I'm not blaming my partner(s). They are doing their best. Yes, I imagine I still have a ton to learn. What I AM saying is when faced with Rogues or any burst team, they can usually beat us down faster than I can heal in 2v2. With Rogues, it's stuns. Warriors it's DPS/MS. With Locks/SP it's face melting.
I don't understand how teams with a Druid are doing so well when I am following the advice, watching the videos, gearing up as best I can and we still get smoked. I don't know if it's me or simply that we're facing really good players. Even when I try to use LoS.
As for my Warlock being amazing, so far when faced against Warriors or Rogues (or other Locks, remember the Horde have racials that make them immune to fear) I simply can not do enough DPS. I am killed faster than I can kill.
Perhaps trying the control game more-so than the kill before being killed method? On both your warlock and your druid you have amazing CC and interrupts. LoS is only half the battle.
You are complaining about other teams being druid/warrior when you are druid/warrior yourself? That is very confusing to me. It is the same team as you. It is very clear that they are outplaying you. I'm sorry to say but I don't think you know how to play your druid. I went and looked at your arena team and the gear of you and your warrior teammate. It is very solid indeed. You are not playing on a super competitive BG like Stormstrike or Bloodlust either. You should be able to easily get to 1700 at the very least if not much higher.
I'm going off your warrior/druid composition since it is the one I am more familiar with having played both classes and seen the comp a lot more.
Druid/Warrior - Mirror match for you. If you outplay them you win. You can't complain about comp there.
Rogue/Druid or Paladin - Complete advantage for you for the simple fact that warriors counter rogues.
Lock/Druid or Rogue - Yes a tough counter for your team in many ways. May I ask something though? How can warlocks be OP here while in the other thread you posted on today you constantly complained that warlocks sucked in pvp?
On the note about hunters, if they are beating on your hunter in 2s then they are not beating on you. You can easily keep a hunter up in that case as well as use your CC.
I think that something that might be helpful is maybe go over the strategies you use while pvp'ing? Because it seems like you are getting burst despite having very good gear, meaning you are probably not positioning yourself and getting caught in the open. Then people here can tell you how to improve your play.
With no healer it must be SL/SL.
If you have a healer, then UA/AFF.
Just thought I'd chime in and let anyone who reads this (poster seems to have been banned anyway) that this is terrible advice. A UA affliction lock does not work well with a healer in 2v2. You're too squishy and you lack the burst to really pressure the opposing team. Highest I could ever get with me as UA and a pally healer was 2150, and that's mostly cause Blessing of Freedom is a huge bonus, especially if an opposing rogue/warrior doesn't have a purger.
If you're paired with a healer, go SL/SL.
If you're paired with another DPS, go UA if paired with a shadowpriest or 6/43/11 Felguard if paired with a frost mage or rogue.
Just thought I'd chime in and let anyone who reads this (poster seems to have been banned anyway) that this is terrible advice. A UA affliction lock does not work well with a healer in 2v2. You're too squishy and you lack the burst to really pressure the opposing team. Highest I could ever get with me as UA and a pally healer was 2150, and that's mostly cause Blessing of Freedom is a huge bonus, especially if an opposing rogue/warrior doesn't have a purger.
If you're paired with a healer, go SL/SL.
If you're paired with another DPS, go UA if paired with a shadowpriest or 6/43/11 Felguard if paired with a frost mage or rogue.
I'm paired with a disc/holy priest as UA, having real problems getting past 1700, and I can't imagine how SL/SL would improve things. The match ups that we have trouble against are the ones where they focus the priest; not the ones where they go for me. Why do you suggest SL/SL as the premier spec when partnered with a healer? I would have thought that the presence of a healer means you can drop a bit of survivability for extra damage potential?
I don't understand how teams with a Druid are doing so well when I am following the advice, watching the videos, gearing up as best I can and we still get smoked. I don't know if it's me or simply that we're facing really good players. Even when I try to use LoS.
I hope replying to this doesn't get me banned along with him, but for other people feeling the same way dont feel too bad. Sometimes forums EJ and other PvP centric communities like to throw ideas around like 'Warrior+Druid=2.3K default rating' and it just doesn't happen like that. You dont get points just for zoning in, the druid *is* still a squishy character it takes a while to really learn how to make your reactions to certain scenario's second nature.
One of the biggest little things that I would advise against rogue's in particular are the use of bark skin and the PvP medallion. For a long time I used to save my trinket for when it was clearly a 'life saving situation' and then would get angry and frustrated when i kept losing games with my trinket still up. Wait for the Kidney Shot and trinket out of it, in my opinion it's nearly always worth it (with the buff to blind, it might be a bit risky - I've been lucky and not had to deal with the new blind much). Plus, with BarkSkin + Nature's Guardian (sorry if this is the wrong talent, the recently buffed 3/3 talent at the end of the resto tree) that's some pretty serious damage reduction.
And again, like other people have said, you need support from your partner. If its a warrior, he can easily intercept the rogue allowing you to get away. Even if he didnt time the 3sec stun right, hamstring+TC/PH should give you some breathing room. If you still keep dying, practice practice practice. Do some ABs and just practice kiting with your partner. Take on 2v3's and try to make them last as long as possible. In my opinion (and it's been mentioned here before too) the druid is the *hardest* class to play effectively with. However, once you get the hang of them its also the most powerful healer to bring along.
I'm paired with a disc/holy priest as UA, having real problems getting past 1700, and I can't imagine how SL/SL would improve things. The match ups that we have trouble against are the ones where they focus the priest; not the ones where they go for me. Why do you suggest SL/SL as the premier spec when partnered with a healer? I would have thought that the presence of a healer means you can drop a bit of survivability for extra damage potential?
Well really, SL/SL can only go as far as how well your healer can keep himself alive. Have your partner watch some disc priest 2v2 videos to get a good grasp of how to LoS dance and sneak in mana burns when he can. You can also help out by fearing the DPS on the priest, and then CoEx him. Perhaps gear is an issue.
Since you know you can win an attrition battle as SL/SL, just try and control the game at the start (w/ spell-locks, fears, and death coil on the DPS target) while the opposing team blows their cooldowns trying to kill you or the priest. Once you survive that, your DoT's and drains will eventually wear them down. Of course, the exception are warrior/healer teams, since warriors are like the energizer bunny. Against that makeup, you're kind of at a disadvantage already as priest/lock since neither of you can really help the other in slowing down the warrior. Which is probably why you see more druid/lock and paladin/lock combos. The former can root/cyclone, the latter can get rid of hamstring. And both are difficult for a warrior to take down on his own.
Also, UA really isn't that much more damage, specifically burst damage, than SL/SL. Their DoT's hit just as hard, with all the damage modifiers in the demo tree. The main benefits of a UA spec is an extra DoT that protects other debuffs, instant HoT, and shadowburn. But when you're the sole DPS in a 2v2, these still aren't enough to burst a well-geared target down. So as a lock/healer, you're better off trying to play the attrition game.
A friend and I are doing a warlock/priest combo for some 2v2s. Both of these characters are rather fresh 70s, so the gear issue is pretty noticable. We're both workin on getting as much honor gear as possible (all the s3 honor gear + maybe some s1 arena gear if we have spare honor) to gear up ASAP. One thing we're not so sure of is how to spec, though.
UA lock + Shadow priest sounds nice, but we're both extremely squishy right now. Would SL/SL + Disc work a bit better until we've managed to gear up? I believe the priest wants to spec shadow eventually, but the lack of gear might make that an unwise choice for us to start with. Bascially, which spec combo would allow us to gear up the quickest? Going in with ~60 resilience against teams already wearing half a set of S3 is painful, to say the least.
One of the biggest little things that I would advise against rogue's in particular are the use of bark skin and the PvP medallion. For a long time I used to save my trinket for when it was clearly a 'life saving situation' and then would get angry and frustrated when i kept losing games with my trinket still up. Wait for the Kidney Shot and trinket out of it, in my opinion it's nearly always worth it (with the buff to blind, it might be a bit risky - I've been lucky and not had to deal with the new blind much)
As a rogue being on the other side of the scenario, I can't tell you how much I love it when people trinket out of my stun. It allows me to instantly blind you, knock you out of combat, vanish, and sap you, thus starting the whole process over again. Trinketing out of a stun could possibly be one of the worst things you can do because of how powerful a full duration blind is and because a trinket is the only thing you can do to break it (except for paladins).
A friend and I are doing a warlock/priest combo for some 2v2s. Both of these characters are rather fresh 70s, so the gear issue is pretty noticable. We're both workin on getting as much honor gear as possible (all the s3 honor gear + maybe some s1 arena gear if we have spare honor) to gear up ASAP. One thing we're not so sure of is how to spec, though.
UA lock + Shadow priest sounds nice, but we're both extremely squishy right now. Would SL/SL + Disc work a bit better until we've managed to gear up? I believe the priest wants to spec shadow eventually, but the lack of gear might make that an unwise choice for us to start with. Bascially, which spec combo would allow us to gear up the quickest? Going in with ~60 resilience against teams already wearing half a set of S3 is painful, to say the least.
You're kind of taking the very long and painful road if you are going to gear yourself by trying to get season 3 gear first. It would take you a very long time to accumulate points in 2s especially since you don't have any gear to start off with. In my opinion, what you want to do is get the season 1 gear first because it's about 10x faster to attain. 2 weeks ago I started to do BG's on my alt paladin and when Tuesday came around, i was able to buy 3 pieces of season 1 gear. Take advantage of how easy it is to attain the pvp gear via BG's and then use that to be competitive in Arenas.
2 weeks ago I started to do BG's on my alt paladin and when Tuesday came around, i was able to buy 3 pieces of season 1 gear. Take advantage of how easy it is to attain the pvp gear via BG's and then use that to be competitive in Arenas.
Can you qualify that with how much actual time (as in, time spent) those 2 weeks works out as? 2 weeks to get that kind of honour on an alt sounds like your either not playing your main during that time (not raiding), or you play "office hours".
I've got an alt warrior that just hit 70, and his gear is horrible. Since he hit 70 2 weeks ago I play battlegrounds on my lunch break most days (ie, 4 or 5 hours a week, tops), but I'm still playing my main in most evenings (raiding 4 nights a week). With that time investment into an alt, I'm just about to get his first piece of honour gear sometime next week. Perhaps I'm just very unlucky with getting into lots losing games, but I do get the pvp daily quest done most days, and on the Fri/Mon I go for the bonus battlegrounds, but its sounds to me like 3xS1 pieces from honour in 2 weeks isn't the kind of thing most people could pull off.
I would set a goal to get 3k honor per day and play long enough to get it. On Weekends I'd try to get 5k honor per day. My guild is now down to only 3 days a week raiding so I can afford to devote some time to alts. Usually I would try to get 1k honor on my lunch break, then make up the rest before and after the raids.
Sorry to turn the topic a little, but I got some great advice when I last posted. And on that note thank you to all that responded to my question. We were really able to get over the hump and reach 2k.
We play a warrior/resto druid team.
Now that we have passed the clump of warlock or warrior plus healer and are able to preform well against them, we've seem to run into a lot of rogue warlock combos. 90% of the time it will be an AR/Prep mace rogue who sticks on me and im stunned so often I'm just unable to to pummel any fears being cast on my druid. When my druid finally get our of fear or avoids on the rogue will peel off blind him and thats the end for me.
I've tried being on defensive with a shield as well as using a two hander, and I've come very close to killing the lock many times but never succeeded.
I'd love to feed off your suggestions again, thanks in advance.
The only times the druid should be feared is during a deathcoil -> fear. Beyond that he needs to LoS the warlock's fears. Unfortunately, if he is hit by a deathcoil -> fear it shouldnt be trinketed, otherwise he will eat a blind. It is better to eat a fear since that has a chance of breaking early even with no damage being taken.
If possible the druid should also try to pounce the felhunter / cyclone rogue after they open on you.
Perhaps I'm just very unlucky with getting into lots losing games, but I do get the pvp daily quest done most days, and on the Fri/Mon I go for the bonus battlegrounds, but its sounds to me like 3xS1 pieces from honour in 2 weeks isn't the kind of thing most people could pull off.
I am currently playing Resto-Specc Druid, started arenas about 2 weeks before the patch. I managed about 3k a day without too many worries. Looking at about 500-900 per AV(ish) depending on if we are on a win streak or not. Sadly, I miscalculated the Honour required (I've noticed the occasional discrepancy between estimated and actual honour, I assume its due to dim returns not being calculated quite correctly) and I ended up about 300 honour short for 3 pieces. Busy grinding for the jewellery at the moment, as I'm pretty sure the Neck is unbeatable.
The good thing about it is I can BG as full resto, which lets me instance/raid during the week, with a swift respecc to do the Arenas once a week. As my gear improves, I'll spend more time in PvP specc, since the S3 gear knocks the hell out of my current normal healy gear. Depending on faction (banging that old drum again) you might be better off just sticking to AVs rather than the bonus battlegrounds. Now that people are used to the new AV, its back to 15 min games.
Anyone got some experiences with killing Frost Mage x2 as Warrior/Paladin? Just lost 20 points to one, the only thing they were pretty much good at was Ice Blocking when Bubble was up and then timing 2x CS + focusing me, which basically means 12 lock-out. They pretty much ignored my warrior and annihilated me instead, thus no clever use of spell reflection either. Probably I didn't think far enough once again, any ideas?
Anyone got some experiences with killing Frost Mage x2 as Warrior/Paladin? Just lost 20 points to one, the only thing they were pretty much good at was Ice Blocking when Bubble was up and then timing 2x CS + focusing me, which basically means 12 lock-out. They pretty much ignored my warrior and annihilated me instead, thus no clever use of spell reflection either. Probably I didn't think far enough once again, any ideas?
Double caster DPS teams in general are brutal against paladin+warrior. Best of luck trying to keep sacrifice or freedom on your warrior against 2 spell stealing mages stacking more debuffs than you can possibly hope to cleanse. If they intend to focus you down, the only thing you can do is just run around pillars as much as possible and just leave your warrior to his own devices until the poly DR kicks in and then pray he can somehow magically drop one of the mages before his hypothermia debuff wears off. Squeeze in some cleanses and just try and avoid getting hit by anything bigger than an icelance + water elemental nova combo. Your warrior also needs to be careful to not be caught too far in the open or they're just going to turn around and nail him before he can ever make it behind a pillar.
You will probably never win this match up if either mage is decently geared or remotely attentive. It's simply too easy for them to run away and eat/drink, too hard for your warrior to do damage to them and too hard for you to heal against 2 counterspells with vicious burst potential.
Anyone got some experiences with killing Frost Mage x2 as Warrior/Paladin? Just lost 20 points to one, the only thing they were pretty much good at was Ice Blocking when Bubble was up and then timing 2x CS + focusing me, which basically means 12 lock-out. They pretty much ignored my warrior and annihilated me instead, thus no clever use of spell reflection either. Probably I didn't think far enough once again, any ideas?
The good news is you're unlikely to see such a combo at higher rankings. At least I think that would be the case. Which brings me to my question:
What have people been seeing as a successful pairing with a frost mage? I haven't historically done much 2v2 but I'd like to get into it more seriously. I think any type of full healer is out because any time we face a drain or endurance team I'd just run OOM. On the other hand I'm hesitant about running two DPS because we are in season 3 after all, and the notion of gibbing people at high brackets is all but extinct. I'm guessing rogue or warlock would work well, but I'd like to hear from some high ranked mages who have tried it.
Inform your dealers and whores of my credit, and pour me a goddamned drink!
I've got an AR/Prep Mace Rogue and I run 2s with a Resto Shaman. We've immensely improved over the course of last season. Yesterday we played 5 matches. 3 of them were Warrior/Druid. We've actually become somewhat adept at chasing down runaway Druids and won all three matches. What really messed us up was when we encountered a Frost Mage/Rogue combo. We got obliterated by this matchup both times we fought them.
Usually when there's a caster around I hop on him like any rogue loves to do. My Shaman can live through a Rogue beating on him as long as he can keep up Earth Shield. The problem was the mage stealing my Shaman's earth shield and the rogue just unloading on my healer. I couldn't seem to avoid getting sheeped by the mage, so I'd trinket out only to meet a nice blind from the Rogue.
My only thought is to just use cooldowns more aggressively in terms of vanish/cloak/sprint and just do everything I can to kill the mage. Anyone have any tips for such a match?
I've got an AR/Prep Mace Rogue and I run 2s with a Resto Shaman. We've immensely improved over the course of last season. Yesterday we played 5 matches. 3 of them were Warrior/Druid. We've actually become somewhat adept at chasing down runaway Druids and won all three matches. What really messed us up was when we encountered a Frost Mage/Rogue combo. We got obliterated by this matchup both times we fought them.
Usually when there's a caster around I hop on him like any rogue loves to do. My Shaman can live through a Rogue beating on him as long as he can keep up Earth Shield. The problem was the mage stealing my Shaman's earth shield and the rogue just unloading on my healer. I couldn't seem to avoid getting sheeped by the mage, so I'd trinket out only to meet a nice blind from the Rogue.
My only thought is to just use cooldowns more aggressively in terms of vanish/cloak/sprint and just do everything I can to kill the mage. Anyone have any tips for such a match?
My suggestion would be: sap the mage and have your shaman purge the ever-living crap out of him. Now you aren't getting slowed via ice armor, or stunned via molten armor. If you can make him blow blink, you should use sprint/CloS/Vanish to avoid whatever control you need to avoid, prioritizing use of CloS before all else due to its low cooldown. But likely, without Ice Armor up, you're not likely to be in trouble against a mage. Be sure to keep the shaman in the area, both so you can blind the rogue when needed and so your shaman can purge Ice Armor/Ice Barrier should the mage refresh either of those. Try to restealth out of Nova range when Block comes, though only if you have a combo point on him to interrupt the poly (assuming pvp gloves).
Alternatively, if the rogue doesn't let your shaman in LoS of the mage by opening on him right away, just open on the rogue. Blind the mage if he comes too close, and have your shaman ready to earth shock/ground any poly attempts that come out of the mage. Use CloS and Vanish to disrupt poly attempts while the shaman's ES/Grounding are down, or when he is stunned or silenced (but if he isn't, he can take out 2-3 Poly's in a row between cooldowns you use to avoid poly's). You should be able to take out a good chunk of the rogue's health on your opener, and because they don't have a healer, this should cause some problems for them.
Most importantly, make sure your shaman friend knows not to try to use anything with more than a 1.5 second cast time until the mage tries to CS him. A 10-second lockout is bad news for your team. Keep poison cleansing totem down, and you should be able to take them down. This isn't an "easy" team for you to take, but it seems doable.
First off, the resto shaman needs to have 3/3 Focused Mind to play 2s, so CS should "only" be a 5.6sec lockout.
Anyway, open on the mage as early as you safely can. If the rogue opens on you, then they've made a mistake. Your shaman partner can much much more easily keep you alive through that, in conjunction with your own timers, than he can heal himself with a rogue on him. More typically, their rogue will be on your shaman.
Your partner's #1 job in this matchup is to LoS the mage after a couple of initial purges if possible. He should trinket kidney shot since once they've committed to bursting him, blinding him isn't productive. Spam poison cleansing and try to drop crippling and kite, but do anything and everything to stay out of LoS of the mage.
Your job is to stay on the mage as best you can, and keep him snared to assist your partner in accomplishing this.
Basically it's a question of how long the shaman can stay alive. If the rogue and mage get onto him at the same time and he gets rooted in plain sight of both, he's fucked. Your job is to kill the mage before that happens. I can't give technical rogue advice, but as a shaman all I can say is to LoS at all costs, and to save grounding in case the mage gets to you and you suspect a shatter combo is forthcoming. Dropping it prematurely will just get it killed by a waterbolt from the elemental, more or less wasting it.
Helo peeps, I've been running 2vs2 with a UA warlock and although my gear is meh at best, I've managed to get 318 resil/9.4k health {btw currently I wear the veterans kodohide boots/bracers, I was wondering if maybe it would be better if I wore tempest strider/blackfathom bracers) my warlock frands' gear is relatively good (season 2 stuff w/ season 3). Other than gear, and the fact that my warlock buddy puts his felhunter CS/dispel on autocast, what can we do against warrior/druid teams or paladin/warrior teams? I find myself running out of mana way faster than the druid/paladin and even drinking every opportunity isn't enough to keep my partner alive. I also tend to forget to heal myself or him in the midst of purging/shocking/etc but I guess that's a skill thing. I'm also having a hard time earth shocking more often than not so if anyone could recommend a nice focus bar or casting bar on the focus addonsomething that'd be hella cool.
He also has no idea what to do for most combos in terms of who to fear/when etc so if someone could post some advice that I can make him read, that'd be great too. Thanks.
The good news is you're unlikely to see such a combo at higher rankings. At least I think that would be the case. Which brings me to my question:
What have people been seeing as a successful pairing with a frost mage? I haven't historically done much 2v2 but I'd like to get into it more seriously. I think any type of full healer is out because any time we face a drain or endurance team I'd just run OOM. On the other hand I'm hesitant about running two DPS because we are in season 3 after all, and the notion of gibbing people at high brackets is all but extinct. I'm guessing rogue or warlock would work well, but I'd like to hear from some high ranked mages who have tried it.
Shadowpriest/Frostmage.
Boomkin/Frostmage (Double CC+big burst potential)
Warlock(even destruction can work here, since mage can CC so easily)/Frostmage
Frostmage/Frostmage! Stupidest combo in 2v2 currently playing, almost impossible to beat without maxxed resilience and HP thanks to CC/ability to drink/eat and stupid amounts of burst damage.
Hunter/Frostmage Can be played as a drain team vs. 1dps/1healer teams, or as a straight burst vs. 2dps teams.
Pyro/shattermage/frostmage. This one's a total bitch, and will be at least as bad as double frost in 2.3.2 thanks to the genius iceblock gift.
Elemental shaman/Frostmage Bloodlust, purge, poly, what more needs to be said?
Whether these combos work past 2300rating, yes, there's feral druid/firemage combos at 2400+ (or there were). It's truly fortunate that GOOD mages are a rarity, as the amount of double mage teams that are absolutely garbage (i.e. losing to a warrior/retadin team is just dumb if your both frost) is high. The fact is, that polymorph and frostnova are incredibly good for 2v2, to the point where along with blind and cyclone, nothing else is even close (fear has far more counters). A full duration poly into a full duration nova while your partner is being destroyed is incredibly frustrating, far worse than any cyclone/root spam, since the mage can turn around and nuke you for a 6k combo.
I know it's been mentioned that you can't just make a druid/warrior team and walk into a gladiator title, but in running 2v2s as double mage(Or frostmage+caster), you pretty much CAN walk into a 1900+ rating on the power of your CC, much like warrior/paladin and feltard/ele shaman in season 1 did on the strength of their relative burst.
Though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable; I simply am not there.
My friend and I recently decided to give 2v2 Arena a go, as Warlock/Shadow Priest. So far, it has been a colossal failure, getting our rating to only 1501 (and that's to say nothing about our pathetic joke of a 3v3 team.) At the moment, we honestly have no clue where to start. We have pretty mediocre gear, him moreso than I, and I think he might be using his PvE shadow build, but I don't know how that would compare to a PvP build.
Our armories are here: The World of Warcraft Armory - Me (EDIT: Goddammit, I logged out in my PvE gear, I'll try to fix that. If you see a Star Heart Lamp equipped, consider this profile link useless.) The World of Warcraft Armory - Shadow Priest
Aside from "get better gear" (incidentally, does anybody have recommendations on what order for us to upgrade our gear in? I'm thinking getting S3 Hood from the arena first, and BG neck, BG boots from honor) what can we do to improve? Ultimately, I'm looking for spec advice, general tactics, videos etc. (I've watched the ones in the PvP video thread) Could anyone share some starting tips and resources for Warlock/SPriest?
I'm running a 2's that currently consists of myself, a very skilled Holy Paladin, a SL/SL Warlock, and a Disc/Holy Priest.
What matrix would be most effective for pushing this rating up quickly? All four players will be involved for points, but I'm just wondering who should put in the first 20 games or so to boost us up into a bracket where we might actually need to start caring about what line-up we run.
11/29/07, 5:27 PM
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