Got to be kidding me...

[Droobear]

So, heres the scoop.. I cant kill a resto druid in 2v2... I just can't do it. I've tried multiple games.. I know all about resto druids and their abilities but as a rogue i cannot kill one for the life of me... How ever, Disc/MWM/Shammuy/Hpally all easy to kill.. THat movement kills me tho... Any suggestions?

[Feali]

Sub or Combat?
BoS or Step?
What's your partner?

[Deleted]

Poor rogue, a class that he cant kill out right

infracted: trolling

[shaithis]

I kill resto druids all day as combat with healer. I see more and more starting the fight out of stealth to cast HoTs and shit, beeline straight for them, dodging obvious shit on ground / trying to predict where warrior will leap / DK will drop his puke zone, hunter flare etc. Open with CS > RvS > Glyph'd Garrote, get SnD up, drop a KS with Internal Bleeding for pressure, then wait for first displacer beast to burn AR and CloS (roots), then quickly get up to redbuff and KS > Spree > M4D > DfA him, hopefully while he is in caster form. Not going for kill here, just trying to force trinket and/or tree if he specced it. Ohce he trinkets, have your pardner CC him (cyclone works great) while you swap to the dps for a bit (cancelaura crippling if it's a DK). Once druid is in full DR, hopefully wasting a lot of time in Cyclone if your pardner is a druid, switch back to him, KS every 20 seconds to apply pressure, kick bad shit, maximize uptime during second Deep Insight, you will not have Spree for kill window yet, but make sure to KS him still for the huge Internal Bleeding DoT + potential freakout, ideally get full DR CC on his pardner to see if he will oblige with trinket pop. Rinse, repeat, third Deep Insight should be a kill.

Other shit - your pardner should be peeling for you or being vocal if he needs you to peel for him, use Feint and Evasion as you need, communicate to make sure that he is not CC'd and you are about to die. Kick Cyclones and big heals. Burn Blind early, can even use on druid to stop a big heal if you slightly out of range and step / kick down. Also very important to not lose Insight stack due to not refreshing in 15 seconds, very possible if you are being kited. Btw smoke bomb can help you not get peeled during kill burst, or you can burn early on after catching DPS in stun in order to try to freak ppl out.

Btw, and if you are playing as rogue healer vs survival restodruid, and your healer is not a druid, you are probably not going to be able to win by going mongo on the druid, will likely need to swap between targets, purge HoTs, etc, LoS the hunter and play defensively outside of burst windows. Someone else may be able to help you there, I feel pretty strong vs this comp with my druid tho.

Oh, and if you are playing Subt in 2s, you are not going to get far unless you are absolutely gosu, or are playing a viable 2dps comp, at which point I cannot help you. Btw, got absolutely rekt by a Subt rogue + Spriest yesterday, was proud of the little feller.

[dak1]

If you're a Combat Rogue atm, it's a fairly braindead process of using Burst of Speed to get to the Druid and using Killing Spree during Deep Insight. Some people prefer to build up to deep insight on the DPS target and then swap, since it peels for their healer a bit, can be quicker than burning energy on BoS to stay with the druid, and has a chance to catch the Druid with no hots and/or in caster form.

As a Sub Rogue, I will often stay on the DPS, depending on the comp. I'll usually go Shadowstep (except against Hunters, which are just stupid). This requires a lot more finesse though as I'm trying to find a good CC chain on the healer to create a kill opportunity. It is still possibly to stay on Druids even with Step, although you have to have good reflexes and Step almost the same exact instant they Displacer Beast, and you need to have a partner that can dispel you and is very on point with their dispels. Usually though that means your healer is really outplaying their DPS/their healer.

Against a good team and a good RDruid, I'm often looking to land a full Kidney on the Druid, either when they try to run in and go for a stun or DPS, or when they're forced out of position due to their melee LoS'ing them. Ideally I want to hold on to Shadowstep here. Then I try to Dance on their DPS and Sap them out of the Kidney. That already creates ~14 seconds of pressure with no CC, which if nothing else is going to force trinkets/defensives. If you timed your Dance at the start of the Sap and their trinket is down, then you can also Garrote out of the Sap for another 4 seconds of CC, and then usually Blind out of that for 8 more (now up to 26 seconds of no healing). If the DPS is still alive and you're playing with an RDruid yourself, they can then follow that up with a half clone for 3 more seconds (29), or they can put an offensive clone on the kill target to prevent heals. If the healer tries to hard cast a heal or cyclone, Step/Kick is usually enough to end the game with 5 more seconds of lockout, or you can Vanish and get a full Cheap Shot or your Druid go in for a full Bash since stuns are off DR by now. You may have to adjust the chain slightly depending on circumstances (like Cyclone instead of Sap if you're too far to land a Sap).

That CC chain with the healers trinket down is also a good time for your RDruid to pop HotW and help DPS.

If the DPS somehow survives (happens to me sometimes with a Combat Rogue who is using Cheat Death and Cloak -> Vanishes and then BoS away), then you can swap on to the RDruid and basically have a 2v1 on them (your druid still has HotW up too if he popped it). He's going to be popping defensives and mana-intensive spells like crazy to try to just keep himself, and the DPS either comes back in and you swap back on to him or the healer gets way too behind in mana/healing to keep his team up much longer anyway and you kill either of them in the next dance.

If it's a DK/RDruid, I find myself usually focusing on CC'ing the DK and trying to bait him into popping IBF with an off KS or Bash while sitting on the Druid. At that point we'll get CC running on the RDruid (see above) and hard swap on to the DK. They can be surprisingly squishy without some of their defensives, especially if you keep Evasion up to keep him resource starved and preventing him from landing those Death Strikes.

Most other DPS seem to be fairly easy or you don't see them often... almost always beat Combat Rogues too although you have to pay attention when they're in Moderate Insight/Deep Insight and know when to pop defensives or when to CC them and make them lose their buff. DKs are similar in just knowing when to pop defensives. Really the only DPS that causes me problems regularly is a good Survival Hunter with an RDruid.

One thing that can help against Survival Hunters though is they don't really have any burst and their best DPS by far is Murder of Crows, which will do 0 damage while you're in stealth. If you can't or aren't in a situation where you want to sit stealth for a few seconds, Combat Readiness will really neuter their damage with Crows up as well. Their auto-attacks and pet generally get you up to 50% damage reduction pretty quickly and keep you there.

If you're not playing with an RDruid, I hope your partner is a mage and you can arrange similar CC chains. If not, what are you doing?

[shaithis]

Yeah I should have mentioned - building to deep insight on the second enemy player is helpful to the extent that, when you switch to the druid, he will not have all of his HoTs rolling on himself. However you run the first of having stack dropped from getting cycloned to max DR, so consider this tactic for when your pardner can CC the druid or blind him yourself first, or try to LoS him / preempt CloS, and have your pardner drag the other player to you if you get caught in cyclone chain. Actually, cycloning the druid to max DR before burst is an interesting thought that we will try next weekend (time for HoTs to drop, etc).

Against a good team and a good RDruid, I'm often looking to land a full Kidney on the Druid, either when they try to run in and go for a stun or DPS, or when they're forced out of position due to their melee LoS'ing them. Ideally I want to hold on to Shadowstep here. Then I try to Dance on their DPS and Sap them out of the Kidney. That already creates ~14 seconds of pressure with no CC, which if nothing else is going to force trinkets/defensives. If you timed your Dance at the start of the Sap and their trinket is down, then you can also Garrote out of the Sap for another 4 seconds of CC, and then usually Blind out of that for 8 more (now up to 26 seconds of no healing). If the DPS is still alive and you're playing with an RDruid yourself, they can then follow that up with a half clone for 3 more seconds (29), or they can put an offensive clone on the kill target to prevent heals. If the healer tries to hard cast a heal or cyclone, Step/Kick is usually enough to end the game with 5 more seconds of lockout, or you can Vanish and get a full Cheap Shot or your Druid go in for a full Bash since stuns are off DR by now.

Wow that is noice...but how are you sapping out of Kidney when OOC timer is 6 seconds, but Subt can only Kidney for 5? Would technically work if druid starts casting instead of using an insta ability, but how likely is that past silly rating? If it works, worth mentioning that KS will be off DR after the Sap > Blind > Cyc.

[dak1]

Wow that is noice...but how are you sapping out of Kidney when OOC timer is 6 seconds, but Subt can only Kidney for 5? Would technically work if druid starts casting instead of using an insta ability, but how likely is that past silly rating? If it works, worth mentioning that KS will be off DR after the Sap > Blind > Cyc.

Sub's Kidney is 6 seconds (all Rogues Kidney is 6 seconds). And yeah, usually something forces the CC chain to fall apart by the time Kidney is off DR again (or the fight is over). Usually biggest issue is being too far from the healer, although a Smoke Bomb can sometimes force them into range and add some more time on to the effective CC chain.

I've definitely had some matches though where I've kept a healer CC'ed for over 30 seconds and if I listened hard enough I could swear I could hear them raging at me and pounding their keyboard.

That's basically why Sub is almost as viable as Combat, but 10x harder though.

[roahn the warlock]

The trick is to wait until the tree. poke till then, then burn

[Sesleri]

I kill resto druids all day as combat with healer. I see more and more starting the fight out of stealth to cast HoTs and shit, beeline straight for them, dodging obvious shit on ground / trying to predict where warrior will leap / DK will drop his puke zone, hunter flare etc. Open with CS > RvS > Glyph'd Garrote, get SnD up, drop a KS with Internal Bleeding for pressure, then wait for first displacer beast to burn AR and CloS (roots), then quickly get up to redbuff and KS > Spree > M4D > DfA him, hopefully while he is in caster form. Not going for kill here, just trying to force trinket and/or tree if he specced it. Ohce he trinkets, have your pardner CC him (cyclone works great) while you swap to the dps for a bit (cancelaura crippling if it's a DK). Once druid is in full DR, hopefully wasting a lot of time in Cyclone if your pardner is a druid, switch back to him, KS every 20 seconds to apply pressure, kick bad shit, maximize uptime during second Deep Insight, you will not have Spree for kill window yet, but make sure to KS him still for the huge Internal Bleeding DoT + potential freakout, ideally get full DR CC on his pardner to see if he will oblige with trinket pop. Rinse, repeat, third Deep Insight should be a kill.

Other shit - your pardner should be peeling for you or being vocal if he needs you to peel for him, use Feint and Evasion as you need, communicate to make sure that he is not CC'd and you are about to die. Kick Cyclones and big heals. Burn Blind early, can even use on druid to stop a big heal if you slightly out of range and step / kick down. Also very important to not lose Insight stack due to not refreshing in 15 seconds, very possible if you are being kited. Btw smoke bomb can help you not get peeled during kill burst, or you can burn early on after catching DPS in stun in order to try to freak ppl out.

Btw, and if you are playing as rogue healer vs survival restodruid, and your healer is not a druid, you are probably not going to be able to win by going mongo on the druid, will likely need to swap between targets, purge HoTs, etc, LoS the hunter and play defensively outside of burst windows. Someone else may be able to help you there, I feel pretty strong vs this comp with my druid tho.

Oh, and if you are playing Subt in 2s, you are not going to get far unless you are absolutely gosu, or are playing a viable 2dps comp, at which point I cannot help you. Btw, got absolutely rekt by a Subt rogue + Spriest yesterday, was proud of the little feller.

This is a great post.

Yeah I see lots of people just bashing their heads against Ironbark stupidly and crying OP. Rdruid is by far the best healer right now though.