They've said no free respec BTW.

There is no free respec, i just logged in to look.
Hurray for PVP-Quests btw, Arathi today.

Nevermind this

2v2 question:

I've recently started playing with a druid friend who originally was feral, but has taken to playing resto in pvp lately (he is missing some pieces of gear here and there).

A makeup I've found extremely frustrating is marks hunter/resto druid (especially now that the hunter dispels hots. I kind of feel like it becomes a more viable fight if I can kill the pet, but with so much CC that becomes very difficult. Am I just missing something very obvious from this match, or is it really as uphill as it seems to feel right now?

From limited experience playing Warr+Paladin (me being the Paladin), if you can kill the pet you'll start winning slowly whereas you will lose slowly if you don't. As soon as your paladin can drink it's over mostly. Just deny them the chance to drink and it's all yours. Frustrating fight, though.

Can anyone confirm this? I'm solidifying my gear progression for the next few weeks here and this would be a relevant curve ball for what I have in mind now.

No, this is retarded.

(That's as eloquent as it's going to get. Apologies in advance.)

This was my initial thought, but anything is possible with dice rolls in this game (glancing blows hitting harder than normal hits because of the no-block mechanic pre-TBC comes to mind). Regardless, a dodge should probably turn into a normal hit and not a miss with this talent.

Hmm my apologies, I did more research and I found that expertise is directly converting dodges to hits.

I used to 2v2 with a restoration Druid like yourself. One strategy that works well against classes with a pet, such as a hunter or a warlock, your healer provided the pet is on him/her (this should most likely be the case) should line of sight and begins to melee it down. Once at around 50-65% your healer should call for the burst, you should have no problem killing this pet with a full bar of rage. This works exceptionally well against a drain lock since we all know while you are getting rage off the lock the pet is taking damage as well.

Now for something off topic, I was wondering what everyone thinks is the most viable PvP specialization?

I am as of right now 35/23/3. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I faced off against something similar myself, except instead of a druid it was a priest. Needless to say it was one of the most annoying match ups ive ever been up against.

The hunter had me frost trapped probably about 40% of the game, so the priest was kiting me easily, if my druid dint kite the hunter hed get scared beast and bursted down, so he couldnt eat my traps, if he switched to caster hed get mana burned, there was one game where i tried to kill the pet but i just couldnt burst him down fast enough and the hunter was mending it while the priest was throwing shields and renews on it. We ended up going 1-3 against them, although the one game we won, we got 24 points so I was happy.

How do you guys deal with warlock druid combos, specifically as a warrior pally combo? It seems like there is NO way that my pally will ever be able to keep me up with cyclone/dc/fear/spell lock..i've tried going for the pet, but if i'm not on either the warlock or druid my pally will just be constantly cc'd. So that leaves the druid or the warlock, assuming the warlock is sl/sl what target would you generally pick?

Hunter/Priest is a really annoying drain team for warr/pally in my experience, though I haven't seen the same burst problems with a pally healer, and any group with a pet where the pet gets heals is annoying, pretty much have to open up on something else and switch to the pet when your healer has it down a little (warr/pally vs a lock pet this at least should be pretty easy to pull off now, 800-1k spell damage in healing gear + exorcism should put a decent dent into them).

Personally based on the best results I've seen so far vs lock/druid as warr/pally, you can't just stay on either of them, have to force the druid to run off frequently and try to minimize how much damage and CC the lock gets off... the buff to interrupts vs drain life should help a little, but the biggest problem my warr/pally team has is being unable to keep the druid from drinking, thus almost guaranteeing a loss... generally the lock/druid teams I've seen have tried to CC me and mana drain/kill my pally though, if they're focusing on you I'd guess that LoS + trying to kill pets is probably your best option, if the druid stays far away from the pillar you're using to avoid you having a chance to burst him, you might be able to LoS the lock from him and have a small chance of a burst kill.

The armor penetration from S3 + ZA gear may help to make both locks and caster form druids a little squishier, hate the resto survival talent buff druids got though...

I've pretty much reviewed through most of this pvp thread and would like to summarize some things, add some additional comments, and last, ask some questions (hopefully ones that have not already been answered):

The axe, mace, sword debate. This is one debate which will probably be on going for as long as Warcraft is played. And to be honest I am not interested in debating it, only to summarize for those who haven’t read through the previous 24 pages. There is one valid argument that stands out giving sword spec and mace spec both have an obvious advantage in ONE category. This is that the extra swing proc and stun proc is not affected by resilience. What this means basically is that no matter if the target has 999999 resilience. your extra swing proc or stun rate is still 5%. Where as your crit is being countered constantly by resilience in pvp. obviously these things can both proc off hamstring too. axe spec would prob give ya 100 dmg instead of 50 off your hamstring whereas with mace or sword u get an extra 1k+dmg or an extra stun off of any ability. And sword spec having one additional advantage in that it has the potential of putting out the most possible BURST dmg available (not counting execute) to a MS warrior with a instant crit following your original crit. obviously this is not to say crit or stuns are not important. and i apologize if i have left out any MAJOR points on the matter. and I’m also not saying one is better than the other. obviously a stun can my priceless along with that 3rd crit u needed in a row to kill your target. what i am doing is stating the facts from the information gathered on this thread. from these facts you can make your decision as you see fit. But for the record, if I was doing mixed PvE/PvP with my warrior I would without question choose Axe and Flurry. And for Pure PvE id be Duel Wielding. The only reason I have even debated this myself is because my warrior only does PvP.

As far as spec's go there has been 2 main MS warrior Pvp Specs i have found. these are:

33/25/3
33/28

now there are some variations between these specs on certain things obviously. your basically choosing between 3/3 tactical mastery OR 3/5 flurry. i have found since i have gotten into serious pvp with my warrior tactical mastery to be much more valuable than 15% increased attack speed after landing a crit. that being said my main questions i'd like to pose here are in reference to the 33/25/3 spec. there are several different things you can do with it. first off you have the choice between. 5/5 booming voice , 5/5 imp demo shout, 5/5 unbridled wrath. This being said, I propose my first questions relating to these three talents.

#1 does unbridled wrath scale with weapon speed? do you receive more than one rage point with a slower weapon etc..? or do you have a VERY good chance, such as a very high % of getting rage from it with a slow 2hander as opposed to fast duel wielding?

#2 for 5v5 i see booming voice as VERY valuable. as to your team being very spread out and the matches lasting longer, is booming voice greater for all situations, 2v2,3v3,5v5. and don’t forget the increased range helps knock people out of stealth.

#3 Last but not least does Imp demo shout scale down or up in importance with 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5? removing a crap load of attack power from 2-3 melee in a 5v5 seems pretty significant to me. but in a 2v2 situation is there an argument that the potential of demo shout > than all still if kept up against just 1 or 2 melee?

Other things you can choose from in this spec is blood frenzy or imp slam. I’ve found imp slam to output more damage when the opportunity presents itself. I’ve won many matches with an Slam/White dmg/MS, which can be done with half a rage bar (not too uncommon). If you have more throw a WW in there and u can start from the beginning. Obviously moving targets = bad for slam. And blood frenzy is a constant 4% dmg increase for 12sec following a crit. But these are really the only arguments I find worth posting, others I find not to be worth mentioning. So below I have posted the accepted specs using unbridled wrath as the 5/5 beginning talent instead of imp demo, and booming voice in the fury tree. And 2/2 slam instead of 2/2 blood frenzy. Also I’ve chosen 5/5 mace just to finish tree creation. Please switch death wish with sweeping strikes in accordance to patch 2.3:

33/25/3 <<<Link

33/28 <<<Link


***Now obviously like I said the wild cards in these specs are, Blood Frenzy, Improved Slam, Flurry, Tactical Mastery, and Booming Voice/Imp Demo Shout/Unbridled Wrath. And Obviously which type of 2hander you prefer.

So beyond my initial questions about booming voice, demo shout, and unbridled wrath. I pose my next question on spec’s. is there anyone out there can argue their 33/25/3 or 33/28 build to be better for pvp? With good reason? Note: I am not asking for random builds that are better. I am very interested in if there is a BETTER 33/25/3 or a BETTER 33/28 build that is arguably better for pvp.

Last but not least I’d like to ask one final question in reference to stance dancing. I have noticed one thing since I have been doing it often. This is that it seems to at times reset my swing timer. But other times it seems to not reset it. So I am wondering. Is switching stances only resetting the timer if you switch stances right before or as you swing, or is this a bug?

How good is Imp Hamstring (for 2v2 arena).

I'm trying to choose between it and ranks in 2H spec.

I personally don't spec it, but when it procs on me it's really annoying for the second or so i have to wait to get bof. Overall i'd say its just a tossup for personal choice.

From my experience, the Warrior/Paladin teams that beat my 2v2 (Warlock/Druid) are those that DPS my partner (the Druid) as hard as humanly possible. JoJ on the Druid + BoF on the Warrior with Deathwish up makes it nearly impossible for my partner to get away at all. The Paladin often has to bubble to keep on top of the Druid to ensure JoJ stays up, but when they blow all their cooldowns like this they rarely lose. Maybe we're just bad, but it seems extremely effective against us.

It is great. You will notice it aiding the match more than the 2% extra damage from 2H spec.

Personally, I try to spec into whatever gives my easy-to-predict class a surprising edge. It really throws the opponent's groove out of whack and supports your team at the same time. I've proc'd it on the opposing teams warrior and allowed my Paladin to let MS fall off and cast a max-rank holy light out of the warrior's melee range.

Friendly advice: don't sign your posts.

I'm not a big fan of slam personally, maybe i've never really given it a decent chance but It doesn't seem to fit with my pvp playstyle very much. Having to stand still and time my swings is not something I'm willing to focus on.

You also forget that blood frenzy benefits both yourself and any other physical dps on your team. I recognize most good 5v5 setups have only 1 physical dps though, but I happen to play with a feral druid and a felguard lock and often times when I'm forced to play defensively their damage is way over mine and I just contribute by keeping MS and blood frenzy up along with the occasional sunder on every free gcd I have.

On weapon spec, I've bought both a merciless mace and sword this season and I've been playing around with both. Although the extra swing is nice because of the added burst potential, I always found myself going back to mace spec, an additional stun is very often more important than an extra attack. Even with the 2.3 change I'm still going to buy the S3 mace first. For arena play I'd rather have the stuns even if the proc chance was as low as sword spec. For PVE and more casual PVP I agree that sword and axe spec are much more attractive.

On booming voice/UW/imp. DS, I think it's pretty much a matter of personal preference, they are all situationally useful. I like booming voice because of the nice advantage it gives vs stealthers. I haven't seen any numbers on how much rage UW generates in pvp so I could be underestimating that. How does it compare to anger management?

On imp. hamstring, I really like it because of how much it disrupts the normal flow of a fight, it's also very helpful as a defensive tool to help a teammate get away from someone. It's often as valuable as mace spec and for less points.

It generates less rage for 5 talent points than Anger Management does with 1 talent point.

I found that e.g. a [Torch of the Damned] almost any autoattack does generate 1 additional rage; that would be in best case (on damage duty all the time, flurried) ca. 20 rage a minute. Considering the jousting nature of the arena though it should be even less than that.

In short: UW is a waste of talent points for 2h in arena ... even considering the alternatives.

EDIT: It would be somewhat ok, if it would still generate rage on yellow swings, like it used to over 1 year ago.

For what its worth: I tested a new spec yesterday and didn't miss enrage as well weapon mastery all that much. Endless rage has become much more attractive nowadays imho since you don't have to give up both improved intercept as well as deathwish. At least in 2:2 it performed very well. I had almost no problems keeping the MS on the target which sometimes happened with my old cookie cutter spec.

Spec is: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

On UW vs BV: I prefer booming voice as well, especially since I play mostly in the two smaller brackets. Destealthing a vanished rogue is very nice as is getting first strike on any stealther.

If you're not speccing enrage you should consider going for last stand:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft