[Druid] The Resto PVP Thread - Page 3

Xantcha · 08/03/07, 12:55 PM

Originally Posted by Unraveller

I went with +20 Spell penetration. Having your Cyclone/Roots resisted can be a major pain. Most of the high level druids seem to have it on their cloaks.

Spell penetration isn't spell hit.
Spell penetration will only help against those with nature resist.

Unraveller · 08/03/07, 2:33 PM

Originally Posted by Xantcha

Spell penetration isn't spell hit.
Spell penetration will only help against those with nature resist.

I don't remember saying it was. But any party with a Druid will have 35 Resistance (each). Most Warlocks will have more than 20, and any Taurens will have resistance to nature.

Not to mention every Felhunter that you root, every pet that you Hibernate.

Resist enchants are not uncommon (especially on capes).

Overall, with the critical timing that cyclone can require, I wouldn't want to have it resisted.

Aphyrax · 08/08/07, 3:03 PM

Maybe (or rather, probably) I just suck, but I found the below to be not so easy to do. With SR on the warrior I found warlock/spriest beatable, albeit not all the time. But once gear swapping is out, ouch. I don't know what your druid's HoTs heal for but mine do not outheal a warlock+spriest. And I have pretty good gear.

We played against this warlock/pally team last night a couple of times. One game I did not eat a single cast time fear, not a single mana drain, nothing. The warrior basically did what you proposed, fight the pet in the middle while I hide behind a pillar, try to kill the pet out of LoS/range of the pally when it goes for me. We killed it once, but the second time they just had the pet stand in the middle, waiting for me to come out. The warrior (fully geared, Stormherald) was beating on the thing for nearly 5 minutes and it. would. not. die. I don't know what went wrong there, but it felt like the fight was unwinnable. I could not reliably cyclone the pally as he would simply take the pillar on the opposing end of the arena (this was Nagrand) and was far out of range. I could have run to him for a cyclone, but then the lock would have stacked up on him and mana drain me while I do so (tried that in a prior game.

That fight was extremely frustrating because I felt I played well and yet was still completely helpless. Even with MS, the warlock still outdamanged my mana pool faster than my warrior did the pallies. The problem is that as long as the pally has mana the warlock will, and that damn pally was able to heal a pet with little armor and MS on it for what seemed forever. Is there anything I am missing, or is the only way to win this to come out, expose myself to the warlocks fear and mana drain and hope the one cyclone I will eventually get off is enough to finish off the pet?

Originally Posted by Quixotic

Warrior + druid is the counter to any warlock team. The biggest thing is, never cyclone against 2 dps teams with a warlock, never regrowth, never HT. You can out heal with a 3 stack lifebloom + rejuv + swiftmend. You should also never be feared by single target fear, ever, outside of the deathcoil + fear, which is what your trinket is for. You can stay out of los when the hots are up.

Warlock + Frost mage - This team is relatively bad, only if they sheep you and burst the druid down so always stay out of los, and kill the water elemental asap upon spawning. No heals mean you will win by attrition if you never allow the druid to be feared, for if he is kiting a mage, the mage will never get a single casted spell off, and the druid can easily outheal dots with hots. Keep hamstring on both targets and have the druid run around a pillar, immeadiately switching out of frost nova to prevent ice lance crits.

Warlock + Shadowpriest - Come out of stealth and pre HoT the warrior and have him stay on the shadow priest. He should be pummeling any casted spell, and your hots can outheal the warlock + shadowpriests dots. If you get deathcoiled trinket, if he gets deathcoiled, he needs to trinket, + defensive stance + intervene to you out of LoS to stop incoming damage while the hots heal him up. Always be watching for good times for intervene + warrior kills felhunter (it's an affliction lock and will die with only 5.5k hp very fast). It frees you up for cyclones and regrowths and allows you to get out of combat to drink. Your goal is to outlast the shadow priest's mana pool, or to kill him outright with a lack of healing on their team.

Warlock + Paladin - be very agressive on making many attempts to kill the felhunter. Lure it back away from the paladin as much as possible and then intercept to warlock + intervene to you and try and kill it. Even if you fail the warlock will bring it back and it will allow you to get drinks off. There is no danger of burst so try and get many cyclones/roots off on the pet and drink whenever you can. The more you get drinks off the fight becomes a joke because the warrior has MS and constant damage with the ability to burst, while the SL lock has no healing debuff and no burst to force you to keep healing outside of hots. Always look for the opportunity to burst the lock down with well timed cyclones.

doogless · 08/08/07, 3:10 PM

I play with a Druid partner in 2v2, and only once have I see a Warrior try and fail to kill my pet. 0 resilience on my Felhunter makes it a very squishy target, and when it has MS on it my partner simply can't keep it up. I suppose Paladin heals are a bit different than Druid heals, but I'm really surprised that a well geared Warrior would have any problem decimating a Felhunter in short order.

Aphyrax · 08/08/07, 3:17 PM

Originally Posted by doogless

I play with a Druid partner in 2v2, and only once have I see a Warrior try and fail to kill my pet. 0 resilience on my Felhunter makes it a very squishy target, and when it has MS on it my partner simply can't keep it up. I suppose Paladin heals are a bit different than Druid heals, but I'm really surprised that a well geared Warrior would have any problem decimating a Felhunter in short order.

Well, being a druid I can see how that happens. Druids do not have the healing throughput of an unmolested pally. But yes I was quite surprised, too. I thought our strategy of me LoSing the lock and using the most mana efficient heals while the warrior beats down the pet was solid. But as I said it was an enormous exercise in frustration. And the warlock was not even fully geared.

For the record, how long should it take a fully geared warrior to take down a felhunter twice presuming you have a more or less unmolested pally healing the pet and a warlock throwing whatever curved balls he has at the warrior?

drole · 08/08/07, 5:29 PM

Originally Posted by Aphyrax

We played against this warlock/pally team last night a couple of times. One game I did not eat a single cast time fear, not a single mana drain, nothing. The warrior basically did what you proposed, fight the pet in the middle while I hide behind a pillar, try to kill the pet out of LoS/range of the pally when it goes for me. We killed it once, but the second time they just had the pet stand in the middle, waiting for me to come out. The warrior (fully geared, Stormherald) was beating on the thing for nearly 5 minutes and it. would. not. die. I don't know what went wrong there, but it felt like the fight was unwinnable. I could not reliably cyclone the pally as he would simply take the pillar on the opposing end of the arena (this was Nagrand) and was far out of range. I could have run to him for a cyclone, but then the lock would have stacked up on him and mana drain me while I do so (tried that in a prior game.

That fight was extremely frustrating because I felt I played well and yet was still completely helpless. Even with MS, the warlock still outdamanged my mana pool faster than my warrior did the pallies. The problem is that as long as the pally has mana the warlock will, and that damn pally was able to heal a pet with little armor and MS on it for what seemed forever. Is there anything I am missing, or is the only way to win this to come out, expose myself to the warlocks fear and mana drain and hope the one cyclone I will eventually get off is enough to finish off the pet?

Something is simply wrong here.

Felhunter:

5-6k Hp
5-6k Armor = ~30-37% mitigation.

Warrior:

Effectively 1144 Ap + BS (-CoW? witch would be a serious blow to the warlocks damage)
~27 % crit.

I think you can see where i am coming from. Even if your warriors AP is shite with full stacked Tainted Blood on him he should easily be able to kill the felhunter within 4-5 seconds(assuming no healing)! I dont need to teach you how big of a degree of emergency healing this requires nor about the mana cost of this healing. Either you are wasting tons of mana on something or the warrior isnt even trying to kill it.

Either way getting drinks of is out of the question for the paladin yet easy as hell for you due the rather lackluster damageoutput of a sl warlock.

Aphyrax · 08/08/07, 5:47 PM

(You reading this, Torth?)

Anyway, here is the warriors armory: The Armory

As you can see, he is fully geared and PvP specced. He posts here occasionally so maybe he can shed light on what happened. I was focusing on my mana and LoS so I do not have a good grasp on what happened, but he was definitely trying to kill the thing. The second incarnation of the felhunter did not die for at least 3 minutes.

As for positioning, the warlock and the pet were in the middle. Initially he sent the pet after me but it almost died a couple of times when I kited it out of LoS of the pally so eventually he just parked it in range of the pally.

The pally was on the other side of the arena, back to a pillar, facing the middle (this is Nagrand). I did not cyclone him because to get in cyclone range would have required me to be exposed to fears and mana drain. Was that a mistake? If so, how can I get in range of the pally while being out of LoS of the lock when they form a line with the pally against a pillar, the pet in the middle and the lock in between them?

The lock just dotted both of us up (he put all his instant dots on me whenever I popped out to refresh the HoTs). Even with innervate I ran OOM before the pally did. The lock was dry by then too, but as long as the pally has mana that is not really an issue.

I wish I would have frapsed it, but I did not so I am at a loss about what to do.

Originally Posted by drole

Something is simply wrong here.

Felhunter:

5-6k Hp
5-6k Armor = ~30-37% mitigation.

Warrior:

Effectively 1144 Ap + BS (-CoW? witch would be a serious blow to the warlocks damage)
~27 % crit.

I think your can see where i am coming from. Even if your warriors AP is shite with full stacked Tainted Blood on him he should easily be able to kill the felhunter within 4-5 seconds(assuming no healing)! I dont need to teach you how big of a degree of emergency healing this requires nor about the mana cost of this healing. Either you are wasting tons of mana on something or the warrior isnt even trying to kill it.

Either way getting drinks of is out of the question for the paladin yet easy as hell for you due the rather lackluster damageoutput of a sl warlock.

Loshiis · 08/08/07, 6:17 PM

Well, you should have had plenty of time to drink if the warlock wasn't offensively preventing it, so you probably should not have ran OOM...and if he sent his pet in to prevent it, or the warlock himself, then they would be leaving themselves open for damage again and cyclones on the paladin.

Edit: You also have bear form -> bash warlock -> cyclone paladin, if necessary.

doogless · 08/08/07, 7:27 PM

Once Fel Domination is down, there's no way the Warlock will be able to summon another pet - a 6 second cast is just stupidly easy to interrupt, between Intercept, Pummel, Feral Charge, and Cyclone. Being mana drained once or twice (max) is worth it to get his pet dead, especially since once the pet is down you shouldn't have as much problem getting OOC to drink.

drole · 08/09/07, 4:19 AM

Idd like to clarify my post a bit for the sake of better understanding. The 4-5 seconds does require a couple of crits, so be fair to your warrior

. However this doesn't change the fact that a felhunter should be very killable in the gear he is running around in. And you really should have no problem at all getting in those drinks. Even if they decide to send the pet after you it will take ages for it go get from the middle of nagrand (or any other arena) to your position, if you are a little smart about it and your warrior remembers to hamstring it. Same goes for the warlock actually.

Herrera · 08/09/07, 4:50 AM

What if a warrior dotted (meaning rage isn't an issue) start bashing on the pet while you stealth (since you were LOS-ing, you could easily go OOC), sneak behind Paladin, Pounce+chain Cyclone+Feral Charge+Bash. That's more than enough time for a warrior to kill the felhunter, after which you can quickly NS the warrior if he gets low on HP. It's easy to keep a paladin CC-d for the first 10+ seconds if you haven't had any openers yet. What you should do is change your initial positioning and unless the warlock can kill your warrior before your warrior kills the felhunter, you're at advantage all the time.

Fero · 08/15/07, 11:12 AM

How does a Resto/MS warrior beat a draintank lock/holy priest on an arena like ruins, where it is extremely hard to LOS anything due to their team standing on top of the tombstone?

Yes I can stay in bear form to avoid mana burn/drain mana, but as soon as I come out to heal all my mana can be drained in the duration of 1 fear. This seems to be the most ridiculously overpowered tactic I have come across in 2v2 arena, and we can't figure out what on earth to do.

• sadris · 08/15/07, 12:33 PM

Epic shadow resistance.

Kaber · 08/15/07, 1:29 PM

Originally Posted by Herrera

You won't be needing quest rewards to improve your gear. Start farming honor for the Veteran Kodohide items and arena. Healing touch, other than the one macroed with NS won't see much use. Maybe at lower rating you can pull out a HT or two, but that's about it. Resto druid arena gameplay is shifting out of snares, hotting a lot, rooting and most important cycloning. You'll probably see easiest to play with rogue. He would go for healer/squishy target while you pounce/chain cyclone/charge/bash the other target. You'll be amazed to see how much dps a rejuvanation and 3 stacks of Lifebloom can outheal. If things get close, you have always Swiftmend. Don't miss out on important talents like Natural Shapeshifter and maxed Nature's Grasp. Use Barkskin whenever focused. Try to los Mana Burns, go cheetah and run around like crazy. When rogue is approaching you, Abolish Poison yourself. You may save a trinket to remove blind. If you can't avoid a mana burn, go cat/bear - you will waste 500 mana, but it's better than 1000 burned. Watch for priests dispelling your Innervate.
That's it... I think

I know when I used to PvP against druids pre-2.0 I could hit them with Viper Sting in caster and mana drain them as they were running around in feral forms (which would often leave them unable to shift between forms for the next time around). Did they fix that? Because lately I have been noticing no change between the time I hit them with it and the point where they shift back out in terms of mana pool. Maybe I was just seeing the natural mana loss from shifting, but I swear they would be at full mana in caster, then I mana drained them, they shifted feral and the very next time around they'd be out of mana. This was at 60, so viper sting did a lot more back then.

Kaber · 08/15/07, 1:49 PM

Originally Posted by Unraveller

I went with +20 Spell penetration. Having your Cyclone/Roots resisted can be a major pain. Most of the high level druids seem to have it on their cloaks.

I was under the impression that spell penetration does nothing in PvP and is a PvE only stat. Maybe I have it reversed, but I recall every caster I talked to telling me that.

doogless · 08/15/07, 1:54 PM

Originally Posted by Kaber

I was under the impression that spell penetration does nothing in PvP and is a PvE only stat. Maybe I have it reversed, but I recall every caster I talked to telling me that.

You do indeed have it reversed. Spell penetration is crap in PvE because CoS/CoE remove the resistances bosses have (there's a small amount of level-based resistance that can't be removed through CoS/CoE or spell penetration, hence you still see a few partial resists), but in PvP it's rather useful for cutting through MotW/Shadow Prot/Master Demonology buffs.

Fero · 08/15/07, 8:43 PM

The question is which would see more use - 15 Shadow Resistance or 20 Spell Penetration?

Of course shadow resistance is going to be useless against a warrior/pally, but with so many warlocks and priests at the top of my battlegroup its usefulness is increased.

Presumably spell penetration could be taken advantage of more often.

Going back to my original question though, I guess what I'm looking for is tactics against a Lock/Healer team on the Ruins arena specifically. On nagrand and blades edge it is easier to use LOS to my advantage, but with a draintank lock standing on top of the tomb in the centre of Ruins I don't really have anywhere to hide.

Maynard · 08/16/07, 6:36 AM

Originally Posted by Fero

Going back to my original question though, I guess what I'm looking for is tactics against a Lock/Healer team on the Ruins arena specifically. On nagrand and blades edge it is easier to use LOS to my advantage, but with a draintank lock standing on top of the tomb in the centre of Ruins I don't really have anywhere to hide.

At the risk of stating the obvious - the four vertical spikes on each corner of the tomb can be used for LOS. The positioning is precarious and it's quite easy for him to duck left/right, but at the very least you can give him a headache.

There is also the horrible but perhaps necessary strategy of just camping the room.

Kaos · 08/19/07, 4:48 PM

Originally Posted by Fero

How does a Resto/MS warrior beat a draintank lock/holy priest on an arena like ruins, where it is extremely hard to LOS anything due to their team standing on top of the tombstone?

Yes I can stay in bear form to avoid mana burn/drain mana, but as soon as I come out to heal all my mana can be drained in the duration of 1 fear. This seems to be the most ridiculously overpowered tactic I have come across in 2v2 arena, and we can't figure out what on earth to do.

Just as a bit of a background I run a 2180 rated 2s team with a resto druid as my partner. This is probably one of the easier matchups for us, simply have your warrior focus the priest. You won't need to heal the warrior much beyond hots for the first few seconds of the fight which is enough to force the priest into defensive healing and so he usually won't be able to mana burn you.
Fears on you are no big deal versus a drain lock as they have little to no burst. Your warrior should only need help from you once to kill the priest, pummel->feral charge-> pummel should easily get the priest in kill range. Some priests are shifty characters and will try to mana burn or mind control to force an interrupt burn so make sure your warrior doesn't pummel the mana burn just save it for the heals, you won't need too much mana for this matchup anyway as it is usually over quickly.

Fero · 08/20/07, 6:53 AM

Originally Posted by Kaos

Just as a bit of a background I run a 2180 rated 2s team with a resto druid as my partner. This is probably one of the easier matchups for us, simply have your warrior focus the priest. You won't need to heal the warrior much beyond hots for the first few seconds of the fight which is enough to force the priest into defensive healing and so he usually won't be able to mana burn you.
Fears on you are no big deal versus a drain lock as they have little to no burst. Your warrior should only need help from you once to kill the priest, pummel->feral charge-> pummel should easily get the priest in kill range. Some priests are shifty characters and will try to mana burn or mind control to force an interrupt burn so make sure your warrior doesn't pummel the mana burn just save it for the heals, you won't need too much mana for this matchup anyway as it is usually over quickly.

Cheers, against that setup is it still worth going for the felpuppy first to allow for drinks? Or is it better to jump on the priest right off the bat?

Herrera · 08/20/07, 7:56 AM

Originally Posted by Fero

Cheers, against that setup is it still worth going for the felpuppy first to allow for drinks? Or is it better to jump on the priest right off the bat?

Puppy can be insta summoned, but even so, it's worth killing it twice. Just make sure druid cyclones the priest so he can't heal the damn dog.

◊ Lord BEEF · 08/21/07, 4:13 PM

Well this isn't great news but it's good to know.

WoW Forums -> Natural Perfection and Resilience

The most you can reduce a crit by is 25%, and natural perfection counts as part of that, so beyond a point (something like 300ish) you stop getting the benefit from the crit reduction portion of resilience.

This means at higher levels of resilience you'll want to take points out of natural perfection and put them elsewhere (unless you really like spell crit I guess)

Kaber · 08/21/07, 4:57 PM

Originally Posted by Aphyrax

(You reading this, Torth?)

Anyway, here is the warriors armory: