Saturday, January 12, 2008

"Meowmix"

That was the name of my 2v2 team on the PTR.

So. Me. A 17/0/44 frost mage (by the name of Spatula), and a 41/5/15 beastmaster hunter (by the name of Inda (pet's name was hizzouse)).

(Just mentally remove Ice Block from the talent tree, put Cold Snap there, and put Icy Veins where Cold Snap is)

We did quite well, I think, for the rather unorthodox matchup of Hunter/Mage, for a 2v2 anyways.

To be quite honest, this type of arena was practically a 3v2 effort. A beastmaster's pet is quite a deadly force, especially when sent after a squishy. We had some rather devastating combos as a team here, and our kiting power was unmatched.

Thought process behind my talents:

Maxxed out Imp. Arcane Missiles, for use as un-LoSable nukes whenever clearcast procced. Did that sentence make sense to non mages?
Anyways, Arcane Missiles is a spell that, once started, can only be stopped when its target is massively out of range. We're talking 50 yards away. Even if you run behind a pole, or something like that, you cannot stop them. They keep right on channeling away, pounding into you like the LoS whore you are.
Essentially, I would pop this any time clearcast procced on a spell, and would use it generally whenever someone, like a healer, tried to run away and prevent me from hurting them. In this way, I can keep right on nuking while they're trying to hide. Needless to say, very effective.
Clearcast is obvious, free spell casts ftw. And besides, what else am I going to take while trying to get to Improved Counterspell?
Magic Attunement was taken because I put Dampen Magic on the both of us before every fight. We don't have a healer, so we don't lose out heals because of it. So, effectively, we get a couple hundred damage shaved off each spell cast against us, which of course, is just plain sexy.
Now. Improved Counterspell. If you're serious about PvP, you will want this spell. It is devastating. It is horrible. Healers will cry in their sleep because of this.
Go on. Ask a healer you know. Ask them how they feel about a 4 second silence in rapid-speed PvP. See what kind of response you get.

The frost tree is easy. Maximizing my frostbolts, and other roots and cooldowns. Cone of Cold was never used as a damaging spell, merely as a snare (and thanks to frostbite, quite often a full out root as well.
Putting only 3 points into Winter's Chill was deemed alright by me. Disagree if you want, but here's my explanation.
The whole point behind Winter's Chill is to put pressure on the other teams' dispellers. When you sheep something, most likely their dispeller is going to try and get rid of that. Be it a Paladin, whatever, they don't want their buddy being useless meat. The point of Winter's Chill is to provide an additional "debuff", to make it harder for the dispeller to get rid of the Polymorph.
(PS, for arenas, use rank 1 Polymorphs. Zero point using higher ranks, they cost more mana for no reason)
You can max out Winter's Chill to get the full debuff, but as a team, we didn't feel it was necessary to do so. Being a hunter mage combo, we already had substantial annoying things at our disposal. Things like Concussive Shot, Freezing Traps, Polymorph, Counterspell; then factor in the pet's stun ability, Cone of Cold, and my very frequent roots. Already so much powerful crowd control going on, we didn't feel it was necessary to spend the points to add to what was basically a dispell fodder talent. That, and I really like Arctic Reach >.>

So, the hunter's talents seem simple enough to me. Maxing out the health talents, getting all the usual pet dominatrix abilities, etc. Beastial Discipline was gotten (is that a word? Getted, maybe?) because my hunter buddy didn't have Go for the Throat, and so would need the extra focus.
(Inda uses a kitty cat, therefore he can spam Claw as long as the focus is there. For further questions, go ask BigRedKitty, because this isn't a hunter blog, no matter how much my hunter alt craves attention)
Inda felt that getting Imp. Revive Pet was a good way to spend two talent points. See, he figured that in some battles people would go for his pet, in an effort to de-rail his build. So, he picked up the talent in order to recover really fast if that ever occured.
It never actually did, but whatever.
(Note: arenas are flagged as outdoors, thus Bestial Swiftness does work.)

So. Our combos. The most obvious one that springs to mind is the classic Warrior/Paladin thing.
First thing, the pet rushes after the Paladin, Bestial Wrath going full bore. Oddly enough, this caused the Paladin most times to blow his bubble right away? Was the Paladin new or not? Either way, it made for a guaranteed win for me and Inda, as we would simply kite the warrior for 10 seconds, then annihilate the Paladin very quickly. Turns out, Paladins don't last very long while Silenced and stunned, with no bubble to escape from their early demise.
Intimidation followed by a silence immediately after is a horrifying experience, I'm sure.
Meanwhile, Warrior rushes at me. He gets rooted. I walk away. He intercepts. I blink, then he gets hit with Concussive Shot. I whip out the water elemental, root him again, Shatter combo. Turn WE on Paladin as soon as bubble falls, toss a frostbolt/fireball on the Paladin, giggle as he tries to cast a heal and counterspell him. Paladin goes down, then the warrior meets his fate. Never touched either one of us after that intercept.

The arenas against Ret Paladins were incredibly sad. I'm sorry, but if I find out you're a retribution Paladin, I'm going to mentally picture the sight of two blood elf Paladins riding straight at me, dismounting, and bubbling the second their feet hit the ground.
Pure idiocy, that made for some ridiculously easy kills.
Even worse, these Ret Paladins would... well, never heal. When they did, which was very rare, I'd just counterspell them and be done with it. Never once saw a Flash of Light of these guys, just Holy Light.

One interesting team we came across was a pair of Marksman hunters. How do I know they were Marksman? Easy, I got chained with Silencing Shot. Our strategy was simple when it became obvious they wanted me dead. I simply ran away, abused LoS, and let my hunter buddy kill them off. Mostly I just harassed them, rooted them, then ran around a corner and first aided. It was all good fun.

At one point, we came across a Resto druid paired with a Soul Link warlock. That was a very odd fight, and we almost lost it, too. We only won because the druid had the exceptional bad luck to run straight into a freezing trap at a critical moment during the fight. Critical meaning that the warlock took enough damage to be unhealable once the Trap broke. Oh, the druid tried. Damn right he tried. Got off one Lifebloom, which the hunter promptly dispelled with Arcane Shot. Pure luck there, in my opinion. Anyways, warlock died because the next autoshot critted, and then we turned to the resto druid. At this point, we have a full health resto druid, me at 25%, and my hunter buddy at just under 50%. And one pet who's Intimidation cooldown will finish in 4 seconds.
Getting that druid down took a bloody long time. We were at it for a good 9 minutes before he dropped. Longest 9 minutes in my life.

And that rogue/warlock team... Gah, it was ruthless. They didn't focus on killing me, they focused on crowd controlling me. What I looked at was Deathcoil, then feared right after that. Trinketed out of that. Got spell locked right then, and I hit Ice Block. Sorry, couldn't restrain myself. It just had to. Immediately broke it, in an effort to save Inda who had just gotten hit hard. The rogue didn't even touch the freezing trap. (No flare, I berated Inda for that one.)
As soon as Ice Block broke, the rogue hit sprint and CloS, and rushed right at me. I got blinded, then he rushed right back to the hunter and kept ganking.
It was relentless. It really was. Inda was getting stunlocked to hell and back, dotted to hell, randomly feared, and the warlock had somehow managed to switch to a Succubus in the middle of this and was Seduce-nuking at the same time.
Splat goes Inda, and then the rogue immediately pops Vanish.

Well, I'm fucked.

And it went like this the two other times we fought them. Ruthlessly destroyed by this team. Dunno why, but thats what happened. Maybe I need to learn to play.

But the fact is, I could not escape from so many Crowd Controls so fast. Hell, the last fight I got sapped near the beginning.
How do you counter Deathcoil, fear, spell lock, blind, kidney shot, sap, and mace stun effects? It gets even worse when you see "Seduce" on your screen when you were just spell locked a couple seconds ago. Harsh times...

So that's some of my stories for my 2v2 arena on this last past PTR. Good stuff, we did pretty darn well, in my oh so humble opinion.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I get controlled as much as you describe in your last encounter I either mash keyes on my keyboard furiously, or sip my soda in frustrating anticipation of being able to click anything on my action bars again. Several keyboards later I have learned the glorious caffine high that Diet Coke brings.

Euripedes said...

"AUGH! No, ARGH! GAH! GAH! GAH! Stop that. Stop it right now. Don't - FUCK!"

Is my usual reaction.

Anonymous said...

You wanna know how healers feel about being counterspelled in PvP?

I want you to die IRL. Thats how we feel. :)