How To: Joust in the Argent Tournament

There's a lot of reasons to joust in the Argent Tournament. Maybe you're working on the Crusader title. Maybe you just want some quick and easy gold. Personally, I'm doing it for those two reasons, plus the tokens. I'd like to get the 75-pet achievement on Jillathee for no reason other than "because it's there", and the 5 easy pets from the Tourney are 5 more pets I don't have to buy in the Auction House.

Additionally, you might find yourself thinking about rolling up a Dwarf Shaman, Worgen Druid, or Goblin Rogue in cataclysm. While we've been told that the current crop of heirlooms probably won't work from 80-85, they should still work from 1-80, and 20% more XP plus a few slots that are always pretty well-equipped is totally worth the effort. Anyway.

Not everybody is all that good at Jousting. I see a lot of people get defeated in the ring, or hear them complain about how hard / boring it is. I've gotten it pretty much down to a science, so I want to offer a few suggestions and observations. These apply to both the Champion and Valiant jousts, and to a lesser extent the Commanders joust (because they now behave exactly like champions, although they're considerably more annoying because of adds).

First of all, you should make sure you can see target-of-target frames. This isn't on by default in the standard UI and to be honest I don't even know how to turn it on in the default UI, since I've been running with replacement unit frames since WAY back in the day (discord unit frames, FTW!). Anyway, your opponent will periodically detarget you and run off in a somewhat-random direction. If you have target-of-target frames, you'll notice this right away, and the key to a successful joust is just that - noticing when your opponent detargets you.

I also want to make another observation. It is possible to win this joust by doing nothing but thrusting and keeping your shields up. If you follow the opponent while he detargets you and runs away, you will stay under his charge/shieldbreaker range, and he'll just go back to hitting you again after a while. But because he has the same HP as you and hits just as hard, those periods of inactivity on his part means that if you just spam thrust and follow him around (and remember to refresh defend before it falls off), you can win with no risk. The problem is that this technique requires five and a half minutes, or thereabouts, to pull off. You can go much faster.

The key to fast jousting is to keep your opponent at one or two levels of defense.

There are a few techniques to help with this, some are easier than others. I generally go all-out, and now that I've gotten it all down to a science it works fine. I started with the only-shieldbreaker technique, moved to the only-charge technique, and then went to the shieldbreaker-and-charge technique.

1. Before challenging someone, get a little behind them, and face into the ring. When you challenge them, they immediately put up shields and run into the ring. If you're sitting behind them, you can charge them as soon as they run far enough away. I just spam 3 until I start charging them.
2. While you're fighting, stay close to the opponent. If you're too far away from the opponent, they will try to shield-break and charge you. Because they're an NPC mob, they don't have a GCD. Which means that they can shield-break and charge in pretty short order, although shield-break has a cast time (as it does for you), so it's possible to move back under minimum range for shieldbreaking before they cast it. If you don't stay close to them, though, you'll find yourself down two shields - one lost to shield-breaker and one to charge. That puts you in a tricky position, you have to shield up as quickly as possible.
3. Generally, I try to slowly walk backwards while fighting. This keeps weirdnesses from happening where the opponent goes a little too far through you and hits you without you being able to hit them, and also makes life easier when they drop target. And trust me, there's all kinds of weird lag and positional issues in jousting. It just doesn't behave predictably.
   
4. When the opponent drops target and runs off, you have four options, in increasing order of risk but also payoff:
   1. Just stay on top of him, and keep thrusting. This is the 5-minute plan. It's also a lot less dirty than it sounds.
      
   2. Toss a shield-breaker as soon as he's out of range, then quickly move back into range and keep thrusting. If you're lucky, you'll get a few hits in before he ups his shield again, and you'll be ahead in the damage race.
   3. Charge as soon as he's out of range, and quickly recover back in and keep thrusting. Charge hits harder than shield-breaker, and this gets you into thrust range faster, so you can usually hit a few more times this way.
   4. Charge as soon as he's out of range, and as you run through him in the post-charge sprint, try to quickly turn around and toss a shield-breaker. This is the hardest trick to manage, but if you pull it off, you'll reduce his shields by 2 levels per cycle, and he only can recover 1 shield per cycle. Which means that if you're doing it right, you'll have him stuck at more or less 1 shield permanently, and the joust will be over before you know it.
5. The trick to this is your quick reactions. No matter which path you take, you have to make sure you get under the minimum range for shield-breaker before than your opponent can cast his shield-breaker. It's tricky, but totally doable, if you're fast on the ball. If you don't do this, you'll get shield-broken and charged, and be unable to recover.
6. The whole time, keep an eye on your defend timer. There's nothing worse than starting out really strongly but losing your entire 3-stack of defend because you didn't need to refresh it because you weren't getting hit.
   

And that's it, really. The whole thing comes down to watching for the opponent to detarget you and deciding what to do when he does. Valiants and Champions behave identically in this respect. The only difference is that Valiants start with a 2-stack of shields instead of a 3-stack, and that Valiants seem to wait longer between refreshing their shields.

All you have to do is remember to keep your shields at an equal or higher level than the other guy. Sometimes for me, this means ignoring a charge opportunity. If I flubbed a pass and ended up at 1 shield, I'll spend the next pass making sure I'm back up to 3 before I do any more charging.

Good luck and happy jousting!