Mosg2's DK Manifesto

When you look at melee zerg boxing really, is there a lot of rooms for improvement on the execution ? I see we got the execution down pretty well. But it is capped.

and put it into a ratings perspective, I see it capped around 2k ratings. That is NOT bad in any sense. But that is what we have to work with. I can't imagine all those 2200 teams just suddenly forget how to play and let us zerg them down.

I say this from experience. I've played enough melee zerging. When I lose a match to a good team, I ask "is there anything I can improve on ? " and frankly, most of the cases, there is nothing I can think of. I did the best possible. The weakness of melee boxing just cannot be overcome if your opponents know them.

Still, the fulcrum is 2200.

Playing all five toons, by yourself.
You're not that far away from superior gear.

Would a separate healer push this team over the edge?

ya that's essentially what it boils down to, losing games because people know how to counter you, not due to making mistakes or not being tricky enough. thats at least how it was with the pallies. with the DK team that's a lot of dark simul action that currently probably isn't being used at all by any boxers yet, but has potential. you see someone casting a big heal you can DS them and let it go through and then have 4 of them of your own (i think it works that way, maybe there are stacking issues). or the same with a big damage cast.

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Originally Posted by Kromtor

ya that's essentially what it boils down to, losing games because people know how to counter you, not due to making mistakes or not being tricky enough. thats at least how it was with the pallies. with the DK team that's a lot of dark simul action that currently probably isn't being used at all by any boxers yet, but has potential. you see someone casting a big heal you can DS them and let it go through and then have 4 of them of your own (i think it works that way, maybe there are stacking issues). or the same with a big damage cast.

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You can use it on any mana casting spell and it applies itself to you. I've done it on pally aoe, some heals etc. They all work.

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Originally Posted by remanz

Not to be negative in this, but how to reach gladiator with a 50-60% winning ratio. What Kromtor did with DK + 4rets is as closed as it gets as I see it.

So we go 50-50 in most of the matches. That is no where near gladiator. Heck I'd be jumping up and down if we can reach 2200.

If your MMR and your real ratings meet at 1800, I think that's it. You are likely to get 100-200 more. You are not going higher than 2000.


basically, you won't all of sudden one day start winning more than you do now.

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The way to do it is to dodge ques against high rated players who can straight out beat you. Defeating lower teams give 1-2 points and it just is a GRIND simply put... you will need well over 1000 games to do it but it is mathematically possible.

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Originally Posted by Shodokan

The way to do it is to dodge ques against high rated players who can straight out beat you. Defeating lower teams give 1-2 points and it just is a GRIND simply put... you will need well over 1000 games to do it but it is mathematically possible.

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Can't argue that. I agree. if you can do that, then higher ratings are within reach. But that's not so much about the combos.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by remanz

When you look at melee zerg boxing really, is there a lot of rooms for improvement on the execution ? I see we got the execution down pretty well. But it is capped.

and put it into a ratings perspective, I see it capped around 2k ratings. That is NOT bad in any sense. But that is what we have to work with. I can't imagine all those 2200 teams just suddenly forget how to play and let us zerg them down.

I say this from experience. I've played enough melee zerging. When I lose a match to a good team, I ask "is there anything I can improve on ? " and frankly, most of the cases, there is nothing I can think of. I did the best possible. The weakness of melee boxing just cannot be overcome if your opponents know them.

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Even then-

Anyone who has played with the mindless children who care about rank 1 and to a lesser degree gladiator know that there is a high school popular cool kids mentality among the good arena players.

They snipe,dogde, wintrade, level alt teams, tank mmr to friends while their mains already have glad. In my opinion no muti boxer, no matter how good will ever get glad in 5s. 5v5 is such a small pool of teams that it just wont ever happen, even on BL which is not even the highest/best/most populated BG anymore. Most all the cool kids went horde/illidan/rampage when cata came out.

If you could even get into glad range every counter would snipe you. You would have lvl 1 watchers on your server to see when you were playing the second you were in glad range towards the end of the season. They would queue and you would lose points. If you tried to sit on your rating, they would wintrade/dump mmr to their friends team and farm you when you tried to play.

I could see it in 3s just for the fact that there is a larger pool, but I think even that is almost impossible playing all by yourself.

You could pull a krush and get glad solo on each of your characters and then log them all on at the same time. huzza

With all that said, I give mad props to all the 5s boxers who play arena. Arena =/= BGs. I say if you are able to get to 2200 for the weapons, that in itself, no matter how accomplished is something to be proud of in this stupid game.

@Dark Simulacrum:
It uses your coefficients, so it's basically worthless to steal a heal or a damage spell. You want cool stuff like Ring of Frost (I got that once in IoC), Frost Nova, Death Coil, Fear, Psychic Scream etc.

@Possible Gladiator:
I have all blue PvP gear with the Conquest weapons and legs right now. I can burn through most classes in under 5 seconds. With single-target DPS going up for us post-patch I think that you're realistically going to be able to make it a 5v4 right off the bat--With immunity to CC for 7 seconds plus 4x Death Grip you'll be able to stay on the target for the entire duration.

The only bad targets for me are Hunters, Priests, Mages and Paladins. my Priest is 77 and he'll fix the Mages and Paladins. Anything else is just plain dead.

@Separate healer:
Having a separate healer would certainly let you focus more on Dark Simulacrum and Hungering Cold.

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Originally Posted by Mosg2

@Dark Simulacrum:
It uses your coefficients, so it's basically worthless to steal a heal or a damage spell. You want cool stuff like Ring of Frost (I got that once in IoC), Frost Nova, Death Coil, Fear, Psychic Scream etc.

@Possible Gladiator:
I have all blue PvP gear with the Conquest weapons and legs right now. I can burn through most classes in under 5 seconds. With single-target DPS going up for us post-patch I think that you're realistically going to be able to make it a 5v4 right off the bat--With immunity to CC for 7 seconds plus 4x Death Grip you'll be able to stay on the target for the entire duration.

The only bad targets for me are Hunters, Priests, Mages and Paladins. my Priest is 77 and he'll fix the Mages and Paladins. Anything else is just plain dead.

@Separate healer:
Having a separate healer would certainly let you focus more on Dark Simulacrum and Hungering Cold.

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Looks like someone is drinking the kool aid




http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...W-AqVoLwCbWXkQ

@Fat Tire:
I honestly don't understand why you're even posting in this thread. Could you possibly be constructive or helpful in some way, shape or form? Otherwise go find something else to do?

On topic:
Immunity to CC + 5 second Strangulates x4 + Leap/Gnaw x4 + Awesome pressure works. It's obviously early in the season and with the 2200 weapons not available for another two weeks or whatever 5's activity is low. I don't understand why everyone is being so negative-Nancy about it. Get your team to 85 and get them geared with at least the Conquest weapon and THEN post your thoughts. Of COURSE if you're sitting on a target with the Tol Barad weapon or the OOOO from Crucible of Carnage you're going to have a skewed perception of what this team can do.

If you were to stop using HB, other than as a ranged snare, with the 12%+ to 2h DPS it seems to me like playing 4 DK's + a pocket healer will be pretty effective with you having the ability to use hungering cold on a more proper rotation.

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Originally Posted by Mercbeast

If you were to stop using HB, other than as a ranged snare, with the 12%+ to 2h DPS it seems to me like playing 4 DK's + a pocket healer will be pretty effective with you having the ability to use hungering cold on a more proper rotation.

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Watching for runes on all toons to make sure you can effectively use obliterate isn't going to be possible really, unless you make a priority rotation like

Obliterate > Howling > Frost strike > Necrotic Strike

But even then you need to worry about howling and necrotic using the runes for oblit... which WILL happen way too often. So in order to do that you'd need to play the dks like you would manually. Theres no way we can use things like "dont use howling blast if we have killing machine up" type statements in macros.

So what would you use the extra frost runes on? make them sit there? Ssing oblit also makes it so you are NOT using necrotic and maximizing the usefulness of the stacking of buffs. Obliterate on plate targets is a really bad choice as it gets double mitigation through plate armor and resil.

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Originally Posted by Shodokan

Watching for runes on all toons to make sure you can effectively use obliterate isn't going to be possible really, unless you make a priority rotation like

Obliterate > Howling > Frost strike > Necrotic Strike

But even then you need to worry about howling and necrotic using the runes for oblit... which WILL happen way too often. So in order to do that you'd need to play the dks like you would manually. Theres no way we can use things like "dont use howling blast if we have killing machine up" type statements in macros.

So what would you use the extra frost runes on? make them sit there? Ssing oblit also makes it so you are NOT using necrotic and maximizing the usefulness of the stacking of buffs. Obliterate on plate targets is a really bad choice as it gets double mitigation through plate armor and resil.

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It would depend on the DPS feasibility of an Oblit rotation versus the regular rotation. I would have HB off the priority, I already have this key bound. Use it specifically for snaring. I would also take NS off the rotation.

Well actually I will quickly explain my setup.

I use R as my DPS spam. I use Shift-R as my PVE DPS spam (no IWT). I use T as my HB, I use shift T for nothing currently. I would change shift R to my oblit rotation, and set shift-T as my necrotic strike.

I now have on demand NS or HB via T and Shift-T. I also have my IWT HB/NS/FS/BS spam with R, and with Shift-R I have my oblit/bs/FS IWT spam.

I don't think it is a bad idea to set up your keys in a similar fashion anyways. Gives you more control over what you are doing with NS and HB, it also gives you the flexibility to switch between single target sniping with controlled round robin hungery colds, but also aoe pressure from the HB spam.

I can see an opener being something like this. Open with your HB+blood tap spam until all runes are on cooldown, making sure you get a big fat NS stack on the target. Then you hit empower rune weapon, hit your first hungering cold, and switch to your single target oblit/bs/fs rotation. Pop a second hungering cold the instant you see people start trinketing out.

You've come out of the gate and thrown down heavy pressure on the other team even when taking into considering the HB nerf on the PTR, figure close to 200k damage dealt via HB aoe(dependent on how many people you hit with it)

I think if someone becomes proficient with this sort of setup, this is going to take you higher than the the current HB spam zerg fest we currently do. This is because incorporating 4x well timed hungering colds gives us something we don't have normally. Control. You give us this sort of control and you pressure any dispeller you are going to lock down any melee constantly cutting their DPS down dramatically.

fat tire isn't trying to be mean he's just being realistic. we can't stress enough - you won't understand how correct he is about 5's until you're in the last month stretch of the season dealing with the highly social nature of the tiny, tiny (even smaller now thanks to rated BGs) pool of top end teams in the 5's division. the 2400 club. it's a queue dodging, wintrading, friend farming extravaganza based far more on scouting and availability to play when appropriate than your team strength.

i'm impressed though that you haven't even had the chance to use your priest yet - it will be very interesting to see how that helps you (or hurts you due to the fact that he's behind in gear and catching up is going to be hell). you might even end up wanting to play him shadow, it's super powerful in 5's right now.

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Originally Posted by Kromtor

fat tire isn't trying to be mean he's just being realistic. we can't stress enough - you won't understand how correct he is about 5's until you're in the last month stretch of the season dealing with the highly social nature of the tiny, tiny (even smaller now thanks to rated BGs) pool of top end teams in the 5's division. the 2400 club. it's a queue dodging, wintrading, friend farming extravaganza based far more on scouting and availability to play when appropriate than your team strength.

i'm impressed though that you haven't even had the chance to use your priest yet - it will be very interesting to see how that helps you (or hurts you due to the fact that he's behind in gear and catching up is going to be hell). you might even end up wanting to play him shadow, it's super powerful in 5's right now.

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So what you're saying is, most of these teams will have two teams. The primary team and the dummy team. They get both up to a high rating with a similar MMR rating. Then teams from this community will arrange to play each other where the dummy team and a primary team queue at the same time. If they don't both get the arena at the same time they leave the queue and try again? This allows the primary team zero risk wins against other high ranked teams. They then return the favor for the other group?

they dont necessarily need a second team of their own in the queue to find out who else is queuing, just using scouts on the servers of specific teams that they dont match up well against to make sure they aren't queue'ing works but this is just one tactic. i've never been in a normal 5's team so i dont know everything that is done, but i know they definitely cooperate with other teams to take turns pushing the other team over 2200 to get access to the better gear earlier. i've been offered gold by other 5's teams to let them beat me. i'm not angry at these people, i dont think they're evil. the fault lies with blizzard by not properly incentivizing 5's.. when the queue's get empty it opens the door for arranged matches and that sorta crap.

i also like your idea of making better use of hungering cold. CC is still the name of the game and breaking our own CC when not necessary needs to be minimized as much as possible. i play friggin undead DK's with licheborne and trinkets and in long matches (which i have many) fear bombs are still one of the biggest pains in my ass. i can't stop whining :)

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Originally Posted by Mercbeast

It would depend on the DPS feasibility of an Oblit rotation versus the regular rotation. I would have HB off the priority, I already have this key bound. Use it specifically for snaring. I would also take NS off the rotation.

Well actually I will quickly explain my setup.

I use R as my DPS spam. I use Shift-R as my PVE DPS spam (no IWT). I use T as my HB, I use shift T for nothing currently. I would change shift R to my oblit rotation, and set shift-T as my necrotic strike.

I now have on demand NS or HB via T and Shift-T. I also have my IWT HB/NS/FS/BS spam with R, and with Shift-R I have my oblit/bs/FS IWT spam.

I don't think it is a bad idea to set up your keys in a similar fashion anyways. Gives you more control over what you are doing with NS and HB, it also gives you the flexibility to switch between single target sniping with controlled round robin hungery colds, but also aoe pressure from the HB spam.

I can see an opener being something like this. Open with your HB+blood tap spam until all runes are on cooldown, making sure you get a big fat NS stack on the target. Then you hit empower rune weapon, hit your first hungering cold, and switch to your single target oblit/bs/fs rotation. Pop a second hungering cold the instant you see people start trinketing out.

You've come out of the gate and thrown down heavy pressure on the other team even when taking into considering the HB nerf on the PTR, figure close to 200k damage dealt via HB aoe(dependent on how many people you hit with it)

I think if someone becomes proficient with this sort of setup, this is going to take you higher than the the current HB spam zerg fest we currently do. This is because incorporating 4x well timed hungering colds gives us something we don't have normally. Control. You give us this sort of control and you pressure any dispeller you are going to lock down any melee constantly cutting their DPS down dramatically.

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I'm using crap weapon and crafted pvp set and my oblits crit for 13k (1 talent point, no glyph both diseases up) and for 23k with talents (HUGE difference). Now after 40% reduction you get 13.8k or so per obliterate crit and for 6k non crit. Your string of 3 oblits in PVP per dk is equal between 18 and 41k . This puts your total damage from the string of oblits at between 72 and 164k damage. Scaling with gear and weapons i'd say this goes up to about 180k ish max with 90k minimum. So yes this damage is enough to kill someone if you get at least 1/2 crits putting your damage at around 120k (not including white attacks or frost strikes)

A rotation of obliterates will kill someone with higher ranged weapons than what i have, but after that initial kill you need to make sure you can get back on the offensive, because a kill is worthless if your entire team is vulnerable for 20 seconds after the fact. Not to mention that obliterate requires both diseases up as pressure meaning you can't just use an oblit macro/priroity system you need to watch your disease timers. This just isn't possible to do effectively without a dedicated healer that you can concentrate on all that shit. I am 99% sure that you need your own diseases up in order to make oblit hit harder, so yea.

With the way Runic Empowerment works for Frost I don't think you're going to get a satisfactory single-target rotation with Obliterate. Unholy opens up a lot of options because their Runic Empowerment isn't random. I intend to try out some different DPS sequences today at some point and see.

@Kromtor:
Vis a vis Fat Tire I'm referring to his Kool Aid post and then the one where he admits he just wanted to come shit on the DK's.

@All:
The team is in its infancy. There are a lot of people who've been 2k+ in arenas multiboxing that are playing this team now. I think that without a doubt the DK's are more viable as an arena team than any other melee variety due to defensive cooldowns and their ability to stay on target.

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Originally Posted by Mosg2

@Kromtor:
Vis a vis Fat Tire I'm referring to his Kool Aid post and then the one where he admits he just wanted to come shit on the DK's.

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I called all the theorycrafting gladiators out. I am not the one who said they would/could get gladiator(legit). Everyone who thinks they can is drinkin their own kool aid, for the simple fact that is doesnt matter how good of a muti boxer you are and my proof was in my earlier post. I also gave props to all who arena 5s- guess you missed that, I am not hatin on what is a very good thread.

I will revisit this thread at the end of the season.

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Originally Posted by Fat Tire

I called all the theorycrafting gladiators out. I am not the one who said they would/could get gladiator(legit). Everyone who thinks they can is drinkin their own kool aid, for the simple fact that is doesnt matter how good of a muti boxer you are and my proof was in my earlier post. I also gave props to all who arena 5s- guess you missed that, I am not hatin on what is a very good thread.

I will revisit this thread at the end of the season.

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I'm pretty sure, there isn't a single person in this thread who said 2200+ rating would be likely or even possible with this group.

Stop being butthurt. You're looking like a giant douchebag.

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Originally Posted by Mercbeast

I'm pretty sure, there isn't a single person in this thread who said 2200+ rating would be likely or even possible with this group.

Stop being butthurt. You're looking like a giant douchebag.

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Reading comprehension is a talent you lack. Back up and re read a couple pages back.

If I am a giant douchebag, then youve got to be a fucken idiot. See what I did there.

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Originally Posted by Fat Tire

Reading comprehension is a talent you lack. Back up and re read a couple pages back.

If I am a giant douchebag, then youve got to be a fucken idiot. See what I did there.

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Your logic fails completely. Reading comprehension has nothing to do with reading every post in a thread this long. You're calling people out? That is comedic. You neither have the tact, or wit to call anyone out. You're a dullard who is upset for some reason so you're coming to take a big whiny emo dump over here, yet still failing spectacularly.

You've got a chip on your shoulder, like you're pretty serious business.

You couldn't flame your way out of a paper bag. So, unless I'm missing something, that chip on your shoulder has nothing tangible backing it up.

Now, I'd rather not hijack this thread for a couple reasons. Child abuse is wrong and I'm pretty sure people in this thread want to talk about the team. I'm also pretty sure nobody wants to listen to you cry in your fuckin' cheerios.

See what I did there?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fat Tire

Reading comprehension is a talent you lack. Back up and re read a couple pages back.

If I am a giant douchebag, then youve got to be a fucken idiot. See what I did there.

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I've always noticed the black cloud above your posts. You're always mocking someone or calling someone else out.

Must be something bad going on in your life to be spewing so much negativity. Hope it gets better. Life's too short.

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Originally Posted by Mercbeast

Your logic fails completely. Reading comprehension has nothing to do with reading every post in a thread this long. You're calling people out? That is comedic. You neither have the tact, or wit to call anyone out. You're a dullard who is upset for some reason so you're coming to take a big whiny emo dump over here, yet still failing spectacularly.

You've got a chip on your shoulder, like you're pretty serious business.

You couldn't flame your way out of a paper bag. So, unless I'm missing something, that chip on your shoulder has nothing tangible backing it up.

Now, I'd rather not hijack this thread for a couple reasons. Child abuse is wrong and I'm pretty sure people in this thread want to talk about the team. I'm also pretty sure nobody wants to listen to you cry in your fuckin' cheerios.

See what I did there?

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Even a clueless 30 year old with a helmet can see that I said a couple of pages back where is was discussed. Where does having to read the whole thread come in. Did I hurt your feeling calling you an idiot? Truth hurts I can tell.

Mogs2 said he could hit glad and I said there is no way anyone could as a boxer. Your jumpin on me like I dont know what I am talking about, where if you were any good at pvp you would know that what I talked about in my post a couple of pages back described high lvl pvp to a T.

the fuck says I am cryin about anything you scrub.

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Originally Posted by thedreameater

I've always noticed the black cloud above your posts. You're always mocking someone or calling someone else out.

Must be something bad going on in your life to be spewing so much negativity. Hope it gets better. Life's too short.

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There is a difference between being negative, having perspective and coddling cute fluffy bunnies. I understand that a majority of wow players have low self esteem.

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Originally Posted by Fat Tire

There is a difference between being negative, having perspective and coddling cute fluffy bunnies. I understand that a majority of wow players have low self esteem.

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I should have said insulting.

To get things back on the right track, I'm finally dipping my toes into the DK pool and have read most of this epic thread. Here's my questions (I'm a helmet wearing scrub in WoW, but I don't draw my self esteem from a video game, haha):

1
Mosg2 - you're Paladin's UI looked like the following:

1 and 2 were your Deathknight's rotation
3 - invisibility? (your guys were Orcs tho?)
4 Light of Dawn
5 - trinket
6 - Avenging Wrath
7 - Divine Favor (for oh crap heals?)
8 - Bubble
9 - Divine Plea
10 - Lay on Hands
11 - Arcane Torrent
12 Rez

Are these all you push or are these just what you click?

2
You also mentioned a one button rotation that is perfectly optimized. What is that button?

2a
I found in Ualaa's this in Ualaa's post. To understand that with my dinosaur brain, I'm to create two cast sequences; one with Howling Blast as a priority, the other with Nec Strike... do I set this up in ISBoxer? This can't be the cast sequence, cause I don't see Plague Strike or Obliterate... Could you further explain your code?

3
Spells to set up on Round Robin:
- Hungering Cold
- Mind Freeze
- Death Grip
- Anti Magic Shell?
- That it?

4
Mogs - you had Orcs in your video. Still with Orcs are have you made belfs?

Thanks all!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thedreameater

To get things back on the right track, I'm finally dipping my toes into the DK pool and have read most of this epic thread. Here's my questions (I'm a helmet wearing scrub in WoW, but I don't draw my self esteem from a video game, haha):

1
Mosg2 - you're Paladin's UI looked like the following:

1 and 2 were your Deathknight's rotation
3 - invisibility? (your guys were Orcs tho?)
4 Light of Dawn
5 - trinket
6 - Avenging Wrath
7 - Divine Favor (for oh crap heals?)
8 - Bubble
9 - Divine Plea
10 - Lay on Hands
11 - Arcane Torrent
12 Rez

Are these all you push or are these just what you click?

2
You also mentioned a one button rotation that is perfectly optimized. What is that button?

2a
I found in Ualaa's this in Ualaa's post. To understand that with my dinosaur brain, I'm to create two cast sequences; one with Howling Blast as a priority, the other with Nec Strike... do I set this up in ISBoxer? This can't be the cast sequence, cause I don't see Plague Strike or Obliterate... Could you further explain your code?

3
Spells to set up on Round Robin:
- Hungering Cold
- Mind Freeze
- Death Grip
- Anti Magic Shell?
- That it?

4
Mogs - you had Orcs in your video. Still with Orcs are have you made belfs?

Thanks all!

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MOSG has vids on most of that stuff and he plays worgen now.

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Originally Posted by Shodokan

MOSG has vids on most of that stuff and he plays worgen now.

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Oh crap! Just found em. Didn't realize there were more than the first.

Doh!

This one, right?
http://www.justin.tv/mosg2/b/275194639

@Fat Tire:
I didn't say I'd get glad. I said this comp is capable of pulling it off.

@thedreameater:
The original video has a complete explanation of how it works. I'm going to bed now but if you have any other questions about my setup I'll be around tomorrow.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fat Tire

Even a clueless 30 year old with a helmet can see that I said a couple of pages back where is was discussed. Where does having to read the whole thread come in. Did I hurt your feeling calling you an idiot? Truth hurts I can tell.

Mogs2 said he could hit glad and I said there is no way anyone could as a boxer. Your jumpin on me like I dont know what I am talking about, where if you were any good at pvp you would know that what I talked about in my post a couple of pages back described high lvl pvp to a T.

the fuck says I am cryin about anything you scrub.

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You don't have to be good at games to be good at WoW. I play WoW because it is polished and there is nothing else out on the market currently worth playing. Achieving high level PvP status in WoW means absolutely nothing to me. I've run into "elite" WoW guilds in other games. In the past 6 years of facerolling these guys in other games, what I have come to realize, is that skill!=treadmilling. Achieving anything in WoW is not about inherent player skill, it is about chasing a carrot. It is a relationship where time invested + above average competence = success. That is what you meant right, high level wow PvP, not high level PvP in general.

WoW is PvP lite. I personally multibox because it is actually challenging.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mercbeast

You don't have to be good at games to be good at WoW. I play WoW because it is polished and there is nothing else out on the market currently worth playing. Achieving high level PvP status in WoW means absolutely nothing to me. I've run into "elite" WoW guilds in other games. In the past 6 years of facerolling these guys in other games, what I have come to realize, is that skill!=treadmilling. Achieving anything in WoW is not about inherent player skill, it is about chasing a carrot. It is a relationship where time invested + above average competence = success. That is what you meant right, high level wow PvP, not high level PvP in general.

WoW is PvP lite. I personally multibox because it is actually challenging.

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Probably enough of the off topic stuff; would be a shame to have such an awesome thread locked due to petty behaviour from a couple of decent contributors.

With regards to the comp itself, I have achieved some improvement myself over the last week with the 4DK + priest version. I still find the priest gets locked down and taken out first, but I have gotten better at having 1-2 targets down during this situation. This has been due to a few things.

1. My priest last a bit longer now, have gotten up to almost 2k resil and have led the DKs to thebattle and actually stayed mounted initially to dodge attackers whilst the DKs dismount and unleash frosty hell. I'm also better at using Guardian spirit pre-emptively and getting all of my preheals off in time.

2. I have not changed the DKs setup at all, they have roughly 500 extra AP on what they had and about 2k resil each but still plugging away with the CoC weapons. What I think has made a significant difference is building up a decent amount of Spell Pen (150 on each) to increase the effectiveness of my frost damage.

In response to Mosg2's idea of priests being a superior offensive healer due to Mass Dispel, I find that this is often not the case. The level to which I am locked down and defensively healing or being stunned means that I will only get off MD maybe 25% of the time.

Looking at the vids of Mokoi's I think the way the pally draws initial fire, then takes a few seconds for them to switch off after bubbling then back afterwards is much more effective for defensive healing in this comp. Considering the way the priest gets universally targeted and burned I have considered even becoming shadow just to improve my surviviability during the initial burst. Shadow form + dispersion is the most effective means of damage reduction priests have available, plus I have the horrify CC for my first dps target. I think this is another pro that the pally has over the priest, Hammer of Justice is nice just to slow your first dps target enough to cop a significant amount of melee damage.

Anyway, a bit more to think about for the comp for now, I'm sure things will only continue to improve with better gear and whilst 4.0.6 will likely reduce the DK effectiveness a bit, the priest changes will hopefully make me stronger.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noids

Probably enough of the off topic stuff; would be a shame to have such an awesome thread locked due to petty behaviour from a couple of decent contributors.

With regards to the comp itself, I have achieved some improvement myself over the last week with the 4DK + priest version. I still find the priest gets locked down and taken out first, but I have gotten better at having 1-2 targets down during this situation. This has been due to a few things.

1. My priest last a bit longer now, have gotten up to almost 2k resil and have led the DKs to thebattle and actually stayed mounted initially to dodge attackers whilst the DKs dismount and unleash frosty hell. I'm also better at using Guardian spirit pre-emptively and getting all of my preheals off in time.

2. I have not changed the DKs setup at all, they have roughly 500 extra AP on what they had and about 2k resil each but still plugging away with the CoC weapons. What I think has made a significant difference is building up a decent amount of Spell Pen (150 on each) to increase the effectiveness of my frost damage.

In response to Mosg2's idea of priests being a superior offensive healer due to Mass Dispel, I find that this is often not the case. The level to which I am locked down and defensively healing or being stunned means that I will only get off MD maybe 25% of the time.

Looking at the vids of Mokoi's I think the way the pally draws initial fire, then takes a few seconds for them to switch off after bubbling then back afterwards is much more effective for defensive healing in this comp. Considering the way the priest gets universally targeted and burned I have considered even becoming shadow just to improve my surviviability during the initial burst. Shadow form + dispersion is the most effective means of damage reduction priests have available, plus I have the horrify CC for my first dps target. I think this is another pro that the pally has over the priest, Hammer of Justice is nice just to slow your first dps target enough to cop a significant amount of melee damage.

Anyway, a bit more to think about for the comp for now, I'm sure things will only continue to improve with better gear and whilst 4.0.6 will likely reduce the DK effectiveness a bit, the priest changes will hopefully make me stronger.

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The amount of healing that priests do NEXT patch is why, their pre-emptive healing with pw:s is equal to about 20k in pvp gear per toon. You are also healing as holy where as we are talking about disc healing and the use of resil (3k+) and pain suppression (which can be done during a stun) is equal to ~80% damage reduction for 8 seconds, where the paladin (if dispelled) is much less than that with bubble though it is 100%. Priests also have two instant cast pre-emptive heals in renew + pw:s, a flash heal equiv that also heals themself for equal healing, pennance, life grip, power word: barrier for hairy situations, AOE fear to force trinkets, 16% damage reduction in total when you take damage equal to 10% of your HP and last but not least you have inspiration for 10% damage reduction after a crit plus desperate prayer for a big heal on yourself instantly when you need it.

The priest has as much as a paladin does minus the holy radiance but has mass dispell which makes all targets good targets.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shodokan

MOSG has vids on most of that stuff and he plays worgen now.

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http://www.justin.tv/mosg2/b/275194639

That video cuts off at 10:03.

Is there another video where Mogs2 continues with his set up? I've watch the one where he discovers how suck Archaeology is, the other recent BG match, and the first narrated intro to the comp.

Theres no step by step guide really, just ideas to get you started.

Pain Suppression not being dispellable.
Can cast it, even when stunned.
That is looking pretty good.

And the boosts to the PW: Shield will help too.

I really like the Mass Dispel capability.
But we might need a lot of resilience from gear, before that is a factor.

I run this combo with a priest healer also. I'm still tweaking a lot of things and figuring out how to play certain maps still. he has roughly 3200 resil and about 124k hp's during a match. He's gemmed/outfitted for stam/ resil. He survives okay, but not when focuesed by 4 dps for sure. I also play him as holy for the 21 seconds of free heals which is way better than a 10 second bubble that can be removed. Once the change to desperate prayer comes in, that will be a huge buff. I tend to find i'm either going to win or lose and the type of healer hasnt' made a huge difference in my mind yet. I do find that 90% of the teams go for my priest first so a lot of times i end up kiting them on my mount while the dk's pwn. A lot of high level teams tend to go for the dk's first for some reason. They have crazy dps and the dk drops seriously fast. I'm still setting up my defensive cooldowns for them so we'll see how this week goes. I get the conc weaps this week, so should be big boost there. I love mass dispel when I can get it off, but it can definitely be tough. I get it off a lot when there's only 3 opponents left or so, but it's tough when 5 are alive.
the fear is pretty handy, but it gets trinketed pretty quick generally.

Them trinketing your fear means you get a full duration Strangualate and/or leap/Gnaw combo. C-C-C-C-C-C-Combo!

The power word shield change is going to be very big for the priests.

I played holy paladin a bit. Facing multiple targets (2-3melees), you simply get 8 second of free healing. You can spamm a couple FOL + WOG + Holy Shock. That's about it. Outside of bubble, don't really have much. Can only heal with Holy Shock + WOG.

During 8 second bubble time, the heal per second is about 20k-25k / s. So about 200k heals as output for healing. The target you are healing should not die during that time. After that, you either can't cast anymore, so your HPS drop to like 6k/s. or after a couple more FOL, you will be OOM. So better make something happen during bubble.

If Death's Advance goes live as it is on the test realm then Unholy is going to be the best spec, hands down. Can't be slowed below 100% movement speed? Thank you.

After a gruesome honor grind over the weekend, I did some arena matches with my Holy + 4 dks team. They are not too geared yet, but do have 4 piece pvp set. The rest are mixed quest greens.

Now that I have both teams, I can finally draw some real comparisons between dk + rets and holy + dks.

• Necrotic Strike + Howling Blast. Without a ton of gear, Necrotic Strike is the only reason my targets fall. Not only does it stack amoung DKs, it also stacks with itself. As a single DK, you strike once it abosrbs 7k. You strike again before the debuff end. The debuff will show abosrbing incoming heals for 14k. and You can keep refreshing. To confirm this, simply mouse over the debuff after you necrotic strike twice on the target. During the arena match, the only reason I killed anyone is because of necrotic strike. My target jumps around and dies slowly due to no heal. So you would think if my target always have no heal then I should kill them all the time, right ? Not really.

The problem is that It takes me too long to peel off the 120k hp. and I get kited around too much where the only



real damage output is Howling Blast. As Kromtor said, 3k HB is killing no one.

• Holy paladin heal is ok. I don't really have a priest to compare. But paladin feels alright with the team. The only thing is to bubble early and pray it doesn't get stripped. But still, at least I get to bubble. For a priest, even with all the good tools from the priest, 1 stun => slience, you die. I don't think the other team would just let the priest free cast. Mass dispel ? I don't even have time to cast flash of light without bubble. All I get are holy shock, and WOG. Then I just drop dead. a note on WOG, the only real difference between Retribution's and Holy's WOG is Holy has a talent to crit 60% when using WOG on target below 35% hp. The amount healed is about the same. 15k non crit, given that Ret's WOG used on someone else. 1 single 15k is nothing in 5 v 5 arena. Without FOL spam, holy paladin is near useless.
• I am thinking to switch 1 DK to unholy for 8% spell buff. and frenzy (maybe even 2 unholy)

DK + rets are not in a better position. But the play style is a little different. First, you lead with DK. so at least you have some control over where you are going. The rets have ok burst with wings. So in an arena match that only lasts 2mins, Rets are not too bad. I can't say it is better than the DKs simply because of necrotic strike stacking.

and IMO, having 1 healer is almost like having no healer since this one healer just gets pwned every time. 2 healers + 3 DKs, for the endurance (relatively longer) match, and kill people with NS stacking. 2 healers would be spamming heals and dispels. Something like holy paladin + restore shaman.

With upcoming buff to retribution, and minor nerf on the dks, its hard to say where they will be after the change. But both teams have potentials. Not to glad of course as I previously said, but 2200 may be within reach.