Stuck... 2v2 and 3v3

[Septer]

Sin Rogue here looking for some helpful advice from the PVPers here at MMO champion. I feel like in both teams we have gotten to a point where we can no longer progress. In 2s its 1600 (Rogue/Disc) and for 3s its 1500 (Rogue/Unholy DK/ Disc). Ever since we started pvp we have sort of been in the dark trying to come up with strats as we go along. I feel like our tiny amount of pvp knowledge isnt cutting it anymore. What can we do to learn and to improve? Where can I look up info on how to properly cc and macros and such? I want to be able to know what any class in the game can do. Cooldowns and such.

[Kals]

Knowing what classes can do, the cooldown on those abilities and how well they interact with each other just comes from playing the game; either playing against those abilities/classes or playing them yourself on alts. I can't give you a much info on your 3s comp, but I can tell you it's not very viable to begin with; you'll be DRing everything and your DK won't have much follow up CC after your priest's fears or your blinds.

In terms of 2s advice, I run with a rogue friend of mine on my disc to around 18-1850; just change your talents (both of you) based on the comp you're facing. For example; vs hunter/rogue about 75%+ of the time they're going to try to get a sap on you and open on your priest; meaning your priest needs to either adjust his talents accordingly or you do in order to help peel long enough for their cooldowns to expire.

Learn to coordinate your CC with your priest well. Against teams that aren't going to be sitting on your priest very often he should be specced for Dominate Mind. Make sure you're not blinding while the target is on Fear DR and vice versa, as the abilities share diminishing returns. Gladius shows this very well if you have it installed.

Make sure you know when to go for a kill or how to force cooldowns. If you managed to get someone away from their partner and in a 6s stun it's probably a good idea to smokebomb to keep their partner from helping them out at all. Get your priest to help DPS when he's not CCing or healing you; discs are good for that.

Make sure your disc is shelling you and him at the beginning of the game (or at least himself if he's sure they're going to go on him), and times when he's going to be either drinking or CCing to prevent pressure from building up too fast. After a while he should be able to figure out the proper situations where shell can shine.

Some basic arena tips period:
-If a priest or a lock is rushing towards you, 99% of the time they're going to fear; try to stop it.
-Learn what each healer's aura mastery (silence/interrupt immunity) looks like; it will keep you from wasting your kicks, and let you counter it in other ways such as gouge, fear, kidney, ect.
-Make sure you're using your survival talents. Although Elusiveness is a good talent, if you don't find yourself using Feint much when you're being trained you're better off swapping to something else.
-Change your poison per matchup. Mind Numbing is good for healers and casters who need to actually cast, paralytic is good for peeling and extra pressure; but watch what classes you use it against (nearly useless vs mages, dks, druids, rets).
-Get an addon to show when enemys trinket or use cooldowns, such as Gladius (for arena bars), Tidy Plates (for easy visibility of current cooldowns) and Icicle (for what abilities are on cooldown) until you get used to them.

Other than that it's just going to take a lot of play. After a while you'll learn what comps do what, how they do it and discover ways you can attempt to counter it. So although anyone in these forums can give you as much advice as possible, it's still going to take a lot of play time to get it down, and to make sure it's one of those "second nature" things.

I wish you luck sir.

[Deleted]

I'd recommend watching alot of streams for both your priest and you. Blazins(twitch.tv/merker1) and Hydras(twitch.tv/hydramist) streams are both good choices. Also communicate about cc and be sure to blind to force a possible trinket, if no trinket, try to get a sap off during dance when blind is about to end. Also be sure to use focus(if you don't already).
Your priest is also the key for alot of cc having both Fear and possibly mindcontrol. If you meet double dps, just be sure that you peel off your priest if they go for him, and make him use one cd at a time to survive. (He can glyph fantasm for 10% reduced damage, really good against double dps)

But most important is that you get used to playing your class, and playing with eachother. Communication is the key

[Deleted]

Very good advice here so far. I'd say watching streams helps lots aswell (RZN is streaming sometimes, I think pikaboo aswell to name a few rogues), since the streamers are often very good players and you can benefit off of their communication. You can learn HOW and WHAT they communicate, telling each other which cooldowns have been forced on the opposing team and which ones they still have themselves. You have to know what each class/spec is capable of in order to act preemtively or atleast so you are not caught by surprise. Reading through all the talent tress, playing a lot of different classes yourself and obviously personal experience from arenas and bgs can help you getting better at this. I'm playing 2s right now as ret with a rogue friend of mine, we are 1800 give or take a few points. Often times we win because we play it cool, spot enemy mistakes and capitalize on them (they trinket nothing/late, fear into cloak, bad positioning, etc). You can only do that if you know what else is in their arsenal. Good Luck!

[Fedster]

Everything mentioned above with addition of using addons like http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/gladiatorlossa. It will help you with understanding what the enemy team is up to, and reacting accordingly. Also, talking a lot will make all the difference. I've lost games beyond count just because I've had partners who were silent when they needed help or something...

[Myci]

Practice alot. Disc rogue is very good in 2s still. After each game, and during, be aware of any little mistakes. When something bad happens that stops your pressure or they get some ect. think to yourself" if i would have save my kick for that would it have been better? Should i of saved my disarm for cds? Always think of how things went, of what allowed them to win, and what you could have done differently to stop them or take advantage of them. This sounds very vague, but it just comes with lots of practice.
As far as learning try and watch alot of streams or youtube videos with rogues playing. Even watching any high rated stream will help, you can see someone of the thought processes behind what they are doing.

Also rogue/dk isnt a very good comp in 3s. If you find a good shadow priest/mage/ lock or hunter you would be alot better off

[Septer]

Thanks for the advice guys definitely helps. Now ive been playing assassination for as long as I can remember. Do you guys know where I can look for help with learning sub? Ive tried sub before but I just can't see how it out shines assassination aside from a little more control. I feel like now (especially with shadowstep not being exclusive to sub anymore) that sin can be just as good. Then again im not the best player in the world so.. What about when we playing against a heal/dps team. Should we ALWAYS CC heals and kill the dps? How does one know when the other option is the way to go?

[Deleted]

The biggest part of getting skill in pvp is (IMO) knowing all other classes/specs and all their abilities.
You need to know what class/specc X would logically do when you do Y.
You should have a good picture of what the weakness of spec X is against you,
or what their strength is against you.

Simple examples of this are:

Lets say you are facing a healer disc priest, paladin, shaman or somethng.
These each have an ability to become immune to interrupts for a few seconds, you need to know what those spells are
and how much cooldown they have and how you stop their healing even during these abilities.
You can counter these abilities with all forms of cc except interrupts/silences.
As a rogue you have an insane arsenal to do this, you can gouge/kidney/cheap/blind etc.

I could give you a hundred examples like this...

You need to know that dks have a defensive cd that makes them immune to stuns and reduces dmg,
you also need to know that alot of dks will use this wayy too offensive because they are stunned during their burst
or they just want to stop getting stunned So as a rogue, if you see a dk burst, redirect a kidney or vanish/dance
a cheap shot on him, you have a very high chance of making him waste IBF (iceboundfortitude) for that.
30 seconds later you can switch on a dk that has just lost one of his major defensive abilities...
Same goes for your cds and how a dk can counter them.
You might get his trinket and switch on him afterwards with a full kidney in a bomb and think you can score a kill.
However he will just IBF / desacrated ground and walk out of it without much harm being done.
So you need those cds too.

Rogue vs hunter/mage.. you need to know they can disengage/blink and that you can counter that with Shadowstep (if using that)
You can force blinks with a stun (or even with a simple root(shiv paralizing) vs not-so-good mages ) and then step behind them and continue without losing uptime.

When you open on a mage with a garrote then most of them will pet nova you and run away.
So open with both garrote and cheap (if playing subterfuge, else small kidney) so you get your opener off.

You need to know that any cc on a BM can be broken with bestial wrath so dont waste your blind on that before
he popped it.

You shouldnt waste cds like vanish to break some random root at some random point in the match etc.
Force a healer his trinket, or let your team force it. Then blind him full and when that is about to end vanish and sap him.

When a hunter narrowescapes you with disengage and puts a flare on top
you should know NOT to vanish (if you even can nowaydays), in that situation you can only
be helped if they are dmging you and break the root, of if you get a freedom.

You need to know that often a decent disc priest in 2s will intentionally let you kick a heal when his team is
both on full hp just so you cant kick the mind control that follows.

You need to know that if a dk has 200k necros stacked on you that its a good idea to cloak vanish
even is you are still at 80% HP.

You need to know that you should waste vanish with 3+ sec of bleed debuff on you
unless you intend to reopen within that time.

You need to know that popping combat readiness at 30% hp when 2 people are nuking you
will not save you.

You need to be aware of stun/fear/silence/disorient DRs on everyone in the enemy team so
you dont redirect a kidney on a target that is on a stun DR or blind someone on a fear dr.

You can see where this is going
But I wouldnt know how to help you any better then by telling
you that you need to know all the classes/specs and all their abilities
and think how you could/should react when they use them.

Anyway, if you want to learn alot then go to the PTR
and try every class/spec (if thats possible there).
And although everyone always rofls at 1V1... it is a very good way
to practise countering an enemies abilities in a simple environment
(since you only need to focus on 1 enemy player and 1 friendly player instead of 2-3 of each)
That doesnt mean that 1v1 is balanced or somethng, we know it isnt. That doesnt make it useless.
So also duel duel duel, you will soon start to notice patterns how class X reacts to you when you use ability Y.
Then you can start thinking how you can prevent their counter or counter their counter. (if that makes sence )

Sorry about my sloppy english, its a long post and I didnt have a lot of time.

[Deleted]

paralytic is good for peeling and extra pressure; but watch what classes you use it against (nearly useless vs mages, dks, druids, rets).

- First, you lose 10% damage against stunned targets with paralytic poison.
- Second, you can force mage blink with kidney or cheap and root them full with paralytic shiv thus making it rather useful after all, also if the random stun procs after the initial blink it will be full 4 second stun which is also nice.
- Third, the random stun element of paralytic poison can rng win you cames. Ill give an example, more than a dozen times its insta stunned someones trinket and some of those times inside a smokebomb to give you a free kill.

Pretty much only way to get better/higher rating is to keep on doing arenas, have a good understanding of how other classes work & communication with your team mates. Also blame game after a loss or a during a arena game rarely ends up well, try to learn from your or your team mates mistakes. Situational awareness is also big factor, know whats going on around you, can you follow the kill target behind that pillar or will you die if you do so, when to peel, when to peel with damage. ( counter pressure )

[Deleted]

Everything mentioned above with addition of using addons like http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/gladiatorlossa. It will help you with understanding what the enemy team is up to, and reacting accordingly. Also, talking a lot will make all the difference. I've lost games beyond count just because I've had partners who were silent when they needed help or something...

While Gladiatorlossa might be helpfull I personally believe that you're better of going without it. Your awareness will be better and you will be a better player. While it might be hard to learn what happends when, without an addon telling you what happends, you will evolve into a better player overall without it. The reason to this is that you will instead of waiting for the addon to tell you when it happends, learn when it should happen instead. Learn when the rogue will try to use vanish, or w/e. Just my thoughts. I noticed this alot myself when i stoped using it

- - - Updated - - -

Also, if you encounter teams that have one class the same as one of you and they play better than you. Check what server they are from, make a toon and /w them and ask them if they could see some mistakes you made. This is really useful since you will get a point of view from someone else on your play. I do this when i face better players

[Spoonman]

To me 2v2 is all about setup. U need to be DK, Warrior, hunter or Ret Pala + Healer to make it somewhere. If u got the oppertunity to play 3v3 instead with ure class, at least that is what I would do. But still, u should be able to at least reach some higher ratings in 2v2, ure setup isnt totaly usless. Im playing my capping games at 1700 rating with random healers everyweek on my shadow priest.

About 3v3 ive never played it serious so I dont have any game changing stuff to write. What I know from streams ive seen is that its all about communicating with ure mates and timing CCs with dps bursts.

[Rorke]

Watching streams is a waste of time. When you're watching someone else play, it means you're not playing, which means you're not getting better. The main reason those "top steamers" are so "Good" is because most of them have played this game since Classic wow. That basically means they have 7+ years of competitive arena experience under their belts while you have none. Also, those people have played at least 10,000 arena games at a competitive level. There is no way that you will gain anything from watching them because they're at a completely different level over everyone else.

Guides and tips are also generally a waste of time. As nice as some of these posts are, they won't help you because its basically information that you won't use while you're playing in a game. Reading text and saying to yourself "Okay I know now to Cheap shot the mage to bait the blink" will not help you improve because you don't have the muscle memory to do it. The only way to "Improve" in this game is by playing the game numerous hours of day, every day and playing with the right people. All of the class mechanics/macros all of these other posts tell you you will learn over time by playing the actual game and selling your soul to it. You have to be your own "guide" through the game as cheesy as it sounds or else you'll be eating the little crumbs of information that that superior player feeds you to keep you in your place.

If something isn't working, you need to make a conscious decision on what is better instead of relying on what other people at different skill levels and environments do. That's not to say you can't listen to other advice. It's just that you need to be the ultimate judge on what's best for you.

I would also like to make a recommendation that this game is not worth it above 1900. You may play at 2k -2.2k but its far more about dealing with shitty attitudes over actual skill based gameplay. Most of these competitive online games require you to know and use the right people. You may be stuck at 1600 because your team mates suck. This game (or any competitive game) is designed where if you're better than your team mates, you have to drop them and find better players if you want to move up the ladder. It's a hard thing to do if you actually have a soul which you cannot have if you want to be above 2k+.

And yes, you'll never achieve above 2.2k on a competitive battlegroup because "those people" will always keep you down because its basically a big circle jerk up there since there's such few players at that level. If they don't know you, they won't like you and you'll always be seen as some "lesser scrub" to them. And don't even think for a second that you can compete with them. You can't. Like I said earlier, you're dealing with people who have at least 1000 games of competitive arena experience.

Go to arena junkies if you want to see how awful the high level community is. If you're not "those" type of people, you won't be good. You basically have to be the equivalent of an e-sport jock except those people don't have the physique of actual jocks. Most of them are skinny, weak, pale beta/lesser males who have a Napoleon Complex in real life. Their only real means to feel powerful is by dominating and verbally abusing others in the online realm which they obviously don't have the power to in real life. It's not all of them, but a lot of it exists in that realm and that is why its completely a waste of time to play this game (or any game) at a highly skilled level. You're better off applying yourself to real life skills.

If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading. Good luck!

[achromatickang]

I'm also playing Assassination, and have found that there isn't a lot of information how to play the Spec. at the moment. I expect this to change as a Mutilate Rogue just won a tournament in dominant fashion a couple of days.

Anyways, this is one of the only highly skilled Rogues I know who has put any information out there on Mutilate:



His stream actually has a lot of information on the Rogue class in general.

[Dorkman007]

[wall of text here]

To me, it looks like this person has had one too many bad experiences with pvpers (or pvp in general). While a lot of his points are right (mainly that people that have played more will often come out on top), some of his other points aren't actually so valid. Sure, the best way to learn is to just buckle down and play the game, but a big part of playing the game correctly, is knowing the theory behind it. Things like watching other players and reading guides DOES help, because in the end, you learn how the theoretically handle the situation and acquire muscle memory through putting the theory into practice.

My point is, that just playing a lot will obviously get you a lot of practice with a class.... but more often than not, if you don't know what you should be doing to improve, playing a lot badly will in the long term make you play worse. I say this because if you just do something in a specific situation, instead of knowing what you should be doing and improving, your muscles get used to wrong reactions and bad habbits, which are REALLY hard to get rid of.

The way I learn new games/classes is acquire basics through playing at a low lvl and and reading the most basic of guides, then once I get a hang of those, I thoroughly read guides and analyze gameplay of players who are much better than myself. Once I've done that, I play a LOT and try to put what I learned into practice and gradually improve. After that, I can play around with my own strats and things like that.

Anyways, don't get demotivated so quickly and I wish you the best of luck in your PvP endeavour!

[Deleted]

Watching streams is a waste of time. When you're watching someone else play, it means you're not playing, which means you're not getting better. The main reason those "top steamers" are so "Good" is because most of them have played this game since Classic wow. That basically means they have 7+ years of competitive arena experience under their belts while you have none. Also, those people have played at least 10,000 arena games at a competitive level. There is no way that you will gain anything from watching them because they're at a completely different level over everyone else.

Guides and tips are also generally a waste of time. As nice as some of these posts are, they won't help you because its basically information that you won't use while you're playing in a game. Reading text and saying to yourself "Okay I know now to Cheap shot the mage to bait the blink" will not help you improve because you don't have the muscle memory to do it. The only way to "Improve" in this game is by playing the game numerous hours of day, every day and playing with the right people. All of the class mechanics/macros all of these other posts tell you you will learn over time by playing the actual game and selling your soul to it. You have to be your own "guide" through the game as cheesy as it sounds or else you'll be eating the little crumbs of information that that superior player feeds you to keep you in your place.

If something isn't working, you need to make a conscious decision on what is better instead of relying on what other people at different skill levels and environments do. That's not to say you can't listen to other advice. It's just that you need to be the ultimate judge on what's best for you.

I would also like to make a recommendation that this game is not worth it above 1900. You may play at 2k -2.2k but its far more about dealing with shitty attitudes over actual skill based gameplay. Most of these competitive online games require you to know and use the right people. You may be stuck at 1600 because your team mates suck. This game (or any competitive game) is designed where if you're better than your team mates, you have to drop them and find better players if you want to move up the ladder. It's a hard thing to do if you actually have a soul which you cannot have if you want to be above 2k+.

And yes, you'll never achieve above 2.2k on a competitive battlegroup because "those people" will always keep you down because its basically a big circle jerk up there since there's such few players at that level. If they don't know you, they won't like you and you'll always be seen as some "lesser scrub" to them. And don't even think for a second that you can compete with them. You can't. Like I said earlier, you're dealing with people who have at least 1000 games of competitive arena experience.

Go to arena junkies if you want to see how awful the high level community is. If you're not "those" type of people, you won't be good. You basically have to be the equivalent of an e-sport jock except those people don't have the physique of actual jocks. Most of them are skinny, weak, pale beta/lesser males who have a Napoleon Complex in real life. Their only real means to feel powerful is by dominating and verbally abusing others in the online realm which they obviously don't have the power to in real life. It's not all of them, but a lot of it exists in that realm and that is why its completely a waste of time to play this game (or any game) at a highly skilled level. You're better off applying yourself to real life skills.

If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading. Good luck!

I wholeheartedly disagree with you. I started with serious pvp last season and i have improved vastly from watching streams, taking tips from others and playing. Even if you ain't the one playing when watching streams you can still learn from it by watching certain "things" during the stream. How does the player position, what do they say to eachother? No, you won't become a great player from just watching streams, obviously, but combining gameplay, with watching streams does help.
I also disagree with you saying that our tips are of no use. If you are willing to improve, you will take things people tell you and try to put them in pratice. While it might not be successful at that begining, you will find out after playing more that it does in fact work and that you can make use of it, even if you can't make use of it as good as better players. The thing is, even if you don't have the muscle memory of doing stuff, you will by knowing that it works, try it out as good as you can, and build onto it from there. Tips aren't ment to be executed perfectly, but rather be some sort of help to have something to begin with. "That's what i want to do, but i can't do it.. I'll however try to do it as good as i can do it."

[CHRONICGODX]

If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading. Good luck!

TLDR go slay some dragons bro, life is too hard for me.


streams and guides aren't useless. It took me 4 seasons to get my first 2200. Everyone learns and improves at their own pace, and reading guides and watching streams will only make it easier on yourself.