Mage/Priest Guide (Part I)

Druid::Warrior

Summary:

This is the most simple matchup in some ways. The war will be on your priest to inhibit his ability to mana burn and to prevent his CC on the druid and also, well, to avoid being kited by your mage. You will be sheep-locking him. Full poly into half DR poly into nova. It's 22ish seconds of lockdown for you and your priest to do as you wish. A rank f1bolt at some point during the end of the nova for a chance to extend it into a frostbite and to give your priest some extra time.

Notes:

Some mages do retarded shit like full DR sheep->nova->half DR sheep. They then poly again for 2 seconds and poly into immune like retards. I see this in vids all the time. Are you fucking kidding me? Kill yourselves.

Both teams require RNG to win or the game just goes on forever. They need a mace stun or huge crits; you need crits or a bite proc. You can definitely lose this matchup with bad luck and good play on their part. Fortunately, almost nobody plays this correctly against mage/priest. Spell reflecting frostbolts and trinketing a random poly for no reason isn't going to get it done. The war should save spell reflect and CDs until he's on poly DR and then hop on your priest while the druid tries to CC the mage. Good crits and mace stuns plus a spell reflect on a poly, and a trinket should potentially give the warrior time to land a kill. I've yet to really see this done well and often you can keep up enough pressure where the war is spending most of the match just trying to stay alive.

Start with frostbolt spam on the war, shatter any bites you get. If the war drops below 60% and is relatively in the open, summon a pet, and be ready to silence the druid. Be mindful that the wars first action will probably be intervening his druid.

Basically, you're looking to put the druid way behind. You do this by silencing him and then dispelling hots and by putting him in risk of eating a fear. This is only possible if well positioned; if you chase the war around a pillar while he beats on your priest, you will fucking lose you baddy.

In Nagrand, sit in the center and wait for them with your mage out in front and your priest mounted. Harass with rank 1 blizzard and lances on the war, if need be, wait for eyes. Fight exclusively in the center and your priest should be mindful of when poly DRs are up and can hopefully outrange intercepts a bit. In Blade's Edge, hold the center of the bridge. In Lordaeron, try to pull the warrior out to behind the grave on the hill between the gravestone and the wall. It's horrible LoS for the druid and makes landing a fear ridiculously easier.

If at any time, you don't like where they are taking the fight. Don't chase. Eat/Drink. Never let yourselves get low on health or mana. Eat/Drink even when you don't really think it is necessary.

Don't obsess about mana burning the druid and "winning the mana war." Druids are imba and homosexual and between second wind, lifebloom, and terrible mage DPS, he can keep the war up a long time.

You win when you create a window for a kill. This happens when you get a fear into mind control on the druid along with a crit frostbolt leading into a shatter on the warrior. It's obviously difficult to get a fear on the druid if you eat a hamstring, so just sheep and reset if you can't see a fear happening.

There's no real "trick" to beating druid+warrior. Manage DRs well. Burn their cooldowns and use yours at good times. Use Imp CS aggressively along with dispels on hots during the silence. If the war ends up on your priest and things look shitty, and the war is on poly AND nova DR, rank 1 frostbolt + r1 CoC are your best options for your first two globals as a bite proc is the best save for the situation.

Mind control rapes Blade's Edge. Have your priest sit on the pillar with his back to the corner to prevent intercept. When you need to reset, sheep twice, and then MC about two seconds into poly. Toss war off. Med up. Any non retard druid will avoid the center of the bridge as it puts him in a bad position to eat a fear into an MC off the bridge. At some point, he'll get frustrated and have to come in to assist his warrior with CC and feral charges/bashes which you can take advantage of.

I think blinking charge is optimal versus this team if you can't deny it; almost nobody will agree probably, but if the war is dump enough to burn intercept on you, it can lead to a very fast win as your priest is not hamstringed and free to fear the druid. If you think you can pull this off, shatter the warrior, imp cs the druid during the fear, and have your priest mash dispel as the druid trinkets and try to grab the NS. (You'd be fucking appalled at how often you can get this) Another embarassing way to humiliate bads is to fear the druid, pain him, and then MC the warrior after the shatter and watch the druid trinket and intend to NS the warrior but auto target himself and NS the pain tick. (Yup...)

You can double shatter with relative easy against this team, and it's really the only team you can pull it off against, so it's worth trying if the opportunity arises. With IV+PI+MQG, frostbolt->pet nova->lance->lance can be pulled off at 25ish yards with relative ease and is pretty nasty damage.

It's pretty important you get comfortable playing against druid/war because it is totally ubiquitous in every BG in every rating bracket. It also teaches you to play the comp pretty well as the games are moderately long, somewhat lopsided in your favor, and give you lots of opportunities to try new shit.

I use mind control a ton against this team when the war spends time on my mage, which is questionable, but is interesting. Just don't do it with full hots on the war and your mage midcast. I generally just do it to give my mage some room and to put the war in a more useful location, but it has the advantage of screwing up the bloom stack and generally freaking out bad druids. It is an awful waste of time with stupid resists some games though -- as a priest, there are times where there isn't a ton to do against this comp though and spamming smite just doesn't get it done.

Dear Diary I Think I'm

So, there was some drama at ESL. Shrug. To be honest, only the MLG events have really piqued my interest enough to actually watch. Well, that and the fact that they aren't at 4AM. I hate to be whiney, but I can't help but feel the matches are a bit repetitive. I watched the some random CLEAVE team with a nerd enhancement shaman fail to cleave the lock on a WLD and wasn't even able to finish it. Hopefully, WotLK will help WoW be a bit more marketable as an eSport by making it a bit more fun to spectate. Although, thinking about successful eSports in the US, I partially feel Counterstrike was an anomaly. Everyone played it. It was fun to watch. It was accessible. It was simple. The skill divide was massive. WoW, while the more recent events have been better, and things look to be (maybe) improving, has a ways to go. And while we all suck each other dicks for being awesome at this game, I mean, almost none of the "top" teams even really practice.

On the WotLK front, yes the cap has been raised, and well, I'm still seventy seven. Honestly, I've had better, okay other, things to do. My excitement with it is at a record low right now. I'm mostly bitter that nothing works still, so I'll probably just camp on some rested until they get more working. I'm gone all next weekend probably, so eighty will have to wait probably ten-ish days. At that point, I'll probably be looking to arena/duel actively. A few people have asked me my thoughts on random stuff (Deep Freeze, viability of non-frost specs, damage scaling) and I don't really want to bullshit you with anything until I'm dueling and arenaing at 80 against non baddies. My initial reaction is that damage is WAY too fucking high on pretty much every single class and resilience won't do fuck all against it.

Random WotLK Nerd Mage Thought: So frost nova is coded to now break on a fixed amount of damage. This is either sweet or gay for us in arena. Is this amount before or after resilience? If it's after resilience, it might mean that we get an extra lance or two and actually profit from their wearing more resilience. If it's beforehand, then it's a synthetic tax on damage output. Don't really know what's "right" but it will probably be a relevant issue. I could probably test this but I'll let someone nerdier do my work and instead just profit from it.

Random Answer to Random Question: Yes, you can trinket the frostfire bolt snare. It removes the whole debuff, DoT, and all. (You can also EA it)

Random Sense of Damage Scaling Thought: It looks like most classes will sit around 20k health at 80 in Arena gear. Probably a 15% variation around 20k depending on class and buffs. That is really only a 50-60% increase in health, but damage looks to literally be doubling for most classes. Also, with Blizzard's intent on making PvE less dependent on buffs and debuffs and more tied to the classes' baseline damage, the divide between PvE and PvP damage is going to dwindle. Bet on more defensive abilities being added or improved, further buffs to resilience, or just a fuckton of 4dps 5s teams. =p

Deep Freeze: With my penis gear, it does similar damage to a frostbolt. On a 0 resilience target, frostbolt into deep freeze into 3 lances is roughly 15k damage at 77. This is with zero gear upgrades. Resilience bumps this down to more like 11k, but I think with damage scaling, the new shatter combos will be doing 20-30% more than the old. While this seems like massive damage, Ret Pallies, Frost DKs, and Rogues have even scarier burst. o.O Can't wait for patch 3.0 stupidity. LF 3dps 3s.

I'm still planning on writing the mage/priest guide. I just have nooooo time. Sooooon.