Check it out: http://epilepticgaming.ggl.com
^^
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Friday, June 1, 2007
Warlock Dueling: Affliction Locks (INCOMPLETE)
I'm not really doing these dueling guides in any particular order, and they are all works in progress that I'll come back to as I learn new things, so keep that in mind!
Okay, it's time for -- (Oh Verona theme from R+J) WARLOCKS!
Once again, I'm going to use the format: Their Game, What You Need To Do, How We Win, How They Counter Us, and Mixups.
And as before, I believe that against non-SL locks you can play competitively without Cold Snap, but to beat top locks (even affliction), you will need a full set of cooldowns. With that said:
Deep Affliction Locks
Their Game:
What I see a lot is: Immolate, Corruption, Syphon, CoA, FelHunter Silence into a fear, when fear is trinketed, howl, UA, reapply CoA, and then kite the WE. Best case the lock wants to howl both you and your pet. Your first nova will be spellstoned, then they can either try to use the felhunter to dispel novas off themselves, or they can use it offensively to destroy your Ice Barrier, Fire Wards, etc. Best case is they force you to IB before they use Death Coil, then they can DC and DL to bate the CS, fake it out, and then fear and drain for the win. The goal is to deny you IBing Deathcoil, to remove your pet as a factor by kiting it, to avoid being CS'd by faking and not doing open shadow school casts, and once CS is down, Drain Life for the win.
What You Need to Do:
- Force the lock to Deathcoil early, while you aren't on hypothermia.
- Do NOT miss a Counterspell, it is better to eat a fear or a tick or two of Drain Life than risk interrupting a fake cast so the lock "knows" he can safely spam drains.
- You must keep the pressure on, the DoTs are destroying your health pool especially if the felhunter is aggressively dispelling your shields.
- Use you globals wisely.
- Remember you probably have mana to burn against an affliction lock, mana shield IS viable.
How We Can Win:
Summon your WE as the duel timer ticks, nova and opening lance as the duel starts. If he opens with immolate, your fire ward eats the damage, and hopefully you've done some okay damage, taken some damage, and he's burnt his spellstone at the end of one global cooldown. If he doesn't stone the nova, lance again if nova is still up, and lance a third time if nova is still up. You will eat corruption and a shadowburn as you lance and close the distance.
As he puts up Syphon and Agony, Cone of Cold and Fireblast. Hopefully between these instants and your pet, the lock is at 60-70% while you still have near full health, though are quite DoT'd up. If the lock goes for a fear at a time like this, it IS a fake. Eat the fear, and trinket it to keep pressure on. You're going to nova, lance next. Then another lance if the nova holds, Cone of Cold if it comes up (depends on your spec) while the lock is still frozen. So basically, you spend 3-4 globals pumping in damage while he either: fake-casts fear, fake-drains, burns howl, or tries to just trade damage with searing pain/immolate.
If he tries to just outdamage you, he will lose as long as you spend your globals intelligently. Decurses agony in between the cooldowns of Cone of Cold and Fireblast. Use this time to reapply Barrier, Mana Shield, or Fire Ward as they come up or as they are needed. If you know he's set to autodispel you, Mana Shield before you Barrier each time. Reapply shields BETWEEN Cone of Cold and Fireblast cooldowns, as you need your high damage instants to keep pressure on. It sounds pretty lame to just reshield, spam instants, and let your pet do damage, but you're dueling a WARLOCK. Remember that Cone of Cold is VERY important not just for the damage but to keep him close so that your pet is able to do solid damage.
If he starts legitimately trying to drain you, CS the drain because you have to, you should be able to force the healthstone during the spell lock, as he comes out he'll try to howl, avoid it if you can and force the deathcoil. IB the deathcoil best you can, if you're on global or are too close to react fast enough, too bad, but it doesn't cost you the duel. Sitting in block full duration is VERY dangerous here, if you sit full duration, and he silences you with felhunter shortly after coming out, you're going to eat a fear, as he'll either howl into silence->fear or silence->fear into howl. If he gets this, the lock has a solid 6-10 seconds to Drain Spam you, which really is pretty much GG. So hop out of block moderately early, and keep the pressure up. The goal is to burn him down before felhunter silence comes back up, if it does and he lands a fear->Drain, your pet nova should come up as the fear ends, so you can get one last attempt to burst him down before his DoTs kill you. You'll have your second CS here, if you can last to your second CS after him spending Deathcoil, Howl, and his most recent Felhunter Silence, the fight is likely yours.
If the lock deathcoils early after your initial burst, drop the IB instantly after the DC and keep up the pressure, if the lock doesn't get a long fear on you VERY fast after an early DC as affliction, he's done to your instants and pet.
If the lock after your initial burst starts fake-casting fears, let him fear you. Trinket the fear and keep up the pressure. If he lands a howl->drain, Ice Block QUICKLY. He'll like DC you, but it is better to eat the DC than a long fear+Drain Life. Sit in block for a moderate amount of time, Cold Snap when you come out and keep Counterspell in the bank to deny Drain spam. Let your pet do your damage while you perform your instants and shields rotation. If he kites a lot and you have a hard time keeping him in range, don't hesitate to bring out your second pet and NEVER hesitate to use cooldowns against any lock with the improved drains. A small amount of health can go a VERY long way when he's draining you.
What He Does to Counter You:
He will either: kite your pet if he's confident he can or he will kill your pet. Fearing and banishing the pet is not very effective for an affliction lock as eating the Counterspell even with a decent chunk of health remaining can be GG. It's safer to kite the pet or kill it with shadowburn and powerful DoTs. Alternately, the lock can howl you (and pet if he can) and as you trinket fear, he can silence->fear, corruption, shadowburn, deathcoil your pet and run. This trades deathcoil for your first pet basically, a trade that he can afford to make as it pretty forces the mage to burn an Ice Block if he wants to get his second pet out. And while I complain about how overpowered locks are, there isn't a TON he can do to counter what you're trying to do against him here.
Mixups:
Hypothermia means you REALLY need to put the lock on the defensive before you hop in your first Ice Block. Even though an affliction lock lacks the survivability of SL, his dots do huge damage, his felhunter is even more a nuisance than a felguard, and he's perpetually trying to outrange you and run away while his DoTs destroy you. You must keep him snared and close to you to maintain damage for both you and your pet.
- Save your pet nova until after he burns hunter silence->fear on you. When he does, trinket and quickly pet nova, try to cast a bolt on the lock. This denies howl pretty well and puts the lock in a strange situation where he needs to get close to howl, but needs to stay far away to kite your pet. If you space yourself away from your pet and deny him the howl by keeping range as you run from him, even if he Spellstones that nova, you can get a lot of damage in as he tries to land that howl.
- Time to go see Knocked Up, I'll add to this LATER!
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Great Post on Shadow Gaming on Competitive Arena PvP
I think is really a must read: http://www.shadow-gaming.com/?p=111
I agree with a lot of what he said; it's been something I've wanted to rant about for a long time.
People use the argument that Wow has too much "luck" in it for it to be a great competitive game. Resists, dodges, crits, or windfury procs can have such a huge impact on a match, perhaps more than the little things that very strong players do that average players do not.
The counterexample is often poker: poker involves a lot of luck. It is inevitable even when you're stronger than your opponents in poker that not only will you lose a lot of hands, you will go through huge streaks of losing. What you play for is edge. Higher skilled players play at an advantage to the rest of the table, and it is apparent pretty quickly whether a table will be generally profitable even if you can't well predict how the next few hands, or perhaps next few yours will necessarily go.
As a poker player, I like the comparison, but feel it creates too much emphasis on the idea that because poker is a "game with a lot of luck" and is a reasonably serious competitive game, it is okay for WoW to involve a lot of randomness or luck. Consider two extremely talented long distance runners; they run a 40 mile race, and the winner wins the race by a few seconds. How confident are you that the winner will win the next race? Certainly, there is some randomness in the results even though the nature of the race (they run identical courses) implies there should be little to none. Randomness is intrinsic to anything competitive -- the strongest will not always conquer, he will just conquer more often than the weak.
The goal of an arena rating system therefore should be to recognize players who despite their occasional falters, win with consistency. Rating systems should be tailored to match their games, and games with more randomness need systems that punish or reward "flukes" not too heavily. In this way, ELO is perhaps not that well suited to WoW. Because even the best teams reach a plateau with respect to their chance of beating a lower ranked team (disconnects, atrocious luck, etc), how can it make sense for there to be games that yield no rating yet cost 32? It creates a strange situation:
Consider a 2300 rated team playing a 2200 team:
The 2300 should have roughly a 2/3 chance of winning based on how ELO is generally balanced. (I'm sure someone who is a real math geek on ELO will flame me for this generalization) The expected value of the game assuming how WoW implements ELO (which is a 32point K factor system, basically you can win or lose 32 at most), is simply: (% chance of winning) * (winning ELO) + (%chance of losing) (losing ELO)
(2/3)(2310.7)+(1/3)(2278.7) ~= 2300
That is the fundamentals of ELO, playing a game should have no effect on your rating, if it does, your rating is adjusted -- you stop when the expected value of playing a game does not change your rating.
But these % chance of winning assumptions don't include logical "caps" -- say you can't win more than 95% no matter how great the gap is:
(.95)*(2300)+(.05)(2268) = 2298
So each game you play against a team where you're playing a 0-32, and you have a winning soft cap of 95%, you're expected to lose 2 points. Is that really logical? When you lower you soft cap, this problem grows pretty quickly, or when you deal with teams that yield a few points, but you can only win 75-80% against. Fundamentally, ELO requires flawless domination of teams below you to be able to "profitably" play against every team even if you're the strongest player.
How do you fix this for WoW? "K-factor" is just math geekiness to describe how much you can potentially gain or lose from any game. Why not scale the K-Factor down when teams are far apart in rating? Or simply do a better job of scaling how you gain or lose per game as your rating changes?
Still thinking this over...
I agree with a lot of what he said; it's been something I've wanted to rant about for a long time.
People use the argument that Wow has too much "luck" in it for it to be a great competitive game. Resists, dodges, crits, or windfury procs can have such a huge impact on a match, perhaps more than the little things that very strong players do that average players do not.
The counterexample is often poker: poker involves a lot of luck. It is inevitable even when you're stronger than your opponents in poker that not only will you lose a lot of hands, you will go through huge streaks of losing. What you play for is edge. Higher skilled players play at an advantage to the rest of the table, and it is apparent pretty quickly whether a table will be generally profitable even if you can't well predict how the next few hands, or perhaps next few yours will necessarily go.
As a poker player, I like the comparison, but feel it creates too much emphasis on the idea that because poker is a "game with a lot of luck" and is a reasonably serious competitive game, it is okay for WoW to involve a lot of randomness or luck. Consider two extremely talented long distance runners; they run a 40 mile race, and the winner wins the race by a few seconds. How confident are you that the winner will win the next race? Certainly, there is some randomness in the results even though the nature of the race (they run identical courses) implies there should be little to none. Randomness is intrinsic to anything competitive -- the strongest will not always conquer, he will just conquer more often than the weak.
The goal of an arena rating system therefore should be to recognize players who despite their occasional falters, win with consistency. Rating systems should be tailored to match their games, and games with more randomness need systems that punish or reward "flukes" not too heavily. In this way, ELO is perhaps not that well suited to WoW. Because even the best teams reach a plateau with respect to their chance of beating a lower ranked team (disconnects, atrocious luck, etc), how can it make sense for there to be games that yield no rating yet cost 32? It creates a strange situation:
Consider a 2300 rated team playing a 2200 team:
The 2300 should have roughly a 2/3 chance of winning based on how ELO is generally balanced. (I'm sure someone who is a real math geek on ELO will flame me for this generalization) The expected value of the game assuming how WoW implements ELO (which is a 32point K factor system, basically you can win or lose 32 at most), is simply: (% chance of winning) * (winning ELO) + (%chance of losing) (losing ELO)
(2/3)(2310.7)+(1/3)(2278.7) ~= 2300
That is the fundamentals of ELO, playing a game should have no effect on your rating, if it does, your rating is adjusted -- you stop when the expected value of playing a game does not change your rating.
But these % chance of winning assumptions don't include logical "caps" -- say you can't win more than 95% no matter how great the gap is:
(.95)*(2300)+(.05)(2268) = 2298
So each game you play against a team where you're playing a 0-32, and you have a winning soft cap of 95%, you're expected to lose 2 points. Is that really logical? When you lower you soft cap, this problem grows pretty quickly, or when you deal with teams that yield a few points, but you can only win 75-80% against. Fundamentally, ELO requires flawless domination of teams below you to be able to "profitably" play against every team even if you're the strongest player.
How do you fix this for WoW? "K-factor" is just math geekiness to describe how much you can potentially gain or lose from any game. Why not scale the K-Factor down when teams are far apart in rating? Or simply do a better job of scaling how you gain or lose per game as your rating changes?
Still thinking this over...
Mage - From the Point Guard to the Shooting Guard of 5v5
I feel unbeatable, and while I cannot say how our caster matrix will perform against elite teams, based on what I've seen in one night of playing, it is without a doubt, on par with the typical warrior, rogue, priest, shaman and paladin team. Our caster team has everything a playoff contender needs: solid defense, a solid big man in Azael, and good shooting from beyond the Arc with our ranged, caster offense.
It is our beyond the Arc shooting that dominates opponents. While lots of mages like to run point with crowd control, drawing enemy focus to create shooting opportunities, in a caster team, we're not just a Stockton or Nash, we're a T-Mac or Kobe. We do BIG damage. We have that clutch burst Rasengan(螺旋丸) level damage we can dominate opponents with when left unguarded. You let us cast on you, and we drop 50+ (thousand damage) games more reliably than Kobe, but the rest of our team doesn't suck!
What about defense? Silence, Improved Counterspell, Earthshock, Grounding Totem, BoP, BoF, DS Healing Spam, Pally stun, Novas, Pet Novas -- we have more tools to control opponents than any other team. Why work towards deflecting enemy attacks with a Suna no Tate(砂の盾) style, when you can totally shut down your opponent with a Hakke Rokuhuu Yonshou. It's hard to put up numbers against our defense when your key scorers are dominated by our zone caster crowd control defense.
So to anyone who thinks they can oppose this lineup of course, I quote my two Gods, T-Mac and Naruto, "Omae, zettai ni makenai ze!"
So is this how I'd write? ^^
It is our beyond the Arc shooting that dominates opponents. While lots of mages like to run point with crowd control, drawing enemy focus to create shooting opportunities, in a caster team, we're not just a Stockton or Nash, we're a T-Mac or Kobe. We do BIG damage. We have that clutch burst Rasengan(螺旋丸) level damage we can dominate opponents with when left unguarded. You let us cast on you, and we drop 50+ (thousand damage) games more reliably than Kobe, but the rest of our team doesn't suck!
What about defense? Silence, Improved Counterspell, Earthshock, Grounding Totem, BoP, BoF, DS Healing Spam, Pally stun, Novas, Pet Novas -- we have more tools to control opponents than any other team. Why work towards deflecting enemy attacks with a Suna no Tate(砂の盾) style, when you can totally shut down your opponent with a Hakke Rokuhuu Yonshou. It's hard to put up numbers against our defense when your key scorers are dominated by our zone caster crowd control defense.
So to anyone who thinks they can oppose this lineup of course, I quote my two Gods, T-Mac and Naruto, "Omae, zettai ni makenai ze!"
So is this how I'd write? ^^
New World of Wing Coming?
I'm actually pretty excited to see what comes of Ming's site over the next few weeks. He's really been talking the changes up the past few weeks, and I'm anxious to see who he lines up to write for his new site and what sort of format it will end up being.
I'm flattered that my name be included, but I'm not really sure I'm appropriate for the task. I think I'd feel guilty taking money from readers (indirectly through ads even, which is why I recommend you use an RSS reader!) since I really use this space to just sound out ideas, not put out finished product. I hate giving up on this blog as it has been a fun way of covering all sorts of topics; I love that I can come back to writing dueling guides whenever I want, and can talk about a million other class issues in between -- I'd just feel guilty being that negligent if I was part of some sort of PvP Blog team. ^^
I'd certainly like to preach to a larger choir someday, and maybe that will or won't happen via a small blog like this; I think it's cool to make a difference in a game as big as WoW.
On totally non-related notes:
I'm flattered that my name be included, but I'm not really sure I'm appropriate for the task. I think I'd feel guilty taking money from readers (indirectly through ads even, which is why I recommend you use an RSS reader!) since I really use this space to just sound out ideas, not put out finished product. I hate giving up on this blog as it has been a fun way of covering all sorts of topics; I love that I can come back to writing dueling guides whenever I want, and can talk about a million other class issues in between -- I'd just feel guilty being that negligent if I was part of some sort of PvP Blog team. ^^
I'd certainly like to preach to a larger choir someday, and maybe that will or won't happen via a small blog like this; I think it's cool to make a difference in a game as big as WoW.
On totally non-related notes:
- If you like the DJ drama stuff in my last 2 vids, the Saigon and Drama mixtape is ridiculous fierce.
- Been watching replays of a Zerg player Midian from Team Liquid, and I'm contemplating marrying him. Watch this: http://www.battlereports.com/viewreplays.php?replaynum=28877
- I'm definitely doing some arena videos this season; I promised to do them last season, but was afraid it would interfere with my playing. Well screw my teammates, I'm going to be frapsing. I don't plan on recording until Season 2 starts getting serious, so it's probably at least 6 weeks away.
- I'll be at Blizzcon with a few "friends" so expect lots of spy photos of SC2 and fat, pale girls dressed as Night Elves. (If I'm really lucky, maybe get you some HOT dwarf pics too^^)
- I promise to not derail into so much non-WoW stuff often!!
Monday, May 28, 2007
Your base is under attack.
Build more overlords.
I apologize for the lack of content this weekend; Starcraft is consuming my time. It's basically the first RTS I've ever played, and I'm on day 4, so the learning curve is pretty punishing. ^^ I'm really hoping to get to a semi-competitive level before SC2, so if you have advice, replays, strategy advice, I'm grateful for it.
Anyways, back to WoW thoughts:
Ran 4 DPS again tonight after throwing away 200 rating trying to build back classic style matrices with new players earlier in the week. Picked up close to a 100 playing against what I consider mismatches going against us. (To me it seems, 4DPS>classical>WarX2>4DPS in a rock, paper, scissors type way) We also had a 30 point disconnect, and our nightly let's throw away 30 points to a team we sat in queue for 10 minutes against because we play awfully or just have incredibly bad luck.
I'm not going to say anything that I'll regret as silly, but there is a real dearth of classical matrix teams running in Stormstrike next season. We have two Forgotten Heroes teams that run war/pally/priest/mage/X where X is hunter or lock which by the way is what I mean when I refer to "classical" matrix. But beyond those two, there's about a half dozen WarX2/HealerX3 teams and now a few 4DPS teams.
I believe we're already the strongest team running currently though our rating doesn't reflect it, though doesn't everybody? ^^ That's not to say I'm comfortable with this team yet at all, but it feels like everyone is pretty green with these new teams; more often that not, we win because our opponents lose to their own mistakes or we lose to ours -- we aren't really straining for well played games yet.
I anticipate huge drama at season end as many will do whatever it takes to get their netherdrakes. Therefore, finding games might become increasingly challenging, and games are going to be more intense as people play to protect their rating a bit more seriously. We had a few 10 minute Nagrand pillar standoffs earlier today (which drive me crazy btw) where the opponents would not even come attack the middle with pretty much a free charge and for a brief moment I actually missed the stupid tornadoes. I get that you want every little edge you can get, but stalling the game until you're given a significant opening advantage you don't deserve doesn't really feel intended to me. =\
The viper sting and DoT dance for the opening minute or so is fine, but now with everyone 100% of the time having water, it is mostly futility and basically just leads both sides to running back to LoS safety and getting full med up anyways. I'm not trying to play some moral high ground argument, but didn't arena evolve out of old-school roaming 5v5, and was there ever this obsession with getting flawless openers? (Must get charge on my target of choice, must get a good sting and multi as we go in, must not have any dots on any part members, blah blah)
I'm sure there are a lot who can relate with the feeling that I've never really been into the whole gaming your rating side of arena. There is a lot of it in our battlegroup where teams won't play when they know hard matrix matchups are running or when they want to avoid specific teams. A lot of people consider this "cheap" including me (I whine about it a LOT), but then again, in poker it is stupid to play at an unprofitable table when you know you'd win at the next table, so why not in WoW pick your fights? I know that I have a hard time stopping after a loss even when I know continuing to queue is probably not in rating's best interest (risk vs reward, bad matchup, sloppy playing on our part), which sounds somewhat noble, but realistically just puts us on tilt to hemorrhage a lot of points.
I apologize for the lack of content this weekend; Starcraft is consuming my time. It's basically the first RTS I've ever played, and I'm on day 4, so the learning curve is pretty punishing. ^^ I'm really hoping to get to a semi-competitive level before SC2, so if you have advice, replays, strategy advice, I'm grateful for it.
Anyways, back to WoW thoughts:
Ran 4 DPS again tonight after throwing away 200 rating trying to build back classic style matrices with new players earlier in the week. Picked up close to a 100 playing against what I consider mismatches going against us. (To me it seems, 4DPS>classical>WarX2>4DPS in a rock, paper, scissors type way) We also had a 30 point disconnect, and our nightly let's throw away 30 points to a team we sat in queue for 10 minutes against because we play awfully or just have incredibly bad luck.
I'm not going to say anything that I'll regret as silly, but there is a real dearth of classical matrix teams running in Stormstrike next season. We have two Forgotten Heroes teams that run war/pally/priest/mage/X where X is hunter or lock which by the way is what I mean when I refer to "classical" matrix. But beyond those two, there's about a half dozen WarX2/HealerX3 teams and now a few 4DPS teams.
I believe we're already the strongest team running currently though our rating doesn't reflect it, though doesn't everybody? ^^ That's not to say I'm comfortable with this team yet at all, but it feels like everyone is pretty green with these new teams; more often that not, we win because our opponents lose to their own mistakes or we lose to ours -- we aren't really straining for well played games yet.
I anticipate huge drama at season end as many will do whatever it takes to get their netherdrakes. Therefore, finding games might become increasingly challenging, and games are going to be more intense as people play to protect their rating a bit more seriously. We had a few 10 minute Nagrand pillar standoffs earlier today (which drive me crazy btw) where the opponents would not even come attack the middle with pretty much a free charge and for a brief moment I actually missed the stupid tornadoes. I get that you want every little edge you can get, but stalling the game until you're given a significant opening advantage you don't deserve doesn't really feel intended to me. =\
The viper sting and DoT dance for the opening minute or so is fine, but now with everyone 100% of the time having water, it is mostly futility and basically just leads both sides to running back to LoS safety and getting full med up anyways. I'm not trying to play some moral high ground argument, but didn't arena evolve out of old-school roaming 5v5, and was there ever this obsession with getting flawless openers? (Must get charge on my target of choice, must get a good sting and multi as we go in, must not have any dots on any part members, blah blah)
I'm sure there are a lot who can relate with the feeling that I've never really been into the whole gaming your rating side of arena. There is a lot of it in our battlegroup where teams won't play when they know hard matrix matchups are running or when they want to avoid specific teams. A lot of people consider this "cheap" including me (I whine about it a LOT), but then again, in poker it is stupid to play at an unprofitable table when you know you'd win at the next table, so why not in WoW pick your fights? I know that I have a hard time stopping after a loss even when I know continuing to queue is probably not in rating's best interest (risk vs reward, bad matchup, sloppy playing on our part), which sounds somewhat noble, but realistically just puts us on tilt to hemorrhage a lot of points.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Water Elemental Basics
Random Thoughts on WE:
Double up on stopcasting bind. It is pretty reasonable to macro this to be:
/stopcasting
/petpassive
This ends up being versatile in a lot of situations and it is pretty rare you want to do one and not the other. Basically becomes, a stop button for everything you're doing. (Say your rogue teammate lands a blind on your pet's target)
Bind petattack to something intelligent and don't use scrubby pet assist macros. WE does a lot of dmg, it is great for secondary damage in arena if you run staggered or split DPS. You should be comfortable at switching targets with WE as if you were simply tab-target fireblasting to assist the DPS train. A lot of people just summon their WE on the target their team is nuking and leave it autoattacking a target getting spam healed all game; without getting into if this is good or bad (it does keep moderate healing pressure up), realize at least when you switch targets you're leaving a good chunk of DPS behind if you don't control your WE well.
You should pet nova with about .5 + your latency seconds before your frostbolt finishes to bolt->lance combo off the pet nova. A LOT of people nova sooner than necessary and I watch nova gets dispelled before they get off their lance. (The bolt will still get shatter bonus even if the dispel occurs midair, shatter is calculated when the bolt leaves your hand) This comes up not very often against casters since they often have multiple debuffs or are on global, but against rogues, who have many ways of escaping nova, gnomes, or druids, you should try to be reasonably "tight" on the window you give them to escape the nova. It is a pretty big damage loss if you don't get the shatter bonus on both.
You need to be at 8 yds or more to shatter combo reliably. Why do people try this on people literally on top of them?
At 25+ yds, you can get shatter bonus on all three spells: frostbolt, ice lance, and fireblast. This is of course easier with gladiator gloves. I've heard you can get this even at much shorter distances, and I haven't really confirmed it either way, the point is that distance is your friend when pet nova comboing.
Be wary of Psychic Scream or Affliction Howl of Terror. Some teams will save this stuff for pet summon, there isn't necessarily a ton you can do, but stall on summoning pet until you can be well spaced. You both eating the fear is pretty bad news for your team.
WE obviously benefits a good deal from activation trinkets, you of course should be using them when you are confident you can land a good pet nova combo. A lot of people go for their WE burst, see the target doesn't die, and then pop trinkets and just try to chaincast (perhaps with heroism), recognize that you lost a few hundred potential burst damage by not using it sooner.
Do not rely on the AI to avoid CC'd targets. This is pretty obvious, when you poly, switch your pet target manually, if your pet is midcast, its not horrible to use the aforementioned stopcasting bind as you change targets, the split second doing this is better than repolying and wasting 6 seconds of potential poly to DR.
Don't kill other mages WE. If you're a WE mage, you of course realize that your pet is a lot of your damage, and are more likely to advocate killing opposing mage Water Elementals. If you're 17/0/44, you are horrible at doing this, and you could spend time doing better things. Your teammates are MUCH better suited to killing a frost immune target than you. You can finish them off or help out a bit with a fireblast, but don't sit there scorching or missiling or blasting or whatever.
Save your own frost nova for defensive purposes and use the pet's nova for shatter combos. Good shatter combos are not much weaker than AP Pom Pyro+Fireblasts, but you can do it 4 times, while they get to do it once. Thinking of your pet nova as your "pom pyro" equivalent is important or you are not a burst damage threat. Moreover, it is extremely rare you'll get to use your own nova and frostbolt someone in arena, more often than not, you're just getting an Ice Lnace off that nova, why not save your teammates with it instead?
Just because you have your pet out does not mean you let your pet do your damage while you spam CC and poly juggle. AP Frost is better suited to playing this way, you want to find opportunities to draw fire or outright cast bolts on people. CC when you can, but you are there to deal damage, and you should be threat if you're left unguarded to openly cast. I don't like to switch to hardcore CC until after the first kill, because it really gives up sente. By the way, you should never cast non-rank 1 poly.
Double up on stopcasting bind. It is pretty reasonable to macro this to be:
/stopcasting
/petpassive
This ends up being versatile in a lot of situations and it is pretty rare you want to do one and not the other. Basically becomes, a stop button for everything you're doing. (Say your rogue teammate lands a blind on your pet's target)
Bind petattack to something intelligent and don't use scrubby pet assist macros. WE does a lot of dmg, it is great for secondary damage in arena if you run staggered or split DPS. You should be comfortable at switching targets with WE as if you were simply tab-target fireblasting to assist the DPS train. A lot of people just summon their WE on the target their team is nuking and leave it autoattacking a target getting spam healed all game; without getting into if this is good or bad (it does keep moderate healing pressure up), realize at least when you switch targets you're leaving a good chunk of DPS behind if you don't control your WE well.
You should pet nova with about .5 + your latency seconds before your frostbolt finishes to bolt->lance combo off the pet nova. A LOT of people nova sooner than necessary and I watch nova gets dispelled before they get off their lance. (The bolt will still get shatter bonus even if the dispel occurs midair, shatter is calculated when the bolt leaves your hand) This comes up not very often against casters since they often have multiple debuffs or are on global, but against rogues, who have many ways of escaping nova, gnomes, or druids, you should try to be reasonably "tight" on the window you give them to escape the nova. It is a pretty big damage loss if you don't get the shatter bonus on both.
You need to be at 8 yds or more to shatter combo reliably. Why do people try this on people literally on top of them?
At 25+ yds, you can get shatter bonus on all three spells: frostbolt, ice lance, and fireblast. This is of course easier with gladiator gloves. I've heard you can get this even at much shorter distances, and I haven't really confirmed it either way, the point is that distance is your friend when pet nova comboing.
Be wary of Psychic Scream or Affliction Howl of Terror. Some teams will save this stuff for pet summon, there isn't necessarily a ton you can do, but stall on summoning pet until you can be well spaced. You both eating the fear is pretty bad news for your team.
WE obviously benefits a good deal from activation trinkets, you of course should be using them when you are confident you can land a good pet nova combo. A lot of people go for their WE burst, see the target doesn't die, and then pop trinkets and just try to chaincast (perhaps with heroism), recognize that you lost a few hundred potential burst damage by not using it sooner.
Do not rely on the AI to avoid CC'd targets. This is pretty obvious, when you poly, switch your pet target manually, if your pet is midcast, its not horrible to use the aforementioned stopcasting bind as you change targets, the split second doing this is better than repolying and wasting 6 seconds of potential poly to DR.
Don't kill other mages WE. If you're a WE mage, you of course realize that your pet is a lot of your damage, and are more likely to advocate killing opposing mage Water Elementals. If you're 17/0/44, you are horrible at doing this, and you could spend time doing better things. Your teammates are MUCH better suited to killing a frost immune target than you. You can finish them off or help out a bit with a fireblast, but don't sit there scorching or missiling or blasting or whatever.
Save your own frost nova for defensive purposes and use the pet's nova for shatter combos. Good shatter combos are not much weaker than AP Pom Pyro+Fireblasts, but you can do it 4 times, while they get to do it once. Thinking of your pet nova as your "pom pyro" equivalent is important or you are not a burst damage threat. Moreover, it is extremely rare you'll get to use your own nova and frostbolt someone in arena, more often than not, you're just getting an Ice Lnace off that nova, why not save your teammates with it instead?
Just because you have your pet out does not mean you let your pet do your damage while you spam CC and poly juggle. AP Frost is better suited to playing this way, you want to find opportunities to draw fire or outright cast bolts on people. CC when you can, but you are there to deal damage, and you should be threat if you're left unguarded to openly cast. I don't like to switch to hardcore CC until after the first kill, because it really gives up sente. By the way, you should never cast non-rank 1 poly.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
