tristantio

My 2v2 team consists of a holy/disc priest, and myself - a siphon life/soul link warlock.

Recently however we've frequently encountered the restoration druid and siphon life/soul link warlock duo.

Other than their team making errors, I can't figure out a reliable strategy to beat this team, since my dps doesn't out pace the heal over times and life blooms, even with felhunter devour magic removing the regens and rejuvs.

If I attempt to drain mana the druid they will typically either shift to bear, or just shift into cat/cheetah form and run away, constantly staying out of range of fear/drain mana. During the time I'm attempting to catch the druid, I will DoT up the enemy warlock, however he will drain my priest's mana well before I've even got the druid to 50% mana.

What could I be doing differently? The few times we've beat this team it's been because I managed to get a fear off on the druid, nuke her to half life and then deathcoil + silence her to finish her before she could put up the heal over times.

 

Persian

You're using drain mana, but is your holy priest? (I'm sure he/she is, but still).

It's a difficult situation. When you focus on the druid, is your partner (holy priest) attacking the lock, or simply following you around and dispelling/healing?

Is the opponent warlock a UA lock, making it dangerous for your holy priest to negate his DoTs with dispells?

If it's not a UA lock, your holy priest can probably keep you two alive while you pressure the druid into no mana. A warlock's drain mana isn't nearly as effective as mana burn + another warlock's drain mana. In between dispells, your priest can spam mana burn, and once the druid's at no mana, the lock can't do much aside from fear (and give a healthstone prior to the fight) to get you guys off the druid.

After that, should be an easy kill.

If their warlock does have UA and you can't more-or-less ignore him...um...(words).

Edit: Oh, and you've got the felhunter out to eat the druid's HoTs and whatnot, right?

 

Kcolraw

I know gear switching is getting removed next patch, but right now your priest probably need to switch in a pve/regen set for these type of matchups. My druid does.

 

Celandro

Have you tried both of you drain the warlock's mana while fearing the druid if they get close (and keeping felhunter on the druid as well)? I dont see how warlock + priest can lose to warlock + druid in a straight mana drain war.

 

s[orc]ery

Simply put, stack manaburn/manadrain/dots on the lock. Use your initial spelllock on him when he tries to drain mana, wait 9 seconds for the shadow school silence to wear off, then fear him over and over until spelllock is up again and keep the mana drains on.

Put tongues on the druid and try to stay out of range of him, if he's playing defensively like you said he would be further back anyway, if not use your fears on him instead.

At that point they will have effectively 0 dps, and you win by attrition.

Also if your priest has good awareness, mass dispelling hots when they build up.

 

◊ Acustar

We ran into this on my spriest/lock team more than once, lost the first one due to focusing on the healer. After that we just drained the lock before he could drain me and just kept dpsing him down and eventually won.

 

DecimusGarona

What he said, basically just drain the warlock dry of mana, the only thing he can do at that point is lifetap, and if you keep draining him he won't be able to get off more than one spell at a time before having to lifetap again. Also, make sure to spam dispel the warlock at the beginning to remove fel armor, that isn't something you want to have to deal with.

 

tristantio

Thanks for the ideas. The main problem with the druid was also that in bear form my drain mana doesn't drain any of his mana, and as soon as I'd begin to channel drain mana he'd switch into it (but run out of fear range still).

I hadn't really thought about doing drain mana to the warlock since he can lifetap for more mana, however what I failed to consider was the global cooldown he'd be using up on each of those lifetaps. I think spamming drain mana/mana burn on the warlock is just the solution I needed.

 

Morphyous

Get rid of his Fel armor, Mana burn whatever you can.

 

Zure

I play on a lock/druid team myself.

Ironically, disc priest + lock is the team we fear the most on an intellectual level. We lose a lot of games to poor execution or gear disparities, but overall we feel our combo gives us a fighting chance against virtually every duo except this, for the exact reason given above.

Double mana burn runs our lock bone dry of mana within the first 20 seconds of the game with no real way to recover the mana for any appreciable amount of time... we can't play attrition;
SL + healthstone + spellstone + preemptive healing makes CCing the healer and playing for the gib almost impossible... we can't play offensively;
Offensive and defense dispel frustrates both our dps and our healing;
Tons of buffs and debuffs neutralizes devour magic; etc. etc.

And just as a kick in the teeth, the warlock on this team starts the match with 140 shadow resist.

 

Opioid

Curse of Tongues seems counterintuitive, but its right on. Locks are boned against it, druid can ignore it and take the healficiency loss or keep removing it from both of them for 8% base mana cost vs. the 110 mana to cast it and druid's always gonna lose that mana war. (Assuming around 7000 warlock mana, a low baseline guess, its only around 1.5% of the locks mana for each curse, which means it takes more than 5 curses to match the loss for one druid decurse)

 

ric

This will be an endurance match basically; remember to rebuff Fel Armor should the felhunter be stuck on your priest instead of yourself.

Also its prudent always create a spellstone at start, since it can be swapped out for resilience wand if its a melee team. What would work most is have cot on the warlock (so you can spellock UA), and have your priest spam mana burn and drain mana on the warlock while you fear + dot the druid. remember to watch out for innervate and dispel it asap (felhunter dispel wont work because a smart druid will force an autodispel with a useless thorns)

 

Optimized

Similar to the original poster my team of Siphon Life/SL Warlock and Frost Mage finds druid/warlock to be by far our toughest matchup. CC'ing the druid seems nearly impossible with him running around and the mage has difficulty keeping him slowed with shifting. The druid seems to be able to keep both of them up without ever becoming susceptible to counterspell/spell lock, with effecient instant cast hots. Anyone have any advice? I'v recently picked up curse of exhaustion just for this matchup as it was giving us so many problems, so we could try to contain the druid.

 

snakedance

It's worth pointing out that this has a dual benefit in winning the mana war. Druids can only decurse in caster form, which opens them up to Mana drains/burns for at least a GCD - and when they shift out of those, they lose yet more mana and time. Keeping Tongues on the warlock is one form of pressure, but it might even be worthwhile to keep Agony on the druid for a little extra nudge to keep him decursing.

 

• Zyla

Shifting to bear over and over again to avoid mana burning is almost counter productive. If you force it, You've still burned an effective 800 or so mana. Its the right move but you're still giving up tons of mana to block the burn. But yes, the key is to burn the lock down to nothing and you'll find he helps you with damaging him in order to do anything. Try to get some drains on the druid and at least force him to shift.

We don't use words like that...St. Louise is listening!

 

tizoxin

i think a lot of people here are missing the point. he's talking about mirror matches of soul link/siphon life warlock + healer (priest) vs. soul link/siphon + priest. UA should not be in any of the answers here.

with that keep cot on the other warlock. slower fears means you'll be able to fear him before he fears you, you wont need too many heals generally becasue this is a low dps build that relies on outlasting as a strategy.

a good strategy i can think of (at least now since yo ucan still gear swap) is to regem all of your season 1 gear that you may not be using any more for spell penetration and kill their felhunter.

if you cannot afford that, socket whatever gear you are not using that still has high stam with enough penetration so that you can land a curse of shadow on the opposing felhunter initially. there are two variants of soul link/siphon life 27/34 or 23/38. 27/34 picks up 2/5 in Shadow Mastery and empowered corruption over demonic resilience and 1/3 in mana feed. if your are ble to land that curse of shadow easily, you can mana drain the opposing felhunter's mana very easily, and since they did not pick up 1/3 in mana feed, it will be more or less useless the rest of the game, since it will not have the mana to spell lock and devour magic.

it would be good to note here that gems matter a lot. soul link siphon life is the lowest dps, but highest survivability. going for an excess of 13k health is probably not your best best. stick to high 11's or mid 12 k at tops and stack some additional spell damage on your gear (changing out +12 stams for glowing nightseye is a good idea). be versatile with your gear!

i dont believe spellstone is really necessary in this matchup, soul link warlock vs soul link warlock dps is low enough that you will not be bursted down anytime soon since siphon life/shadow ward and drain life can regen most of what you lose.

 

s[orc]ery

Spellstone is quite possibly the best thing we have!

Although the point is taken, Spellstone has the potential of removing 3 dots+ other debuffs instantly at no mana cost. If you're trying to win a mana-war it is awesome. I use it every time i 1v1 another lock and win the majority of the time.

It is also an invaluable counter to silencing effects, Spellstone+Fear and they're finished, as well as magical snares like Frostbite/Mindflay.

Against a Shadowpriest/Warlock team, spellstone mitigates almost all of their damage.

 

tristantio

I always create and equip a spellstone at the start of a match. When it's timer is down, or it's a team that doesn't have anything to use it on (rare) I simply re-equip my wand for the stats.

 

Narugh

You are confused how base mana works, it is not with your gear on. At level 70 remove curse costs 189 mana for a druid.

 

dunno

I actually believe this is the key. I run a paladin-warlock combination and when we come up against a druid-warlock I leave my pally buddy to run around the arena while I dot the druid up. When he pops out of cat form I try to catch him with a fear and then mana drain for (hopefully) 5 seconds of uninterrupted cast. I also try and keep the other warlock dotted up. Nuke his pet down when they're in trouble. That will give your healer opportunities to drink up. There is a point when both the druid and the warlock are low on hp, and that is when you dish out the deathcoil + silence + aoe fear (if you're affliction) and hope thats enough time to finish the druid off. Don't forget to devour their innervate if the fight is extended.

My 2v2 team team played 4 games today and lost all 4 to a shaman-affliction warlock combination. Grounding totem+ nature's guardian prevented me from finishing either of them off; my paladin partner did not have such luxury.

 

tizoxin

Spellstone is pretty useful in certain situations, but I honestly just dont find that much of a use for it in arenas. Against a shadow priest/warlock setup, the warlock is usually specc'd for UA, so spellstone would kill you, since it triggers UA. Spellstone is good against spriests and ice mages in 1v1 maybe at best. I usually equip it in BG's because its great to have in that situation.

If you have a paladin it SHOULD be a little bit easier to catch the druid, by using a HoJ or judging the druid every now and then. I also find that spamming coex can be useful, as they have to shapeshift out in order to get out of the form, if you can get close enough a coex + deathcoil lead up to a fear can be very good because it will keep them in caster form, allowing you to do 'more damage', since when they swap back into animal form to excape you will have done a larger amount of damage (since its percentage based if I'm not mistaken).

 

• Zyla

Why would you bother with CoEx as lock pally? It really doesn't matter how far away the druid is except to get out of HoJ/Howl Range. The felpuppie should be locked on the druid and annoying the shit out of them.

We don't use words like that...St. Louise is listening!

 

glick

You can usually find a window to use it versus shadow priest & warlock teams. Whether it's during the opening or right after the first UA wears off. It's infinitely more useful than your wand. It's also really nice for shadow priest & rogue teams, although they're not nearly as popular. If you can remove 2 or 3 spells with it at once at any point, then it's worth using.

 

Herrera

Mindflay is a debuff that cannot be dispelled, unlike drain life/mana. Are you sure Spellstone removes it?

 

s[orc]ery

I would usually spelllock any shadow spell a warlock tries to cast, but if by some luck he gets UA on me, i simply Shadow Ward and eat the UA, then devour magic the silencing effect. Beats taking all those dots. Soullink and master demonologist also mitigates a good chunk of the UA damage.


I stand corrected on that, but yes i use it to counter nova-lance combos.

edit: It was dispellable at one point!