So we’re rocking it again as rogue priest…

…and it’s so much more fun than I thought it would be. I just didn’t realise how much potential Wrath arenas have.

My issue used to be that I wanted to be able to stay alive. I didn’t want games where “zerg the priest” was a foolproof strategy 100%. It still isn’t quite balanced in that aspect (you, in fact, can zerg the priest to success no matter how hard Calissa tries to peel). But I imagine it’s better than how it used to be in previous seasons.

The best part of the whole “whoa son, you got WOTLK’d” deal is that it feels to me that very few teams are true countercomps. You always have a chance. There’s always the possibility that you will gib that unprepared healer, even through HoTs and shields, while the partner is in a CC chain.

I remember when warrior/druid used to be hard counter to rogue/priest, so much so that if we won a single one it was a cause for major celebration. Now when we go out against one, I feel we have a chance. It doesn’t have to be an autoloss because they can abolish Wound and DPS on leather. It’s easier to force cooldowns due to higher damage, which ultimately means we have more of a chance of putting them in a CC chain before I get worn out from spam healing.

I also love being able to spare the mana for more offense, because in most of the cases something will die before everyone is out of mana. The amount of damage people are able to dish out assures that. You might as well spend it while you have it to force a cooldown. Out of 70+ matches we played over three days, there were only 2 I can remember in which it came down to mana (and we won one and lost one). This is also why I ditched my beloved PWS glyph to glyph Smite, and so far, lovin’ it.

“They have both trinkets down.”
“Gib during next Blind yah?”
“Yeah Blinding in 3, 2, 1, gogogoog”
/receive Tricks
/cast Power Infusion
/cast Holy Fire
/spam Smite

I love having Perception and being able to get the opener. We do it quite a bit of the time. And you have no idea how many times mindless Holy Nova spam has denied someone the opener.

I also seem to be better than I was in TBC when I comes to SWD’ing sheeps, which has immensely helped with our win rate against mage/rogue.

We also see great variety in comps – used to be that you saw maybe ten different comps in a whole season of playing 2s and that was it. Now there’s everything ranging from double DK to ele shaman/moonkin.

I quite like the new rating system, too. First off, there’s a much greater sense of progress about it. You start from zero, so there’s nowhere to go but up. If you go 50/50 at the lower ratings, you’re still going to move up on the ladder, which didn’t happen in TBC. The fact that losing doesn’t carry a massive penalty keeps people playing, especially if you’re new, or like us, just haven’t played for a few seasons. Add to this the fact that there are few countercomps (and even if there are, you just don’t meet them to start off with since comps are so varied), and you have a recipe for success.

I’ve just been playing for a few days, with a win rate barely higher than 50%,  yet I’m rated high enough to afford four Furious pieces, and two Relentless offpieces. I like this in a way, because if you’re mediocre, which I admittedly very much am, you still have a chance to get rated stuff. On the other hand, if you’re new to arena, it will still take you quite a while to get someplace, so I’m still in two minds about the system.

I quite like the MMR aspect – there have been few fights where I felt I got outplayed by some guy going for glad. Point for point, in most matches I felt like I played with people skill equal or close to my own.

Probably due for more matches tonight, so we’ll wait and see. It would be amazing indeed if one day, I could land the T1 Relentless weapon… oh well, a girl can dream.

I am not pleased at all with the Blizzard decision to not implement non-rated PvP weapons, because, to put it in Kalgan’s words, “most players are encouraged to get their weapon upgrade through PvE”.

Uh, well, what if you play this game to casually PvP, like if you’re on my low-populated server where getting groups = pulling teeth, and you actually don’t want to PvE to be halfway competitive in PvP? Or if you have terrible luck with droprate, a la Lumi and the staff from heroic VH (20+ runs and counting)? And you don’t want to fork over hundreds, no, scrap that, thousands of gold to get some craftables?

Well, then I guess you don’t need to be playing, either.

PvE rewards mediocrity. This has been well established. You can be bad and still get gear. The game design actually encourages this. You don’t need to be doing much to get kitted, just turning up for raids is enough. PvP doesn’t quite work that way, in fact, quite the opposite. PvP rewards only the good players (or well, currently, mostly only plate wearers who have access to Naxx25 gear) and rewards it well.

The trouble with that is, the people who PvP casually but like to be competitive, like me, ultimately end up having nothing to strive for except the enjoyment they derive from arena (and let’s face it, arena isn’t horribly enjoyable for most classes right now). This wasn’t the case during the first two seasons as the end result was the same for everyone, just that some people got there faster and some people got there slower. I got there on my own slow pace, learning a lot of things about my class on the way, and life was good. For S3, and especially S4, I was suddenly limited in how far I could “go” unless we, individually and as a team, raised our skillcap, AND started playing a FoTM team with few if any counters. Which, well, you know, isn’t going to happen.

So in S4, suddenly, the casual had less reasons to play arena, and the gear gap between the casual and the hardcore got bigger. S5 only feeds that, except with one catch – if you PvE, guess what, you have easy access to PvP gear through Vault and Emblems. But it doesn’t work the other way around. PvPers can’t buy the shiny badge gear or T7 with battleground marks.

Even Kalgan has agreed in a blue post that the current arena system leaves the casual little incentive to play. I really hope this is changed soon and casuals actually have a reason to participate in the arena system.

I and my 2v2 partner Rinny the rogue had the following conversation about druids and our twice-gladiator friend Kiyu the other day, while we were struggling to climb out of the 1600-1700 bracket.

Rinny: I hate druids.
Me: They aren’t that bad.
Rinny: Yes they are.
Me: Well, they aren’t, you know, immortal or anything.
Rinny: You know that Kiyu used to be Alliance before we rolled here.
Me: Yeah?
Rinny: Well, the other day we learned that a friend of ours had an Alliance hunter on another server, so Kiyu transferred his 70 druid to play with him. Said druid is in greens. They got to 1700 within one day of playing.
Me: Well, that’s Kiyu for you.
Rinny: He’s in greens.
Me: But it’s Kiyu playing.
Rinny: He’s in greens.
Me: I hate you.

How can a team have 1661 in team rating, while both team members who have 100% of all games played have 1646 rating?

No other people have played in this team since the start of the season, other than Rinny and me.

YET WE WERE DENIED OUR RINGS TONIGHT, BECAUSE PERSONAL RATINGS ARE %$#&ING %!^$ED UP.

/emo

Now that we’ve fallen back to sub-1600 again, battling many a full S3 druids, I bid you all goodnight.

At least we got a really sweet 25 point win off of a warrior/druid team. We love overarrogant teams. We really do.

I hate Perception. See, rogue/priest mirrors are usually a “If you get the opener, you win” deal. I play with a blood elf rogue. See the catch?

Rinny getting sapped means we lose. We just… lose. I get stunlocked while spamdispelled, then it’s over. And Rinny gets sapped rather a lot.

Or Hardiness. Oh Hardiness, how we love thee. Especially when the same warrior resists three full CP Kidneys and a dumb racial steals 18 points from a team that is just flat out better.

It’s awesome when your partner knows how important it is to lose the sodding pet, then you lose anyway because he decided the warlock is a better target. And to add insult to injury, you get emotespammed by a 12 year old retard.

It’s also awesome when you get a warrior to 30%, then he gets healed up because your partner decided Shadowstep was too much to use.

It’s even more awesome when you 1v2 4839843 matches because your partner DCd.

But the most awesome is to hear this against a mirror from your partner:

“Blinded, just trinketed that Fear, sorry!”

DISPEL IS AN APPARENTLY NEW CONCEPT.

Conversation with a friend who is a nice dude but is rather stupid:

“Who are you arena’ing with anyway?”
“Rinny.”
“Who is Rinny?”
“/who Rinny?”

ARMORY. IT IS AN AWESOME TOOL. UTILIZE IT.

Dearest of all our friends (Guess the game reference and win my heart), ex-Gladiator Kiyu, says that we need to win more. Thanks Kiyu. We love your wise advice.

…so it’s time for Random PvP Tips!

1. Reflective Shield. If you play 2v2 and are not specced into it, you are utterly missing out. Great freedom in battlegrounds as well – solo those pesky warriors!

1a. A good 2v2 strategy against warrior/healer teams vs rogue/priest: We go 2x 1v1s, with Rinny on the healer and me tanking the warrior. If the healer dies before me, awesome. If he doesn’t, a Blind/Fear chain when the warrior is on 50% (thanks Devouring Plague, SWP, and Reflective Shield) is usually all it takes for me and Rinny to stage a Shadowstep gib on the warrior.

2. You can safely spec out of Silent Resolve without missing it. I really don’t notice the difference when there is an enhancement shaman purging the everloving %$!& out of you while smacking you with 1k Windfury crits, which is when you really need that dispel protection.

3. 2v2 – play aggressive against healer teams, it really pays off. Smack that dispel button. Fear whenever you find an opening. Contribute with SWP, Mind Blast/SWD combos whenever your DPSer’s target gets low. It is the difference between getting that pesky druid down and seeing him heal up to full again. Focusing just on health bars is the biggest mistake you can make, bar none.

Plus, most teams really don’t expect that PI/Smitespam from 30% onwards.

4. Make sure everything you do has a point to it. Otherwise it’s just a waste of mana. For example: Have you mana burned a target to zero? Well that’s not really useful unless you can make sure they won’t go powerdrink. Have you just feared a target? Better make damn sure it was for a kill, to save someone’s ass, for an interrupt, or for a Mana Burn opening. If you can’t justify what you just did, don’t do it.

5. Prevent rogues from reopening constantly, SWP rank 1 is your friend.

6. If there is a chance you will get Blinded, save your trinket for Blind. Your trinket is your precioussssss.

6a. However, in the rogue/rogue zerg or ferlol/rogue zerg situations, it might be wise to trinket the initial 5 point Kidney so you can gtfo out of Dodge, else they can and will kill you before their stuns wear off, their entire strategy depends on this.

7. Powerdrink like your life depends on it. It usually does. Disc priests are notoriously mana inefficient, especially when you have to heal through MS effects and Mana Burn and Dispel at the same time.

8. Learn how to SWD sheeps. I haven’t. That’s why we lose against mage/rogue.

9. Holy Nova is great for getting rid of Snake Traps.

10. Downrank Holy Nova to rank 3 for Snake Traps. Downrank Psychic Scream to Rank 3 if all you ever do is 2v2 like me.

11. Against warriors, heal early, heal often. You never know when mace stun/Deep Thunder stun/Improved Hamstring/whetever else will proc at the same time, not to forget Pummel.

12. I read all the guides that say “Survive the Bloodlust” against warrior/shaman and feel like facepalming. You don’t need to survive no stinking Bloodlust – you do have a dispel button, right?

…Aggro on Priest, for we are that good, baby.

The warrior was in full S3, probably boosting the priest into weapon range or something. The priest was pretty failgeared, 250-ish resilience, sorta what you’d expect from a new 70.

And fail they did in spectacular fashion – if the warrior had gotten to Andersson he’d probably just own him in seconds, trouble was, he couldn’t. I popped stealth, racked up Cyclone DRs on the warrior, then racked up root DRs, then got bored and racked up Cyclone DRs again, meanwhile, he basically didn’t touch me at all. I was expecting at least an Intercept/Pummel in caster all the time and I was scared because I thought if he got on me, game over, don’t pass Go, don’t collect $200. But he just kept chasing, or trying to chase, Andersson in remarkable single-mindedness. And got a dead priest for his trouble, heh.

I think he was bad. Or arrogant. At any rate, we really enjoyed the 24 rating. Moral of the tale, don’t be bad, thanks, love, Andersson and Starlet.

EDIT: So I just learned that:

Two friends have logged on to my account.

Proceeded to invite themselves in my paladin’s 2v2.

And nuke the rating we built up from the 1300s with blood, sweat, and tears playing pretty much the most frustrating warrior/healer combo I ever ran across.

And they don’t see what’s so wrong with this, because “You weren’t playing your paladin anyway”.

I AM NOT FUCKING AMUSED AT FUCKING ALL. MAKE YOUR OWN TEAMS, KTHXBYE. Seriously wtf, who logs on to someone else’s account to actually STEAL THEIR ARENA TEAM? It’s not like 80g is a lot of money.

I swear, miserable fail doesn’t even begin to cover this one.

And definitely in style, baby.

I thought I’d try Starlet a little for this week’s arenas, seeing that now she’s past that 10k HP/350 resilience marks. Did some skirmishes with Severian’s rogue, and felt fairly useless constantly going up against full S3 characters – then Zilli came online, and we thought hey, let’s try some warrior – druid/rogue – druid games.

So. We made a new team. Was going to call it Starlet’s Stealth Sucks (because it does) but the name was taken, wtf? We ended up calling it Aggro on Priest, which basically…. goes back. Goes way back. I should probably stop here and explain this.

See, when I was leveling Elysiane, I pugged. A lot. Healers were damn popular back then, since they weren’t overpopulated (now that they are so good in PvP, everyone and their fish plays one, /sigh). So what happened was that I ended up in a lot of terrible, terrible PuGs. This caused the need for a macro, basically, one that said “/y AGGRO ON PRIEST!”. Everytime I got aggro in a group, which happened a lot with bad tanks, I would spam that and hope someone would help me.

But then, Elysiane grew up. Geared up. Applied for one of the best guilds on the server, and miracle of miracles, got accepted. And she forgot about this macro completely.

Alas, one fateful day would remind me of that macro.

Back then, I had a tendency to keep all my macros next to each other. That meant that this particular macro was jammed in with a lot of others I used frequently. Namely my shield self macro.

So one day, back when I was new in the guild, my guildies set up an AB premade. I’m sure everyone can see where this is going.

Much laughter ensued on Vent when all 14 of my teammates saw AGGRO ON PRIEST! repeatedly plastered across their screens, while I was trying to defend blacksmith under heavy attack and thinking I was spamming my Shield Self macro.

/facepalm

I earned the guild note “Aggro on priest” that day.

Anyway, back to the subject.

We played Zilli and Starlet at first, didn’t do too badly (think we about went even, which is good when the druid is as gimp geared as I am) but I felt I was very limited by gear and that the setup itself, warrior/druid, overall lacked “oh $%&! I need help, NOW” buttons. I really loved the ease of HoTing up my partner and going off to drink or focusing on CC chains, but it just felt like something was missing…

…and that something clicked when Zilli swapped to Andersson, his rogue.

The difference was vast. I suddenly felt I had a lot more escape options, a lot more panic buttons, and that we were more in control of the match in general. On-demand stuns, being able to get out of hairy situations with Cloak/Evasion/Shadowstep + a well-timed Swiftmend or NS/HT, the fact that two stealthies _can_ get better openers in and can get a better positioning where the other team is weak (when one of the stealthies is me, that is kinda shaky, but oh, well), and the fact that Zilli is just overall much better at being a rogue than a warrior due to sheer experience, thus making up for what I lacked in gear, made the setup click perfectly.

And if all else fails, we have Cheat Death. *shrug*

We shot up 100 rating from warrior/druid immediately, clocking over 1600 at the end of the night (I think our top rating was 1630 at one point), which isn’t bad for a setup we’ve never played. I’m terribly, embarrassingly inexperienced as a druid and some matches it really shows. I frequently forgot Nature’s Grasp, forgot Barkskin, forgot to Faerie Fire rogues, got popped out of stealth with great consistency, got caught in humanoid for 5 CP Kidney Shots, etc, etc.

Zilli’s massive experience and talent as a rogue pretty much saved the night, I’ve lost count of how many seemingly impossible 1v1 and even 1v2 matchups he won after I bit the dust. Hat off, I knew he was the reason we did so well in S2 as rogue/priest. /bow I think that’s one reason I enjoyed the setup so much, watching the display of sheer skill and thinking “There is no way we could have pulled that off as warrior/druid”, because on his rogue, he is THAT good.

Other than the stuff I consistently fail at, I don’t seem to have great trouble with getting away (unless two rogues are sitting on me in bear, then it’s GG unless Zilli hurries to take one down fast) or keeping people alive. Swiftmend is a really great emergency heal, but HoTs are usually more than enough to keep both of us going as long as I can consistently keep them up. I thought of going Dreamstate at one point, since it is rumored to work better with rogues, but my +healing is really gimp for that and I think I’d really miss Swiftmend anyway.

I manage to get lots of drink breaks especially vs warlock teams – we’ve got killing warlock pets down to an art, sapping pet owner, chain Cycloning the healer and bursting down the pet fast. They’re usually in panic mode by then, using up cooldowns, and we can delay the summoning of a second one by a good 30 seconds if we’ve distracted them properly, thus letting me drink up to full (scare them more and sometimes they end up forgetting to sic the pet on someone, free points thanks).

Speaking of warlocks, warlock teams are usually our easiest matchup anyway, no matter whether double DPS or lock/healer. I think we lost maybe two lock/healer matchups out of a good fifty matches played – we like killing the pet and immediately sitting on the healer while I go off, drink, rack up Cyclone DRs on the warlock and roots on the healer, /laugh at SL/SL dps, stack up HoTs and go drink some more… you get the idea. Rogue/druid against a warlock/healer setup of any kind is so forgiving of mistakes that we’ve had matches where both of us were repeatedly at 10% with all cooldowns blown and we still managed to win. Zilli’s able to catch up to and kill druids with great consistency as well, which makes the ever-common lock/druid setup even more of a free point fest. Double DPS I try to make myself scarce immediately and start up a Cyclone/Root rotation on the other DPS while Zilli has his fun with the warlock, it usually is over quickly provided I manage to get away.

Hardest matchups – I’d say mage/rogue is pretty much the anti setup, we’ve won very few of the mage/rogue setups we met so far. The amount of burst on me is silly, and we’ve tried everything. If I start in cat, more often than not the opposing rogue finds me while Zilli’s working on the mage, and being found in cat is… bad. It just really is. If I just start in bear, that’s like screaming KILL ME NAO and gives them the opportunity to open however they like. Cyclones and roots just eat a Counterspell, and with the amount of burst they have available, a 8-second lockout pretty much spells instant death in and of itself, no pun intended.

I guess I just need more gear to have more of a chance of surviving the initial burst. If that happens, we’re looking at a much better chance of winning because I can heal to full and we can reset the match, whereas they now have all their cooldowns blown and are in defensive mode.

I find rogue/rogue another hard matchup, as with mage/rogue, capability to keep me locked down by too long a time ruins it. I pretty much need to sit through two CS/KS durations in bear and when I try to get away, wham 2x Shadowstep.

Zilli says he also doesn’t like anything with a shaman or a hunter in it, simply because with hunters positioning is so important and shamans are very hard to kill. Running shamans OOM is damn near impossible if they are under attack, most shamans have an itchy Purge finger, they wear mail, can ground/shock Cyclones etc. Although with hunters, it could be that most hunters we met tonight were in double DPS setups where it was harder to control them, seeing almost all of them were BM. In single DPS situations it probably is not that challenging (unless it’s hunter/druid, hello thirty minute matches).

I thought at first that warrior/paladin setups would be terrible for us, but we won most warrior/paladin setups we met. There was one particular very well geared team in which the paladin had his shoulders, all match they did nothing but sat on Andersson in Lordaeron (who happened to crank out some sick sick DPS on the warrior). Hot him up, Cyclone Cyclone Cyclone, swap Cyclone to warrior upon bubble, /lol, /bye. There was maybe a single warrior paladin setup who Justiced me and chased me around, and oh well, I’ll take the one loss if the rest of them are as stupid as they were tonight.

Mirrors. Mirrors were fun, we ended up winning almost all our mirrors because let’s face it, my rogue > other rogues. I’d get opened on, hang in there a bit, and either the other druid would die, or we’d die about at the same time and it’d be a 1v1 with our rogues. Nerve wrecking, but like I said, my rogue > other rogues, and he won pretty much all but one or two 1v1s (the losses were ones where he was at a bad disadvantage, low health, no cooldowns etc).

All in all I’m delighted with the setup so far. After playing for ages with the frustration that is warrior/paladin, turtling constantly, having to play extremely defensive, and sometimes just downright feeling inadequate as a healer, rogue/druid is amazingly refreshing. I love my newfound offensive power. I love being able to focus on things other than healing as a whole. I love being “adequate” even if my gear can’t deliver it. Looking forward to more games with the combo, and hopefully a higher rating – I’m going for 2set S1 as soon as possible, with that I should be hitting 400 resilience easy.

Was reading an albeit a little outdated post on the paladin forums about how “the problem of paladins is not being susceptible to spell school lockouts, it is the fact that resto druids easily counter a paladin”.

Resto druids, if permitted to, will lock out any healer class. It is true. In between Pounce, Cyclone x3 + Feral Charge, you are looking at a very, very long CC chain indeed. The trick there is to not permit the CC chain to happen. Leave a resto druid alone without any interruption, and he will keep his team healed to full plus dish out highly disruptive, unremovable crowd control.

But how, exactly, is a paladin supposed to prevent that?

The truth of the matter is, they can’t. The only solution in a 2v2 environment, with paladin+X vs druid+X is to focus the druid. That is, paladin gets JoJ up, and then assists with whatever clutch burst and stuns they can, while depending on their partner to cause the real disruption.

How about the other healing classes?

Shamans bring swift removal of all HoTs from the target – forcing the druid to focus on heals because they will have fallen behind. Then, anything with a cast time is simple to interrupt. They can ground and shock Cyclones. Add to that Bloodlust and you’re looking at something that at least puts a little pressure on a druid. Priests bring the ever-dreaded Mana Burn, plus offensive dispels. Paladins bring absolutely nothing. Nothing that can be a threat to a druid without the help of a partner. JoJ a druid all you want, unless your partner is assisting in killing them, you’re helpless.

My point is that yes, while paladins are particularly susceptible to the amount of CC presented by a supposedly defensive class, it isn’t their biggest problem. The problem here is not enough offensive capability to present enough of a threat and to make the druid concerned with other things. Add to this the overabundance of resto druids in the smaller brackets, insta paladin unviability.

Plus, of course a paladin’s primary problem is spell lockouts – you learn how to pillar hump pretty well when all your spells, literally everything you can do, is of the same spell school. Any class with a spell lockout can be really disruptive to a paladin. There’s a reason why rogue/mage teams are the worst nightmare of a warrior/paladin team. If I’m playing rogue/priest vs rogue/mage, and if I get Counterspelled/Kicked, I can walk up to the mage and fear to deny him the Shatter combo he just set up. (And don’t even get me started about Spellsteal…) If a shaman Earth Shocks my heal I can still mana burn to force him on the defensive.

As a paladin, the second a class uses a lockout, I just get to stand there and look pretty while my warrior dies, or gets so dangerously low that I have to blow my most valuable cooldown to be able to heal uninterrupted, thus leaving me without an escape button for the rest of the game. If there is a priest? Forget it, really. If Zilli hasn’t given the priest anything to be concerned about yet (hello there rage starvation) I’m already screwed.

That’s too bad, because I really, really, really love the class. I really enjoy being a paladin a lot more than being a druid/shaman, and sometimes a lot more than being a priest, too. I just wish it worked.

Soooo we’re rocking some 2v2, Roch and Zilli.

Warlock SP vs us. We have lost to them before, but for some reason this time the priest is just healing, not DPSing, which sort of gave us an advantage early in the match. Not too much damage going around, FoL keeps everyone at full, I have time for cleanses, pillardancing, etc. Zilli’s beating on the warlock, the priest has to heal through MS, I’m dodging fears and relying on Zilli to pummel mana drains as best as he can. He gets off 1 or 2 full ones (f-you draining through pillars, please fix that ^%$!), but meh, okay, I’m used to it, could be worse.

I drag the pet behind a pillar and DF/HS it to see if the healer is paying attention. Nope, not really. Exorcism, Judge, Shock, the pet’s under 30% and I speak out on Vent that I’m killing the pet, and that Zilli needs to prevent Fel Dom summon, I’m getting sort of desperate for drink breaks and BoW constantly being devoured is screwing me over.

20 seconds later, the pet dies.
22 seconds later, I have HoJed the warlock who is around 35%, because I really don’t trust Zilli’s pummels.
28 seconds later, I have Arcane Torrented the warlock coming right out of HoJ.
30 seconds later, Arcane Torrent fades from the warlock.
31 seconds later, “Warlock gains Fel Domination.”
32 seconds later, “Warlock gains Soul Link.”

“…sorry, I couldn’t pummel.”

And I’m just about ready to throw my keyboard out of the window.

1 minute later, the match is over because I’m completely drained of any semblance of mana with zero drink breaks.

Sometimes I really have no comment.