Rycho
08-10-2007, 11:39 AM
Specs: lock/priest is different from other combinations in that a lot of specs will work for both classes, I've seen holy/UA, holy/SL, shadow/UA, shadow/felguard, and even disc/UA variants played to a high rating. Last season I finished in the 2500s playing soul link and UA variants with a holy priest, so most of the strategy stuff I'll talk about relates to that. I transferred last week so my rating is a bit shitty right now, but I've played around 1500 games with this combination :)
In my opinion the best SL variant to play is the 27/34 spec, (your games won't be long enough to need mana feed and if the other team targets your pet, you're going to win, so the 23/38 paladin/warlock team spec isn't a good choice). This offers a ton of survivability obviously, while maintaining things like soul siphon, shadow embrace, and grim reach which are essential talents in playing the mana game. I'm not going to write this in every strat, but the importance of drinking can't be stressed enough. When the vast majority of games are decided by mana, getting even 2k-3k back can mean the difference between a loss and an easy victory. Know the spots to go where you can get drinks off, curse the other warlock's pet early so its easy to banish, and communicate cc effectively because drinking a lot is the easiest way to win matches.
Basically your overall goal (again, playing with a holy priest) is to run the other team's healer out of mana. If you're trying to burst warriors down during a spell lock with a shadowburn and a nightfall proc, that may win some games, but at the highest level with the best gear and most skilled healers it gets more and more difficult to rely on and isn't consistant enough. The good news is though that locks and priests are arguably the best classes at attacking their opponents mana. If you manage to get the opposing team's healer feared into a spot where you both can cast on him for more than a few seconds, you'll win that match every time - the speed at which a lock/priest team can go through 10k mana is fairly ridiculous.
Strats
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Paladin/Warrior - This can be a difficult matchup if the warrior is mace spec with a stormherald (if they are sword/axe its usually a free win). If your warlock is soul link the warrior will sit on the priest, if your lock is UA he'll sit on the warlock (these are the correct strats anyway). Your goal is to chase the paladin around until you can land a fear/psychic scream/iHoT and get him in the open for a few seconds, and at that point you've won because taking 2-3 burns and drains isn't something he's going to recover from. The main problem with this is that since the warrior is on one of you, its going to be difficult to chase the paladin in some places, if this happens there are two things you can do:
-Kite the warrior away from the paladin while doing damage to him, in Nagrand this would be across the map to the opposite pillar, in Blade's Edge go to the opposite side of the bridge, and in RoL it would be the rooms at either side of the map. This forces the paladin to run out and clease/heal and you can either land a full fear or at least get a few burns/drains off.
-Turtle. You have the felhunter, so the advantage in a long game if your priest can get drinks off is going to go to you. This normally only happens with a mace spec warrior on a UA lock, but the basic idea is to leave the pet on the paladin and spam drain life/dots on the warrior to minimize the healing the priest has to do. the priest should basically heal the lock to full and shield/renew him, and then hide on the opposite side of the map from the paladin and drink to full. This can take a long time since the paladin basically has to go oom casting clease and FoL, but it is an effective strat against good teams - some paladins are just too good at using LoS and aren't going to get burned dry, especially when one of you has a mace spec warrior on you.
Druid/Warlock - You should win this matchup the vast majority of the time if you play it correctly, a 23/38 warlock just doesn't have the tools to run a priest out of mana fast enough. First of all, if you have any pve gear, switch to it if you know the warlock's partner is a druid. this team does almost no damage whatsoever, so you won't have to worry about dying ever - just going out of mana. Your goal is obviously to burn/drain the druid and dispell his innervate, but if he's good this can take a long time. Do not get caught up chasing a druid in travel form around the map. this is the easiest way to lose this match. Start off by fearing/dispelling the warlock (getting his fel armor is key) to get him to use his fear breaks, dot him up and the druid should come out cycloning your priest. Using spell locks on cyclones isn't generally the best idea in this match, a cyclone isn't ever going to lose you the game. Basically whenever the opposing warlock mana drains or fears, you want to spell lock that, it shuts down their entire offense and half their cc for 6 seconds. Whenever the druid gets in travel or caster form, just burn/drain him - he can only cyclone one of you, and the other can get 1-2k mana every time he pops out from around the pole. The key to winning lies in keeping the druid from drinking, a good warlock will try to fear your lock, banish your pet, and snare your priest so its difficult to keep the druid in combat(especially in blades edge). However, since both of you have ranged abilities and fear breaks you should be able to keep him from drinking. when the druid is out of mana - BURN/DRAIN THE WARLOCK. Chasing a druid around is futile, his lifebloom is basically going to outheal all your dot damage and you'll never get a cast off. You have to make him heal the warlock who is now life tapping himself to death, at this point you've won the match because the warlock isn't going to be able to cast anything.
Rogue/Druid (Resto) - This would probably get my vote for most difficult matchup, although it can go a long time and the games are very fun to play - as a warlock, trying to get fears off and trying to kite a skilled rogue is one of the most difficult and challenging things I see in 2v2 arena, though a tauren druid/undead rogue wearing shadow resist in Blade's Edge can be a nightmare. The most effective strategy for them is usually to just have the rogue sit on the warlock, stacking wound and kicking his shadow tree, and slowly running the priest out of mana. The reason this matchup is so difficult is because its almost impossible for a sole priest or warlock to chase down a druid and cast on him, and theres no way the other player can chase anyone with a rogue on him. Add in the fact that your warlock has a difficult time casting anything, and they have a 50% healing debuff and you don't, add in cyclone/blind and this can get very frustrating.
Obviously leave the pet on the druid to prevent as much drinking as possible, although in Blade's Edge this probably isn't going to happen (playing Blade's Edge against a good rogue/druid team is almost an auto-loss). If the rogue isn't undead that can be pretty huge for you because one fear break every 2 minutes isn't much. Your priest should fear the rogue immediately, he'll break it, then you want to wait for his kidney shot, trinket/death coil/fear/curse of exhaustion and run around kiting him. he'll sprint or clos (often both) when his 6 second fear is up, try to run away for as long as you can, and if you can stay out of range long enough you can answer his sprint with an amped CoEx and he'll be forced to either vanish or get a quick decurse (which usually means the druid takes a burn). Wait for DR on fear and have your priest fear the rogue again, if all of this goes off it means you're in good shape - the druid should be down 1-2k mana from healing through corruption and siphon life, and you can kite the rogue for a long time at this point. if the rogue gives up chasing you and sits on the priest instead, thats usually a game win because they don't have an answer to chain fear on them both.
If all of this goes well, you should be in good shape to start running the druid oom - if you can get a fear on him and he stays in caster, as usual, thats a game win, but don't expect that to happen. Minimize the damage the rogue does as much as possible and drink as much as you can, and it will be very difficult to kill you off. The problem is that even a resto druid who is OOM shouldn't really ever die to a sl lock or holy priest, so you have to kill the rogue at the end if its a good team. Doing this through clos/vanish and kicks on all your warlock's casted shadow spells isn't very easy, but it is doable if the druid is oom.
Let me know what you guys think, I'll post more matchups later :D
In my opinion the best SL variant to play is the 27/34 spec, (your games won't be long enough to need mana feed and if the other team targets your pet, you're going to win, so the 23/38 paladin/warlock team spec isn't a good choice). This offers a ton of survivability obviously, while maintaining things like soul siphon, shadow embrace, and grim reach which are essential talents in playing the mana game. I'm not going to write this in every strat, but the importance of drinking can't be stressed enough. When the vast majority of games are decided by mana, getting even 2k-3k back can mean the difference between a loss and an easy victory. Know the spots to go where you can get drinks off, curse the other warlock's pet early so its easy to banish, and communicate cc effectively because drinking a lot is the easiest way to win matches.
Basically your overall goal (again, playing with a holy priest) is to run the other team's healer out of mana. If you're trying to burst warriors down during a spell lock with a shadowburn and a nightfall proc, that may win some games, but at the highest level with the best gear and most skilled healers it gets more and more difficult to rely on and isn't consistant enough. The good news is though that locks and priests are arguably the best classes at attacking their opponents mana. If you manage to get the opposing team's healer feared into a spot where you both can cast on him for more than a few seconds, you'll win that match every time - the speed at which a lock/priest team can go through 10k mana is fairly ridiculous.
Strats
-----------
Paladin/Warrior - This can be a difficult matchup if the warrior is mace spec with a stormherald (if they are sword/axe its usually a free win). If your warlock is soul link the warrior will sit on the priest, if your lock is UA he'll sit on the warlock (these are the correct strats anyway). Your goal is to chase the paladin around until you can land a fear/psychic scream/iHoT and get him in the open for a few seconds, and at that point you've won because taking 2-3 burns and drains isn't something he's going to recover from. The main problem with this is that since the warrior is on one of you, its going to be difficult to chase the paladin in some places, if this happens there are two things you can do:
-Kite the warrior away from the paladin while doing damage to him, in Nagrand this would be across the map to the opposite pillar, in Blade's Edge go to the opposite side of the bridge, and in RoL it would be the rooms at either side of the map. This forces the paladin to run out and clease/heal and you can either land a full fear or at least get a few burns/drains off.
-Turtle. You have the felhunter, so the advantage in a long game if your priest can get drinks off is going to go to you. This normally only happens with a mace spec warrior on a UA lock, but the basic idea is to leave the pet on the paladin and spam drain life/dots on the warrior to minimize the healing the priest has to do. the priest should basically heal the lock to full and shield/renew him, and then hide on the opposite side of the map from the paladin and drink to full. This can take a long time since the paladin basically has to go oom casting clease and FoL, but it is an effective strat against good teams - some paladins are just too good at using LoS and aren't going to get burned dry, especially when one of you has a mace spec warrior on you.
Druid/Warlock - You should win this matchup the vast majority of the time if you play it correctly, a 23/38 warlock just doesn't have the tools to run a priest out of mana fast enough. First of all, if you have any pve gear, switch to it if you know the warlock's partner is a druid. this team does almost no damage whatsoever, so you won't have to worry about dying ever - just going out of mana. Your goal is obviously to burn/drain the druid and dispell his innervate, but if he's good this can take a long time. Do not get caught up chasing a druid in travel form around the map. this is the easiest way to lose this match. Start off by fearing/dispelling the warlock (getting his fel armor is key) to get him to use his fear breaks, dot him up and the druid should come out cycloning your priest. Using spell locks on cyclones isn't generally the best idea in this match, a cyclone isn't ever going to lose you the game. Basically whenever the opposing warlock mana drains or fears, you want to spell lock that, it shuts down their entire offense and half their cc for 6 seconds. Whenever the druid gets in travel or caster form, just burn/drain him - he can only cyclone one of you, and the other can get 1-2k mana every time he pops out from around the pole. The key to winning lies in keeping the druid from drinking, a good warlock will try to fear your lock, banish your pet, and snare your priest so its difficult to keep the druid in combat(especially in blades edge). However, since both of you have ranged abilities and fear breaks you should be able to keep him from drinking. when the druid is out of mana - BURN/DRAIN THE WARLOCK. Chasing a druid around is futile, his lifebloom is basically going to outheal all your dot damage and you'll never get a cast off. You have to make him heal the warlock who is now life tapping himself to death, at this point you've won the match because the warlock isn't going to be able to cast anything.
Rogue/Druid (Resto) - This would probably get my vote for most difficult matchup, although it can go a long time and the games are very fun to play - as a warlock, trying to get fears off and trying to kite a skilled rogue is one of the most difficult and challenging things I see in 2v2 arena, though a tauren druid/undead rogue wearing shadow resist in Blade's Edge can be a nightmare. The most effective strategy for them is usually to just have the rogue sit on the warlock, stacking wound and kicking his shadow tree, and slowly running the priest out of mana. The reason this matchup is so difficult is because its almost impossible for a sole priest or warlock to chase down a druid and cast on him, and theres no way the other player can chase anyone with a rogue on him. Add in the fact that your warlock has a difficult time casting anything, and they have a 50% healing debuff and you don't, add in cyclone/blind and this can get very frustrating.
Obviously leave the pet on the druid to prevent as much drinking as possible, although in Blade's Edge this probably isn't going to happen (playing Blade's Edge against a good rogue/druid team is almost an auto-loss). If the rogue isn't undead that can be pretty huge for you because one fear break every 2 minutes isn't much. Your priest should fear the rogue immediately, he'll break it, then you want to wait for his kidney shot, trinket/death coil/fear/curse of exhaustion and run around kiting him. he'll sprint or clos (often both) when his 6 second fear is up, try to run away for as long as you can, and if you can stay out of range long enough you can answer his sprint with an amped CoEx and he'll be forced to either vanish or get a quick decurse (which usually means the druid takes a burn). Wait for DR on fear and have your priest fear the rogue again, if all of this goes off it means you're in good shape - the druid should be down 1-2k mana from healing through corruption and siphon life, and you can kite the rogue for a long time at this point. if the rogue gives up chasing you and sits on the priest instead, thats usually a game win because they don't have an answer to chain fear on them both.
If all of this goes well, you should be in good shape to start running the druid oom - if you can get a fear on him and he stays in caster, as usual, thats a game win, but don't expect that to happen. Minimize the damage the rogue does as much as possible and drink as much as you can, and it will be very difficult to kill you off. The problem is that even a resto druid who is OOM shouldn't really ever die to a sl lock or holy priest, so you have to kill the rogue at the end if its a good team. Doing this through clos/vanish and kicks on all your warlock's casted shadow spells isn't very easy, but it is doable if the druid is oom.
Let me know what you guys think, I'll post more matchups later :D