New low in PvP

[Multibocks]

So my 4 Dk 1 Priest team had a new low today. There wasn't a single 85 out there that could kill us, except for the DK I met today. He would kill my priest in about 5 secs ( I shit you not). And then my whole DK team. His resilience must have been sky high, because I wouldn't get him to 20-30% until at least two guys were dead. He would then death strike back up to half health.

I imagine it's because my team has low resilience, but it pissed me off to no end that my DKs have some pretty darn good pve stuff and we couldn't burst him down before my priest got whacked (I even used pain suppression on priest and defensive cooldowns on my DKs).

One 85 should not be able to tool a group of 85s and I think resilience has gotten too good. However I take joy in the fact that come Tuesday I'll have a good chance of killing this asshole. Howling Blast nerf hurts me, but it hurts him more.

edit: this was world pvp and I don't gank. the guy smoked me everytime he saw us.

[daanji]

I've had similar experiences on my PvE Paladin and 4x Shaman Team.

Each toon is level 85 with at least iLevel 346. I've done lots of PvP and smoke everyone I come across.

A feral druid would pop out of no where, blow all his cool downs on one of my toons get him down to 1/2 health to disappear. By the time I responded the druid was gone and my toon was almost dead due to DOTs.

I'd start rezzing the fallen toon only to have the druid pop out again. My whole team died like this.

He kept at this for 1 + hour until I left the area.

[Zub]

lol they must have had a blast.

[Firstcow]

This is impossible. I've never had any single character no matter how geared get any one of my guys even to half health before he was dead. Do you have vicious gladiator weapon?
My healer is paladin though so he might be a little more resilient than a priest especially against melees.

[Mokoi]

first, never ever let a DK go to town on your priest, that's why you have death grip and hungering cold..

Keep your DKs away from your priest when fighting melee. you have 4x more things to slow him than him you.

it doesn't come down to gear, it ALWAYS comes down to skill, and skill will always trump gear. doesn't matter what you are wearing, you have better combined gear than him, and he had more skill. you will get better at running your team in ways that are not so point-and-shoot

[remanz]

What spec is this dk. Unholy ? At 4k reslience, stuff is really tough to kill. Even with 5 guys melee zerging, it still takes a while to kill. Especially DK/Rogue, those two can survive for a long time.

and gear does make a difference. Not the only factor, but it is one of the factors. We are not frost mage who runs around being unkillable in PVE gear. Melees need pvp gear. As for boxing skills,

It ultimately breaks down to 2 parts:

1. the setup and 2. awareness and reaction time

The 2nd one is hard to get. It takes a lot of practice, OR even talent. The first one (setup) should be achievable for everyone. i.e. For a case like 5 v 1, simply put all your defensive CD into your dps spam, even Hungering Cold round-robin, you will beat him. No way he can kill you if you used up all your cool downs. Since the stuff are all in your dps spam, even if you panic and only hit the dps key. It should still be enough to kill him.

[Multibocks]

Well they are Frost DKs when I am doing my dailies. When I do PvE they are unholy. What do you do for a DK that blows anti-magic at start? I can't fear him, I can't tank him and I can't slow him. I pretty much die on my priest. Then he goes to town on my 4 DKs, at this point unholy would probably be better against him, since frost isn't very good dps single target.

Oh and none of my DKs have a gladiator weapon as I have never stepped foot in arenas. Honestly I dont even know where to start... Do I have to get 5 wins for points that week? That pretty much means I will never do arenas. 339 BoE PvP gear and some 352 will never beat whats out there now. I just bought 346 weapons from the TB vendor and my dps didnt change much from the 333 weapons they had before. Was kind of disappointing.

As it stands now my DKs have only 1-1.5k resilience and my priest maybe 500. I just havent spent much time farming honor, because its a soul draining pain in the ass.

[Multibocks]

Keep your DKs away from your priest when fighting melee. you have 4x more things to slow him than him you.

This is a problem in world PvP, you can't always be ready for the next attack when you are concentrating on looting that stupid crocodile you just killed or picking up that scrap. Once he's in range of DG it's over for my priest.

[ElectronDF]

If he killed you once, using anti-magic, he got the CD jump on you, but about .5 secs after that fight, you should spec 1-4 people in anti-magic shell (the big one) from unholy. Use his tactics against you. He comes up, attacks your priest, have a Oh-Crap button, of trinket (or human) and dispersion. Your DKs will break follow when they melee and run like a little girl with your priest. Then come up with a defensive button for everyone, 2 DKs use plague strike (with desicration-the ground slowing thing), 1 do CoI (chains of ice) and 1 does DG (death grip). Meanwhile you priest puts a bubble up and burns a crappy potion (like a lvl 65 one probably 2200 health or so, not much, but should be free after having them left over or can make them with herbs left over).

Not saying it is perfect, of course you will run into things that can kill you, just saying use defense to counter his offense if you can't burst him down. They want burst to be less effective, so use defense instead. My PVP motto is when they use a CD, I use a CD.

One thing my priest and lock team (they are my squishiest in WotLK), I kept 2 stacks of worg food on me for human tracking. It is fun as hell seeing a person show up on my mini-map, show up on my SPY or STALKER addon and then target them the last second, and load them up on DOTs before they even hit the ground. Invest in some world PVP stuff (food, addon, etc).

Non-boxers love to go after the char in front, pretty much no matter what. Especially if that person has a dress on. It might be weird, but see if you can put a tunic and pants on them and make them follow more than lead (if your setup lets you). Having plate person take the first few hits before they see the person with mana out there, might buy you some time. Maybe (not sure about race), a NE shadowmeld might screw with thier strategy. Or a BE AOE silence (not sure if that is a spell for his anti-magic).

I admit, I am not great at keeping melee of my priest in my lock group, but I use my pets as grenades, and love it. Having a pet chew on you for 50 yards until you get close enough to attack me, is fun. So maybe unholy ghouls might help a little with their stun (put it on manual and round-robin), not sure if that is considered a spell with his anti-magic. Think of like tenacity. All the HP and DPS in the world meant nothing if you were CCd. Find a way to counter his first few seconds of anti-magic and then CoI, DG and desicration his ass for years. And see if CD vs CD helps any. He DGs you after your priest gets away, fear him. He CoI you to slow you down, have dispel @player in your defensive moves early. He sends his pet on you to stun you, use your DKs to stun right back.

Over all, watch what he does to you and use rock/paper/scissors to counter that and try to hold on so your priest can get away.

[Noids]

We all know gear makes a difference, I think what Mokoi means is that we have 5 x the gear against a single toon to start with though.

I run my priest as holy and I honestly think this is a much better spec for PvP for us. I know disc is the traditional PvP priest build but holy has some nice things for us. It improves our AoE heals, instant renews and still has decent shields.

The best thing about holy are the defensive cooldowns. Pain suppression is nice but I like Guardian Spirit better. I have actually used this and had teams focus my priest, think it was dead, only to focus off and have him escape once the 50% heal comes through. If it stays active it's full duration, the extra healing is pretty amazing but I reckon the best value is to get that free 50% heal at 7s duration rather than be left with only 10% left and have the buff expire.

Without resilience your priest will die regardless of what you do in a lot of situations though. In this case again holy comes up trumps because even when dead you can spam heal your DKs while they avenge your death for a further 15 seconds. This is gold in arena and is the closest thing priests have to the pally bubble IMO.

Aside from the builds you probably do need to look at what defensive action you can take with your priest. When I attack groups, I tend to stay mounted on the priest if possible and ride around kiting while the DKs wreak havoc. If you are ganked then pop your instant heals then trinket/racial any snares off and pop shield. In holy spec shield gives you 4s of sprint which again is nice against melee. My priest is dwarf which will be nice in next path for 10% damage reduction on stoneform as well as shedding diseases, poisons, bleeds.

You should get used to having your healer getting focussed, do what you can to make him as hard as possible to kill and you're good. Saying that DKs are one of the hardest classes for multiboxed frost DKs to kill. The same cooldowns which make us a great team are used against us to negate a major portion of our damage and death strike is a pretty awesome skill to be able to pull out when you need it. This will be the case even moreso in 4.0.6 and might even be something worth looking at to add some extra durability to the comp.