My Paladin friend and I have a real tough time against some combinations of double dps/caster teams. Most notably, Warlock and Shadow priest. We went up against a team last night that we lost 50 points to (in two games). Obviously, we stopped after that.
We also lost to a Elemental Shaman, Prep Rogue(?) team that was rated about the same as us (2150+). We shouldn't have lost, because I had the Shaman down to 24%, but died right before the heal.
Another team we have a problem with is a Mage and non healer team.
Usually, I go for a priest if there is one, a cloth-class with a rogue, or the more squishy of the two dps classes.
Does anyone have any strategy for these types of matchups? We lost nearly 100 points from our rating last night and are probably going to try and get it back today, to get us back in the magic number for netherdrakes.
The real limitation to Paladin warrior is as you have said 2x Caster, thinking about it Warlock/Shadow Priest, Elemental Shaman/Rogue would not have been top of my list of ones to cause you serious problems.
Affliction Warlock/Frost Mage would have been two I would have thought could cause problems, felhound on the paladin and Curse of Tongues and spellsteal on Blessing of Freedom should make that your most difficult fight, added with unstable affliction making dispelling difficult as well as healthstones for any healing to compensate for any times you actually hit them.
Try to out LoS them is my only tip, this as a 2x Elemental Shaman casual arena team though, I think 2000+ caster teams could offer more insight on what you need to do.
The real limitation to Paladin warrior is as you have said 2x Caster, thinking about it Warlock/Shadow Priest, Elemental Shaman/Rogue would not have been top of my list of ones to cause you serious problems.
There aren't really that many Warlock/Mage teams in the 2100+ range that I have seen so far. The typical match that we have with a Shadow Priest/Warlock goes like this:
- Charge/Intercept the Shadow Priest,
- Dotted up by both
- Paladin gets feared by either Shadow Priest/Warlock, breaks with trinket
- Sometimes first heal is spell locked
- I stay on priest, to avoid mana burn (maybe this is what I should change, most of the time they do not switch out of shadow form to heal)
- I get deathcoiled
- Paladin gets dotted
- Fear again on paladin
- I get low
- Paladin shields
- Mass dispel
- Silence
- I die, Paladin dies right after
Usually I have the priest to 20% by this time, so if we could find a way to stay alive for something like 30 more seconds, we would be able to win.
Or bubble very early. 12 seconds of warrior beatdown is a lot of pressure on a team without a true healer.
We tried that strategy, but it is pretty hard for me to dps down a priest in 12 seconds. They usually come out with shields on, we wait for them to wear off then go in, but he just puts another one up. By the time I get the one down, he can put another one up (lack of rage), but then I do not have any problems after those initial two shields.
I am starting to think that if the Shadow Priest is in shadow form, go for the warlock and pray he doesnt start to mana burn. If I can get him out of shadow form to heal the warlock, its basically over.
Never leave a warlock, especially affliction, free. By going for the shadowpriest, you're allowing the warlock to get UA up easily and CC without hinderance. Not to mention they're squishier to melee since they don't have the 15% physical damage reduction of shadowpriests. Keep the warlock on lockdown and your pally can freely heal for the most part.
And mana burn should not be your worry in such a matchup. Warlock/Spriests rely on their burst, so as long as you can heal through it, you'll win. If you force the shadowpriest to drop out of shadowform just to heal, you should have already won.
My Pally (2x 2 piece bonus glad) and a Warrior (4 piece glad / deep thunder) friend of mine started a 2v2 last night and shot up to nearly 1900 in ~3 hours. However we then ran into a slew of caster /caster mixes that were giving us a heck of a time. Maybe you guys can provide some insight on these combos.
Here are 2 examples.
Deep Frost / Deep Frost
- Start off the fightw. BoS on warrior to avoid sheep. Blow bubble to avoid CS, top the warrior off. Bubble fades. 2 CS'es to deal with. After 1 either myself or warrior is dead and warrior barely hit even 1 of them due to nova rotation.
Shadow Priest / Mage
Burst + Fear + CS + Dots + Mass Dispel
I roll with a demonology warlock in 2v2's. My gameplay improved *drastically* once I stopped thinking of divine shield as a defensive tool. This was especially pronounced in mage fights, as they know just how devastating a counterspell is to a paladin. Even better, I've found that mages will check their dps while waiting for you to start casting the big spells (they don't want to miss it). So be sure to use a lot of holy shocks, cleanses and try to bait the counterspells with interrupted casting.
If you're fighting a team with no healers, all you need to do is survive. To that end, 12 seconds of uninterruptable casting on the only person that can be affected by spells and abilities is incredibly powerful.
The problem I run into using Divine Shield offensively against SPriest/Lock teams is that my warrior partner spends usually two swings to cut through the PW:S on whatever target he's going after, which takes almost eight seconds, giving only four seconds to get the rage necessary to burst down his target, of which three is usually taken up by Death Coil.
If I delay the DS, I run into the problem of determining whether it's more effective to start mass cleansing while not fearing Unstable Affliction, or healing over the DoTs.
We're both starting to amass Shadow gear for these, teams, which have the potential to ruin a week of arena for us by snagging 20+ points a game just by virtue of their makeup. We always stop playing after losing to a team twice in a row, but being 40 points in the whole in 30 seconds is disheartening.
Ok, at risk to my rating Ill give away the secret. Pummel the Mass Dispell, or have the pally stun the priest (forcing him to trinket), then Int Shout as soon as your pally friend bubbles.
Which to target first depends on the Warlocks spec. Demo = go for priest, Affliction = kill warlock.
Don't worry about mana burn. Don't swap into green shadow resist gear. (We will just kill the pally) Read more about SR gear in the "Nights End" thread.
And if all else fails, hamstring and kite.
That said. Its still a bit of a case of rock paper scissors. SP/Lock beats Warrior/Pally. Rogue/Druid beats SP/Lock. Warrior/Pally beats Rogue/Druid. Thats kinda the life of Two's.
Skill and luck obviously play a bit of a factor, but those matchups are just geared to take advantage of the other's weaknesses.
We tried that strategy, but it is pretty hard for me to dps down a priest in 12 seconds. They usually come out with shields on, we wait for them to wear off then go in, but he just puts another one up. By the time I get the one down, he can put another one up (lack of rage), but then I do not have any problems after those initial two shields.
I am starting to think that if the Shadow Priest is in shadow form, go for the warlock and pray he doesnt start to mana burn. If I can get him out of shadow form to heal the warlock, its basically over.
Once the shields on the priest go down, try charging the lock for rage, hamstringing if you need to, and then moving to the priest after switching to zerker. This allows two possibilities:
1. Breaking or going immune to the first fear with DW or zerker rage
2. A hit or two on the unshielded lock to gain rage.
Also the priest may hit the lock with a shield, which you can ignore since you are switching.
I'm in a holy priest + destro lock 2v2 pair. Our rating isn't astronomical (1500s) but we definitely find MS warrior + holy pally as an easy fight. The only time we lose to that matchup is if the warrior has some really damn good gear (we're still in the 1-2 piece gladiator area), which we do run into now and then and basically when that happens I can't survive more than 4-5 seconds. I suppose though that can be marked up to just being outgeared.
Anyway, let me first show fight as we see it:
-I always stay way the hell back because of charge. Usually the lock will engage you with his felhound to put you in combat, then move it to the pally as we start blasting you. Warriors who mount up and rush as soon as the doors open will usually get the charge off, but usually the pally's a long way off and i'll just gimp kite him away so he barely gets any healing while the warlock burns him down. Not a good scenario for him.
-Don't worry about mana burn, pallies have huge mana bars and it's going to take at least 18-20 seconds of undelayed casting for a priest to clear that out, which is way too long. Pally and druid? You bet i'll probably be mana burning, but not against MS warriors; it's too large a window for you to kill one of us.
-I (priest) am always getting focused. EVERYONE loves going after priests, so we get pretty good at trying to defend against it (and depending on race/etc, often have a handful of semi-useful oh shit buttons), and we plan much of our strat around the assumption that i'll be getting focused. The lock gets targetted i'd say <5% of all matches, and those can throw off our game a bit, since it's kinda unexpected and he's our source of getting health bars down to bursting range. When he's getting attacked it slows that way down, and I'm doing my same stay-alive routine except casting it on him. The end result is we don't get as much DPS on our target, we usually have to blow our fears defensively and if the other team is quick to recover, we're right back to square one and often are completley hosed. Half the fight is doing something that the other team isn't anticipating (but is still somewhat effective of course). If you have two clothies, decide on which target you'd go for first and then rush the other one, it will probably mess up their routine while you're still hacking up a caster like normal.
-Our whole goal is to drop you, the MS warrior. One of us at half health/mana against a holy pally with full bars can still probably be a win, so we're doing everything we can to drop you and get to that point. The pally should be on dot cleanse duty, it's harder to prevent and if the pally's on top of things then the dots will hardly tick. If UA is up then you have a squishy warlock, so consider casting axe on him instead of the priest. I'd also consider letting the pally play russian roulette on dispelling UA, since he's probably not taking much damage and those dots are going to hurt more than normal since it's an aff lock. Bubble-cleansing will negate UA's nastiness alltogether, though that of course blows the bubble for later, so that's a judgement call.
-More on the whole drop the warrior idea, we're going to try and get you to about 50% and then CC the hell out of you and the pally, followed by trinkets and a large payload of burst. Casters, depending somewhat on spec, can have insanely strong bursts and me and my lock buddy can usually finish off a warrior at 50% or 5-6k health if we get about 2 or so seconds of uninterrupted casting (and little or no healing on the warr). Anticipate the CC and have the pally bubble early and top you off, or at the least throw a stun when you think our CC is coming (or trinket+stun as soon as we start CC), anything to throw some speedbumps in our fairly coordinated and precise little tactic.
-Even more on the warrior's role. You're the DPS but you're also the tank, and even if a little undergeared DPS-wise I'm sure you'll agree it doesn't take much to cut down a clothie. The problem is whether can you cut down the clothie before his buddy brings your healthbar into burst range. I'd say the spec + the weapon will give you good tooling for killing, and it's a hitpoint race between you and said clothie after that (on top of foiling their CC+burst combo). I'm going to be working on getting some tanking pieces (trinkets, amulets, cloaks, rings, etc) and while it takes some bite out of my casting, it'll buy time for my warlock to bury the warrior. Having more hitpoints gives you a similar advantage, as you'll take longer to get into burst range and your rage bar will only be going up in that time.
I see those fights as me surviving long enough for the warrior to get within bursting range, then piling on CC and bursting. If the CC rush gets effectively countered, or if it takes too long to get you into bursting range before I'm dead, then we're in trouble.
if you notice a lot of double caster teams queuing that night, i'd recommend the warrior swapping out with a rogue/lock or the pally swapping with a druid/priest (whichever is available obviously). double caster teams fear rogues because they can rip them up and they basically require no heals for the first 30 sec of fight. druids are good imo because their HoTs can override their dots and they are instant so getting CS'd/etc is not an issue. lock and priest also have similar advantages against double caster teams over warrior/pally teams.
player swapping isn't a bad idea in high level play.
Ok, at risk to my rating Ill give away the secret. Pummel the Mass Dispell, or have the pally stun the priest (forcing him to trinket), then Int Shout as soon as your pally friend bubbles.
Thanks for the tip, I bet noone thought of that (Ok, I'll drop the sarcasm). Problem with priest teams is that the warrior doesn't have too much rage, but with some good communication he should be able to interrupt the mass dispel. 'Have the pally stun the priest' is pointless, unless you enjoy wasting a 1min cd on a resist.
We tried that strategy, but it is pretty hard for me to dps down a priest in 12 seconds. They usually come out with shields on, we wait for them to wear off then go in, but he just puts another one up. By the time I get the one down, he can put another one up (lack of rage), but then I do not have any problems after those initial two shields.
.
Paladin should help you with holy shock + JoR, that's 1100 damage that can't really be resisted, should take the shield down before the debuff wears off.
Scrolls of Blinding Light are invaluable against dual DPS teams.
This doesn't have that much to do with the thread title (I do think of it as a logical continuation however), but I'm interested in all of your opinions on Warrior/Paladin versus SL Lock/Paladin.
If I attack the warlock, I can pummel fears/sbolts/immolates. Mortal strike does nothing to diminish drain life though, so the warlock can sustain himself nearly indefinitely with drain life spam. Dots slowly wear away at my paladin's mana pool and we lose. If I go on their paladin, the the lock is free to spam drain mana on my paladin. We lose.
I never get enraged because nothing ever crits me.
Wearing PvE gear is a given since resilience does jack against dots. Do assume the warlock has 350+ resilience and 11k+ life though.
Get shadow resist up to 150ish (not a huge stat sacrifice if you rely mainly on slots that can be enchanted), and have your paladin cleanse his heart out. The typical soul link warlock does NOT have shadow embrace, and none have contagion, so cleansing is actually very effective against their dots - particularly if you've got enough shadow resist to resist them half the time. Once that's done, your job is just to make sure the warlock can't switch to the paladin - which in most arenas simply waltzing around a pillar or similar object will accomplish, as the typical SL warlock/paladin team has no snares (obviously there are the oddball 30 affliction/31 demo style specs, but they're quite rare in my experience).
If at any point the pet gets low enough that you can spike it, go for that of course. The fight's over once the warlock's pet dies twice as surely as if he dies himself.
To stress for the above, as a lot of people surprisingly aren't aware - cleansing stops drain life/mana in their tracks and they have to be recast. Obviously the warlock can recast it right after, but in my experience that is a losing proposition for them in that match up. If at any point you can get the pet off of the paladin long enough for him to drop combat and drink a few tics, that's golden as well - though make sure their paladin doesn't get to do the same. An easy enough way to do this is intercept pet -> intimidating shout as intercept stun is fading, and your paladin should get at least 2k mana back if he's expecting it and is smart about line of sight - potentially more in blade's edge where he can take advantage of stupid pet pathing.
It's still a finesse match, but the shadow resist alone will swing the pendulum into your team's favor - at least in my experience 2v2.
I've found warlock/paladin teams rather easy to beat as warrior/pala. I just equip full pve healing gear and simply outlast the other pala. The warrior will do more damage, and the other pala has to heal through mortal strike. A warlock can't burst down your warrior that fast, so you can even drink abit.
edit: forgot completely about that annoying pet, which keeps you constantly in combat. You should still be able to outlast them with some heavy cleansing and some mp5 gear.
The most common group is Affliction Warlock/Shadow Priest w/ .5 Mass Dispel.
Problems:
1) .5 Second Mass Dispel. You will be MD'd, unless you waste precious GCD on it. in order for it to work, you have to get lucky with the HoJ stun, and than get lucky with the warrior fear, and than hope you get 2-3 heals off before you run.
Avoiding a MD IS NOT a hard task. The issue occurs when UA + other dots has been applied to your warrior and they are already Mind Blasting+Shadow Bolting. You have to crit healx2 and than run. This is pretty difficult. If you HoJ, DS, you also wasted 3 seconds of healing time on GCD which can sometimes mean you have to play catch-up.
2) Fear. One instant fear and one casted fear. Paladins have two fear breaks. Always avoid the AOE/Priest fear. Don't waste HoJ on warlock fear. Bubble out of first fear you have to and trinket out of the second. If your bubble lasts the full 12 second and you still have your trinket up, you might win the fight.
3) Shadow Priest/Mind Control. The shadow priest is normally the first target most teams choose. Mana burn ISN'T the issue. Mind control is. If our warrior hops on the warlock, they'll just do instant dots + MC. Let the MC burn him down and while this is going on the warlock is free to UA me + fear me. When the warlock starts his fear the priest just let's go of MC and they reapply dots/finish off warrior.
It's been a while since I played my priest but I'm pretty sure the MD cast redux talent was placed too deep in disc for full shadow to get.
Its possible to get cast time reduction on mass dispell, and most of the important talents in shadow. You won't have misery or more than 3 points in +crit to mindblast/shadow word death, but you will have really important stuff. (shadow form, silence, VE, etc.)
edit: a 27/0/31 +3 spec will get you shadowform and cast time reduction.
Thanks for the tip, I bet noone thought of that (Ok, I'll drop the sarcasm). Problem with priest teams is that the warrior doesn't have too much rage, but with some good communication he should be able to interrupt the mass dispel. 'Have the pally stun the priest' is pointless, unless you enjoy wasting a 1min cd on a resist.
Didn't realize my post deserved sarcasm.
The OP asked for tips, I gave a few to him. Ive played around 500 arena games so far this season, to a 2100-2200 rating, and its not like I haven't seen my fair share of Warrior/Pallies at that level. Anyways. My tips stand as what is most problematic for my team. The only thing worse than pummeled MD, or a well timed Int Shout, is watching Deep Thunder proc more than twice in a given match. Those are the things that the match hinges upon. If I get the MD off unhampered, the game is over.
I would love for you to tell all the pallies that hit me with HoJ that they are wasting their time. Course, then thats kinda like saying throwing silence at a pally is a waste of time, because it might resist.
And for the record. Green shadow resist gear is no problem at all. It might work the first time out of the gates if you rush quick, but its easily countered by strat. BT SR gear on the other hand, is a different story.
06/14/07, 10:01 AM
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