2v2 Arena Thread - Page 15

• Calantus · 08/11/07, 7:42 PM

Originally Posted by Tower

30s of AR does not equate to burst dps, especially with how weak your SS crits are hitting for. Now, how bout AR with Aggresssion, Lethality, etc. And the biggest boon to nasty lockdowns, Combat Potency. Your build also does not have Hemo.

I linked that to point out that AR+Prep != Hemo (necessarily). It's trading deep combat and assas for prep and a few other things in sub. Really the advantage isn't so much more burst damage but that you can sustain it long enough that a single bubble or NS+heal doesn't screw you over and if your target gets away you have both a better chance of catching up and could still have AR up. I'm also not advocating the build, just pointing out that it's not necessarily what you were saying it was.

Zure · 08/11/07, 8:34 PM

Originally Posted by Tinkerfizzle

My 2v2 team's been having quite a bit of trouble with a certain 2 dps combo..

We're Combat Rogue/Resto Druid, and we generally have few problems in terms of facing other matchups, but we've been against a Combat Mace Rogue/Drain Tank Warlock duo -- I might be missing something, but it really seems to me like their level of control and damage is simply unparalleled; every time we face them we hardly make a dent in them before I get completely owned.

We've been focusing on the Rogue first when we can, and putting blind/cyclone on the lock. I usually use evasion directly after our initial openers, but I've been conserving Cloak of Shadows for mid-to-late fight(which is usually 15-25 seconds in). I can generally stay up fine during this period, but the problem lies in the time after evasion and cloak are down: I'll almost always be dead during the rogue's second or third full kidney shot. Saving trinket for one of those late KSes rarely does any good, since it usually puts us so far behind on damage against the rogue.

The lock keeps my druid perma-feared, any trinketed fears are supplemented with his partner blinding the druid shortly afterwards.

I've had plenty of matches to try pretty much everything in terms of gear: Full PvE to try to get more damage on the Rogue between his stunlocks(I simply died faster during the first/second kidney shot), full SR set(My damage output was almost nonexistent), and all my PvP pieces(not quite up to snuff with most -- 10.2k hp, 250 resil/1500 ap/25 crit).

Could my problem simply be a lack of additional health and resilience to "tank" the rogue, as it were? Or is there another strategy I hadn't thought of?

The problem is your healer being permanently controlled. With their rogue crippled, he shouldn't be able to blind you. The warlock is more mobile, but the range on fear is quite small (20-24 yards), which means your druid can either outrange it or feral charge it.

Adeiko · 08/13/07, 8:36 PM

Well, all of you talk about mana warr vs warrs+healr, i'm a resto druid. i've 2300 rating in 2vs2(dr00d+rogue) and 2250 in 3vs3(dr00d+rogue combat maces + Warlock 27/34 SL). And the probles is always the same.

Warrior focuses the Rogue = dead.

i'm full s2 arena gear, with all honor items + some PvE items. 1500 heal, 11,5k health 320 resilence. my rogue is also with 11,5k heal and 350-400 resilence. And i don't know how to heal that. With MS warr (stormherald OFC) partys that go with pala+sham resto + warr or pala + warr or druid + warr. There is now way i can heal that, and it's not only that, some warrs intercept you MS you and autoattacks and then go for the rogue, if you don't heal yourself next intercept in 15 seconds will be your dead, if you heal yourself your rogue dies. Are you serious when you say that you can heal your rogue when a full s2 geared with stormherald warr hits your rogue?

Also have some problems 2vs2 when i go vs pala + warr because of the justice + warr focus on you. Random stum of spec or mace = you die, you can't run you can't heal yourself because of pummel, only hots, and with 50% less heal and a warr kicking your ass is nearly as impossible. Any secret i haven't seen?

Ragnor · 08/13/07, 10:16 PM

Do the warriors tend to focus you or the rogue?

Are you healing from significant range when the warrior is on the rogue? HoJ is only short range, same with Pummel. With 1500 +heal you should be able to heal through the damage for several minutes.

A paladin can't remove your hots like a shaman or priest so I don't see how you can't last a long time when the warrior is solely on the rogue.

However if the fight is lasting several minutes and you are going oom first, is the pally wearing pve/regen gear instead of S2 pvp gear because the pally s2 gear has no mana/5 and the pally can and will go oom quite fast if your rogue is doing enough damage. If you see the pally switch to pve gear it might be viable to focus on him.

Have you tried to cyclone the warrior when the warrior himself is 40% hp, cyclone will interrupt the pally's heals, if you communicate with your rogue he can save his combat points, you cyclone at 40% and try to rush the warrior down when he comes out, while cycloning the paladin.

It's a tough match no doubt, given a geared warrior has so much more armor and probably more burst damage potential than a rogue

Republica · 08/13/07, 11:20 PM

Because I haven't seen a lot on this, my 2v2 partner and I are trying out a paladin/hunter 2v2 combo to see which spec works best. For lower rated teams, ret seems great, because we can FF one target. However, he's currently respeccing healbot so we can see what kind of difference that makes for longer fights...

roosevelt · 08/14/07, 2:43 PM

I've relatively recently started playing my 28/33 priest alt The Armory in a 2v2 with either a MS warrior or combat swords rogue as partner. We've managed to steadily progress as my gear has gotten better throughout the season, however we had some problems this week with Resto Druid/ Lock combo. We've tried dpsing through the lock with me dispelling the lock, and we've tried focusing on the druid; we've even tried mana burning the lock (this did not go well.) It seems by the time we're making a dent in the lock, I'm out of mana from dispelling and mana drains, and the druid is free to run off and drink whenever he likes.

Have any teams with running priest/melee developed a strategy for this kind of team, or other configurations with a resto druid? I expect resto/warrior to beat us, but I feel like this is/should be winnable. Thoughts?

Leto · 08/14/07, 3:00 PM

Have you tried mana burning the druid? When I've faced this combo as priest/rogue, I've just dispelled the lock often while mana burning the druid and the rogue locked down the lock. It shouldn't take long at all to drain a druid, and if he's running from you to avoid being burned, he's not healing.

Granted our team is only in the 1800s, but thats due mainly to warriors tearing through my 200~ resil priest.

roosevelt · 08/14/07, 3:28 PM

Originally Posted by Leto

Have you tried mana burning the druid? When I've faced this combo as priest/rogue, I've just dispelled the lock often while mana burning the druid and the rogue locked down the lock. It shouldn't take long at all to drain a druid, and if he's running from you to avoid being burned, he's not healing.

Granted our team is only in the 1800s, but thats due mainly to warriors tearing through my 200~ resil priest.

Yes, I've tried that. The druids I faced were either shifting to avoid the burn, or able to run out of combat and drink again, negating the mana burn and usually at the same time opening me up to drains. Usually both, in fact.

Azoth · 08/14/07, 7:30 PM

Originally Posted by roosevelt

Yes, I've tried that. The druids I faced were either shifting to avoid the burn

A druid that shifts to "avoid" the burn is burning around 600 mana to avoid your 1.2k burn. Keep doing it when you can, everytime they shift it's a pretty massive amount of mana (since you can mana burn travel form).

Triza · 08/15/07, 7:37 AM

For all the fellow warlocks out there...

I play with a shadowpriest in 2v2 (usually around 2k rating, dropped a lot of 20 point games this week to rogues) and is it actually possible to beat the Rogue with a Druid or Holy Priest combo?

I really can't see any way around it, we try focus the rogue and my spriest partner (who has 400 resilience and 11.5k health) dies pretty much just after his first Clos. If we focus the healer they just run around LoS'ing while the rogue burns down my spriest. Mace rogues makes it even more fun. I don't think we've ever won a game against this combo (apart from maybe a game for 2 points or so) and was just wondering if anyone has an actual strategy that will work? I know it's pretty much the rock to our scissors, but has anyone had any success?

Thanks.

• Phlug · 08/15/07, 12:43 PM

Originally Posted by Spades

I really strongly recommend not touching the warrior when fighting this matchup. Sap him, fear him, anything you can do to slow him down, but focus fire that paladin. Make him shield early, then obliterate him when it wears off. Rogue can vanish when he bubbles to get away from the warrior if he needs to. Once the paladin goes down, the warrior is easy meat.

warriors are tough to sap... if they happen to forget to go to zerk stance when they notice the team has a stealther (possible rogue) the pally is likely going to dispell it straightaway...

warriors are next to impossible to fear... DW+trinket+zerk rage... recklessness to, but you can't use that in arena's

as far as a rogue trying to obliterate a pally ever? not ganna happen...

if its rogue/holy priest VS warrior/paladin... you're best bet will be to try to sap paladin (means luring him off his consecrate) and or blind one and stunlock the other

it will always be a VERY hard fight even if you outgear them...

as a deepthunder warrior/pally 2v2'r myself i can say the only thing that remotely scares me is warlock/druid and lock/spriest... druid only being annoying if they are amazingly geared and skilled... soulink is the hardest thing to overcome ever...

other warrior/paladin teams also tricky... but i usually chuck on a shield and use dragonmaw... this reduces dmg delt... but also mitigates ALOT of the other warrior... thus making his pally OOM faster in which case i switch back to my bitch (deep thunder) and get an easy 15 points

• Deris · 08/15/07, 2:59 PM

Pally/War can beat Lock/Druid - just remember to always dispel all dots, and kill the pet. Kill the pet twice if you have to. Between the Paladin and Warrior you can both put some impressive hurt on a Demon. Then just kill the lock.

Unless you can get 300+ SR, then just burn down the druid.

Aphyrax · 08/15/07, 3:33 PM

Originally Posted by Deris

Pally/War can beat Lock/Druid - just remember to always dispel all dots, and kill the pet. Kill the pet twice if you have to. Between the Paladin and Warrior you can both put some impressive hurt on a Demon. Then just kill the lock.

Unless you can get 300+ SR, then just burn down the druid.

Pally/warrior cannot realistically beat lock/druid. Killing a demo locks pet is quite hard, especially when you spend 30% of your time cycloned. How long does it take for the pally to be completely mana drained? Longer than it takes for the warrior to kill the pet twice, I assure you that. Alternatively, if you go for the pet the warlock can just burn down the warrior. Between CoT, fear and cyclone the pally cannot keep up the warrior, and since you are busy killing a pet, both players are free to do whatever nasty things to the pally. If the pally bubbles to heal the druid cyclones the warrior, so the pally will get one heal off in his bubble.

I played druid/lock for a while, and never lost to warrior/pally. Unless you massively outgear or outskill the other team, that matchup is about as uneven as it gets.

roosevelt · 08/17/07, 4:53 AM

We ran into a decent druid/lock team again tonight, with the warrior this time instead of the rogue as my partner. We ended up going 5/2 by pretty much ignoring the lock and focusing on the druid, with my partner locking him down and me chain dispelling and mana burning when possible. This seemed to work very well, although I'm hoping it's repeatable with a rogue instead of the deep thunder warrior.

• Wodin · 08/17/07, 4:57 AM

It's really funny how easy it is to get tunnel vision in 2v2 and self-LOS your healer. Especially when your target is almost dead and if you can just stick on them for that last interrupt you'll have them.

Don't be that guy. :P

• Neux · 08/17/07, 5:04 AM

Originally Posted by Deris

Unless you can get 300+ SR, then just burn down the druid.

It's all about the SR gear swap.

Elikai · 08/17/07, 7:16 AM

I've always found chain dispelling resto druids to be counter productive. They spam lifebloom until the cows come home, so the overall effect is each of your dispels heals them up for around 750-1k hp. The net effect on the druids mana pool seems low also, as lifebloom is pretty cheap. Dispel - isn't so much.

I'm still in two minds as to whether the gains outweigh the losses where this is concerned. Yes you may be dispelling rejuv etc, and preventing lifebloom ticks, but those popped lifeblooms just tend to cancel out the dps of my partner (aff lock). Letting the HoTs tick does the same thing, but frees up my GCD for other things, and saves my own mana pool a bit.

Any thoughts regarding this? Druid healers are proving a real hard counter to our team right now at ~1800 rating. Getting any kind of mana drain tactic to work is tough with a druids ability to pillar dance/shift, dispels as I say tend to cause more trouble for my team than theirs, and cyclone/feral charge/bash are very strong interrupts.

I guess more generally I'm asking for advice on dealing with resto druids. Again, we run aff lock / holy priest.

TIA.

Originally Posted by roosevelt

We ran into a decent druid/lock team again tonight, with the warrior this time instead of the rogue as my partner. We ended up going 5/2 by pretty much ignoring the lock and focusing on the druid, with my partner locking him down and me chain dispelling and mana burning when possible. This seemed to work very well, although I'm hoping it's repeatable with a rogue instead of the deep thunder warrior.

Asmolicious · 08/17/07, 7:45 AM

Originally Posted by Republica

Because I haven't seen a lot on this, my 2v2 partner and I are trying out a paladin/hunter 2v2 combo to see which spec works best. For lower rated teams, ret seems great, because we can FF one target. However, he's currently respeccing healbot so we can see what kind of difference that makes for longer fights...

The are issues with this team. In that you will doubfully be able to maintain a high overall DPS because as soon as people LoS you or get in your deadzone then your group has no damage and your paladin's mana will just drift away keeping you up.

Not to say it couldn't work but it is doubtful it will have legs for the higher levels.

Unraveller · 08/17/07, 11:17 AM

Originally Posted by Adeiko

Well, all of you talk about mana warr vs warrs+healr, i'm a resto druid. i've 2300 rating in 2vs2(dr00d+rogue) and 2250 in 3vs3(dr00d+rogue combat maces + Warlock 27/34 SL). And the probles is always the same.

Also have some problems 2vs2 when i go vs pala + warr because of the justice + warr focus on you. Random stum of spec or mace = you die, you can't run you can't heal yourself because of pummel, only hots, and with 50% less heal and a warr kicking your ass is nearly as impossible. Any secret i haven't seen?

Cyclone more. I am no expert, and I just started Arenaing 4 weeks ago... but me and my partner are severely undergeared, yet have managed to take out full Merc War/Pal combinations.

Use the 10 seconds from 2 X cyclone to get the MS debuff off of you and your partner (use swiftmend during this period). I found that against a uber geared warrior, I could literally SPAM heals and still not heal my partner fast enough... So I used cyclone a lot more to interupt the tempo and stance of the opposing warrior. Even a 1.5 second cyclone is worth it! This time also allows your rogue to regenerate energy, and possibly even re-stealth.

Hopefully, one of your cyclone will catch the warrior at 40% or so, and you can chain cyclone/charge the paladin/druid long enough for your rogue (who has a full energy bar) to finish the job.

roosevelt · 08/17/07, 12:20 PM

I think part of why killing the druid worked for us is that the warrior had focused dps enough to do pretty massive burst damage during a stun or series of stuns, putting actual survival pressure on the druid. The healing debuff of MS was huge here, and I'm not sure we'll be able to repeat it with my rogue partner given that wound poison is susceptible to abolish. With an affliction lock, there's really very little burst, and therefore you can't make the druid spend the mana on the non-lifebloom spells. You also can't stun/snare and can't debuff his healing. I really don't know how I'd deal with them in your setup. We only tried focusing the druid because we had tried all the other options, and it turns out the last answer was the correct one.

Originally Posted by Elikai

I've always found chain dispelling resto druids to be counter productive. They spam lifebloom until the cows come home, so the overall effect is each of your dispels heals them up for around 750-1k hp. The net effect on the druids mana pool seems low also, as lifebloom is pretty cheap. Dispel - isn't so much.

I'm still in two minds as to whether the gains outweigh the losses where this is concerned. Yes you may be dispelling rejuv etc, and preventing lifebloom ticks, but those popped lifeblooms just tend to cancel out the dps of my partner (aff lock). Letting the HoTs tick does the same thing, but frees up my GCD for other things, and saves my own mana pool a bit.

Any thoughts regarding this? Druid healers are proving a real hard counter to our team right now at ~1800 rating. Getting any kind of mana drain tactic to work is tough with a druids ability to pillar dance/shift, dispels as I say tend to cause more trouble for my team than theirs, and cyclone/feral charge/bash are very strong interrupts.

I guess more generally I'm asking for advice on dealing with resto druids. Again, we run aff lock / holy priest.

TIA.

Killmour · 08/19/07, 4:51 AM

Originally Posted by Asmolicious

The are issues with this team. In that you will doubfully be able to maintain a high overall DPS because as soon as people LoS you or get in your deadzone then your group has no damage and your paladin's mana will just drift away keeping you up.

Not to say it couldn't work but it is doubtful it will have legs for the higher levels.

I'm holy, Ret was just an experiment. It's nice playing my pally instead of my priest, just having plate makes melees weaksauce. Not having mana burn, and offensive dispell can be pretty lame though. I don't know, what do you guys think? The fact that I like playing my pally more is an issue too :X

Poloma · 08/19/07, 5:12 AM

Originally Posted by Deris

Pally/War can beat Lock/Druid - just remember to always dispel all dots, and kill the pet. Kill the pet twice if you have to. Between the Paladin and Warrior you can both put some impressive hurt on a Demon. Then just kill the lock.

Unless you can get 300+ SR, then just burn down the druid.

I usually find going for the Druid first in Warlock+Druid Combo's to be more effective in my 2v2. Although staying the warlock help reduce some of the damage the warlock puts out, if I stay druid I can interrupt his CC and usually get him down easily between him switching forms with good pally/mace stun. This also keeps him from running away and drinking if he goes oom from healing the warlock. If I try to go for lock first I usually end up getting Cyclone and Rooted while they both have their way with my paladin partner.

Braque · 08/24/07, 5:30 AM

I'd be interested in any tips people have for beating mana-drain teams. I've been playing a bit of 2v2 with a Moonkin spec druid recently, and mostly we do okay, but mana drain teams are causing some real headaches, I die a little inside every time I see a priest, but especially Warlock+Priest or Hunter+Priest teams, so I'd love some tips on how our set up could beat them.