I'm playing competitive (Good pvp spec, right gear, sockets, etc) in the 2v2 bracket with a resto druid friend of mine. I would say certianly that my PvP gear is where it needs to be- My armory sports my raiding set but I have 5/5 merc glad and a pretty good weapon and all of the other gizmoz. My partner is a fairly decently geared and pretty skilled player with gear that isn't amazing but certianly isn't terrible zero skill scrub crap either.

I can't break about about 1720 in 2v2 and it's causing me concern. All of our wins are coupled with losses and almost all of these losses are based around:

Warlocks
Mace Rogues
Mace Warriors

Is this just a problem with not having enough glad gear on my healer's part? I feel like my gear (And my decent skills? Eh) should be able to push above what is already a decently inflated bracket- but then i'm locked down continuously by druids or helpless as a mace rogue chews my partner up. Mace warriors are even worse, and surprisingly as a warrior i am thankful for their incoming nerf.

How do i play more defensively with all this nice gear to keep my partner from exploding into light?

How in the world is a rogue staying on your partner? You hamstring the rogue, your partner gets away. A rogue should barely be able to stay on a druid 1v1, let alone with a warrior intercepting him and hamstringing him. And then once the druid is away from the rogue, you get to have fun with cyclone and roots.

Druid/War should cause a rogue fits.

You need to explain in greater detail how these matches are unfolding. Give specific 2v2 makeups, what you do, and what they do, and where it goes wrong.

I can only speak from the rogue perspective here, but when a warrior sticks on me with hamstring and intercept they can really lock me down and keep me away from their healer. Granted I don't arena as mace spec(41/20 mutilate) and I can see how a couple inopportune mace stuns on your druid can throw a wrench in your game, but a druid should be able to get away from the rogue if the warrior is on the rogue keeping him snared. Hell, just spam hamstring if you have to. We can only get out of one hamstring with imp sprint, but that is what intercept is for.

edit: Are your problems with the mace rogue teams when they have a healer or a team like a frost mage/rogue or lock/rogue?

It could be one of those rogue/shadow priest, or rogue/warlock teams. Those are capable enough to burst down a druid.

Contrary to popular opinion, not all druids can kite like Hafu

I hope this post doesn't come across the wrong way because I've actually fought your team twice before and your druid just stood there trying to heal you. We were a Rogue + Ret Paladin group, so while I was Maces at the time it wasn't my skill that was locking your Druid down, he just wasn't moving.

One of the fights was in Nagrand, and we fought down by one of the ramps and for some reason your druid was healing you from down there, not from on the bridge which meant one of us would have had to run all the way up top to get him.

For what it's worth, you won both games because we were idiots, but your Druid who should be almost impossible for me to contain made it very, very easy for us.

You hit like a truck I seem to remember (of course a BoP would have solved that problem, but let's just say my partner and I have our own issues to work on), but if you get your partner to stop treating the Arena like he's raid healing, you'll climb the ladder very quickly.

Good luck, I hope to see you around.

I play with a priest 2:2 and we made the following observations:

a) if you play against a rogue, the rogue will always try to stick on the healer. Your healer needs to outlive the CD spam the rogue will commit in order to stick to him and to escape your snares. Keep pressure on him, debuff him as good as you can and check whether you can disarm him. If you can, disarming him twice is almost an autowin. Once he is out of cooldowns he won't be able to stand up to you toe to toe and you will be able to keep him snared indefinitely, preventing him from going for your healer.

b) your healer needs a certain hardiness, he isn't a paladin oder shaman that can tank the damage while healing himself. If your healer is too soft, this will stop your progress imho unless he plays really amazing. When we started, there was absolutely nothing I could do from preventing a bloodlusted windfuried warrior from tearing up my partner. Nowadays he can tank a lot better, buying the seconds that make or break the game.

c) we tend to loose a lot against druid teams that are able to kite me almost indefinitely through roots/cyclone spam and using travel form when appropriate. (and I do have a skillherald).

d) warlocks are probably your greatest problem since you cannot dispel the majority of the damage done by the lock. I don't want to whine, but warlocks are a problem for almost every team not sporting one :P

A poorly geared druid is going to have a hell of a time getting away from a skilled (and geared) rogue. I agree that Hamstring helps, but the rogue can trinket or CloS out, sprint, blind, and stun lock. Without a large amount of resilience the druid can be stun locked to death. It is an issue I was struggling with at ~150 resilience last week paired with a rogue. Other rogues that we couldn't catch in stealth and sap would rock me, straight through barkskin, trying to shift bear and bash, cyclone, root, charge away, anything I could do to get away and start kiting. You can last pretty well in bear, but a good rogue hits expose armor, blows his timers and can get me locked down to the point where I have no options. At 1700+ is where I keep running into that problem, and it's always rogues with 5-6 slots with arena gear that do it to me and we go on some pretty epic losing streaks. Not having the 4 piece set bonus as a druid is absolutely huge for kiting as well. He needs to get it quickly.

As for what you can do to get out of the 1700 rating, have your druid PvP like crazy in normal BGs to load up on the epic items. You would be surprised at how large of a difference that makes. It will take you a while, but there is nothing you can do when you have an undergeared druid with you except make that druid well-geared. I gathered up around 90 resilience since last week between new PvP gear and swapping in my old S1 feral chest, boots, and belt over raid epics and I can already see a pretty big difference in BGs (I figured the feral gear had some healing, so it wouldn't kill me to use it). You'll probably just have to buckle down and accept the 1700 rating as where you will have to be until you get your druid some gear. It's what we've come to accept on my teams with all our undergeared players.

When people talk about what does and does not work in arenas, I find they generally leave the gear discussion out of it for some reason. Gear can make every bit as big a difference as class composition, skill, or tactics (and gear is often used as a basis in tactics for figuring out which player to focus fire). Just keep that in mind as you push onward and you will start to see improvement.

This is the key right here. Honestly I can break away from rogues easily enough as is with my warrior helping unless their partner can help them out (rogue+druid makes this harder for instance), and the only cripple breaks I have are trinket and stoneform. After the opener if he gets one, and POSSIBLY after he spams his cooldowns to catch your druid, that rogue should never be in melee range of your partner again. The only test is whether you can survive that opener.

To help things along have him stealthed at the start and you go after their healer. The rogue will have to open on you eventually or watch you kill their partner. Once they attack you hamstring and beat down on the rogue while your druid heals from max range if possible so the rogue has to blow cooldowns to even think about attacking your druid.

Gear does make a difference, but it's not the only thing stopping his 1720 team from becoming a 2100 team.

From playing my alt Rogue (only 1800-2000'ish ratings playing with an SL Lock, Holy Priest, or Frost Mage), Druid / Warrior teams are one of my biggest annoyances. Are you and the Druid communicating well? The teams with the more slippery Druids make sure to use cooldowns wisely. Don't intercept the rogue right after he's dropped a kidney shot; wait until the kidney shot is about to end to give your Druid a little extra time to establish room.

It sounds like your druid just needs to get used to being more mobile. Get him to spend more time in travel form and try to have him heal with instants as much as possible.

You dont have a pvp trink on .
Get some movies from warcraftmovies.com and see how it is done.
Helps alot.

I dont know how long you have been playing together but warrior/druid is one of the best combos there is. Locks might give you problems, however UA locks are squishy and SL/SL locks you should just kill their pets. If your partner is getting burst down constantly then gear is the issue.

As a rogue the only way i can see a rogue being on the druid continuously is if he gets the daze effect (via blade twisting). Against a rogue remind your druid to keep Abolish poison on you and him. In all seriousness if your druid is running around a pillar and the rogue is going for him just pick off the rogue and stand in one spot and wait, though I would recommend waiting for the rogue when he is out of los from his healer.

In my history of doing annoying arenas, though not so much any more, is that the warrior will go for the rogue and hamstring him, then when he uses one of his items/abilities to get out of it you piercing howl. Mace stun down have its own dr and you should remember that. It may sound crazy but one of the most game crucial things to do is to nature swiftness cyclone the rogue after he has used his pvp trinket when he uses his cool downs. Ex: you have the warrior fear the rogue and he uses his cds and then pops adrenaline rush/flurry/racials. Though I would only recommend doing this if you can actually notice he has wasted them.

Last thing which may be given for your partner and you, remember to keep paladins away from your druid. This is because they can put seal of justice/judge it and your druid will not be able to run. Thus limiting the kiting ability of your druid and the paladin will be able to heal the rogue to a much higher extent then before now that the rogue can keep the druid in a certain area successfully. Make sure like stated before that your druid not only looks at the videos of these other amazing druid, but also look at their specs and how they use the key things such as feral charge to interrupt spell casts, and leaving the other talents that would otherwise be useless in arena healing as a druid for 2v2.

A lot of my tips that are not on the rogue class are from speculation and experiences only. and for rogue blade twisting (daze effect) is assuming that they are combat spec.

Typically the rogue will CloS the first roots(typically from nature's grasp, used because it's the shortest timer), sprint the second set(removing the hamstring from the warrior), will trinket the first cyclone and try to kick the second. In the best case scenario you the rogue then gouges on feral charge and dodges the ensuing bash. If any of those break down, the druid gets away. Blind is a non-issue thanks to Abolish(assuming the rogue isn't partnered with a priest).

The easiest way to deal with it is to have your druid wait till the rogue reveals himself, then root -> cyclone him to bait the trinket. Then, coordinate an intercept -> hamstring and the rogue will never get back on the druid and will have to turn around and face the warrior. That means the druid can go into control mode on the other player in the 2v2(cyclone, cyclone, feral charge, bash, triplestack lifebloom + rejuv on you, cyclone, cyclone, feral charge, root) while you dismantle whatever is left.

this information on shutting down rogues is pretty helpful. I've been slightly more frustrated against warrior paladin and warrior shaman teams than anything else- especiallly with mace warriors it's a lot of trouble. Should she be dropping into bear form? Should I try to intervene MS? Is that possible?

A lot of the warrior paladin matches i try to stick to the paladin and hamstring the warrior, he eats freedom, i beat on the paladin and the warrior just kills her. I guess this is classified as a gear issue.

Also, i logged off in PvP gear to reflect what i actually wear when i go outside. Hopefully it'll update soon... I have all of the honor gear, all of the glad gear except the 2hd, reallly not illogical stuff. Morphia is also logged off in PvE gear.

While blessing of freedom on the enemy warrior along with him constantly hamstringing your druid may make it hard for your druid to kite, I definitely think that your druid needs to play with a lot more kiting if what the above poster mentioned is true (your druid trying to stand there and out heal damage).

If the warrior is solely focusing on your druid then that means all she has to do is kite and heal herself, giving you time to beat on the paladin as needed to wear down their mana. Also if you can time it well your druid should be able to cyclone as you intercept the enemy warrior, giving her 6 more seconds to get distance and LOS from the enemy warrior, and cyclone isn't dispellable by the paladin like root is.

Edit: Not to mention your druid can go into bear form, bash the enemy warrior, and proceed to kite again. As soon as the enemy warrior switches to try to focus you instead of your druid, your druid will have time to drink and heal you.

As druid/warlock, I always start in stealth, preferrably not very close to my teammate. I have humanoid tracking up. As soon as the gates open, I call Tracking X (0-2). Tracking 1 means we have a rogue/druid or possibly a mage in invis/stealth. We stick the pet on the visible as anytime the pet is not doing something is a waste and the lock starts putting up dots. As a warrior, charge in and get to work. Make them come out og stealth. When they open up on you probably with CS your rogue can open up on them with pounce. Pounce, shred, back off. You can even skip the shred as a resto druid doesn't hit for a ton. I just consider it a free hit. Once druid has gotten 20 yards from the rogue, he can start some hots/abolish/root work. Maybe if he roots the rogue near his healer you get some sweeping strikes action. Really, though, the rogue is going to have to start popping CDs. He can either vanish and sneak up again (your druid can break combat and restealth) or he can sprint at the druid. Personally, I go bearform. That's 11-12k hp and 13-14k armor to worth through. When the druid wants out, he calls switch. He feral charges the healer and you intercept/hamstring the rogue. Now he's at range from the rogue and the rogue has no sprint. If your druid gets caught with an opener (CS -> massive CDs -> KS), he needs to barkskin immediately and then trinket the KS (not the CS). A rogue shouldn't be able to kill him in 2 second CS. Now you intercept, hamstring while he runs for space.

If the rogue is not an UD, remember you can always fear him. Warrior fear is uncleansable I beleive. That's 8 seconds to create space. Demo shout on rogues works well as they don't have self AP buffs. TC isn't important as auto-attack is not really as dangerous as the specials.

Rooting a warrior/rogue behind a pillar or with a rank 1 FF on them makes it more difficult to cleanse/freedom.

Quick summary:

*Use feral charge as a way to create distance. This should be your #1 escape tool due to the short cooldown and reliability (supresses snares).

*Run through the opponent, mouse turn, then bash to avoid parry/dodge.

*Go bear and move out of LoS, THEN nature's grasp to avoid cleanse/dispel.

*Call for a hamstring before you travel form away if it is feasible.

*Most importantly, keep moving whenever possible to keep maximum distance between you and melee opponents before they even go for you; keep within range of a line of sight block when enemy casters/hunters/mana burners are at issue. You should only be standing still to cast cyclone or roots if any opponent is even considering targeting you.

You should enter every matchup with an idea of your optimal positioning, and always work to re-establish that when you can. Examples:


Opposing Healer



Opposing dps.........................................Druid
Warrior.................................................PILLAR

To allow heals and cyclones while keeping as far away as possible from the threatening target

or


Opposing DPS
...............................Opposing healer
..................................Warrior
..................................................................................PIL LAR
.................................................................................Drui d

To keep max distance from your opponent while the warrior beats on the healer with MS up to win a mana war.

Hello-this is my first post on these boards and felt inclined to respond to this post because me and my holy pally 2v2 encountered a war/resto druid combo last week and it was honestly the first team that I knew we would never beat (we are in the 1700s now so I guess that is about right).

As the people posting above have mentioned, there's no way a rogue should be giving you guys trouble-and I even have BoF at my disposal, but it still doesn't matter.

At least in our case, I have no choice but to jump the druid and attempt to take him down as the war was a) g'd up from the feet up and b) rogues certainly don't have mitigation on their side in that matchup

After the initial jump the druid immediately goes into kite mode, I'm ready for this and spam shiv + wait for the hamstring so I can sprint out of it with a timed HoJ on the warrior-however, the thing to remember is that you guys aren't the ones under pressure here, at least not as much as us. The rogue/pal team is already at a disadvantage as they need to get the druid down before the rogue's CDs are used up. On top of that, we have to hope that the HoJ will actually hit-which seems to get resisted more often than it sticks. If it doesn't hit and I sprint anyways to try and finish the job I just get charged by either the warrior or the druid himself. Any time the druid drops below 50% I would receive a coordinated intercept and feral charge which allowed the druid to easily heal back to full and take me out of the match.

The thing to remember about rogues is simply not to panic-if your druid can stay alive for about 45 seconds then they are pretty much out of cooldowns at that point and there is nothing else they can do to catch up. While my team setup is a bit off the beaten path, hopefully I've helped you in frustrating me and rogues like me even more in the future

OK

I'd like to add that I am not logged out in my PvP gear, I am in my PvE gear, so the comments about needing to stack stamina I believe are void - I have about 9400 unbuffed. Yes I need more resilience, but I'm working on that.

The comment about standing still and just healing would be the first 1-2 weeks I started; I had never done arena before on my druid, or any sort of 1v1/2v2.

Really the major issue I have is Mace Warriors, they always seem to get three stuns off on me nearly back to back and in that time it's easy for a geared one to beat me down, with or without, the help of his teammate.

The stamina sounds about right. What is your armor in bear form? And what is your resilience at currently?


Sounds more like bad luck if they are getting that much stuns off on you back to back, the warrior is probably as surprised as you are to get back to back mace stuns. The mace stuns have their own diminishing returns, and have a low proc rate. The proc rate is going to be lowered even more in the upcoming patch.

Armor is 14.3k in bear, and my resilience currently is 177.
So I keep hearing.

Is this a cry about nerfing mace stuns or are you legitimately seeking advice?

Originally it sounded as if your team was seeking advice based on your partner's posts, however you (the druid) seem to just be crying about mace stun instead of looking at what you're doing wrong.

On a 3.8 speed stormherald the mace spec proc chance is ~11%.
This means for 3 mace stuns in a row to occur is an .11^3 chance, or a .1331% chance of occuring (not even a 1% chance).

If you're hitting a "wall" at 1700 due to this triple mace spec stun occurrence, I find this to be completely unfeasible. Three mace stuns in a row is a fluke, not a regularity or a wall.

Edit: Also even if the warrior were to give you just a 2 second break of not being stunned, that's plenty of time for you to do something to change your situation during the fight.

Also I know you're probably going to say something to the effect of the mace stuns not being in direct succession, however lets throw up a 12 second time frame. Assuming perfect play and no lag on the part of the warrior he will have time to do (with the 1.5 sec global cooldown):
0.00: Mortal Strike + Auto Attack
1.5:Whirlwind
3.0:Hamstring
3.8:Auto Attack
4.5:Hamstring
6.0:Mortal Strike
7.5:Hamstring
7.6:Auto Attack
9.0:Hamstring
10.5:Hamstring
11.4:Auto attack
12:Mortal Strike

13 attacks on you, 11% of which should be mace stuns, meaning you should be stunned about one and a half times every 12 seconds.

While this is powerful, theres no way that being stunned for ~4.5 seconds and not stunned for 7.5 seconds is the reason you're losing.