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View Full Version : [2v2] Mage/Rogue - Last update 08.24.07


Qor
08-10-2007, 01:17 AM
Strategies:

(WE mage/combat or mutilate rogue)

vs Paladin/Warrior
A tough match up. If the warrior start with 60+ rage by shout spamming, and either the warrior or paladin has perception, you are going to have a very tough match. Generally speaking, if this is the first time you have played the opposing team, it is wise to go for the warrior. The mage should ping the warrior a few times to lure him out in the open. If you can, try to get the mage to lure the warrior into a position where he or she can blink towards the rogue. Assuming the warrior charges the mage, the mage then blinks to the rogue and the warrior follows with an intercept. Right as the warrior intercepts, the rogue should open with a CS. From here, it is the mage's job to steal BoS, keep the pally polymorphed and CS the paladin if the paladin attempts to heal before he uses Divine Shield. Assuming the paladin bubbles, the warrior will get heals/BoF and he will be attacking the rogue as much as possible (mage can steal BoF). This is the tricky part for the rogue. The rogue must find a way to get away from the warrior. The best strategy is to pop improved sprint (assuming you are combat mutilate or combat swords/maces/fists) and look for a spot that it is out of the warriors LOS. The mage will be fine, as he or she can ice block for the duration of the DS. Once DS is over, bandage/eat if you can and then either switch to killing the paladin or continue killing the warrior. Usually, it is easier to kill the warrior if he doesn't go defensive stance. If he does, and he is very good, you may be forced to go after the paladin instead. if that is the case, it is critical for the rogue and mage to time a kidney shot on the paladin as the mage polymorph's the warrior. You must shut down the warrior if you are going after the paladin, otherwise the warrior will kill the rogue very quickly. Note: If you see the paladin cast BoF on himself, that means the warrior can now be snared so its critical the mage continues to control the warrior as much as possible. As a rogue, u should be saving energy for kick and gouge.


vs Druid/Rogue
A VERY tough match. Putting racials aside (assume no perception) the key to this match is finding the druid. An excellent rogue/druid will wait for second sight, the druid will pick it up, fairy fire your rogue and the game is off to a horrible start. So, to avoid this, the first step is to find the rogue/druid immediately. If the gates open, and you see no one, its probably rogue/druid (or occasionally mage/rogue). The best advice I can give, is to have your mage mount up, get to the opponents entrance and blizzard everywhere you can. Meanwhile, the rogue should be looking around the edges/pillars on the opposite side of the arena. I realize this is very vague advice but every arena is soo different that it would be impossible to describe exactly how to properly scout for the druid/rogue. Basically, as a rogue, you should know the speed/movement patterns of a stealther quite well so try to direct your mage. MOST times, the rogue will open your mage. The mage should treat this like any 1v1 duel with a rogue and begin to nova/summon pet/IB to draw out the druid. As a rogue, you need to scout for the druid who will most likely be somewhere near the action so that he can heal when its needed. If the druid is savy, he will be hanging out somewhere where he/she can easily LOS after getting a heal off. To win this fight, you must kill the druid. The mage cannot poly/CS the druid enough for both of you to burn down the rogue. Now, it may be possible to kill the rogue, if hes horrible and doesn't cloak off your wound poision and runs out of LOS of his healer or if the druid is just plain bad. However, we must assume our opponents are more competent that than. So, kill the druid. As a rogue you need to be spamming shiv on the druid everytime he shapeshifts out of a crip. Save your energy for shivs and combo points for KS. Also, you may need to use your blind as a way of slowing down the druid when he gets just out of range and your imp sprint is down and you can't deadly throw. Deadly throw/Novas/Crips and polly the rogue (MAYBE blind the rogue if he is too far from the druid) I can't express how tough this matchup can be if the rogue and druid are excellent. Also, if you see the rogue is sitting through a full duration poly, his trinket is probably down. If thats the case, and you can somehow restealth, go for a sap. However, you need to be keeping the druid in combat so he doesn't drink and make sure hes wasting as much mana as possible by shapeshifting.

Overall, I think we win about 1 in 5 matches against a competent druid/rogue. Getting a lucky blizzard at the beginning or a sap, is your best chance. Also, for druid/rogue fights, I put on +stealth gear (cape/boots/JC trinket).

vs Druid/UA Warlock
coming soon...

vs Druid/Warrior
coming soon...

vs Mage/Warlock
coming soon...

vs Paladin/Rogue
coming soon...

vs Paladin/Warlock
coming soon...

vs Priest/Warlock
This is a free win if you have shadow resist gear over 350 and the lock is UA or drain spec. My partner and myself always put on SR gear when facing this match, unless the lock is felguard spec. In the case of felgaurd, we keep pvp gear on and attempt to burn the lock while polly/blinding the priest. If the lock is felguard, the mage should open on the lock, try to draw out an intercept and the rogue should open with a CS on the lock as quickly as possible. Don't be afrad to burn an improved sprint to get in position on a felgaurd lock because he does not have curse of exhaustion. My mage/rogue has an advantage in this matchup because we are both undead. As such, we always WOTF the first fear and save trinket for DC. Do not be afraid to pop CloS if you CS -> KS the lock and you are burning him down with all your CDs. More often than not, the lock will trinket/Death coil your KS to escape death. A preemtive CloS can win you the match if the priest is CCed or counter spelled. Also, make sure you pop evasion while on the lock as the felguard will do alot of damage. I wish I could give more advice...

vs Priest/Rogue
This is a straight forward fight. A priest is the easiest healer for a mage to CC. So, start the fight with the mage opening on the priest to draw out the rogue. Once the rogue shows his face, its time for YOUR rogue to open on him. Open CS, blow cooldowns (trinket/AR and eventually evasion) and make sure you are shiving crip and keep rupture on him at all times. Kill the rogue as quickly as possible, and let the mage handle all of the poly/CS duty. Once the priest is pollied twice, or, in case of emergenices, blind the priest. It will buy your mage enough time to land a CS or a fresh poly. As with all fights, try to draw the priest out of position (aka not near a pillar) so he can't pop in and out to heal the rogue. Dot rogue, control priest. Later in the match, if the opposing rogue is out of CDs and is running for his life, it makes sense for YOUR rogue to stay on the priest and use kick/gouge or blind/sap to prevent heals.

vs Warlock/Rogue
coming soon...

etc...

==Please reply to this topic if you have additional comments or feedback. Assuming these type of threads take off, we will sticky one for each "popular" 2v2 combination==

Glave
08-10-2007, 05:00 AM
you

Pogo
08-10-2007, 08:18 AM
I love fighting this combo. It's by far the funnest combo my partner and I face. It's always down to the wire since neither team has a healer but damn it's a lot of fun. Mage+Rogue combos can be extremely deadly if executed properly. I commend anyone that can pull it off at a high level. I'm eager to here your strategies against the druid/affiction lock and druid/rogue combos that my team has trouble against.

MatsT
08-10-2007, 08:28 AM
Keep it up. Had huge troubles with this combo when playing warrior+shaman but usually win with warrior+paladin due to lack of spellsteals.

Windwalk
08-10-2007, 08:34 AM
Hmm, interesting strategy vs. warrior/paladin. I played this 2v2 combo season 1, and we ended up in the top .5%, though barely.

Against warrior/paladin, we went for the pally, always. I would engage them both, throw an ice lance on the warrior to stop charge and then sheep+detect magic on the warrior. The rogue would open on the pally and we would try to burn him down. If/when the warrior trinketed sheep, the rogue would blind him. When the pally bubbled, we I would throw sheep+detect back on the warrior and continue to spam sheep. While I tried to keep the warrior sheeped through dispel spam, the rogue would sprint away or vanish. After bubble, we would reopen and kill the paladin.

We used your strategy against lower ranked teams when we were starting out. However, as teams became better and better, this combo gave us more and more trouble. My partner started dying during the pally's bubble. Deep wounds blocked vanish and he had trouble getting away from the warrior.

We did have subpar gear last season though, and I'm sure this season my rogue partner could've taken a few more hits.

Tyveris
08-10-2007, 08:34 AM
Shout spamming to start with rage was disabled quite some time ago. Other than that, keep it up.
Nope, it is still active on live =/. The patch to fix it is 2.2 (Bloodrage will no longer put you in combat). The way I have heard it works is, Bloodrage upon entering the arena, Shout to keep you in combat, Bloodrage again at the end of prep, and with Anger Management you should have 60+ rage.

minor
08-10-2007, 07:15 PM
I play the mage on a mage / rogue team. We are pretty solid with a 90% win ratio against any teams but paladin/warlock. I think it is a pretty solid combo for that reason...but if anyone has an idea for what a solid strat would be a good strat against that combo, enlighten me please

Avee
08-15-2007, 01:07 AM
If you have a prayer against lock/druid my hat's off to you.

I played this combo in season one and got gladiator with it. The trinket change hurt us pretty hard though. people getting out of blind and sap changed things a lot. a lot of combos we used to shit on we're occasionally losing to now, and some, like druid/lock, we now get assraped by.

Oh, and sap and polymorph share diminishing returns. Isn't that bullshit? @#@$ you bliz.

Think I'll go back to playing 2v2 on my mage again if the queue times ever go below 5 mins again.

oh, and I find going after the warrior odd in war/pal. Good tip on timing the sheep and ks together though. if you're chasing hte paladin round the nagrand pillars that's a good time to abuse the warrior too, though you're probably still in for bad times as your pet's garbage and you're probably not getting too many frostbolts off.

My rogue partner used to call for me to spellsteal the paladin's freedom, but having tried this numerous times I don't think this works. 640 mana a gcd, + righteous fury + stoicism = not worth it. Bottom line is you need to drag that paladin out into the open somehow if it's a skilled team. You lose 80% of the mage's dps otherwise, and you're probably not going to bring that paladin down fast enough otherwise. Sooner or later the warrior will be free of sheep/nova, and you'll get worn down.

kyoshi
08-15-2007, 02:15 AM
that is a great combo to get up there with. the only problem i would see would be warlock/druid. because a druid is the anti rogue in terms of kiting, and locks just destroy mages.

Tyveris
08-15-2007, 02:17 AM
that is a great combo to get up there with. the only problem i would see would be warlock/druid. because a druid is the anti rogue in terms of kiting, and locks just destroy mages.
Druid is also anti-mage (no sheeps, all insta heals no CS opening), it is a really brutal fight.

Avee
08-22-2007, 04:56 PM
I wouldn't call druid anti mage really, just locks. Sure, we don't own druids like we do some other classes, but consider the following.

druids can't cleanse. those polymorphs all stick minus that one pvp trinketed one. same with those novas.

they still have to shift to get out of poly. it's a decent ghetto cc when you're about to down someone, or just delaying them until you want to slap on

imp cs still works on htem, and those 3-4 secs can allow a kill.

Rathizan
08-23-2007, 12:33 AM
Has anyone tried a change in dps once the Druid pops out in the druid/lock combo.

Something me and my rogue partner have been toying with is I'll solo the lock for a bit then the druid will pop out ot heal, rogue then jumps on the druid, blinds the lock if possible, then I'll start sheeping the lock, hopefully killing the druid.

We are just constantly getting beat by this makeup, trying to find a way to a least win a few :-p. Any suggestions?

Iceballz
08-23-2007, 10:35 AM
hai2u rath

Harmann
08-23-2007, 10:39 AM
Make sure the Rogue uses Crippling in his main and offhand if you're trying that. Might even want to try Spellstealing a HoT.

Stay very close to the Rogue as well, you don't want the Druid shifting into Bear and FCing you to get away from the Rogue.

Fear absolutely needs to be CSed followed by a Blind on the Warlock or Sheeps + Detect.

Certainly seems a lot more viable than killing an SL/SL Lock while getting Cycloned/Rooted and having HoTs up on him constantly.

Rathizan
08-23-2007, 04:16 PM
Hi ice,

Yeah, we've tried just burning the lock but healthstones plus NS and we are done. He gets a cyclone rotation going, lock fears, eventually we just die slowly from dots. Seems the only way to kill a SL lock / druid is to kill the druid first and fast.

Qor
08-24-2007, 07:41 AM
the original post has been updated as of 08.24.07

Windwalk
09-02-2007, 04:48 PM
I'm playing this combo again after some time off from 2v2.

It's a lot of fun, but losing against every single lock/pally team really takes away from it.

inkline
10-06-2007, 03:35 PM
I play this combo with my buddy on Vengeance, and it is nothing but fun. The only combos we cannot beat consistently is Pally/Warlock and Druid/Warlock.

As of this post we're 2251 and 32nd in BG6

foxxybrown
10-06-2007, 05:51 PM
Does blade twisting make a difference vs lock/druid comps? I get mixed reactions. Some say that 20% on special attacks is too low, some say it procs all the time.

xforce27
10-21-2007, 04:13 PM
can someone update this plz?

Tyveris
10-21-2007, 04:32 PM
can someone update this plz?
We don't really play it anymore because of how frustrating 2v2 has become. I'll mention something to Qor though.

Lopos
10-22-2007, 04:15 PM
I just spent all night playing with a Holy priest vs this mage/rogue combo. It is a very tough matchup but it is also one of the most fun matchups.

Ollowain
10-22-2007, 04:36 PM
We play this setup around 2k~..it's really fun but we stand no chance against warlock/druid, warlock/pally, against everything else we can win if we don't do one single mistake. We need around 2,1k rating for gladiator title and that's possible, though I would maybe do better with a good priest/druid.
The only thing I hate about our setup is that i have to pick up an arush/prep spec to win against a lot of setups, particularly mirror matches, and my favourite spec is mutilate. :(