[2v2] Spriest/Lock vs Rogue teams.

Strifen · 10/02/07, 2:47 PM

Recently I have been doing 2v2 with my priest. The set up is myself, the shadow priest specced 14/0/47 and the warlock specced affliction. So far we've gotten a 2k rating, with the bread and butter teams taking us up there being healer/warrior combos. However, nearly every single one of our losses have been due to rogue teams. What happens is the rogue gets a jump on me, pretty much locks me down quickly and just tears me up. I cant do anything to the rogue and just get burst down. Any advice on how to deal with rogue teams with our set up ? If it's rogue vs healer we usually end up going for the healer because the rogue will just cloak. Should we force a fast cloak on the rogues part and then go for him ? Maybe have the warlock single target fear him off of me ? I'm at a loss of ideas on how to handle this set up, but I guess it's just their rock vs our scissors.

Any ideas on how to deal with rogue teams in 2v2 with my set up ?

I'm sitting at 300 resil and 11k hp buffed. Warlock is around 13k hp buffed and 300 resil too.

Reubarb · 10/02/07, 3:00 PM

On my rogue, paired with a frost mage we usually have no problem with S. Priest/Warlock combos.

The toughest fight I can remember was when the S. Priest just went out of shadow form and healed himself. After that I switched to killing the warlock and shivving wound poison because he was receiving weak heals now. At that point, I would recommend while trying to keep the warlock alive, throwing in any mana burns you can. The warlock can dispose of the frost mage with ease.

Honestly, I can't remember losing to a warlock/s. priest team, Rogue + x is just your anti arena team. Us rogues have a very easy time against shadow priests and only a slightly harder time against warlocks.

Ozzmar · 10/02/07, 3:01 PM

Well, for starters, stay away from your partner. The absolute worst thing you can do is stand near one another and get double Blade Flurried.

Assuming you're doing everything you can to spot them first (Felhunter with Paranoia, moving to keep your field of vision maximized), they'll probably open with a Cheap Shot. Trinket out of the stun and Scream, forcing one (hopefully both) of them to burn his/her trinket or WotF. Basically, do everything you can to get them to burn all their cooldowns right away. Rogues are extremely dependent on their cooldowns to beat anyone, so constantly fearing and DoTing is vital.

Focus on burning their cooldowns first, then kill them.

Tower · 10/02/07, 3:03 PM

I'll assume neither of you are human. It's going to be an uphill battle no matter what, but stay mounted at the start and try to delay the initial onslaught as long as possible, particularly until the see invisible buff pops up, making the rogue blow cooldowns to close in range is your only chance. You should be doing everything you can to stay at max distance of the rogue, if you can't last until the buff pops up at least do your best to separate him from his teammate.

Mind Control is poor mans death coil....

Benjamin · 10/02/07, 3:08 PM

Rogues have always been the bane of Spreist/Lock teams, there really isn't much advice to give other than to pray you don't fight teams with rogues too often. If you do find yourself queueing against a lot of rogue teams, switch your team setup to Spriest+Rogue instead of Spriest+lock.

Similarly, Frost Mages are generally the bane of Spriest+Rogue, if you're fighting a lot of Frost mages, run Spriest+Lock.

As your rating gets higher, you'll probably find that Spriest+Lock is a better team to run in general, as teams who are extremely well geared throw more of a wrench in the Spriest/Rogue strategy than the Spriest/Lock strategy. I have a 2v2 with a similar makeup, we've bounced between 1700-1900 most of the season. When we're closer to 1700, Spriest+Rogue is definitely the better team, but as we get close to 1900, we start losing a lot of matches where we're bringing our focus target down to 5-10%, but not quite finishing him. Around 1900, the Spriest/Lock team starts to do better, mainly because of the prevelance of draintank locks at this rating in my battlegroup -- UA removing the healer's option to cleanse is extremely helpful.

YMMV, but those are my experiences with it.

Benjamin · 10/02/07, 3:25 PM

Also on the topic of Spriest/Rogue 2v2, I posted this on Shadowpriest.com today:

Shadowpriest/Rogue is a lot of fun in 2v2, and at least on my battlegroup, very uncommon. The biggest hiccups you'll run into are resists, the typical strategy is to basically sick the rogue on whatever target is most threatening to the priest, and CCing the other target while you burn that target down. If you get resists on your silence or fear, or you're fighting a team that's both Undead, it can turn a win into a loss pretty easily. In the same vein, fighting teams with Orc warriors is almost always going to be problematic, since they resist so many stuns that a rogue can't control them very well. Because of these mismatches, our rating can go up or down quite a bit in a given week, we started this week at 1900, but ended up down at 1700... but of course, this can go both ways.

If I had to give one piece of advice about the requirements for the team, it would be this: the spriest NEEDS to have some pretty decent defensive gear before the combo becomes viable. The combo relies on killing someone before the spriest goes down, so be sure to focus gearing for stam/resil, not +dmg! The spriest's real role in this team is as a tank, CC, and dispeller. The rogue's main jobs are to stun and control their target as much as possible, and keep Wound Poison and Crippling poison up as much as possible. Focus on your control, and the DPS will be there.

Here's some basic strategy tips against common setups:

Warrior/Paladin:
Their Expected Target: Priest
Sick the Rogue on the warrior, the Spriest's main job is to keep dots on the warrior, and apply CC to the Paladin. Apply CC early so that the Paladin falls behind on healing, and is forced to bubble -- if the Pally is Silenced or Blinded with the warrior <50% HP, expect the bubble and have a MD + CC ready to prevent more than one heal going off, and hit the warrior with every thing you've got. If you don't kill the warrior here, the match is over and you lose.

Warrior/Druid:
Their Expected Target: Varies
Similar to Warrior/Paladin in general, Warrior should be your first FF target. Spriest should get a silence off on the druid ASAP, don't let him get a cyclone off on the rogue (this will likely be his first move). While you've got the silence up, do what you can to pull the warrior out of the Druid's LOS -- the idea here is to take as much HP from the Warrior as you can before the Druid can get a whole round of HOTs on him. Apply your other CCs while you work the warrior, again doing what you can to break LOS between the warrior and druid. If the rogue is going to go for a blind, be sure to dispel the druid a couple times to get rid of Abolish Poison.

If you find yourselves beating on a warrior that's back to nearly full HP and HoTted up, your last chance at victory is to switch targets to the druid. Before you make the switch, throw two dispels at the warrior and refresh your dots, then have the rogue sprint to the druid. Dot the druid up, use Mindflay to slow him down if he's slipping away from the rogue, and watch both targets' health carefully. If the druid has been hotting and healing the warrior, focus on finishing the druid. If he's focusing on himself, don't be afraid to fear him and take a last shot at killing the warrior.

Also note that the strategy for fighting Rogue/Druid is nearly identical to this.

Rogue/Holy Priest:
Their Expected Target: Rogue
Sick your rogue on their rogue, CC their Healer -- similar to other 1healer/1DPS teams. If they're undead and you're not, this is going to be a rough match. Even if your rogue doesn't have MoD, it's usually worth trying to get a sap off in this matchup to get the priest to burn his trinket, making him vulnerable to fear early on. Try to time your Silence after your rogue lands a 5-point Kidney, this is the window of time that he'll be doing the most damage.

Paladin/Warlock:
Their Expected Target: None in particular, they'll try to outlast you.
Rogue on the lock, who will likely be soul link. The rogue's primary job here is to ensure that the warlock can't get a fear off. Don't try to burst down either member of this team, you simply won't be able to pull it off on a draintank lock. Instead, focus on Dispelling the lock's dots (Draintank locks don't have UA, so no worries here), and Manaburning the Paladin. Drop shadowform early and use ProM in this matchup; there's no physical damage coming in, and their lock will almost certainly be dotting both of you. Use your shadowfiend early, and on the Paladin, not the warlock, to ensure that you get as much mana back from it as you can. If the warlock does manage to fear the rogue, dispelling him is priority number one. Since you'll be doing a lot of Dispel/ProM in this fight, you should have ample opportunity to keep in a prime position -- outside of the warlock's 20 yard fear range, and close enough to the Paladin to manaburn him.

Shadowpriest/Warlock:
Their Expected Target: Spriest
Warlocks in this setup will nearly always be affliction, this match will be won or lost based on whether or not he gets off a UA on you. The rogue should be on the Lock, and your initial Silence/Fear should be on the Spriest, Silencing as soon as possible and applying your dots. You want him to be playing catchup, faced with the grim choice of either dispelling your dots and not applying his own, or applying his own dots and not dispelling yours after the silence wears off. After you've got your dots up and you've lived through the spriest's silence, throw a MB on the Lock, refresh your SWP, and then drop shadowform and start using ProM and Renew. Once you've got ProM and renew up, dispel dispel dispel. As usual, if at any time in this sequence your rogue catches a fear, your job#1 is to dispel it.

Teams You'll Hate:
Frostmage/Draintank Lock. Simply impossible to win if they're competent.
Frostmage/Spriest. CS + Silence will prevent you from giving your rogue the dispels he needs to not get annihilated by the Frostmage.
Frostmagex2: No way you're going to kill one before they destroy your rogue.

Basically, if you see a frostmage on their team, you're going to have a tough match. Pray that he'll break LOS with his partner, and be sure to LOS him as much as you can.

Teams You'll Love:
Resto Shaman + Whatever. Dispel Earth Shield, sick the rogue on the Shaman, and whack the Poison cleansing totem, you've got a dead shaman in 15s or less no matter what he does.
Enhancement Shaman + Whatever or Ret Paladin + Whatever. Kite kite kite, let your rogue + your dots kill their partner. GG.

I should probably just make a thread about this, but yeah -- Hope this helps!

It might be useful to others reading this thread. If some of what we're doing isn't a good idea, I'd like to know that also!

drole · 10/03/07, 2:45 PM

First of all; if his partner isn't stealthed go get him, now! the last thing you want is sap so do anything to avoid it.

Rogue + healer

Cover each others asses. MC and fear are your best assets (PROTECT FROM DISPELL!). If you can stay alive until the rogue has blown his cooldowns without dropping too low odds are starting to stack in your favour! if the healer is druid things become tough though.

Rogue + Dps/CC

No real trick here. Dot anything in sight to force defensive use of cooldowns (this includes putting SL on ANYTHING). Kite frostmages. Drop shadowform if need be.