Today’s focus is the start on a series of articles breaking down 2 versus 2 Arena match ups between Rogue partnered with Holy Priest against combos they are likely to face in high level play.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
- Sun Tzu

Knowledge of yourself is important, as are knowledge of your opponents. It’s been a known fact for many decades and it still applies on anything competitive today. World of Warcraft Arena is no exception. In order to defeat a combo, you must first understand what they’re capable of doing and what tools you have to defeat them. As the articles will be very detailed, we will start off by talking about the strengths and weaknesses of the Rogue class.

Rogue, the most versatile PvP class?

Arguably the most powerful tool for Rogue class is how many Talent specs there are to choose from. Classes like Druid, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Warrior all had their PvP specs laid out for them. There are not much to choose from and most of them don’t even have more than 1 or 2 talent points worth of variation in the 1 or 2 specs they’re forced to play with.

The following Rogue specs are all viable for 2v2 and 3v3 Arena:

Mutilate with Combat (3-5 talent points variation)
41+ Combat (5+ talent points variation on top of weapon specializations)
Combat with Quick Recovery (5+ talent points variation on top of weapon specializations)
Combat with Preparation (up to 10 points variation)
Hemo with Assassination (5+ talent points variation)

Rogue starts off with 5 major spec choices and the combinations offered by all the talent variations will push the spec choices for a Rogue easily over 20. Now, with so many choices to pick from, which will be the best overall performance for 2v2 Arena partnered with a Holy Priest? To answer this question, first let’s examine our strong matches and our weak matches.

Rogue is generally strong against all the offensive caster classes, this includes Elemental Shaman, Mage, Shadow Priest, and Warlock. In the healers category, Priest fell to the prey of Rogue due to their lack of Poison removal spell and cloth armor. The reason behind this is the large amount of spell interruptions a Rogue has at his disposal with a good amount of root-breakers and of course Cloak of Shadows. These are the match up combinations you can beat regardless which spec you are.

Then we got the hard match ups, these are usually high armor targets that can also remove poison. Such as Druid, Paladin, Restoration Shaman, and Warrior. Due to how much Rogues rely on their Poisons, it is extremely difficult beating classes that can easily remove them, Druids are the best at doing so with Abolish Poison followed by Shamans and Paladins. Rogues are also hurt by high armored classes since nearly all their moves are physical damage which are reduced anywhere between 30-40% by high armored targets.

From the above facts, we can conclude that Rogue with Holy Priest will dominate most 2 offensive caster teams, 1 offensive caster 1 healer teams, losing to Warrior and poison removal healer teams. Good thing 2 Healer teams makes no sense in 2v2 or else Rogue might also have a hard time against them. If climbing to top of the ladder with Rogue and Holy Priest is part of your team’s plan, then you must overcome your weaknesses at all cost.

There are 4 teams that are the hardest match ups for Rogue and Holy Priest:
Warrior Druid, Warrior Shaman, Warrior Paladin, and Warlock Druid.

Note that due to the extremely powerful Abolish Poison, Druid paired with Warlock actually makes them a high threat. Now in order to overcome these teams, we first limit the specs we have available in order to narrow down our choices. Due to positional and poison requirement, Mutilate is cut, next we cut Combat with Quick Recovery because being the only damage dealer in 2v2, it’s quite important to make sure you’ll do enough damage, not just some where in the middle. We have narrowed down to 41+ Combat, Combat with Preparation and Hemo with Assassination.

Which of the 3 specs will prevail? What strategies are there for each choice? Stay tuned for next part of 2v2 Arena, Rogue & Holy Priest explained.

Tags: Rogue · 2v2 · Articles

10 Responses to “2v2 Arena: Rogue & Holy Priest Explained, Part 1”

1. gg Says:
   July 25th, 2007 at 1:29 pm

   Very nice read

2. Leveh Says:
   July 25th, 2007 at 2:36 pm

   QR Combat got cut because of its lack of damage but hemo didn’t? Combat prep is also a low damage build, double adrenaline rush sounds good in theory but really doesn’t work that well unless you’re double dps.

   Combat mutilate, QR Combat, and deep combat should be the 3 specs to choose from. The poison requirement isn’t that big of a deal to any half decent rogue since shiv has been introduced, even with poison removal classes. The position requirement doesn’t really bother me unless I’m up against another rogue. Even when you play a combat build you find yourself getting behind your target out of habit anyways.

   Mutilate should really be considered because once we get kited and finally catch up (since we wont have BoF) it’s nice to be able to unload your entire energy bar on the target. Paladins are going to be one of the biggest threats for rogue teams in the arena, when you catch up to someone it’s going to suck only being able to unload 2 hemo’s on him before he gets BoF’ed and gets away again.

   The reason combat is so good is because, oddly enough, other rogues are actually one of your biggest threats as well. Combat maces tends to shut down other rogues pretty quickly.

   Ziss:
   This is why there’s more parts coming out for just the Rogue side of this long break-down. Your concerns are correct because I should not have cut out popular specs with just 1 sentence, I’ll explain why those specs are cut while Hemo wasn’t in better details on next article. Thanks for the feedback.

3. shyst Says:
   July 25th, 2007 at 3:13 pm

   just found this site, keep up the good work…it’s nice to read pvp info that’s actually informative rather then just endless trash

4. shyst Says:
   July 25th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

   btw, anyway i can contact you guys about contributing articles/posts to the site? Thanks

   Ziss:
   You can reach me at admin@pvpsource.com

5. Ecole Says:
   July 26th, 2007 at 4:22 am

   Sweet, keep up the good work.

6. Sweethart Says:
   July 26th, 2007 at 8:58 am

   Very good video. My friend (holy priest) and I (rogue) have just started a 2v2 team and everytime we run into pally/warrior it makes me want to try. However, last night I talked to my friend (warrior/pally 2v2) who’s team is 1900ish. He said one of the only teams he fears is priest/rogue combo because of the mana burn.

   So, long story short. We tried the mana burn strat and we were on the brink of winning the match. Once my nub priest gets any kind of gear I think we will be able to move up the charts (he only has 7.4k health buffed with fort).

   After the battle i was searching for mace spec videos (i’m combat daggers) and stumbled onto you site. First video I saw was the priest/rogue - warrior/pally one really helped me a lot to see how long the battle took.

   Keep them coming!

7. Cyrik Says:
   August 6th, 2007 at 11:41 am

   hey guys,
   will there be any new articles or vids coming or is this site dead? would be a shame, cause i liked what i read

8. horrible Says:
   August 10th, 2007 at 11:19 pm

   90% of the time the warrior will stay on the rogue while the pally LoS’s mana burns.

9. Nubkilla Says:
   September 4th, 2007 at 3:24 pm

   priest/rogue vs warrior/paladain is an incredibly hard matchup, the actual smart warrior will be ont he rogue and put an immense amount of pressure on him making it difficult for the priest to get mana burns off, the rogue can pop evasion and give the priest time to get off a few mana burns but still not enough to out heal him what should i do? if i try and go after paladin i get kited like i’m in the special olympics

10. DCLXVI Says:
    September 20th, 2007 at 2:11 am

    great read, i play a combat mace rogue and this has opened my eyes a bit, keep these articles coming!

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