5v5: thoughts on S4 and dealing wtih "The Super Fast Rush"
Note: I'm only the healer for the quad-box shaman team, but I frequent these forums a lot in search of new ideas that will help us improve.
On a side note, how is everyone liking S4 so far?
Our team has had a helluva time trying to break 1600. Every time we get to around 1625, we lose a couple of games to extremely well geared (s3 shoulders + s3 weapon + couple pieces S4) teams before climbing our way back up. However, that's not to say that we haven't won any games against full S3 teams. We wouldn't have hit 1600 if we hadn't. Right now it seems like there's a hole in the ratings. We seem to either play teams under 1600 (probably having been beaten down so much), or around 1680 to 1700, but there don't seem to be many in-between teams that are equally geared matches for us.
You can see our team here: http://www.wowarmory.com/team-info.x...=Hogans+Heroes
One thing I've noticed about the teams that destroy us the quickest is that they toy around with us for a couple of minutes, before rushing us and completely destroying us in a matter of seconds. Even if the shamans all had an average spell dmg of over 1k dmg (instead of in the low 900s), I'm sure we still would have lost to these types of teams, using our current tactics.
As an example of a match I'm still scratching my head over, last night we faced a very well geared team consisting of: holy pally, disc priest, MS warrior, Shaman (spec ?), and frost mage. The map was RoL.
This is what happened during the first 15 seconds or so:
1) Everyone mounted up on top of the middle tomb.
2) They charged us and dismounted shortly after jumping off the tomb, when they were in range.
3) Our shamans immediately went for their shaman and got him down to 50%. The priest immediately buffed him with Pain Suppression.
4) As they were just a couple of yards away from us, the priest started to spam Mass Dispel, over and over. I've never seen anything like it. Our shamans used up all four heroisms, to no real effect.
5) Somewhere during this confusion I tried to HOJ the priest, but he either quickly trinketed out or it resisted (which is much too common IMHO).
6) The mage must have ice-lanced the tremor totems because the warrior's fear sent us flailing about for a few seconds, before we had a chance to put down new totems.
7) By this point, it was pretty much over, however, as we weren't in control and shamans were going down left and right.
It seems to me with a team like this, if we don't take someone down in the first few seconds of the rush, then it's game over.
My question is: What's the best way to do that using an instant-crit spec? I know that Ellay advocates saving the crit until you're certain you can kill someone, but I'm wondering if this might not apply during this type of rush. Also, for type of rush with a very experienced team, they also probably know we would be going after the shaman or mage first, so that leads me to my next question: What type of targeting strategy should we have used?
I'm sure the team we played will easily hit 2k and beyond, so I don't feel bad that we lost, but I'm trying to learn something from this ass-beating. :D
Tokov
RE: 5v5: thoughts on S4 and dealing wtih "The Super Fast Rush"
Quote:
Originally Posted by 'kidvid',index.php?page=Thread&postID=81145#post81 145
It seems to me with a team like this, if we don't take someone down in the first few seconds of the rush, then it's game over.
Against this setup, I generally find that trying to down a dps fast, usually results in a loss for me and this is one of the few times, I'm happy to have a holy priest as my healer.
Against this team, I generally do not instant fire at a dps (i would suspect it was an elemental shaman on their side, as that is the most common setup I see elemental shaman, frost mage, ms warrior, holy paladin, disc priest). For one, the MS warrior I find is a horrible target first - most good warriors (and it sounds like this team would be considered good) will just hit their board/sword & spell reflect macro (which will reflect a full volley back at ya) and intervene on one of their healers to stop from dying until fully healed and charge back in. I'll wait for the warrior to charge, purge him, drop nova, switch to the MAGE and purge (at this point he's PROBABLY got a heroism + icy veins = insane casting speed) to get rid of all his armor/buffs, then switch to the disc priest because he's going to do one of two things a) mass dispel spam you to get rid of your bloodlusts, or b) mana burn the hell out of your healer. I find, that it is imperative to make him burn his pain supression on himself and go defensive. So, I'll throw a bloodlust and start the LB spam, once he pulls back out of range, your grounding totems should be all gone from eating the water elemental/mage/shaman casts. Reground asap to stop polys.
I cannot emphasize how important purge is against a team like this - especially for me because if there are no other buffs to dispel, mass dispel will always grab an IB or BOP.
Then, I'll take out their water elemental to either have the mage burn cold snap (without using his IB first) because those damn things burn through my groundings. Then force the warrior off, and this frees up my healer for a bit and then go after the shaman, who's the only dps on their team with no easy outs.
Once that's done, I'll switch to the mage, force him to iceblock. Which I'll get mass dispelled off, and kill him. Without mass dispel, I'd just force him defensive or just go after the warrior.
This setup is particularly easy for me since my healer will just mass dispel off their heroism/bloodlust and he'll take care of dispelling any frost novas/freezes I get to prevent the addition crit damage from the frost mage. And in Lord in particular, he's quite adept at LoSing casters. It's the melee teams that tear him up.
We fought this setup in all S3 when I was only in S1 and it turned out well, but it wasn't a cakewalk, nor was it quick. It was probably one of our longer matches.
Oh, and if there's a shaman with any other melee - look to see what air totem he's dropping and take out their freaking windfury totem because giving an ms warrior windfury freely is just horrible :)
