5v5: thoughts on S4 and dealing wtih "The Super Fast Rush"

[kidvid]

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.

Tokov

[Mendicant]

DISCLAIMER: Notaexpert.


Some things stick out:
Tremor totems... you need to watch and make sure they aren't being taken down, re-apply them if necessary
Pain suppression... could have been purged. Even with resistance to dispel, 4x purge should take it off easily.
If they were up on your team, 4x fire nova totems should have done a nice chunk of damage to all of them.
Why was the shaman your DPS target? While his dps could be good and ES annoying, but it seems like there may have been better targets. So I hear, part of the key to MB burst DPS is that you can change targets instantly. Perhaps since they knew your teammate was targeting the shaman, he could have quick switched to another target with a quick burst before they realize to switch heal targets.

[Kicksome]

1st off - they start getting in and out of range ice lancing - mass dispelling - cl'ing me. running in and out of range. It's tough to see when they are really going to rush. I keep putting my totems back down

2nd - they all rush - warrior comes in and does ground stomp. (while the shaman just bloodlusted everyone)

3rd - warriors fears (my group get scattered for less than 1 second but f's up my casts)

4th - I go for the shaman - he gets pain sup.

5th - I go for the priest - one of my guys is already dead.


tremor totems where down but if they took 1 or 2 out it's still a 1 sec fear - it's not like we ran around feared for 6 seconds - it was 1 second max.
out of that team - shaman isn't a bad target imo. warrior was running circles around the group with the priest mass dispelling. after the shaman got PS I went for the priest to get him out of there - but by that time one of my guys was already dead.

[Drizzit]

I am pretty sure that Ellay did a really good write up on what to kill first and why. Sometimes it wasn't the healer.

[Tehtsuo]

I am pretty sure that Ellay did a really good write up on what to kill first and why. Sometimes it wasn't the healer.

In almost all cases it isn't the healer. That's the direction burst groups like 4 shaman teams take you. The premise is that your opponent shouldn't be able to heal through your damage, not that you can outdamage them over time. This especially becomes even more the case when you come up against healers that are more durable than usual. I'm in the high 1500s, and I'm hoping things start to sort out next week. Right now I can't get past the full season 3 teams I keep coming across - got soundly spanked by a team 4 times that had a priest who ran at me. I didn't see any reason not to unload on him, and got a nasty surprise when my 4 EM NS chain lightnings didn't even take down his shield! (And before a ton of people say it, yes I need to learn to purge. lol) :cursing:

I hate that I have to play against teams that outgear me that badly right now.

[kidvid]

Tehtsuo:
Yea, I totally feel your pain. S3 teams EVERYWHERE right now, even in the lowest bracket. I've even seen near-full S3 teams in the high 1400s!

Drizzit:
To be fair if you do a search on this form for the word "rush," you'll get 10 hits and half of those hits are for this thread or a thread about AV. I remember Ellay writing that he usually targets the mage first, as they're usually the hardest hitter, and maybe he would do the same if we was getting rushed by their entire team. I don't know.

Having said that, if the entire enemy team is rushing you all at once, I have a feeling that our normal strategy has to change. One of them HAS to go down during the rush, if they're well geared, or there will be big problems.

There are two things going on as far as I can tell: One is a problem of awareness - identify the rush as soon as it's happening so we have time to properly switch from our target to a new target. That's something we'll get better at as we play more games and get more experience. No doubt, we have a lot of room to improve in this area. However, even if we do that perfectly, we run into the next problem - during a rush we have to get someone down ASAP, and in this situation, it might or might not make sense to blow the instant-crit talent earlier, in a riskier manner. Any suggestions?

[Ellay]

Priests overall are generally a bad target because they are able to mitigate so much damage via their passive defensive skills and pain suppression mixed in with it.
If someone rushes you need to be prepared already with your totems in place and push back at them as much firepower as they are giving to you.

Classic anime portrayal where 2 enemies charge all their energy into 1 punch and both swing at the same time.

If the team is insanely geared though it will have to be a burst / defense / burst / defense. Meaning pick the target you feel you can kill the easiest (needs to be DPS) and attempt to drop it with your combo. If you do not kill him with the combo give up and switch to heals, once your topped off try again. The target/kill switches need to be precise and fast. This method is also very mana intensive and if you don't drop anything within about 30-45 seconds you're probably out of mana.

[kidvid]

This is some really good stuff! The attack/defense/attack/defense is something new to me that I don't remember you talking about in this way before. We need to practice this in EOTS and a bit and see how it works.

Ellay, how do you handle your targeting for quick kill-switching? -- Nevermind. I found a post you made in April 18th, confirming that you're still using Focus as a way to switch targets.

Right now, we're clicking on Proximo and switching targets, so we need to work on a more efficient way to making a very quick switch for the kill.

[Ellay]

Ya I use focus to quickly swap to my intended target or tab if it is something else and they are close.

I think I'm going to have to do a Braindump of all my information and store it in the wiki so everyone can have easy access =D

[Alemi]

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