2 on 2 rogue/sham vs rogue/Fmage - need help on tactics

[Man2001]

sorry for my english, im german!

my team: rogue (combat with swords) (NE)/ shaman (heal) 2200+
vs.
rogue (combat with maces/subtlety) (human!) / mage (frost) (human!) 2100+

what can i do against them? we lost about 100 points...

mage does: up to 3x sheep, always frostnova, frostnova pet, 2x iceblock, blink always, his armor slows me

rogue: has human racial and see me first, then CS me, or sap me, blind me (totem destroyed), uses endurance/vanish so that i cant hit/stun him, uses prep to vanish/endurance again. his poison ist slows me too.

shaman gets attacked by mage pet, silence mage, rogue kick, KS, CS and mace-stun!!! shaman cant escape..

i always geht sap, blind, sheep several times, frostnova etc.

[Man2001]

we only won 1 match when the mage didnt use his silence correctly and my shaman survived a bit longer.

the problem is: rogue always have first hit, sheep and blind and they manage to kill shaman during the first 20 seconds of the fight

[gnathanwafer]

sorry for my english, im german!

my team: rogue (combat with swords) (NE)/ shaman (heal) 2200+
vs.
rogue (combat with maces/subtlety) (human!) / mage (frost) (human!) 2100+

what can i do against them? we lost about 100 points...

mage does: up to 3x sheep, always frostnova, frostnova pet, 2x iceblock, blink always, his armor slows me

rogue: has human racial and see me first, then CS me, or sap me, blind me (totem destroyed), uses endurance/vanish so that i cant hit/stun him, uses prep to vanish/endurance again. his poison ist slows me too.

shaman gets attacked by mage pet, silence mage, rogue kick, KS, CS and mace-stun!!! shaman cant escape..

i always geht sap, blind, sheep several times, frostnova etc.

Well looks like theres a few options I would try. (i've never done 2v2 with a shaman, but from experience 2v2ing with a mage)
Normally the best option in a rogue mage team is to kill the rogue first, cause you wont touch him with a rogue on you. But this particular rogue has many advantages over you. Increased stealth, two vanishes, evasions, perception, hightened senses, imp sap, etc. Now the mage starts to look more appealing as a focus target.

Now normally you would start out stealthed and try to find the rogue or get a sap off on the mage. or you would hide and hope the rogue comes after your shaman but rogue wont go after the shaman until he's found you. This is where I would try something (either smart or dumb).

You and your shaman mount up and rush the mage immediately. Have your shaman play extremely offensively and rely a little on stamina and resillience at the beginning. You need to be on the mage keeping crippling poison up and your shaman needs to spam purge on the mage and earthshock his casts. You should be able to drop the mage pretty fast once his shields/ice armor are gone. The reason why i say mount up and charge the mage is for two reasons, mages vs rogues the mage is used to expect either a garrote or cheapshot and wont be ready or as well practiced in having you run at them. And the second and most important reason, charging him will get you into combat as fast as possible, making you unsappable and forcing their team out of their gameplan.

[Corespam]

get a mage friend

but my serious answer:
The odds really are against you when you meet teams like this, so there will be an element of luck involved if you win.

I suggest:
when you face this, burst damage the mage and wait for him to iceblock. As soon as he comes out, take advantage of his 30 seconds Hypothermia debuff, so you basically have 30 seconds to kill him, and use cloak of shadows now if you need to. You're only advantage is that they can't heal, so all damage you can cause is worth something. Also bear in mind that blink has a 15 second cooldown (unless they have 4 pieces of season 1 gear, reducing it to 13). Use this to your advantage, in other words, sprint to him and stunlock him straight after he blinks. If he has hypothermia debuff, hes as dead as a warlock would be in this situation.

While this is happening, your shaman should be abusing line of sight on the map to avoid damage from the mage, who will be ignoring you to an extent and DPSing the shaman, and hope the shaman can heal himself.

As far as CC is concerned, all i can suggest is that you use your trinket on polymorph and hope you don't get blinded. < This is one of the main reasons that rogue/fmage should beat you, they have a lot of effective CC.

Also, you may wish to try a 'rush' strategy in order to try and avoid sap. This may also work, but doesnt protect you against blind or polymorph.

GL

[Fibb]

1) Make sure both of you have your PvP trinkets equipped.
The mage sheep lasts 10 seconds, then 5, then 2.5, then 0 due to diminishing returns. If you remove the first sheep (10 sec) then the next sheep will be 5 (only half the duration).

2) Have your shaman save his grounding totem till he's going to heal.
Mages have counterspell, but it's on a 24 second cooldown. Grounding totem can eat that counterspell and waste a cooldown. If your shaman friend drops a grounding totem and immediately does a heal, the mage will either waste his counterspell or waste a global cooldown to take out the totem.

3) KILL THE ELEMENTAL
As a frost mage myself, I can say that the elemental is one of my best abilities. It does an extra 800-900 dmg every waterbolt and has an aoe frostnova that I can use for high Frostbolt and Ice Lance crits. The elemental has no hp though, and it'll take you 5-6 seconds to take it out. Once the elemental is down, the mage will either blow cold snap to summon a new one, losing an iceblock, or wait until his iceblock is blown.

4) Use totems effectively
Grounding totem eats a Counterspell. Tremor Totem removes polymorph. Poison cleasing totem removes blind and rogue poisons. Etc.

5) Kill order and combat
a) Rush in to avoid sap and get into combat ASAP.
b) Go on the mage's elemental first and then switch to the mage. Pop everything to get the mage down fast, using kicks to interrupt sheep. You have 30 seconds after the Ice Block to kill him, take advantage of his not being able to heal. If the mage summons a second elemental, kill it (unless the mage is almost dead).
c) Go read up on focus macros, and how they work. Set the rogue as your focus, and make a macro to gouge your focus. If you gouge the rogue then you could save your shammy friend's life.
d) Use line of sight. If your shaman friend is getting targeted, have him LoS the mage while avoiding the rogue. Try and always stay in LoS of your shaman friend and out of LoS of the mage.
e) Earthshock. This interrupts casts like polymorph, frostbolt, etc. Have your shaman friend use this in a focus macro.
f) Cloak of shadows gets you out of frostnova and basically makes you immune for the next 5 seconds. Use this to your advantage. You also might want to pick up imp sprint if you don't have it.
g) Poisons
Slowing on offhand, instant or mind-numbing MH. Don't use deadly as it can interrupt gouge.

6) Purge and Heroism are your friends
Have the shaman Purge the mage, it'll remove both the Ice Armor that's slowing you and his Ice Barrier which absorbs ~1.8k dmg (as of next patch). Pop heroism as soon as you start to get the extra speed.



All in all, just make sure to zerg the elemental, interrupt the mage, and kill his elemental. Frost mages only do good damage when they crit, which is a sure thing when the target is frozen. Taking out the elemental takes out a RANGED frostnova which could be the difference between a 1500 non-crit fostbolt and a 3k FB followed by a 2k Ice Lance. You can kick the elemental to render it useless as you kill it (it doesn't have a melee attack). Don't get sapped, use pvp trinkets wisely, and don't suck.

[apophisbr]

2) Have your shaman save his grounding totem till he's going to heal.
Mages have counterspell, but it's on a 24 second cooldown. Grounding totem can eat that counterspell and waste a cooldown. If your shaman friend drops a grounding totem and immediately does a heal, the mage will either waste his counterspell or waste a global cooldown to take out the totem.

if im not mistaken, CS isnt tied to GCD, so a smart mage can icelance/wand the totem and still CS the cast just in time. totem + fake heal is probably the best move against the mage until he uses his CS. tell ur shammie friend to start healing early to try getting his CS off, and even if it lands it wont be as fatal as if he CSs when either of u are on low health

[Man2001]

thank you very much for your answers!

@gnathanwafer: yeah, i usually go on rogue when there is one, but in this case, its a bad idea! this rogue ist almost unstoppable, because when blind, he just uses insignia, i never get first hit with cheap shot, when i attack the rogue, he uses endurance and ignore me and just dps the shaman, if endurance ends, he uses prep and uses endurance again.
you may think: "vanish, cheapshot him, if insignia, then blind" - no chance, mage would have sheeped me long time ago...

i think mounting up and rush is ok, at least for 1 match^^ next time they will be prepared gonna try this


@Corespam: im sure with my mage-friend i would win but what if we get pala/warri^^
we try to be more offensive next time.


@Fibb:
1) always! equipped, but shaman dies in 20 sec

2) the mage is very smart, he knows about that totem. dont forget, the rogue interrupts with kicks, gouge, mace-stun, etc.

3) hmm gonna try killing that elemental... yeah thats the problem, ice-lance = no casting time! cant kick

4) tremor removes poly? gonna ask my shaman Oo dont think so:
"shakes the ground around it, removing Fear, Charm and Sleep effects from party members within 30 yards. Lasts 2 min."
poison totem is always destroyed Oo

5)
a) rush - gonna try
b) elemental - gonan try
c) rouge uses 2x endurance - no chance
d) LOS - tried, but its hard
e) uhhh if shaman must not heal himself ok
f) COS and mage iceblock/blink and ignore me -> dps shaman
g) never use deadly, ill try mind next time, as they dont have a healer

6) purge, gonna tell my shammy


@apophisbr

shammy is using fake heal, but mage is not dumb

[apophisbr]

hmm...well fake healing after a tremor has been downed usualy gets most mages to CS.

another option is for the shammie to remember that if he earthshocks any arcane spells the mage might cast (polymorph, Arcanemissles, etc.) he will be able to squeeze in a heal off due to the 2secs silence CS being tied to the arcane tree.
again ur shammie is probably already doing this, but healing early is key here. the mage probably wont want to spend his CS when ur both nearly on full health. it is much more effective when one of u guys are low. that way the mage will spend his CS early and due to the 24sec CD i doubt he will have it again once one of u runs low on health.

charging might seem to be a good idea, but a good mage will probably save his blink+IB for potential rogues.

[Poetia]

You and your shaman mount up and rush the mage immediately. Have your shaman play extremely offensively and rely a little on stamina and resillience at the beginning. You need to be on the mage keeping crippling poison up and your shaman needs to spam purge on the mage and earthshock his casts. You should be able to drop the mage pretty fast once his shields/ice armor are gone. The reason why i say mount up and charge the mage is for two reasons, mages vs rogues the mage is used to expect either a garrote or cheapshot and wont be ready or as well practiced in having you run at them. And the second and most important reason, charging him will get you into combat as fast as possible, making you unsappable and forcing their team out of their gameplan.

I (frost mage) play a 2v2 with a rogue friend, and I always start out in invisibility, which would make this strategy quite useless.. usually rogue starts out by sapping one player and then bursting the other, I come out of invis -after- this. so charging isn't a very good option there. with this tactic most team focus fire on the rogue since he's spotted first, but with all the subtlety talents it's easy to force fire to be focused on mage instead.. apparently it's a bad match for your team I'm afraid :P

[Corespam]

@Corespam: im sure with my mage-friend i would win but what if we get pala/warri^^
we try to be more offensive next time.

You will be surprised to hear that we win probably about 90% of the time against warr/pala, as fmage/rogue.
We have no problems with this team setup:

nuke pala > force bubble
rogue vanishes, mage IB, wait out the bubble.
after bubble, nuke pala again, kick and CS to make sure he dies.
easy 2 on 1 on the warrior.

anyway mate best of luck with your shaman friend