Ghando

A lot of melee in particular rely on pushback to give them a window to pummel/kick...it's legitimately difficult to interrupt a 1.5s cast from anyone, taking into account latency on both ends. I get interrupted far more easily by a Rogue or Warrior when I don't have Earth Shield up...70% vs. 100% is a huge difference in practice especially when the opponent is dual-wielding, and a 2-second LHW is a lot easier in practice to interrupt than a 1.5-second cast. Paladins spamming Flash of Light can avoid a fair amount of interrupts, but they lose a ton of volume when that happens so you'll rarely see FoL being used in a clutch situation.

Shamans bring a fair amount to the table in terms of situational party buffs (windfury, grounding, poison cleansing totems, tremor totems) and obviously Bloodlust and NS heals (in addition to a very powerful flash heal) get a lot of attention, but I think the truly unique potential of the class in arenas lies with Earth Shock...an interrupt with a 25-yard range (Gladiator Elemental Gauntlets, I DEFINITELY recommend these) on a 6-second cooldown (can spec for 5). No other class's interrupts can match that kind of consistency.

 

vorda

The reason you dont see FoL that much in Arenas is because FoL spam does too little healing to outheal motivated DPSers. I think almost every paladin uses concentration aura + at least 10 holy, making him immune to pushbacks.
Also, you have to be prepared to outheal burst damage, something that just isnt possible with FoL.

 

Dashivax

You assume a good Shadow Priest on a Lock/Priest team will actually try that more than once during the fight. They aren't going to win by wasting half of their DPS draining mana from the Paladin. Their entire strategy relies around trying to Fear/Silence the Paladin and then burst down the Warrior around the time the Paladin bubbles.

If the Shadow Priest really wants to try to Mana Burn my Paladin he is just making our jobs easier, because now I have almost no risk of being bursted down and the Warlock still can't fear my Paladin because I am stuck on him.

Again, the entire point of the 2 DPS caster team is to quickly burst someone down, not to outlast them. They have no heals and every second they waste not doing damage is another second one of their teamates comes closer to dying. Control the Warlock and you eliminate their best CC and lessen their chances to have enough time to successfully burst someone down. Show me a high rated Lock/Priest team where the Lock is SL, and I may change my strategy.

 

Dashivax

Hate to call you out but, according to your armory page you are not on an arena team in any bracket.

 

vorda

Correct, I havent played WoW for almost a month now and my team disbanded when I quit WoW. (only reason armory still works is because a friend uses my tailoring CD's till my game time runs out :p )
Not going to tell me alot has changed since then I hope?

edit: although I must admit I overreact on mana burns.. Being ex shaman, where shadowpriests used to be a piece of cake when you are prepared for them, I cant stand meeting them one on one and not having more then 2 long CD spell interrupts.

 

Morsexy

I run around with 7.55% chance to hit in my 2h gear, what then would cause the pummel issues? Its happened about twice now on very long casts, is that the Furnace neck + concentration? Ive had issues with super fast casts, but that could be GCD + lag etc. Ill admit I dont remember this happening before Arena, but pvp generally before Arena was no where near as coordinated or as important to interupt heals obviously.

 

Davidson

With the neck, improved concentration aura, and/or the priest/shaman interrupt resist talents you can "land" a pummel, but it just won't do anything =(.

 

Morsexy

So I just miss spoke then probably, Pummel 'fails' for whatever reason, and is generally the end for my team since a paladin that isnt forced to expend his bubble is just impossible to deal with.

Is that logged? Im asking because I wonder if its possible to have a mod that recognizes that it didnt stop the cast and have it announced in party chat.

 

• Wodin

So-so, really depends on how well they execute and how lucky they get with crits. Double blind is ugly, but if we can restabilize with blind/deathcoil it sometimes works out. Haven't run into too many double rogue teams, honestly, and a lot of the ones we did run into let us AE them to death with Blade Flurry/Felguard Cleave.

We had good success rushing down warriors tonight - were actually net positive against warrior/paladin teams. Got hosed by a DT Warrior/Holy Priest combo which we tried both strats on. Lost a heartbreaker vs. another DT Warrior/Paladin combo when I got the sap off on the paladin after dropping the warrior and died to deep wounds tick + tornado spawning on me.

Tonight was the first losing record we had in a long time though, so I don't know. WTB 200 more resilience.

 

Vazu

Yeah, to Wodin:

Warlock/Rogue vs. Warrior/Paladin

Positioning is huge for this one. If you're in Blade's Edge, keep the Warrior nearish to a T-Junction at the end of the bridge, where the ramps go down. Let the Paladin heal from the bridge or a pillar. If you get Nagrand, fight the Warrior near one of the large support columns. I'll explain more in a sec. Keep the Warlock within 20yds of the Paladin for Fear.

Tongues on the Paladin. Felguard on the Warrior.

Throw some Wounding Poison on both weapons. Blow cooldowns on the Warrior. Make the Paladin start healing. Wait for a longer big heal, not FOL. When he's a good 60-70% into his heal, Felguard Intercept him and stay on the Warrior. One of two things will happen.

1. Paladin will bubble to strip the stun & Tongues, and spam heal.
2. He waits for the stun to wear off and ramps up another heal.
- Deathcoil the Paladin

At some point during all of this, the Paladin will bubble. The MOMENT he bubbles, you need to run the Warrior out of healing LOS. I've found a good 70-80% of Warriors will chase to get a kill and totally forget their healer. This is why I mentioned positioning being so important. You have 12 seconds before the Paladin is CC'able or killable, so you need to control the Warrior and instead of DPS'ing, try and save 5 combo pts for a Kidney Shot once he's out of LOS. Pray that one of you isn't dead after 20-25 seconds of the match. Once the Paladin's bubble drops, Blind and get on the Warrior. Warlock needs to re-Tongues and Fear. You won't out-last the Paladin's ability to heal w/o having a healer yourself. The game turns into controlling the Paladin and playing LOS games with his healing. If you do this right, sometimes a Paladin will run into melee range to heal in desperation. Which makes him ripe for a Kick / Gouge, etc etc.

 

Sniddie

Hardly, i don't know what kind of druids you are talking about, but mindlessly spamming travel form gets you, as you put it, nowhere. The key here is 1.4s non-pushbackable Cyclone, its really really hard for the warrior to interupt it, then just run away and kite the warrior, once he gets on you again, repeat. If Paladin isnt close you can also root warrior after Cyclone. The Warrior has no chance in hell of killing you until your oom, and you have innervate. Throw some roots on the paladin if he freedoms the warrior, it will atleast stop him for a sec or two while cleansing, and rank 1 root is much more mana effective then cleanse.

 

Taja

Seems pretty hard to pull that off aswell. Druids in casterform are for a blacksmith warrior killable in a few secs. So you have to get some luck not to get yourself killed trying to make the first cyclone. Second of all; Charge druid, beginst cast cyclone, pummel. 4 sec of free damage. Cast second cylone, jump away and intercept. 3 sec stun with non parry/dodgeable damage (stand behind him aswell). Next cyclone your pummel should be up again. Taurens can add a warstomp in the rotation.

 

Sniddie

Its VERY hard to Pummel a 1.4s cast that doesn't interrupt on damage.

In one night of playing, probably 1/20 Cyclone's when someone is meleeing is successfully kicked/pummeled. I see alot of missed kicked/pummels though.

And druids in Casterform in Arenagear is hardly the "killable in a few secs" as you put it. I tried it with one of the best PvP warriors on our server, and it was quite hard for him to kill me even if i just stood in melee and trying to heal myself. Plus i can always go Bear and bash.

And the "run out and intercept". I'd like to see you pull that of when you see Cyclone starts casting and you are in melee range.

 

Dashivax

Very hard, but possible and consistently repeatable. Honestly the hardest part about interrupting short casts is having just used another ability and having to wait for GCD to complete before using Pummel. I would wager a lot of people are sitting there spamming their interrupt so it goes off right after a GCD, and when it finally does it is too late and is wasted. Personally, if I know my target will be casting a spell soon with a short cast time I will just start queuing up HS and keep my GCD free to immediately Pummel.

As Taja said every time we catch them with a Pummel, their life is now in real danger, especially when they get caught stunned in caster form by Intercept, mace proc or HoJ from your Pally. As for root, the first one will get trinketed out of, most likely followed by an Intercept or Pummel on the next attempted Cyclone.

Why would I try to "run out an intercept" when I see Cyclone starts casting and I am in melee range. I thought you said you played with good Warriors, I will either immediately Pummel because I was waiting for it, or I would have already ran out to Intercept range because I had been counting down the silence from a previous Pummel.

Fast reaction time is only half the battle, knowing what your opponent is going to do before they actually do it is just as important.

 

Sniddie

Well, the first global cooldown is "usually" wasted/spent on using Hamstring. It usually goes like this:

Warrior charge, stuns wear off, shift to travel form and gain a couple of yards, hamstringed, shift out and back to travel, hamstring/piercing, shift out, cyclone. Hot yourself while running away. Repeat once warrior gets close again.

Maby we have the worst warriors ever in our battlegroup, but around 2000-2100 rating i have never ever had any trouble with "kiting" warriors while their paladin goes oom.

 

Dashivax

You let them charge you?

Oh and you left out the Warrior using Blood Rage, and the fact that every time a druid gets re-snared and has to shift twice more I am going to get a melee swing off.

 

Sniddie

Well, Intercept then, usually starts with the Warrior cycloned for the first 9 seconds anyways.

I fail to understand what you are trying to state with "has to shift twice more i am going to get a melee swing off" ?

Basically everytime i shift to travelform i will gain a couple of yards on you, period. And you will get Cycloned, almost everytime unless your some superhuman with faster reflexes then other humans

 

• Kinz

Pretty fascinating stuff here and in the other thread, I only dabble in PvP with my highest rating at 1800ish, holy priest most the time so when I spec shadow we get to have some 2v2 time.

I would say though, be careful this doesn't descend into a "Well I do this, then this and that and win" " No but I did this" because then it's just theorycrafting to the extreme, on paper lots of things are easy, but in the arena it's not so. Things like claiming 1.5 sec casts are easy to interupt for a war not ready for the spell is pretty laughable.

I will ask, for my 2v2 team, atm we run a Shadowpriest/Warlock and have done ok with the games we play, but the double rogue combo really messes us up. Sap + Cheapshots and expose armor is too much with blind as well to lock down other player when the sap breaks. We were messing around with the idea of felpup to devour but it means having that pet out for most combo's and the felguard helps our "Burn dps, silence/fear healer strat". Any way to deal with 2 rogues who know how to play?

 

• frmorrison

Fel puppy only can remove magic effects on Friendly targets, and blind is a Poison effect. Also the puppy's counterspell can be resisted a lot (due to talents plus heroic HH neck).

Vs. 2 Rogues, Felguard is good because he can stun a Rogue if you know how to use him, lowering their burst, and stacking lots of resilence really hurts a Rogue. In 2.1 the Lock PvP trinket will break stuns, so that is really helps vs Rogues. However, Voidwalker gives 10% less melee damage and a 2900 shield, so that one is good too.

Personally I use FG always and when things get bad I hit my 0.5 summon VW + Sac macro, but I am about the same rating as you, so maybe I don't know the best .

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.

 

Dashivax

Piercing Howl has a "couple of yards" range, meaning with correct timing you will re-snare the druid every single time.

I never claimed 1.5sec casts were easy to interrupt if you were not ready for it, in fact I am pretty sure I said the easiest way to interrupt 1.5sec casts was to be ready for it. Either way, some people do in fact have incredible reflexes, usually from playing FPS's, and I would hardly call player skill in the realm of possibility "laughable."

Does Lifetap put you into combat? If so the priest could buff/heal you and you won't have to worry about Sap at least.

 

• frmorrison

Tap does not put you into combat (nor breaks the 5 second rule).

However Dark Pack sometimes put me in combat for a few seconds, I am not sure how that worked (haven't had Pack in a while to recall).

Until Locks have stun on their trinkets, double Rogues are a tough matchup.

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.

 

Viktus

Dark pact will put you in combat, I don't believe lifetap will. Not worth using it to stay in combat though, as your pet's mana is pretty crucial.

Not to get into the warrior vs. druid theorycrafting, but from personal experience playing 2v2 with a druid, a gnome warrior would be able to stay on my druid the entire fight while a different race would eventually get caught long enough for the druid to get out of intercept range. This is not factoring in the matches where the warrior had blessing of freedom.

 

alienangel

I"m in the same boat. Do hunters manage this kind of interruption too, with Silencing Shot and Scatter Shot? Back when Scatter Shot didn't have a travel time I could see it happening, but currently I think I can't reactively silence people in the way described - I'd basically need to keep the opponent targetted (or mousedover), and stand close, and not use any other abilities to keep my GCD free - hence I usually end up using my interrupts proactively instead (silencing a healer when someone is getting low, or after a mage has popped AP).

Am I just bad at it, or is that more or less the extent of hunter interrupts?

edit: ok, I should definitely be using a focus frame to watch for casts, tip #1 noted down