nevermind

Well the rogue's skill should pretty much scale with the rating at which you're playing. Trust me at higher ratings rogue/mage + rogue/ret + rogue/lock will be a nightmare.

You should NEVER get caught off guard by a Wyvern Sting, keep abolish up on yourself when Wyvern is coming off CD. Use addons to monitor its cooldown. Against marks hunters, ALWAYS have abolish up because serpent sting constitutes a large portion of their damage. Essentially, if you get put to sleep by a hunter it's because you made a mistake.

Where travel form is concerned, as I said, stand near a pillar (or anything you can run around). When you shift into travel form you can dash right around the corner and LoS the rogue/mage/whatever.

Since my last post I've played a good 300+ games. I'm still learning how to play the comp, sitting in tree form with prehots is NOT always the solution. Prehotting worked quite well in the lower brackets but now I find the damage output of double dps teams too much to deal with (22.9k hp, 952 resil).

A new strategy I've devised is have my warrior rush in, while I stay nearby in cat form. Pray not to get caught in cat form while prowling. Pounce + cyclone one of the DPS and get away from the other team. They might choose to switch to you, in which case your warrior can charge/intercept, giving you a 2 second window to travel form away.

Also another reason you want to stand near a pillar is to support your warrior. If he gets pressured too much (example: combat rogue with godmode + shaman spamming purge) he can intervene to you and step behind a pillar. This has saved my warrior many times.

Other than that... I can't think of anything else. Just make sure to ALWAYS think about how you can play better positionally after every match, even when you win. I've found that this game is all about positioning. When I lose, I can almost always blame positioning for my loss.

Oh and don't spam abolish poison. It already removes poisons every 2s..

 

malthrin

That's not a good idea for many reasons. First off, if you get caught in cat form, you lose immediately. That alone will lose you a lot of games vs Rogue teams. Second, let's say you Pounce one of the DPS and start casting your Cyclone. There's a hundred things that can go wrong at this point - the other DPS could interrupt your Cyclone, or stop it with the Blood Elf silence or Warstomp or AoE fear. Even if you get the Cyclone off, it'll immediately be trinketed and then where are you? Your Warrior is somewhere around 50% hp, you're right next to the enemy DPS, and neither of you have any hots on. The other team can either swap to you or drop a CC on you and kill your Warrior very easily.

Don't start in cat. It's not good.

 

nevermind

The idea, as outlined above, is to have your warrior rush in. That way the rogue cannot possibly make it to you before your warrior opens up on his target. Pounce cyclone always works because you cyclone a target that's stunned. It cannot retaliate unless it trinkets. The only way you can get CC'ed out of cycloning is if the rogue blinds you or something.

I was ALWAYS against the idea of starting off in cat vs a rogue until we tried it out, and we're winning 75% of matches vs double dps, up from 30-40% or so.

 

Maligne

Haha good one.

Malthrin is pretty spot on, actually. Walking around in cat against a rogue is just asking to lose. Leaving your warrior fending for himself against two dps while you try and set up some super CC combo is too.

Since the armory in your profile is a hunter, care to link the druid you're playing?

I have only read Pages 1,2 & 5 so far, when making this post.

 

malthrin

No. Let's outline some possible scenarios:

Rogue/caster. Your Warrior rushes in.
-Scenario 1 (Rogue/Mage): the Rogue bypasses your Warrior and searches for you. The Mage gets your Warrior sheeped. Now what? Your Warrior gets CCed until the Rogue finds you, and then you die.
-Scenario 2 (Rogue/Lock or Priest): the Rogue saps your Warrior and moves on to look for you while his teammate hangs back. If the Rogue can find you while you're moving in to stay close to the Warrior, they nuke you down with a stunlock in cat. If they can't find you by the time Sap is on DR, they open on your Warrior. Who do you pounce? If you pounce the Rogue, the Priest or Lock will fear you off before you Cyclone. If you Pounce the caster, he'll trinket the Cyclone. Now your Warrior is at 50% and dropping with no hots and 2 DPS beating on him, and you're not in a good place to Intervene to.

Rogue/melee. Your Warrior rushes in.
-Scenario 3 (Rogue/DK or Ret): they rush in and meet your Warrior halfway. Odds are you get destealthed by Pestilence, Descration, or Divine Storm on the way in for a Pounce, but even if you get it off, you're right next to both players and wide open for Arcane Torrent, Gnaw, Blind, Repentance, or a basic interrupt. Alternately, the Rogue just Vanish/CSes you as soon as you Pounce and they kill you immediately.
-Scenarion 4 (double Rogue): One of the Rogues finds you in stealth and you die.

Cat is bad against double DPS.

 

nevermind

I'm not saying prehotting doesn't work. It hasn't worked very well for me. I'm at 22.9k HP, 952 resil. I still get blown right up by double dps when pre-hotted. The scenarios you outline above assume some pretty bad mistakes by either party. ie:

- A warrior not getting a rogue out of stealth upon getting sapped.
- A priest standing near his rogue vs a warrior team (bladestorm fodder?)
- Any player trinketing a cyclone into a fear?

Of course there are many bad scenarios, but for now this works for me at 2200.

You can look me up on the US armory, player name Moomkin.

 

Aamoo

I'm trying to figure out the best meta gem for 3s as the upcomming patch pretty much dictates it:
Reducing stun durations with 15% instead of 10% using TBC meta gems instead of WOTLK ones, is it viable?
eg: Powerful Earthstorm Diamond - Thottbot: World of Warcraft vs. Powerful Earthsiege Diamond - Thottbot: World of Warcraft

IMO: the TBC > the WOTLK one.

It seems wierd to me that the TBC one is better, so did blizz not update the tooltip? does anyone have the funds/tools to meassure this?

 

MatsT

If you check the spell effects on wowhead you will see that they are the same. It's just a tooltip issue.

 

Logo4real

I have been struggling over if i should get gift of the earth mother, or insect swarm and the 12% intellegence into SP talent. I am running with a DK and we are doing fairly well but im wondering what you guys think about this subject.

 

Awshlia

in 2's i prefer to run with this spec simply because it allows me to play much more offensively against healer / DPS combos, but is still resto based so I can handle 2 DPS teams as well. I also use moonfire glyph to increase its damage, so when I'm playing offensively, my moonfire ticks for 900 and insect swarm for 680 or so- that damage can add up. However, if you're finding that this sort of spec doesn't give you enough healing power for dual- DPS teams, I would suggest getting Gift of the Earthmother and lose the offensive ability. It kind of depends on how well you and your DK coordinate things as well as your ability to control the match via cyclones, roots, etc.

 

Kalitse

I've decided to spec this for 2s in an effort to supply more utility for control with my MS war partner. I lose out on healing but gain a little survivability against melee and have better stuns, and speed with the charge for a quick escape.

What are the main reasons people don't use this spec? I'm assuming that people don't use it for the obvious reason that you lose out on healing and are still pretty tough in Tree form as it is that oyu don't need to go bear anymore. Am I missing anything else?

I'm currently only at 1350 rating after 80 games our first week.

 

malthrin

One more thing - bear form is quite expensive now compared to tree form. It's barely a survivability increase - a little more hp/armor, but you can't heal - and frequently shifting in and out of bear will OOM you quite quickly.

 

Hukilyou

Which trinkets are you guys useing?

 

Awshlia

Also the talents in the balance tree now directly help resto druids as well, whereas in TBC, if I remember correctly, they were more designed for only DPS. Being able to CC effectively (consistently) as a resto druid is a better use of talents than survival instincts.


Anything with SP and / or resilience will do you well. You certainly need a 2 minute escape trinket, and I personally use the one available from WG rewards that gives SP (not resil), but that's your choice. I'm also a big fan of the battlemaster trinkets for the bonus HP- especially in 2's, that's quite a lot of HP to gain. It is usable while silenced, as well. I have both the spell hit and spell power one and alternate between the two, depending on what comp I'm with or if I'm doing 2v2 or 3v3.

 

malthrin

The Wintergrasp PvP trinket [Titan-Forged Rune of Audacity] is a no-brainer. Other than that, I used a PvE regen trinket ([Sif's Remembrance]) for a while, but eventually swapped it for the spellpower battlemaster trinket ([Battlemaster's Bravery]). In 2s, the teams most likely to run you out of mana are even more likely to kill you during a Strangulate.

 

Vitalay

On my druid, I'm loving [Living Ice Crystals] over BattleMaster's as it allows you to heal your partner during strangulate; and as a heal of the GCD, it gives a good burst. The effective mp5 of the healing component, however, is only approximately 10.6, so don't get it merely for the healing efficiency of the Click effect.

 

Awshlia

Your druid isn't linked so I'm not sure what comp you're running, but one strangulate shouldn't be enough to kill your partner. If you're reactively healing on a druid (i.e. not hotting) then yes, they'll die- but theoretically both you and your partner should have at least two or three lifeblooms, and maybe a rejuv, on at almost all times. Of course there may be a few exceptions to this, but there's really no reason that your partner should die in just 1 strangulate.

 

malthrin

You'll be out of mana pretty quickly if you try to roll a full set of hots on both you and your partner all match. You want to go with the bare minimum of healing that it takes to survive.

 

Vitalay

I'm never so arrogant as to think I can't use help; but in 2s vs. burst comps, and in 3s vs. nearly anything, it's not uncommon for a full suite of hots to still be insufficient and/or for a long CC chain to end with you strangulated, your partner unhotted, and you needing to put up a bit of burst hps nonetheless.

In any event, if someone is considering Battlemaster's, [Living Ice Crystals] are usually a better alternative. There are obvious exceptions (Mortal Strike, etc.).

 

Kalitse

Thanks for the replies. I played 10 games with the feral talents and switched to the offensive resto build (with IS and Lunar Guidance) - much more efficient overall.

As for trinkets, I gather that at a certain level of resilience 111 SP is better than 84 (or 108) resilience? I'm at 800 res (without procs) and I need to replace my welfare [Darkmoon Card: Berserker!]. Right now it's a toss up between [Flow of Knowledge] and [Battlemaster's Bravery]. After reading the last few posts I'm pretty sold on the Battlemaster's but at just under 1800 SP I'd like to increase my SP with that trinket slot. If I switch my medallion for a [Titan-Forged Rune of Audacity] and get the Battlemaster's do you think losing 84-189 resilience is worth 222 SP?

(I'm in a sub 1500 2s Resto/War team)

Edit: This question is mostly due to the change in resilience come 3.2 - After the patch, will 111 SP be worth more than 84 resilience (at 700 resilience)?

 

lazorbeam

Resilience becomes less beneficial the more you stack it. If you are crit less often, your resilience doesn't get to reduce crit damage as often. As you said, this number is around ~800 resil, where SP becomes more of a beneficial stat. Not to mention, SP also increases your partner's survivability.

 

Vitalay

Probably not. My gut feeling is that post-3.2, when resilience affects all incoming damage, resilience will likely become a ridiculously good stat until something else is changed.

 

m3rcury

I've searched the thread and have not found anything addressing this team. Perhaps it is competely obvious to more experienced players.

I'm new to arenas and play with a rogue. At the lower level we are at, we don't have much problem with double dps teams, but it seems the rogue/rogue combos just wipe us out.

I come out of stealth, prehot, and pretty much wait for the sap. If I trinket the sap, then I just get blinded. The two rogues bust down my partner. I click "leave arena."

Granted, better gear + more stats will help, but what kind of general strategy is good here? My partner played at 2k+ a couple of season ago (so has the experience I lack) and he said that if he can't catch one of the rogues in stealth for a dismantle, that we are pretty much done. That feels like a gamble.

Thoughts?

 

Erdluf

I'm not so sure. Just looking at a few numbers:

100 resil is about 1.2% less damage (all damage in 3.2), 1.2% fewer crits, and about 2.7% less damage from crits (and reduced mana drain). That may be something more than a 4% overall damage reduction (just you) in a high-crit environment.

100 spell power (going from 1925 to 2025, with equal number of casts (full duration) of Rejuv, Lifebloom, Swiftmend (glyphed)) increases amount healed by roughly 3.7% (both you and your partner).

100 stamina (most toons) is very roughly a 4-5% increase in health (just you).

It seems that the changes will make resil much more competitive. I think the lower itemization costs of SP and stamina mean that they remain very attractive stats.

 

Felixalias

Well, for starters, waiting in cat form is just asking to be caught by one of the rogues (explained a few posts above). Tree Form also is immune to Sap (it is an elemental, and thus vulnerable to Banish etc but not Repentance/Sap).