5v5 Discussion Topics: WE Mage in Classic Matrix Matchups

I'm thinking that it would be fun to approach discussing 5v5 strategies in a similar framework as dueling guides; of course, there are problems with this. If one can complain that a "dueling guide" makes little sense because there are often so many variables, 5v5s an exponentially more complex. You can't follow a strategy you read online and get guaranteed results. But I do think that in the process of going through what we routinely do, we can pick out that things that clearly are not very good and integrate ideas that sound like they would work well. Enough pandering to the haters.

WE Spec 17/0/44

Matrix: MM Hunter, BR Priest, Pally, War

Our Game: We have dominating crowd control and mana burn. Any game where we can live long enough to let viper sting + scorpion and mana burn do their thing, we will dominate; to do this, we must protect our priest and hunter, who will surely be the eventual targets of opposing assist trains. We have lasting damage in the form of WE Mage and War, and mediocre burst.

Opponent 1: FG Lock, WE Mage. BR Priest, Pally, War

Their Game:

This is the new "classic" matrix on our battelgroup; it is quite challenging. They have no soft spots and have powerful lasting damage, moreso than almost any other matrix. They have ridiculous crowd control; they win by either creating a window where they can burst someone down through their vast CC which includes tongues, fear, scream, shout, poly, and CS. If they know they cannot burst someone down, they will attack the blue bars with drain mana and mana burn.

Pre Game:

This is a matchup that is very unfavorable. You do not have the damage on your team to reliably burst down any target quickly, though the priest is really your only option. Your hunter traps and frost snares are not likely to do a ton in preventing them from being all over your priest making it impossible for him to manaburn. If you ignore their priest and go for their mage or lock, their priest will dominate your pally with manaburn, and your priest will collapse to their assist train before you can hope to take out a SL lock with huge health/resil or a similarly high hp/resil WE mage.

Isn't our hunter team built on outlasting and crowd control, so this matrix is just better than ours, right? Yeah, it is, because they have a warlock -- if you want to win, bring a warlock. Well, actually, there are ways to win this fight and you have some advantages they do not. They are extremely dependent on their warrior for damage, if you can put out moderate harassment on the SL lock and WE mage, you can really limit their damage. Moreover, if you can take their pets out of the game, you really neuter what their team can do. Look for opportunities to kill the FG, and most definitely go out of your way to kill WE. Your hunter and you as a mage can quickly fireblast, autoshot, arcane/mutli a WE down, and this basically saves you at least 10-12k damage per WE you kill quickly.

WE mage should have focus set to pally, hunter should have focus/scatter on priest, but should use silencing on either pally or mage situationally. Hunter should have pet and viper stings on their priest until pally bubbles, and that point he should pet and viper to their pally, or situationally their mage. Your priest is going to do manaburn opposing priest if at all possible, probably not though. You are going to spend a LOT of time removing tongues; this is where I whine about warlocks again.

How You Play It:

CONTROL THE MAP. Harass with viper stings and multis and avoid getting DoT'd up best you can. Drop trap in strong location where you know their war has to pass through. When they eventually charge, first poly on the war hopefully inside the trap, if you're well positioned, rank 1 fb->poly->detect, and you got a nice stack for them to dispel, YOU SHOULD HAVE WC OR I HATE YOU) High level arena is very much like a duel, you MUST be using every one of your globals wisely, and with that in mind, you should be casting bolt on your target as soon as that poly cast finishes. Fireblast after the bolt and use the global to readjust positioning. This is just a good general way of maximizing doing something while getting into position; I do it as most specs against most teams I guess lol.

Their war should be dispelled at this time and all over your priest, don't concern youself about it, there's nothing you can do. Poly their mage as soon as your well positioned and off fireblast global as hopefully tongues** isn't out yet, if it is, make sure you learn how to stay near your pally and remove it promptly, if you get poly'd here (as some mages like to poly mages before wars or are just faster than you cause you had to waste time on tongues), trinket it and poly the mage as you come out. Don't suck and get poly'd by him a second time before you poly him. If you have to sit in sheep for an extra sec to watch his cast bar, do it, it's a huge handicap to eat a poly here and your pally cannot afford a global dispel you, especially not the 2-3 it might require if he did something gay like rank 1 coc, poly, detect you. Summon pet as soon as you poly their mage (or lock if you can't reach the mage, it's not big deal, but the mage is MUCH better)*

Drop your pet as soon as you can, and get on your assist target, your hunter should be watching their mage; goal is to silence the mage as soon as he trinkets poly or is dispelled. He must do this while still doing damage to the main target. If you can CS now and go for the win, do it, you probably cannot as their priest is going to be above 50%. If priest is above 50% still with no BoP, silence, yes silence the pally and shatter burst the priest. Your priest should be dispelling him while getting focused by war btw to ensure no freedom. (God it is hard to keep track of everyone!)

"Well the pally bubbled because I didn't hit the tree and the priest lived, nice advice." But you forced the bubble! Your priest should be doing fine as their mage is just coming out of silence, but your now in a world of trouble as your pally is now getting CC'd by their lock. But DR is now up on their war, and you can sheep detect the war to buy your priest some breathing room. Quickly get back to casting on the priest who should still be moderately low; now here best case is what happens, the pally comes out of bubbles and has yet to BoP the priest as he's midheal and is "saving it", scatter the pally and kill their priest. More likely he used BoP during bubble; you can work in some mass dispel madness in here, but we never found it to be reliable really.

If it looks likely they will be able to kill your priest (i.e. mage is casting openly and war is coming out of poly ready to rip), you need to get more CC down. This should be a new sheep on the mage and if possible a nova (NOT A PET NOVA) on the warrior. Try to do this without spending a half hour of wasted globals.

You still have a 5-6 globals at least before your CS is back up and a few until your second pet nova. You can sheep juggle here, though you only have 1 more tiny sheep on each most likely, alternatively, you can sheep the lock, which is probably the best option most of the time. Before getting on priest again, look to kill opposing WE and FG. Coordinate with hunter! After you succeed, pump damage into the priest, and use hunter silence on mage again when it is up, pet nova shatter combo priest and CS pally for the kill. This game is actually still not over, as you still have a full health lock, a full health mage with decent mana remaining and no matter what you do, your priest is going down pretty soon. Doing damage at this point might seem pointless because of SoR, but WTF else are you going to do. Pally is next target as he's their freedoms and the warlocks mana source, he has no bubble, you must snap second pet to kill him FAST because this is a 4v4 you will lose.

* Sheeping the mage early limits his ability to CC AND do damage while the lock is really only doing CC for their team. He is putting out some damage, but not the type of damage that is going to give them momentum. Plus poly is more dangerous early game CC than fear due to WoTf and fear ward etc. (but is worse later game as you don't want to be healing people lolol)

** Some mages are meticulous at decursing their teammates. It is VERY important; you should prioritize decursing your pally over everything but full DR sheeps on opposing war and the times when you can shatter combo. Decurse your priest teammate with much lower priority -- I decurse myself first actually. ^^

Now the Reversal:

Assume you are the FG lock version of the classic matrix.

Pre Game:

Play well and you will win. There are lots of ways to win this:
1) Attack the hunter's mana pool while DPSing priest
2) Attack the priset mana's pool while DPSing priest
3) Straight DPS priest, BoP your priest and mass dispel their pally, CS after bubble is MD'd, kill priest

I'll go with #1 for now. Their weak points are the small mana pool on their hunter, their priest as a squishy DPS target while traps don't help much, and the reliance on their mage controlling you better than you control him as he is the majority of their effective CC against your matrix.

How You Play It:

Outplay their mage. Let's play it fancy too ^^

Rank 1 fb, poly detect on their war to start. Frostbolt->fireblast on their priest as you move into position. Summon pet quickly, pref before their mage looks to poly you. Your CS focus is of course the pally, but if you can get a CS on the opposing mage's arcane tree the beginning, take it out. You aren't going to need that CS for a little while.

Mage won't IB the silence unless he's a total baller. Now, you're a lot less concerned with DR than the other matrix because you have fear and DC. Frostbolt, and then frostbolt shatter combo their priest while your lock fears and harasses pally. Pally will have to bubble. You will now be getting poly'd most likely, trinket it and sheep the mage because you're gay like that. Your pet should still be on the priest who is getting healed to full by pally. Your lock is now fearing and harassing the hunter while their war struggles to prohibit manaburns. Either their hunter will silencing shot your priest to protect his manapool, or he'll hit you here. You can actually IB this probably, but I'm not baller enough, so I just eat it. Use the time to get good positioning.

However, most hunters will SS the priest, if he does, DPS the hunter with your lock teammate while war hangs out on priest. When pally switches to healing the hunter, quickly get back on the priest, and shatter combo->CS pally->deathcoil pally if need be for the kill. They really don't have tools to stop this. IB a poly if you get poly'd mid DPS here.

It is better for the hunter to Silencing Shot the mage IMO, if he does and their war can control your priest, they now have a window to kill your WE and deny you that second nova combo. They can even work on the FG during this time. Alternatively, he can silence priest and scatter you or something. Either way you are getting CC'd and probably can't justify the risk/reward of IBing it. (it lets them go for a zerg kill on you during hypo which is pretty much GG and you don't want that) When you come out of CC, repoly the war. This buys priest time to finish manaburning the hunter, your pally should BoP before bubbling of course, and between BoP and pally Bubble they should not be able to kill your priest here especially with you harassing their war with poly (you can repoly until immune here) and your lock fearing the hunter.

As your priest gets that sickening heal to full and their DPS has that "oh balls we didn't kill him" thing going on, you should have their hunter floating around 40-70% from lock dots and harassing, their pally at 50-70%, their priest at 75% ish, and their mage and war full up. You now have the option of going for the priest or hunter. It is up to your warrior, don't argue, just adapt. Either way, if your pet is dead or too oom to use second nova, snap a new pet -- in fact if you get silenced of scattered and they killed your pet or you just know you'll need a second one before you can shatter combo, IB that CC. Moving on...summon pet and shatter combo target of choice, focus CS their pally and you know the gist of getting the kill here. This fight is totally dominated after their priest dies, get on their hunter next, and let your lock fear/tongues harass their pally (even if the mage is dispelling it, its still good)

Between BoP locking out two of their DPS and healthstone, its very hard for their matrix to gain sente (momentum) and even though you have very little burst with this matrix (which generally means poor momentum), you should have control of this fight. As a mage, you're looking to limit the effectiveness of their CC by keeping their mage under control while your lock controls first their pally and their hunter -- you then take over on the pally. You do this while CC'ing the warrior and putting out as huge damage as you can on the priest, which they can do little about. Even if the game goes to a long game, say the priest uses LoS very well or gets good resists etc., you should still have the edge as long as they didn't succeed in killing your pets and taking you out of the fight for too long. It's important in matchups like this to take advantage of the fact you aren't being focused, limit their ability to CC you by CC'ing the mage who is tasked with controlling you, and making the most of your damage potential as you are the lion's share of the team's burst.

Well, I need a break. I'll continue with more on this matchup including mixups, fakeouts, and split DPS variants; I'd then like to move on to other fights.

Mixups:

I find it pretty common that you can't always get on your target of choice off the bat, so you're forced to either play defense till you can or pick a second target to go after with your assist train. I definitely favor playing aggressively (why I play on a 4DPS team now, DUH) and I'd much rather pour damage into a non-optimal target than spend 10 seconds CC juggling.

For the FG lock team, you clearly are going after the hunter as a secondary target. He has good tools for playing keep away from your warrior, as once he gets freedom, he's extremely slippery which is one of a few reasons to not have him be your primary focus. The other reasons being the fact that damaging a hunter accomplishes basically just doing damage to him whereas damage a priest prevents that player from doing much along with the huge health pools that hunters have and a nasty physical snare. Hopefully by the time the hunters gets freedom, you can force a BoP despite the freedom or even a bubble. Worst case the priest should be exposed by now and you can quickly switch targets.

If you're the mage on the hunter's team, your options for a secondary target are more limited. The pally is always an option but often they are equally difficult to focus as they're going to play duck and hide with the pillars. If he's out of the question, you're left a SL lock and a WE mage, two classes specc'd entirely to take and withstand a beating. The WE mage is the better option of the two as at least you limit the early game CC and chain casting threat. Hopefully you can force an early IB and maybe even continue the pressure when he's on hypo, though the majority of the time you're going to be better off switching back to their priest as they still have BoP and Bubble to keep the mage alive.

Either way, it is tempting when DPSing your non-optimal target to half-ass damage and focus more on CC thinking that even if you fail to really get the target low, at least you'll thwart the opposition's offense. This is a dangerous mentality; the point of casting into that target is to get him low enough to force use of defensive cooldowns, if you aren't doing this, you're wasting time and letting your opponents accomplish their goal of using your defensive cooldowns. If you can't do enough damage to actually generate sente, you're better off poly juggling and playing keep away.

From either team's perspective, your tasks are always:

• Reliable CS on Pally
• Control Warrior with Poly
• Burst on MA when needed
• Sustained damage through WE
• Control Opposing Mage

If you're on the hunter team, you are likely going to need help controlling the opposing mage as you have the additional duty of decursing that he does not have. If you have a lock teammate, make use of the fact that tongues really injures both their healers and their mage, and recognize by controlling their mage you're also controlling their decurse; don't waste time using poly on other targets.

Split DPS:

At some point with teams like this you realize that as you play better opponents, you can't leave as many people unguarded. Priests, mages, and warlocks go from strong to powerhouses if you let them pump damage and CC without harassment. You should also think about their play is going to change when you start harassing them; a priest with a warrior on him won't be healing or manaburning but he will be dispelling. Any good player is going to make use of his globals regardless of pressure -- this is why I've always felt focusing SL locks is a mistake. A focused SL lock can still freely tongues, shadowburn, and DoT up as he likes. You don't gain as much by guarding him as when you pressure a mage. (This idea is the whole reason why 4 DPS is so effective IMO...well that and zerging things down)

Okay, so this is how split DPS variants work in slightly less detail than above, and how the WE mage adjusts.

WE Mage on Hunter Team:

Your team is probably running the pretty common: Viper and scorpion pet on their priest along with warrior, Hunter on the Mage with all silences going to the mage and scatters going to their war, Priest looks for window to MC war actively otherwise manaburns their priest, Pally heals and uses stun on second lock fear (fear ward first and third!), what do you do?

Control the war. It would be great to time scatters for when poly is on DR or something, but that level of control isn't really possible...well for us it wasn't. Just poly the war until immune pretty much every time he isn't immune, obvious juggle them to the pally so that they aren't super easily dispelled.

So you're poly juggling the pally and War as much you can, you've got your hunter frustrating their mage (unless he has 2 pc t4, thx PvE gear), and you've gotten all your mana draining on their priest who is prevented from mana burning by warrior and pet on him, who do you damage? Still the priest. You want to be putting damage on the target with MS to force them to heal the least efficient target, however now when BoP hits, both you and the war can hop on the mage who should be pretty much instantly forced to IB due to the harassment from the hunter. So nova combo the priest once CC becomes no longer an option (they go immune), and then hop on the mage with normal frostbolt-fireblast-CoC type of burst. Get the IB and go back to the priest briefly, if the priest gets to be totally oom at this point, get back on the mage and look to finish up the game during hypo.

WE Mage on Lock Team:

More variety here, but something like: Warrior on Priest with Felguard as well, Mage/Lock on hunter, WE on Priest when it's out, Priest manaburns hunter and then pally, Pally like heals and stuff.

Basically, you're wearing down two targets and will go for the kill on whichever gets the worst healing. The priest is likely the target to dip the lowest due to MS, but mage/lock can sometimes tear through the hunter HP pretty quick especially if opposing healing is distracted a lot by tongues and dispelling CC. You don't put the felguard on the mage because doing so does nothing if he's 2 pc t4, and otherwise just forces him into decursing more quickly, which isn't something you really want either. Plus with traps down, your war might not always 100% be on their priest and you don't want manaburns getting off.

Because the priest will probably have freedom as they try to keep him from the warrior, the hunter will not, and you'll have reliable access to shatter combo him with your pet. This can often kill the hunter if you get a good CS on the pally.

Mirror Match:

People always hate mirror matches in pretty every game and it seems to be basically true in arena as well. I actually really enjoy mirror matches in arena though loathe in duels, riddle me that hypocrisy. Actually, it's pretty clear that I hate mirror matches in duels because if I lose I don't have my class or my teammates to blame. ^^

Hunter Team:

Remember that BoP is going to be really effective and just because you get something low, a kill might be a ways off. If your team overextends trying to get the kill here, it's going to be punished; your trying to outlast here more than ever and your job is to facilitate that while frustrate their attempts to outlast you.

One common strat we ran was something like:

• Hunter and Warrior on the Priest along with pet and viper sting (holy zerg)
• Priest Manaburns hunter
• Mage controls warrior and opposing mage
• Pally stuns something or other

That's pretty basic...but this isn't THAT different than the above fights. You're still using your pet to try to burst down the priest while CC'ing mage and hunter. You're going to want silencing shots on the opposing mage to help you out-CC him and reduce his damage. Killing the WE is a MUST in this matchup as you're not trying to burst out the kill, you're trying outlast -- LIVING WATER ELEMENTALS != OUTLAST. You can try fancy stuff like silencing shot->imp CS->scatter on the pally to force bubble and then stall/CC till they are back up for the kill. The priest can dispel the silences though not quickly enough generally. You should mix stuff like this in just because it keeps your opposition honest and forces them to try to keep the priest topped up through the MS debuff. They will probably just counter by scattering your war, and CSing you, so don't be OMGSCARED when you don't get the kill.

The team who wins this is the team who keeps their priest most free to manaburn; this is largely your task and you have to do what you can to keep the opposing DPS off your priest. You can try strats where you sheep juggle the hunter as well and manaburn the priest only, and there are advantages to this (hunter is often far away and hard to dispel poly off of, hunters can't...err well couldn't trinket poly), but I think as a generic plan you're better off going after the hunter's mana pool simultaneous to the priest's. You free up your priest most effectively by never using poly 3 times on the same DR; use it twice and not again for 15 seconds. If you're working on poly on both the warrior and mage, plus pumping out frostbolts in between (plus getting CC'd yourself), you shouldn't be too bored waiting on DR to come up. If you know you aren't likely to kill the priest anytime soon, CS'ing the opposing mage's Arcane tree isn't bad particularly when your War is off of DR.

Warlock Team:

This is really the silliest of them all because it boils down to mage v mage and lock v lock epeen. All of the CC is trying to out-CC the rest, typically with locks on locks and mages on mages.

Off the bat, you're best trying to poly opposing mage instead of the war; if they charge you, you can still rank 1 bolt the incoming war but get on their mage as fast as you can. Hopefully, you can poly their mage before he even can poly your war; this is the goal! Otherwise, poly their mage and as soon as that cast finishes, immediately poly their war. Their mage will likely trinket and poly you, but at least you got the war sheeped before you were sheeped. Now you can hesitate a bit here; if their mage is guarding you waiting on you to trinket, make sure you can trinket CS and not get sheeped again. Or if he decides to sheep your war, trinket poly and CS the poly. If he does neither, trinket poly, but do not CS the mage even if he goes to poly a few seconds later. The goal is to give your team momentum by making their CC delayed, you've accomplished it from your side already, don't waste CS.

Get your pet out and damaging their priest, and watch the two locks gay each other while trying to harass opposing paladins to bait an early bubble. Likely all they will bait is an HoJ and then a fear as it wears off, but whatever. If you can spell lock the pally here, for whatever reason he is able to cast, take the early CS on him and try to put damage on the priest to warrant at least a BoP as CS wears off if not a bubble. This is going to be challenging because you're going to be forced to remove tongues and pretty much only have time for a shatter combo, and even, you're likely to get sheeped out of it. If the kill on the priest isn't happening after you blew CS, don't cry, turn your attention to kill opposing Water Elemental while protecting your priest. Kill WE with aid of lock shadowburn, you should use AM to kill the pet + fireblast. 6.5 seconds of your life gone.

Things were probably briefly hectic and then got quiet again as no team should have been able to make a great play at killing a priest unless there were huge crits involved; if there were, then bubble or BoP has been used, but it doesn't change much for you as a mage. Decurse your pally, and then sheep opposing war off your priest. Poly juggle the warrior and mage until you're second pet nova is up, use this burst opportunity + CS on the pally to go for a kill. Most of the time you should get it, but it's quite possible the opposing mage has sheeped your warrior and silenced you (which you should do if you're on the other side of this!), this did waste his CS, but it should have given him time to escape death, and the pressure is back on your priest. You have a few more seconds probably until DR is back off, so use this time to get good positioning and put light damage on the priest. If you get poly'd here, you can freely IB it, just be a little careful of the assist train switching to you.

Poly juggle the mage war and snap to bring out second pet. At this point, your DPS push on the priest should succeed as the pally should be out of CD and your shatter combo + shadowbolt/burn + war should finish off the priest. These games can drag on pretty long, remember that your pvp trinket is coming back up imminently.

Sidenote: Against this matrix, you'll find your personal frost nova pretty useless as it is generally hard to keep freedom off the warrior and be close enough to your priest to really help him with nova unless you waste a LOT of time. You can use nova on the mage to force blinks and waste mana. Just nova, wind up a bolt, and let him blink out of it; follow it with a pally stun if you want and your pally has a few seconds of safe healing.