(Repost moved) Is there any hope for an aspiring S. Priest in 2v2 Arenas?

[Buffwhite]

I had this originally posted in the PvP Forum, but it got very little views and no responses, so I figured it was more suited for the Priest Forum.

I benched my main Orc Arms Warr to level my BE Shadow Priest to 80. I'm a pvp'er at heart. I love BG's and world pvp, but I am not very fond of Arena. Arena seems to be the only way to get the best gear though. I have 2 pieces of Furious, 3 pieces of deadly and randomly assorted heroic/badge epics. My wand, cloak and boots are blue and I'm trying to replace them with gear from arena. I sit at around 440 resilience as is (I haven't started arena yet outside of skirmishing).

Well, getting to the point, I teamed up in 2v2 with an Arc mage (yes I know it's not the pvp spec, but I couldn't complain as not many ppl want to team with the CC lacking squishy non-healer that is a shadow priest). We decided to try some skirmishes before we payed 80 gold for a 2v2 team. We lost all the matches horribly to melee/physical damage teams. We only saw 1 other caster besides ourselves and it was a pally healer (plate to combat the melee facerollers no doubt). No other mages, locks, elem shams, boomkins or priests were spotted. Just a gang of rogues, a few warriors and some hunters. I did notice that almost every single team had 1 or more rogues though. Rogues seem to dominate 2v2s.

I figured for starting out in arena I have better (pvp) gear than your average 80 would have. Was I wrong? If I am sitting on a full set of 5 piece arena gear and I am still dying in the course of a stunlock or close to it (even after the resil changes) is there any hope for me in getting a game out where I'm not targeted first every time, stunlocked and bursted down while being able to do nothing?

Here's how the game usually goes. I PW:S and Renew my partner and myself (hmm maybe I should use PoM as well). Rogue cheap shots me and his partner and him open up on me. I'm forced to use Dispersion or die in 2 seconds. Afterward I'm usually at less than 40% health, my power word shield is spent and the rogue pops cloak to finish me off. If I PS, they both just trinket it. I am doing very little offensively and most of my time spent is just in running for my life, to little or no avail.

Am I doing it wrong, or is it just hard as hell to 2v2 as a shadow priest? I know I have no really good gear, but that's why I want to arena. Please don't say "just go disc". I don't want to heal. I didn't start this topic so someone could tell me something as simple as "change specs". I need positive feedback on strategies, setups and combos I can try. Any addons and UI setup suggestions would be appreciated as well.

Also are the skirmishes just randomly generated without looking at gear? Imo the skirmishes were harder than a starting arena team rated match would be. Thanks in advance and sorry for the wall of text, but I felt I had to be specific.

[Deleted]

Not really. No

[jonish]

yer hope , BG until you get full relentless or better gear

then you might have a shot in hell.

[TwistedPower]

Nope, do 3's. It is more points anyways.

[Elothie]

I got full furious and rele offpieces/weapon and still queue up against full rellentless rogues/hunters etc that rape me.Those are often bored pvers or pvpers that try to configure an addon or smth so do not take skirmishes too seriously.

[Buffwhite]

Thanks to all that replied (except the first guy, that didn't help lol). I will probably have to just BG until I get better geared (more resil). I started a 2's team with a aff/destro lock yesterday and we lost about 2/3 of our games, but we are getting better. I went disc most of the time, but I guess it's a small price to pay to be able to possibly play a shadowplay team later.

Hmm, I wonder how a SPriest/Aff Lock/Resto Druid team would do. With rolling hots for us all, I'm thinking it wouldn't be too bad. Silence, Terrify, Roots and Fear Bombs. I'll see if I can snatch up the resto druid in my guild.

[egonomic]

First off, Bg and get at least 800+ resil. You need at least that much to even consider doing semi-serious arena.

Secondly, rogues. Basically, you need your partner to use peels. Try to dot then after the second cloak you have a choice to either cc or dps him down. Until then, you must put all cc possible on him.

Third, you don't have to go disc. Shadow is very viable now, no matter what people say. Possible comps for 2v2:
spriest / fmage(very nice, can go far.)
spriest / boomkin(lolburst team, won't work at higher ratings)
spriest / lock(bitch team, can go far.)
spriest / ench shaman(very viable team, just have to use cd's wisely.)
spriest / ret(pretty much like ench shaman, just less cd dependant.)

Those are the top comps I can think of at the top of my head. Of course, a resto shaman would be nice if you wanted to roll with a healer class instead of double dps. 3v3 comps:
spriest / rdruid / lock
spriest / rsham / lock

Those two are the top, imo, and you should aim for those.


On a sidenote, I was running disc / fmage(me) last season and this season we switch to shadow. It is a whole lot more fun and, imo, a lot easier to play as long as you can peel well. If you're running this comp there is plenty of cc and burst. CC rotation on a healer is something like this: sheepx3>fear>df(depending)>cs>priest silence>resheep.
That's a basic idea of how the cc chain can go. I think the trick to this comp is timing your two silences, once you get that down you'll boost up in ratings no problem.

Either way, run with whatever comp you want, and have fun.

[TwistedPower]

You could just do aff lock, spriest, resto or ele shamen. Since that is one of the better spell cleaves now that haste affects locks and spriest the lust = win. The ele/resto shamen can crit lava burst to help with those killing blows so it is all good and plenty of CC.

[thantos]

I play a spriest as my main, currently doing 2v2 with a resto shaman. I often find myself not able to kill warlock/any healer teams, and dk/any healer is a pain too. Today we got priest/rogue 7 matches in a row. It really is a pain depending on me to kill something with meele constantly interrupting me. I rely heavily on my resto shamans hex's and wind shear to often get kills off. It's a very stressful comp imo.

As for you, don't touch arena until you are atleast 900 resil as a spriest.... as for you will get shit on in arena.

Do bg's, and run heroics till you are full furious. Get a rogue and get to 1800 ez for your weapon. Once you have the gear(pref. 950 resil, 2.8k sp) your free to 2v2 without dying so fast.

Against rogues, disarm the rogue second he opens up on your partner, or asap if he opens on you. Dispel his fear ward if he has one, fear him, fade from his crippling poison, and it will give you time to get some range on him.

Lately, i've been seeing holy pallies and disc priest dispel ALL my dots with ease.... not even noticing the 6k damage they get from VT... leaving me with nothing to kill their partner, and i cant focus the healer since they hug the pillar(Player vs Pillar lol) in those cases i'm yelling at my resto shaman over vent in anger because i can't kill shit, but mostly i end up killing the healer in the end if i get them feared out from their los

I'd also recommend getting haste over crit, sicne resto druids are OP as hell, barkskin, they can't be crit, most healers have over 1100 resil anyways, reducing their chance to be crit by like 18%(spriests have about 22% crit in full relentless atm)

I have around 590 haste, and its better then crit. Also, get the spirit main pieces, spec 3/3 into meditation

Since your just starting off in arena as a spriest, i'd get a rogue or mage first. you'd have to be pretty geared and know how to time your cc accordingly well with a resto shaman or any healer for that matter

Hope I helped...

[Buffwhite]

That sounds good. I'm gonna see about getting 1 more (a healer: resto druid or shammy) and trying 3's. In the meantime I will keep doing heroics and BG's and replace those 3 blue pieces I still have first. From then on, it's just a steady upgrade process, priority going toward my worst pieces of gear being replaced first, but I should be at about 800 resil in idk, a couple weeks at most I'm guessing. Thanks again for the input, and I'll just be taking my arena frustrations out on BG'ers until I'm viable.

[Huurka]

Spriest Mage is a very strong comp if you can play. What can trouble you is resto druid teams, but you have plenty of silences and an interrupt.

[Buffwhite]

Update: I went Disc for most of my arenas last time (with a Destro Lock). This time I said screw it and went Shadow the entire time. We more than doubled our arena rating in one day. Went from 400something to about 850. We are getting into the groove with what to do and how to react to each other and other teams. '

I have replaced my 3 blues with 2 PvP epics and the Triumph Emblem Wand. I sit at about 560 or so resil. By this time next week I will have 3 more PvP epics. Titan Shoulders (Relentless equivalent), Relentless Chestpiece and the 153 resil Medallion of the Horde to replace my blue, 5 min cooldown trinket. I will be at about 800 resil.

Before, double rogue teams or teams with rogues would light us up and there was nothing we could do about it. Now we are learning how to use the map to our advantage and when to pop cd's. Only teams that really give us trouble are dual feral druids, mage rogue, dual shams (one elem, one resto), Hunt DK, Hunt Enh Sham, and Disc ArmsWarr/DK.

This team seems to be doing better and better the more we play. We've gotten this far and he has virtually no pvp gear (not even a trinket, which he is getting from WG next week btw). With 2 clothies and pretty much no heals, I'd say we weren't doing that bad to be starting out.

What I do is obviously buff up everyone at the start. When the match starts the lock takes point. I shield him, PoM him, Renew him, Renew myself, go back into Shadowform, and then shield myself. That extra healing works wonders at the start of the match and has saved our asses tons of times. We have discovered that when he takes point and sucks up all the damage first, we generally do better than if I were to die first. I have taken dual rogues by myself after they've blown all (or almost all) their cd's to kill my partner.

Here's my armory. http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...one&cn=Kittkat
I will be changing my meta to the stun duration reduc gem as soon as I can find one on the AH, and will start to gem my relentless equivalent and up with epic gems instead of blue. The 20 resil gem in my boots is from WG.

[walexia]

First off:-
affliction/spriest/resto sham is one of the oldest most succesful comps in wow also one of the oldest caster cleaves.It's called shadow play (shadow cleave is lock/dk/holy pally)
So yeah try for that comp it's viable

secondly (even before we tackle your gear)Your locks spec is confusing you said he was destro , but i am not seeing nether protection and neither of his specs have soul link which is a must for any pvp spec.

you need the wrathful set pieces and furious rings asap full furious/relentless is the way to go too .I'm saying this coz your running double dps and damage is also very important.The low sp on your current gear will make it harder to get those kills in you need to be lookin at well over 2500 sp.

[Deleted]

I can throw in a few tips since I've always played shadow on my priest, all the way since season 2.

This is an alt though, so I've shelfed him several times and dusted him off and picked up up just as many.

http://armory.wow-europe.com/charact...hisper&cn=Hexn

Anyways, the most important thing in doing well in arenas is GEAR.

Gear matters so incredibly much, that you almost won't believe it.

Getting a just weapon upgrade can take you +100 or +200 rating with the same skill level.

I played with a rogue friend to 2450+ last season and that was just a "fun 10 games a week alt team". And it was easy. If we bothered we could probably go 2600 or so, but we were still catching up on gear the entire season.

First off, when playing 2v2 as shadow, double dps teams seem to work the best. We are incredibly powerful when we have someone who can peel off of us, and that is why a Rogue or Mage is your best choice. Both of them is viable at 2600+ ratings right now.

Restoshaman works too, and to some extend restodruid, but I wouldn't recommend it, because it can be very difficult to score kills if people play extremely defensively and they will end up outlasting you, or your healers mana. With that said, Spriest/restoshaman is also 2500-2600+ viable.

So you need GEAR. It sucks, because getting proper pvp gear is extremely grindy in wow.

Do battlegrounds to get Wrathful Neckpiece, Wrathful Cloak, Wrathful Bracers (haste). All of them are very good pieces and they dont require any rating. Also get 153 resil trinket, and the 150 SP battlemaster trinket.

Next, grind heroics to get full furious mainpieces. Get the satin set, because crit is simply better than spirit once you pass a certain threshold to negate the standard amount of resil.

With all that, you should be able to get at least 1200-1400 rating to get the rest of the Wrathful offpieces (Boots, Belt).

Also get the ashen verdict ring by joining some repruns.

Get about 100 hit rating (relentless ring + ashen verdict ring will take you there), and more importantly get 130 spell penetration asap. You NEED this, so you can pierce through Shadowprotection, Mage armor, Mark of the Wild and Shadow resistance aura.

Spell penetration is your MOST important stat until 130. I can't stress this enough. Easiest way to get it is to enchant +35 pene on your cloak, and socket all blue gems with either +13pene/+13SP purple gems (mysterious dreadstone) and if you still lack some, feel free to use the +25 pene blue gems.

Once all that is set, you should be able to reach 1800 with a decent rogue or mage. Make sure your partner also has gear that is somewhat up to date (wrathful offpieces and at the very least furious mainpieces), otherwise you will struggle so much.

Now get the weapon, and next the offhand. The spell penetration offhand might be good to start with, so you can replace some of your +25 penetration gems with +13/12sp ones. Later on you can buy the penetration wand (should be one of your last pieces to buy - mainpieces are way more important after getting weapon) and use the haste offhand for better stat balance.

A few tips:

Learn to use Fade well. If you have a rogue on you, have your partner peel them (root, stun, horror). As soon as this happens, you can fade and get distance. This will very likely force an early Cloak (as he struggles to get on top of you again), which means you can blow him up soon enough.

If he cloaks and sprints on you, feel free to disperse and run away, while your partner applies a new snare on him. Now cloak is down, and the rogue will be your little toy! He cant get to you, because your mage or rogue partner is keeping a slow on him so you can keep your distance. IF he manages to get on you again, get a stun or peel and fade out again. The rogue is very easily kitable if you exploit his very weak mobility with well timed Fades.

Try not to get fully dispelled while sitting in a sap. If you play with a rogue, have him sap their priest or shaman if you get sapped. Using these counter saps will allow you to not get opened on without a shield or buffs (which can be hard to recover from!).

If you play with a mage you can have him start invisible to avoid getting sapped and to let him sheep the priest/shaman before you get dispelled.

Dont waste fearward. It can be a good idea to put it on your rogue as it saves him from using his trinket/wotf when hes rushing down enemy priests. If you want to save it for yourself, its a bad idea to buff it from the beginning, as any decent priest will just dispel it off you before fearing. Instead, have it hotkeyed somewhere comfortable, so you can put it up a splitsecond before the priest charges in to fear you. This way you can avoid getting feared and wasting your trinket.

Use dispel a lot!
Getting a full row of dots up on your target is important, but dispelling stuff off the enemy even more so. Removing a sacred shield, a sacrifice, a powerword shield etc can create gigantic amounts of pressure if you dispel it as soon as it comes up.

Remember that one powerword shield from a geared discpriest is 7-8k absorb, so if you can instadispel it, you and your rogue will have to do that much less damage to get a kill. That means you have to watch the target's Weakened soul debuff, and be ready to spam dispel as soon as it fades. If you learn to do this correctly, you can destroy a priest healers most powerful mitigation tool.

Use shadowfiend offensively! Remember that this little guy does a TON of damage if you use its shadowcrawl ability, so its a very very good cooldown to use when going for a kill. Doesn't matter if you got 70% mana, if it helps kill your target its well spent. This is pretty much your only "burst" cooldown as a shadowpriest so use it wisely.

Use focus frame and have a focus macro for your silence and horror spells. This means you can instantly silence a healer without changing targets. This is one of the most important things in the shadowpriests arsenal. A welltimed silence will win you many many games, even if your CC rotation goes wrong or whatever.

/cast [target=focus] Silence
/cast [target=focus] Psychic Horror

There are other macros you can use for example Silence your target if you press the button and silence focus if you hold down shift, but you can find those on arenajunkies.com

Also have a macro for dispelling your teammate and yourself without changing your current target

/cast [target=party1] Dispel magic
/cast [target=party2] Dispel magic (if you play 3v3)

You can bind this to scroll-wheel up and down for ease of use.

/cast [target=YOURNAME] Dispel magic

That one is for dispelling yourself. Have it some handy place because you will be using it a LOT.

I could write loads of more advanced stuff, but it probably wouldn't do you any good for now. Try to get that gear asap, and get a decent partner either mage or rogue that knows their way around pvp, and im sure you will find your success shoot up a lot.

1000 resilience is a comfortable number to have (I personally use 1122, but thats with full relentless Main and full wrathful offpieces)

Stack haste to 500-600 ish and then go all out on spellpower. Crit will come by itself once you upgrade your mainpieces.

GL with the facemelting!

[Buffwhite]

Thanks for pointing that out about my lock's spec, Walexia. He doesn't have a lot of "survivability talents". Almost none, actually. I'll work on the spell pen asap. I'm at like 75 or something. All the info given here has been a help as far as what to gem and what pieces to get, but something is rather confusing.

I was wondering about my choice of main Relentless pieces. I have been told to go both ways. The crit pieces and the spi pieces. I believe the max crit % reduction you can have is 12.5%. I see that Mew has more crit pieces than I would have after I got my gear and he is still only at 16.6% crit. Now with the Mind Melt talent that puts his crit chance of Mind Blast, Mind Flay and Mind Sear at 8.1% and DP, SW:Pain and VT at 10.1% (assuming the 12.5% reduction is correct). That's not much of a crit chance (and mine will be even lower), and the crit dmg reduction would also be a drag.

Now with that said, would my points in Mind Melt and Shadow Power be better spent somewhere else and just forgo the crit pieces for spi pieces?

If I took the spi pieces I would respec to this http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...P,RdwRO-,11403

If I took the crit pieces I would just shift a few points around from my current spec to this http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...1,RdwRO-,11403.

I know Mew said crit was better, but again, I am being told two different things and am wondering what I should do. I am going to pick up my first Relentless main piece (the chestpiece) Tuesday and I want to know if it should be spi or crit. Thanks in advance.

[aliancekill]

wait....I HAVE TWO CLOAKS>?

[Deleted]

Thanks for pointing that out about my lock's spec, Walexia. He doesn't have a lot of "survivability talents". Almost none, actually. I'll work on the spell pen asap. I'm at like 75 or something. All the info given here has been a help as far as what to gem and what pieces to get, but something is rather confusing.

I was wondering about my choice of main Relentless pieces. I have been told to go both ways. The crit pieces and the spi pieces. I believe the max crit % reduction you can have is 12.5%. I see that Mew has more crit pieces than I would have after I got my gear and he is still only at 16.6% crit. Now with the Mind Melt talent that puts his crit chance of Mind Blast, Mind Flay and Mind Sear at 8.1% and DP, SW:Pain and VT at 10.1% (assuming the 12.5% reduction is correct). That's not much of a crit chance (and mine will be even lower), and the crit dmg reduction would also be a drag.

Now with that said, would my points in Mind Melt and Shadow Power be better spent somewhere else and just forgo the crit pieces for spi pieces?

If I took the spi pieces I would respec to this http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...P,RdwRO-,11403

If I took the crit pieces I would just shift a few points around from my current spec to this http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...1,RdwRO-,11403.

I know Mew said crit was better, but again, I am being told two different things and am wondering what I should do. I am going to pick up my first Relentless main piece (the chestpiece) Tuesday and I want to know if it should be spi or crit. Thanks in advance.

I will try to clarify a few points to make your decision easier.

The whole notion of crit versus spirit mainpieces depends a lot on your gear level.

With full wrathful Satin mainpieces and either meteor chaser raiment / leggings of woven death (similar stats, both are quite easy to get), you will be sitting at about 21% crit unbuffed.

Add in Mindmelt (6%), Focus Magic (3% from mage) or Master poisoner (3% from rogue) and Winter's Chill (5% from mage) your crit will be very decent.

With a rogue: 21+6+3 = 30%
With a mage: 21+6+3+5 = 35%

Now add in the fact, that the optimal gearsetup for a shadowpriest is 2PT10 (Chest+Shoulders) if you got access to ilvl 264 or above (251 versions are not worth it over Wrathful; but worth it over relentless) you will get an extra 5% chance to crit on your dots.

This bumps your critratings up to 35% with rogue and 40% with a mage. Add in about 1200 resil as standard, and your effective crit chance will be roughly 25-30% in a pvp setting. This is the almost the same as Rogues, Warriors, Retpaladins and Hunters in similar gear.

Now add in the fact that dot crits for 200% damage (and not 150% like normal spells), and crit begins to become very attractive.

Spirit mainpieces will give you a slight bit more spellpower (+80'ish with full relentless) and mana regen (130'ish MP5) which amounts to about 2000 extra mana in between dispersion cooldowns and 5000 in between Shadowfiend cooldowns.

However it also comes with a cost. You have to take Meditation, which means you can't get improved shield. It also means that your burst damage and overall pressure will be significantly lower, because Hasted Critting dots are extremely potent.

So it basically comes down to this: Resilience removes a good portion of your base crit chance, however, if you can stack it high enough to see decent amounts of crits anyway (15% unbuffed), your damage will go through the roof. Combine that with 2PT10 and crit is vastly superior.

So in your situation, I would buy the Furious Mooncloth gear to play with right now, BUT whenever you can get an upgrade of either Relentless or Wrathful quality, you should definately go Satin.

Hope that helps

[Zoulis]

I really dunno alot of pvp stuff...but in a 3v3... a pve geared spriest ( with 130 sp pene) and pvp specc ( that doesen't take away alot of our dmg ) wouldn't dominate?
i'm a full pve shadowpriest ( 3200 sp 25% crit 1.1k haste)
and i went into a 3v3 with some friends for fun.. a rogue and ele shammy.
the rogue was full pve geared also ( we both have average ilvl like 260) and the ele shammy is one of the best PvPers of the server with full relentless ( and he is getting his wrathfull weap next week.. the ilvl277 )
anw... we played like 10 matched and completely dominated anything in our path... we used no complex tacts etc... but our dmg was just insane...
but this was at arena teams at low rating. i dunno about higher rating.
do u think a pve geared spriest would have hopes of anything good in higher ratings?

Cheers

Zoulis

[Deleted]

I really dunno alot of pvp stuff...but in a 3v3... a pve geared spriest ( with 130 sp pene) and pvp specc ( that doesen't take away alot of our dmg ) wouldn't dominate?
i'm a full pve shadowpriest ( 3200 sp 25% crit 1.1k haste)
and i went into a 3v3 with some friends for fun.. a rogue and ele shammy.
the rogue was full pve geared also ( we both have average ilvl like 260) and the ele shammy is one of the best PvPers of the server with full relentless ( and he is getting his wrathfull weap next week.. the ilvl277 )
anw... we played like 10 matched and completely dominated anything in our path... we used no complex tacts etc... but our dmg was just insane...
but this was at arena teams at low rating. i dunno about higher rating.
do u think a pve geared spriest would have hopes of anything good in higher ratings?

Cheers

Zoulis

A shadowpriest with full pve gear would do a quite ridiculous amount of damage, but by design, priests are build for "tanking". You don't have any "outs" like a mage does, you have to stand there and take a beating for a bit until the next peel lands and you can get a short breather and get a few casts off.

So in order to survive long enough to do your job and not get globalled you have to wear a healthy amount of resilience. Shadowpriests are actually one of those classes that benefit the most from the recent resilience buff, since we get to live longer, so our dots can really start to do its work and we can get more than one Scream off and start setting up some nasty cc-chains.

I don't know what MMR you were playing at, but let me just say that I can solo a lot of 2v2 teams without a problem on about 1400-1500 mmr on my shadowpriest. At low ratings it wouldnt matter if you played naked, because people are so clueless that anything works.

So if you wanna do well at high ratings, high resil is a must.

With that said, 900 resilience is probably the lowest you wanna go for high end arena. I do not recommend this, because you will be shredded up quite nicely by bryntroll warriors, marksmanhunters and envenom rogues and be forced defensive all game.

1000 is where you start staying alive a bit longer and can do your magic.

1100 is my comfortable sweet spot, and I wouldn't like to go lower than that. Maybe for 2s, but not for 3s.

1200 is where I aim to be at the end of the season when I got full wrathful and the optimal gearset. With that number you will feel very sturdy and in BGs you will be an absolute juggernaut. To be perfectly honest I would LOVE to go even higher (1400'ish) but then I would have to sacrifice too many offensive stats such as haste and crit for it not to be worth it.

But take note - a shadowpriest with high resilience gear is like three times as powerful as one without. You need to try it to really see the difference in performance its quite insane.

So HF grinding those bgs

edit: oh and also, a pvp geared shadowpriest does almost the same amount of damage as a pve geared one. Mostly because all the hit rating you carry around in pve is useless, and subbing that out for resilience is only a net gain. Not to mention that the Wrathful gear is ilvl 270 and has SICK amounts of spellpower on it. When I get my T2 weapon I will be sitting at around 3500 spellpower with inner fire. With full wrathful that jumps up to about 3700. That's just nasty.

[irongar]

Awesome post! I only have played on my priest as shadow back in s3 around 2k+ ratings. Really motivated myself to go more bg farm to get some wrathful off-set and heroic grinding for full furious set

thanks for the post!! wtb stick would be handy for more starting shadow pvp-ers