Kitty cleave this season

[Knolan]

My friend that is a healer got back into the game and now we are playing with his brother (a warrior).

We are facing a lot of problems agains teams with mages and hunters. Basically, unless they have a resto shaman healer (in which case we mostly win), we end up having a ton of problems.

Mages specially are very problematic, once he get a POM polly of he will deal 300k damage without casting a single spell. I have no ideas how to stop it... we tried going on him, but it was not very effective as he will get a pom+polly out or a blaket CS on our healer anyways. He can frostfire bolt + ice lance for over 300k damage in a few seconds, even if we are focusing him, so we don't really see much of a reason to keep going on him. Hunters also give us a lot of trouble mainly because he have too much CC and can start a huge chain by himself. We try to eat traps and I dispel his shots as much as I can, but if their team got some cross CC, we are pretty much dead.

I am mostly trying to keep cloning/rooting a dps and my stun is always saved to the healer.
My current talents are:
2/1/2/1/2/2

Should I exchange rewal for Ysera? I see a lot of high level druids using it, but I just don't find it good myself.
Heart of the wild should replace NV? I mostly go HotW on random BGs for extra survival, but I use NV on 2s.

We are playing against ~1.9k MMR teams and we are at ~1850 rating.

Any tips are welcome.

[Deleted]

keep track of the mage's df cooldown, don't let your healer get cced if the mage can df you, focus the mage, if the mage has pom cc the crap out of him force him to waste it

[Rucati]

Attacking the Mage is certainly the correct choice. Mages die really fast.

You didn't mention what healer you're running with, and that matters quite a lot. I'll give kind of a brief rundown of each I suppose.

With a Priest, tunnel the Mage really hard and pop CDs early. Fear -> Cyclone on their healer, and with Mass Dispel you can get the Block off the Mage fast and kill him.

With a Druid, find a different healer. 2 Druids in the same comp is bad.

With a Paladin pop minor CDs early to force a block while your Paladin uses HoJ -> Repentence/Fear/Blinding Light on their Healer, have your Warrior shatter the block if possible (good teams will stop it), then pop big CDs with a Cyclone on their healer.

With a Shaman good luck. Shamans aren't good cleave healers and are much better with caster teams. Their hex is useless against Mage teams, so yeah... You're gonna have a hard time.

With a Monk you can play similarly to a Paladin. Monks have decent CC, and Ring of Peace is a great defensive or offensive CD.

The trick against Mage teams is to get pressure going early and make them fall behind. They'll do much less pressure if the first thing they worry about is surviving. They also won't get any Polymorphs other than PoM'd ones, which at least Paladins can avoid with Sac some of the time.

As for your Druid questions, I don't play Feral. I will say that Ysera's is probably better than Renewal because it can help teammates and it's also passive. And HotW is absurdly amazing and should absolutely be taken. You can pop it and Tranq around a pillar to heal your teammates a ton, blanket Rejuv them and you just saved the game. Don't underestimate how strong offhealing is during HotW.

[Knolan]

Sorry, I forgot to say that the healer is a pally.

[Snuggli]

I'll disagree with the other posters. You are correct in hitting the healer. If it's a Resto Shaman, Resto Druid or healing Priest your best bet is to tunnel them from start to finish. I'm not sure about MW Monks and Hpalas but I'd assume the same goes for them (both struggle with high damage when not being able to cast).

You maybe shouldn't be going for as many clones as you think you should be. Your main job is to keep on the healer and make sure he can never cast, ever. Use disorienting roar (or bash), shockwave, typhoon, kicks, etc just to stop any cast. The DPS should be so concerned with trying to peel that if they try to kill you their healer will die.

As for dealing with Mage damage, it should be easy for you. Make sure you're only using defensive CDs when you need to use defensive CDs. Your Paladin can hand of sac the sheeps (tell him not to just apply them randomly cause they'll get purged, try and predict it somewhat). If your healer does get PoM sheeped and the Mage has CDs available, pop wall instantly and you'll most likely pre-wall the deep. If not, use trinket, if your trinket is down, bubble it. You've got 3 massive CDs that will keep you alive and if you do it right you're almost immortal to mage damage.

[Rucati]

I'd probably agree with killing the Resto Shaman, I think killing any other healer is a mistake. I know on my HPriest I'm not going to die to War/Feral if I have a Mage on my team. Just isn't gonna happen. And Mages have stupid amounts of control when left alone. Free casting Polymorphs and Rings of Frost, plus Frostbolts are gonna increase his damage significantly if he's left to free cast them.

RDruids aren't going to really die either I can't imagine. Keeping myself alive was never hard on my RDruid, of course my partners always died cause I'm a trashcan PvP Druid, but I could live for a long time. Especially with Ice Block from a Mage. Doubt you could kill a Monk because they're crazy at keeping themselves up. Might be able to kill Paladins though, they die quite fast.

I guess what this means is try different things and see what works for you. Personally I never leave Mages free if I can help it, they die very fast and have too much control when left alone. But if killing healers works for other people it's obviously viable, so it's worth trying that too. See what works for you.

[Knolan]

Thanks for the replies.

We played a little more this weekend (current at 1901 rating, MMR matches varying from 1850 to a top of 1970). We kept the train the healer with priests and shamans, druids we swap after he uses the first trinket. We are also getting better feeling when to use major CDs, still mages beat us on damage big time (one match the mage did 3.5kk damage, while I was at 1.6kk and the warrior 2kk, seriously WTF =/ )
As for talents, I am using bash (and pounce on incarnation) to keep the healer from running away and warrior is using bladestorm + bloodbath. Works very well against priests and shamans. Not so well against other healers, I will suggest that he uses stuns and I use disorienting roar against other healers.

On talents renewal still feel the best, I use it to keep offensive, if I need to peel I will typhon/clone/roots, the heal from other talents is pretty weak... I am still using NV, I used HotW for some time, but it seems to me that peeling is more efficient than off healing.

As for my healer, he is quite good on sacs (Arena master on s8, rival on more than one season) and avoiding CC, but against mages/hunter he ends up getting CC'ed.

[Snuggli]

On talents renewal still feel the best, I use it to keep offensive, if I need to peel I will typhon/clone/roots, the heal from other talents is pretty weak... I am still using NV, I used HotW for some time, but it seems to me that peeling is more efficient than off healing.

I'd use Wild Charge / Yseras / Typhoon(or mass root against melee) / Incarnation / Bash / NV as Kittycleave.


No way I'd recommend you play Renewal, it's really bad in comparison to the other two talents on that tier. Unless you are the one dying, and you're dying 100-0 in a 5 second window within the first 1 or 2 minutes of a game then it's far worse than Yseras. Over 2 minute period, Yseras will heal you 24 times, equalling 120% of your health. Renewal is only 30%. Also, if people are on your team mates instead of you then Yseras will be healing them instead. Finally, it also means your Paladin can use more healing CDs to keep the Warrior or himself up, because you wont be rotting to DoTs or bleeds like other classes.

[Deleted]

I wouldn't go with Ysera's Gift in arena.
Keep in mind that it ONLY heals others if you are 100% hp.

imho you should pick Cenarion Ward, as it can be used on friendly targets. Together with HotW + CW and Reju can be a lifesaver.

But you can pick anythign you want if it works for you

[Rucati]

I wouldn't go with Ysera's Gift in arena.
Keep in mind that it ONLY heals others if you are 100% hp.

imho you should pick Cenarion Ward, as it can be used on friendly targets. Together with HotW + CW and Reju can be a lifesaver.

But you can pick anythign you want if it works for you

Cenarion Ward + HotW is actually crazy good.

HotW in general is just amazing, and without a doubt better than Nature's Vigil. Looking at the top Ferals all but 1 has HotW in that tier. Granted I didn't look through all of them, but the first 10 or so. But as said, go with whatever makes you feel comfortable.

Also, Bladestorm/Bloodbath is wrong. Either have him go Bladestorm/Avatar or go Shockwave/Stormbolt. Bloodbath is virtually useless in your comp because all it does is spread damage. You want direct damage to one purpose as a cleave, so if you're going mongo damage just take Avatar. The only comp I'd run Bloodbath in is with a Warlock or *maybe* a DK depending on your strategy against certain teams.

[Yvaelle]

Run with a Holy Priest possibly? Gives Dispersion<->Cyclone Symbiosis - which is the strongest symbiosis trade by far - and lets you tunnel any healer (mass dispel for paladin bubbles). Kitty Cleave tunneling healers is free wins IMO - nothing stops the bleeds ><

[Snuggli]

HotW in general is just amazing, and without a doubt better than Nature's Vigil. Looking at the top Ferals all but 1 has HotW in that tier.

It's really strange because in EU 90%+ of ferals run Yseras/NV, but in US almost all of them run CW/HotW looking at ladders.

[Knolan]

Yvalle:
The healer and I have been playing together since the start of MOP and he doesn't really enjoy playing priest (I suggested that already). We play for fun, but I swear that I wouldn't complain if I get the duelist title this season =) Still I am really happy keeping Rival in a season where feral is bad.

Snuggli:
I will try both and see how it goes, but from my experience we mostly die during small CC chains after our cooldowns are gone, renewal is one extra CD that saves my life. I have been experimenting CW, but by itself (No HotW) it sucks big time, not sure if it is worth.

EDIT: 1916 rating as of now, but it has been a rollercoaster of wins/loses.
EDIT 2: The warrior is playing bladestorm/bloodbath, if we play against mages he goes with staggering shot/MSR otherwise Disrupting shoud/Safeguard.