Just wanted to share my experiences with a somewhat different approach to Hunter/Priest.
In limited playtime this season with decent PVP gear we've hit 1810 so far, not great but hoping we can get over 1850 for the sexy bow.
I have 320ish Res with close to 13k HP Buffed, 1631 AP, 38% Crit... Priest has around 300 Res but is still wearing several primal mooncloth pieces /cry
A Gladiator Hunter who teams with a resto sham suggested this spec and which I have tried with my priest and liked so far:
0/26/35
It focuses on Max CC which is ideal for hunter/healer 2v2 being as you are an outlast team.
Pros:
- Wyvern Sting is godly for double dps teams for living through the initial burst, also quite valuable vs. healer/dps teams because often the games will last over 8 minutes meaning that you can use it multiple times.
- Counterattack is actually very useful, first time I've played with it but its really nice knowing i can pop deterrence and are pretty much guaranteed a parry so that i can immobilize a rogue/war for 5 seconds. Its a nice way to get away with caught in crippling poison/hamstring with no other CDs up.
- With reduced trap cooldowns and clever traps, makes life hell for warriors/rogues
- Very high Cirt %
Cons:
- Cannot use scorpid pet because of lack of pet speed
- If Pet dies its very hard to rez him and the fight may be lost
- No SS against mages hurts, against healers it doesn't seem to matter since we are mana draining them anyway.
- Low AP, Crit seems to be more important anyway for times when you want to burst targets down
Why not a Scorpid?
- With this build you must use a pet with dash and not a scorpid. Otherwise you will never beat a DPS/Druid team.
- Mana drain is still quite effective against most targets.
- Pallys dont seem to be a problem at all, they will burn their mana quickly regardless if the viper is ticking away or not and With the extra CC i know the warrior isnt going to be a problem for me or my priest. Also Fear + Mana Burn + Viper is extremely effective against Pallies/Druids in dropping their mana pool in a hurry.
- Against priest or shammy healers, scropid is fairly useless anyway as you dont need to cover the sting. Cat also does more passive DPS.
- Start off the fight with pet dismissed, once the action starts I summon him and send him off towards the healer. This seems to work decently well in that a rogue cant pop out and insta-gib the pet and a warrior will not start focusing on him right away.
Tough Combos
War/Druid
Against war/druid in our bracket we are probably about 60/40 win/loss. Times we lose is when my pet gets gibbed. If the warriors gets on him i Wingclip or scatter/trap the warrior and then send him off with dash to get the healer. If the healer brings him back to the war i try to dismiss him then resummon him later. The problem is pets just go down so damn fast, WTB res for pets please!
Ice Mage/Rogue
We've been quite pleased versus ice mage/rogue. If they go for my priest i can usually CC the rogue enough to allow the priest to live through the initial burst even if i get shepped a time or 2. I stay on the mage, mana draining and dpsing him, I can usually kill him while keeping the rogue CCed enough. Even if my priest dies, if I kill the mage I can almost always beat a rogue without CDs.
These are always very close fights though. However if they are smart they will go for me and sheep the priest which usually means we lose.
Lock/Druid
SL/SL Lock/Druid seems to give us the most trouble. I think we've only beat the combo twice out of 6 or so matches. Our best successes come from this strategy:
I'm on lock pet while priest stays on druid, when druid comes out to heal, fear + mana burn + viper. Once the driud gets low on mana we simply try to burn him down, it seems to waste too much time/mana to try to kill the locks pet twice, we can usually take the druid down if he gets low.
Someone previously mentioned that you have to be agressive against this combo which i agree with, seems unlikely you will be able to outlast them as they do more damage and the lock pretty much will never run out of mana. Plus after you kill his felhound he will summon a voidwalker which is very hard to take down.
SPriest/Rogue
Shadow Priest / Rogue is a very hard combo for us as well though I'm not sure how common this is. We only have beaten them once and i got lucky killing both the rogue and the shadow priest after my priest went down. Battlemaster trinket saved us here for sure... I would highly recommend getting one as its really nice to give yourself the extra bump in health.
Lock/Rogue
Have not beat this combo so far, between all their CCs, its easy for them to CC the priest while they kill me.
Hunter/Druid
Only played one so far but I would think the strategy is to mana burn the hunter ASAP, since the druid cant mana burn the hunters mana should drop very quickly. Then scatter/trap, fear, wyvern sting the druid to kill the hunter pet. After that your priest should be able to get OOC and drink while your pet will still be on the druid and eventually you should win that fight.
Easy Combos
Pally/War or Priest/War or Priest/Rogue we almost always win these games, I can keep the dps on lockdown until we mana drain the healer.
I'm debating on trying the 11/41/9 spec for pet speed and improved pet rez, but i fear this will limited our effectiveness against those double dps combos. However Improved Pet rez and speed seems pretty much key to beating those war/druid combos consistently.
any advice on this?
Anyone have comments or similar strategies to share against tough druid/lock, ice mage/rogue, spriest/rogue combos?
random
Against DPS/Healer Teams, once the healer gets low on mana he will generally only be focusing on getting away from your pet to converse mana, its usually then that you can burst down the dps, especially if your priest throws a smite or SW-D in the mix.
But in generally, with teams like Druid/War, Druid/Rogue or other dps healer teams, do you find it easier to kill the healer or the DPS after the healer is OOM?