Although I was supposed to follow up with this article a lot sooner, things have been hectic with the site and work. We do have some very exciting features coming out next week, so make sure to check back!

To start things off from where we had left off, we ended the last article with different methods of dealing with Rogue’s hardest match, the Warrior. Although we have covered how to deal with the Warriors, it is still a must to understand how different each fight can be upon change of their healing partner.

The order of difficulty from easiest to hardest for Rogue & Holy Priest goes: Priest, Shaman, Paladin and Druid. Some might find Shaman paired with Warrior to be the hardest, but this is mostly due to gear issues. To withstand the bursts from Windfury procs — which leads to a ton of Rag — it is a must that the Priest and Rogue both are quite durable in the Resilience department. Now, let’s take a look at what each healer can do with a Warrior in 2v2.

Priest & Warrior – Priests are very offensive healers to classes with Mana. Having both a nice CC (Fear) and Mana Burn makes them very hard to deal with for other healers. By also having instant heals and PW: Shield, Priests can easily keep a Warrior up against a Rogue, without having to stand still and heal for a long time. Meanwhile, the Rogue will take heavy damage from the Warrior, forcing your Priest to spend a lot of Mana healing and exposed to Mana Burns. Lucky for Rogues, Priests are the only class that does not have the ability to remove Poisons. Outside of PvP Trinket and Dwarf’s Stoneform, there’s no other ways for a Priest to escape from a Rogue once Crippling Poison is applied. With the Rogue’s handful of cooldowns, it won’t be difficult to land a 2nd or 3rd Crippling.

To win this fight, it is very important for you to get the jump on the Priest. Take your time and carefully make your way there; the difference of the opener could mean that extra Crippling or losing the Priest. Besides that, it’s important to know how to kill a Priest fast. If you can’t kill the enemy Priest before the Warrior can kill your’s, then there’s no hope in this fight. The effective ways to drop a Priest is via building up the burst. Start yourself off with Slice and Dice to get Wound Poison up. As you reach 3-4 layers, spend the next 5 Combo Points on a full Expose Armor. This will greatly increase the damage of your Blade Flurry, Trinket, and Adrenaline Rush. It is pointless to bother kicking heals at the start. The reason for this is the initial damage prior to your Wound Poison stacking up will not out damage instants, such as Prayer of Mending and Renew. Usually, the Priest will attempt to kite you at first, once they realize they can no longer kite, they will start trying to cast heals. It is important for the Rogue to realize when this will happen. Sometimes, it’s wise to let a Flash Heal to go through if you’re not confident on your Kick being on time to interrupt due to global cooldown, or lack of Energy. It is much better to let them heal once than to miss a Kick. Your Kidney Shot should not be used until the Priest is below 40%. Usually, this will finish them off during the burst, or come very close to it; don’t be tempted to use all your Energy in attacks like Sinister Strike — even if the Priest is at 10% health! Always save 25 Energy for a Kick towards the end to ensure the death of their Priest.

As long as you can drop their Priest before your’s runs out of Mana healing you, or your Priest dying to their Warrior, then this match should be a free win. The hardest case is if their Priest is Dwarf, but the match should still be in your favor.

Shaman & Warrior – This fight is extremely hard if you’re not experienced. It is a very common mistake for the Rogue to go after the Shaman. This will leave your Priest fully open to a WF and Bloodlusted Warrior. And, with the lack of pressure a Rogue will cause for Restoration Shamans; your Priest will be squashed by Purges and big crits, leading to a premature lose. It might sound crazy to feed the Warrior more Rage, but, in this case, there’s not much of a choice. The match opens up a new world when the Rogue stays on the Warrior, when you can avoid the offensive aspects of a Restoration Shaman; they’re not the best at the outlasting game.

Aside from Purge and Shocks, the Restoration Shaman can’t really do much when left alone. The goal is to keep the Warrior off the Priest because the high amount of damage they’re capable of with Windfury and Bloodlust. Use your stuns and Evasion wisely to create that window of opportunity for the Priest to Fear and Mana Burn. The Priest should melee all Totems possible, especially ones like Tremor Totem before the Fear. Be careful of the bursts from Warrior. Even with the Rogue tanking, it is very easy to get hit by a chain of crits, and go down in seconds. This is a fight that’s heavily reliant on the Rogue’s ability to avoid damage. As long as the Warrior isn’t hitting the Priest, the Rogue should be performing limited kiting whenever low on energy, and when Kidney Shot is on cooldown. Knowing the perfect time to burst is how you win this match. Do not use your burst when the Warrior is still on your Priest. Even if this doesn’t lead to a quick death, it is likely your Priest won’t be able go on offense under pressure. When their Shaman is out in the open and your Wound Poison is stacked up, you’ll be ready for an Evasion tanking burst. During this time, the Priest must be freed up to Mana Burn or Fear — or else, your burst will be easily covered by half a dozen Lesser Healing Waves. The perfect situation is when you catch their Warrior with a Kidney Shot right after Intercept. Your Priest can then Trinket out and dash towards their Shaman while you unload. During the Kidney Shot, build up a couple Combo Points for Slice and Dice. Active your Blade Flurry, Trinket and Adrenaline Rush; open up Evasion soon as the Warrior turns on you. When you get the first 5 Combo Points, toss up a Rupture. After Evasion is over, you can avoid further damage with a Vanish > Cheap Shot, then another Kidney Shot. If done correctly, your Priest will have had just over 20 seconds to mess with their Shaman and land a Fear. If the Shaman was too busy avoiding being mana burned, then the Warrior should be very low on health from lack of healing. If that didn’t happen, then the Shaman should be low on Mana after being Mana Burned during the 20 seconds you lockdown the Warrior. If the Warrior is low on health, Sprint to the Shaman with a Blind then proceed to finish off the Warrior. If the Shaman is low on Mana, simply have your Priest prevent drinking while the Rogue keeps up the damage.

The fight is still by no means easy, and a resist on Kidney Shot can easily turn the tide against you. Be ready to cover the resisted Kidney Shot with other methods of interruption to create a breather for your Priest.

To be continued…

Tags: Rogue · 2v2 · Articles

13 Responses to “2v2: Rogue & Holy Priest Explained, Part 4½”

1. narh Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 10:32 pm

   Nice man,

2. Bummer Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 11:37 pm

   Thanks - Great guide. I always had trouble with war/restoshammy but that is because the warrior wrecked my priest before I managed to kill the shaman. I’ll try out this strat and turn the tables on the huge amounts of warrior teams in my BG =)

3. Mousaka Says:
   October 15th, 2007 at 2:15 am

   “2v2: Rogue & Holy Priest Explained, Part 4⅝”

   Coming soon…

4. DOOODLE Says:
   October 15th, 2007 at 3:12 am

   Too much emphasize on combat but then again, combat > all in 2s. RNG still > rogues when it comes down to war vs rogue in most cases.

5. Mousaka Says:
   October 15th, 2007 at 2:36 pm

   So true… Having to rely on a KS to make or break the match against an Orc Warrior (35% resist if they have meta) is dumb.

   Ziss: Unfortunately there’s no other choice. You win some you lose some.

6. Fan Says:
   October 15th, 2007 at 7:24 pm

   Awesome article, im waiting eagerly for the next part, thats where it gets really exciting.

   As my team has quite simply been devastated by druid/warrior teams

7. sharky Says:
   October 15th, 2007 at 7:53 pm

   warrior/priest, you get on the priest the warrior charges stuns and you get hamstring spamed what now ?

8. Mousaka Says:
   October 15th, 2007 at 10:26 pm

   Crippling > Hamstring by 20%. You have a ton of cooldowns to avoid being kited by the priest, even if a warrior gets to you once every 15 seconds. Sprint, Vanish, and trinket. If you aren’t able to kill the priest in 45 seconds using all cooldowns, I think you’re going to lose.

9. smjygarn Says:
   October 16th, 2007 at 1:29 am

   Very nice guide, tho this is a aspect of a Combat rogue i guess combat mace? Would be nice if ya could make like pointers about specc’s & when a mutilate build works better then combat and the other way around.
   Keep up the good work

10. Blacklisted Says:
    October 16th, 2007 at 11:08 pm

    For a combat mace rogue, which trinket should I use:
    Bloodlust Brooch, Tsunami Talisman, or Dragonspine Trophy?

11. Bonedeth Says:
    October 17th, 2007 at 2:19 am

    Bloodlust brooch

12. Witty Says:
    November 10th, 2007 at 8:15 am

    This is written from a Combat rogues persepective because you don’t normally play mutilate rogue/holy priest. If you read the articles in order you will see he goes over rogues specs and explains why his combat spec works the best. that is ofcourse barring the change to hemo in 2.3 where an AR/Prep rogue might be just as viable.

13. Kaid Says:
    May 28th, 2008 at 5:59 pm

    I love the article, I am a human holy priest 28/33/0 (2v2 priest/rogue) and would love to see the same
    fight from the angle of the priest, what gear, tactics should I get/do to assist in the fight?

    I have 465 resisliance how much does this help against melee attack?
    I seem to get slaughtered by the warrior, he locks me down with stun and proceeds to carve
    me up, as soon as i come out of stun, he will interupt my next cast and stun again and that is
    normally the point I die.

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