I'm pretty noob at arena - but one thing that i have seen in videos which have really caught out PMR's in mirror matches, is that both the mage and the rogue nuke the other mage, and the priest gets ready for a mass dispel. As soon as iceblock hits mass dispel and burn him down.
Early on your priest may probably take a beating from the other rogue, which could prove problems for mass dispel, but if everyone uses instant CC's properly (fear, blind, nova) and just rush the opposing mage that seems to be a pretty good "shock" tactic.
I played about 70 games last week as PMR, and i think we won every mirror match. It seems you can run 2 different strats against the mirror match. The first was to sick the rogue on the mage, the mage controls the rogue, and your priest goes for mana burns on the priest, this basically comes down to which rogue vs mage matchup is won by which team. The priest that heals first loses the mana battle basically.
The other option is basically as you say, again rogue on the mage, your mage controls the rogue intially, but doesn't focus on it 100%. Then you call for a dps burst, and the priest tries to get Fear + any other CC in on the priest to stop healing (priest should fear first up on the enemy priest to burn fear ward at the start of the match, it's not worth dispelling through all his buffs just to get it off). This was the strat we went with mostly, because i was playing dwarf, and chastise is simply rediculous in that situation, Fear + Chastise + CS means that priest has no real chance to heal the mage, and then get off a Mass Dispell and the mage goes down pretty easily.
I've been having a fair amount of success running 48/0/13 Mute in a PMR so far. I have the Shard as a MH, so decided to pick up imp. ambush and have found the small burst potential to be rather effective. With 91% movement speed stealthed, depending on our match up I can sprint in for an easy sap (the speed inc. lets me get sap off before their client shows me on their screen) to try to lure a trinket.
Imp ambush comes in after a 5pt KS; this gives 10% Find Weakness+9% from the KS - I CB, vanish, ambush for a large spike in dmg.
Anecdotally, I've had enough initial success with this Mute build that I am seriously considering staying with it > Maces for now.
I've been having a fair amount of success running 48/0/13 Mute in a PMR so far. I have the Shard as a MH, so decided to pick up imp. ambush and have found the small burst potential to be rather effective. With 91% movement speed stealthed, depending on our match up I can sprint in for an easy sap (the speed inc. lets me get sap off before their client shows me on their screen) to try to lure a trinket.
Imp ambush comes in after a 5pt KS; this gives 10% Find Weakness+9% from the KS - I CB, vanish, ambush for a large spike in dmg.
Anecdotally, I've had enough initial success with this Mute build that I am seriously considering staying with it > Maces for now.
Unless CB =/= coldblood, what's the point of imp ambush, if the only time you use it is via cold blood.
This is my first season doing any sort of Arenas on a level of more then "just to get points". I have been running PMR since the start of this season and I am not a very big fan of the frost spec. So i've been playing as 34/27/0 (arc/fire), AR/prep rogue, and disp/holy priest. We focus on bursting teams and being I run around with about 1200dmg and 10k hp (i have like 420 resilience gear but i dont use it) with just over 200 resilience. We focus on bursting teams down and going from there. The only hard part of this setup is the mage, playing teams multiple times they know my spec and ALWAYS will focus on me. Yes, we get iceblock soon, but the hard part of this group is the mage. You have to be very cautious and communicate to your team exactly what is going on and they need to talk to you. POM/Pyro is a finisher, use it as one, you must be very smart about how to use this amazing weapon. The entire game the opposing team is scared of this and worries about this as their ultimate priority. I mean what can you do when ur warrior takes a 6k pyro followed by a 3k+ fireblast. This always puts teams who have played you on the defensive and puts teams you havent played raped before they start because of the mage spec plus the rogue doing crazy numbers.
Still working on tweaking this setup and I think iceblock will help a ton, Most all the games we have lost is because of me dying and just not able to get someone low enough to even use ap/pom on them. If we lose I generally have not even blown my trinkets. But all in all, I will find a balance for this setup and we are floating around 1.9k - 2k rated in BG9 with this setup. I plan to be well over 2k next week.
Imp ambush comes in after a 5pt KS; this gives 10% Find Weakness+9% from the KS - I CB, vanish, ambush for a large spike in dmg.
I'm curious, why do you go through all the trouble to CB->Ambush, wasting your only vanish? You're specced Mutilate, why not just Cold Blood Mutilate and save vanish for when you really need it?
You said you are using Shard, assuming your OH is something like S2 Shiv:
Base MH Damage (1600 AP): 202(Weapon) + 194(AP) = 396
Base OH Damage (1600 AP): (137(Weapon) + 194(AP)) / 2(OH Damage Penalty) = 166
So even using a fast OH like the S2 Shiv, the difference between a CB Mutilate and a CB Ambush is only ~200 Damage, while using Mutilate saves your vanish for when you really need it.
Any ideas what to do as PMR vs Hunter(mark) , SL and disc?
We met such team today, i think 15 times exacly same team. On the 1st few attempts we went straight for hunter which eventually would drop with good blind/fear/sheep assist but the problems started later on.
With bugged pain surpresion being casted while silenced it was getting insanly hard to get someone die on next few attempts and warlock being able to do whatever he wants, simply doing 1-2-3 and repeat fear rotation.
They ofcourse drained the priest, good (bad) thing that i wasnt drained becouse the fight wouldnt take so long.
We have tried going on priest, sheeping hunter/lock on rotation but dps from hunter with well timed silences / scatter and few fears from lock didnt go well.
Cant say my dmg was good either with smart lock banishing my pet / hunter multi pretty much taking away all my burst with shatter combos.
Just to mention we were equally geared in S2-S3.
Im thinking whether its good idea to stick on the warlock at the start, mana drain hunter and than silence/blind/fear the priest so lock will eventuall drop or doing it as we did on 1st few attempts with small change.
Go for hunter, leave priest pretty much alone and interrupt lock with fear/cs rotation.
Now little tip if u meet mirror setup. Usually its rogue going on ur mage and its really pain in the ass to do anything if he sticks to u and u have no help at the start. So what we do, rogue open with cs on me and i wait till its over, its either i get little help with fear or gouge on rogue. After that its quite easy kiting the rogue and/or sheeping him and locking down the priest/mage. Its vital to keep iceblock and all cds as long as possible and help your mage have some free space becouse your priest will get chain sheeped/feared/blinded so whoever waste their cds 1st is most likely to lose their game.
1 more question. Recently i swapped from 2pT4 + 3p of arena armor to 5p leaving me with shitloads of pushbacks limiting my kiting/burst abilities by a lot when facing Lock/Druid/xx and other combos with hunter for example.
Felpuppy/felguard/hunter pet simply makes my 2.5sec frostbolt casts 3.5s+ ;/ And whoever says icebarrier and cast, its doesnt last long as in PMR im focus quite often.
Alright, i got gladiator last season on 3v3 with druid lock warrior/rogue changing in and out for different combinations. Against priest mage rogue, just take your warrior out, its almost pointless to keep him in especially at the high arena ratings we are at. This is if you consistently fight the same or just multiple PMR teams all the time. Rogue warlock druid IS the 2nd best counter against this team. Your rogue stays on their mage and deadly throws every polymorph. Your warlocks dots and spams curse of tongues(right there, you just made their mage do absolutely nothing if hes trying to decurse the priest and himself) and your druids main focus is the rogue. Start near your lock, pounce rake maim, cyclone spam... if he pops his trinket, feral charge, wait it out, root, make him burn his cloak, fear. If your rogue is doing his job, the priest cant come to the rogues aid because hes too busy trying to get your rogue off the mage. If the priest leaves the mage and is intent on mana burning, make sure your warlock has a good lead on the rogue and lead the priest around a corner, therefore losing him from everything. Right now the rogue should have dots on him, the mage should be getting beaten to death(my rogue is always mutilate) and the priest is busy trying to fear/mana burn your considerably faster druid. If your warlock needs help because of shadowstep...yes this is a dilemma nowadays. you have to abolish off the cripp asap and feral charge him, wait 4 seconds, bash. now the priest has to choose what to do, he will go into defensive mode, where he burns most of his mana, the rogue has most likely burned his cooldowns since its a kill team, and your rogue is perfeclty fine destroying their mage... POSITIONING IS EVERYTHING... letting them sap your rogue or whatever is horrible and make sure your druid does not get focused, if he does, deathcoil/intervene disarm should save him and hopefully he has his battlemasters for when he gets counterspelled.. If you just want to demolish the team, and you KNOW its going to be PMR, you bring in 2 hunters and a paladin. Viper sting both of their casters and drop frost trap auras... bam, they have no mana, rogue cant move, they lose...good luck... pst if the pmr is good as the ones i fight, and ive fought ming before along with wataf and pugo, your gonna have to get a lil dirty and switch targets all the time and have your druid be VERY aggresive... Warrior warlock druid doesnt stand a chance imo, sorry if your the warrior :/
Good god, I really took in every detail of that eyesore.
It's a little hard to remove the warrior considering that, well, I am the warrior; my question was moreso directed at other warrior teams and if they have any underground techniques that turn the opposing PMR into three hamstrung Griffs. I don't need a step-by-step on how to remove myself from the situation.
The felguard's melee and cleave attacks together causes a good amount of spell pushback when put on a priest or mage. If the warlock also maintains CoT on that target, it effectively locks them down to casting nothing but instants. A felguard will cause a mage a lot of trouble, as its Avoidance ability gives it a 50% chance to resist AoE effects - that includes frost nova, which is one of the few ways a mage can get away from a felguard. It's very hard for a mage to cast polymorph when he has both CoT and a felguard damaging him causing spell pushback. Ice barrier might help a mage against spell pushback against a felhunter, but a felguard will do enough damage to drop the ice barrier in short order. Especially on a team without any defensive dispels to remove a mage's CC (ie if you use a druid or shaman healer yourself), the felguard will put a lot of pressure on the mage - just be sure to keep CoT up on all times on the mage as well.
I play the mage in a forsaken PMR team and just wanted to counter some of your assertions here. First of all, you can't keep CoT on any targets since a good mage will decurse it immediately. Secondly, Felguard damage is insignificant to a good geared mage, since Ice Barrier scales with spell damage and then there's resilience on top of that. Moreover, there's no need to waste frost nova on a felguard since Frostbite procs will mean it will be frozen anyway when it hits you, so you just wait for that to happen then move away. I simply let the Felguard freeze itself, then sheep the healer and help my rogue kill the lock. A warlock is very easy to kill when both me, my elemental and the rogue is focusing our big burst combos on him, especially when I counterspell anything from the shadow school (banish, drain life, fear, howl of terror which is not instacast except for Affliction specs).
The only troublesome warlock pet to get on me is a felhunter because that little guy can really interrupt my spellcasting with his counterspell, so whenever there's a felpuppy, our rogue just kills it off. If the lock is demonology-specced and quickly summons another, he kills that off, too. We are all forsaken though, so seduce is not a problem and we always kill the succubus if one is out.
How do you mitigate the incoming damage from a warlock when your rogue is on the felpuppy? I've found that the time my rogue is locked in on one is time that the warlock generally has carte blanche to go crazy on my team... and if I'm stuck in a CoT-Decurse duel with the warlock, and the rogue is on the pet... well... just wondering how you deal with the lock until the felpuppies die.
How do you mitigate the incoming damage from a warlock when your rogue is on the felpuppy? I've found that the time my rogue is locked in on one is time that the warlock generally has carte blanche to go crazy on my team... and if I'm stuck in a CoT-Decurse duel with the warlock, and the rogue is on the pet... well... just wondering how you deal with the lock until the felpuppies die.
Just stay away early on and let the rogue sneak over to the lock. Remember that pets have the stats of a newdinged lvl 62 or so. Ambush, backstab and autohit should kill it and after that its a free win.
Just stay away early on and let the rogue sneak over to the lock. Remember that pets have the stats of a newdinged lvl 62 or so. Ambush, backstab and autohit should kill it and after that its a free win.
RMP seems like the FOTM setup right now.. on Reckoning BG 45% of the top teams.. 2k+ are RMP.
Just stay away early on and let the rogue sneak over to the lock. Remember that pets have the stats of a newdinged lvl 62 or so. Ambush, backstab and autohit should kill it and after that its a free win.
Alright, I'll try to convince my rogue buddy to kill pets... he's always been leary of the idea, despite my constant urging to remove them from the equation. His idea is that killing the pet doesn't do anything unless we plan to outlast them, and I think that's one of the many factors keeping us locked down around 1650-1700.
How do you mitigate the incoming damage from a warlock when your rogue is on the felpuppy? I've found that the time my rogue is locked in on one is time that the warlock generally has carte blanche to go crazy on my team... and if I'm stuck in a CoT-Decurse duel with the warlock, and the rogue is on the pet... well... just wondering how you deal with the lock until the felpuppies die.
There is really no incoming damage under these conditions from the warlock and I'll explain why:
As the match begins, our rogue is in stealth and I am on the lock, the felhunter is either hitting me or our priest. Rogue just saps their healer then does a quick combo on the felhunter to kill it while I'm keeping the lock busy with sheep, counterspell or by using instant damage spells with my elemental hitting it. Most warlocks would try to banish my elemental at this point or cast either fear or howl of terror, so I save counterspell for that in order to lock down his shadow tree, then i can use some frostbolts or scorches to keep pressure on him. Our rogue (combat maces spec) can literally kill a felhunter in less than 5 seconds - they have very high spell resistance but are vulnerable to physical damage. After this, rogue uses sprint to run to the wounded warlock and use a burst combo along with a shatter combo from me to kill him off, while i'm focus-sheeping or focus-counterspelling their healer and our priest fears or mana burns their third player depending on what class they are.
I also use Grid and click2cast mods for decursing quickly anyone on my team without having to change my current target. Grid highlights any friendly units who are afflicted with a curse I can remove and click2cast allows me to remove that curse by hovering my mouse pointer over that unit in Grid and pressing my thumb mouse button (configurable). This means the longest CoT would last on anyone is about 3 seconds, provided you play smart and maintain range and line of sight to your mage any time you get a curse on you. Our priest uses the same technique to dispel magic debuffs, which means a warlock really can't do much damage at all against us. If he tries to use anything with a cast time, he'll get sheeped, kicked or counterspelled. If he uses any instant DoTs, we'll either decurse or dispel them.
Quickly killing felhunters whenever you see them can be key to winning against certain setups. They really play havoc with priests' and mages' casting (I imagine they'd interrupt the heck out of any pure caster class).
Some general rules we use: If there is a warlock, priest or resto druid on the enemy team, we always kill them first. Our reasoning is as follows: A rogue does his best damage on cloth and warlocks have two kinds of fear and priests have mana burn both of which can lose us the game if left unchecked. Also, I can't control or shut down a druid's heals with sheep or counterspell (lifebloom is so strong these days), so they must die ASAP if we are to win. If you need to quickly figure out what spec your enemies have, use the Arena mod called Proximo.
I play the mage in a forsaken PMR team and just wanted to counter some of your assertions here. First of all, you can't keep CoT on any targets since a good mage will decurse it immediately. Secondly, Felguard damage is insignificant to a good geared mage, since Ice Barrier scales with spell damage and then there's resilience on top of that.
As you say, a good mage will decurse CoT immediately. But a good warlock will just re-cast CoT again. Now you have the mage and warlock trading global cooldowns on cursing/decursing. But guess what? In the meantime the warlock's DOTs are ticking and/or the felguard is still doing DPS. A mage that is using GCDs to decurse is not doing any damage, while a warlock re-casting CoT can just take 1.5 sec away from that time to cast DOTs.
A CoT war versus a warlock and a mage will always leave the mage behind IMO, unless the warlock is incapacitated somehow.
As you say, a good mage will decurse CoT immediately. But a good warlock will just re-cast CoT again. Now you have the mage and warlock trading global cooldowns on cursing/decursing. But guess what? In the meantime the warlock's DOTs are ticking and/or the felguard is still doing DPS. A mage that is using GCDs to decurse is not doing any damage, while a warlock re-casting CoT can just take 1.5 sec away from that time to cast DOTs.
A CoT war versus a warlock and a mage will always leave the mage behind IMO, unless the warlock is incapacitated somehow.
Adding to that, most mages don't notice the Curse of Tongues until halfway through their Icebolt cast, meaning they lose two GCDs. Obviously decursing is the best thing to do, but CoT is still a nuisance and time-wasting thing that warlocks can do to cut down on mage dps or priest hps.
Btw - it seems to have completely blown over my head, but how exactly is (dru/priest)/lock/hunter a hard counter to PMR?
Unless they do something like drop dots and viper sting and literally hide behind a pillar the entire game, I don't quite see how it is a hard counter.
Hunter + Felhunter slaughter the Mage, Priest can't remove Viper or get OOC because there's a pet on him too, Rogue gets CCed to hell by Fear, Frost Trap, Roots, and Cyclone. A couple friends and I started playing Druid/Lock/Hunter recently (our team is cleverly named Priest Rogue Mage), and we've ruined every PMR team we've seen. A 2k rated PMR team would probably rip us apart, but because they're better/more experience players than we are, not because the combo has some advantage over us that we're not seeing at our rating. The only real chance they have is for an early gib on the Hunter (difficult, since the Warlock will break up the burst with Fears) or Warlock (difficult, since killing a Warlock is well, killing a Warlock, but probably a better option), but if the match doesn't end quickly the Rogue runs out of cooldowns and spends the rest of the match CCed and the Priest/Mage run out of mana due to Viper Sting.
Hunter + Felhunter slaughter the Mage, Priest can't remove Viper or get OOC because there's a pet on him too, Rogue gets CCed to hell by Fear, Frost Trap, Roots, and Cyclone. A couple friends and I started playing Druid/Lock/Hunter recently (our team is cleverly named Priest Rogue Mage), and we've ruined every PMR team we've seen. A 2k rated PMR team would probably rip us apart, but because they're better/more experience players than we are, not because the combo has some advantage over us that we're not seeing at our rating. The only real chance they have is for an early gib on the Hunter (difficult, since the Warlock will break up the burst with Fears) or Warlock (difficult, since killing a Warlock is well, killing a Warlock, but probably a better option), but if the match doesn't end quickly the Rogue runs out of cooldowns and spends the rest of the match CCed and the Priest/Mage run out of mana due to Viper Sting.
Well. HWlD is as counter-comp to RMP as counter-comps go. Warlocks might be the better option, but with Abolish...
Best suggestion for a RMP team?
Swap in your warlock and druid and kill their warlock.
Fans glory to the Gladiators,
Gods glory to the Heroes.
12/26/07, 10:13 AM
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