Sunday, December 16, 2007

Test Server Sweetness

After dueling for about 30 hours as 33/28/0 on PTR, here's some thoughts:
  • One set WE mage is a rough fight. I haven't fought anyone who didn't suck at dueling WE against other mages, so I'm not really sure, because I shit on them -- but I think they were all terribad. WE mage needs to play rushdown and then find range with early pet and needs to maintain distance from pet as if against a rogue to avoid blastwave + AE on him and pet. (Fuck cumbucket WE mages who LoS against fire mages btw)
  • Mut and even SF/Hemo rogues seem farm. Shadowstep I haven't found any good enough to say anything about. AR/Prep is about 50/50. The trick to all of these is faking the PoM Pyro by splitting when you use AP and PoM. You can also do stuff like trinket kidney->PoM Pyro or try to catch the rogue on a global, etc. Obviously, play aggressively? ^^
  • No resto druids of high talent on PTR. I'd guess I'd probably go 50/50 against top druids as 33/28. It's very straightforward from mage side. Stack scorches, either fireball or consecutive scorch to force a dip, and thus a swiftwend. Repeat until that swiftwend is not a full topup and start pressuring with scorch impact procs etc. until you see a burst opening. What sucks is that Natural Perfection is pretty much always fully stacked. Without WE for the mana efficiency , I don't think you can run the normal outlast strategy unless the druid aggressively spends mana trying to kill you. (Which is retarded and scrub but happens)
  • Resto shamans are somewhat easier. I like to play a weird outlast strat where I blow burst early to force the NS, and kite around and resheep bandage until second set is up basically. Against a shaman who spams underwater breathing to keep ES up all the time, I don't believe you have a chance, but that is pretty god damn homosexual. As scrub as it sounds, poly AP fireball, PoM Pyro, scorch (grounding), scorch (hit) is probably the best guaranteed way to force NS off the poly. Against shamans with Battlemaster trinket, BT epics gems and offset pieces plus full S2/S3, unless they make an egregious error, there isn't going to be a great opportunity for a CS->AP PoM Pyro rushdown like we used to pre-TBC.
  • Warriors you can kill in sheep.
  • For all the above, I've at least dueled people who hit gladiator last season, and weren't retardedly awful. Lots of good rogues as per usual on PTR. I probably won't be dueling much more this PTR as interest has been low and while I love dueling as 33/28 and there is perhaps some potential in 2s as the spec, the reality is that WE is still dominating and its delusional to think you'll be playing something else if you want your teams to be the best they can be. (2.4 ptr maybe!)
I can talk more about specific fights if there's interest -- people assume its a scrubby dueling spec, but there's a few technical things about playing it well.

26 comments:

Umbra said...

WTB more details about those fights. What do you think btw, will lots of mages spec anything different from that WE crap next patch?

Oppo said...

There's too much frost synergy in keeping with the mages roll of CC first, dps second.

frost is here to stay. (Just like AR/Prep was...)

Anonymous said...

can you put up a link to the exact build you were using?

Anonymous said...

great article! Really nice for being about magecrap!

Anonymous said...

I too would like to know what build you use.

klassick said...

I sold my UD and am leveling a gnome or I would have given you some duels. ;o

Maybe next PTR when I'm rocking the BT gems.

yecal said...

i will be on ptr again at like 9~!

good duels last night.

Bamft said...

Did any warrior trinket your sheep on last .4 seconds of cast and spell reflect? If not then you've dueled scrubs.

Anonymous said...

Go write more yes!

Hams said...

@Bamft

Because getting sheeped gives a warrior an instant 15 rage amirite?

Bandera said...

Tell me you fraps the fights! This is the exact sort of thing im interested in for your new movie.

Anonymous said...

@hams

You usually blood rage after charging a mage in a duel...

Tist said...

raddy, dont suppose you have a copy on pve? I copied my resto druid over there to avoid Qs on pvp, but would like to see a good mage in action, maybe give you a decent run ;P

raddy is ghey said...

LINK TO THE BUILD PLX

Raddy said...

Actually, I'm going to write a post about things other classes can do to gay me in duels. I didn't really fraps much sorry. =(

The dueling competition on my home server was infinitely stronger than what I saw on PTR with the exception of a few old faces. I did fraps a few rogue and resto shaman duels, but I don't play that well in them! (It's okay I still win!) =p

As for the build:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=o0xE0RbdbGzbZVgMzf0sRo
(tripple click it to select)

No surprises, a lot of people will probably say 34/27 is better blah blah blah. I like the more consistent damage. I should get Haab to fraps some duels with his gear actually -- Hex head, season 3 and all the BT gems etc. Sickmode. 6k pyro crits on people with 400 resil = o.O

Bamft said...

@Hams, no, charge and Bloodrage give a warrior 25 rage. But you clearly have deep insight into a class I have played for 3 years so what do I know?

Warriors can fuck up mages sheep like 3-4 times to begin with, the spell reflect out of sheep is just icing on the cake. Heck with the new bug, spell reflect and then just /sit for 5 seconds, just in case he PoM Pyros right after. Although most mages stick a fire ward after getting fireballed in the face. Intercept right after the fireball into a mage, if he blinks, that usually means no fire ward > the DoT ticks, if he does fire ward he gets MSed in the face.

Honestly warriors should have been fucking you up for not having DB, and it makes no sense that you dismiss them as a no contest o.0 Makes m think you had really weak competition. Although you may have indicated somewhere that you did.

Being a Gladiator does not make you a good warrior BTW, being a gladiator for half warriors means they are average with amazing healers. I mean it's not like it's a hard class to pretend to play, few people really know it though. (I think it's same for every class)

Aaaanyway, I'm 22 on Tich =D Hopefully I can get to 70 soon and then quickly beat Raddy in greens =P Or bite the dust and shake his hand, you know w/e.

Anonymous said...

Poultryizer helps A LOT against resto shamans. You can really screw them over if they don't realize you have it the first duel.

Would be a bitch with ignite though.

Icicles said...

warriors are easy no matter what spec if you're not retarded.

so do you want a WE mage to come beat you or not? ;)

Raddy said...

I don't really believe in using any trinkets beyond the standard issue PvP and +dmg trinkets in duels -- I don't use engi belt etc. either; I'm mostly interested in class vs class not player vs player blah blah blah

I won't be on tonight -- I'm at work till tomorrow morning srry ^^

Anonymous said...

you know whats fun these days, tanking felguards since SL/SL got nerfed

Anonymous said...

seriously, burning soul scorching looking a lot nicer with the amount of hunters/felguards out there now

GC said...

You won't duel me Baddy, oops I mean Raddy. You won't do it.

Icicles said...

Yeah, I'll probably check the PTR out tomorrow evening, assuming my 3s partners aren't around, we'll see

tsubi said...

pretty much my experiences as ap fire too

didnt really duel hunters, how are they as ap/fire?

and decent disc priests were wrecking my face with mana burns -___- did you duel any disc/spriests?

Raddy said...

I was looking for you on ptr but couldn't find you gc =(

I even went to org and yelled like an idiot for a while

All the hunters I saw were garbage, but isn't that why their class keeps getting buffs?

affix said...

"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 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. ^^"

Counterspell keeps them in combat, bro.