21 replies to this topic

[Viia]

If you're feral and you're not really enjoying playing with a priest, go find your local S5 gladiator paladin and have him spec 21/50/0. It's absolutely incredible and counters a lot of the top teams that you're seeing rise up now.

Just to give you an idea, in my last 40 games with my paladin we've gone 31-10 (or around there, it's hard to tell... since I play with two priests on the same team as well) and we only lost to three teams, one exceptional Priest/Rogue (once), Ret/Sham and DK/Sham. We were playing above 2500 MMR (2600+ at the end) and warrior teams were almost pure faceroll DPS on the warrior. The comp feels much stronger than priest/feral overall.

Good matchups:
War/Healer
Warlock/Healer
DK/Healer

Average matchups:
Ret/Priest or Holy Pal
Rogue/Priest
Double DPS

Bad matchups:
Ret/Resto Shaman or Druid

[browniking]

Atm, I play with a buddy feral drood of mine. Though my spec is 35/0/36, I've been contemplating changing my spec to Prot/Holy. But my question is.. how do you guys do against DK's? or atleast the strat. We've had such a hard time trying to get a berserk/cc rotation on the healer to kill the dk, but the DK will always either sac pet, ice trap us, spam CoI or have the pali bop him.. and it's pretty much rinse and repeat.

[Beefpotpie]

In a fight like that it really all relies on the Feral for your comp. Honestly he should be able to almost 1v2 a DK down while keeping the pally locked out. If nothing else, it forces the bubble almost immediately, and you can do it again if your real good, and if not again in 3 minutes.

[Erch]

browniking said:

Atm, I play with a buddy feral drood of mine. Though my spec is 35/0/36, I've been contemplating changing my spec to Prot/Holy. But my question is.. how do you guys do against DK's? or atleast the strat. We've had such a hard time trying to get a berserk/cc rotation on the healer to kill the dk, but the DK will always either sac pet, ice trap us, spam CoI or have the pali bop him.. and it's pretty much rinse and repeat.

Yeah I'm running with a 35/0/36 too. We're both expecting the deep prot build to get nerfed really soon. It's just silly the spec can heal perfectly well with like 5 points in actual healing talents in holy simply because of gear. Guess that's pretty hypocritical with us running more points in ret than holy I guess =S

Anyhoo, Dk = Rip train. Keep pulling him los, throw all your Hojs and repents at the pally just to have him struggle to keep up. If your druid does it right the sheer sustained damage will overwhelm the pally sooner or later. If your druid isn't glyphed for rip or shred he might want to consider it: it's hilarious freebie damage vs war/heal, ret/heal and dk/heal and great for keeping rogues out of stealth.

I always hate telling people to roll face more when they're trying to outskill people but it's simply not worth your druid's lost dps time to try and CC the healer when he could just be landing more hits.

The only way things can get really messy is if the pally judges justice while the dk lands desecrates and CoI spams you but the only thing he'll accomplish there is a stalemate.

Also remember frost pres is armor and stam: bleeds still hurt like hell and their damage output is lowered considerably. In the same token tell your druid he should NEVER be in bear form vs dk/healer. The only conceivable time he should get in bear is if you eat a strang-->hoj and then he needs to get in, SI and frenzied regen real fast.

If you want to go offensive a great tactic I find is you drag the dk los, 5-pt rip him. Head back into los and mangle spam a 5-pt rip into the pally then get back on the dk. You as the pally start throwing judges and hojs at the pally.
The combined damage from the dk with hand of sac up and the pally with his own bleed will usually scare a bubble or if he's not safe your judge will put him into hammer range and you can GG them right there. If not the pally will definately scare off thinking the damage is going into him and forget about his dk long enough for you to drop him.

Honestly this is one comp I have about zero trouble with running my feral/hybrid pally setup.

[Viia]

Beefpot and Erch are exactly right. The feral can almost 1v2 any warrior or DK team given just support heals. One thing you need to know is that if you're not putting out enough pressure as feral (or your partner as the case may be) your healer CAN die to HOJ + DK or HOJ + whatever, so the druid has to realize at some point that if he's not putting out enough pressure he needs to maim/cyclone/root/whatever to peel. This is more important against warrior teams than DKs but it applies to both.

I'm playing with a relatively fresh feral druid on my shaman... and I think what I've found, is most inexperienced druids tend to play too defensively and get into bear far too often. It's hard to tell someone "listen, you need to be in cat 90% of this fight... it's up to you to make it happen" but that's basically what you have to do, you stay in cat and it's my responsibiility to keep you alive.

Also make sure your druid is making SR #1 priority. Savage Roar is the single most important skill you're using and I prioritize it over everything unless I'm going for a Maim peel or FB when the target is <30%... and occasionally I'll roar there anyway.

[Erch]

Viia said:

Also make sure your druid is making SR #1 priority. Savage Roar is the single most important skill you're using and I prioritize it over everything unless I'm going for a Maim peel or FB when the target is <30%... and occasionally I'll roar there anyway.

Yeah, I've been in the habit lately of renewing a 5 pt SR or Rip when the target is los and <30% only because I know the healer will throw big cooldowns and save him if FB doesn't crit, especially with SR down.

Thing is once that healer does throw those big CDs in, you're in the perfect posistion with a new SR or Rip to pressure again right away and I get alot of kills <10 seconds after that FB point when a non-critting FB wouldn't have gotten the kill and left you drained.

[Beefpotpie]

Erch said:

Yeah, I've been in the habit lately of renewing a 5 pt SR or Rip when the target is los and <30% only because I know the healer will throw big cooldowns and save him if FB doesn't crit, especially with SR down.

Thing is once that healer does throw those big CDs in, you're in the perfect posistion with a new SR or Rip to pressure again right away and I get alot of kills <10 seconds after that FB point when a non-critting FB wouldn't have gotten the kill and left you drained.

Couldn't agree with you more Erch, against almost any healer / dps team I would do the exact same thing with the exception of warlock, just because 10k Ferocious Bites can finish that puppy off pretty good.

[Friendlies]

i know as a dk / resto druid, we would tear right through holy paladin/druid

[Viia]

That's not really a fair post Nexim. Have you played a lot of them at high ratings? My guess is probably not, since there are maybe 3 feral/priests and 0 feral/paladins above 2200 on your BG.

Smells like a troll.

[Under]

having a very easy time vs deep prot paladins, emmm candy, bring more!

[Viia]

Yeah, the one thing about deep prot healing is that if your partner isn't peeling correctly or you don't know how to heal through certain types of burst you're pretty worthless.

It's not that it's hard to play, it just takes getting used to. 20s HoJ is a good defensive buffer.

[Friendlies]

Viia said:

That's not really a fair post Nexim. Have you played a lot of them at high ratings? My guess is probably not, since there are maybe 3 feral/priests and 0 feral/paladins above 2200 on your BG.

Smells like a troll.

Naw I haven't but I know the amount of pressure I can do to a feral druid, and I know how much pressure they can do to me. I also know that Prot Paladins have to channel all their heals :)

[lohpally]

1 channel fol=10.5k heals, i doubt ur even remotly good enough to completly lock out a decent pally playing prot especially since as feral/hp u can bait cycloned, hoj and switch to him in caster every 20seconds lol

[Friendlies]

my scourge strike crits for 8k and i can do it 3 times in a row

[lohpally]

k

[lohpally]

i guess the pallys you fight at 2.4k dont know dispeling diseases mitigates ur damage to pitiful :/

[Aliandren]

Rip crits you for about 3k every 2 seconds while rake is hitting for close to 2k every 3...that is while he is also direct damaging you.  Feral can put a great deal of pressure on DK as well.

[Erch]

Friendlies said:

my scourge strike crits for 8k and i can do it 3 times in a row

http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=6940

Your scourge strike crits for 5.5k, IF it does crit all three times and we don't dodge one as averages would dictate.

Most common way I see resto/DK flop over is they get too cocky, switch into blood pres and get destroyed by rip ticks OR they play too defensive, CoI/cyclone spam me to kite and don't notice the ticks bleeding them down when my pally rushes in for a judge/hammer.

Keep in mind Mr. DK that one feral =/= all ferals. We're in that right spot right now in terms of power that you'll see plenty of s5 bads helplessly trying to flop their way through ratings but when you play a good one you'll swear they're your hard counter.

[Friendlies]

all I am saying is that chances are you're going to not be able to heal because all of your heals you must stand still and cast, vs a team that has 2 silences, a stun, a partners dots ticking for 2000 a tick, cylones, bash, and a death grip out of los.

Thats all I'm, saying


I also said my comp never had any problems locking out a prot paladin from heals

[Erch]

Well Prot's a different beast altogether and imo shouldn't be competing as a healing spec with that few points in holy.

Most of the feral/pallys you're going to find should be running holy/JoW though.