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Author
  | Icycake Altar of Storms US-Nightfall |
 | Mage/Rogue | VS. |   | Druid/Warrior |
There are few tactics to use against this set up but I will go over the most common one we use.
Start by stacking Winter's Chills with Ice Lances on the Warrior. If he is avoiding you and hugging pillars try to get a Rank 1 Frostbolt in and Cone of Cold. Your mission is to make the Druid using a minimum amount of cool downs. If you get rushed, Nova and then Cone of Cold. At this point you should be walking faster than the Warrior so you are free to Ice Lance/Fire Blast.
Once the Druid pops out, if your Mage get Cycloned its better because it gives time for your Rogue to get closer to the Druid. Sheep the Warrior, most all of the time he'll use his trinket right away, so re-sheep as soon as the first Poly hits. This buys you around 6 seconds, by this time your Rogue should be on the Druid. Summon your Water Elemental, pop Icy veins and start to DPS the Druid. Throw in a Counter Spell as soon as you can. Most of the time he will use Nature's Swiftness after your initial burst. When your sheep runs out the Rogue should Blind the Warrior and continue to keep the pressure on the Druid until he is dead. After the Blind runs out, Sheep the Warrior again if the Druid isn't already dead.
Most of the time I use both my Water Elemental and both Icy Veins cool downs.
Start by stacking Winter's Chills with Ice Lances on the Warrior. If he is avoiding you and hugging pillars try to get a Rank 1 Frostbolt in and Cone of Cold. Your mission is to make the Druid using a minimum amount of cool downs. If you get rushed, Nova and then Cone of Cold. At this point you should be walking faster than the Warrior so you are free to Ice Lance/Fire Blast.
Once the Druid pops out, if your Mage get Cycloned its better because it gives time for your Rogue to get closer to the Druid. Sheep the Warrior, most all of the time he'll use his trinket right away, so re-sheep as soon as the first Poly hits. This buys you around 6 seconds, by this time your Rogue should be on the Druid. Summon your Water Elemental, pop Icy veins and start to DPS the Druid. Throw in a Counter Spell as soon as you can. Most of the time he will use Nature's Swiftness after your initial burst. When your sheep runs out the Rogue should Blind the Warrior and continue to keep the pressure on the Druid until he is dead. After the Blind runs out, Sheep the Warrior again if the Druid isn't already dead.
Most of the time I use both my Water Elemental and both Icy Veins cool downs.
Comments: | |
|---|---|
 Revoca | Jan 31, 2008 - 8:39 PM (HideShow) |
| No good warrior will ever trinket out of the first poly. And throw in a CS as soon as you can? Wouldn'tit be better to CS after a long KS or something? A good druid will be in bear and behind a piller, good luck getting any kind of burst on him. | |
| Icycake | Feb 21, 2008 - 2:00 AM (HideShow) |
| They do trust me, i see it all the time. As for druids in general they can outheal both of us if they can run fast enough. | |
 Hakham | Feb 21, 2008 - 3:15 PM (HideShow) |
| This, like most warrior teams, is usually a pretty easy fight for my team. With the long CD on charge/intercept, once they've burned them, the warriors are pretty much stuck for a good while and have trouble chasing you down, especially with snare on. That, combined with mass cc, and you have all the time in the world to kill the druid. An important thing to remember that wasn't mentioned in the strat is that you can spellsteal druid HoT's. A running druid is toast if you keep his HoT's off, not to mention you get the heal benefit yourself. Just throw everything at him that you can to slow him down, and have the rogue save his sprint for the chase. If worst comes to worst and you can't catch the druid, you can always throw a few nukes on the warrior to bring the druid back into range and then start cc on the warrior again. | |
| Mackaveli | Mar 14, 2008 - 11:04 AM (HideShow) |
| warriors trinket the early sheep most of the time | |
 Puwet | Mar 18, 2008 - 7:17 PM (HideShow) |
| then that's when you have to have blind throughout. rogue has ghostlystrike/evasion right after and as long as the mage as the elemental out he can ice block meelee attacks and bleeds. The warrior has to be CC'd OR kited. And the rogue should never be OFF the druid giving pressure for the mage to have time to cast and slow down the druid. Even if the druid shapeshifts.. with the mage's chills and rogues shiv(crippling) that should work out a combo together to OOM the druid. The mage will have to make a crucial COUNTERSPELL at the right time.... rogue: you are the pressure to make the druid have no time to cast or even heal.. if you are being focused on first evade out the bleeds and have the mage sheep/nova to slow down the dps. You have deadly throw, kick, and gouge in your arsenal to keep them silenced and stunned. Use it when he is trying to heal. It's hard to build up 5 pt. combos on druids cause they run like lil girls, but that's why you have deadly throw to slow them down. kick is a 10 second cooldown... not need to burn ALL your energy on the druid.. save 45 for the all important gouge, your stuns and white damage is what is needed to finish him off. don't worry about the warrior, that should be your mages responsibility not yours. mage: are the controller. you want to make it a fact to avoid the first 15 seconds of attacks by either nova'ing, ice block, or the elemental freeze as well. a druid can not attack you if he has to worry about himself or the warrior. So make it a point to avoid the focus attacks while you slow the druid down. You have counterspell ( no point on warrior but hurtful on the druid, so get that in early so you can cast again ), winter's chill ( warrior + ice lance/CoC), and please send that pet on the druid. save your blink for the warrior's rush and then it's all kiting time for you. If you DO find a split second for time ( if you just noticed they weren't focusing on you), this is the time where you should shine. Freeze with pet, counterspell (druid), frostbolt, ice lance | |
 Youdienow | Mar 21, 2008 - 1:26 PM (HideShow) |
| For perception rogues you can do like this (Was just browsing here for fun when realizing a good tactic, I got this from the nerf sap 10 movie). Mage opens on warrior with total damage and control, lots of shatter combos. Meanwhile your rogue has found druid and will try to SAP the druid the millisecond he exits catform (this can be achieved because theres a small time frame betwen healing and getting into combat ), druid will trinket, now rogue just control him in any method you see fit (cheapshot -> kidney shot -> blind -> (restealth)Sap -> Sap -> cheapshot comes to mind). Depends on what hp warrior was when you started of course, but he should die relatively quick. This tactic can be shot to hell by a quick intercept -> disarm on your rogue, but then you just sheep warrior (depends on what his hp is of course though) and pew pew druid. | |
| Youdienow | Mar 21, 2008 - 1:31 PM (HideShow) |
| Above is also pretty crap tactic if you cant find druid despite Perception. But if you are close a (shadowstep) cheapshot -> kidney shot(trinket) -> blind -> sap -> sap -> repeat might do the trick. Important as usual is communication, mage should tell if he druid has gotten off too many heals and you want to focus him instead of warrior - so you dont waste blind on a druid that the mage is helping to dps for example. Also spellstealing some heals from druid will help you if warrior has gotten lucky hits and you're below favourable health. (Especially nice with lower mana cost on spellsteal after 2.4) Imp. counterspells is veryyyyy good in versus this setup. But I've had no problem up to 2000 with 0/5/56, maybe it is because my rogue is human though. ;) | |
| Razorzshadow | Apr 10, 2008 - 3:24 AM (HideShow) |
| What works for us is just start dps on the warrior not burning many CD's, and force the druid to pop and use his NS. By the this time the war should also have used his trinket to get out of frostnova or a stun the rogue has done (second wind doesn't matter the point is to make him use his trinket). From there its easy CC on on the war while you chase down the druid. | |
| Zerokelvin | Apr 16, 2008 - 1:29 AM (HideShow) |
| Most of the tactics here fail in Season3. I'm talking Perception teams, those have a tremendous advantage over vs any stealth team, so like 70% If you both open on the warrior, trying to dps him to force NS, the warrior will go def stance with a shield, while the Druid casts Regrowth + Rejuv + Swiftmend, which brings the warrior to 100% hp. The strategy was to sprint Blind the druid and kill the warrior so that it forces both trinket and NS. This is no longer the case once the warrior is at 100% after what's written above. And your rogue will have hamstring+bleed on him, goodbye vanish. If you decide to go for the druid straight away, you will not kill him unless the mage is full out and lucky on crits/procs. But then you leave the warrior unattended (it will be forced by the druid running like a chicken), which then gets to your rogue. If this fight lasts 1 minute+, you lose, cause you have used too many cooldowns. | |
| Zerokelvin | Apr 16, 2008 - 1:30 AM (HideShow) |
| The above is obviously for NON perception teams, AJ doesn't even have post editing. | |
 Fancypancy | Apr 22, 2008 - 4:24 AM (HideShow) |
| i personally don't agree with that strat, rogues take note a druid should never get a cyclone off you or the mage because our job is to glue ourselves on that druid, mages soloing the warrior at beginning of fight to draw out the druid if help is needed cheap shot the warrior and cripple him and then by then the druid should be up or you automatically win because warrior is dead. if the druid does come out get on him force him to LOS the warrior while the mage controls the warrior, note (once the druid trinkets) this is when both mage and rogue burn cool downs to burst down druid cspel the druid right as kidney comes off and that just leaves warrior who is polied and blinded the whole fight | |
 Digitalspeed | Apr 26, 2008 - 5:28 PM (HideShow) |
| The key in this fight is for the mage/rogue team to have very good CC rotation on the warrior and to just zerg the druid as quickly as possible but you need to be smart about how you choose to DPS him down. As for Zerokelvin, I wholeheartedly disagree. If you are both on the druid without any interruptions from the warrior you SHOULD BE ABLE to kill him with decent communication. The druid is going to be hotting and trying to run away/pillar kite you NEED to be using frost nova when the druid is in bear form only! He can easily shift out of it for sure, but this is where your rogue absolutely needs to have 5 CP for a 5 CP KS to stun him when he is in caster/travel where he is now susceptible to shatter combos as well as a beating from the rogue. Getting that 5 CP KS off will usually finish the druid off so long as the warrior isn't on you. | |
| Chilz | May 4, 2008 - 1:25 PM (HideShow) |
| Hmm Ok well I dont think that strat will work in the 2200 bracket. By 2200 most Druids are pro runners. What my mage and I do: The mage starts off on the warrior like always. When the druid pops out most of the time hes going to be beside a pilar and hot himself up knowing hes bout to get bombed. The rogue will cheapshot then the mage will get a shatter combo off right when I kidney. 98% of the time the druid will trinket the kidney and run like crazy. Unless you have extreamly HIGH dps you are not going to kill that druid running around the pilar. So the rogue stays on the druid and just spams shiv. After the druid trinkets the mage jumps on the warrior while is pet is still out. The druid will be running around hotting himself up. As soon as the warrior hits 60% and that should'nt be long due to a shatter combo and a cone of cold. Blind druid and shadow step right to the warrior and unload. If you have a dps trinket USE it NOW. If the warrior is smart he will go sword and board. So when 3 sec of ur blind is left sprint, vanish, sap the druid then hit prep and shadow step back to the warrior. He should be dead by the time the sap ends. If not thens you can still breath because your mage should still have his imp counter spell. We beat the best Druid/Warrior with this strat. Good Luck. Will not work all the time due to unlucky situations. But if the druid is hugging a pilar, you have no other choice. | |
| Doomflama | May 17, 2008 - 1:51 PM (HideShow) |
| Hmmm, im always trinketing the first poly, otherwise my druid gets way to far behind, need that initial intercept on the mage. and this is against 2200+ mage rogues, have even managed to go 1-1 with like the highest rated mage/rogue in the u.s. doing this, i find if i dont trinket this theres a chance they can wtf burst my druid down easily. | |
 Pihwi | May 20, 2008 - 8:15 AM (HideShow) |
| I play a 2400 rated Rogue/Pompyro mage, and I'd like to share a working strategy against this setup, which is one of my favorites. If you can't find the druid, it's easy to open on the warrior with a cheapshot/evasion/ghostlystrike (to avoid deep wounds and damage overall) and have your mage open up on the warrior as well. The druid eventually pops out spamming heals on the warrior or cycloning one of us. At this moment the rogue should immediately vanish, sprint and premed/cheapshot the druid BEFORE he pops HOTs on himself. Follow up with a kidneyshot and you have the druid in about 30-50% HP, and he will instantly use the trinket. Then you will throw a blind on the druid and restealth, and your mage should have poly'd / frostnova'd the warrior completely. Start with a sap on the druid to allow your kidneyshot cooldown and diminishing return to finish, usually you have to sap twice for it to happen. Then open up with premed/cheapshot/kidneyshot and your mage throws a pyro / imp counterspell and the fight is pretty much over. Worked like a charm against 2500+ druid/warrior teams. | |
| Falah | Jun 5, 2008 - 6:18 PM (HideShow) |
| I don't trinket the first sheep because they asume I will, they then resheep and then I trinke the blind and I'm emmune to sheep. Rogue can no longer get to the druid with me on him and his cd's are wasted... druid has no problem pillar humping a mage... | |
| Tezh | Jun 6, 2008 - 4:20 PM (HideShow) |
| Me and my mate tryed out a new tactic. And what i did experience, it worked very well.. but it only works once against same openments. The mage starts out by nuking the warrior with elemental/icy veins and trinket, and so on. The warrior will go down very fast. The druid pops out, and starts hotting him. Then the rogue are supposed to lock him totally down with cheat shot,gouge,kidney - vanish and over again. While the stun-lock, the warrior will go down, unless the druids trinkets out of cheap or kidney shot. Then blind the druid, and vanish and sap him.. then finish the warrior. | |
| Zukias | Jun 16, 2008 - 10:52 AM (HideShow) |
| firstly id like to say, Icycake i hate how vague all of your tactics are by the way... You must use counterspell consecutively with KS, as soon as KS is finished, so that's 10 seconds unable to cast, a good way to keep control over your warrior is 2 sheeps (don't bother the 3 second sheep), then frost nova for 8 seconds, if he tinkets any of these, get your rogue to blind him and wait for dr's (NECB is needed to watch diminishing returns on sheep), then keep warrior sheeped again, and rank 1 frost bolt at 36 yards while you wait for the dr's to end again... all of this time your rogue should be wearing down the druid, basically you have to 'play' around with the warrior until your rogue calls out for the nuke tactic 2 another way for the quick but risky option is to start nuking the warrior at the beginning and split dpsing them, while you are on the warrior your rogue will be opening on the druid with either a sap, or cheap shot straight away, then kidney shot and blind, hopefully you can highly pressure them here and the warrior may if you're lucky | |
| Zukias | Jun 16, 2008 - 10:53 AM (HideShow) |
| may die* ^^ | |
 Genz | Jun 21, 2008 - 2:00 AM (HideShow) |
| good druid warrior is extremely hard | |
 Hellstabber | Jul 6, 2008 - 7:59 AM (HideShow) |
| I used this strat and beat glad warrior/druid 4times in a row. If you see the warrior have the mage sheep the warrior, unless your rogue can sap or cheap shot him. Have your rogue KS the warrior to prevent him throwing his shield on. Druid pops have the rogue blind him. Druid has no other choice but to trinket from the burst you put on the warrior. If the warrior is about to die. Have your mage CS the druid, if hes got hots and heals. Switch and burst the druid, should be an easy win for rogue/mage | |
| Spardaa | Jul 8, 2008 - 2:43 PM (HideShow) |
| well by no means am i calling myself an expert but ur strat is right but i thought ide go into more detisl-this is what i have learnt going against this combo, it is very very popular about 30-40 percent of alot of my game sometimes. so i have had good practice on this combo only when the druid is AMAZING then we dont win- this is in a bit more detail for the nubs= mage starts on the warrior by doing a 1v1 you have to kite him and force druid out, and he will come out, the rogue instantly jumps on him ( if u get cycloned this is even better, as it gives rogue a chance to get to the druid). once this happens stop you're WE attacking warrior and sheep- he will trinket( mostly likely) so be ready for another sheep, this is you time to start NUKING THE DRUID summon water elemental and go for the shatter once the druid gets low he will use NS. this is where it counts pull out another Water elemental ( by this time warrior has gotten out of poly, this is when you go for the blind/ nova/freeze CC on the warrior and LOS him u can- if u do this then the poly Diminising returns will be down so you can go into more poly's easier) now you shout for a vanish/cheapshot/stunlock and nuke from you're rogue then you have to get him into a 6 sec kidney shot ( druid should be at at 2-30 percent assuming you've gotten the shatter on with youre new pet) immediately when it is done go for the silence and finish. then finish off warrior now basically a mage/rogue tears apart druids especially if you're rogue is good enough with stun timing. there will be variable ofc like cyclone/roots/intercept/mace stun----but if you apply enough pressure they should be ables to interrupt you too much. good druids will make your life hell by pillar humping but getting them in stuns is most important. this fight can be hard but with enough practice you should be confident in defeating them. hopefully this will help atleast once person out there who benefits from this, if they do then it was worth typing all this up lol hopefully it helpedm, GL and | |
| Spardaa | Jul 8, 2008 - 9:13 PM (HideShow) |
| remember practice makes perfect, the more you loose ( dont get angry and bash you're keyboard like me rofl), think of it as another chance to imprve see what u did wrong, what CC, wat misake, your positioning, timing etc --btw if the warrior is rly skilled and spell reflects poly ( i havent seena lot of them do this) then icelance it off | |
| Theef | Jul 27, 2008 - 10:21 AM (HideShow) |
| for anyone who says warrior/any healer is hard obviously is a completely fail team, the strat we used when i ran rogue/mage for every warr healer team which we have never lost with, against warrior druid, i wait stealthed a decent distance from the warrior to avoid shouts, my mage just dpses the warrior down, and as soon as the druid pops i shadowstep cheap shot him, and just cc him horribly, gouge when that ends, kidney shot after.. thats already 14 seconds of cc, the druid will almost always trinket somewhere in there, and you are free to hit him with a blind... vanish just to be safe and avoid the warrior bleeding you, and sap him as soon as blind ends.. sap 2 more times and you can cheap shot etc again.. if the warrior isnt dead already find a new mage, against non druid healer teams this is even easier as you can start with 3 saps instead of a cheapshot.. and the only time this strat might not work is against a pally which you can just delay as you wait for the bubble and simply sheep him like a normal strat for rogue mage, i can prove almost any team can do this because my mage, i dinged 70 and the same day played some decent geared warr/healer teams and dominated them, as a mage it really is too easy to solo a warrior. | |
| Thehate | Jul 30, 2008 - 9:34 PM (HideShow) |
| that actually doesnt work Theef.. not if the warrior saves an intercept for you and then puts a bleeding on you! | |
| Theef | Aug 2, 2008 - 11:03 AM (HideShow) |
| it actually does work and it has every time for us, and for the majority of the cc you dont need to be stealthed, if your going to vanish for an extra cheap shot its not like you need more then a second, and when you blind him, which should be after a trinket use, you have 10 seconds before you need to sap, which is enough time for a bleed to disapear, and if your left in the open waiting just burn a vanish since you wont need it for anything else, imo if you cant do it with this plan learn to play a rogue, its probobly the easiest thing in the world to do as long as your mage knows how to kill a warrior decently. | |
| Rhia | Aug 3, 2008 - 2:59 PM (HideShow) |
| I play rogue/mage and I (the rogue) has problems to be on the druid,shaman if they have a warrior as mate. If the warrior can charge at 1 time the druid is far away and I need many cds to be on the druid,shaman. Can you give me a tip pls? | |
| Dry | Aug 8, 2008 - 9:12 PM (HideShow) |
| I sap the warrior off the bat to force a serk rage. If he doesnt pop serk rage my mage frostbolts him to force druid out. If druid doesnt pop when war is hovering around 50% from the bolts i cheap shot the war until druid pops, SHS to druid lock him down. At this point if the war is low enough we just finish him off, in between kidney shots and blinds. If I find the druid off the bat then we just CC the war and drop the druid pretty much under 10 seconds. Extremely easy combo to beat especially if your rogue can garrote the druids NS. | |
 Gurloff | Aug 16, 2008 - 5:14 PM (HideShow) |
| im sure that the strategy you´re talking about works quite good if the druid doesnt pop out as soon as the mage casts on the war. nearly everytime me and my rogue play against this kombo the druid pops out until anyone has seen each other. so he starts to hot him an his war all the time and theres no chance to kill the druid with all those hots on him. only if the druid makes any very big mistake we are able to kill him. do you know any other strategy ? :O | |
| Icecrusher | Sep 2, 2008 - 6:08 PM (HideShow) |
| My Rogue has a somewhat weird hybrid specc with combat/subt, and we're both decently geared. The rogue used to play with a healer and decided to try with a mage now (me) on warrior druid we somewhat totally lose. I would say, that I keep the warrior away from my rogue perfectly. First I kite him all over the arena until the druid has to heal. My rogue Is just watching till that, and I have no problems soloing the warrior, then I poly and /focus the warr and we both start the druid. But eventhough that warrior rarely touches my rogue, since I repoly him all the time We just cannot kill the Dudu before DR are preventing cc and the warr rapes my rogue. Is it just cuz we suck, we have bad approach, not perfect gear, or should the rogue just specc shs? | |
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