[DK+4xRet] Freshies and Arena Strat

[outdrsyguy1]

I completely disagree about using SoC. Using it in arena at low to even medium gear levels is a mistake. You are going for burst damage, splash is irrelevant most times. Look at the judgement damage between the 2 spells, one crits in the 2.5k range and the other nearly 5k range. multiply that by 4 and you'll find that you will actually burst down targets significantly easier with righousness. SoC is great for bg's because people don't heal that much and there are swarms but arena's they will just step away and cc you or get healed. I'm not pro by any means and i've only just started focusing on arena's but i did manage to break 1400 last week with all 219 weaps (except one 232). If a healer is actively healing your target your not really going to be able to take them down before you lose a guy. Your not going to make them have to chose who to heal and then kill the other.

I'd also suggest not wearing any pve gear for arena's, the difference between a few pve pieces and all pvp is very noticable in my opinion.

Always be rotating divine sacrifice with bubbles, even in bg's if there's more than about 2 opponents. It's 50% damage reduction for 6 seconds and 30% for the next 4 so it's HUGE. I've found it's insanely more effective to pop that first rather than wings on all. They also go for my dk like 90%+ of the time so I keep him in frost. Dk damage is terrible compared to the pallies imo so the difference between frost and any other stance is marginal. Having him survive so your pallies aren't kited to death is big.

I hope some of your guys are blood elf, the aoe silence is awesome. It even stops ret pallies from using skills for 2 seconds so it's great for more than just typical casters. Open up on a priest with aoe silence then stun just under 2 seconds later and you'll get that kill before they can blow the aoe fear.

I personally geared up pve first but regretted spending the marks on it rather than on furious. I geared up more in bg's and weekly 10 arena matches so the resilience makes a difference.

Do daily bg's every day (you'll need the honor, trust me), do all wg quests every week (used to be able to do them 2 times a week,tuesday then like sat or later but doesn't seem to work any more), do one daily random heroic, you want to get that 264 trinket for the pallies, it's a lot of extra dps over that terrrible arena trinket. I never did Voa but if you have time to run each of your guys through go for it. It's just really tough to get in one with crappy gear and no achievement and when you factor in random fail and loot not being for your class I just didn't think it was worth it.

Hilts are coming down in price, i bought one yesterday for 5.5k which is like 5 hours of daily's for me and well worth it if you can find em cheap.

just my 2 cents, take what you want from it! I love playing the dk/pally team. It's so much more fun than shammy team in my opinion. Not having to cast and be facing the right direction after blinds/fears/death coil's etc and not having to be constantly raped by whirlwind and other melee is a nice breath of fresh air.

[Boylston]

I completely disagree about using SoC. Using it in arena at low to even medium gear levels is a mistake. You are going for burst damage, splash is irrelevant most times. Look at the judgement damage between the 2 spells, one crits in the 2.5k range and the other nearly 5k range. multiply that by 4 and you'll find that you will actually burst down targets significantly easier with righousness. SoC is great for bg's because people don't heal that much and there are swarms but arena's they will just step away and cc you or get healed. I'm not pro by any means and i've only just started focusing on arena's but i did manage to break 1400 last week with all 219 weaps (except one 232). If a healer is actively healing your target your not really going to be able to take them down before you lose a guy. Your not going to make them have to chose who to heal and then kill the other.

You guys have me flip-flopping. I think I will have to try out SoR some. One thing I dislike is that I use basically one spec on my Pallies for both PvE and PvP and I think this would force me into giving up Glyph of SoC, which is handy for PvE.

SoR benefits from the 5pt Holy talent Seals of the Pure (+15% dmg), but I don't think I can afford to spend points there...


A couple other random comments based off your post, outdrsyguy1:

Gearing: I bootstrapped myself with a couple PvE items, but I've basically been doing 344 arena points/week + honor farming to buy PvP gear ever since the first couple weeks passed. The pallies are all basically in 800-850 resilience range-- I have legs left to replace (some Savage Saronite or L200 PvE stuff on them, yuck!) with arena points next tuesday, a necklace slot to upgrade with honor, and then some L245 PvE rings to replace with PvP stuff after that.

I am pretty good about DSac+Bubble usage, and have to admit that it's very nice. I tend to worry in arena about whether I should do it in advance of the fight or once the fight begins. I am leaning towards trying to get the first one going before I engage.

I had a revelation last night that I hadn't been using Righteous Fury in PvP at all, even though the team is talented to get the 6% damage resistance. DOH!! Talk about fail... that's now fixed!

Since I'm horde, all my pallies are BElfs. I am re-writing some keybinds/macros so that I have better usage of this silence. It's an area I need to improve upon. My DK happens to be troll (I made him a long time ago), but I will probably be changing him to BElf as well so that the team is consistent and as small as possible. I'll probably have a keybind for the 4 pallies to rotate through casting silence and leave the DK's available for a mouse click. This doesn't consume a GCD, right?

I have a macroed /cast [target=arena1..4] Repentance on all pallies, but I am not sure that I am getting the best usage out of this. I am interleaving stuns in my default kill sequence, so basically my guys fire off stuns periodically as I start the DPS sequence. This may not be ideal, but it works for PvE well and it's one less thing to try to micro-manage for arena. I may pull 1-2 of the guys out of this rotation so that their stun stays available until mid-fight.

Considering blowing Hand of Freedom proactively at the beginning of a fight instead of waiting to get rooted/snared/etc. Would love to hear your thoughts on this...



Anyhow, a lot to do and the first few seconds of arena go by fast.

[outdrsyguy1]

let me know what you think about rightousness vs soc.

i find that if i don't blow divine sac as fight starts, within about 5 seconds somone is at half health or lower and without a dedicated healer they are going to go down shortly thereafter. If you time your silences and stuns well though and don't end up getting fear bombed 2 times in a row it's very likely you'll kill your target even though one of your pallies is doing 50% damage.

and yes, it's a hell of a lot to do within about 6 seconds. don't forget you have cleanes and stuff you can use too so it's rather hectic.

[Mosg2]

I also completely disagree with Shodokan about SoC vs SoR. SoC just does not put out enough pressure against any decent healer.

[heyaz]

soc is ok for splash damage on other targets but try SoR vs SoC on a single target and see the difference. SoC is incredibly gimp on single target. SoR rips people in half - outside of arena situations its an instant kill, in arenas its 1-2 globals. Switch to SoC and you'll get down to auto-attack swaming and they're still alive

[Zugdud]

When you are comparing SoR to SoC, also keep in mind that a judgement with SoR will also proc a seal on the target while a judgement with SoC does not. So in addition to SoR judgements dealing about 2-2.5x more damage, there is an additional 1,000 or so damage delt from a seal hit as well.

The seal hits from SoR will be slightly less damaging then SoC hits, and SoR seal hits can not crit, however SoR seal hits do not have the possibility to be dodge/block/parried while SoC seal hits can be

[Mystic]

Heyaz speaks the truth about SoR vs SoC (PVP only of course).

I used to be lazy about twisting them and just kept SoC up all the time, but then watched Heyaz on livestream a few weeks ago rip through his opponents about 2-3 times faster than me, and him not much better geared than my team.

I switched to SoR (twisting to SoC when it is rarely more efficient) and now I kill cloth instantly, and 35k+ plate in about 3-4 seconds max (sometimes near instant if Darkmoon: Death procs and I also pop pyros). I have 2-pc T-10 for the almost non-stop spamming of Diviine Storm, which does a good job of keeping AoE damage, largely negating the need for SoC. If I get 6+ melee opponents lynch-mob on me however I twist to SoC, because it takes them down much faster than going one by one. This is in BGs, and SoC is especially effective if you get a cluster on you beause there are hardly ever any heals given to those you are AoEing.

In Arena, I have little play time, but I can definitely say that from my limited experience there, against a good team, SoC will just get you laughed at as they keep their distance, totally spread out from each other, CC you, and easily out-heal your SoC on anyone hit. With SoR, you have a good chance of taking your mark out in spite of the heals, espcially if you pop pyros and Darkmoon : Death procs. Between the latter two that's around 16k (avg) damage additional burst.

Use SoC if you are against a noob arena team who likes to stick together, especially if they pillar cluster-hump. Run in, glue them to the ground with glyphed Hungering Cold, with 2-pc T-10 spammable DS and SoC, you will kill one or two easily, as they cannot move away quick enough and the healer cannot heal everyone. For those that get away, twist to SoR and pursue them one by one. Again my arena time is minimal but when they are glued (and then slowed) and you are AoE'ing the ever-loving crap out of them, there is no healing done at all, as everyone including the healers are just trying to get away. This tactic usually only works a couple of times against a given team, and they then know to stay pretty spread out, and then you will use SoR and throw SoC to the curb.

[Boylston]

Updates:

I'm definitely prioritizing Engineering x 4 and Weapons Farming for the team to increase burst DPS on the initial kill. Two 232 and three 219 weapons just aren't cutting it.

SoR vs. SoC was tried out extensively over the weekend. Honestly, one can feel the extra initial burst of SoR, but the SoC splash damage has its place as well. Two fights where I squeezed out a victory were made possible only because there was a lot of DPS from SoC that helped kill the second and third players in the match. I'm sticking with SoR for now, but I think the points that have been made about SoR not putting enough healing pressure are valid with higher ranked teams.

My matchmaking rating is up at 1200 or so, even though I'm only actually rated 700ish. I faced a nice stream of 1200-1600 teams over the weekend and really struggled as a result. I think it's good news overall, since I won't be wasting practice against totally pathetic teams where technique doesn't matter.

FIrst target selection continues to frustrate me. Combined with lower burst than I want, too many classes can survive or disrupt my team before the first big healing response comes. Ignoring classes and going for someone "out of position" seems to work best. Timing of strangulate is key.... miss it and there's a bubble/iceblock/thunderstorm/howling terror/etc and I might as well leave the arena instantly.

I get a big leg upgrade tomorrow, but I clearly need to address the weaponry issue before I will be more successful. Having fun, but it's annoying that you can't get a badge/arena point weapon...

[Zappy]

Since I'm horde, all my pallies are BElfs. I am re-writing some keybinds/macros so that I have better usage of this silence. It's an area I need to improve upon. My DK happens to be troll (I made him a long time ago), but I will probably be changing him to BElf as well so that the team is consistent and as small as possible. I'll probably have a keybind for the 4 pallies to rotate through casting silence and leave the DK's available for a mouse click. This doesn't consume a GCD, right?

I'm not sure which broadcasting software you use, but as long as it supports round robin keystrokes, you don't even need to waste a special macro for it. Simply hit your arcane torrent key while dpsing or anything, so long as you aren't stunned or silences, and it'll fire off nicely without triggering a GCD.

[TeamGrizzly]

Seems lots of folks are getting good progress in aneras with their DK/4 rets teams. I am still losing all matches. The seldom wins I get are against teams that exit anera b4 the match starts.. Can't seem to burst down any target even though my team are all over 5K gear score. How do U guys do it so easily