadowmourne etc, but it is about how one reacts and treats other people, and I am reaching out to the community here hoping others share if pvp affects them negatively.
Something I am reminding myself now, If one is being ganked, camped, teabagged and spit on, or dominating 3vs3 at 3k rating, it is still a human being on the other side of the computer monitor. It is very easy to forget that.
Thanks for reading.
