Possibly the wrong thread to put this in... but as a rogue, how do I kill you guys? =P

I'm in a pally/rogue 2v2 team who has gotten to 2100 at our highest, but have been hovering in the high 1900's to low and mid 2000's atm, and warlocks and druids just give us so much trouble with CCing. We just lost to a druid/warrior team as well and it just seems like there is no way to catch the druid due to cyclone, intercept, bash, and being able to shift out of poisons.

With warlock/druid its just fear into cyclone, cyclone, fear or bear intercept etc..

Any tips on how a rogue/pally combo can minimize this trouble?

He's got a commentary version as well, where he explains why he does certain things. For some it'll be obvious, but for those learning to play a druid (lvl 41 myself), it's nice to hear.

it really does depend on the bracket and your teammates. 2on2 is not at all as resilience demanding as 5on5 is.

The veteran's set is excellent and offers quite a resilience boost compared to its PvE counterparts. Get that and 2 peices of something (HWL, s1 or s2) to get the resilience bonus and you should be good to go.

Thanks =)
I am trying for a good 3v3. The other two on my 3v3 are Kara/Gruul geared. I am not completely at that lvl due to Kaleido being my alt. I have mostly had to self gear her, not depend on raids.
Would the NonSet Epic PvP 3 pieces and the 2 pieces of Arena2 gear still provide enough resil for a 3v3?

Depends on your teamates, like Drole said. Ferals usually don't get focused first though due to our relatively good survivability compared to other classes. I'd say that unless you run with 2 "durable" classes (eg frost mage, paladin) ~200 resilience should be ample, or optimal in fact, as it allows you stack some extra dps stats from pve gear.

In general, the most powerful thing a druid can be doing is cycloning at every opportunity in 3s and 5s. This hurts ferals, since you can either be cycloning or feraling but not both.

There's a reason druid/warlock is the top 2s team right now. My advice is shadow resist. The druid isn't going to be killing you, and SR will hurt the warlock greatly. Your weakness is being a rogue (read: bad mobility) against a high mobility class who can handle poisons. That druid can literally kite you forever once sprint goes down.

Things would be better in 2s if shred actually worked in pvp. Notice in most quality feral videos you tend to see the 800-900 yellow hits that imply mangles, and not the 1100-1200 hits that would imply debuff enhanced shreds. If you could reliably shred things would be better, as I can reliably lay out 4000 yellow damage in 3 globals before the finisher. But as so many have mentioned, it is nearly impossible to shred a moving target in pvp.

As a feral, you have a choice at any one time of either good damage, good survivability, or good CC while everything else is set to below average. Cat is good damage, poor survivability, poor CC. Bear is good survivability, poor damage, etc. You have to know what form to be in, AND you have to hope the opposition doesn't know how to punish you for your choice.

Take DF 5. During the war/pal fight in 2s, Deep sensibly goes off after some initial damage to control the paladin as the paladin could probably outheal both players' damage. If the warrior had been smarter, he could have maneuvered to keep Deep in intercept range and intercepted the first cyclone. Instead the warrior was either late or too far away, allowing a full cyclone. Incidentally, I have no idea how that rogue survived against the warrior without much assistance for so long. Note how much time Deep spends in caster form during that match. All he does in feral is to open, rip, and some charges.

Vs. the lock/pal team, the lock rarely goes for one of the great weaknesses of ferals. Mana. Deep only has ~8k mana. A single coordinated stun on the rogue + drain could strip Deep of a sixth of his mana bar in a match where he runs low already. Admittedly, doing so with a rogue on you is hard. In the end, a SL warlock with no pet is just squishy. Many SL warlocks lose that way.

Once again, notice how little time Deep spends in forms during each match. I always wonder if a balance druid couldn't deal similar damage without having to shift to cyclone or heal, and still have feral charge accessible.

The DeepFeral 5 video was quite nice, especially with commentary. My only concern is how much he's using the Nordrasill 2pc bonus, something many ferals just don't have access to. I really wonder how differently some of those fights would have gone if he didn't have instant regrowths whenever he shifted.

Glad to see I'm not the only one surprised at how long his rogue kept that warrior busy without support. I'd be interested to see the rogue-cam for his 2v2's, since maybe I could teach my partner a couple things. I rarely have the luxery of abusing the paladin like that when the warrior is eating my rogue alive.

Yeah, the rogue got some regrowths here and there, but not that much more. Tru is a maces rogue, so lots of random stuns, but the difference between how Tru survived in the war/pal fight and Zechs in the rog/dru fight was night and day.

Apologies for resurrecting a very old thread, but there seems to be zero discussion elsewhere and the metagame has changed considerably since the last post and most discussion i see these days is quite outdated.

I've recently been doing some 2v2 with a Frost Mage and had some reasonable success. On our first night in S4, I managed to pick up the bracers and was quite close to hitting 1600 to get the chest which I'd use for PvE as well. Unfortunately, we ran into several back to back lock/rogue teams which are proving almost unbeatable for us.

I've been fiddling with enchants and gems recently and would like to ask the opinion of other feral pvpers out there:

1. Cloak enchant: 12 agi or Stealth? I found that against rogue teams, the win or loss moment is almost always decided on who gets the opener. Thus, i recently switched over to the stealth enchant but at the cost of 0.48% crit.

2. Feet enchant: Agi, Stam or Boar's Speed/Cat's Swiftness? I'm currently running with 12 agi for the dps. But have been thinking of switching to a run speed enchant for the times i have to pop into caster and throw hots on the run and for gaining distance quicker in bear form.

I've also been thinking of setting up a 3v3 team soon. Anyone have any suggestions of good setups? I've been considering running war/feral/holy pala or possibly enhance shaman/feral/holy pala although i dont think it will be as strong as with a warrior.

Disclaimer: I study arenas, but scarcely play them.

Seems like a legit choice to me. You clearly want to prevent a Sapped Mage + Rogue opener on yourself.

I personally play with a BM Hunter (terrible choice, btw) so I can just camp in the flare with him and open on the rogues when they pop on him. Haven't met any that sap hunter + open on me yet. 1500s bracket could be the reason.

All I've read indicates that Bear form and caster form benefit from the boot speed enchant. That makes it a no-brainer for me. More speed > 3 Agi/3 Stam.


As for your warlock/rogue troubles, you could experiment with opening on the felhunter. Those dispels and counterspells are fatal and you're going to have trouble cycloning anything with that puppy chewing on you.
Additionally, I'd figure on the rogue being your burn target...despite Cheat Death, CloS, and other rogue garbage. He'll probably have less resilience and won't be able to heal back so much from deathcoil/drain life/etc.

I went with +stealth.

I still don't think it's a major thing, considering Human Rogues -will- find you, and you're a Tauren Druid, lacking the +0.5 stealth level allowing you to win stealth wars. You do not have the improved stealth detection of regular Subt rogues either.

Boar's Speed does not stack with the PvP speed boost + FS. It'd only affect caster form and I'm not in caster form often enough to expect it to have a favourable outcome (Druids and speed-increases).

I only played Frost + Feral in s1/s2 and with a mage that had a wildly varying attention span and latency. As such, I won't comment on tactics.

I think this is workable with your comp since the resto druid will almost always be the primary target. However, I run with a mage so its usually 50/50 who gets focussed and having zero resillience is just suicide against mages or locks. My usual tactic vs other ferals (the very few that i've met) is to focus hard on the feral and force him into bear form. I can't imagine you'd be able to survive too long with no resillience.

For hunters, try to lure the pet out of LoS and dispatch it. Then I'd say both of you just sit on top of the hunter. Let the resto eat any freezing traps and he can help with roots and feral charge. You can then run his healer oom whilst taking almost negligble damage or u can finish him off with a well timed cyclone->charge->bash to his healer from your resto.

The nice thing about Shaman and Paladins are they don't have any instant heals ouside of CDs. If you can get them low after expending their NS or Bubble, switch to bear, feral charge a heal, bash, go cat form, dps, maim their next heal and then your partner can charge a heal and bash after that. The only problem is, if you so much as miss one heal (or get a dodge/resist) and you have to start all over again while waiting for CDs.


My problems with the lock/rogue combo is such: Both are almost un-sheepable as long as the felhunter is up in addition to trinkets/CloS. I've tried killing the felhunter, but in the time it takes to kill 2 (interupting fel dom+summoning is abit hard), the lock will have managed to apply full dots on the 2 of us as well as the rogue running free doing as he pleases. Focussing the lock, means my mage simply gets spell locked and locked down by the rogue. I think we pretty much agreed that this combo is unbeatable for us and just take the rating loss when we see one.

I also ran with a frost mage recently in twos. We had minor success against the rogue/lock combo. Basically, the mage went into survival mode. Both you and the warlock's pet are faster than the warlock, so you're able to do some pole kiting in order to protect yourself from some of the DoTs. Generally, the mage will be targeted first due to their burst potential using shatter. Yes, you have to kill the puppy twice, but in between, don't be afraid to pop out and do some HoTing/minor healing. Once the second beastie is down, the lock will generally be screwed. That's a good time to do a tranquility if your partner is getting low because you'll probably need some healing too. Then dispatch the lock and the rogue.

NOTE: You need to be checking buffs on the lock. If for some reason he is NOT soullink, ignore the puppy, just open with ravage and burn him. Have your mage bring out his pet (can't stop both) and you should be able to take him down fairly quickly.

What 2nd trinket do people use for feral arena (2v2 with rogue)

I have some tank trinkets (badge of tenacity, darkmoon vengeance, moroes pocket watch) dps trinkets (ogri'la trinket, shard of contempt) and the T5 class trinket ( Living Root of the Wildheart - its useful for all forms, which suits 2v2 playstyle but kind of weak)

I dont have the inclination to get the 30k honor battlemaster trinket, so what would you use?

I used Spyglass initially, now I use Shard of Contempt. If JC, I'd suggest the Shadowsong Panther.

I run 2v2 with a ShS rogue, and for a while I used Berzerker's Call for the burst, but I've switched to Badge of Tenacity. You can still get great burst damage from it when activated, and it doubles as an "oh crap" trinket when you've got melee beating on you. The extra AC helps in the long war/rogue fights I get into while my rogue is beating on their healer.

I've finally dropped 2t5 this season and feel completely reborn. I so missed that old bonus...

Yes, instant regrowths are fun, but frankly - if you as DPS are standing there healing, you're likely in a bad spot anyway, or you have the luxury to be able to heal up without fearing interrupts.

I also came across this choice and found that the extra speed boost is invaluable for that exact reason. You can keep up the pressure on restos so that they dont have the chance to gain distance and cyclone/heal.

As for trinkets, I used badges to obtain the battlemasters trinkets since i have excesses from PvE. Badge of Tenacity or Badge of Tenacity seems quite a good option too. I've considered using the shard of contempt, since having your maim dodged is never a nice thing. But I must say the Battlemasters has saved my skin several times in buying me those few extra seconds to pull off a heal before death.

I ran into a Feral Druid/Disc Priest team last night in the upper 1700s. They were good players, attempting to win through either a surprise burst or Maim->mana burns. Sadly, it's very tough for a Feral to put any kind of pressure on a Resto alone; any time I felt like it, I could Cyclone->Hibernate him and top myself and my Warrior off. They did have some nice longevity with the Feral's Innervate going to the Priest, however.

Hibernate can be dispelled.

And, when I tried it last season, with Reflective Shield up a Priest was able to largely solo a Warrior.

You can shift out of feral form while cycloned to avoid the hibernate, although it starts to be prohibitive mana-wise. My experience, though, has been that restos who try to do this enough to actually threaten my mana are playing aggressively enough that they sometimes let themselves get low enough to be bursted down. Hibernate also has no pushback resistance, so you can really only use it directly after another CC, which limits your ability to chew through mana with it.

The real killer is that Cyclone and Hibernate do not share DR's. So a Cyclone 2x into a Hibernate can be a looooong time being CC'ed.

[e] What makes it especially nasty is if you can't trinket or get out of the hibernate, DR from cyclone is going to wear off shortly after the Hibernate does, setting up another string.