Alright this is my first post outside of the UI and AddOns section on these boards, hopefully people will find it usefull information.

First off, I would like to clarify that I wrote this thread with a specific spell in mind and not just every interrupt effects. This spell is the mage's Counterspell and it's effect in PvP, especially in 5v5 arenas. In this thread I thought it would be interresting to talk about ways to avoid it, especially for healer type classes. Feedback from mage players would also be greatly appreciated.

From my experience;

It is well known that a well executed counterspell is fatal in most scenarios where the paladin is the main healer. After a week of rated 5v5 arena play, I have decided to go ''at war'' with counterspell and try to figure out the most effective ways to avoid it at least 85% of the time. If you didn't know yet, paladins only have one school of magic wich is holy, therefore if a paladin gets counterspelled, the only spell available is auto attack for a whole 10 seconds, same thing goes to shamans (exept they can cast frost and flame shock I believe). Here is a quick list of options that I know of that works relatively well:

1) Faking a heal; I think every healer experienced in pvp knows this one, the idea is to start casting a heal to get the mage's attention and quickly cancel the cast to make the counterspell hit you while you are NOT in the middle of a cast.

The problem with this method is that a skilled mage will never miss a counterspell even under high pressure, he will get it off simply because CS does not trigger the global cooldown. That's not even mentionning all the macros, focus frames and other UI modifications that can make it very easy for a mage to counterspell properly.

2) Talents and items; Those can also provide some restrainned protection agaisn't counterspell, talents such as improved Concentration aura and items such as http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29347

3) Interface AddOns; Addons such as tinytip can let you see by simply mousing over a mage, what his current target is. By knowing what the mage is targetting you obviously have a better chance of faking the mage out.

The above was mostly from my experience and I hope I can start a good discussion on this topic, something that would be really amazing is some information from mage players who have experience in pvp. What your biggest problem when it comes to counterspelling? What annoys you the most when you're trying to land a clutch CS?

Your feedback is appreciated.

There are a few other ways as a shaman I have found to avoid it. One is laying a grounding totem and immediately casting a heal, this often works in our 3v3. A huge thing as a shaman, I find if im fighting an ice block mage and i charge up a chain lightning, they often times will ice block, so I immediately stop the cast at that point and heal myself, since they are rarely able to right click the buff and cs in ~1.3 seconds of time. As a priest, your best bet would be to use some shadow spell and have that be csed. Other than those, I always fall back on the plain old cast and move to dodge it. Can we get any comments from mages as strategies to actually hit the cs?

Also the infamous Hearthstone cast by Shamans.

Regarding the tinytip add on reference, how would that work if the mage simply makes a spell stop casting (or whatever the equivalent is) / focus macro. With something like that, he never even has to target the paladin to CS him.

In my limited 5v5 experience, there's so many decked out teams w/ such mass DPS that there's basically no stopping the assist train on something less than plate without something like ice block or BoP - which is part of the reason I've withdrawn my warlock from our 5v5 team (no paladin). Under those extreme DPS circumstances, if healers have time to run around and head fake heals, it's b/c the opposition sucks. Every heal that's cast, in my experience, is b/c it's been needed by the intended recipient at *that* moment.

Interesting thread though, I'd also really love to hear from the mages.

Counterspell is a 30 yard range 180 degree arc skill.

The best way to avoid getting CS'd is to be outside of 33 yards from the mage.

Faking might work, but I believe more often then not it will get your target killed!

Technically, if the following stacked, an eng shaman/priest with: Focused Mind/unbreakable will, Imp Conc Aura,
http://thottbot.com/?i=54329
http://thottbot.com/?i=60329 << Might be tricky to get
http://thottbot.com/?i=36110 <2x? (Might be a little bit of a hit on sta, losing about 600 hp)


Would have a 65% chance to resist silence!
A paladin would have 50% chance!

To go even further, a priest in ironweave 4x
http://thottbot.com/?set=520
Would have 75% chance to resist silence effects. Of course that would be nerfing yourself extremely.
As a side note,
A shaman could also put on a http://thottbot.com/?i=54332 with 3x 12 sta gems.

Our shaman finds it easy to watch the mage's target and facing and drop a grounding totem just in time.

Something to keep in mind is that they can have a macro which counterspells the target the mouse is hovering over.
So Tinytip won't help there as they never target the person being counterspelled.
That is a basic version, if your mouse is not over someone it will Counterspell your target, I am sure you can make fancier ones using the harm/help modifiers too.

If there is a rogue or warrior or priest close to fear on a mage chances are he will worry about survival rather then CS unless it is an exceptional situation. Hunters can stop CS with SS/SS, but our health going down does not scare us as much as fear/stunlock.

This won't work against any decent mage using Iceblock and CS macros. "Right click the buff" you say? Who clicks?

Also keep in mind that any serious PVP mage can afford 17 points into arcane making their CSes silence, so "faking out" really isn't a great option (though I think it will avoid the much longer shutdown of the holy/nature tree).

Good thread through, having just started getting into Arena play (2v2 matches last night) I was thinking earlier about how crucial it is for me to use my CS correctly. In the 4 matches we lost, at least two of them were due to incorrect CS usage (against priest/warlock groups). The biggest advice I can give is just to just force the mage to use it, much like the strategy regarding a pally and divine sheild. You know it's coming, and you can plan for it.

Good point, but what is more important to counterspell than a paladin or shaman heal, wich spell can force a mage to use his counterspell?

Depends on what class you are teaming up with I suppose. Getting counterspelled on ANY cast as shaman/paladin kills your entire healing tree aswell.

If the hearthstone trick still works, you defenitly would have won that game without it aswell

I can imagine counterspelling something like a fear or fireball very early in the game, but not when it is the only decent interrupt your team has.

As a side note, I'm alot less afraid from counterspell then I expected. We play 3v3 with a ele/rest shaman, holy pala and aff lock and there have games where I took a full CS twice (20 seconds feeling useless..) and still didnt get in trouble.

A good tip is to start healing early, very early. Rather be counterspelled when your teammate is on 90% hp then when he is on 50%.

Best advice is to use fast spells. The window of opportunity for countering a 1.5 sec cast is considerably less than the casting time, because of lag both ways. Though after a lot of practicing last night, enemy spellcasting started to seem a lot slower than usual. Maybe I just had slow on the target =p.

Neat as counterspell is I've found earthshock messes up a mage much worse than counterspell messes up a shaman. My team usually has a holy paladin, enhance shaman, lock, holy priest and MS warrior on it. There is enough healing going around that even 2 CS hitting at once won't shut down our healing and 4 of the 5 classes have spell interrupts of thier own.

Usually as an enhance shaman my job is to chase down and kill thier mage/lock/priest whatever clothie is the most dangerous. It seems most of them will run/blink away fearing a massive windfury barrage on a single lucky swing but they never ever make it outside earthshock range.

If you're worried about CS, bum rush the mage. In all cases a mage will/should go for survivability over a nice fat CS on your paladin. If they are blinking away from you and blowing iceblocks they aren't messing with your healers or doing any damage.

As a sort of unrelated side note. I've found CC is nearly completely ineffective in 5v5 with the exception of mass fears and stuns. Oh, and cyclone but thats fairly limited and takes most of the attention of the druid doing it as well.

With a 5 man team you have so many people that can remove CC its impossible to really CC all the people that can remove CC. In a 2v2 sure, odds are only one of them can remove CC so you CC that guy. 3v3 depending on the team might only have one or two. But on a 5v5 team I just don't see any make up that isn't going to be able to pretty much remove any CC or combination of CC thrown at them, barring a 5 mage team or something like that.

Having a mage just go through the whole team polying and csing the pally is surprisingly effective. When you have only 2 healers (we had a pally and a priest) and they get polied one after the other that's a lot of time spent cleansing and if the mage can get a cs off on the pally the healing output your team can do goes down to almost zero between your healers having to trinket/cleanse and getting interrupted by the sheep and cs.

As a PVP healer:

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23838
+
http://thottbot.com/?i=60329
+
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=20256

Hello 45% resistance to spell interrupts.

Those two are pretty much it, honestly, at least in arenas specifically. I know I personally save earthshock for paladin / shaman heals almost exlusively when fighting them, and its only 6 seconds on CD. Perhaps if your team is training someone and the mage sees a shaman begin casting CL or something, he may realize locking it equals locking all heals for 10 seconds too...

Counterspell does not require facing.

Haha I'd never thought of that... too bad hearths can't be used in Arenas.

I fear counterspell above everything else in our 5on5 matches these days, but that is mainly because I am the only real healer and cleanser in our team. We are most of the time a very offensive team and with me counterspelled things can get really bad pretty quick. You can't help but feel completely useless when you see three opponents going all out on one of your teammates and you desperately try to heal while practically waiting to get a counterspell right in your face, and when it happens your teammate dies within seconds. As a solo paladin healer I feel that your options are very limited, the fake heal that Lust suggests is actually the only thing you can do and is something I try to do as often as I can. But it's always easier said than done regarding all the things that can interrupt/prevent you from healing other than counterspell. I haven't really tried the early healing as Vorda suggests but I still fear that those 10 seconds can be enough to kill a teammate or even myself.

Have any of you paladins spammed the Divine Shield button after the counterspell-lockdown just to make sure you get to heal people in fear of getting interrupted again? I think I have done this quite many times, but in most cases I was the target and not my friends in which it's a pretty obvious choice, but I am referring to times when you're at full hp. Then again I actually believe I have used Divine Shield at some point when at full hp just to make damn sure nothing prevents my healing in some crucial moments.

I am currently using the Talisman of the Breaker and imp Concentration Aura just to increase my chances. And I also would like to mention that I've never had so much fun and challenge as a healer in PvP as I've had in the 5on5 arenas, it's the best thing that's happened to WoW pvp.

Regarding the Hearthstone trick I don't think it is as effective as it once was since you nowadays (if you're observant) can check what type of spell your opponent is casting by reading the Castingbar text.

I can't speak for other paladins, but the ones I fight bubble on me to heal all the time. I'm usually the one in charge of dealing with the pally, and most of the time it goes like:

I sheep
He trinkets
I sheep
He bubbles and heals his teammate

Sometimes the pally for whatever reason doesn't want to blow his bubble, but that's a mistake and we finish his teammate off. Even when he does break the sheep with it, we just hold off till it fades, then proceed to assist train his teammate. At this point I finally use counterspell when he tries to heal.

So what can I reasonably expect from resists on paladins? The other day one resisted my sheep, then my counterspell, back to back. I have around +15 to hit with those spells, so either he was wearing some crazy resist gear or I got really, really unlucky. Needless to say that was incredibly frustrating.

Other than the handful of "tricks" to get a Mage to waste a CS, the only real solution seems to be team coordination.

A well timed Silencing Shot, Fear, Grounding Totem, et. al. can help negate the CS at least temporarily and that may be long enough for me to save a teammate.

With this experience statement I assume you aren't playing versus teams/players around 1900 rating. And I also assume you mean arena 5on5 matches and nothing else. Blessing of Sacrifice is a blessing that prevents CC abilities like gouge, blind, sap and most importantly polymorph. Paladins who aren't using this spell frequently aren't necessarily bad players, merely unaware of it's effectivness in PvP. I always use it on one of our teammates and keep it refreshed during the entire fight and if I notice a polymorph happy mage I might even cast it on a second teammate as well, just to be perfectly sure I won't be polymorphed. (This is ofcourse my view as a solo healing paladin in a 5on5 team where I won't get any sorts of dispels/cleanses or whatever, I am on my own so to speak)

Using Divine Shield prematurely is often a sign of low experience in PvP. Divine Shield should be your last resort and not your first as I use to say. But using the shield fast might also be good in some situations. And ofcourse there are always certain exceptions, as I stated in my post above there are rare ocassions where you actually feel the need to Shield when you aren't really threatened but are vulnerable to certain annoying spells. Using your Divine Shield in the best possible moment in each situtation is something you only learn by playing a lot of pvp.