The link to follow will help you calculate wait times and pieces you want.
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This link is designed to learn about 2v2 teams and 3v3 team makeups for optimum winning ratios as well as strategies for these teams.
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Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Leveling Priest Spec Info
This is a template, an ordered list of talents, focused on assigning your talent points effectively for leveling to 60 as fast as possible. It is basically a Shadow/Discipline template, but with some specific choices for leveling. Starting with your first point, place them in the following order:
1. Spirit Tap – 5/5 Put your first 5 points here, this is vital for speedy soloing
2. Improved Shadow Word: Pain 2/2 put your next two points here. It will increase your leveling by doing more damage for the same mana cost.
3. Shadow Focus 3/5 These three points will help with resists some, but mostly it is to fulfill the prerequisite for Mind Flay
4. Mind flay 1/1 this is your 11th point and a vital one. Mind flay will be your most mana efficient damage spell.
5. Unbreakable Will 5/5 The affects of this talent are ok, but you are using this as a prerequisite mostly.
6. Improved Power Word: Shield 3/3 This is important, until lvl40 when you can re-spec to full Shadow, you will want to be able to refresh your shield mid fight for some tougher mobs.
7. Improved Power Word: Fortitude 2/2 Extra hit points never hearts, you should always have this buff active.
8. Mental Agility 5/5 This is your final Discipline talent, you will be casting many instant spells and this will help reduce downtime greatly.
9. Improved Mind Blast 4/5 Mind blast is going to be your primary nuke, you want to be able to recast it as fast as possible
At this point you will be level 39. When you reach level 40 it is time to re-spec your character. This should only cost you 1 gold, and it is well worth it because at level 40 you will truly be a Shadow Priest. Here is how you will re-spec at 40:
· Spirit Tap – 5/5
· Improved Shadow Word: Pain – 2/2
· Shadow focus - 3/5
· Mind Flay – 1/1
· Improved Mind Blast – 5/5
· Improved Fade - 2/2
· Shadow Reach - 2/3
· Shadow Weaving 5/5
· Darkness - 5/5
· Shadowform 1/1
As you level up from level 40 you should want reinvest in Discipline as follows:
1. Unbreakable Will – 5/5
2. Improved Power Word: Shield – 3/3
3. Improved Power Word: Fortitude – 2/2
4. Mental Agility - 5/5
At this point you have developed a build that will see you through to 60, you can add extra points where ever you choose, and they will not significantly affect your leveling speed. Feel free to experiment with the last 6 points as you level to 60. Once you hit 60, it will be time to re-spec again, either to Shadow for PvP, or Holy for healing in instances/endgame raiding, or some hybrid. However, as the following section on Healing Efficiency makes a strong case for selecting a Holy/Discipline spec if your primary activities include high-end instances.
6.b Shadow – post 60
If you primarily want to PvP, you will probably want to be Shadow specced. Here is a sample template for such, though your options are varied, and mostly should be adjusted to fit your play style. Further discussions regarding PvP are beyond the current scope of this guide.
Discipline Talents (18 points)
· Unbreakable Will - 5/5 points· Improved Power Word: Shield - 3/3 points· Improved Power Word: Fortitude - 2/2 points· Mental Agility - 5/5 points· Improved Inner Fire - 3/3 pointsHoly Talents (0 points)
· None Shadow Talents (33 points)
· Blackout - 5/5 points· Improved Shadow Word: Pain - 2/2 points· Shadow Focus - 3/5 points· Improved Mind Blast - 5/5 points· Mind Flay - 1/1 point· Improved Psychic Scream - 2/2 points· Shadow Reach - 3/3 points· Shadow Weaving - 5/5 points· Silence - 1/1 point· Darkness - 5/5 points· Shadowform - 1/1 point
6.c Holy – post 60
The following section on Healing Efficiency makes a strong case for selecting a Holy/Discipline spec if your primary activities include high-end instances. The following build is designed to optimize your healing efficiency to enable you to be the best healer you can be. This will also facilitate your ability to acquire high-level equipment and to be an effective team member in upper level instances and raid zones.
Discipline Talents (21 points)
· Unbreakable Will - 5/5 points· Improved Power Word: Shield - 3/3 points· Improved Power Word: Fortitude - 2/2 points· Mental Agility - 5/5 points· Mental Strength - 5/5 points· Inner Focus - 1/1 pointHoly Talents (30 points)
· Improved Renew - 5/5 points· Spiritual Healing - 5/5 points· Subtlety - 5/5 points· Improved Healing - 5/5 points· Improved Flash Heal - 2/2 points· Improved Prayer of Healing - 2/2 points· Spirit of Redemption - 1/1 point· Master Healer - 5/5 pointsShadow Talents (0 points)
· None
1. Spirit Tap – 5/5 Put your first 5 points here, this is vital for speedy soloing
2. Improved Shadow Word: Pain 2/2 put your next two points here. It will increase your leveling by doing more damage for the same mana cost.
3. Shadow Focus 3/5 These three points will help with resists some, but mostly it is to fulfill the prerequisite for Mind Flay
4. Mind flay 1/1 this is your 11th point and a vital one. Mind flay will be your most mana efficient damage spell.
5. Unbreakable Will 5/5 The affects of this talent are ok, but you are using this as a prerequisite mostly.
6. Improved Power Word: Shield 3/3 This is important, until lvl40 when you can re-spec to full Shadow, you will want to be able to refresh your shield mid fight for some tougher mobs.
7. Improved Power Word: Fortitude 2/2 Extra hit points never hearts, you should always have this buff active.
8. Mental Agility 5/5 This is your final Discipline talent, you will be casting many instant spells and this will help reduce downtime greatly.
9. Improved Mind Blast 4/5 Mind blast is going to be your primary nuke, you want to be able to recast it as fast as possible
At this point you will be level 39. When you reach level 40 it is time to re-spec your character. This should only cost you 1 gold, and it is well worth it because at level 40 you will truly be a Shadow Priest. Here is how you will re-spec at 40:
· Spirit Tap – 5/5
· Improved Shadow Word: Pain – 2/2
· Shadow focus - 3/5
· Mind Flay – 1/1
· Improved Mind Blast – 5/5
· Improved Fade - 2/2
· Shadow Reach - 2/3
· Shadow Weaving 5/5
· Darkness - 5/5
· Shadowform 1/1
As you level up from level 40 you should want reinvest in Discipline as follows:
1. Unbreakable Will – 5/5
2. Improved Power Word: Shield – 3/3
3. Improved Power Word: Fortitude – 2/2
4. Mental Agility - 5/5
At this point you have developed a build that will see you through to 60, you can add extra points where ever you choose, and they will not significantly affect your leveling speed. Feel free to experiment with the last 6 points as you level to 60. Once you hit 60, it will be time to re-spec again, either to Shadow for PvP, or Holy for healing in instances/endgame raiding, or some hybrid. However, as the following section on Healing Efficiency makes a strong case for selecting a Holy/Discipline spec if your primary activities include high-end instances.
6.b Shadow – post 60
If you primarily want to PvP, you will probably want to be Shadow specced. Here is a sample template for such, though your options are varied, and mostly should be adjusted to fit your play style. Further discussions regarding PvP are beyond the current scope of this guide.
Discipline Talents (18 points)
· Unbreakable Will - 5/5 points· Improved Power Word: Shield - 3/3 points· Improved Power Word: Fortitude - 2/2 points· Mental Agility - 5/5 points· Improved Inner Fire - 3/3 pointsHoly Talents (0 points)
· None Shadow Talents (33 points)
· Blackout - 5/5 points· Improved Shadow Word: Pain - 2/2 points· Shadow Focus - 3/5 points· Improved Mind Blast - 5/5 points· Mind Flay - 1/1 point· Improved Psychic Scream - 2/2 points· Shadow Reach - 3/3 points· Shadow Weaving - 5/5 points· Silence - 1/1 point· Darkness - 5/5 points· Shadowform - 1/1 point
6.c Holy – post 60
The following section on Healing Efficiency makes a strong case for selecting a Holy/Discipline spec if your primary activities include high-end instances. The following build is designed to optimize your healing efficiency to enable you to be the best healer you can be. This will also facilitate your ability to acquire high-level equipment and to be an effective team member in upper level instances and raid zones.
Discipline Talents (21 points)
· Unbreakable Will - 5/5 points· Improved Power Word: Shield - 3/3 points· Improved Power Word: Fortitude - 2/2 points· Mental Agility - 5/5 points· Mental Strength - 5/5 points· Inner Focus - 1/1 pointHoly Talents (30 points)
· Improved Renew - 5/5 points· Spiritual Healing - 5/5 points· Subtlety - 5/5 points· Improved Healing - 5/5 points· Improved Flash Heal - 2/2 points· Improved Prayer of Healing - 2/2 points· Spirit of Redemption - 1/1 point· Master Healer - 5/5 pointsShadow Talents (0 points)
· None
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
PVP Priest
Thanks for looking, this information was swiped from the boards and I liked it so I thought I would put it up and work on disproving. Thanks to Convert <> Genjuros for the original post.
Intro:
I started writing this in response to a thread about rogue/disc priest teams but these tactics can be applied to pretty much any combination with a priest. Im not going to claim to be the most practiced or best geared priest out there because im not. But through my fighting I have found certain tactics to give me the best shot and that because of the lack of guides out there I have had to use trial and error to find Most of all i would like to hear from other peoples tactics as I myself am trying to learn how best to go about pvp encounters and we can use this thread to help each other out and open up new ideas for each other. I hope this will give the priests out there either noobs or experienced some way to ask questions and get answers.
Gear
First are foremost you need to collect yourself some pvp gear. Yes you are a healer going into the arena with Karazhan healer gear is probably not the best idea. As a disc priest you need to concentrate on building up your survivability. You can do this by stacking resiliance and stamina. Resilance is very important because lowers the speed at which others can kill you and lowers the effectiveness of their attacks. Once you reach a certain amount of survivability you will in most cases only die when you run out of mana. Increasing your resilience also means less healing and so more mana. The easiest way to get the best pvp gear is in fact pvp. Get down to your bgs and start farming.
Talents
Just the same as your gear, to get the most effective priest for arena you must spec for pvp. The Discipline tree will give you increased survivability and improve the efficiency of your instant cast spells. The Holy tree concentrates on healing power and casting spells. To get the most out of your priest you can just put all your talents into one of these trees, you must make a balance. Currently I have placed my most of my talents into the Discipline tree with a 42/19/0 spread.
This enables me to be an effective instant spell caster. http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxxGuhgtMcozfVxoc
Explanation of my Build
Holy:
Healing Focus – Allows you cast more easily under pressure
Improved Renew - Renew is an important spell and you should keep it up at all times on players who are damaged
Spell Warding - Good for lowering the dps of casters and helps when dealing with being nuked Divine Fury - Reducing your casting speed of greater heal, a must have to make this an effective spell
Blessed Recovery - Giving back health from a crit, doesnt help too much as multiple crits will only cause it to refresh not stack
Improved Healing- Makes your Greater Heal more mana efficient, this talent could be scrapped for more points in the Disc tree as you wont find yourself casting too much
Discipline:
Unbreakable Will - Reduces the chance that I will be stunned, feared and silienced
Silent Resolve – Slows down the rate that the enemy can purge/dispel your heals/buffs
Improved Fortitude – Unless Fort is removed increases you are your teammates max health giving you more chance to get heals off
Martyrdom – If an enemy crits you, you will gain focus casting and a resistance to interruption for 6 seconds
Absolution- Increases the mana efficiency of all dispels
Inner Focus -Gives you a free spell every 3 minutes with increased chance to crit, use for casted healing spells or can be used on expensive spells such as Mass Dispell
Meditation- Gives you mana regen from spirit even during the heat of battle. Helps you last long fights
Mental Agility-All instant cast spells are more mana efficient; good for lasting longer battles Improved Mana Burn- Lowers casting time of Mana Burn; a must for all serious PvP priest Mental Strength- Increases your mana pool Devine Spirit- Increases spirit and due to meditation increases mana regeneration through out the fight, if anything is also a dispel buffer Focused Power- Reduces cast time of Mass Dispel; effective at breaking pally shield and mage Ice Block
Focused Will- When you are crit reduces damage on yourself and increases healing; increases survivability
Power Infusion- Can be used on you or on your allies to increase damage or healing output Enlightenment- Increases your core stats of Stamina, Intellect, and Spirit Pain Suppression- Reduce damage on yourself or ally; great way to prevent large amounts of burst damage focused on one person Druid Put your dpser on his dpser. Try to dispel all HOTs and buffs on the the enemy dps to give the your ally an easier time and to make it hard for the druid. You should chase the druid and try to mana burn him when he goes out to heal. The more he is running the more mana he is going to waste on changing form. If the dps attacks you try to get your friend to slow/CC him. When the druid gets on low mana send your pet after him so he stays in combat and get your friend to go after the druid. If the dps tries to stay on your dps MC him. The main thing you have to make sure is that you don’t allow that pesky druid to drink or you are done for. I find that he normally runs out of mana before me and that its just a matter of making sure that your dps switches. Communication is key.
Against 2xDPS This can be touch and go at times but here you are trying to make sure that you are using maxium CC and not getting caught out casting as that could spell the end of your friend. I find it is best to send the rogue in first with you hanging back out of range. Once the rogue enters combat and they are focusing on him pop your pain suppression on who ever they are nuking (normally the rogue) and heal like crazy. Dont be too trigger happy with your trinket and keep it for when you really need a heal off. Try to stay out of the heat of the battle so their CC is as limited as possible and dont forget to use fear to give yourself a breather even if you aren't getting attacked yourself. Hunters I find hunters very annoying as they kite my rogue and can really do some serious damage- not to mention their viper stings can change a battle completely. Since damage means more healing for you. In my experience the best way to stop a hunter is to Pain Suppress who ever he is attacking and mana burn the crap out of them. Most hunters have very little mana and if you can take that away they can do no special moves including traps and viper sting (more mana for you). Of course this means getting yourself out in the open. I generally only do this if either im facing another healer or their dps is low. In some situations you will find that is better to kill their pet fast especially if he is a beast spec. This will lower you dps and allow you to drink. Rogues Rogues are probably the biggest pain the ass for priests. With their stun and poisons they can make a real mess of you really quickly. Make sure your partner picks these guys up fast and gives you time to heal yourself because if you let a good rogue stay unhindered you are going to be dead pretty soonish.
-Save your trinket for kidney shot -dispel his buffs -make sure you keep renew up -keep on shielding -watch charges on inner fire Warriors Warriors can a be a tough attacker to heal over. Their MS lowers healing by 50%, certain skills allow them partial immunity to fear, hamstring keeps you slowed, pummel to interrupt your casts, intercept and intimidating shouts as CC. You will eventually die from a warrior unless you attack him in a 1vs1 situation. The best way to slow down the process of dying against a warrior is:
-stay shielded to reduce his rage and direct damage to you (another positive is it is not effected by MS so has full 'healing') -keep renew going the entire time -rebuff inner fire when its gone -try to fear when he has used his anti fear spells -get your team mates to help CC him. Even in a 2vs2 it is normally best for dps to attack the warrior to limit his dps and because the other heal is likely to kite. When the warrior is CCed move away from him and try either mana burn the other healer, drink, or move away from him and heal without the MS debuff on you. Due to charge/intercept the warrior wont be off your back for too long so use your free time wisely.
Casting Spells A new priest soon learns that casting spells in the heat of a pvp battle is not always the best. Being caught out with kick, pummel or i dare say counterspell can lead to the death of a priest. Due to the fact that all of the priests healing spell including shield are in one tree means that any type of interrupt will lock out all healing for a period of time (not a good thing). To be on the safe side it is always best to only cast instants if there is any possibility of an interrupt. Though you find yourself in instances where you have weakened soul, you have renew ticking away, and POM is on CD. You could in this instance actually allow the player to silence you at this stage as you have nothing to gain and it would allow you to get a few heals off while their interrupt is on CC. Better in fact is making them interrupt you without affecting your healing. One way to do this is through the old art of feint-casting. This involves you casting a spell and then interrupting the casting yourself. You hope the enemy will see you casting and then go to mash their interrupt button, but because you stop casting once they have hit the button you are no longer casting and their interrupt is on CD and you are free to cast some spells. Although this doesn't always work. The player may not even see the cast and then would not interrupt or you leave it casting for too long and you get hit by what you are trying to avoid.
Mind Control
I find that if you want to get heal off you can actually cast mind control him. With such a large cast time he is bound to try to interrupt it or he will be CCed. This gives you your chance to get a heal off while his interrupt is on CD. Though against rogues make sure you keep your back to him while you are casting the heal as he will most likely to gouge you. If for some reason you want to MC the rogue do the opposite, cast a slow heal (greater or even prayer of healing) so he kicks that and then cast your MC. This also works on warriors. MC if undisturbed (can be easily dispelled or the team mate can just hit you to knock back the timer) will make him either burn is anti-CC so you can fear etc or give you the chance to loose those poisons he has stacked up on you. Be warned though it is not a good idea to use this on healers unless your dps is on top of the kill on the opponent as you may find as i have that your rogue could die during these 10 seconds and then you will look very stupid for basically CCing yourself. Another application of MC is getting a dpser off the back of your dpser so he can kill their healer. For example if the druid is on low mana the rogue could blind the warrior, and sprint to the druid. Wait close to the warrior (not too far or too close so he cannot interrupt or charge) and then MC him. This buys your rogue more time. I normally round up my MC with a fear as this seems to be quite effective.
Using Mana Bun & Fighting Other Priests
This spell is generally only usable in a fight where its a healer battle. Basically your dpser is fighting their dps and its about who runs out of mana first. The best thing to do is peruse their healer making him have to use LOS to block the mana burn. This generally leads to them poping out every now and again to heal. This your time to strike. If they are being sneaky about it then get close to them and fear. Follow the fear up with a few mana burns and if you are lucky he wont run out of range. Other ways of getting them out into the open is getting them to come to you. Help out your dpser by fearing or by dotting the enemy up/casting. (with the addition of spell to healer gear you will be surprised as to how much damage you can do. Not mention if one of their team is lower on health, fear the other team member and mindblast-->death-->spam smite. Combine this with power infusion for extra effect. Dont get too carried away and waste your mana. Even if you dont kill the enemy their healer will be on edge and spam healing giving you ample time to mana burn him down. Save your pet for if they try to drink and help finish off the other member. If you are fighting another disc priest you are playing a game of chicken. This is a battle of nerves and clever positioning. You are trying to mana burn him without him mana burning you. There are a few ways to win this. Against less experienced priest you will find this easy. They will basically run for the hills once you start casting and you give chase and eventually you will burn down his mana. More experienced priest stand by cover so they can see their dpser and heal him but can quickly duck away behind line of sight at the sniff of a mana burn. Due to the mechanics of the game trying to run out of the range of an incoming Mana burn is difficult. Even if you are out of the range of the mana burn when he finishes casting it you will probably get hit by it. So you are best off use your terrain to block these attacks. To open up a stale mate there are a few things you can do to get the advantage. Giving your dps the advantage so the other priest has to stick and heal is one way to pull him into the open. One on one fear and your fiend play are a large role. Fear allows you to get 2 or 3 mana burns off without him returning but be careful when trying to get close as this could make you vulnerable as you move towards him. You should save your fiend for a mana burn face off. This is where both priests are casting mana burn on each other at the same time. If you use your fiend while you burn each other his cast bar will be knocked back by the fiend's fast attacks and will be further knocked back because you complete your burn first. Basically if you have you fiend out while you exchanged mana burns you will come out on top. If he puts his fiend out LOS his burns and try to get your team mate to kill the fiend quickly if possible. Having your fiend available will give you the offensive advantage and allow you to be more aggressive. Mana burning and keeping your damage dealer alive takes a lot practice to get right, so do not worry if you do not get it straight off the bat. The main the thing you need for mana burning is confidence (many priests play too defensively), time, and good awareness of your surroundings.
Mages
These masters of the arcane magics of water vendoring are indeed an annoying lot. Not only do they spit in you water when you ask for some but they dont say 'thank you' after we take it off their hands. There are 2 main groups of water vendor which try to spread their conjuring ways through the arena these are frost and ice. Although there are obviously many different ways you can spend your talent points you are basicly left with pretty much the same.
--Frost Mages-- Frost relys on small burst damage and control over the fight. To prevent the mage from acting freely you should pressure him with DPS making him use his CDs and reduce the amount of time he is allowed to cast. He will be tricky to kill for melee classes due to frost nova and slowing effects. To give your melee classes the best chance to kill him dispel all slowing and snare effects and remove buffs like ice barrier and frost armor. If he iceblocks on low health mass dispel it quickly. If on the otherhand you are or in fact a party member is on low health you can almost use Iceblock as a let up to get a few heals off. Remember, most mages will have 2 ice blocks so be ready to either dispel or switch targets at moments notice. Dispelling frost nova fast will stop his ice lance from gaining that triple damage effect and the increased crit chance.
--Fire Mage-- Most fire mages focus on large amounts of damage in small periods of time. This involves blowing all their CDs and nuking the hell out of their target. This big burst damage has been traded for sustainability and survivability so normally if your group can survive their initial attack the worst is over. Most mages will infact sheep you first and then nuke a team member. When you see their target trinket out the sheep and instantly Pain Suppress them and then cast you instants. This is generally enough get through this intense period.
--CC-- It is not the damage of the mage that makes them particularly dangerous (though it does help) but also their ability to CC targets. If timed a correctly and if you have already used your trinket (if you dont have the anti-CC trinket yet, get it fast) a sheep can give a team enough time to finish off one of your friends. The best way to stop a mage freely sheeping everyone is attacking him. Though you need to understand the mage will sheep you, so to prepare for this event try to always keep your teammates topped up for health and keep a renew going on who ever they are attacking most. Fearing is a good way to slow down the mage nuke but as you should most mages will have their trinket ready, but this still should buy you some time to heal against the nuke. Personally i have never done this purposely but if you are able to time a SW:Death when the mage is about to sheep you the reflected damage of it not killing him will actually unsheep you. Do not rely on this as it is pretty difficult to master. If you able to last the mage attack for a long period of time he will start to run out of mana. A mage without mana is a dead mage. They have mana jems which they can consume during the fight but the main way of regeneration is through evocation or drinking. Evocation is a channeled spell and if uninterrupted they will gain back 60% of their mana pool. By this time you will probably be close to low mana, if you allow the mage the chance to evocate you could be signing your death certificate. Thankfully any type of damage will knock the channeled spell forward and so you can dramatically reduce his mana gained. The best way to stop an evocation though is some sort of CC. This will stop the cast completely. Fear is a good option for you if you are close. After the fear burn off that mana he has gained and finish him off. Even if he has evocation on its 8 min cd he can still go sneak over to the corner and drink. If you have your shadow fiend you can keep him in combat by sending it after him and therefore preventing him from drinking and gaining yourself mana.
Shaman
Now I shall tell you the tale of the evil shaman... On the first day god (blizzard) created the classes. Everything was going swimmingly until the greedy shamans got hungry. Since all the mages in AV were either leeching there was a famine of tables across the land. Though the shamans did not care that everyone else was also hungry/thirsty and they complained to god, 'Gief us foodz or wei quit.' So the humble god to try to make them happy gave them purge. This purge enabled the shaman to make the disc priests completely defenseless as it removed all their instant cast buffs and heals. The priests were still allowed to cast spells healing what little life they had left. So god gave them earthshock which allowed them to spam interrupt all the of priests casting. This left the priest with nothing and so the shamans were able to eat the priests for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Basically if you leave shaman alone to attack you, he will eat you. The best way to counteract this is to kill them. Elemental shamans are harder to kill then the enhancement but have lower burst damage and cannot cast if under pressure lowering their overall dps. If you attack the shaman he will think less about his stomach (you) and more about his neck (the guy destroying him). After the shaman is dead make sure yell out about the fact that he killed mommy priest, daddy priest and little sister priest and that this is part of your crusade to kill all shamans. Resto shamans are the less danagerous cousins of the elemental/enhancement shaman and not as much a problem for you unless they are particularly aggressive players. Get your teammates to attack the other members of the team and try to give you space to burn his mana down. If he puts up any type of shield on himself dispel it (so he knows what it feels like to be purged and also to stop him gaining health or mana. If your quench for blood is still not satisfied dispelling his bloodlust/heroism should do it. Start first with dispelling the dpser's buff and then move onto the healer to limit the amount burst damage they can do with this. Dont forget to kill his friends. This obviously is an odd statement as shamans have no true friends. Their only companions in life are their totems. Crush their soul by simply swing your weapon at them and destroying them. Because all the important ones have no health any direct damage will destroy them so its the perfect job for a priest to do in his spare time. Totems to watch out for:
-Windfury - allows melee player around the totem to gain an extra swing from attacks, powerful if he has warrior allies (friends would be too kind a description)
-Tremor - Periodically breaks fear charm and sleep effects
-Grounding totem - absorbs not direct damage spells and absorbs direct damage spells but is also destoryed
-Earthbind - Slow all enemies in a 10 yard radius
-Searing Totem - shoots fire at a single target, can be annoying as they cause spell cast knock back.
-Poison Cleansing - if you are with a rogue friend destroy this asap as this periodically removes 1 poison from all members.
-Mana Spring - Gives the shaman a constant stream of mana
-Mana Tide - A shorter lived more powerful version of the Mana Spring giving all party members in range 6% of their mana back, easily recognized by the distinct swirling effect at its base. Destroy this fast.
-Totem of Wrath - Increases spell damage of all surrounding allies
Warlocks
Warlocks are the result of blizzard having lots of good ideas for spells and then at the end of making WOW just sticking them all together into one class. At least thats what it feels like for anyone who has ventured into the deep dark realms of the warlock.
--Warlock Strengths-- Crowd Control Damage Over Time Mana Drain Pretty Good Survivability(SL/SL) Unlimited Mana (when paired with a healer)
--Warlock Weakness-- Dispelable Damage Reliant on Pet Low Burst Damage
Most warlocks you meet in the arena will have almost identical talents specs. This cookie cutter build is known as SL/SL. It is a hybrid consisting of pretty evenly distributed talents between affliction(the DOT tree) and Demonology(demon tree). The idea of this build is to get two talents, Siphon Life(magic DoT which also heals the warlock) and Soul Link (20% of the damage on the warlock is transfered to the pet). This build means that although the warlock has less damage they can mitigate damage, heal themselves with DoTs. At very high levels of play killing the warlock's pet twice means the victory for team. The pet is more then just the damage mitigation,damage and spell lock(felhunter) it is a means of keeping you in combat. If you or the other healer is able to leave combat and successfully drink it means that you gain the advantage. Even in a small amount of mana which gives you enough mana for that extra heal is enough to decide a battle. Not to mention a good healer will try to heal a pet, so by attacking the pet which has no resilience you can quickly exhaust the mana of the opposite healer. Crowd Control Crowd Control is one of the warlock's biggest assets. If you have ever been deathcoiled and then chain feared you will know what i mean. Though with all types of spamable crowd control this spell is subject to diminishing returns (the spell will become less effective if spammed for every time it is applied until the player is immune. It is 3 fears which come to a total of 18 seconds of fear and on the 4th fear the player is immune for 15 seconds before they can get full force fear on them again. It is true that fear does not break under damage but it does increase the chance that it will break so if a warlock wants max fear time he wont dot up his feared target. You can absorb one fear with fearward but then you will get feared for a full seconds before you can do anything that is unless it breaks for what ever reason. The next fear is 5 seconds and 3 after that. If one your team members gets feared just dispel, simple as that. If you are facing a burst team and they are nuking your team members trinket out of the fear and get your Pain Suppresion on him/her straight away, if you have time shield them etc. Dont forget fear is casted so you can use interrupts or run out of line of sight to stop it. If you can stop fear you can cripple a warlocks defense a lot. Warlocks also have Howl of Terror and Death Coil. Howl of Terror is a casted AoE fear with a 40 second cooldown, it is an instant cast with talents but the SL/SL warlocks that you will face normally will not have this in their build. Death Coil is an instant cast horror effect lasting 3 seconds, doing damage which heals the warlock. Death Coil is not considered a fear effect so it wont be affected by your fearward, although it is still a magic effect and so is still dispelable.
Paladins
Paladins are the result of thousands of man hours of trying to splice the genes of humans and...a bottle of washing-up liquid. What was created was something that can clean almost every sort of ailment (except curses) and produce bubbles. Paladins are interesting opponent for priests. Currently there are two viable talents specs for arena; holy and retribution, and with most talent trees create two different play styles.
--Holy-- Holy is the currently the most common style of paladin you will meet.
Strengths
-Highest Armor (wears a shield unlike warriors)
-Mana Efficient Heals -Dispels:Magic, Poison, and Disease effect
-Momentary Invulnerability -Instant Stuns -Blessing of Protection(make immune to melee and ranged attacks
-Blessing of Freedom (removes snares/slows and makes target immune to both for a period of time)
Weaknesses -Cannot heal while moving -Lack of instant cast heals -Easy to lockdown/silence
Videos
Gladiator Holy Priest PvP http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=46672
Pandemic's Arena Vid 2100~ S3: Movie: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=56026 Armory: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Frostwhisper&n=Pandemic
Swarm 2 - Priest Arena PvP (shadow with 3vs3 as Disc) Movie: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=53221
Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Tichondrius&n=Swarm Zomgasm: You Lack Discipline! Movie: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=54001 Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rivendare&n=Zomgasm
Intro:
I started writing this in response to a thread about rogue/disc priest teams but these tactics can be applied to pretty much any combination with a priest. Im not going to claim to be the most practiced or best geared priest out there because im not. But through my fighting I have found certain tactics to give me the best shot and that because of the lack of guides out there I have had to use trial and error to find Most of all i would like to hear from other peoples tactics as I myself am trying to learn how best to go about pvp encounters and we can use this thread to help each other out and open up new ideas for each other. I hope this will give the priests out there either noobs or experienced some way to ask questions and get answers.
Gear
First are foremost you need to collect yourself some pvp gear. Yes you are a healer going into the arena with Karazhan healer gear is probably not the best idea. As a disc priest you need to concentrate on building up your survivability. You can do this by stacking resiliance and stamina. Resilance is very important because lowers the speed at which others can kill you and lowers the effectiveness of their attacks. Once you reach a certain amount of survivability you will in most cases only die when you run out of mana. Increasing your resilience also means less healing and so more mana. The easiest way to get the best pvp gear is in fact pvp. Get down to your bgs and start farming.
Talents
Just the same as your gear, to get the most effective priest for arena you must spec for pvp. The Discipline tree will give you increased survivability and improve the efficiency of your instant cast spells. The Holy tree concentrates on healing power and casting spells. To get the most out of your priest you can just put all your talents into one of these trees, you must make a balance. Currently I have placed my most of my talents into the Discipline tree with a 42/19/0 spread.
This enables me to be an effective instant spell caster. http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxxGuhgtMcozfVxoc
Explanation of my Build
Holy:
Healing Focus – Allows you cast more easily under pressure
Improved Renew - Renew is an important spell and you should keep it up at all times on players who are damaged
Spell Warding - Good for lowering the dps of casters and helps when dealing with being nuked Divine Fury - Reducing your casting speed of greater heal, a must have to make this an effective spell
Blessed Recovery - Giving back health from a crit, doesnt help too much as multiple crits will only cause it to refresh not stack
Improved Healing- Makes your Greater Heal more mana efficient, this talent could be scrapped for more points in the Disc tree as you wont find yourself casting too much
Discipline:
Unbreakable Will - Reduces the chance that I will be stunned, feared and silienced
Silent Resolve – Slows down the rate that the enemy can purge/dispel your heals/buffs
Improved Fortitude – Unless Fort is removed increases you are your teammates max health giving you more chance to get heals off
Martyrdom – If an enemy crits you, you will gain focus casting and a resistance to interruption for 6 seconds
Absolution- Increases the mana efficiency of all dispels
Inner Focus -Gives you a free spell every 3 minutes with increased chance to crit, use for casted healing spells or can be used on expensive spells such as Mass Dispell
Meditation- Gives you mana regen from spirit even during the heat of battle. Helps you last long fights
Mental Agility-All instant cast spells are more mana efficient; good for lasting longer battles Improved Mana Burn- Lowers casting time of Mana Burn; a must for all serious PvP priest Mental Strength- Increases your mana pool Devine Spirit- Increases spirit and due to meditation increases mana regeneration through out the fight, if anything is also a dispel buffer Focused Power- Reduces cast time of Mass Dispel; effective at breaking pally shield and mage Ice Block
Focused Will- When you are crit reduces damage on yourself and increases healing; increases survivability
Power Infusion- Can be used on you or on your allies to increase damage or healing output Enlightenment- Increases your core stats of Stamina, Intellect, and Spirit Pain Suppression- Reduce damage on yourself or ally; great way to prevent large amounts of burst damage focused on one person Druid Put your dpser on his dpser. Try to dispel all HOTs and buffs on the the enemy dps to give the your ally an easier time and to make it hard for the druid. You should chase the druid and try to mana burn him when he goes out to heal. The more he is running the more mana he is going to waste on changing form. If the dps attacks you try to get your friend to slow/CC him. When the druid gets on low mana send your pet after him so he stays in combat and get your friend to go after the druid. If the dps tries to stay on your dps MC him. The main thing you have to make sure is that you don’t allow that pesky druid to drink or you are done for. I find that he normally runs out of mana before me and that its just a matter of making sure that your dps switches. Communication is key.
Against 2xDPS This can be touch and go at times but here you are trying to make sure that you are using maxium CC and not getting caught out casting as that could spell the end of your friend. I find it is best to send the rogue in first with you hanging back out of range. Once the rogue enters combat and they are focusing on him pop your pain suppression on who ever they are nuking (normally the rogue) and heal like crazy. Dont be too trigger happy with your trinket and keep it for when you really need a heal off. Try to stay out of the heat of the battle so their CC is as limited as possible and dont forget to use fear to give yourself a breather even if you aren't getting attacked yourself. Hunters I find hunters very annoying as they kite my rogue and can really do some serious damage- not to mention their viper stings can change a battle completely. Since damage means more healing for you. In my experience the best way to stop a hunter is to Pain Suppress who ever he is attacking and mana burn the crap out of them. Most hunters have very little mana and if you can take that away they can do no special moves including traps and viper sting (more mana for you). Of course this means getting yourself out in the open. I generally only do this if either im facing another healer or their dps is low. In some situations you will find that is better to kill their pet fast especially if he is a beast spec. This will lower you dps and allow you to drink. Rogues Rogues are probably the biggest pain the ass for priests. With their stun and poisons they can make a real mess of you really quickly. Make sure your partner picks these guys up fast and gives you time to heal yourself because if you let a good rogue stay unhindered you are going to be dead pretty soonish.
-Save your trinket for kidney shot -dispel his buffs -make sure you keep renew up -keep on shielding -watch charges on inner fire Warriors Warriors can a be a tough attacker to heal over. Their MS lowers healing by 50%, certain skills allow them partial immunity to fear, hamstring keeps you slowed, pummel to interrupt your casts, intercept and intimidating shouts as CC. You will eventually die from a warrior unless you attack him in a 1vs1 situation. The best way to slow down the process of dying against a warrior is:
-stay shielded to reduce his rage and direct damage to you (another positive is it is not effected by MS so has full 'healing') -keep renew going the entire time -rebuff inner fire when its gone -try to fear when he has used his anti fear spells -get your team mates to help CC him. Even in a 2vs2 it is normally best for dps to attack the warrior to limit his dps and because the other heal is likely to kite. When the warrior is CCed move away from him and try either mana burn the other healer, drink, or move away from him and heal without the MS debuff on you. Due to charge/intercept the warrior wont be off your back for too long so use your free time wisely.
Casting Spells A new priest soon learns that casting spells in the heat of a pvp battle is not always the best. Being caught out with kick, pummel or i dare say counterspell can lead to the death of a priest. Due to the fact that all of the priests healing spell including shield are in one tree means that any type of interrupt will lock out all healing for a period of time (not a good thing). To be on the safe side it is always best to only cast instants if there is any possibility of an interrupt. Though you find yourself in instances where you have weakened soul, you have renew ticking away, and POM is on CD. You could in this instance actually allow the player to silence you at this stage as you have nothing to gain and it would allow you to get a few heals off while their interrupt is on CC. Better in fact is making them interrupt you without affecting your healing. One way to do this is through the old art of feint-casting. This involves you casting a spell and then interrupting the casting yourself. You hope the enemy will see you casting and then go to mash their interrupt button, but because you stop casting once they have hit the button you are no longer casting and their interrupt is on CD and you are free to cast some spells. Although this doesn't always work. The player may not even see the cast and then would not interrupt or you leave it casting for too long and you get hit by what you are trying to avoid.
Mind Control
I find that if you want to get heal off you can actually cast mind control him. With such a large cast time he is bound to try to interrupt it or he will be CCed. This gives you your chance to get a heal off while his interrupt is on CD. Though against rogues make sure you keep your back to him while you are casting the heal as he will most likely to gouge you. If for some reason you want to MC the rogue do the opposite, cast a slow heal (greater or even prayer of healing) so he kicks that and then cast your MC. This also works on warriors. MC if undisturbed (can be easily dispelled or the team mate can just hit you to knock back the timer) will make him either burn is anti-CC so you can fear etc or give you the chance to loose those poisons he has stacked up on you. Be warned though it is not a good idea to use this on healers unless your dps is on top of the kill on the opponent as you may find as i have that your rogue could die during these 10 seconds and then you will look very stupid for basically CCing yourself. Another application of MC is getting a dpser off the back of your dpser so he can kill their healer. For example if the druid is on low mana the rogue could blind the warrior, and sprint to the druid. Wait close to the warrior (not too far or too close so he cannot interrupt or charge) and then MC him. This buys your rogue more time. I normally round up my MC with a fear as this seems to be quite effective.
Using Mana Bun & Fighting Other Priests
This spell is generally only usable in a fight where its a healer battle. Basically your dpser is fighting their dps and its about who runs out of mana first. The best thing to do is peruse their healer making him have to use LOS to block the mana burn. This generally leads to them poping out every now and again to heal. This your time to strike. If they are being sneaky about it then get close to them and fear. Follow the fear up with a few mana burns and if you are lucky he wont run out of range. Other ways of getting them out into the open is getting them to come to you. Help out your dpser by fearing or by dotting the enemy up/casting. (with the addition of spell to healer gear you will be surprised as to how much damage you can do. Not mention if one of their team is lower on health, fear the other team member and mindblast-->death-->spam smite. Combine this with power infusion for extra effect. Dont get too carried away and waste your mana. Even if you dont kill the enemy their healer will be on edge and spam healing giving you ample time to mana burn him down. Save your pet for if they try to drink and help finish off the other member. If you are fighting another disc priest you are playing a game of chicken. This is a battle of nerves and clever positioning. You are trying to mana burn him without him mana burning you. There are a few ways to win this. Against less experienced priest you will find this easy. They will basically run for the hills once you start casting and you give chase and eventually you will burn down his mana. More experienced priest stand by cover so they can see their dpser and heal him but can quickly duck away behind line of sight at the sniff of a mana burn. Due to the mechanics of the game trying to run out of the range of an incoming Mana burn is difficult. Even if you are out of the range of the mana burn when he finishes casting it you will probably get hit by it. So you are best off use your terrain to block these attacks. To open up a stale mate there are a few things you can do to get the advantage. Giving your dps the advantage so the other priest has to stick and heal is one way to pull him into the open. One on one fear and your fiend play are a large role. Fear allows you to get 2 or 3 mana burns off without him returning but be careful when trying to get close as this could make you vulnerable as you move towards him. You should save your fiend for a mana burn face off. This is where both priests are casting mana burn on each other at the same time. If you use your fiend while you burn each other his cast bar will be knocked back by the fiend's fast attacks and will be further knocked back because you complete your burn first. Basically if you have you fiend out while you exchanged mana burns you will come out on top. If he puts his fiend out LOS his burns and try to get your team mate to kill the fiend quickly if possible. Having your fiend available will give you the offensive advantage and allow you to be more aggressive. Mana burning and keeping your damage dealer alive takes a lot practice to get right, so do not worry if you do not get it straight off the bat. The main the thing you need for mana burning is confidence (many priests play too defensively), time, and good awareness of your surroundings.
Mages
These masters of the arcane magics of water vendoring are indeed an annoying lot. Not only do they spit in you water when you ask for some but they dont say 'thank you' after we take it off their hands. There are 2 main groups of water vendor which try to spread their conjuring ways through the arena these are frost and ice. Although there are obviously many different ways you can spend your talent points you are basicly left with pretty much the same.
--Frost Mages-- Frost relys on small burst damage and control over the fight. To prevent the mage from acting freely you should pressure him with DPS making him use his CDs and reduce the amount of time he is allowed to cast. He will be tricky to kill for melee classes due to frost nova and slowing effects. To give your melee classes the best chance to kill him dispel all slowing and snare effects and remove buffs like ice barrier and frost armor. If he iceblocks on low health mass dispel it quickly. If on the otherhand you are or in fact a party member is on low health you can almost use Iceblock as a let up to get a few heals off. Remember, most mages will have 2 ice blocks so be ready to either dispel or switch targets at moments notice. Dispelling frost nova fast will stop his ice lance from gaining that triple damage effect and the increased crit chance.
--Fire Mage-- Most fire mages focus on large amounts of damage in small periods of time. This involves blowing all their CDs and nuking the hell out of their target. This big burst damage has been traded for sustainability and survivability so normally if your group can survive their initial attack the worst is over. Most mages will infact sheep you first and then nuke a team member. When you see their target trinket out the sheep and instantly Pain Suppress them and then cast you instants. This is generally enough get through this intense period.
--CC-- It is not the damage of the mage that makes them particularly dangerous (though it does help) but also their ability to CC targets. If timed a correctly and if you have already used your trinket (if you dont have the anti-CC trinket yet, get it fast) a sheep can give a team enough time to finish off one of your friends. The best way to stop a mage freely sheeping everyone is attacking him. Though you need to understand the mage will sheep you, so to prepare for this event try to always keep your teammates topped up for health and keep a renew going on who ever they are attacking most. Fearing is a good way to slow down the mage nuke but as you should most mages will have their trinket ready, but this still should buy you some time to heal against the nuke. Personally i have never done this purposely but if you are able to time a SW:Death when the mage is about to sheep you the reflected damage of it not killing him will actually unsheep you. Do not rely on this as it is pretty difficult to master. If you able to last the mage attack for a long period of time he will start to run out of mana. A mage without mana is a dead mage. They have mana jems which they can consume during the fight but the main way of regeneration is through evocation or drinking. Evocation is a channeled spell and if uninterrupted they will gain back 60% of their mana pool. By this time you will probably be close to low mana, if you allow the mage the chance to evocate you could be signing your death certificate. Thankfully any type of damage will knock the channeled spell forward and so you can dramatically reduce his mana gained. The best way to stop an evocation though is some sort of CC. This will stop the cast completely. Fear is a good option for you if you are close. After the fear burn off that mana he has gained and finish him off. Even if he has evocation on its 8 min cd he can still go sneak over to the corner and drink. If you have your shadow fiend you can keep him in combat by sending it after him and therefore preventing him from drinking and gaining yourself mana.
Shaman
Now I shall tell you the tale of the evil shaman... On the first day god (blizzard) created the classes. Everything was going swimmingly until the greedy shamans got hungry. Since all the mages in AV were either leeching there was a famine of tables across the land. Though the shamans did not care that everyone else was also hungry/thirsty and they complained to god, 'Gief us foodz or wei quit.' So the humble god to try to make them happy gave them purge. This purge enabled the shaman to make the disc priests completely defenseless as it removed all their instant cast buffs and heals. The priests were still allowed to cast spells healing what little life they had left. So god gave them earthshock which allowed them to spam interrupt all the of priests casting. This left the priest with nothing and so the shamans were able to eat the priests for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Basically if you leave shaman alone to attack you, he will eat you. The best way to counteract this is to kill them. Elemental shamans are harder to kill then the enhancement but have lower burst damage and cannot cast if under pressure lowering their overall dps. If you attack the shaman he will think less about his stomach (you) and more about his neck (the guy destroying him). After the shaman is dead make sure yell out about the fact that he killed mommy priest, daddy priest and little sister priest and that this is part of your crusade to kill all shamans. Resto shamans are the less danagerous cousins of the elemental/enhancement shaman and not as much a problem for you unless they are particularly aggressive players. Get your teammates to attack the other members of the team and try to give you space to burn his mana down. If he puts up any type of shield on himself dispel it (so he knows what it feels like to be purged and also to stop him gaining health or mana. If your quench for blood is still not satisfied dispelling his bloodlust/heroism should do it. Start first with dispelling the dpser's buff and then move onto the healer to limit the amount burst damage they can do with this. Dont forget to kill his friends. This obviously is an odd statement as shamans have no true friends. Their only companions in life are their totems. Crush their soul by simply swing your weapon at them and destroying them. Because all the important ones have no health any direct damage will destroy them so its the perfect job for a priest to do in his spare time. Totems to watch out for:
-Windfury - allows melee player around the totem to gain an extra swing from attacks, powerful if he has warrior allies (friends would be too kind a description)
-Tremor - Periodically breaks fear charm and sleep effects
-Grounding totem - absorbs not direct damage spells and absorbs direct damage spells but is also destoryed
-Earthbind - Slow all enemies in a 10 yard radius
-Searing Totem - shoots fire at a single target, can be annoying as they cause spell cast knock back.
-Poison Cleansing - if you are with a rogue friend destroy this asap as this periodically removes 1 poison from all members.
-Mana Spring - Gives the shaman a constant stream of mana
-Mana Tide - A shorter lived more powerful version of the Mana Spring giving all party members in range 6% of their mana back, easily recognized by the distinct swirling effect at its base. Destroy this fast.
-Totem of Wrath - Increases spell damage of all surrounding allies
Warlocks
Warlocks are the result of blizzard having lots of good ideas for spells and then at the end of making WOW just sticking them all together into one class. At least thats what it feels like for anyone who has ventured into the deep dark realms of the warlock.
--Warlock Strengths-- Crowd Control Damage Over Time Mana Drain Pretty Good Survivability(SL/SL) Unlimited Mana (when paired with a healer)
--Warlock Weakness-- Dispelable Damage Reliant on Pet Low Burst Damage
Most warlocks you meet in the arena will have almost identical talents specs. This cookie cutter build is known as SL/SL. It is a hybrid consisting of pretty evenly distributed talents between affliction(the DOT tree) and Demonology(demon tree). The idea of this build is to get two talents, Siphon Life(magic DoT which also heals the warlock) and Soul Link (20% of the damage on the warlock is transfered to the pet). This build means that although the warlock has less damage they can mitigate damage, heal themselves with DoTs. At very high levels of play killing the warlock's pet twice means the victory for team. The pet is more then just the damage mitigation,damage and spell lock(felhunter) it is a means of keeping you in combat. If you or the other healer is able to leave combat and successfully drink it means that you gain the advantage. Even in a small amount of mana which gives you enough mana for that extra heal is enough to decide a battle. Not to mention a good healer will try to heal a pet, so by attacking the pet which has no resilience you can quickly exhaust the mana of the opposite healer. Crowd Control Crowd Control is one of the warlock's biggest assets. If you have ever been deathcoiled and then chain feared you will know what i mean. Though with all types of spamable crowd control this spell is subject to diminishing returns (the spell will become less effective if spammed for every time it is applied until the player is immune. It is 3 fears which come to a total of 18 seconds of fear and on the 4th fear the player is immune for 15 seconds before they can get full force fear on them again. It is true that fear does not break under damage but it does increase the chance that it will break so if a warlock wants max fear time he wont dot up his feared target. You can absorb one fear with fearward but then you will get feared for a full seconds before you can do anything that is unless it breaks for what ever reason. The next fear is 5 seconds and 3 after that. If one your team members gets feared just dispel, simple as that. If you are facing a burst team and they are nuking your team members trinket out of the fear and get your Pain Suppresion on him/her straight away, if you have time shield them etc. Dont forget fear is casted so you can use interrupts or run out of line of sight to stop it. If you can stop fear you can cripple a warlocks defense a lot. Warlocks also have Howl of Terror and Death Coil. Howl of Terror is a casted AoE fear with a 40 second cooldown, it is an instant cast with talents but the SL/SL warlocks that you will face normally will not have this in their build. Death Coil is an instant cast horror effect lasting 3 seconds, doing damage which heals the warlock. Death Coil is not considered a fear effect so it wont be affected by your fearward, although it is still a magic effect and so is still dispelable.
Paladins
Paladins are the result of thousands of man hours of trying to splice the genes of humans and...a bottle of washing-up liquid. What was created was something that can clean almost every sort of ailment (except curses) and produce bubbles. Paladins are interesting opponent for priests. Currently there are two viable talents specs for arena; holy and retribution, and with most talent trees create two different play styles.
--Holy-- Holy is the currently the most common style of paladin you will meet.
Strengths
-Highest Armor (wears a shield unlike warriors)
-Mana Efficient Heals -Dispels:Magic, Poison, and Disease effect
-Momentary Invulnerability -Instant Stuns -Blessing of Protection(make immune to melee and ranged attacks
-Blessing of Freedom (removes snares/slows and makes target immune to both for a period of time)
Weaknesses -Cannot heal while moving -Lack of instant cast heals -Easy to lockdown/silence
Videos
Gladiator Holy Priest PvP http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=46672
Pandemic's Arena Vid 2100~ S3: Movie: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=56026 Armory: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Frostwhisper&n=Pandemic
Swarm 2 - Priest Arena PvP (shadow with 3vs3 as Disc) Movie: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=53221
Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Tichondrius&n=Swarm Zomgasm: You Lack Discipline! Movie: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=54001 Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rivendare&n=Zomgasm
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Hunter PVE
Vapo's Hunter Tips ver.1
First off I want to say that I do not believe one bit that I know all there is to know about hunters. What I have learned has been from experience and reading up on this class. I rolled this toon ages ago on Suramar with friends. I already had a 60 warrior and a 60 priest Horde side on Stormreaver. This guy was my fun toon. And that he is. I have a blast playing my hunter.
Anyways I wanted to write this up to share my tips and hopefully get other inputs from other hunters as well.
=UI=
I think a big part of playing a hunter well is having a good clean UI setup for yourself. Me, I am a minimalist and have the bare essentials shown. Only action buttons that are not keybound are shown. Make sure you have a way to see your target's target as well key people(ie. main assist, focus target if used).
=Mods=
I will list the key ones that have helped me.
Most of my mods are made using the Rock/Ace architecture. I keep most of these updated using WoWAceUpdater tool provided by www.wowace.com. A lot of these files can be downloaded at http://files.wowace.com -
oRA2 You remember CTRA? Yeah well it's old. Upgrade yourself to oRA2. -
Omen2 Threat. Keep it updated. You also need the Threat 2.0 library for this mod as well. -
BigWigs Boss Mod. A must. I like it better than DBM because it's not as bloated as DBM. No pvp timers and what not. A boss mod should just have boss timers imo. -
oUF Unit frames. I used to use Pitbull forever till I heard about this one. Very nice setup. I use the Kosken layout if anyone is wondering. -
ElkBuffBars A very clean buff replacement mod. -
Chatter Chat mod. Long time user of Prat and I changed over to this. Loving it ever since. -Chinchilla Minimap mod. Lets you move it anywhere you want and change it's shape. Lots of things can be done with it. -Bartender4 Action bar replacement. Allows you to hide bars, move bars anywhere and do just about anything you can think of. -
OneBag Bag replacement. I just hit B and one bag comes up with all my gear and ammo in one location. Very minimal and very easy to use. -Parrot Scrolling combat text. -Hourglass Cooldown monitor using bars. -
Chronometer Dot timer. -HunterAEP Agility Equivalence Points mod. Gives me a nice round number that I can use to gage if something is an upgrade or not. Applies itself to the tooltip. Works for gems and chants as well. -
RatingBuster Gives you a quick breakdown of what up/down grades you will get from a particular item. -
AtlasLoot Shows you what loot comes from where. No need to find out what loot Prince drops when you can just look it up yourself. -
Fence I hate having to look through the AH and figure out in my head real fast what the price is on items per when someone puts a stack of something up. Makes it very easy for me at a glance to find out who has the best price per unit on mana pots. -
MrPlow Organizes the gear and items in my bags and my bank. I’m lazy I can say it. -
Wardrobe2 Outfit organizer. Change between my PvE and PvP outfits with just a few clicks. -Quartz The best castbar. Period.
=Group Makeup=
Give us a shammy and a feral druid and we are happy. Put a rogue and a fury tank in our group and they will be happy with our BM proc. An ideal setup would be a BM hunter, MM hunter for TrueShot Aura, feral druid for 5% crit, shaman that actually drops GOA totem <3 and if at all possible a spriest for mana regen. Spriests are usually snagged up by the healing groups and I don't blame them. But if we were ever to have a mass influx of raiding spriests, don't forget the hunters
=Gems=
Big thing with a lot of hunters is they want to stack AP everywhere so they can flex their AP. What a lot don't know is Agi scales higher with Kings then AP. So gemming Agi is actually the way to go. There is nothing wrong with using gems with AP that you got from quests(ie. 20 AP epic gem from Kaelthas) and the like just as long as you don't make a routine of it in all your gear. You really will hurt yourself. =Enchants= Again Agi is king here. You can put Savagery on your wep and still be fine. I actually think I might put Savagery on my S3 when I get it. Don't know yet. My ideal setup would be two of the daggers off Hex Lord with 20 agi on both.
=Hit=
If you are not hit capped you are not only hurting yourself but you are hurting your group. If you do not put points into Surefooted(BM hunters) then you must have 140 hit rating. That will put you at 9% hit rating. That would mean that theoretically you cannot miss on a 73 elite. If you do spec in to Surefooted I think the number you want is 90 hit rating. Having this hit rating should be simple if you are smart about it. If I put all my hit gear on I get up to like 260 hit rating. Does nothing for me being that high so I try to balance out gems and gear to get a good number. I beleive right now I am at 143 hit rating.
=Consumables=
I usually just run around with Blackflight arrows but if we are headed to a new boss fight I try to get the Kara revered arrows. Make sure you have on you plenty of mana pots. Hunters do not regen mana for shit. Get a good cycle going of popping pots. We are lucky to have a ret pally in raid with mana return. Be nice to have more spriests but even then I don't know if the hunter group will get one For flasking I would tell you to just use the relentless assault flask and be done with it, but there are numbers that show that the intellect elixir and major agi one are slightly better. Your call on that one really. Warp burgers are ideal for your food buff. Just go to Cosmowrench and farm the warp guys right outside there. Then just give the meat to your local butcher or cook it yourself. It is also not a bad idea to put some mana oil on your wep to give you more regen. Not expensive to buy or make at all. =Shot Rotation= Shot rotation has already been talked about in other threads here and they hit all the key points so I don't need to go in to that. One thing I would like to point out. If you are doing the 3:2 rotation correctly, your SS should be your number one damage shot for your overall damage. If you have further questions on this you can get with me in game, I have no problem helping out.
=Websites=
Here are a few links to pages that contain lots of important data.
Hunter Shot Rotation Illustrated http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13107-hunter_shot_rotation_illustrated/
Hunter DPS Spreadsheet http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t9816-hunter_spreadsheets_--_development/
Hunter Beast Mastery Bible http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t11420-hunter_beast_mastery_bible/ Hunter Survival Raiding http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t12346-hunter_survival_raiding_2_1_a/ WoW Wiki - Guide to WoW http://www.wowwiki.com/Portal:Main
World of Raids - Up-to-date news on WoW http://www.worldofraids.com/
WoW Ace - Home of Ace Mods http://www.wowace.com/wiki/Main_Page
Online Character Auditor http://be.imba.hu/
Written by Vapo (Trollbane)
First off I want to say that I do not believe one bit that I know all there is to know about hunters. What I have learned has been from experience and reading up on this class. I rolled this toon ages ago on Suramar with friends. I already had a 60 warrior and a 60 priest Horde side on Stormreaver. This guy was my fun toon. And that he is. I have a blast playing my hunter.
Anyways I wanted to write this up to share my tips and hopefully get other inputs from other hunters as well.
=UI=
I think a big part of playing a hunter well is having a good clean UI setup for yourself. Me, I am a minimalist and have the bare essentials shown. Only action buttons that are not keybound are shown. Make sure you have a way to see your target's target as well key people(ie. main assist, focus target if used).
=Mods=
I will list the key ones that have helped me.
Most of my mods are made using the Rock/Ace architecture. I keep most of these updated using WoWAceUpdater tool provided by www.wowace.com. A lot of these files can be downloaded at http://files.wowace.com -
oRA2 You remember CTRA? Yeah well it's old. Upgrade yourself to oRA2. -
Omen2 Threat. Keep it updated. You also need the Threat 2.0 library for this mod as well. -
BigWigs Boss Mod. A must. I like it better than DBM because it's not as bloated as DBM. No pvp timers and what not. A boss mod should just have boss timers imo. -
oUF Unit frames. I used to use Pitbull forever till I heard about this one. Very nice setup. I use the Kosken layout if anyone is wondering. -
ElkBuffBars A very clean buff replacement mod. -
Chatter Chat mod. Long time user of Prat and I changed over to this. Loving it ever since. -Chinchilla Minimap mod. Lets you move it anywhere you want and change it's shape. Lots of things can be done with it. -Bartender4 Action bar replacement. Allows you to hide bars, move bars anywhere and do just about anything you can think of. -
OneBag Bag replacement. I just hit B and one bag comes up with all my gear and ammo in one location. Very minimal and very easy to use. -Parrot Scrolling combat text. -Hourglass Cooldown monitor using bars. -
Chronometer Dot timer. -HunterAEP Agility Equivalence Points mod. Gives me a nice round number that I can use to gage if something is an upgrade or not. Applies itself to the tooltip. Works for gems and chants as well. -
RatingBuster Gives you a quick breakdown of what up/down grades you will get from a particular item. -
AtlasLoot Shows you what loot comes from where. No need to find out what loot Prince drops when you can just look it up yourself. -
Fence I hate having to look through the AH and figure out in my head real fast what the price is on items per when someone puts a stack of something up. Makes it very easy for me at a glance to find out who has the best price per unit on mana pots. -
MrPlow Organizes the gear and items in my bags and my bank. I’m lazy I can say it. -
Wardrobe2 Outfit organizer. Change between my PvE and PvP outfits with just a few clicks. -Quartz The best castbar. Period.
=Group Makeup=
Give us a shammy and a feral druid and we are happy. Put a rogue and a fury tank in our group and they will be happy with our BM proc. An ideal setup would be a BM hunter, MM hunter for TrueShot Aura, feral druid for 5% crit, shaman that actually drops GOA totem <3 and if at all possible a spriest for mana regen. Spriests are usually snagged up by the healing groups and I don't blame them. But if we were ever to have a mass influx of raiding spriests, don't forget the hunters
=Gems=
Big thing with a lot of hunters is they want to stack AP everywhere so they can flex their AP. What a lot don't know is Agi scales higher with Kings then AP. So gemming Agi is actually the way to go. There is nothing wrong with using gems with AP that you got from quests(ie. 20 AP epic gem from Kaelthas) and the like just as long as you don't make a routine of it in all your gear. You really will hurt yourself. =Enchants= Again Agi is king here. You can put Savagery on your wep and still be fine. I actually think I might put Savagery on my S3 when I get it. Don't know yet. My ideal setup would be two of the daggers off Hex Lord with 20 agi on both.
=Hit=
If you are not hit capped you are not only hurting yourself but you are hurting your group. If you do not put points into Surefooted(BM hunters) then you must have 140 hit rating. That will put you at 9% hit rating. That would mean that theoretically you cannot miss on a 73 elite. If you do spec in to Surefooted I think the number you want is 90 hit rating. Having this hit rating should be simple if you are smart about it. If I put all my hit gear on I get up to like 260 hit rating. Does nothing for me being that high so I try to balance out gems and gear to get a good number. I beleive right now I am at 143 hit rating.
=Consumables=
I usually just run around with Blackflight arrows but if we are headed to a new boss fight I try to get the Kara revered arrows. Make sure you have on you plenty of mana pots. Hunters do not regen mana for shit. Get a good cycle going of popping pots. We are lucky to have a ret pally in raid with mana return. Be nice to have more spriests but even then I don't know if the hunter group will get one For flasking I would tell you to just use the relentless assault flask and be done with it, but there are numbers that show that the intellect elixir and major agi one are slightly better. Your call on that one really. Warp burgers are ideal for your food buff. Just go to Cosmowrench and farm the warp guys right outside there. Then just give the meat to your local butcher or cook it yourself. It is also not a bad idea to put some mana oil on your wep to give you more regen. Not expensive to buy or make at all. =Shot Rotation= Shot rotation has already been talked about in other threads here and they hit all the key points so I don't need to go in to that. One thing I would like to point out. If you are doing the 3:2 rotation correctly, your SS should be your number one damage shot for your overall damage. If you have further questions on this you can get with me in game, I have no problem helping out.
=Websites=
Here are a few links to pages that contain lots of important data.
Hunter Shot Rotation Illustrated http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13107-hunter_shot_rotation_illustrated/
Hunter DPS Spreadsheet http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t9816-hunter_spreadsheets_--_development/
Hunter Beast Mastery Bible http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t11420-hunter_beast_mastery_bible/ Hunter Survival Raiding http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t12346-hunter_survival_raiding_2_1_a/ WoW Wiki - Guide to WoW http://www.wowwiki.com/Portal:Main
World of Raids - Up-to-date news on WoW http://www.worldofraids.com/
WoW Ace - Home of Ace Mods http://www.wowace.com/wiki/Main_Page
Online Character Auditor http://be.imba.hu/
Written by Vapo (Trollbane)
Reputation Calculator
This helps you find out what you need to get your rep where you want it.
Its an amazing site!
Click Here!
Its an amazing site!
Click Here!
Feral Druid
This link takes you to a site that uses weighted stats to determine usefullness of a piece of gear for a druid. It shows an overall value for each individual piece.
Click Here!
Uncrittable macro for druid tanks:
This macro works as long as you have all points in Mark o the Wild.
If the number you get is negative you are uncrittable.
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(2.6-(GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)*.04+GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_CRIT_TAKEN_MELEE) ),1,0.5,0)
Elitist Jerks Threads Cat DPS - Powershifting http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t10533-druid_cat_dps_powershifting/
Cat DPS - Value of +hit http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13352-druid_why_hit_good_dps/
Cat DPS - General http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t11338-feral_druid_dps/
Cat DPS - Feral AP Scaling http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t12143-feral_attack_power_when_good_intentions_go_dumb/
Bear Tanking - Item Comparisons http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13204-bear_tank_item_comparisons/
Bear Tanking - Pre-Raid Gear Bear Tanking - Pre-Raid Gear http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17794-feral_druid_preraid_tank_gear_guide/
Disclaimer: I didnt make this spreadsheet! I have however used it for a very long time and I find it to be extremely helpful and accurate.
Click Here!
Uncrittable macro for druid tanks:
This macro works as long as you have all points in Mark o the Wild.
If the number you get is negative you are uncrittable.
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(2.6-(GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)*.04+GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_CRIT_TAKEN_MELEE) ),1,0.5,0)
Elitist Jerks Threads Cat DPS - Powershifting http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t10533-druid_cat_dps_powershifting/
Cat DPS - Value of +hit http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13352-druid_why_hit_good_dps/
Cat DPS - General http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t11338-feral_druid_dps/
Cat DPS - Feral AP Scaling http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t12143-feral_attack_power_when_good_intentions_go_dumb/
Bear Tanking - Item Comparisons http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13204-bear_tank_item_comparisons/
Bear Tanking - Pre-Raid Gear Bear Tanking - Pre-Raid Gear http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17794-feral_druid_preraid_tank_gear_guide/
Disclaimer: I didnt make this spreadsheet! I have however used it for a very long time and I find it to be extremely helpful and accurate.
Mage PVP Thread
I have been working quite alot on "weighted stats" for a pvp mage and this is what I have came up with. It is very similar to some PVE information I found on Elitist Jerks website. I am not claiming this weighted stats list is the gospel but I am saying I am building around it.
Spell Damage: 1.15
Spell Haste Rating: 1.09
Spell Crit Rating: 0.73
Intellect: 0.22
Stamina: 0.24
Spirit: 0.11
Spell Hit Rating: 0.04
This guide provides mage PvP tactics and tricks. Mages have many times been referred to as glass Cannons. This may be true for some people, but with the right skill and spec a mage can be extremely powerful in PvP. Mages require A LOT of skill if you want to be a good PvPer. If you cannot think quickly and micro-manage many spells and abilities then you would be better off sticking to PvE or rolling an easier class to play. Ive broken the guide down into the three types of PvP: duels, battlegrounds, and arena. No, I didnt forget world PvP, but the item rewards for world PvP are garbage and not worth the time or effort to get.
Talents
Before you can ever be amazing in PvP you will need to have a good PvP spec. Here are some commonly use PvP specs (Remember the trees are in this order: Arcane/Fire/Frost): In order from strongest to weakest.
17/0/44
This build is used by the Mage Class Leader on Stormreaver (Crystorm) and he swears by it for Arenas.
0/8/53
In my opinion this is the strongest all around PvP specs. You have HUGE burst damage with shatter combos and you get a big watery friend to aid you with his ranged frost nova ability (freeze). Ice Block is almost a must-have, it removes ALL debuffs and can be used to absorb certain spells/attacks that would do huge damage. Ice barrier also helps to add to your overall survivability. You also get Improved Counterspell, which is something you will almost have to have if you play arena and will aid you in duels and battlegrounds as well.
0/33/28
Ah yes. Elementalist, my personal favorite spec. This is the spec I use and will always use. The only reason I put it in second is because it is a bit lacking compared to 17/0/44 for arena but overall it is an extremely powerful PvP spec. If you need some motivation to try this spec go to warcraftmovies.com and search for Albis. Watch his world PvP TBC video.
40/0/21
Similar to the above build, but instead of Ice Barrier and Water Elemental you get Presence of Mind and Arcane Power. With this build you play the same as a normal frost mage except you use PoM/AP/Trinket/Frostbolt on people to do massive damage. This build is very viable in any type of PvP but because the combo is on a 3 min cooldown it is commonly used for arena purposes.
40/21/0
Same as the frost 3 minute mage except you get Pyroblast and Blastwave instead of Ice Block. You gain a little more burst with the PoM/AP/Trinket/Pyro + Blastwave combo but you loose the added survivability of ice block.
Heavy Fire
Many people live by this build but for PvP it is very lacking. If you want to resort to hiding in bushes and nuking people with fireballs until they realize where you are and kill you then by all means go for it, but if you ever want to be able to win a “You vs. Many†situation or achieve a rating above 1800 in arena then avoid this spec because it is too lacking in survivability.
Mage 1v1 Dueling Strategies
Duels: (in order from easiest to hardest)
Mage vs. Warrior: This should be a very simple fight if you are specd into frost, if not its still easy, just have rank 1 Frostbolt on your bar. Counterspell him at the start of the duel so that he cannot charge you (he will be put into combat). When he changes to Berserker Stance get ready to Blink because he is going to intercept. At this point just cast a rank 1 Frostbolt at him and proceed to kite him around and use combos like Nova+Frostbolt+Ice Lance (if you are frost) to burn him down. If you ever see him equip a shield it is because he used Spell Reflect, just shoot an Ice Lance at him to get rid of it. Doing 200 damage to yourself is no big deal. Be ready to trinket or Ice Block out of Hamstring if he gets it on you, he will do loads of damage to you if you dont remove it quickly.
Mage vs. Paladin: If the paladin is anything except retribution this will be a very easy fight. If he is ret you will still win, you just have to be more careful. They always open with a stun, just Blink out of it and proceed to nuke them. After that they run around hitting you for minimal damage and healing constantly. The tricky part is knowing when to go in for the kill. MY rule of thumb is that if they are at, or below 35% health, to Counterspell his heal and finish him. If they are above that then there is a good chance the CS will run out before he is dead and he will heal to full, prolonging the battle another 24 seconds until CS is back up. If he heals at above 35% health, let him; just continue to cast Frostbolt/Fireball on him constantly as he heals. If he bubbles, run away for the duration. If you run out of mana sheep him and evocate. His health will regen but its not a problem.
Mage vs. Mage: This fight is all down to skill. Figure out what spec they are quickly and react to it. If he is a frost mage and you arent then spell steal his ice barrier, taking away his survivability and giving it to yourself and be sure to ALLWAYS blink out of nova or be prepared to take a load of dmg. If he is 3 minute mage be prepared to Ice Block his PoM/AP/Trinket/??. If you are quick enough you can Counterspell him as soon as you see AP go up, making him useless for 4 seconds, thus giving you time to spellsteal PoM/AP for yourself. Be smart, if he is frost use CS on a frost spell, if he is fire use it on a fire spell. ALWAYS have a ward up when the cooldown is up, this can make or break you. Another nifty trick is to Blink behind him at the last second of his spell cast; this brings you out of line of sight thus making his spell not go off.
Mage vs. Shaman: Against a shaman always remember that almost all of their spells are nature. So if you Counterspell a heal or a lightning bolt it will lock them out of almost everything for 8 seconds. Be aware of when they pop grounding totems and shoot a ice lance at it. If he is enhancement make sure you stay away at all costs. All it takes is one wind fury crit and you are a dead mage. Against a resto shaman just spellsteal his Earth Shield and /lol him because you have won, all you have to do is time one good counterspell on his heal. Against elemental shamans do all you can to keep him from casting on you. This includes counterspell, blinking behind him, and ice blocking chain lightings. Dont bother casting ice barrier/mana shield except at the start because it will just be purged. Shamans aren’t usually difficult but if you arent careful they can be nasty opponents.
Mage vs. Rogue: Ok, so now were getting into the hard fights. Rogues can either be a.) Fairly hard -or- b.) Really hard, depending on if they have they PvP gloves that give deadly throw a silence effect. A frost mage should be able to beat a rogue 95% of they time. A fire mage will be lucky to win 50%. Most rouges open with cheap shot because they are dumb. If they do then simply Blink away and start fighting as you always would. If they open with garrote it will silence you for quite some time and apply a nasty dot. You will need to Ice Block as soon as they garrote you to remove the dot and silence (if your fire just run and hope for the best while youre silenced). After that kite them as well as you can while doing as much damage as you can pump out. MAKE SURE THEY STAY IN COMBAT. If they get out of combat they will re-stealth and youre out of luck. If they do re-stealth, whether it be by vanish or because you let them get out of combat use rank 1 Blizzard over the area where they vanished and try to catch them before they get to you. If youre a 3 minute mage use your cooldowns or you probably wont win. If you are frost, the elemental will help you a lot. Keep your shield up all the time. When they use Cloak of Shadows I run away until they catch up to me and then I turn around and run straight back at them and Blink past them. This usually disorients them long enough for Cloak of Shadows to run out. If you simply Blink away in the direction youre running they usually catch you with sprint.
Mage vs. Druid: Druids can be very hard if they know what they are doing. If they are feral do exactly what you did vs. a rogue except be ready to Counterspell them when they heal. Remember that you cant sheep a druid and he can shape shift out of slowing effects. So when you nova him use Ice Lance IMMEDIATELY so that you get a bit of dmg of before he shifts out. Resto druids are a pain. Your best chance is to spellsteal their HoTs and hope that you can burn them down before you run out of mana. They probably wont kill you but it will be very hard for you to kill them too. It is pretty pointless to duel a resto druid so I would avoid them most of the time. Balance druids are easy all you have to do is Counterspell one spell and they are locked out of nearly all of their spells for 8 seconds. If they are Moon Fire spammers then keep your shield up and burn them down quickly. If you have to, use Ice Block to remove the dot.
Mage vs. Hunter: Hunters can be very annoying, especially BM spec'd hunters. The key to hunters is staying in their Dead Zone. This is the zone outside of melee range and inside bow/gun range. Inside melee range is not too bad because they have weak melee in most cases, but avoid being far enough away that they can shoot you at all costs. At the start of a duel the hunter will run as far away form you as he can get. You dont have to play cheap and be on him right when the duel starts, but dont be too far away. MM hunters usually open up with Silence Shot (3 sec silence), I would Ice Block out of this and then Blink inside his melee range. Get close to him as quickly as you can, use Blink for this if you need to. Nova him RIGHT AWAY once you get near him so that when he scatter shots you he cannot get his distance. Scatter and nova will run out at about the same time, at this point use CoC or Blastwave to keep him slowed. If you see him bend over to set a trap make sure you either run around it or Blink over it, if you get stuck in a trap youre in trouble. Follow him around as closely as you can and use only instant casts until nova is up. At this time you can cast a spell or two on him while he is frozen. BM hunters are an entirely different story. BW makes them immune to slowing effects for 18 seconds. This is a LONG time. If you are a PoM/AP mage then you have a decent chance. If you get a massive crit off they will die quickly, they do not have a lot of health in general. If you are a heavy frost mage you will have a very tough fight on your hands but it is still possible to win.
Mage vs. Warlock: This is one of the hardest fights for a mage. You will need to play perfectly to beat a good warlock. Before the fight starts throw up Fire Ward and Mana Shield/Ice Barrier even though they may be eaten by the pet. At the start of the fight you will either be spell locked (felhunter) or charged (felguard) during which time the warlock will load you up with dots. At this point he will probably try to fear you. If he is aflic or demo, Counterspell the fear and he will be locked out of most of his spells for 8 seconds. If he is destruction Counterspell the first fire spell you see instead. Burst him down as quickly as you can. When you see him cast fear again Blink behind him. They will use Deathcoil, but when they will use it is anyones guess. Be ready for it and Ice Block BEFORE it hits you. This is very important because if it hits you it causes terror for 3 seconds and gives the warlock a very respectable amount of health back. The Ice Block will also remove all of the dots that were on you, taking away a lot of the warlocks dps. If you have the battlegrounds trinket use it the next time he fears you. If you are undead it will be helpful, as you have Will of the Forsaken. Even the best mages will loose to a good warlock most of the time, but if you play your cards right you should be able to keep it 50/50.
Mage vs. Priest: Priests are the Anti-mage. It is extremely hard to beat a priest 1v1. Against shadow priests make sure to Ice Block out of their dots, if you leave Vampiric Embrace on for long the priest will be healing himself for ALOT while still damaging you. I usually Counterspell a shadow spell and hope that they arent quick enough to change forms and heal before I can kill them. Even holy priests are difficult. Against a holy priest spellsteal all of his buffs as soon as you can so that later on when he uses bubble/renew/prayer of mending you can take it for yourself. To win, you have to get a good Counterspell off on one of his heals and burst him down before he can heal again.
Battlegrounds
Battlegrounds should be called NOOBGrounds. 80% of the people who play in there are awful players. This is good news for the skilled ones =D. Basically, use the 1v1 skills you had just learned, but I'll briefly describe some general strategies for each of the battlegrounds.
Warsong Gulch
To get the most honor you need to get a lot of honor kills, and win quickly. This means not dieing every 2 minutes, because when youre dead youre not getting any honor. Mages don't make very good flag runners, leave that to the druids and shaman. What mages can do well, is destroy people =D, so do that instead. As a fire mage try and stay with the zerg (big group of people on youre team). Just hang back behind the lines and nuke people. As a frost mage you can venture out and engage in some 1v1. Many fights if you really want to. If I ever see 2, 3, even 4, melee classes together I usually go engage them, even if Im alone. Being melee they will all have to get near you to attack you. Simply nova them and slow them with CoC while focusing 1 at a time to kill with other, single target, spells in between youre AoEs. Often times I kill all of them and survive, but even if I kill two or three and die I still get a good bit of honor since I was alone. When you kill something alone you get ALOT more honor than you would if you were with others. If you find that you cannot do this then stick with the group and help the flag carriers by novaing the people chasing him. If you are a 3-minute mage, killing the other teams flag carrier is where you shine. You can burn him down with your cooldowns before he realizes what hit him.
Arathi Basin
Arathi is a very fun battleground, there are a lot of opportunities to get some good small sided fights in at flag points. Dont be afraid to go take a flag if you see that you can safely do it, but beware, if you do not see anyone defending a flag point there is probably a stealthed rogue or druid there. AB is good because you can loose and still get a decent amount of honor since the honor ticks at every 300 resources. There is no real strategy for here except to kill people can win flags. *On a side note, a cool trick is to mount up and jump off of the cliff into the mine and Blink when you are about 10-15 yards off of the ground. It will teleport you to the ground and you wont take any fall damage*
Alterac Valley and Eye of the Storm
The only real strategy I can give you here is to stay with the group, if you end up alone you will probably die. Since there are a lot of people on each team your chances of finding a good 1v1 fight are slim. Just stay with the group and nuke people, treat it almost as a pve raid situation.
Arena
Partners: to have a good arena team you first need to have a compatible team. For 2v2 some good classes to team with are: warlocks, paladins, priests. For 3v3, you will need at least 1 healer and for 5v5 you should have 2. Make sure youre partners are good before you play or you will kill youre rating very quickly. At 1800 rating, 1 loss requires almost 2 wins to make up for it.
3v3 and 5v5:
If you have a good healer in your group you will do well. In these size matches your team needs to make sure that everyone kills the same person first. Split DPS is a very bad thing. Be aware of their healers and be prepared to Counterspell when you see them heal. Your Counterspell can make or break a game so make sure you time it well.
Some tricks: Mages can conjure their own food and water in arena. No other class can eat and drink in arena unless a mage gives them food/water. Use this to your advantage. If you area about to die run behind a pillar, invis, and go hide and eat/drink.
* After a certain amount of time in an arena tornadoes will start to appear. If you find yourself unable to escape from a melee class, jump into to one of them. They will shoot you about 30 yards in a random direction and do minimal damage, giving you valuable time to nuke.* Dont forget Ice Block. If you are about to die use it and hope that a healer notices and passes you a heal. Even if you dont get a heal, usually the enemies will turn their attention to someone else rather than wait 8 seconds while they are being pounded by your teammates.* Use every buff you can before arena starts. The more buffs you have, the more mana the shaman and priests have to waste to purge/dispel you.
Addons:
Arena pointer: Simple addon that shows how many points you will receive for youre current rating.
Arena Live Frames: Great addon. It has a movable frame that will show your opponents health bars and class icons. Their frames will be added as soon as you mouse over them. This allows you to easily change targets. It also shows you who youre teammates are targeting. General Strategy for 2v2: About 50% of the teams you fight will be a healer with a dps class. If the healing class is a druid, kill it first. Otherwise kill the dps class and Counterspell the healer when he tries to heal. Against a team with two dps classes they key is to burn one down as quickly as you can, and then deal with the other one 2v1. Use your PoM/AP on one of them right away if you have it, if not use anything you have in your arsenal. Once its a 2v1 fight you have won (usually).
Disclaimer: I found this on the internet, it is not perfect. Specs are designed to work around peoples playstyle. If you have one that works then congrats! This is mainly to give people a feel of what works for the majority of the mages out there.
Spell Damage: 1.15
Spell Haste Rating: 1.09
Spell Crit Rating: 0.73
Intellect: 0.22
Stamina: 0.24
Spirit: 0.11
Spell Hit Rating: 0.04
This guide provides mage PvP tactics and tricks. Mages have many times been referred to as glass Cannons. This may be true for some people, but with the right skill and spec a mage can be extremely powerful in PvP. Mages require A LOT of skill if you want to be a good PvPer. If you cannot think quickly and micro-manage many spells and abilities then you would be better off sticking to PvE or rolling an easier class to play. Ive broken the guide down into the three types of PvP: duels, battlegrounds, and arena. No, I didnt forget world PvP, but the item rewards for world PvP are garbage and not worth the time or effort to get.
Talents
Before you can ever be amazing in PvP you will need to have a good PvP spec. Here are some commonly use PvP specs (Remember the trees are in this order: Arcane/Fire/Frost): In order from strongest to weakest.
17/0/44
This build is used by the Mage Class Leader on Stormreaver (Crystorm) and he swears by it for Arenas.
0/8/53
In my opinion this is the strongest all around PvP specs. You have HUGE burst damage with shatter combos and you get a big watery friend to aid you with his ranged frost nova ability (freeze). Ice Block is almost a must-have, it removes ALL debuffs and can be used to absorb certain spells/attacks that would do huge damage. Ice barrier also helps to add to your overall survivability. You also get Improved Counterspell, which is something you will almost have to have if you play arena and will aid you in duels and battlegrounds as well.
0/33/28
Ah yes. Elementalist, my personal favorite spec. This is the spec I use and will always use. The only reason I put it in second is because it is a bit lacking compared to 17/0/44 for arena but overall it is an extremely powerful PvP spec. If you need some motivation to try this spec go to warcraftmovies.com and search for Albis. Watch his world PvP TBC video.
40/0/21
Similar to the above build, but instead of Ice Barrier and Water Elemental you get Presence of Mind and Arcane Power. With this build you play the same as a normal frost mage except you use PoM/AP/Trinket/Frostbolt on people to do massive damage. This build is very viable in any type of PvP but because the combo is on a 3 min cooldown it is commonly used for arena purposes.
40/21/0
Same as the frost 3 minute mage except you get Pyroblast and Blastwave instead of Ice Block. You gain a little more burst with the PoM/AP/Trinket/Pyro + Blastwave combo but you loose the added survivability of ice block.
Heavy Fire
Many people live by this build but for PvP it is very lacking. If you want to resort to hiding in bushes and nuking people with fireballs until they realize where you are and kill you then by all means go for it, but if you ever want to be able to win a “You vs. Many†situation or achieve a rating above 1800 in arena then avoid this spec because it is too lacking in survivability.
Mage 1v1 Dueling Strategies
Duels: (in order from easiest to hardest)
Mage vs. Warrior: This should be a very simple fight if you are specd into frost, if not its still easy, just have rank 1 Frostbolt on your bar. Counterspell him at the start of the duel so that he cannot charge you (he will be put into combat). When he changes to Berserker Stance get ready to Blink because he is going to intercept. At this point just cast a rank 1 Frostbolt at him and proceed to kite him around and use combos like Nova+Frostbolt+Ice Lance (if you are frost) to burn him down. If you ever see him equip a shield it is because he used Spell Reflect, just shoot an Ice Lance at him to get rid of it. Doing 200 damage to yourself is no big deal. Be ready to trinket or Ice Block out of Hamstring if he gets it on you, he will do loads of damage to you if you dont remove it quickly.
Mage vs. Paladin: If the paladin is anything except retribution this will be a very easy fight. If he is ret you will still win, you just have to be more careful. They always open with a stun, just Blink out of it and proceed to nuke them. After that they run around hitting you for minimal damage and healing constantly. The tricky part is knowing when to go in for the kill. MY rule of thumb is that if they are at, or below 35% health, to Counterspell his heal and finish him. If they are above that then there is a good chance the CS will run out before he is dead and he will heal to full, prolonging the battle another 24 seconds until CS is back up. If he heals at above 35% health, let him; just continue to cast Frostbolt/Fireball on him constantly as he heals. If he bubbles, run away for the duration. If you run out of mana sheep him and evocate. His health will regen but its not a problem.
Mage vs. Mage: This fight is all down to skill. Figure out what spec they are quickly and react to it. If he is a frost mage and you arent then spell steal his ice barrier, taking away his survivability and giving it to yourself and be sure to ALLWAYS blink out of nova or be prepared to take a load of dmg. If he is 3 minute mage be prepared to Ice Block his PoM/AP/Trinket/??. If you are quick enough you can Counterspell him as soon as you see AP go up, making him useless for 4 seconds, thus giving you time to spellsteal PoM/AP for yourself. Be smart, if he is frost use CS on a frost spell, if he is fire use it on a fire spell. ALWAYS have a ward up when the cooldown is up, this can make or break you. Another nifty trick is to Blink behind him at the last second of his spell cast; this brings you out of line of sight thus making his spell not go off.
Mage vs. Shaman: Against a shaman always remember that almost all of their spells are nature. So if you Counterspell a heal or a lightning bolt it will lock them out of almost everything for 8 seconds. Be aware of when they pop grounding totems and shoot a ice lance at it. If he is enhancement make sure you stay away at all costs. All it takes is one wind fury crit and you are a dead mage. Against a resto shaman just spellsteal his Earth Shield and /lol him because you have won, all you have to do is time one good counterspell on his heal. Against elemental shamans do all you can to keep him from casting on you. This includes counterspell, blinking behind him, and ice blocking chain lightings. Dont bother casting ice barrier/mana shield except at the start because it will just be purged. Shamans aren’t usually difficult but if you arent careful they can be nasty opponents.
Mage vs. Rogue: Ok, so now were getting into the hard fights. Rogues can either be a.) Fairly hard -or- b.) Really hard, depending on if they have they PvP gloves that give deadly throw a silence effect. A frost mage should be able to beat a rogue 95% of they time. A fire mage will be lucky to win 50%. Most rouges open with cheap shot because they are dumb. If they do then simply Blink away and start fighting as you always would. If they open with garrote it will silence you for quite some time and apply a nasty dot. You will need to Ice Block as soon as they garrote you to remove the dot and silence (if your fire just run and hope for the best while youre silenced). After that kite them as well as you can while doing as much damage as you can pump out. MAKE SURE THEY STAY IN COMBAT. If they get out of combat they will re-stealth and youre out of luck. If they do re-stealth, whether it be by vanish or because you let them get out of combat use rank 1 Blizzard over the area where they vanished and try to catch them before they get to you. If youre a 3 minute mage use your cooldowns or you probably wont win. If you are frost, the elemental will help you a lot. Keep your shield up all the time. When they use Cloak of Shadows I run away until they catch up to me and then I turn around and run straight back at them and Blink past them. This usually disorients them long enough for Cloak of Shadows to run out. If you simply Blink away in the direction youre running they usually catch you with sprint.
Mage vs. Druid: Druids can be very hard if they know what they are doing. If they are feral do exactly what you did vs. a rogue except be ready to Counterspell them when they heal. Remember that you cant sheep a druid and he can shape shift out of slowing effects. So when you nova him use Ice Lance IMMEDIATELY so that you get a bit of dmg of before he shifts out. Resto druids are a pain. Your best chance is to spellsteal their HoTs and hope that you can burn them down before you run out of mana. They probably wont kill you but it will be very hard for you to kill them too. It is pretty pointless to duel a resto druid so I would avoid them most of the time. Balance druids are easy all you have to do is Counterspell one spell and they are locked out of nearly all of their spells for 8 seconds. If they are Moon Fire spammers then keep your shield up and burn them down quickly. If you have to, use Ice Block to remove the dot.
Mage vs. Hunter: Hunters can be very annoying, especially BM spec'd hunters. The key to hunters is staying in their Dead Zone. This is the zone outside of melee range and inside bow/gun range. Inside melee range is not too bad because they have weak melee in most cases, but avoid being far enough away that they can shoot you at all costs. At the start of a duel the hunter will run as far away form you as he can get. You dont have to play cheap and be on him right when the duel starts, but dont be too far away. MM hunters usually open up with Silence Shot (3 sec silence), I would Ice Block out of this and then Blink inside his melee range. Get close to him as quickly as you can, use Blink for this if you need to. Nova him RIGHT AWAY once you get near him so that when he scatter shots you he cannot get his distance. Scatter and nova will run out at about the same time, at this point use CoC or Blastwave to keep him slowed. If you see him bend over to set a trap make sure you either run around it or Blink over it, if you get stuck in a trap youre in trouble. Follow him around as closely as you can and use only instant casts until nova is up. At this time you can cast a spell or two on him while he is frozen. BM hunters are an entirely different story. BW makes them immune to slowing effects for 18 seconds. This is a LONG time. If you are a PoM/AP mage then you have a decent chance. If you get a massive crit off they will die quickly, they do not have a lot of health in general. If you are a heavy frost mage you will have a very tough fight on your hands but it is still possible to win.
Mage vs. Warlock: This is one of the hardest fights for a mage. You will need to play perfectly to beat a good warlock. Before the fight starts throw up Fire Ward and Mana Shield/Ice Barrier even though they may be eaten by the pet. At the start of the fight you will either be spell locked (felhunter) or charged (felguard) during which time the warlock will load you up with dots. At this point he will probably try to fear you. If he is aflic or demo, Counterspell the fear and he will be locked out of most of his spells for 8 seconds. If he is destruction Counterspell the first fire spell you see instead. Burst him down as quickly as you can. When you see him cast fear again Blink behind him. They will use Deathcoil, but when they will use it is anyones guess. Be ready for it and Ice Block BEFORE it hits you. This is very important because if it hits you it causes terror for 3 seconds and gives the warlock a very respectable amount of health back. The Ice Block will also remove all of the dots that were on you, taking away a lot of the warlocks dps. If you have the battlegrounds trinket use it the next time he fears you. If you are undead it will be helpful, as you have Will of the Forsaken. Even the best mages will loose to a good warlock most of the time, but if you play your cards right you should be able to keep it 50/50.
Mage vs. Priest: Priests are the Anti-mage. It is extremely hard to beat a priest 1v1. Against shadow priests make sure to Ice Block out of their dots, if you leave Vampiric Embrace on for long the priest will be healing himself for ALOT while still damaging you. I usually Counterspell a shadow spell and hope that they arent quick enough to change forms and heal before I can kill them. Even holy priests are difficult. Against a holy priest spellsteal all of his buffs as soon as you can so that later on when he uses bubble/renew/prayer of mending you can take it for yourself. To win, you have to get a good Counterspell off on one of his heals and burst him down before he can heal again.
Battlegrounds
Battlegrounds should be called NOOBGrounds. 80% of the people who play in there are awful players. This is good news for the skilled ones =D. Basically, use the 1v1 skills you had just learned, but I'll briefly describe some general strategies for each of the battlegrounds.
Warsong Gulch
To get the most honor you need to get a lot of honor kills, and win quickly. This means not dieing every 2 minutes, because when youre dead youre not getting any honor. Mages don't make very good flag runners, leave that to the druids and shaman. What mages can do well, is destroy people =D, so do that instead. As a fire mage try and stay with the zerg (big group of people on youre team). Just hang back behind the lines and nuke people. As a frost mage you can venture out and engage in some 1v1. Many fights if you really want to. If I ever see 2, 3, even 4, melee classes together I usually go engage them, even if Im alone. Being melee they will all have to get near you to attack you. Simply nova them and slow them with CoC while focusing 1 at a time to kill with other, single target, spells in between youre AoEs. Often times I kill all of them and survive, but even if I kill two or three and die I still get a good bit of honor since I was alone. When you kill something alone you get ALOT more honor than you would if you were with others. If you find that you cannot do this then stick with the group and help the flag carriers by novaing the people chasing him. If you are a 3-minute mage, killing the other teams flag carrier is where you shine. You can burn him down with your cooldowns before he realizes what hit him.
Arathi Basin
Arathi is a very fun battleground, there are a lot of opportunities to get some good small sided fights in at flag points. Dont be afraid to go take a flag if you see that you can safely do it, but beware, if you do not see anyone defending a flag point there is probably a stealthed rogue or druid there. AB is good because you can loose and still get a decent amount of honor since the honor ticks at every 300 resources. There is no real strategy for here except to kill people can win flags. *On a side note, a cool trick is to mount up and jump off of the cliff into the mine and Blink when you are about 10-15 yards off of the ground. It will teleport you to the ground and you wont take any fall damage*
Alterac Valley and Eye of the Storm
The only real strategy I can give you here is to stay with the group, if you end up alone you will probably die. Since there are a lot of people on each team your chances of finding a good 1v1 fight are slim. Just stay with the group and nuke people, treat it almost as a pve raid situation.
Arena
Partners: to have a good arena team you first need to have a compatible team. For 2v2 some good classes to team with are: warlocks, paladins, priests. For 3v3, you will need at least 1 healer and for 5v5 you should have 2. Make sure youre partners are good before you play or you will kill youre rating very quickly. At 1800 rating, 1 loss requires almost 2 wins to make up for it.
3v3 and 5v5:
If you have a good healer in your group you will do well. In these size matches your team needs to make sure that everyone kills the same person first. Split DPS is a very bad thing. Be aware of their healers and be prepared to Counterspell when you see them heal. Your Counterspell can make or break a game so make sure you time it well.
Some tricks: Mages can conjure their own food and water in arena. No other class can eat and drink in arena unless a mage gives them food/water. Use this to your advantage. If you area about to die run behind a pillar, invis, and go hide and eat/drink.
* After a certain amount of time in an arena tornadoes will start to appear. If you find yourself unable to escape from a melee class, jump into to one of them. They will shoot you about 30 yards in a random direction and do minimal damage, giving you valuable time to nuke.* Dont forget Ice Block. If you are about to die use it and hope that a healer notices and passes you a heal. Even if you dont get a heal, usually the enemies will turn their attention to someone else rather than wait 8 seconds while they are being pounded by your teammates.* Use every buff you can before arena starts. The more buffs you have, the more mana the shaman and priests have to waste to purge/dispel you.
Addons:
Arena pointer: Simple addon that shows how many points you will receive for youre current rating.
Arena Live Frames: Great addon. It has a movable frame that will show your opponents health bars and class icons. Their frames will be added as soon as you mouse over them. This allows you to easily change targets. It also shows you who youre teammates are targeting. General Strategy for 2v2: About 50% of the teams you fight will be a healer with a dps class. If the healing class is a druid, kill it first. Otherwise kill the dps class and Counterspell the healer when he tries to heal. Against a team with two dps classes they key is to burn one down as quickly as you can, and then deal with the other one 2v1. Use your PoM/AP on one of them right away if you have it, if not use anything you have in your arsenal. Once its a 2v1 fight you have won (usually).
Disclaimer: I found this on the internet, it is not perfect. Specs are designed to work around peoples playstyle. If you have one that works then congrats! This is mainly to give people a feel of what works for the majority of the mages out there.
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