Can't you just mana burn the hunter to dry at the very start and go from there? It only takes about 10 seconds...

We'll usually try and drain a bit at the start, during the cs+ks usually, but a hunter can put too much hurt on my priest before we can empty the hunters mana pool, and then my priest is viper'd already.

The one time we tried to just burn his mana straight up priest/hunter ended up at zero at pretty much the same time (since he had to heal himself too), but then the druid was still at 80%+

Edit: actually went back and watched the video of the last fight, after my priest had burnt the hunter he burnt the druid of what little he had left, and then the druid quit at that point.

If you don't kill the pet, you'll lose the mana war completely, so at some point you need to kill the pet so your priest can drink, and at some point you need to drain the hunter. It's somewhat up to you and how the team plays as to when you'll be able to do these things, but if you can do both you should win.

So I just noticed. If the target has Crippling on, Deadly Throw doesn't apply the snare effect. This is majorly annoying since Crip can be easily removed and Deadly Throw can't.

As far as I can see this should be considered a bug and be fixed?

Does the same thing happen with Hamstring? Can't be applied to Crippled targets, even though it's a more powerful ability in every way except for slowing magnitude?

Yes, if I remember right, it happens with hamstring as well.

I play 2v2 with resto druid and hardest combination we've met was MS warr + holy pala (wich is very common in our battle group) will be very grateful for some advice about dealing with them

It happens with all snares - the more powerful slow always seems to take precedence. A good case in point is Frost Mages, who won't get their FB snare if a CoC snare is already on the target. Definitely annoying and needs fixing, but not much attention is drawn to it.

Mutilate still has higher DPE than Step builds, so you can actually win the mana war in that situation- just fight back. You're not getting mace stunned and you have more burst, so it shouldn't be the end of the world. Mutilate does take a LOT of practise compared to 'spam hemo' builds though.

If you're more comfortable as Hemo, switch back, and then it's an even footing with other Rogues.

The comps you list are designed to beat RMP - that's why they emerged (Hunters own Mages, Warlocks own Mages, etc.) so they're not supposed to be anything other than 50/50 at best...

I'm guessing this was in response to my message. It's not even the Scissors > Paper scenario. It's the fact that my target is their Warlock or Hunter and their Rogue opens and focuses me, especially with a Warlock tossing dots on me, I'm done for. I won't even touch the Warlock or Hunter sometimes. I'm popping CloS, Evasion, Vanish, even Prep to do it all again and it just doesn't matter. The Mage is telling me that the Rogue is resisting his Poly's and Frost Nova's but I just don't buy it. I know that if I don't trinket the Poly, I'm sheeped for the duration. I can CloS out of Frost Nova, but that's only once a minute, and of course you Vanish out of certain things. Between my Blind, the Mages Frost Nova's and Poly's, and Frost Pet's Frost Nova I can't believe that the Rogue can't be better contained. I can't believe that it's just a Scissors > Paper scenario and that it's not winnable. There are too many highly-rated RMP teams and I can't believe they're getting Warrior / Paladin combos all the time.

Rogues are VERY slippery these days.

Poly can be trinketed (and/or eaten by a Felhunter) and with Enveloping Shadows, Surefooted + Heightened Senses you'll get a very significant number of Nova resists. And *some* poly resists - your mage should have a few points in Arcane to reduce this.

Then there's Cloak and Double Vanish. And you can only Nova twice, then pet and mage are on a ~24? sec cooldown.

It's quite conceivable for a Rogue to easily get out of two rounds of mage snares. And they might have Cloak up again by then. Rogues in the prevailing x/x/4x spec are way way slipperier than Warriors versus Mages.

Oh yes they are. Fighting as shadowpriest/mutilate rogue vs. Disc Priest/ShS Rogue is extremly frustrating. The rogue is so insanely hard to catch, especially when undead or orc. The 30 seconds of being close to uncatchable is quite hard to counter. I tend to win duells vs. equally geared and skilled ShS rogues but it's so hard to keep them of a target.

that's why you mirror with disc/mutilate. Shadow is imho way too luck based to be sustainable at high-level play. It can get you to 2k-2.1k probably but it doesn't have the consistency of Disc/Mutilate.
Overall I'd say rogue+disc priest/resto druid is much stronger than any 2dps combos rogues have been good in. Mage/Rogue might be good against priest/rogue when and if they get that lucky shattercombo, but again. Luck vs Consistency.
I really hate playing warlock/rogue since it neither has the burst of RM nor the sustainability of RD/RP.

A question came up from this post...

I play with a resto druid. I normally stay with my PVE swords spec just because I'm too cheap to respec. I can see pros and con's to Mutilate and ShS builds too though.

Mutilate: Better Burst Damage, better mobility when not Snared

ShS: Huge Mobility, could kite along with my druid teammate, not great burst or sustaned

Combat Swords: huge sustained DPS when on target, some outs, AR burst, Screwed when Sprint/other cools are blown

Anyone care to edit my pro and cons? Obviously, combat maces might be better, but since I don't have maces and I do have swords and Daggers, these are the only realistic specs atm.

Soon I will be starting an arena 2v2 team with a rogue friend of mine and we are going to try dual SHS builds. The burst IS there if you gear yourself for AP with a decent crit rate. Even with resilience I find SHS crit strings to be somewhat bursty, especially with passive armor ignore and EA. I think with full S3 and Serrated blades and Dory's, the passive armor ignore is around 1000 (then again the same can be said if you put 20 points into sub as a mutilate build).

Also, don't forget, while SHS builds do not get the +9% damage from KS and +10% damage from find weakness that mutilate builds offer, SHS applies the +20% damage to next offensive ability which is a nice bonus as well. I mean, mutilate burst is the best there is for a rogue, but I think SHS can perform well enough too.

I think someone had posted the DPS numbers of the PVP specs vs targets with x amount of resilience earlier in this thread. I'll try and find it.

EDIT: here it is. http://elitistjerks.com/600583-post871.html

Today we started gathering points again and I played with my Resto Druid partner instead of the shadow priest. He was specced 0-0-61 from raiding and we just tried it for the fun of it and went from 1600 to 1860 without any loss. We usually won any mana war with ease due to the insane healing from the druid.

Then we encountered a Warlock / Resto Druid team and it didn't work anymore. First game I tried to kill the pet. I used the full combination of 5CP KS / Coldblood / 2x Mutilate / Renataki / 5 CP Eviscerate while wound poison was up with 4 to 5 stacks. I couldn't kill the pet. The team didn't even bother to really control me, but I couldn't kill it. The next round I tried to focus the druid, but with the help of the warlock he had few problems to escape while my druid partner died early. After that we decided to quit for the day.

I use 41-20 Mutilate with Season 3 daggers. Wound poison mainhand, crippling slow offhand and have the fast offhand with deadly poison also available. I have two mediocre PVE pieces (Engineering googles and Bladeangels Money belt), while the rest is Season 2 (Shoulders, Legs), Saison 3 (Chest, Hand, Throwing weapon) and Season 3 honor pieces with offensive gemming and Renataki as trinket.

Is there anything better to do than trying to control the druid while bursting the pet down or do you generally use a different approach when fighting this combo ?

you're blowing CB and renataki on the first pet and not killing it? Even if you were successful I can't imagine you'd even have a chance at winning the fight after that. If it takes all your cds to kill one pet how are you going to kill the second one?

You can't chase a druid as mutilate, just isn't possible, it can barely be done with ShS as is. The only suggestion I can think of for you is damage spiking with cyclone. Try to get their druid to trinket something early: KS, Blind, Cyclone, whatever. If you can later land a cyclone on the warlock pet the lock will lose soullink, this is when you drop your burst on him. As soon as the damage has landed blind or cyclone needs to go on the druid immediately so you can pile in a bit more hurt on the warlock before the druid wakes up.

Honestly I'd suggest your druid goes with the moonkin regen spec, rogues really benefit (practically need) the extra damage and longevity from that spec.


P.S. Cycloning the warlock causes the pet to lose soullink as well, as far as I know. So this could help if you really wanted the pet out of the picture.

Made a switch from Mutilate and bought S3 Swords mainly for PvE purposes. Question, should I stay full Combat Swords or go ShS in PvP when I'm playing with my Disc Priest? ShS seems somehow tempting but I have no idea if its good in 2v2 with healer teammate. With Combat I can dish out quite insane damage thought, hard choice.

Most problems become against *drums* Druid and Warrior teams *drums*. I know with Combat Maces it would be easier to keep Warrior locked down and prevent him killing my priest, ShS probably won't help against this setup right?

I play 2s with a resto druid, granted we only played 15 games, lost 1. We would be playing more, but Q times are horrible during our play hours, so we play 3s and 5s instead. I specced QR/Combat because I figured having 2 bursts is great, I still get the sustained dmg of combat and we can always win a mana game because of QR.

ShS won't help that much against the warrior, but it will allow you to pressure his druid much more effectively, forcing him to burn mana with shifting and spend less time casting. Whether or not this will help you depends on how well your priest can deal with the warrior.

This is only true if the other team member is actively snaring and crowd controlling you while you're on the druid. With intelligent use of shiv and deadly throw you can keep a druid in range for a very long time, especially as mutilate spec (+15% base run speed).

@ Hildegard - I would recommend going on the warlock at the start and then gibbing the pet when it is nearby and out of LOS of the druid. In my experience the druid is much less likely to keep the pet alive if you start out on the warlock. Every time I've opened on the pet, they just heal through everything and you have the downside of a warlock going on your druid with no interference.

Considering that you can use a lot more pve gear with ShS the damage output will be probably comparable to combat. (Not to mention the joy of Premed->CS->EA on warrior from the start).
However the possibility of killing the druid is very much a option as ShS, while as Mutilate (if the warrior is good) it's impossible.

As an amendment to my previous ShS 3v3 comments, I think the spec is also complimented by a hunter partner. Did a random 10 games minimum with Pal/Hunter/Rogue around 1875 rating and I can see the potential in coordinating burst between a rogue/hunter partner. Paladin is not the best choice for a healer as we really can't protect him, but it was nice rocking 2500ap with BoM+TSA+Bloodlust Brooch. Druid probably works best, followed by priest. Of course, any synergy we do have is likely of smaller value than if you were to replace the rogue with a warrior unfortunately.

I may even try rogue/hunter 2v2 for shits, however.