All time contributor
Coming soon
Welcome to The Strategies
Welcome to The Matrix
Rogue, Shadow Priest Vs. Restoration Druid, Warrior
Submitted by Ziss · Edit
88 up
79 down
Note: This does not include ones that wears heavy Shadow Resist.
I’m proud to announce that with the assist of Shadowstep, Warrior & Druid teams in 2v2 can be farmed with 100% success rate by SRogue and SPriest. The strategy is actually quite simple, although it is possible with other Rogue specs, Shadowstep makes this strategy much easier to execute.
THE Strategy:
Start the fight with SPriest soloing Warrior as usual while Rogue goes off and predict where the Druid could be. The longer it takes before Druid comes out to heal the Warrior, the better.(!) Soon as the Druid comes out, make sure your SPriest Dispels the initial Lifebloom and possible Rejuv to prevent Swiftmend. Your Rogue ShS to the Druid and open with Premed + Cheap Shot. Now the fight can split in to 2 scenarios from here:
Scenario 1 – Warrior will Intercept to Rogue and attempt to snare/unload. When this happens, you will want to Kidney Shot the Druid. Depending on the timing of the Intercept, you may wish to Trinket it as it could break your stunlock. As long as you can land your Kidney Shot before the Druid gets away, you’ll be fine.
Follow the Kidney Shot with a Gouge while signal your SPriest to close in on the Druid. Make sure your SPriest has already Dispelled all HoTs and kept all the DoTs up as well. If needed, Trinket the Hamstring. Fear the Druid after the Gouge and follow up with either Sap or Silence. Warrior should be long dead before end of the Fear. If the Druid Trinkets at any point, follow up with a Blind > Sap > Fear/Silence while all out DPS on the Warrior. We all know the outcome of that.
Scenario 2 – Warrior stays on SPriest in an attempt to kill the SPriest first. As long as you followed the above tactic of dispelling the Warrior of the initial HoTs, your Spriest only needs to DPS Warrior as much as possible and win the fight. The Rogue’s job will be simple as well, a simple lockout combo will do the trick: Premed + CS > Gouge > KS > Gouge > Vanish CS. That’s 20 seconds of lockout and should be enough for your SPriest to finish off the remaining life on the Warrior. Like before, follow any Trinket with a Blind and assist DPS on Warrior in that duration. Your SPriest can also help out with a Silence or Fear but it shouldn’t be needed.
The other team may attempt to combat your strategy by having the Druid topping off Warrior from the start. This however doesn’t make much difference due to the long duration of CC your Rogue can dish to the Druid. It does make the fight slightly harder through.
Ragadorn: Something that wasn't mentioned is that one of the jobs of the Shadowpriest is, when at all possible, to maneuver the warrior into a position where the rogue doesn't have to guess on a 360 degree radius for the druid's position.
By this, I mean think of the warrior as the center of a circle. If the priest can force the warrior to fight with the back half of that circle cut off (say close to a wall), the druid is limited to positioning himself within the front half of the circle, making it much easier to locate him, particularly if you're a human rogue. For example, in Nagrand if you can position the warrior behind a pillar or with his back to a pillar, the druid positioning is very limited, making it very easy to either find him or at least predict his position and locate your own position accordingly.
Link to this Strategy:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare draw_menu() (previously declared in /home/zhenz26/public_html/pvpsource.com/matrix/draw_menu.php:9) in /home/zhenz26/public_html/pvpsource.com/matrix/draw_menu.php on line 37
January 14, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Seriously, PvP Sources crew should have colored names so everyone can easily find expert advice. Its easy to read, the strategy is all there including their possible counter strategies and how to stuff it.
January 14, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Oh right, and using an apostrophe in "Comments" causes the SQL database to return an error, so I apologize to the Grammar Police.
January 14, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Fixed the apostrophe problem, thanks letting me know. I'll think about working on something for distinguishing the crew.
January 15, 2008 at 1:15 am
u missed acoupole things...nature swiftness + big heal will non crit heal for 5k each time u dispell lifebloom he still gets the last heal (around 1200). Assume warrior fears u and druid swiftmends a rejuv... endless possiblilities, the most successfull way is to blind>vanish>sap after leaving combat. also wile the rogue stunlocks the druid spriest can mana burn and with wounding poison the druid has to spend twice the mana to heal. it all depends on the skill of ur partner and ur opponents
January 15, 2008 at 9:22 pm
I suppose I forgot to mention that you will have to save the trinket for Fear if you're not UD. To combat the lack of trinket for Intercept, make sure you KS the Druid earlier if you see the Warrior making a move towards you. The ONLY cast the Druid will get off is the inital 1 to 2 HoTs and NS big heal the whole fight. So as long as your SPriest does the right thing and dispel the HoTs, there isn't much room for 'endless' possibilities. This strategy has been tested at 2000-2100 rating for 2v2 BG9 Bloodlust against half a dozen different Warrior & Druid teams.
January 16, 2008 at 9:10 am
So what part of this strat is "new" and involves clever use of shadowstep?
January 16, 2008 at 9:52 am
yeah, it doesn't seem like anything you couldn't with an ar/prep build. just replace Shs with sprint....
January 16, 2008 at 3:45 pm
The advantage of Shadowstep is simply that you can get on top of the druid for that initial stunlock much faster than you can with a sprint. This is particularly true if the druid pops out within the 25 yard ShS range--I use a similar strategy with my lock/rogue team against warrior/druid and if the positioning is right, I can literally be on top of the druid before he can even get a second HoT off, whereas with sprint it still takes somewhere between 2-4 seconds to get to the druid, which can be an eternity.
Like I mentioned before, lock/rogue can take a similar approach to Scenario 2 - lock solos the warrior until the druid pops, while rogue premeditation + cheap shot onto the druid, followed by a full kidney shot, followed by a blind (being ready for a possible trinket out of the kidney shot). Once blind ends or is trinketed, lock starts a chain fear on the druid while I switch DPS over to the warrior. If we need it, once fears are close to DRs I'll try to vanish + ShS + sap, though this isn't always possible if I've got bleeds.
January 16, 2008 at 5:15 pm
There is nothing new here.
It can basically be summed up by: "HEY GUYZ, YOU CAN USE GOUGE TO CC"
One other thing thats bothering me:
Why are you trading kidney for intercept? Why not gouge when you see that warrior approaching so you can unload a full energy kidney on the druid for more pressure on the druid and really put him in a bad position if he chokes on his trinket.
Its not a bad strat, although gimping sap DR before the blind is a bit meh at times, so situational but decent non the less.
January 16, 2008 at 5:47 pm
What I used is the most reliable method to prevent the least possibility of what some of you call 'situational'.
There are 2 reasons why I use Gouge to trade the Intercept:
1 - Using Gouge 2nd lets you switch to the Warrior Right after the Gouge while still DPSed Druid prior to Gouge. If you used Gouge first, you lose 4 seconds of DPS on Druid.
2 - When Warrior is planing on Intercepting you, KS lands much faster than trying to get in-front of the Druid then Gouge. The whole strategy heavily relies on the fact that NO casts slips through from the Druid what so ever. A 2 seconds window for the Druid to Feral Charge and Travel Form away because you missed a Gouge is not acceptable.
As for the strategy being original, Ragadorn summed it up well, the addition of Shadowstep makes the difference of 5-6 HoTs vs 1-2.
January 17, 2008 at 5:59 am
Druid heals are >41 yrd range if i am not mistaken. Basically stealthing+shs (especially when not full Camo) will be same time as sprint at this point.
But its true: spriest+rogue = win against war+druid.
January 17, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Still not going to be the same time--even if the druid is 40 yards away from the rogue, it's faster to sprint the 15 and then ShS the last 25, rather than having to sprint the whole 40. As mentioned before, the 2-3 seconds you gain is pretty clutch. From experience, though, it's rare to be caught at that far a distance from the druid for the reason I'll mention below.
Something that wasn't mentioned is that one of the jobs of the Shadowpriest is, when at all possible, to maneuver the warrior into a position where the rogue doesn't have to guess on a 360 degree radius for the druid's position.
By this, I mean think of the warrior as the center of a circle. If the priest can force the warrior to fight with the back half of that circle cut off (say close to a wall), the druid is limited to positioning himself within the front half of the circle, making it much easier to locate him, particularly if you're a human rogue. For example, in Nagrand if you can position the warrior behind a pillar or with his back to a pillar, the druid positioning is very limited, making it very easy to either find him or at least predict his position and locate your own position accordingly.
January 18, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Great addition Ragadorn, I'll add it to the main strategy. Thanks!
January 18, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Hmm... we've seen this strat as druid/war and we simply countered it by making the druid stay at 41 yards. When the rogue opens, I re-apply a hamstring on the priest and intercept --> disarm the rogue. When my druid trinkets, I intervene to eat blinds or the vanish CS. The whole time I stay Sword + Shield to reflect any blast/death combos.
The main problem the rogue/spriest has is that without the rogue on the warrior, the warrior is free to move at 108% speed while the priest is snared and has to run the full 41 yards. In essence, the druid is pulling the rogue and spriest too far apart.
January 19, 2008 at 9:58 pm
The priest can simply trinket the hamstring, toss a silence on the druid if he trinkets the blind (and rogue can't gouge). Between the priest and rogue you'd still be denied any heals for quite a long time, around 15 seconds after the intercept, with both rogue and priest hammering on you. Even if you manage to survive to this point, it'd be tough for your druid to catch up up on the healing, especially with a stack of wound poison on you. Maybe I'm missing something though?
The rogue going on the warrior at the start is just generally a bad idea IMO--it leaves the druid open to cyclone the priest and heal the warrior for those full 6 seconds of CC, which essentially restarts the rogue vs. warrior fight with the rogue at low to mid health (and having blown CDs) and the warrior at full health and full rage.
January 21, 2008 at 1:36 pm
If the priest trinkets the hamstring (assuming he didn't trinket cyclone spams), he'll either eat another piercing howl before he enters fear range, and/or he'll eat the intimidating shout. With the rogue disarmed and the priest either re-snared and/or feared, the game is pretty much set as both blind and silence are down and neither me nor the druid has taken significant damage.
I think the key most warriors are missing is disarming the rogue after the intercept. It gives your druid that extra few seconds to throw extra HoTs without worrying about vanish CS or KS.
January 21, 2008 at 5:22 pm
The Druid will have to decide between 1 Cyclone & 1 HoT or 2 HoTs before the Rogue have him CSed.
Piercing Howl is no issue since your SPriest will only be running after Warrior AFTER he intercepts. I doubt he can Piercing Howl from 20+ yards away.
As for Disarm off the Intercept, any intelligent Rogue should have weapon chain to reduce the efficiency. Also I specified trinketing the Intercept to apply KS(Trinket > KS is faster than Stance Switch > Disarm). At worst case, the Druid will get off an extra HoT or NS heal, which can still be overcome as long as you do the rest of the CC correctly. (Dispel the HoT and out damage the NS healed amount.)
February 20, 2008 at 5:31 am
to be honest, spriest + rogue is an tough encounter for druid + warrior, but they wont ever get a 100% winning chance. its more like 50/50 and depends on resists/latency/crit luck, etc.
March 09, 2008 at 11:04 am
Wouldn't a good warrior just intervene the blind or the sap and druid will trinket KS, plus a human warrior can pretty much open on any rogue in 2v2, AND the druid isn't going to wait around in caster form for a rogue to open on him. Also if warrior intercepts to rogue when he get on the druid the warrior should already have a 8s+ hamstring or a fresh piercing howl on the priest as he intercepts away. Also if druid STILL somehow manages to eat a fear the warrior should intervene to the druid when he's far away to get away from the rogue for a few seconds and after shadowstep he should intercept back to the priest, this is of course if blind is off cooldown otherwise you would still want to stop your druid from being blinded with intervene. Lot's of options available to stay away from the rogue and attempt to stay alive.
March 23, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Ummm, a human warrior cant open up on a rogue, the rogue just waits till perception is down. Also, the druid doesnt have to wait around in caster form for the rogue to open on him, the rogue stays stealthed till the druid comes out to heal and then the rogue opens up on him.
June 03, 2008 at 4:21 pm
How does a human rogue open on a rogue w/ a brain?
WALK AWAYYYYY AS THE WARR POPS PERCEPTION..............................
@ Anon as well, how would the druid leave caster form.. if the rogue shadowsteps within 2-3 seconds of the druid popping out, he has enough to heal the warrior AND switch form? so like.. lifebloom -> shift to bear?
that would make the strat easier, b/c the druid (after the CC listed) would have to waste a global to shift into caster Then heal.
Ziss mentioned that the priest should trinket the hamstring, so the 8s+ hamstring isnt a prob.
and honestly..lol @ every1 saying that any good warr will intervene a kidney or blind.. its not that easy lol what if RIGHT after the druid trinkets, the rogue decides to gouge then blind? If every1 has the reflexes of a god, u could also say that any good rogue will hemo the intervene buff off the druid then blind/kidney =P
June 07, 2008 at 12:51 pm
hmmmm in my experience i think the game is decided on who does better in the warrior v SPriest tussle, if the warrior starts winning then the druid / war win easy, if the SPriest starts winning, it becomes very hard to win but is possible.