PapaShlapa

It didn't look like there was any general 5v5 discussion thread, so I thought I'd take the liberty of making one. I know most of the people on this board are heavy PvE theory types, but I'm sure there's plenty of stoked PvPers. I'll get the ball rolling I suppose

Cyclone: I hear a lot of complaints about this ability, and even have made some myself, but I actually think it's quite balanced. If it were in the hands of any class other than druids, it'd be too powerful. The problem, is that druids don't really bring much to a 5v5, so they really needed something to make them a viable addition. Without cyclone, I don't think you would see any druids at all in the top 5v5 teams.

Heroism: This ability seems to fall under the same category as cyclone. If it were in the hands of a mage, priest, paladin etc, it would be far too strong. Shamans, again, needed something very strong to bring to the table for 5v5. Helps balance out their overall weakness.

On another note, it's kind of amusing to me, to see how PvP has totally switched its focus. In the beginning, it was always "CC dps, kill healers". Now, it's the total opposite. I find myself mostly ignoring priests, where before they were always #1 target. Now it's all about assisting on rogues, shamans, mages, warlocks(non-SL) mostly. Mages, especially, make fantastic targets for melee simply because of how neutered they become when attacked. I run with an SL lock, and always make him keep his Felguard on an enemy mage, because of how much disruption it causes him.

I find myself in a bit of a stick though. The felguard's main purpose is to keep pressure on their mage. Myself and our warrior will assist on whatever their softest target happens to be. This is almost universally not going to be the priest. This leaves him open to mana burn freely. The only solution to it, really, seems to be to keep enough dps pressure on his team, that he can't afford to stop healing.

I've gotta run to work, hopefully this thread takes off a little bit. Please keep it to constructive discussion of 5v5 strategy and tactics as much as possible, as that is my intent with this thread. Hope I got the ball rolling enough!

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• frmorrison

No one has made a specific 5v5 thread before on this forum.
I agree, Cylone and Heroism make a weaker class worth bringing into a 5v5 team.


The change to dps the DPS first comes from Pallys and that people have formed counter strats if you all try to blow up the Priest or Shaman, and Druids are really good at running away.

Felguard is great on Mages, since Frost doesn't have an interruption talent (Tier 4 2/5 does though), and many are Frost specced in 5v5.

I have wondered how I can maximize my Felguard usage. I have thought about using a Felhunter at first to silence a caster then 0.5 sec summon the Felguard to stun afterwards, but not sure if that is a great Strat. I am open to ideas as well.

Know Thy group function; Thy DPS shall avoid aggro, Thy tank shall not attempt to DPS (Fixed in WotLK!), and Thy Healer shall not go AFK without notifying Thy group.

 

subscience

Much like how melee and damage significantly disrupt a Mage's ability to do damage, a Curse of Tongues or Mind Numbing Poison can really put a dent into that Mana Burn happy Priest. Of course, this requires you to have contained or killed their curse or poison-removing classes or Shiv a MNP and stack it up high.

This'll make their 2.0s Improved Mana Burn a 3.2s cast and an untalented 3.0s Mana Burn into an agonizing 4.8s cast.

--

I'm really looking forward to seeing some replies and discussion on Arena PvP.

 

darkeblue

Cyclone is bugged at the moment. When chained, it removes all the buffs (fort, fear ward, shadow protection and Inner Fire) of the first person cycloned. However, what's more controversial, is that it also removes passive abilities such as Blessed Recovery, Martyrdom and Blessed Resilience. Did a few tests with a druid friend and this appears to be the case thus far. I also tested briefly with a rogue, and Combat Potency wouldn't proc. I am sure warriors can test this further and see if it removes Enrage, Flurry, Deep Wounds, and any weapon specialization.

A quick fix would be to give cyclone a short cool down. Here is the current post up in the Bug Forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...89381028&sid=1

 

Emeraude

Long as this doesn't turn into a QQ fest about Mortal Strike >_>

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Keline

Yes I also agree, we can't tell if Cyclone is ok because the bugs make it absolutly overpowered at this point.

And I don't agree on druids being weak, they can heal and shift into something far more durable than any other healing class (when you discount Divine shield obviously)

 

• frmorrison

How does that work? Just cast Cyclone on the same target over and over and it removes a buff each time? After 5 or 6 casts, the target will become immune. How long do you lose passive abilities?

Know Thy group function; Thy DPS shall avoid aggro, Thy tank shall not attempt to DPS (Fixed in WotLK!), and Thy Healer shall not go AFK without notifying Thy group.

 

subscience

The problem, however, is once you get a healing Druid on the defensive in Bear Form, you've effectively shut him down if you can keep him in that form. Paladins (DS, BoP), Shamans (Earth Shield), and even Priests with Blessed Resilience offer significant forms of passive damage reduction that allow them to continue to heal while sustaining blows.

Although, Druids are quite the slippery bastards. Between Travel Form and the LoSable pillars, a smart Druid who utilizes the terrain can be extremely effective in my opinion.

 

darkeblue

You need to cyclone 2 different people.

The abilities come back after your zone or reload UI.

 

◊ thejdawg

How is a druid more durable than a Paladin? Unless we're wearing full mitigation gear, we'll have roughly the same AC or less when shifted, but at the cost of our ability to heal.

 

Zerix

Personally I have discontinued playing my rogue for 5v5 and pvp in general as I feel they are probably the weakest link in high level arena play. There are some team make-up's where I do feel somewhat useful but the majority of the time I feel next to useless. Before the Mortal Strike/Wound Poison nerf it gave an incentive to run with a rogue so you could have a target with -75% healing but it ended up being overpowered so they removed the stacking. Anything against a hunter usually means I will be kited through frost traps over and over again if they know remotely what they are doing. Theres nothing worse than being entrapped with vanish down and a hunter running away with Blessing of Freedom on, it really ticks me off. Even cloak of shadows doesn't remove the entrapment debuff.

Personally I had *pretty* good pvp gear for a rogue, ~9800hp, 175 resil, 21 crit, 1400 something ap, spiteblade & gladiator offhand. I spec'd 23/38 or a variant which is considered to be "Quick Recovery Combat" so I get quick recovery (20% more healing on me) and *most* of the combat goodies for sustained damage. With this spec the damage output was completely worthless, im starting off down 250 AP, 60-70 hit rating less already in my pvp gear compared to my pve gear not to mention i've spec'd out of combat potency and surprise attacks to get quick recovery and coldblood, but often times against good teams I end up getting demo shouted putting me back to my base AP anyway. On top of all this my opponents have gained more health and resilience making it even harder to try to damage someone down.

Also rogue survivability is also something to be looked at. With the aforementioned spec I'll have ~19% dodge and 10% parry along with the 24-2500 armor i've had since 2005. These avoidance levels are really absurd to be quite honest and the dodge needs to be upped drastically to give any sort of improvement in terms of survivability. Armor most of all would be the best, but buffing armor value will never happen.

Sorry if this went towards the rogue emo thread but it's my current thoughts about rogues in the 5v5 bracket. When i stopped 5v5'ing my team was ~2050 rating and are somewhere around 2250 now and 3rd currently in the Stormstrike battle group. Overall a hunter is a much better use of an Arena slot.

The one thing I do think rogues excel at is in 2v2 with a Paladin or a Priest.

 

alienangel

Hmm, we're supposed to kill the DPS first :P? My group still usually goes for the paladin first to make him bubble, and then either assists on a DPS or splits between DPS and the second healer/mage till the pally comes out. Our success is limited though, I wouldn't be surprised if we're screwing up horribly - at 1750-1800 rankings we have major problems against 2.5 healer teams

I spend most of my games trying to find the ideal times to throw out a silencing/scatter, or trying to lead warriors out of LoS to freeze them. Somewhat emo about how useful I am to the team - some games I'll do amazing damage and good CC/interruption, others I'll explode in an orgy of incoming 4 digit numbers in the first 3 seconds of combat and my team will be down a man immediately. Grouping with a warrior, paladin, priest, warlock and stealthed rogue, I seem to be the target of choice most of the time. Vastly different experience from BGs where I can get by fine in pure DPS gear.

 

◊ Vain

The Felhunter is a good pvp pet but suffers from the fact that it cannot get +spell hit or +spell penetration. No +spell hit means it can't get around Improved Concentration Aura + the Talisman of the Breaker that everyone wears these days (it's overpowered imo) -- that is 30% silence and spell interrupt resist right there, before you add further +15% talents, such as the Shaman's, or Priest's unbreakable will. Then you have the Priest's +70 Shadow Protection also, which is ~15% resist.

The Felguard (my favorite pet) meanwhile suffers from the fact that it will die fast to 2 dots plus an assist train on its warlock. Most people don't dot the felguard though for some reason, and instead banish it, which I feel is a mistake.

 

• Sirloin

An additional rare cyclone bug I have observed is that it can occasionally knock a warrior into a "stance-less" state where he must switch into a stance. The warrior on my team described this as similar to after a Nefarian warrior call.

This is particularly useful when it occurs against a number of 5v5 teams in my battlegroup who like to use pre-match rage-gen garbage to start with 100 rage.

My Steam Profile (Aether) Cherish the difference between 58° and 59°.

 

• alcaras

Hmm, how?

 

Tower

Entrapment cheese is definitely something that needs to be looked at, why is it that entrapment seems forever broken one way or the other? As a rogue, at first I loved Blade's Edge arena. Until every team with a hunter rushes to the middle, entraps the center and uses the pillars as advantage. Not being able to sprint, clos or vanish over is pretty imbalanced. And staying back and not engaging is going to cost you some offensive ground, just don't agree with that being fair gameplay.

My 5v5 is mostly physical damage based, with MS and Wound not stacking anymore and the nature of healing in most teams I've found that using Slice N Dice is my best first initial use of combo points, unless there's no Paladin on the offense (we never push for the Paladin bubble, we push for the BoP first if needed, but that's the nature of our team) Keeping several members of their team crippled and wounded is usually what I do if we aren't pushing for a cloth kill in the initial zerg.

I run a mutilate build with as much snare resist as possible (fleet footed, surefooted, meta gem) in order to compliment a dagger build (just never liked always being in the global cooldown with SS builds), it's actually kinda funny going against frost mages due to the nature of frost/snare spells. I'd really like to see both Fleet Footed and Quick Recovery lowered or even moved to lower tier trees, these are much needed talents for end game PvP but they are so deep into the "Dagger" tree, which most will argue is harder to PvP with due to its need of non-facing, non-latency melee range.

I wish the druids known for PvP on our server would get their act together and learn how the class was meant to be played. They do amazingly well in the hybrid role with root, cyclone, shifting to bear, heal, poison clear, back to bear, but ours just want to go full resto and try to shift into bear when targeted or they're full feral and try to dps and attempt to land a heal with their 3k mana pool. I've seen a few druids from PvP servers really shine on the battlefied, elusive and useful in nearly every way.

 

alienangel

It's some sort of obscure bug, there's a thread/screenshot about it at http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...88429183&sid=1

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/2171/lawlrageur1.jpg

My level 43 warrior would love to know too

edit: reading the more recent posts on the thread, it sounds like it's not possible at level 43 >=(

 

• Tehax

Could that not be Gri'lek's Charm of Might (warrior ZG trinket, 30 rage I think) along with Bloodrage?

 

• topojijo

He mentions Bloodrage and Anger Management later on in the thread.

 

alienangel

Btw, have people noticed the "disconnect on zoning" bug being fixed nowadays? I haven't seen it happen in weeks, but I didn't notice any comments about a fix either.

Soulwells still seem to cost a soul shard though.

 

Skiace

sounds like popping bloodrage while having anger management, and then finding some way to remain in combat longer than the 10 seconds granted by bloodrage

 

• Tehax

Never mind this, I am dumb. Bloodrage to get in combat, spam Battle Shout while in combat from blood rage, costs no rage because of prep buff and keeps you in combat since you are buffing someone in combat.

 

Footspeedy

edit - above poster beat me to it.

Here are a couple thoughts about playing 5s at the 2050~~ bracket and listening to our 2500 team.

1. Elemental Shaman are amazing underrated, there burst is insane along with good earthshocks(especially good with CoTongues) and windfury for ur ms warrior, as well as Heroism/lust, they are quite possible the most valuable "nonwarrior dps" slot. I have yet to be impressed by a earthshield shaman, they offer the utility but having to switch between playing defensivly and offensivly via shocks and purge make a hard class even harder to pilot.

2. Warlocks are underrated because they are hard to play effectively, CoT alone can wreak havoc on every team, even if they have decursers both mages and druids are constantly getting pressed first making it very, very hard to keep it off. If you don't pressure a good warlock you will probably lose, fear is amazing.

3. Druids - Druids started very viable at the beginning of the season, before people really knew how to counter them, now there not very hard to beat imo. Have your warriors make a focus frame with a portrait(to show forms) for the druid and just keep swapping back to him via 15s intercept, if you manage to catch him in cat or caster (which you should via stun) you can deal serious damage to him, and if you proc mace stun/deep thunder he will flat out die.

4. Warriors - Warriors are overpowered, MS needs a nerf. However the nerf to MS doesn't need to be that big, it just needs to make it something like 25% base with the Improved MS talent adding 5% +cooldown per point to it. This would take away the redicioulous(sp?) 15s intercept which is the absolute bane of rogues.

5. Priests - Priests are very, very, very strong and are about were they should be for 5's. Good defense, good offense (mana burn). Bloodlust+manaburn is amazingly stupid if left open.

6. Paladins - Freedom needs a duration nerf, otherwise i think they are still a little overpowred being the only class with a targetable immunity in such a melee heavy metagame.

7. Hunters - Hunters get raped way to hard by blessing of freedom, there mail doesn't do as much for them as it did @ 60, hunters really need a peeler (mage) on the team to be effective, otherwise they just get overrun, as they have no outs (stuns>deterence) once people are on them.

8. Rogues - Rogues die to fast to melee heavy groups with alot of stuns, period. They only have so many outs before they become the squishiest target in the game, and even there outs can't be used while stuned (see 15s intercept/deep thunder/mace proc, this is our bgs current metagame).

9. Mages - very strong yet very hard to play effectively, have to balance peeling with nukes and absolutey have to use a focus cs macro because it is so stupidly overpowered. My only complaint about mage is that focus cs macro is way to good and makes a game changing (although highly resisted ability... stupid neck+aura) easy to land.