Da big PvP thread

[Trismus]

Well, that's pretty much it.


Lets discuss tactics, strats, gear, specs, you name it. If we share ideas then perhaps we can all improve.


So I'll start this off: What pvp spec do you use, why, and what is your ideal setup? Here are my thoughts, please comment/criticize them to your hearts content, I'm nowhere near perfect.

My spec can be found on my Armory. Basically, I got for maximum utility, 5/5 iron will, 5/5 mace spec, 3/3 improved hamstring, 2/2 second wind, 5/5 enrage, piercing howl, imp shouts, imp demo, and tactical mastery (for stance dancing).

It's a fairly concise 33/25/3 mix. I also have sweeping strikes and 50% disarm reduction. Sweeping Strikes I find useful in some situations, but I'm thinking of swapping it out for something else, as it is only marginally useful in PvP (although PvE it's awesome).

I also always get Deathwish. Deathwish and Improved Intercept (2/2) are, imo, the most important talents besides MS and maybe Second Wind.


I go mace spec because I've found it to be the most effective. Also, all the top ranked warriors are doing it, man 

That said, I think [item]Vengeful Gladiator's Bonegrinder[/item] is out of reach. I'm not even sure if it's better then [item]Stormherald[/item] or [item]Torch of the Damned[/item] but 1850 rating is looking like a daunting task anyways, unless I can find a s2 geared resto druid who wants to whomp heads in 2v2. [item]Stormherald[/item] simply looks like the best option at the moment, and it's VERY hard to argue with a 4 second stun proc even with the reduced rates. Sword spec might have increased DPS but it lacks that spontaneous chance to interrupt which can be the difference between burning down a paladin and having him/her bubble. Axe spec I think is worthless for PvP simply due to the fact that 5% crit strike means something between nada and zilch when faced with 350+ resilience.

In terms of enchantments I'm looking to get executioner. Armor penetration is a big deal, if you can get a few pieces of gear with it like the Vengeful Gladiator stuff and [item]Dory's Embrace[/item] plus the executioner plus sunder you can easily get over 2k armor reduction, and potentially up to 4k if you stack all 5 sunders. That turns most classes into liquid squish and turns even prot paladins/warriors into conceivably killable targets. It also seems to circumvent the resilience issue somewhat. A 1.5k regular hit doesn't need to go critical in order to be noticed, and if it does all the merrier.


Finally, I can usually take down all classes except for Frost Mages and Hunters. Warlocks are almost always cake unless they out-gear me substantially, and I've had problems with some druids/paladins/priests because they heal, CC, bubble, and take so long to die that by the time I run them out of mana they either have a friend run up, their feeble DPSing in between heals manages to kill me, or I have to shave and go to work. This is all assuming a relatively similar level of gear.

Warriors and Rogues I can almost always beat 1v1, and if I get the jump I can usually beat warriors/rogues who have better gear then I do *hug* disarm stancedance macro. I also think it's because I sunder.... wtf don't more warriors sunder? It's awesome... 5 sunders on a clothie and you can burst them down even with a paladin or two healing. Beats wasting rage on MS after MS until someone comes up and ganks you.

Anyways, this post is long and I'm blabbing,

-Tris

[Vengeance]

Off-topic a little, but im surprised you didnt mention ferl druids in your matchups. SOMEONE needs to learn how to kill us as a warrior without a healer

[Muridin]

thats easy. bring friends...

[Eravion]

thanks for that Tris- i will sunder more :)I also like to blood cut them once before I go to Fury stance.

[Buzan]

Thats easy. Bring friends...

Lol I agree.

[Luise]

thanks for that Tris- i will sunder more :)I also like to blood cut them once before I go to Fury stance.

oops- I'm so used to automatically going on to my forum account- now Era has his own..I accidently went on as him- on other computer.
Obviously this was a warrior and not a pally speaking.

[Trismus]

hehe I wondered about that 

sundering is awesome, but has to be done correctly, i.e. sundering a mage or priest 5 times is pointless, because you will take away more armor then they actually have in the first place, so you just waste rage/time. Also tho, don't forget to reapply sunder every 25 seconds or so. Otherwise it wears off and you need to dump more rage to reapply it to the level it was at before.

On the other hand, putting in 3 sunders and reducing their mitigation to ~1% is lethal.

Plus, using the correct abilities at the correct times is important. For instance, berserker rage makes us immune to fear, but if we're fighting a spriest/warlock we shouldn't pop it immediately, a good one will see the graphic and wait 30 seconds before wasting a fear. It's better to save it until they fear us, then pop zerker rage to break the fear and intercept/run back to beat them down.

Also, the trick with frost mages is to get them to blink. Use pummel/whatever, but do NOT intercept. Charge is fine, just not intercept. The second they blink, intercept and hamstring. Then you have them, if they freeze you then use your medallion/insignia to break it and keep smacking them.

If your cooldown isn't up then see if you got lucky with an immobilize from your hamstring. If that didn't happen, hit intimidating shout and turn attack off QUICKLY. That way they will be stuck in place for a while and if it wears off before the freeze does it will only be by a few seconds, then chase them down, reapply hamstring and beat them down. If they blink away then intercept / hamstring again and kill them. It's tricky, and a good frost mage wont waste a blink unless they absolutely have to, but if they screw up thats how they'll do it and that's how you can capitalize on it.


In terms of hunters, just run out of LoS so they come in close, then hamstring / smackdown. Don't be afraid to run away and bandage in a place where they can't shoot you. In a melee fight you will destroy any hunter who isn't gear FAR better then you, and you can always disarm them. Also, Demo shout irritates the heck out of hunters by crippling their attack power, make use of this. In an open field hunters will just keep trap-kiting you, so don't let them. Make them come to you, and you win. If they send their pet in, kill it. It will not be nearly as powerful as you, and if it's dead then they lose all the dps it was providing, which gives you the edge. Just make sure you're out of their LoS for this otherwise you're just being tanked while they kill you.


Another thing to keep in mind is this: find a rogue. Warrior + rogue is a deadly 2v1 combo, and if you're both mace spec there is NO class who can do anything but stand around stunned while you beat them down, even if they are full s3 gear/weapons and you're not even s1. Being stunned has this weird effect on DPS: it eliminates it.


While I'm rambling I'm going to talk about beating holy priests: get a few sunders in + hamstring, reapply them if they start to fade, and save MS / everything else. The second you get enough sunders in, bust through their absorption, hit MS and Whirlwind, pummel their next cast, MS again and they will be dead or close to it unless they have amazing gear.

Druids are annoying, but sunders also work on them. Get 5 sunders in and bear form is suddenly not so wonderful as it used to be.

Paladins MUST be sundered. Without 5 sunders on them they are impossible to kill if they are paying attention. True, they probably wont kill you either, but they can keep other people alive who CAN kill you. Once they bubble, disarm a rogue or MS a mage or something, throw out a hamstring, whatever you can do, then after 6 seconds jump back on the paladin and stay there. After bubble is blown they are a sitting duck, but unless they are sundered they can tank you. Sunder will knock that 55% mitigation down to about 20-30%, which means you get about 50% more dps then you ordinarily would have. Throw on executioner and it only goes higher. If you can kill the paladin and have 3 teammates left alive in a 5v5 then chances are you can bring their team down. At the very least try to keep the healers healing themselves instead of their teammates. I quite honestly don't care if the paladin heals up all the damage I do to him, so long as he's healing himself instead of Random_Warlock_05 who's rampaging through our healers.

Basically, as a warrior our main purpose in PvP is to make healing classes useless to the other team. If both of us gang up on the healers in a 5v5, while managing to throw a few sunders or a MS up on an enemy we can greatly increase our chances of winning. A warrior/healer combo can beat a DPS trio if they play right, and if the healer is a resto druid we can roll through any 3-man team out there, besides one with a warrior and a druid of course :>

-Tris

[fiere redfern]

Soooo... thinking about taking you up on your offer, Tris - perhaps even as a healer (I'm not a very good PvP tank >.< that pitiful DPS and a touch-pad laptop do not a quick, reflexive baer-butt make) any ideas on what gear req's should be? My healy gear is pretty much an agglomation of free roll wins and /greed-ing from instances, so of course I lost out if the resident healer needed an upgrade. At last glance I had around 900 or so +heal, but that's off-spec and before I'd gotten my latest piece from TK.

I'm obviously out of practice as well, but given a few reg. dungeon runs and maybe a heroic or three I could probably be up to par.

Thoughts? Comments? Halp? =P

[Trismus]

First off, tankage in PvP works about as well as a cloth siv 

People tend to ignore you if you mitigate all their hits down to practically nothing.


In terms of healing, this is how it should work: Keep HoTs up on whoever is taking damage (obviously) as well as yourself. If a warrior or some other melee gets on you, root them. If a hunter or range DPS gets on you, CC them in some other way.

Be preemptive with HoTs. If you see me charging in to start of the fight, make sure I have a few up on me so that I can regen the damage I take before I start to drop down low. It might not be as efficient, but efficiency doesn't matter in a 3 minute match. Also, the important thing is to keep yourself up. Your rez wont work due to the arena cooldown restrictions, so if someone is dead, they are dead (Shaman aside, they are weird).

Also, if you see someone being attacked by a melee, make sure you root them. Especially warriors. We HATE being rooted, rogues too i'd imagine. We might break the first or even the second instantly, but that doesn't matter much. Also, if you can irritate someone enough that they decide you are more of a threat then their original target (rooting is good for this) and they start hitting you, then heal yourself and wait for someone to help you out. I assure you, if I see someone smacking you down I'll be there ASAP to disarm / hamstring / whatever them. If it's 3v3/5v5 and we have a mage they will probably be shooting a polymorph at the guy pretty quickly, or a rogue will stunlock.

The truth is i'm not certain about all the ins and outs of druid pvp, so arc would probably be better to talk to, but I will look for some guides.


I was also thinking you could join my 2v2 for some practice. It will also give you backup points, and given that warrior/druid is HORRIBLY imbalanced we should be able to maintain 1500+ rating, which = lots of points.

-Tris

[un4]

Rogues can trink or CloS out of cyclone/roots and ShS while still entangled.

[Nixphire]

Also, the trick with frost mages is to get them to blink. Use pummel/whatever, but do NOT intercept. Charge is fine, just not intercept. The second they blink, intercept and hamstring. Then you have them, if they freeze you then use your medallion/insignia to break it and keep smacking them.

If your cooldown isn't up then see if you got lucky with an immobilize from your hamstring. If that didn't happen, hit intimidating shout and turn attack off QUICKLY. That way they will be stuck in place for a while and if it wears off before the freeze does it will only be by a few seconds, then chase them down, reapply hamstring and beat them down. If they blink away then intercept / hamstring again and kill them. It's tricky, and a good frost mage wont waste a blink unless they absolutely have to, but if they screw up thats how they'll do it and that's how you can capitalize on it.

I think you understood this before I did. I remember you doing that to me a few times. And that was because I didn't understand the difference (even tho I had played a warrior) to wait till the SECOND charge to blink. Any more, I will just frostnova, trinket and walk away. Usually they'll sit there till it breaks and charge me which I'll blink. Or if they trinket out, I have FBr1 on my keyboard and/or Cone of Cold to slow them down again, for that matter, I always have frost shield up 

[Trismus]

yes Nix, and that is why you suck to duel 


And yeah, rogues have far too many abilities to break CC, that's why it's probably a good strat to hit up bear form to mitigate them and let the heals do their thing. I will try to intercept/intervene over and disarm them, but that only lasts so long. The problem with rogues is that they are hard to CC and do lots of damage / stunlock, but can tank just barely well enough that it's suicide to kill them first. However, once the enemy healers are occupied they can usually be killed quickly.

In 2v2 or 3v3 I'll try to get Tclap and Demo shout up on them as fast as possible, as well as rend and hamstring (#$%^ Vanish). In 2v2/3v3 my that can be worthwhile, because losing a teammate is a bigger deal and there are fewer other options. While that doesn't eliminate the rogue, it certainly turns their dps into something tankable.

-Tris

[Telfurion]

Are there any rogues in this guild that are good at PVP?  Tris gave some awesome advice if i ever decide to roll an MS Warrior, but I find that there are a ton of UD rogues that seem to be be able to stunlock me to death while I can only stunlock to about 50%

[un4]

My gear isn't the best, but I'll be glad to take a few falls with you, Telf.

[Trismus]

Telf, Mace spec helps ALOT with that, I'll see if I can find a guide. In fact, I'll try to get guides for every class to post, it might take a few days tho.

-Tris