Maynard

Wow, #1 team in all 3 brackets? That's pretty respectable.

 

Silver_Surfer

Are you OK with giving us some tips/advice on how you heal in the arenas? I could really use a tutorial.

 

Nitz

It's not my team, it was just an example of a successful 3 dps 2 healers 5s teams with a druid. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

 

Silver_Surfer

Oh ok. Thanks.

I'm going to team with a Warrior here soon and see how that works. We're finding a resto druid and hunter combo is severely gimped (at least until patch 2.3).

 

Fero

Interesting how that he has focused almost entirely on sta gems to get himself above 11k health unbuffed. I know that quite a few druids say that more healing orientated gems are better, but looking at the amazing win record Biomojo has I'm inclined to gem up by s3 gear in a similar way.

On another note, I play 2v2 with a combat swords spec Rogue, and we are currently struggling to get from 2100 to 2200 amongst an annoying array of double dps teams.

Against a mage/rogue for example, he would go for mage first. Their rogue then opened up on him, making me pop out and heal... this inevitably led to my rogue being chain sheeped while their rogue blows every cd he has to get on top of me. Now I can usually get out of the first little tussle with trinket -> NS HT -> feral charge back to mage, but with the mage's slows combined with the rogue all over me I seem to just get caught very quickly and burned down very very fast while my partner potters about as a sheep. What course of action should we take against these?

Against SP/Lock teams it seems to go either way, sometimes I can just about keep my rogue up while they burn burn burn him down, other times they get some fears/silences off on me while CloS is down and he's dead in seconds. Atm we usually open by killing the felpuppy to stop spelllocks, and then go on lock. Is there a better plan than this?

We are both full S2 geared players but we still seem to get ripped apart by some combos, and any help you guys can give us in getting to 2200 and the gladiator title would be very much appreciated.

 

Nitz

I don't know if it may apply here but with my warlock team-mate we first CC the mage via fear and Cyclone to give us more room to force the rogue blowing his cooldowns (you could root, blind, feral charge, FF, etc). After that you have only two cooldown to worry about in a normal arena match, the CloS and PvP trinket, you should be able to shut him down quite easily.

 

Currylaksa

That team you linked exploited. They farmed their own alt team in the wee hours to boost ratings to 2k+ without facing a single genuine competition.

Rank 1 team on vengeance with 0 losses - Arena Junkies Forums

 

Aphyrax

Biomojo's team is triple CC, which is the third viable druid lineup, the other two being quad DPS and triple healer (they also farmed the team they counter best - their own alts). The triple CC part is key. Without it, druid/priest has no chance in hell of keeping people up. Trust me, we tried. It was miserable. Absolutely miserable.

The problem is that all druid lineups require stacking. Stack DPS, stack healing, stack CC. Druids simply don't work in balanced teams. And at the high end, balanced teams tend to do best in the long run since stacked teams will eventually run into a hard counter that costs them 30 points per game.

However, Biomojo's team might break the above statement that all druid-based lineups are highly vulnerable to something. Mass CC might be the answer, since it does not really matter what your opponent fields when they are CCed the whole time. But only time will tell, since people have not had time to adjust to that lineup and find its weaknesses. For a while, gib teams looked invincible, and now 2345 is back on top due to what I said in the second paragraph.

 

Nitz

Didn't know they actually exploited. That sucks.

 

Aphyrax

To be fair they are quite good regardless. Next season will tell, when they transfer to BG9. And people are already starting to immitate their lineup, so they definitely had an impact.

 

Silver_Surfer

So last night I ran with my 2v2 and 5v5 team. We only got in 2 games on the 2v2 team but we went 2-0 (We beat a Shadowpriest/Mage and Rogue/Rogue combo).

On the 5v5 team we went 4-6. We lost to burn teams with one healer. Our 5v5 make up is:

Resto Druid, Holy Paladin, Warrior, Shadow Priest, MM/SV Hunter.

We do fine against other 2 healer teams but lose miserably to burst DPS teams with lock/mage/warrior. One team with a Shaman just ripped us apart. His DPS was awesome, he had totems everywhere and purged every single buff we had. I tried to rank1 MF the totems while healing and CC'ing.

But here's the problem I see with Resto Druids in 5v5. It's extremely hard to keep up with burst damage with only HOTs AND extremely difficult to kite and CC at the same time. Two warriors on me and I am toast in 3 seconds. In one game our hunter went down before I had time to hit my NS/HT macro.

Maybe when 2.3 comes out resto druids will be a tad more viable (as will our hunter) in 5v5s but as it stands now we really have much CC compared to teams with locks/mages, etc.

I think in 2.3 my 2v2 team will be more viable (and we've since added a warrior to try and boost the rating a tad) but in 5v5 I think we'll never get above 1600 (which is where we're at now).

Please note I do know my gear is sub-par. I was thinking of farming honor S3 starts so I can get the S1 gear until I can complete it with my S3 gear.

Also, any thoughts on what weapon I should be using until I can buy the arena healing weapon? Maybe the healing weapon the Prince drops from Kara?

 

Aphyrax

Your lineup is not suitable for a druid. Druids do have strong lineups in 5v5, but they require teams built around them. You need to stack something. Healing, DPS or CC. Druids do not work well in balanced lineups. Also, double physical DPS with no offensive dispeller is a tough thing to make work, unless you are an outlast team (eg warr/warr/pal/pal/druid).

As for gear, use whatever you have now and save points for S3. No need to worry excessively at this point unless you want gladiator.

 

Silver_Surfer

Oddly enough, we pounded (2 times in a row) a double dps/double pally team.

What makeup would I be best suited in a 5v5?

Mage/Rogue/Lock plus Pally and Me?

 

Aphyrax

A warrior would probably be preferable to a rogue in that spot, but that lineup should be workable. Priest instead of pally would work (and probaly be better), too, or another DPS instead of the pally.

Triple CC is probably going to be the premier druid lineup going forward.

 

glick

This might have something to do with the fact that, on the surface, they appear to be an unbeaten team in first (they're really not).

 

Nitz

PvP trinket will now breaks JoJ. That is huge.

 

◊ Yes

We did Druid Paladin Warrior E.Shaman Mage till 2300~. Dual CC was very powerful, I can easily see how switching a shaman for a warlock would allow for even stronger rotations in CC, expecially with a bursty UA warlock build. Playing a multiple CC group forces your players to play better and communicate or to lose terribly.

My other main | My PvP Blog

 

Aciara

Is there a blue post somewhere confirming that this is no bug? I'd like to be very happy but I've learnt to be cautious.

Wash the spears . . .
. . . while the sun climbs high.
Wash the spears . . .
. . . while the sun falls low.
Wash the spears . . .
. . . who fears to die?
Wash the spears . . .
. . . no one I know!
- Aiel chant

 

ndroo

hey all

AM trying to save up for the next season and was looking at the various gems and enchants

Anyone feeling helpful enough to list what kind of gems and enchants they will be using nxt season? I am planning on doing 2v2 with an SL lock and 3v3 with the lock and rogue, if that helps

 

Nitz

WoW -> Test Realm Patch Notes

Try searching for "Meda".

 

nubb3y

Your description just isn't true. We hit rank 1 on one team, then grinded another team to 2nd place with 76-0, and THEN played ourselves. We didn't start playing ourselves until 2439 rating, and to get there we played basically every one of the top 20 teams that currently queues. Our previous team obviously wasn't undefeated; we lost 2 games in a row for i think 26/28 points, and then went around to each of the arenas in their real-world locations to practice our positioning and strategize against various builds...from then on, we didn't lose from i think 4th-1st place, and then this new team.

Anyway, insofar as druid in 5v5, I think the druid class works really well with our 5v5 because cyclone and roots are very powerful for countering the warrior-centric 2345 teams, and innervate on a priest is insane for outlasting. The squishiness is there, but with 3cc they can't take advantage of it very well. You just have to play to your class, and i think a very defensive drain team does exactly that.

 

Silver_Surfer

I just upgraded my gear a tad. I know the shard isn't the ideal weapon but what do you think about my healing (1512 at the moment) as far as viable healing for a 2v2 team with a warrior?

 

Nitz

Your healing is fine (I'm at 2005 rating with a warlock with 1400~ healing) but your resilience and hp are really to low to have decent ratings.

 

Kaber

One of the things I think is the biggest factor in a druid's rating is whether or not he has the 4 piece set bonus. You certainly can't do all that great without resilience, but you aren't going to do hardly anything at all without the set bonus. Being able to outrun warriors/rogues when you drop into bear form is huge, and the speed bonus for Travel form allows for far easier kiting. I went from jumping around in the 1600-1700 bracket without the 4 piece to 1800+ the week I got the bonus. The resident "gladiator" in my guild said they jumped 200 rating the day their 5's druid got his set bonus. It really is that big a deal.

 

Rieux

The Shard is a perfectly viable weapon for healing, but as Nitz said, you simply lack the amount of stamina and resilience to effectively compete in arenas. You have more healing than I do (1405 in full PvP gear), but I have 200+ resilience and 1k hit points on you.

Effective healing might be a viable number to look at when you face pure DoT teams like spriest/warlock, but most other combinations have an extremely viable chance of dropping you in a heartbeat if they catch you in a bad spot. Any 2 DPS team (rogue/lock, rogue/mage, spriest/rogue, mage/lock, etc.) will be able to put significant pressure on you the moment you pop out of stealth to heal your warrior. If a well geared rogue gets the jump on you, no amount of effective healing is going to save you given your current gear. One 'well timed mace stun' will also be your downfall if you face a warrior or rogue with maces.

Personally, I didn't really even start taking arena seriously as resto until I had all of the honor set pieces (bracers/belt/boots/ring/neck), along with a few other pieces of resilience gear. I think I started with roughly 150 or so resilience, which was extremely rough, especially as my warlock partner was specced affliction at the time. To be honest, however, you should still be able to do fairly well depending on your actual skill; I think we made it to the mid 1800s before I picked up a couple pieces of arena gear and my partner respecced SL/SL.