Warrior
- Never trinket nova. Escape Artist if you have it. Assume the first poly cast is a fake.
- When sheeped, do not trinket immediately. Either wait 6 seconds for combat to drop and trinket charge or watch my cast and trinket spell reflect if you have the rage. I will ward up before I cast on you, so the charge option is IMO the better of the two. Its arguable that it is better to not delay my initial sheep just so that hamstring can potentially still be on when you charge me I suppose. (Shrug) I should resheep you 5 seconds into the first poly to stop the charge, but sometimes I forget or get lazy because I think you're a suck. ^^
- You should either intercept right as my Fireblast comes off cooldown (8 seconds) or when I come in for a nova or CoC. Obviously, if I'm going from 25 yds hopping around lancing you to 12 yards I have a reason, try to anticipate the global on the new snare. I have to circle kite you because of dueling range restrictions, so this is usually going to be when I have to cut the arc of the circle.
- Spell reflect bandage is amazing. I have been trying to wand out of it because I'm terribad and should just quit the game, but the correct mage counter is rank 1 Blizz. (Yes, it does take fucking forever to kick in, but so does cocksucker wand plus wand gives me an extra global CD where you can fuck my face with an intercept) Anyone else love how retardedly slow the arena wand is? And that it is fire? Coolio.
- Every time you force me to blink should be a mixup. You either chase me or run away for combat to drop. You'll do a lot better in this if I'm the one chasing you most the time.
- Don't hit spell reflect the instant you get nova'd unless that nova is on DR. Wait for the cast, otherwise you reflect a lance and still get shattered. (not so hot)
Druid (Resto)
- Entangling roots is the most powerful thing you can do. Roots and run away to drink. Blinking out of roots repetitively is prohibitively mana expensive especially for the majority of mage specs.
- Cyclone bandage. Particularly good to go for when swiftwend is soon to come off CD anyways as even if you get locked, you can SM yourself immediately afterwards.
- Make a focus macro for the mage and use the focus to feral charge. Do this especially when you switch to bear to kill the WE -- the mage will almost always hardcast frost, feral charge that nonsense and run back to kill the WE.
- Do not moonfire more than is needed to keep the dot refreshed. This should be common sense. Do not moonfire just because the mage is "pretty low."
- I think starfiring is retarded but it can be used to convince me to blow IB.
Warlock
- If you're destro, for the love of god do not try shadowfury->fear against a mage. Either I'll CS shadowfury, or I'll blink CS the fear. I'm not terribad.
- If you're FG, do not intercept me to start the duel. Wait for a cast. What am I going to do to you without casting? One fireblast? OMG NO. Also, FG intercept->fake fear cast is the most surefire to fake my CS. I really can't tell on that one at all. =(
- Don't banish WE. Certainly never fucking cast banish while my CS is up. You can fake banish while I'm in block to draw me out, but I think you're better DoTing up the WE and Drain Life spamming.
- Drain Mana is pointless against a mage in 1v1. Never cast it when you can instead Drain Life. The only way I can still pull off the whole sheep-you-kill-your-pet thing is if I trick you into PvP trinketing my first nova. Spellstone and wait on blowing PvP trinket on stupid crap until you force me to abandon the killing your pet route. (Takes all of like 5 seconds for me to realize I'm fucked and need to zerg you for any chance of winning, don't worry)
- Deathcoiling my pet instead of me is perfectly reasonable and often a better option if I'm at medium range. Or just wait on my Fireblast cooldown and DC as I Fireblast you. Warlocks are hard.
- If you're pet is about to die, don't panic and DC me -- just let it die and DC before you Fel Dom summon. Odds of me getting that Counterspell = REAL BAD.
Priests (Disc/Holy)
- Manaburns on the WE = doneski.
- Mind Control is actually extremely annoying. I can't really afford to CS it, so if you've got a fresh renew and high hp, going for an MC is definitely a viable option.
- Don't PWS yourself above 75% health just because the CD came back up -- know that fire mage burst is either coming after an impact and frost burst after a bite proc. Mages will use either to get some free "extra" damage before going for burst and spell locking for the finish. Using PWS after impact or bite greatly reduces the chance of that ever happening.
- I'm going to blink through your first or second mana burn cast. Use that to set up a fear.
- The only ways for you to lose is to get carelessly bursted down or to let me reset the fight repeatedly with bandage + eat/drink to run you oom. Keep pain up even if only rank one ALWAYS.
41 comments:
I play internet chess.
e2-e4
i want a movie with all this duel footage with lots of cute little explainations and maybe even some voice commentary. teach me to mage raddyson.
or i want the 32 box super video that you dream about.
just make something with moving pictures and sounds and we'll call it square.
TERRIBAD
...is my new favorite word.
oh, and e7 - e5
how can you lose vs disc/holy priest. you have a counterspell to interrupt mb, you can sheep and await cs cd, you can kite him out of manaburn range while doing dmg.
How can a priest ever manaburn you :/ this was however since i last played (2 months ago) and dont know if alot has changed. Otherwise you shouldn't be losing vs d/h priests. (the hardest ones are bloodelf with their damn mana regen racial and tapping)
I gotta agree with the last poster. Maybe I'm just fighting awful disc priests but the way I fight them is to save my counterspell for shadow school always, that'll allow me to come in for some hot frost nova action.
I never blink behind the priest when he's mana burning, I blink away (and he SHOULD be snared with 5 winter's chill + frostbolt, if he trinkets out I rank 1). If blink is on cooldown I'll spam ice lance to delay the cast until I'm safely out of range. Basically I keep distance at all times to outdistance mana burn whenever it's coming up and, as I said before, close in when shadow is countered.
This has always worked for wearing down a priest for me. I like to sheep when the priest is at 5/5 Winter's Chill, summon a pet on stay, and blink away. Once combat drops, start eating/drinking and put a freeze below the priest while my water elemental keeps it in combat.
I should probably use a nickname instead of anonymous.
I would however like to point out I haven't dueled a priest with chastise yet. I imagine that would make the whole duel a lot harder cause they can rank 1 that crap to make my counterspell not as effective, I play undead so I wouldn't know. I think my altered strategy would be outranging it at all times and mourn my loss of frost nova. I still think it's doable though, if albeit extremely long.
I always fight with lightning capacitor but if you really wanted to be a cheap bastard in an outlast duel you could use the 30 pvp mark trinket that gives you mana back. That thing has a retarded short hidden cooldown and a large proc rate.
Nah, I've always found it easier to take unsolicited advice if it's coming from a nameless, disembodied voice. Call me crazy.
A good disc priest will outlast you every time.
There is just no way you can win if you CS shadow and he'll just heal full like nobody's business if you don't CS a holy cast.
Even if you do CS the holy cast, there is little chance of bursting him down in the 8 second window.
So yeah, i have no idea who you are fighting but you should try a fully pvp geared priest.
The way wanding affects gcd should be changed. Also 1.3 speed wand for 2k personal rating please. 1.9 speed is faggot and apart from getting slightly more spelldmg (and meta gem requirements) is why I'm using carved witch doctor's stick over glad wands.
Nice writeup, the only thing that made me wonder: in the warrior part. To avoid the charge from the poly, why don't you just CS when your poly is at 5 seconds? You save a poly DR that way (incase you get screwed up after your opener and you'd have to restart the fight) and it gives you more time to get distance from the warrior rather then standing still and resheeping.
Nice guide. That is assuming the players you duel are played by retarded 12 year olds with green gear.
No mage will ever beat a well played 450 resil, 10k life resto druid or disc priest. No mage will beat a SL/SL lock who isn't bad.
Basically what I am saying is radikal is only good against feralol druids and warriors. I am yet to see him duel, these dueling "strategies" are laughable against anyone who's out of 1500 bracket.
But Radikal should keep on theorycrafting though! It seems to earn him plenty of asskissers who read and praise his blog religiously, even though he has never dueled anyone good.
"even though he has never dueled anyone good." lol
His last dueling video had the most famous players in the game of most classes. Nice try. People come to this blog not because Rad is just theorycraft, but he is the real thing.
Yecal
Printt
Daefuin
Dahis
Azael
Valanmor
Odd
Tally
Bynis
Eviscerate
Spoh
Ming
Unsouled
Kakeishi
GC
Swift
Nandieb
Clearly all of those players are terrible.
Well, Spell reflecting right after nova and bandaging means I just got back 2.2k-2.7k hp back, and the mage just waste loads of mana on Barrier to stop pushback on throw, one lance to eat Reflect, and the shatter combo itself, so he's missing about, 1.5k mana while I lose 1.5k hp after Blood Craze and Second wind is done ticking.
Need to kill the mage's Mana bar first ;0
A good disc priest will outlast you every time.
There is just no way you can win if you CS shadow and he'll just heal full like nobody's business if you don't CS a holy cast.
Even if you do CS the holy cast, there is little chance of bursting him down in the 8 second window.
So yeah, i have no idea who you are fighting but you should try a fully pvp geared priest.
So far, that has not been my experience if I make an effort to conserve my mana. I've fought well geared priests in the 450 resilience range.
I rarely ever use fire blast in the duel. All my frost novas and cone of colds are rank 1. I pop my mana gem early on so I get it back later. I make sure not to get hit by shadowfiend, or I'll ice block to force a mass dispel while the shadowfiend is out, which costs the priest a lot of mana.
I use the water elemental eat/drink trick that I mentioned before. I can easily use the 30 mark trinket. And I've got evocation to fall back on. Duels have been long when I employ this strategy. Generally a good disc priest takes atleast 6 minutes to down in duel. I'll water elemental early on to get the need to heal on, and to hopefully burn some cooldowns.
There is simply no bursting a disc priest down. Focused Will + Pain Suppression ruins any chance of that with resilience. You HAVE to go after the blue bar.
Generally I wait for water elemental to cool down, and then cast it again, then cold snap and cast it again right after, which is 3 water elementals a duel. One of those water elementals is used to give me some eat/drink time, which has always been extremely effective.
Also, like I said, it's important you never let the priest land a mana burn. Generally the priest only ever gets off one. If you take any more than two it's basically game over.
Oh, it also helps to have rank 1 mage armor and rank 1 intellect either keybound or in an easy position to selfcast on your bar. I put them back up constantly against a priest, the rank 1 AI is just dispel buffer.
Rank 1 dampen magic helps too but it's the most expensive rank 1 buff, clocking in at 100 mana, but I have casted it before and it does pay off.
Also watch out for priests who will try to break your sheep with shadow word death. Hate that shit.
Didn't bother reading comments yet, anyway for warriors, another thing is intercept, and intim shout right as you blink. For raddy it'll force a trinket, if he still has it, for undead it forced WoTF and a global cooldown, both are wins in my books. If for w/e reason no trinket follows use this time to get a sunder or 2 on there.
Spell reflects should be timed to .4 seconds if you have a 2 hander on and .2 seconds of the cast if you have a shield on. The 2 hander option is preffered.
You mentioned expecting a second sheep, trinketing to spell reflect it for a second opener might be a good idea.
You mentioned bandage/spell reflect too =P Few warriros do it and it's a pretty bad ass tactic, lol at ice lance mages BTW.
CoC can be dodged, just gotta get practice it, alot.
The annoying thing with fire is it's never a mana match, and with good gear fire will usually beat wariror 1v1 because of higher DPS and kiting.
Anyway didn't expect a fireward on yourself, that's pretty smart, few mages do it for some reason.
Figured I'd post general ways of choking sheeps:
Get off your charge and hit the mage with a 2 hander do nothing else (to save rage, and to lower chances of a critical, yes a critical off the start is BAD!), hopefully he had mana shield on and you just took some of mages mana away. Now there are several ways this can go down from here, and they can go in any order, but these are the effective counters:
A) The mage frostnovas and runs away where he tries to sheep you. If this is the case then SPELL REFLECT the sheep on the last .4 seconds of casting, this way the person on the other side will have as little time to react as possible. Hopefully the mage will sheep himself. Deselect the mage and CHARGE him once again, cast Mortal Strike this time around, if mage did not reapply his mana shield, you’ve just taken some of his life, alternatively you once again leeched his mana.
B) The mage just stands there and tries to sheep you, switch to berserker and pummel him, he should know better then that. Apply hamstring for a 30% chance at a disable with preferred spec and weapon. You will sometimes get a second hit off.
C) The mage moves too far to hit, but close enough to blow intimidating shout. Do so, then walk back get out of combat and charge him again. Mortal Strike default hit to leech mana/HP.
D) The mage has already tried to sheep a few times and finally gets it off, this is especially good if you are still in a nova. Trinket out of the nova, sheep and slow, and hamstring the mage. You are now on him for 15 seconds or so unless he has the pet out or frostbite procs.
E) A variation on the top is a mage gets the sheep off, and expects you to trinket. You’ll know these mages after a few duels. He starts to cast a second poly before the one you have on is over, don’t trinket out but rather just sit in the sheep. These mages will spend 10-15 seconds just recasting sheep over and over until you are finally immune. Then just giggle at the mage and start the fight all over again with you at full health and mage extremely frustrated that he didn’t get your trinket cooldown.
The above fiasco will take away anywhere between 1000 to 2000 mana away from the mage while also cutting down his HP by around 2000.
blink charge + trinket intercept, for reals.
Yeah blinking charge is actually a good mixup. I do that sometimes against warriors I know to be good just to keep it real. If they're sucks then it just costs you more CDs than you'd otherwise need to win, LOL.
All this is a moot point when you're willing to blow AP and POM LOL
lol im a rogue, i dont know shit about the warrior-mage duel, but what i would do if i was a warrior would be:
charge
hamstring
use my mace stun
bloodrage, mortalstrike critical
he blinks
intercept
critical mortal strike again
use my mace stun when my intercept ends
somewhere there id be close to winning
i read that somewhere and i thought it's ok, i mean it makes sense
to bamft:
charge is on 15s CD, it is not possible charge, reflect sheep, drop combat and charge again...in the beggining
but it is possible during fight
THX FOR RUINING MY DUELS YOU FGT
@anonymous
I've done it so many times it's not funny, a mage never sheeps right after charge, so 5 seconds will be lost somewhere, trust me.
This isn't poker noir....
WTF!? NO PALLY TIPS?!
HOLY PALLIES ARE DUELERS, TOO!
Yecal
Printt
Daefuin
Dahis
Azael
Valanmor
Odd
Tally
Bynis
Eviscerate
Spoh
Ming
Unsouled
Kakeishi
GC
Swift
Nandieb
As far as I can remember he only beat druids who were feral spec, rogues don't even count as a frost mage and people like GC, Azael and Bynis raddy got owned badly.
Indeed, I see way too many warlocks try to banish a WE, which is retarded especially b/c of no pushback protection on Banish. Tongues+Siphon+Corruption is a much better way to deal with it.
Both wand and r1 blizzard is for ball-lickers.
Here's a tip, on the house: Spec out of imp cs and use it to blow the spell reflection with no gcd and an instant to break the bandage.
It's totally worth it just to beat warriors easier in duels. You can thank me later.
Haha @ magdain - lex was just talkign in irc about how he should drop imp cs just for gaying spell reflect in duels vs wars like 2 days ago
As for that dueling vid, I dueled two resto druids, granted they aren't amazing duels, but they are pretty representative of what life pre 2.3 vs druids was like I think. I actually did fine versus the top locks on PTR, winning less than I lost, but definitely winning 1/3 - 1/2 or so against Azael and Daefuin. I didn't lose to other locks I believe.
GC destroyed me that PTR -- I had sort of written off the fight because I had on farm the local BDF talent and it was a real awakening. ^^
None of the disc priests "shit" on me at all that PTR. I did fine against everyone using a pretty terrible strat in retrospect.
I'm not trying to talk up the vid or my own skill or whatever, but saying my thoughts are worthless because I avoid the hard duels is BS and I'll call you out on it.
I fuck up a ton in that vid, use some atrocious and outdated strats, and so does pretty much everyone else. It was really the first time that PTR was highly active with competitive dueling since pre-TBC and everyone was learning the nuances of the fights.
Oh, and those "feral" spec druids had everyone else on farm. =p Tally, Kakeash, and that Tauren who name I can't remember were destroying people, so while feral is not currently fotm in duels, it was certainly no joke back then.
Off topic, but do you still play Go on Koseigo?
Fewer wow strats, more ranting about v-cards and gays and such.
Nah, I haven't played Go much ever since I lost back to back games to a bad 10kyu.
Would you be as so kind to post what your binds are like. I'm looking to get an idea of what to bind my stuff to since I'm bringing my mage out of retirement when I shelved her soon after the start of S1 to play a paladin. Ive always been a pve scrub and always clicked to get by. Im dropping pve and sticking to pvp from now on.
How gimped do you feel by playing a human mage? Mine is human as well and I'm thinking about if it would be worth rerolling horde and starting anew as UD for pvp.
In a naive sense, I think my ratings for best race to be go:
1) UD
2) Tie: BE or Gnome
3) Human
4) Draenei
5) Troll
Perception is extremely good -- it's just not as awesone on a mage as on a rogue or warrior.
It really depends on your teammates. I think human rogue, gnome mage, dwarf priest is THE best RMP comp even if you could argue human rogue and gnome mage are not the absolute best independently. It also seems there are more top alliance than horde arena teams so keep that in mind. (I think this is because so many people rerolled for Fear Ward tbh)
I posted my binds a long time ago, but they've changed a lot since then. I'll post up what I use in a few days.
Aye, very good tips indeed on how to beat a frostmage.
Althou this game is still rulled by random factors. You win or loose because of a resist, unlucky with the pvp trinket etc etc.
About the disc priest. Well if we look at the disk priests abilitys, oh god, he got everything to counter your dmg and your mana pull. Pre 2.3 you could run them oom with kiting etc. But now, they actually hurt with their dots due to the spell dmg they got.
I have not won against a single equaly geared disc priest since 2.3. Althou I think that will change when i get more spell damage. Atm I am runing with 2 pieces of t4 gear setup. Shoulders and pants. Got 860 spell dmg, 9.7k hp. 361 res. Been trying dueling 450 res disc priests with my full arena gear 840 spell dmg, 404 res, 10.5k hp. No luck there aswell. Got no clue at all what to do.
What they usually do against me is. the will wait with their fear untill i pop up the elemental, then they will try to fear it and me at the same time. I am UD so I wotf it pretty quickly however by the time i pull out the elemental they got around 60% mana left BUT they send their SF on my WE so i cant evade it. Then its pretty much gg ether I cancel my pet, e.i no shatter combos or i stick with my pet and try to do some shatter combos on him. But it seems kind of useless because all priests i have faced wore impossible to do the combo on due to dispells in a duel. In arena in bgs well there is another factor. its easier to beat any class in arenas or bgs then its in duels :)
Anyway this I am talking to much nonsence I will stop now.... but my point is, the damn healers actually hurt now which is kind of BS if you ask me. LOLOLOLOLOL WE SPECED HEALING BUT WE WANT TO KILL TOO! wth are you specing healing for then? and dont give me yada yada the dmg is not game breaking bullcrap. It is and you know it!
Take care
/Zow
Got to love my typos. Mucho <3 for ´em
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