Mage will iceblock a sap in the unlikely event that the rogue even opens on my shaman until after the sap is up (which he won't).

Assuming you CS the mage and he blinks, consider following up with a CloS/ShS. Have your shaman purge ice barrier and unleash. Wouldnt be a bad idea to get the elemental down either to eliminate the threat of a shatter combo.

As far as the rogue on your shaman, with the changes made to their poison cleansing totems and instant ghost wolf, he should have no problem getting away if you shiv a crippling now and again. The thing with Healer/dps against 2 dps is that the damage you do to them will never be healed, outside of a bandage here and there. Take it cautious and work to pressure the mage, but this doesnt mean going tunnel vision and forgetting you have a healer to worry about.

My MS war buddy and I have been trying to 2v2 for a while. Sadly we always get the worst team combinations to go against. Like Rogue/Ice mage, Pally/Lock etc. etc. I'm writing cause i'm curious to know what I should do to make the team better. I've tried a few things out. Like Imp expose armor, i've tried Mutilate and of course ShS. I mean we get some wins but on certain teams it just seems like we get rick roll'd hardcore. Any suggestions on different spec ideas, stats, etc. All help is appreciative.


If any are curious to my stats. I have 10.9k HP, 1481 AP unbuffed, 32.59% crit unbuffed. +hit is 87, and resil is at 417.

Also im currently using S1 fists, I have 3/5 veng, 2 S1, and vindicator gear to round it out.

How's your Warriors gear? What "certain teams" do you seem to get stomped by? How do you go about fighting the teams you lose to?

All that information will help Us help You.

My warrior friend is geared the same way i am 3 veng, rest S1 and vindicator. For example if we go up against a druid/warrior. I usually try to find the druid and sap the warrior. In the case I cant find the druid i we try to beat up on the warrior a bit then i try to peel off and keep the druid preoccupied or then we transfer our burst to the druid but after that the warriors to busy beating me on me that i dont last very long to take down the druid.

We seem to have a hard time with Warrior and any healing class. holy pally/lock. Ice mage/rogue are the toughest ones.

Well the obvious snares your going to hit with Warrior/Healer is your lack of CC. Even if you manage to catch the war in Battle Stance and land a Sap, you still need to locate his Healer AND kill him in a matter of seconds. Their warrior will always be on you, and your warrior will most likely be pretty rage starved. A simple roots takes your warrior out of the battle completely. And thats only for Warrior/Healer.

Lock/Pal comps dont offer you many options for targets. A lock can simply kite with freedom while keeping up DoTs, and unless your war is playing super conservative, he's going to go down quick.

Mage/Rogue comps are probably going to be the most difficult, as one of you is going to be a sheep for the majority of the battle. With no freedom its going to be difficult to survive even one shatter combo with a rogue on you as well.

The combo requires a LOT of experience playing it, as well as great execution by the both of you to control a healer. Unless you have an excess amount of gear going against a much lesser geared team, I dont see any guaranteed wins.

Well the problem with anything outside ShS is you lose the ability to close that gap between you and a fleeing healer, or even an ShS kick. Swords arent what's making the damage more constant, its the combat tree in general. But in the comp that your running, your already hard pressed to find a way out of snares, and having two sets of cooldowns may just be what pushes you over the edge to a win.

Another way to give you a bit more of a dps edge would be to swap out some pvp gear for some badge gear. Try and keep yourself at a reasonable resilience/hp, but dont be afraid to swap your veterans ring and even a few pieces of vindicators for some better dps items.

This is mostly due to the overall issues with Warriors- They simply do not function without healers.

If you are intent on playing with your Warrior buddy, find a Druid and make a 3v3 team.

Now that I'm done with PvE, I'm going to make a start on taking PvP a lot more seriously than prior.

The team I intend to play is a Frost mage / Rogue 2s setup, the mage is fully PvP geared and I have no doubt in his skills whatsoever. With me however, it's a different story, my gear is currently very heavy T6 stuff, I have only 215 resilience, and around 10.4k hp unbuffed. I'm at a loss as to how I should gem / chant my gear, as I have no idea what play-style the Rogue / mage combo takes.

We'll be creating a team at the start of season 4, by which time I'll have enough points stacked to aquire some decent Resilience pieces.

Any advice on how a rogue, who intends to reach ~1900 (on Cyclone EU, if that makes a difference ;p) should gear / gem for playing with a mage, and how will this reflect the play-style I will take?

Some things to note that may not show up on my armory that I have in bank are:
Tier 6 Belt
T6 legs
Midnight Chest guard
Black Temple Melee neck
Black Temple Melee cape.

I have never played rogue/mage competatively so take my advice with a grain of salt. But 4 piece t6 is sex for shadowstep. I would wear 4 piece t6 and the s3 or s4 gloves/1 other piece. All the rest pvp gear. Puts your resilience at around 225ish if you gem for damage(I choose 10 agility). The damage is actually pretty solid for a shs rogue.

I believe shs is the spec to go for mage/rogue, but I could be wrong. You will go through alot of timers bursting someone down and maximum uptime on target is really important in addition to survivability considerations.

When facing mage/rogue as any of the combos I play, the skill of the team seems to be driven by the mage as long as the rogue can find his blind/sap button at the appropriate time.

And human/human seems about 3 times stronger then any other variant. Beating the opposing team to the cc punch is such a huge advantage in mirrors or vs rogue/healer teams it can never be understated.

I am playing with a resto shaman for the full season now and am I continue with it in s4. I use 11k hp, 360 res, 1800 ap and 33.00% crit and around 70 hit. Here are some tips based on setups:

Rogue/priest: this shouldn't be that hard. Don't go looking for the rogue, go straight for the priest, open with a 5cp cheapshot and use them all on expose armor, use 1 or 2 cp's in SND and use offensive trinkets. Before the rogue realises that his priest is getting raped, he will prolly get on you, at that moment, before the cheapshot on yourself, use evasion + ghostly strike. Don't use your trinket, save it for a blind, let the shaman throw earth shield on you, you have to keep alive, use CloS when the priest has stacked dots on you. Keep expose up, use offensive trinket whenever you can and keep SND up and be sure to use kidney and kick to prevent healing, along with the interrupts from your shaman. Let the shammy use bloodlust when you are evasion-ghostly to prevent getting stunned thru the whole bloodlust. The priest should go down fast. I have seen full s3 priests go down in under 7 seconds.

Rogue/mage: go on the mage, ignore the rogue completly, your shaman shouldn't have alot problems surviving against a rogue. The mage takes shitloads of damage from you, open up with a sap to get the mage in place, get off a kidney shot or gouge as soon as possible and control the mage, if he blinks, shadowstep, use sprint and cloak of shadows. You will have the mage in an iceblock in a short period, at that moment, blind the rogue. Wait for the mage to get out of iceblock and gouge him at the same time iceblock wears off, you have a stun mage again and should be able to kill it fairly soon. You can't go on the rogue, you will be sheeped for ages and your shammy goes down :p

Rogue/warlock: be quicker, you should have the lock in a complete stunlock (cs=>ks=>gouge) before the has even on dot off. Stay on the warlock, no matter what, interrupt his fears and immolates (or at least, that's what I do to prevent alot of damage). Try to interrupt (with gouge or kick) his drain mana's too, your shaman needs his mana. Same story as killing a priest: expose armor, slice n dice and offensive trinkets. Even if he has 20.k hp, he should go down at some point. Its not that hard a setup. I hate druid/warlock more.

warrior/druid: as soon as you hit 1800 you will see these ones alot. fucked up combination and very hard for you to kill. The best thing that can happen is that the warrior goes on your shaman and he is able to kite it. Then you have some time to get on the druid with shadowstep and everything. Shiv your ass off on the druid, it needs a snare.

rogue/druid: not that hard, use clos to get free of crippling and try to catch the druid, Make sure their rogue opens on your shaman, if the rogue is on you its harder.

Hope this stuff helps you somehow.

You can't dodge/parry cs, no matter what direction it comes from.

Which is why many rogues often vanish -> cs -> ks when the other rogue uses evasion.

Well with that setup and gear your only option would be to spec shadowstep. Shadowstep scales really well with agility gems so I'd stick with as much agility gems and enchants as you can and obviously don't forget to get your metagem activated. With your gear I would also aim for getting 4 piece s3/4 and 4 piece t6. Keep the Dory's Embrace but once your resilience goes up try to use the BT neck or the MH trash one with armor penetration. Ultimatly you want to aim for about 300 resilience with as much dps stats as possible (hope RNG likes you and your mainhand warglaive drops). Hit rating isn't good past the pvp cap but attack power and armor penetration are.

Rogue/Mage is a very offensive setup as you do lack any sort of healing. This means you need to practice chaining cc's and get good teamwork going on with your mage so I suggest you start playing as soon as possible. It's also very important that you and your mage try to coordinate your bursts. Make sure he know's you just did a 5 combo point kidney shot that your opponent can't trinket and focus your burst and crowd controls during such moments. No matter what double dps setup you play matches will always be decided for you in a very short timespan.
And well beyond that practice, practice and practice even more.

Don't be afraid to do it with less then optimal gear. The day my priest alt hit level 70 halfway season 2 he went to arena's straight away in greens and by now he's nearly fully decked in s3 and I learned alot about how to play a priest in arena from that.

ps: Do not use a Relentless Earthstorm diamond like I do in your helmet. A swift skyfire diamond+12 agility on boots is a better combination but sadly all I have seen is 10 shaman/warr/hunter helmets in about 5 Archimonde kills!

Aha! That is quite interesting.

This is in response to a couple pages back regarding a shiv/weapon swap macro. This will shiv with your normal weapon, and while holding down a modifier (alt in this case) will swap to your alternate weapon and shiv with that one. Press again normally and it will return to your normal offhand.

#showtooltip Shiv
/equipslot [modifier:alt] 17 Mind-numbing Poison Weapon
/cast Shiv
/stopmacro [modifier:alt]
/equipslot 17 Crippling Poison Weapon

You can change "alt" to "shift" or "ctrl" to your own preference.

I think this is more a matter of personal preference, I've played entire season 2 with surefooted but currently with the mobility shadowstep offers (and also the setup's I have played this season) I don't miss surefooted at all. If you feel you lack mobility go surefooted.

Not only does it give 10 hit rating but it reduces snares. This is HUGE. First off, the 10 hit rating alone means a reduction in the gemming you have to do for hit to reach the specials cap. 12 agility is barely better than the 10 hit rating alone from a gem standpoint (Lionseye vs Spinel). Add to that a 5% chance to resist snares/movement impairing effects and it far outclasses a measly 12 agility.
If you put 12 agility on the boots you're going to have to gem for hit to get the specials cap anyway so what the fuck is the point?

No, not really. The cooldown of Shadowstep is still 30s, it's solid mobility sure but even more mobility will always be more valuable than 12agility (and losing 10hit from Surefooted). Don't forget any spell or ability with a snare attached can be fully resisted if the snare is resisted, meaning 8% to snare resist means 8% frostbolt resist, frost shock etc. Why would anyone pick up 12 agility over a very useful offensive enchant (10 hit is hard to come by) and an amazingly useful defensive enchant?

Things like Imp Hamstring and Frostnova will forever be the bane of rogues, Shadowstep spec'd or not.

While I agree that 24ap/movementspeed+surefooted is the superior combo, I think the main issue is what kind of helmet are you using. Personally I use Cursed Vision that I also use for PvE (which is a priority to me) so I can't exactly go and remeta it. It's one of the main arguments why one wouldn't use surefooted.

As for 10hit, well I'd argue that using 2x Glinting Pyrestones in chest is easy enough. ^^
But again, if you're using full PvP gear, you can afford to meta your helm with movementspeed.


On resist, I've recently toyed with the idea of going for 1/3 or perhaps even more (on the expense of Cheat Death!?) Enveloping Shadows.
While 1/3 + Surefooted would give a 10% Nova/Howl resist+other snares/roots.
3/3 would be 15%/20%, which is quite huge.
This would be mainly for my 2v2 Spec, since in 3's and 5's (not that I bother playing 5's anymore) the risk of getting instagibbed is a bit greater.
Any comments?

ShS / frost mage combo works extremely well. If your a rogue out there who can't get it done w/ disc/rogue then frost mage is the way to go.

The only thing is that you both must be extremely geared and the mage has to be able to cs at the right times.

The only counter my 2s has is druid/lock - we still haven't come up with anything effective for that combo yet.

Hmm, never know that about cheapshot, I suck Well, the first blind is not exactly useless, if people wait it out cause they wanna save their trinket, its usefull ofcourse. If people decide to trinket it their trinket is on cooldown, which may help you or the shaman to respectivly catch or kite that one.