Warrior PvP Thread - Page 98

Maligne · 04/24/08, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by LodeRunner

Well you're talking from a Retadin/Fire Mage setup which is much different than Rogue/Mage. I only came across that setup once and it was a frost mage, not fire, and we won without too much difficulty. The reason they go after the Shaman is because I will shell up, reflect, get nice one handed Overpowers on the Rogue, pull off a sweet Intervene/Intercept on the Rogue and wear him down.

Also I don't see how a BoP would prevent Earth Shocks/Grounding.

Yeah - we only played 2 warrior/shaman teams (in fact healer teams in general have taken a big back seat to 2-dps it seems), but both times the shaman never managed to shock or ground much. That's why I mentioned shaman could really make it tough because there were definitely opportunities to do so. By rushing and bringing so much damage so fast it puts them in a tough position if they aren't expecting it. Both times they chose to use NS out of poly instead of grounding, and both times they were left with an unused NS and a dead warrior.

Bula · 04/24/08, 1:32 PM

Originally Posted by Maligne

Yeah - we only played 2 warrior/shaman teams (in fact healer teams in general have taken a big back seat to 2-dps it seems), but both times the shaman never managed to shock or ground much.

Just another blatently obvious reason why most of the posts in these threads are so pointless. Lode plays in a 2100+ rated 2v2 team and you play in a 1600 rated team with alts. Judging arena experience playing versus players who have no clue how to play their own class is an exercise in pointlessness. Usually after 50% of the wins the vent chatter goes something like this: "I dont understand why they didn't..." or "They made it pretty easy for me...", followed by "They were bad, stop trying to figure out why bad players do bad things."

Maligne · 04/24/08, 1:52 PM

Originally Posted by Bula

Just another blatently obvious reason why most of the posts in these threads are so pointless. Lode plays in a 2100+ rated 2v2 team and you play in a 1600 rated team with alts. Judging arena experience playing versus players who have no clue how to play their own class is an exercise in pointlessness. Usually after 50% of the wins the vent chatter goes something like this: "I dont understand why they didn't..." or "They made it pretty easy for me...", followed by "They were bad, stop trying to figure out why bad players do bad things."

Actually when we were running this comp it was between 1750-and 1800, and neither of us are alts, just alt specced. Still not the same as 2100 I know, but I never said it was; I was simply trying to figure out if our strategy of going for the warrior first was the correct play.

Furthermore I disagree that most of these posts are pointless - people like Lode, Elendril, and Angeron do a great job of posting worthwhile information and this thread alone has been very useful for my alt warrior. We call people like Cutlery out for being on a 1600 rated team because he's in here trying to give advice. There's a difference.

Bula · 04/24/08, 2:02 PM

Originally Posted by Maligne

Actually when we were running this comp it was between 1750-and 1800, and neither of us are alts, just alt specced. Still not the same as 2100 I know, but I never said it was; I was simply trying to figure out if our strategy of going for the warrior first was the correct play.

Furthermore I disagree that most of these posts are pointless - people like Lode, Elendril, and Angeron do a great job of posting worthwhile information and this thread alone has been very useful for my alt warrior. We call people like Cutlery out for being on a 1600 rated team because he's in here trying to give advice. There's a difference.

I specifically quoted the portion of your post that contained the pointless information. Note that I said "most" and not "all". All I wanted to point out is that the worthwhile information only becomes increasingly more difficult to find with every post that contains none, and the last page is entirely that.

LodeRunner · 04/24/08, 4:55 PM

Eh, I don't really mind in this case. I do think there is merit to going on the Warrior in the Retadin/Mage combo because Paladins do a lot of Holy Damage not mitigated by armor. Also, if I think what Maligne is posting is dumb, I can always repost it in the Benefactor forum for a real official shaming where angry people like Xi will see it. THAT's punishment.

Bula · 04/24/08, 5:30 PM

Originally Posted by LodeRunner

Eh, I don't really mind in this case. I do think there is merit to going on the Warrior in the Retadin/Mage combo because Paladins do a lot of Holy Damage not mitigated by armor. Also, if I think what Maligne is posting is dumb, I can always repost it in the Benefactor forum for a real official shaming where angry people like Xi will see it. THAT's punishment.

Naw I've seen worse.

For Captron, Battlemaster's proc rate is so low you're just as well with an unenchanted weapon. I go with mongoose on my 1 hander because most of the time when I'm using it I have a rogue and/or a warrior on me too so the proc gives me a nice benefit. Generally if you are reflecting something you only have your 1h out very briefly and you may not even get a swing off during the time so I don't think battlemaster would be a good choice.

For how to beat the rogue/priest team, generally on a team like that where the rogue tries to aggressively lock you down and the priest is casting on you is just go for the priest immediately. The rogue is feeding you rage so get to the priest, sweeping strikes, and make them pay. You probably wont kill the priest immediately but this is going to get the priest to stop dpsing you for sure. From there the progression of the game should be fairly obvious to either continue to beat on the priest or to let him retreat and for you to beat on the rogue while your druid watches the priest for drinks. Having a root on the priest from the druid with you watching the pummels, he's going to go down in short order. If the problem is simply that they are killing you, then you need to play smarter and defensively, setup your druid at max range and piercing howl -> intervene, or if possible piercing howl -> intercept the priest -> intervene the druid. The rogue will be cursing at his monitor and your druid will be getting you back to 100% life in no time.

Elendril · 04/25/08, 1:45 PM

I've been jumping around teams playing war/healer (everything but priest) in 2s a lot lately and my experiences with mage/rogue are very similar to what loderunner has been saying. The most important thing for both you and your partner is to try to use LOS to mitigate as much of the mage's damage as you can. Being aware of where the mage is and where your partner is at all times is hugely important - a lot of times your shaman will be pillar kiting and just keep going in one direction and you need to let him know if he's just going to walk into LOS of the mage. With a shaman, you want to stick to the mage because your shaman can strip his armors and you'll do a ton of damage and don't have to worry about getting constantly slowed, but you need to make sure you keep snares on the rogue to keep him from having free reign on your shaman. Intervening back to snare/disarm/demo (not to mention break poly, as lode said) will give your shaman a lot of extra breathing room. Also, I'm not looking at your profile right now, but if your shaman is an orc, make sure he's aware of how to use blood fury to clear a wound poison stack and get crippling off with one dispel.

thevidon · 04/25/08, 1:58 PM

Originally Posted by LodeRunner

The Shaman must position himself in such a way that he can duck out of LoS when the mage spawns the Water Elemental. I then always position myself about 15 yards away from my Shaman, waiting on my mount in Berserker stance while the Shaman waits in Ghost Wolf with his little totem farm, waiting for them to make the first move. The Rogue will *usually* make the first move. If he saps me, I wait for him to attack my Shaman then break out of Sap and Charge or Intercept him. My job is to snare him and keep him snared at the moment. If the mage moves into range first then I must Charge him. He'll blink. Whatever. Intercept onto the Rogue and snare him.

As soon as the Water Elemental comes out, kill it if practical. They don't have much HP and are a nuisance. If impractical, Intim Shout the Rogue or Mage with the elemental in range so it gets CCed for a while. This whole time your Shaman is scrambling to escape you should be hitting the mage since he doesn't have evasion and wears cloth. I put mages as my focus target and have a giant focus castbar in the middle of my screen to help keep me mindful of sheeps, especially when I'm hitting the Rogue.
Make liberal use of Intervene. If you can time it right, watch for the mage to start sheeping you and Intervene to your Shaman. The Rogue's next stab will break the sheep and you'll be on DR (and ready to reflect if you have the rage). While you're there, Hamstring/Disarm the Rogue then get back on that mage. Your Shaman is in a panicked frenzy to keep himself alive at this point, so try to force that Mage to block and alleviate some pressure. If he does block, get back to the Rogue with an Intercept and a Hamstring. Your Shaman should be ready to trinket a potentially brutal Shatter combo. Remember, you must save your trinket for Blind.

This is a hard uphill battle. It is very hectic, but it is doable.

This advice actually goes against what the top warrior/shaman teams do. The idea is for the warrior to go for the rogue and have the shaman play full defense with grounding and earth shocks. I know that at the very least GC and Limewire both handle mage/rogue this way.

Personally I used the same strategy you just laid out until I watched GC's newest video and talked to Limewire about the comp. Starting on the mage to get the rogue out of stealth is good, but the warrior should swap to the rogue once he is out and let his shaman control the mage.

Angeron · 04/25/08, 4:25 PM

GC and Hoodrych don't play a single competent mage/rogue in any of their videos. PERIOD.

*edite* if you can start on the mage comfortably then by all means do so, being aggressive (as the warrior) and forcing cooldowns is what you want to do asap. The faster they burn their cooldowns, the more likely you are to win as you can eat DR and just crush either target. That being said, any mage/rogue team that jumps on the warrior without landing sap on the shaman is dumb. You'll notice that none of the mage/rogue teams actually get a decent opener(because they're bad) and this more than anything decides the match (though mage/rogue can reset the fight at pretty much any time and CC-chain a now-trinketless shaman to kill the warrior).

Elendril · 04/25/08, 5:07 PM

You can't sap a shaman in ghost wolf, so I don't see how opening on a warrior when a shaman isn't sapped can really be described as terrible.

LodeRunner · 04/25/08, 8:22 PM

Originally Posted by Elendril

You can't sap a shaman in ghost wolf, so I don't see how opening on a warrior when a shaman isn't sapped can really be described as terrible.

Precisely. Either the mage has to ride up and I Charge him for the opener, or the Rogue uses Cheap Shot on my Shaman so I Charge/Intercept him.

Angeron · 04/25/08, 9:48 PM

My point is that they don't even open on hoodrych before a) the rogue is unstealthed, b) gc is in caster form in combat purging/shocking the mage, or c) rogue let's HR get a charge off on the mage (they're both at fault here, for not communicating better when mage sees the warrior go battlestance). I can get charges off on mages, but not versus the good mage/rogue teams, ever. They either shadowstep/sap me the second I go battle to charge and then sprint to my shaman or they just nova me in place on the opposite side of the bridge and the rogue opens on my shaman. Yes there are games where I get charges off on the mage as the he rides up to start bursting my shaman but the amount of games that ends up in a sap (thanks GCD) is greater than the number that land. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Yaha · 04/26/08, 3:24 AM

Originally Posted by Angeron

That being said, any mage/rogue team that jumps on the warrior without landing sap on the shaman is dumb.

Correct me if I'm wrong-- you're referring to the rogue's ability to sit in stealth and catch the shaman in a sap when he comes out of Ghost Wolf to heal?

I was wondering if Shamans can get into combat with any insta-casts (other than blowing NS) in that situation. Only thing I can think of is running in GW towards the Mage and opening with a purge.

A while back a video of a rogue/rogue/lock team (Nerf Sap 10 I think) showcased this kind of sapping on Druids when they came out of stealth to heal. It seemed like the druids were manually unshifting, and of course druids can now press a HoT button while still stealthed in Cat form and the game will auto-unshift them. It'd be pretty hard to sap a druid doing that, but maybe it's possible with the delay between the time of the cast and when the game puts the druid in combat?

x1tiger1x · 04/26/08, 9:40 AM

Originally Posted by Yaha

It'd be pretty hard to sap a druid doing that, but maybe it's possible with the delay between the time of the cast and when the game puts the druid in combat?

I'm pretty sure that is the case. It operates on the same principle that allows people to drink after casting a heal and an insta cast spell.

LodeRunner · 04/26/08, 9:57 AM

Originally Posted by Angeron

Yes there are games where I get charges off on the mage as the he rides up to start bursting my shaman but the amount of games that ends up in a sap (thanks GCD) is greater than the number that land. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Try hitting Berserker Rage then going Battle Stance and Charging.