5v5 Discussion Thread
 

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!

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.

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.

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

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

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

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)

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?

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.

You need to cyclone 2 different people.

The abilities come back after your zone or reload UI.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hmm, how?