Druid/Lock strats?

[Auracle]

Ok, I hit 2200 a few weeks ago with a warrior, and we were easily set up for gladiator (got 41st in bg). He, however, seems to have quit, leaving me without a 2v2. I held off finding a new partner, hoping that if I left the team alone, I would still get glad. Well, I made a new 3v3 and we have hit 2100 with no problems, so I am no longer worried about getting gladiator from my 2v2. So I started playing with a lock.

The problem with picking up a new partner at the 2200 lvl is that you dont have any really good strats ready, so after going 0-3 to start (all to a dwarft preist/lock combo, who i think we could have beat if they did not have fear ward), I thought I would get some strats here. So the big teams I am looking for are:

Druid/Warrior

Druid/Lock

Pally/Lock

Priest/Lock

Priest/Rogue

Thanks much for any help :)

[Taffy]

this is a prime example of why i WISH they'd implement scrims the right way.

once you're high rating, theres so much effing pressure to 1. not screw up and 2. stick with it until doomsday, which destroys so much potential fun in trying out new combos and different strats or playing with different specs, and its frustrating.

back in cs days... you get all your status from rated matches, but the whole fun of the game was in scrimming all night every night... building strats, practicing, playing pugs with your friends, etc.

i wish they'd fix arena scrims. they could tether it to the new personal ratings, so that you are auto-paired with people who are similar skill level, and only pair you with other people who q together when you q together.

would be nice if they could chain some diff battlegroups together as well so there would be a bigger pool to choose from, and more likelihood that you could get good matchups.

would be so nice for warming up too, when you feel tired/out of it and you're not sure you want to queue for real, just to get a feel for the night.

anyway, sorry for highjacking. maybe i should just paste this onto the main boards and see if other people liked the idea so it might get some traction :P

[Ridzik]

1 Druid/Warrior

2 Druid/Lock

3 Pally/Lock

4 Priest/Lock

5 Priest/Rogue

Thanks much for any help :)

1: free win once you have the warrior locked down with all you cc's and your lock manages to put pressure on both.

2: knowledge of the map and the best routes decides which druid runs oom first given the same equip. make sure you run the longest possible tracks without stop hotting your lock while running. talents and routine decides which lock deals more dmg on the druid and slows/interrupts the other warlock best.

3: the pally is more vulnerable to fear than you are as you can stay out of fear range more easiely. you can slow both with coex while they cannot. prevent being JoJ'ed. drain the pallys mana whenever possible. will be a long match though.

4: in case the priest is holy: ua helps a lot, without ua you are probably going to loose the mana war. cc the lock and stay away from the priest. drain the priests mana. if you manage to drink some times while the priest is held in combat you win. mf1 and ff1 help a lot when your lock is not full affliction.

5: by far the hardest opponents, especially the dwarf priest/gnome rogue ones. keeping the rogue away from the lock is hard and important but your smallest problem. mana burn and pet focus is what it makes nearly impossible. again ua might help, never heal the pet while focused - your lock needs to run and summon a new one immediately. make sure you hold the priest in combat with mf1 until the new pet hits him again. make sure the rogue doesn't restealth without vanish. never stop moving. apply cure poison on your lock before you cyclone/root the rogue. good luck :P

[Sekah]

4 ..., never heal the pet while focused - your lock needs to run and summon a new one immediately.

Really?

I'm no druid (nor lock!) but this seems like a weird bit of advice. I think there are too many counters to this strat for it to be reliable - a well timed blind, stun, or fear coupled with a dispel of fel dom, or a mana burn bringing the warlock too low to summon leaves you pretty vulnerable. My partner and I have become relatively adept at stopping the summoning of another pet given the opportunity. Rather, we feel it's more difficult for us if the pet is kept healed at least for the initial burst - if the pet doesn't go down within the first 15 seconds or so we switch to the warlock and do our best to ignore it.

Correct me if I'm wrong though. Druid/warlock is still the toughest match up for our priest/rogue team. Maybe our strategy needs modifying.

[Ridzik]

i speak of experience with my sl/sl lock mate. once the rogue starts hitting the pet (crowd control is rarely an option, i won't waste cyclone dr in that moment, nor charge/bash the rogue because the priest isn't far away from the pet) its stunned or at least slowed to 30% movement and cannot fulfill its purpose: keep the priest from drinking. the priest will los the pet and drink. now if i start to heal the pet we don't profit enough from the situation to make the huge mana investment reasonable (remember: the felhunter has low armor and zero 0 nada niente rien resilience) because:

- i won't be able to outheal the the rogue dps on the pet for some time except i use all cooldowns. burning all cooldowns and a huge portion of my manapool is not an option because..
-..our dmg won't profit enough because the priest will continue to los the lock and dispel most of our damage. summary: priest lost some mana, i lost very much mana and cd's plus we probably loose the fel domination cooldown as my lock wont be far enough away from the rogue once the pet goes down
- most of the time the smart rogue teams attack the pet at very good positions (for example behind a pillar, in the base, etc.) where its not an option to go after them and heal the pet / fear (lol fear working and not working is a different story) the rogue, because either the lock would have to stand near the rogue or i would have to expose myself to manaburn or even both.

running away the moment the rogue switches to the pet / keeping rogue and priest in combat with mf1 turned out to be the best option for us. this gives us an advantage against those teams that start playing the pet game when the priests mana runs low, rogue/priest teams that consequently switch from warlock to pet and vice versa from the beginning are unbeatable for us (especially if they have racial advantages in addition to the setup advantage and most of the teams we face are either dwarf priest/gnome rogue or ud/ud).

Druid/warlock is still the toughest match up for our priest/rogue team. Maybe our strategy needs modifying.

Orly? So here comes some advice, you owe me a beer if you reach 1st place because you miracoulosly (spelling? ^^) beat slsl/druid from now on!

Start as usual, focus the lock, dispel like hell, avoid mana leech, mana burn the druid if possible, counter the cc's as good as you can. eventually the lock will be positioned at one side of a pillar with your rogue slicing him into pieces. now immediately position yourself on the other side of the pillar with the pet following you. now tell your rogue to kidney shot/solarplexus the lock, come to you and kill the pet. both the druid and the lock (still incapacitated and probably even slowed) are now left to make the hardest possible decision: run/summon (where to? you are still near only not in los) or continue dpsing (again you are not in los at the moment, the pet is dying fast and the rogue would be near and could help the priest). this will work fine in blade edge and nagrand especially when you position the pet in a way, that the druid has to move towards you in order to heal the pet / cc the rogue while damaging the pet. Now in ruins of lordaeron the nature of the bases allows you to kill the pet in your base. if the opponents would enter your base trying to help the pet this would actually be the best case scenario for you. Say hello to ae fear and manaburn bloody lock team :). you leave them no chance when you wait in your base or very near the base until the lock comes with shadowsight.

In addition to this you can always position yourself near the lock at the beginning of the match so that the rogues blade flurry will hit both the lock and the pet (given that he is combat specced).

as priest/rogue you won't get any more easy mode than slsl/druid.

and now finally be so kind and tell me what to do against healpriest/rogue als slsl/druid. i'd be glad to read some very good advice i've never heard of before.

[Ridzik]

small update: just played versus ne rogue / hu priest. rogues mh was a black temple sword, my lock had void + sl active and 400+ resilience. i didn't believe how fast he lost health. once we managed to down the priest, but i was oom and my lock below 50% health so we both were fodder for the rogue.

2.3 will bring the lifeleech nerf.

now please tell me the golden formula against priest/rogue as druid/slsl.

[Sekah]

and now finally be so kind and tell me what to do against healpriest/rogue als slsl/druid. i'd be glad to read some very good advice i've never heard of before.

This might not be the thread to do it in, but I'll see what I can do.

What we find hardest about Warlock/Druid combos are that they're an excellent outlast set up. We normally go after the pet at first but most of the time we can't get it down since the druid's spam healing it. Sure, it's a mana sink, but it's safer for us if we get our rogue on the warlock asap to minimize damage. Have your warlock kite the rogue as best he can. Root/cyclone the rogue if he catches up to your lock and pins him down, use CoEx whenever some space is created. Drink absolutely every opportunity you can. Use LoS as best you can to avoid mana burns, and have your lock burn the priest whenever they're in sight.

While PoM can bounce around, I find the constant dispels are very taxing on my mana so the lock keeping a few low-costs dots on me is pretty effective to drain my mana pool. When you innervate yourself stack as many low-rank buffs on yourself as possible and play LoS again - preferably in bear form.

As you probably know it's simply an outlast fight, so if you can keep your warlock separated from the rogue you're doing well. Fear spam helps a lot to control the fight, and it's immensly frustrating to play against. Eventually the rogue will run out of trinkets and cooldown to use to avoid it.

If the pet gets shiv'd and the priest runs to get out of combat, follow them and mele them to keep them in the fight.

Be prepared for a long fight and don't get impatient. Always try your best to keep your partner fully hot'd and yourself well mana'd. The priest's mana is bound to run out eventually.

[Ridzik]

thanks sekah for the effort, sadly i am convinced we already do most of what you suggest. i will try to use my trashdebuffs more though it will face me with 2 other problems: the gcd's it triggers and it keeps me in combat as well.

we played against various rogue/healer combos today and won the matches versus rogue/pala but lost to rogue/druid (rooted us to death) rogue/priest (killed the priest at least yeah) and rogue/shaman (maybe void on shaman wasn't the best idea). interesting: none of the rogues got first hit today, we discovered all of them.

final thoughts on this from the druid/lock perspective:

problem 1: the rogue has too big advantages when it comes to breaking snares (medallion, sprint, vanish, cloak) which adds up to..

..problem 2: his snares are way to powerful: once in melee range the snare procs without gcd usage and is powerful enough to keep the victim in melee range when snared himself long enough to solarplexus/kidney shot; spammable slowing and silencing throw (thank god this will be fixed soon); blind as last resort. now add the snare options of his mate (the druid spamrooting my lock made all our tactics crumble into dust). now add..

..problem 3: chances are good that shamans/priests will dispel my cure poison before the snare is removed thanks to stacking wound poison (perhaps the cure poison range increase may help with that somehow). now add..

..problem 4: the rogue can significantly boost his damage with blade flurry and adrenaline rush during time he isn't cc'ed or cc'able for us which my warlock cannot (forget about nightfall, its dispellable and the lock cannot control when it procs). I have seen my locks health melting from 100% to below below 50% in like 3 seconds way to often today (1100 sinister strike crits against [20% absorb trough soullink + 10% though void active + 22% from resilience = 52% melee crit damage reduction in addition to the small amount of armor left after expose armor])


i am frustrated, there seems to be no way for us to beat most of the good rogue/healer combos and i don't believe better gear (i run with 4 pieces of grand marshal set) can make up for all the disadvantages.

[Ridzik]

Fear spam helps a lot to control the fight, and it's immensly frustrating to play against.

the rogue has a good chance to silence the lock with deadly throw while casting fear, locking his shadow line down for all the short time it takes him to close up again and thats immensly frustrating too.

[Ryno]

Really?

I'm no druid (nor lock!) but this seems like a weird bit of advice. I think there are too many counters to this strat for it to be reliable - a well timed blind, stun, or fear coupled with a dispel of fel dom, or a mana burn bringing the warlock too low to summon leaves you pretty vulnerable. My partner and I have become relatively adept at stopping the summoning of another pet given the opportunity. Rather, we feel it's more difficult for us if the pet is kept healed at least for the initial burst - if the pet doesn't go down within the first 15 seconds or so we switch to the warlock and do our best to ignore it.

Correct me if I'm wrong though. Druid/warlock is still the toughest match up for our priest/rogue team. Maybe our strategy needs modifying.

This completely owns us when warlocks are smart enough to do this, restarts the fight and us having to kill the pet all over is such a pain + he doesnt have to use his instant summon

[Unraveller]

thanks sekah for the effort, sadly i am convinced we already do most of what you suggest. i will try to use my trashdebuffs more though it will face me with 2 other problems: the gcd's it triggers and it keeps me in combat as well.

we played against various rogue/healer combos today and won the matches versus rogue/pala but lost to rogue/druid (rooted us to death) rogue/priest (killed the priest at least yeah) and rogue/shaman (maybe void on shaman wasn't the best idea). interesting: none of the rogues got first hit today, we discovered all of them.

final thoughts on this from the druid/lock perspective:

problem 1: the rogue has too big advantages when it comes to breaking snares (medallion, sprint, vanish, cloak) which adds up to..

..problem 2: his snares are way to powerful: once in melee range the snare procs without gcd usage and is powerful enough to keep the victim in melee range when snared himself long enough to solarplexus/kidney shot; spammable slowing and silencing throw (thank god this will be fixed soon); blind as last resort. now add the snare options of his mate (the druid spamrooting my lock made all our tactics crumble into dust). now add..

..problem 3: chances are good that shamans/priests will dispel my cure poison before the snare is removed thanks to stacking wound poison (perhaps the cure poison range increase may help with that somehow). now add..

..problem 4: the rogue can significantly boost his damage with blade flurry and adrenaline rush during time he isn't cc'ed or cc'able for us which my warlock cannot (forget about nightfall, its dispellable and the lock cannot control when it procs). I have seen my locks health melting from 100% to below below 50% in like 3 seconds way to often today (1100 sinister strike crits against [20% absorb trough soullink + 10% though void active + 22% from resilience = 52% melee crit damage reduction in addition to the small amount of armor left after expose armor])


i am frustrated, there seems to be no way for us to beat most of the good rogue/healer combos and i don't believe better gear (i run with 4 pieces of grand marshal set) can make up for all the disadvantages.

This is a difficult matchup. Without a doubt.

Here are the things my partner and I have done, to help even out the score: The key, the absolute KEY is timing your CC's together through vent. It should go

Cyclone->cyclone->fear->Root (while he's buried in a corner)->re-root->CoEx.

Let him run back close the warlock again, repeat Cyclone.

How to deal with the major counters to this strategy.
Trinket: Skip to the next step in the CC chain. Re-root, re-cyclone.
Vanish: Only works for Roots anyway, so move away from the spot of the vanish, and deathcoil->cyclone when he reappears.
Sprint: Only works during Roots, Deathcoiling a sprinting rogue is much fun. Begin cycloning again as soon as DR is over.
CoS: Cannot be used during Cyclone and Fear (?). This is the KEY part of the encounter... Switch to bearform, Feral Charge and Bash (when feral charge effect is wearing off). This should shutdown the duration of the CoS, and have your warlock Fear the rogue off you, or you can being Cyclone/rooting.

It's hard, no doubt. The 2 things to remember above all else are:

- The CC's MUST be chained, rogues are slippery fuckers, and you need to prevent him from closing on the warlock again.

- CoS is the most dangerous part of the fight, 75% of your CC and survival traits Do Not Function. This is the time to feral charge and take it like a man for 6 seconds. Keep him off your warlock!

[organhunter]

The hardest teams that me and my lock have come against is Warlock/Rogue, both engineers...so the rogue has rocket boots and they both have the belts.

Yeah, I have to survive like 3-4 different burns before we win, with the right mace stuns or unlucky long lasting fear, we can lose pretty easily. Our winning strat was saving deathcoil for rocket boots >.>, that rogue went FLYING.

As for priest rogue, keeping the pet alive is pretty necessary, especially since during that time the warlock has free reign on whoever he wants without anyone locking him down at all, a good CC rotation+HoT's is plenty to keep a felhunter alive as a druid, especially if your warlock CoEx's and fears to help out.

[Ridzik]

Thanks Unraveller for the good summary. There is only one thing to add: do not dps the rogue at any time.

Finally my lock and I managed to beat rogue/priest with no luck involved. Yesterday out of 4 matches against this combo we won 3 and had the priest oom in the last one (we were surprised from rogue/spriest in one match because I was so into cc'ing the rouge at all cost that I barely noticed all the dots on me :D). I will post some videos from these matches later today for inspiration and further discussion.

[Ridzik]

Ok here come the links I promised from some of the rogue/priest combos I encountered with my lock mate the day before yesterday. Keep in mind that we had huge problems with those, they basically stomped us back from 2100 to 1950 last week. We changed a lot during that week in order to improve.

http://stage6.divx.com/user/ridzik/video/1789254/2v2-071027-1-pr-ro-W
http://stage6.divx.com/user/ridzik/video/1789605/2v2-071027-3-pr-ro-W
http://stage6.divx.com/user/ridzik/video/1790137/2v2-071027-4-pr-ro-L

I'm sure there is a lot more to improve, but thats the way we try at the moment.

[Calissto]

This completely owns us when warlocks are smart enough to do this, restarts the fight and us having to kill the pet all over is such a pain + he doesnt have to use his instant summon

Smart warlock will start resummoning pet when he's found a good LoS position. Even the extra 0.5 second really helps to get the pet out safely. =)

[dkumofo]

this is a prime example of why i WISH they'd implement scrims the right way.

once you're high rating, theres so much effing pressure to 1. not screw up and 2. stick with it until doomsday, which destroys so much potential fun in trying out new combos and different strats or playing with different specs, and its frustrating.

back in cs days... you get all your status from rated matches, but the whole fun of the game was in scrimming all night every night... building strats, practicing, playing pugs with your friends, etc.

i wish they'd fix arena scrims. they could tether it to the new personal ratings, so that you are auto-paired with people who are similar skill level, and only pair you with other people who q together when you q together.

would be nice if they could chain some diff battlegroups together as well so there would be a bigger pool to choose from, and more likelihood that you could get good matchups.

would be so nice for warming up too, when you feel tired/out of it and you're not sure you want to queue for real, just to get a feel for the night.

anyway, sorry for highjacking. maybe i should just paste this onto the main boards and see if other people liked the idea so it might get some traction :P

Taffy for prez 2012!