WoW 3v3 team: Mizusu, Anelai, Crow

[Crow]

This topic is mostly to discuss the performance of our 3v3 arena team. We would love to post some vids, but I don’t think any of us has a comp good enough to handle it :<. Any comments that might help us, will be mostly appreciated.


I have a few issues to discuss after some of our defeats yesterday.

1) Opening on paladin:
Very often we chose to open on paladin. We brought him to like 10% than he bubbles. Few things could have happened from that point of time:

a) I could instantly use MD (I was close enough and didn't have to spam heals to survive. Maybe I had bubble myself too) it worked on first - second cast and we win the game.

b) I could instantly use MD, but it was resisted few times in a row. Paladin heals himself, he still has one more bubble to use and we are out of our offensive CDs. That didn't put us in a very good position, and on top of that our targets weren't well coordinated when that happened.

c) I couldn't instantly use MD, because I had rogue/mage/feral on me, you were too far away from me (couldn't chase you due to poisons/hamstring/stuns) to peel, I die, pally at full health, loose.

Unfortunately situation c) was most common. b) happened more or less as often as a). I believe, that we shouldn't try to gib paladin. As soon as he bubbles we should change to secondary target. The paladin will be busy healing himself (if he heals the secondary target we can kill him when bubble fades / I dispel it) and, since he used a bubble, he is much open to CC with fear/blind/repentance.

The problem is, however, that the paladin still has the other bubble (new blessing of protection, however it is called) :<. Perhaps we should open on one DPS, as soon as he bubbles swap to other DPS and proceed as mentioned above. If I am not endangered (and there is much less pressure on me, since you are hitting DPS, and if the bubbled DPS is melee, he is much less harmful) I will keep trying to dispel, and fear after that. We do need however to have a better strategy for times where its not possible / it fails.

One more possibility is that I MD bubble on paladin no matter what. That should most of the time lead us to 2v2 which isn't necessarily that bad against some comps (esp since they used their CDs on me).

2) Mage teams

Mage teams were even more painful than rogue teams. Not only can they CC a caster for 20+ secs and can throw around 10k crits but also I need to be really careful with heals against them, because if they counterspell me, 8 secs of no healing, followed by sheep is pretty much gg. Against some mages it was bearable, but the mage from the RMDk team that owned us so hard could CS me before second tick of penance every single time. That means I can only use instant heals, even if I am not focused.

We need to make a better use of LOS against mages. Very often we allowed them to pull us to the middle of Nangard arena and fight there. This is especially true when we are fighting a 3 dps team – it is them who are in a hurry not us. So I suggest we play more defensively against mages, to minimize the damage we are taking.

With 3.0.8 it should get better with 100% success rate on sheep dispels. Also Mirror Images should die in 2 Fan of Knifes, now that the Cd is gone.

3) CS/KS opening versus Ambush/Muti opening.

What was the difference in damage between them? I believe that against classes with good active defensive abilities (pretty much all healers) we should go with cs/ks. For classes that rely purely on being healed Ambush/Muti opening should work better?

[Distant]

Few cents about point 2.
Never play defesively againist mages. Always be the attacking side. Mage in defense is wasting his mana for defensive skills (blink, ice block, ice barrier). Mages are fragile, and it's quite possible the mage will die before even healer reacts. Almost all fights that i won with korm were those that teams went for DK not mage.If you meet a team with a mage, train them first then switch to healer if the healer was fast enough to keep mage alive. Without resilience i'm getting spanked by lucky holy! paladins for 5k crits. Mage death is more then probable, as generally there aren't many ppl with high resilience now. It is really worth trying.

And some general advices:
Mirror Images: always AoE the images, they die of 2x arcane explosion for me.
Water Elemental: 2-3 instant cast spells and it's dead. If you can't kill it just LOS it. Running around pillar againist frost mage is still a cure.

If the mage is arcane he is as good as dead for melee team. If he is frost, you are probably screwd anyway, cause only "pro" pvpers keep telling about "frost" spec domination on arenas and consider "arcane" as noob spec (I rather think that they are just used to their frost specs), so it's very probable, you have just meet experienced pvper.

[Crow]

I guess we never really opened on mages, due to the fact that they can blink from stuns, and we were afraid that by the time we catch the mage with 2 melees I would be already dead (most clases can solo me unfortunately). Games in which we focus on mage would go more or less like this:

Mizu & Ane attack their mage
Their mage kites (his elemental does some little damage at the same time)
Their healer heals the mage
Their other DPS 1v1 me.

So this is a question if he 1v1 me faster than they 2v2 mage. If they have 3 DPS it is even worse, as it means we are racing 2 DPS to kill priest vs 2 DPS to kill mage. Mage wins by using iceblock :<.

By 'playing defensively' I mean killing their melee DPS while losing the mage. If they run away from us (reset the fight) it is to our advantage, as we have a healer (They may have it or may not), Sat can stealth and we can get another sap+opener on them. If the paladin used bubble than reset is even better for us due to bubble CD. I totally agree with Dis however, that a mage, if left alone and not LOSed (Ogrimar arena QQ) can wreak a lot of havoc - CC the healer and kill one of the melee in few seconds.

[1WingedAngel]

Well, it depends on the mage's play style. I personally play differently then many, in that I try to make enemies waste as much time as possible trying to kill me, while DPSing/interrupting them a lot also. Usually I'd blink out of some stun, then Blastwave, Dragon's Breath, Frost Nova, Impact procs, IB, blink to make melees waste upwards of 20 seconds not damaging me, while throwing instacasts and CSing healers, or do the same to anyone attacking the healer, rather then straight DPSing everyone, so a garrote or something (damn DKs) would help tremendously in killing me, otherwise may waste a lot of time. I don't like frost spec, it's good in pvp, but fire has so many little tricks, it's just more fun for me.. plus you can always tell what a frostie will do next, it's boring. 0=) the one weakness with my playstyle (or anyone like me, especially fire with mana shield) is that I'm oom, very quick, not so much with frost, so that's something to consider as well.

If you don't think you can kill the mage before the silence effect wears off, I'd try to just sap, blind, or double stun him (since he will blink), or just force him to go 1 on 1 vs another mage (pref fire because of instant AOEs, he can put pressure on others as well).

Damn I need to get to 80 fast, I miss arenas.. stupid school.