Talgog

Prefacing all of this with that I don't currently Arena, so I'm normally fighting oponents that aren't as good as higher levels of Arena, and certainly not as well organized.

Concussion Blow is treated like a melee attack. It can be dodged. It's nowhere near reliable on a frontal assault on a rogue to use when you need him stopped. The only surefire way to apply it to a rogue that's frontal facing you is to Intimidating Shout him first. This obviously takes quite a bit of rage, but it absolutely works in cases of a crazy combat rogue who is trying to Evasion rush you. Otherwise, it's a coinflip.

Hitting a rogue from behind with it is an entirely different matter. It's a 5 second stun (subject to DR with Intercept and Charge) that either forces PvP trinket use or is close to certain death.

Concussion Blow is good for one thing against druids - the ones who soak up ~ 50% of their life bar in damage in animal form and are confident they can shift out in your face to CC you/NS heal/new HOT's/whatever because they think you can't reliably CC them at point blank. A druid that knows it's coming won't make that mistake, but the ones that do are dead meat if they don't have their trinket up. It's a very gimmicky way to die.

Second Wind/Conc is really a 1v1/BG/instance soloing spec, to be honest. It's extremely strong against most classes because the default strategies for fighting warriors are not built around a point-blank controlled stun. The most glaring difference in that regard is probably mages, as it eats one of their escapes and 95% of mages will blink out of it in panic, which is a death sentence for them due to Intercept. I can see it also probably having application in a DPS rush setup, particularly a 4 DPS 5's, because you can lock down any healer with a cast time with a Pummel - Conc - Pummel chain. This obviously doesn't work against smart druids.

Last Stand is another component of the build that basically means you won't lose a 1v1 fight if you are willing to blow everything. Most strategies for warriors run out of things to do when the warrior has 16K+ health. Paired with the pre-nerf Lifegiving Gem, I would tank 5's burst teams in S1. You can still do that chain with a Battlemaster's trinket (which I don't have, stupid 30K honor). Use the trinket first, obviously.

I have no idea how 3*/x/21 would work in competitive S4 2's. Gimmicks can have an effectiveness all their own, but the biggest problem would be getting it slapped on the problem rogue for its full duration. I wouldn't count on blowing up any intelligent druid with it baring the above overconfidence. Intimidating Shout ---> Conc ----> DPS nukes takes an awful lot of rage, which is a situation that occurs a lot in 1v1, and in BG's (due to random trash damage), but which is something that better teams are obviously going to try to avoid doing.

There is something to be said for "cheap"/unusual gear and specs in general. Most people fall into "this class does/will do X now" tropes. Frost mages still shouldn't be getting killed by Concussion Blow if they think about it, and I've killed or caused the death of literally hundreds of rogues and druids who don't know I'm wearing Furious Gizmatics.

 

malthrin

Yeah, probably not worth trying if it can be dodged and parried. Might be able to work up a War Stomp->Conc Blow->Bash chain, but that seems gimmicky enough that it probably isn't worth it. Maybe we'll try it if we can't come up with anything else against Rogue/Druid.

 

Arikah

speaking of that, has anyone tried using large amounts of expertise this season? The pve 'cap' provides 6.5% dodge and parry avoidance, and with the large amount of melee teams could it be a gamewinner, especially for 2h classes (war, rpaladin). You'd have to have access to the 3 SW t6 and shard of contempt obviously, but would it be worth losing the use effect of the battlemaster's trinket and the loss of 100-150 resil/50-100 stam?

 

ceasefire

I think expertise is a great stat for most brackets, considering it's tough to get full MS uptime versus Warriors/Hunters/Rogues etc that can Dodge/Parry. It's good for 5's too since the MS debuff is so important.

I've tried hybrid specs involving Piercing Howl/Last Stand/Defiance (a good spec if you're too lazy to respec to tank heroics) and a spec involving Last Stand and Concussion Blow. Last Stand is definitely a godly talent, but the problem with Concussion Blow is it gets resisted, dodged, parried quite frequently and it shares DR with Intercept and Charge (which is generally ridiculous).

Since Intercept is a 3 second stun and it's used quite frequently, Concussion Blow basically becomes a drive-by interrupt on a caster as you run by them. It might be good for non-undead double DPS since you can fear then stun for five while focusing their partner, but because of its curious DR it's really underwhelming.

 

panny

I started playing my S1 geared Rogue (except with S2 MH and shoulders) and broke 1700 in ~50 games . My general impressions (in 2s at least) is that Rogues are out of hand with how much damage and control they have. With the right support, they're very hard to pin down and "train".

 

piteq

Well, please take impressions with a pinch of salt, since I never seriously played any 5v5 or 3v3, and I end up each subsequent season between 1750 and 1850. First two (and a half) I played as feral, for last two or three months I try to learn resto way of life (now I tried some quasi-dreamstate for sake of experiment; so this is what my armory will show; the 1660 rating I got now is achieved with MM hunter).

I unfortunately have to agree with rogues going overboard (sob). One mistake with positioning and/or reapplying FF and I'm being exposed to all means of CC, starting from cs and kidney, ending on blind and - if I'm slow enough to get caught in casterform - sap. The amount of control AND damage output AND survivability made me speechless more than several times. Humorously speaking, as a Night Elf I got long enough ears to accomodate several trinkets, and I should have at least two to properly counter rogue teams. <qq>Rogues, together with mace stun specced warriors are currently on my top-hate list ;-)</qq>.

I also got an impression about increased popularity of resto shammy / warrior teams. Combination of WF, MS and just extreme amount of stuns make this team very difficult from my point of view. Especially, that it's easier to make mistake with CC on warrior due to well put grounding totems. We (as in my hunter and me) still don't have working strategy against well played warrior + resto shammy. By the way, I guess warriors perfectly know how powerful their stun capabilities are, because I VERY rarely see warriors equipped with S3 weapon despite having S3 shoulders. Absolutely most of them wield Stormherald instead; at least in 2v2.

I have played around 90 matches. As for popularity of classes, rogue+healer (mostly disc priest), rogue+another dps (especially mage) and warrior+healer (with no visible domination of any healer class) seems to be most popular setups right now. Amount of rogues populating the 2v2 bracket is now IMMENSE. I have seen one enhancement shammy, one feral, very few spriests. I also saw VERY noticeable decline in numbers of pure resto druids - most of druids I met were restokins. Also, quite many people seem to level engineering high enough to make and use some variant of rocket boots. During those 90 matches I saw it at least 5 or 6 times; once even by... resto druid, who pop them to escape from my hunters' pet and take a few gulps of water below the bridge of BE arena.

@Latito; yes - Deep is very well known feral druid. I'm happy you're doing good; I hope you can prove that ferals, combined with right partner, can also rock in 2v2. I had completely no luck in finding partner as feral on my server, despite I (in my own eyes) play feral much better than I play resto now.

 

Humbaba

I played around 100 2v2 games over the holiday weekend and I saw a tremendous number of priest/rogue teams. There were plenty of mage/rogue teams as well, and only a few double rogue and druid/rogue comps. Druid/warrior and shaman/warrior were nearly tied for representation with the odd druid/lock, druid/hunter, ret/rogue.

I think it's fair to say that 85% of the games I played had either a rogue or a druid on the other team.

 

Moof

I finally broke 1600 in 2v2 today as a feral druid+frost mage team to get the s4 chest. We've played around 80 games on Misery EU and its pretty much the same picture here from the 1500-1600 bracket.. Around 75% of teams have rogues, most being rogue+mage, rogue+priest or rogue+druid (had the odd rogue + lock/hunter/retpala too). The rest were all warrior + druid/shaman. It does seem that rogues are extremely prevalent at the lower ratings in 2v2.

 

Cos-

Rogues are worsening that impression that there are only amazing and terrible hunters only with other classes. Warlocks with bad pet control, double cloth set ups, etc are all dropping like rocks while barely passable rogue teams are treading water. 2.4.3 won't really change it either since lots of these rogue teams are the sort in full s2 from honor with a couple s3 pieces anyhow.

 

• Maligne

Hovering around 1650 in 3's I can say there are still quite a few Gladiator teams climbing back up. Not as much as the first weekend but I'd say about 1 in 5. Also it could be just because I'm trying PMR and imagining things but it seems like we're seeing a lot of PMR counters out there. R/R/D and H/P/D (new FoTM it seems) mainly.

Has anyone tried 5's at all? We've played for hours both weekends and ran into maybe 5-6 unique teams in total. We've had to grind our way to 1700 getting 5 point wins and dealing with 1-2 minute average queues (15 minutes being the worst).

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

doogless

I found the same thing in 5s this weekend, there's definitely not a lot of teams playing.

 

Oneiros

Played 5s in two separate sessions this weekend and it is mostly what others were reporting. We lost our first three to the same team, then played unique teams about 20 times in a row and made a significant jump in rating, then lost to the same team (which had a gladiator and 3 players in Sunwell gear-- the 5th looked like an alt or something) about 10 times in a row before calling it quits, ending the day at like 1510. We were getting lots of unique 2v2 and 3v3 teams but 5s is pretty barren, getting the same team multiple times in a row either to farm 3-4 times or to be farmed 3-4 times.

I believe in Harvey Dent.

 

• Riot

D/R and SP/R both counter D/W pretty well in that they can both do a ton of damage and take out the Druid pretty well with a little luck - stuns, Blackout, fear.

Using Revenge stun is a lost cause - you have to Dodge, Parry, or Block an attack, and there's not really much of that going on if you're not the one being touched. Conc blow is also kind of risky - 45s is an eternity of time when your partner is being burned down, and it's not effective when used from the front either - and due to character latency sometimes it's a bit hard figuring out when it's a good time to use it.

I think against the SP/R your goal is to basically survive long enough to get enough breathing room for a Cyclone, open up an opportunity, and obviously take one out.

D/R has a bit more CC against you, so it's tough. From the persective of a Shaman/Warrior team, oftentimes we try to figure out how much PvE gear the Rogue is wearing, and if he's hovering around 250 resilience, we'll usually keep a good amount of pressure on him to keep the Druid busy healing and not CCing. If the Druid starts to focus on CCing, we'll do some swap bouncing. When that druid turns and runs away, we've turned around and focused the Rogue, trying to get a Cheat Death proc to make the rogue sweat. Just keep bouncing around, get CC's where you can, and make sure you're tracking DRs on stuns and cyclones as well as your own Fear, trinkets, and stuns because you'll need them as a finisher.

According to the LSAT examination, the opposite of hot is: A) Cold B) Not Hot

 

djhbrd

There are definitely a ton of players still grinding up. I did Rogue/Restokin last week instead of with a standard 11/11/39 spec Druid and played 62 games to go 1727 to 1810. Did not face a single team without at least S3 weapons, probably 80% had S3 shoulders, and most games were 12-14 point wins.

I haven't touched 3v3 or 5v5 yet, though my Warrior friend (S3 Duelist) is bugging me to get my 2v2 partner to make a team for the three of us, playing Rogue/Warrior/Resto Druid. I'm wondering how viable this would be against, like you said, something like Hunter/Priest/Druid or other kite-heavy teams. I'm willing to give it a shot, only getting 600 points this week from 2v2

As far as 5v5, our healer quit on the first day of S4 (We play Rogue/Frost Mage/Affliction Lock/Shadow Priest/Resto Shaman), and we just managed to get a new Shaman to play with us. They played ~40 games to get to the low 1600s with a different Rogue, I wasn't around, so I can't speak on the number of different teams queueing up in US-Ruin. We faced some powerhouse teams in the last week of S3, but I don't know about S4.

 

• Maligne

I'm just theorycrafting here, but I would actually think R/W/D has a good shot at countering H/P/D. Their strength is draining and they win by attrition so not having mana users (with a druid healer) is step one. Step two is killing the pet so your druid can drink and sitting on the hunter. That keeps him from rezzing and forces his teammates to heal him. Druids and priests are both very susceptible to double melee, so after x amount of time (x is probably pretty large) when they are low on mana and cooldowns a switch with a cyclone from your druid should be able to take one out.

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

• Amera

5v5 is a dying bracket. Since they moved away from "official" 5v5 tournaments and made point acquisition from other brackets worth almost as much, it really kills the incentive to make a cohesive 5v5 team for most players.

 

whysoez

Again with the theorycrafting, but even the double healer/warrior should be a good counter to this setup. I'm thinking Pally/Shaman/Warrior with the warrior just sitting on the priest. Pally cleanses traps/entangle, shaman shocks cyclones.

 

rehtonAesoohC

I really think they should make 3's teams get the same amount of points as 5's teams. The reason I say that is because 1) the tournament realm is only a 3v3 tournament. Blizzard has stated that they balance with 5v5 in mind, but why on earth would they start competitive monetary tournaments with a bracket that they don't support balance in? And 2) as Amera mentioned, 5's is a dying bracket. Last week in my 5's team, we queued against the same 3 teams 10 times total and when we lost, we only lost 5-6 points. Obviously, the teams we were queued against (we started at 1500) were in the 1900+ ratings and there were no other teams near our bracket without being in the 1300's.

 

Malakitoo

This would seem to be an argument to make 5v5 worth more points rather than less, unless you want to make the bracket completely barren and abandoned. The only reason to play 5s is for the points, unless you're a paladin. Remove that and there's no reason to deal with finding and scheduling 5 good players.

 

Ngita

I played 5's on two different characters this week. Same issues, we mostly played the same teams on the 5's even @ 1500 where as 2's was all unique teams. I allready posted this but I will say it again, Take any 5's team and take the best 2 or 3 players and they are going to acheive +100 rating on the 5's. Since anybody who played for significant amount of time in s3 is capped by rating and not arena points that where the interest is.

In 5's as soon as we passed 1650 we started running into multiple teams that were top 20-40 last season.

 

Mearis

It is very viable, but it is the most skill-less comp you can imagine playing. Double melee teams in 3s are incredibly boring and involve 'sit down on the cloth and autoattack'.

Sorry but I really can't take this kind of shit seriously when it's coming from the guild that thinks drawing swastikas with chain heal and relentlessly abusing someone whose only 'crime' is that he takes himself a bit too seriously is the height of humour.

 

Perilous

That is an interesting statement. You realize that possibly the very hardest counter to rogue/war/druid involves 2 clothies with no soul link, right? Res Shaman/shad priest/affliction lock is in essence an auto win vs r/w/d. Or frost mage/shadow priest/rogue (2 clothies) is an insanely tense matchup that is decided by rng. Or play a gladiator warlock/warrior/pally team and see how sit on the warlock works out for you. Or try vs priest/druid/hunter. Watch the priest giggle as your warrior is cyclone/root/freezing trap chained and he walks away from your wingclipped rogue with crippling being abolished off.

Maybe at the 1600s sitting on the clothie works. And maybe at the 1600s killing rogues is 'hard' or something. But teams in the top 20s of their respective brackets actually use those crazy things like communication, coordination, target swapping and crowd control to ensure that mindless strats like zerg the clothie dont work at all. And they actually set up kills by coordinating their cc and burst on a switch to drop a player faster then they can be healed.

 

Lithose