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Zephi’s guide to Feral/Disc

For 3.3.5a

A comprehensive and in-depth guide on how to play a feral druid, more specifically its role in the 2v2 setup Feral Druid / Discipline Priest

1

Content Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3

Spells ........................................................................................................................................................ 4

No cooldown spells ............................................................................................................................. 4

Feral ................................................................................................................................................. 4

Resto ................................................................................................................................................ 4

Balance ............................................................................................................................................ 4

Short cooldown spells (max 1 minute) ................................................................................................ 5

Feral ................................................................................................................................................. 5

Resto ................................................................................................................................................ 5

Balance ............................................................................................................................................ 5

Long cooldown spells (minimum 1 minute) ........................................................................................ 5

Feral ................................................................................................................................................. 5

Resto ................................................................................................................................................ 5

Balance ............................................................................................................................................ 5

Talents, glyphs and gear .......................................................................................................................... 6

Crizp’s setup (high resi with disc priest) .............................................................................................. 6

Choe’s high arp low resi setup (with resto shaman) ........................................................................... 7

Variations in resilience ........................................................................................................................ 8

But I like Deathbringer’s Will ............................................................................................................... 8

What about mangle spec? ................................................................................................................... 8

What it all comes down to .................................................................................................................. 9

How to deal damage ............................................................................................................................. 10

How to use crowd control effectively ................................................................................................... 11

Example 1: Holy paladin/warrior ....................................................................................................... 11

Example 2: Shadow Priest / Sub Rogue ............................................................................................. 12

Feral / Disc ............................................................................................................................................. 13

The general game plan of feral / disc ................................................................................................ 13

Holy Paladin / Warrior ....................................................................................................................... 14

Other healer/warrior comps ............................................................................................................. 16

Disc / warrior ................................................................................................................................. 16

Resto shaman / warrior ................................................................................................................. 16

Resto druid / warrior ..................................................................................................................... 16

Holy paladin / DK ............................................................................................................................... 17

Other DK / healer comps ................................................................................................................... 18

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Disc / DK ........................................................................................................................................ 18

Resto shaman / DK ........................................................................................................................ 18

Resto druid / DK ............................................................................................................................ 18

Disc / Rogue ....................................................................................................................................... 18

Disc / Mutilate Rogue .................................................................................................................... 18

Disc / sub rogue ............................................................................................................................. 19

Disc / mage ........................................................................................................................................ 19

Disc / hunter ...................................................................................................................................... 20

Disc / Feral ......................................................................................................................................... 20

Healer / UA lock ................................................................................................................................. 20

Healer / destro lock ........................................................................................................................... 21

Resto shaman / ret paladin ............................................................................................................... 21

Resto shaman / prot paladin ............................................................................................................. 21

Disc / ret paladin ............................................................................................................................... 21

Disc / ele ............................................................................................................................................ 22

Shadow Priest / Mutilate Rogue........................................................................................................ 22

Shadow priest / sub rogue ................................................................................................................ 23

Shadow priest / Mage ....................................................................................................................... 23

Shadow Priest / DK ............................................................................................................................ 24

Ret / MM Hunter ............................................................................................................................... 24

Feral / MM hunter ............................................................................................................................. 25

Enha / BM hunter .............................................................................................................................. 25

Enha / Combat rogue ........................................................................................................................ 25

Lock / Rogue ...................................................................................................................................... 25

Ele / destro ........................................................................................................................................ 25

Ele / Mage.......................................................................................................................................... 26

Destro / Mage.................................................................................................................................... 26

Ret / Rogue ........................................................................................................................................ 26

Priest gear, talents and glyphs .............................................................................................................. 27

Useful macros ........................................................................................................................................ 28

Focus macros ..................................................................................................................................... 28

Stealth / NoStealth Macros ............................................................................................................... 28

Abolishing / Decursing Partner.......................................................................................................... 29

Attitude in the arena ............................................................................................................................. 29

3

Zephi’s Guide to Feral / Disc

Introduction This guide will be an extensive and in depth guide on how to play a feral druid. It includes the use of every spell, when to use it and how to use it. It will include different interesting talent builds and gear setups. I will talk about different compositions and how to play them. I will show you how to beat certain counters. Basically I will try to share with you everything I know about playing a feral druid in arena. Who am I? My name is Zephi (Zephii is my main feral). I have played the feral druid for several years, both on AT and on retail. I played to 2300 in 3v3 during season 8 on retail (cyclone EU) and peaked at 2600 (glad range) during season 10. I quit retail during the beginning of MoP and played AT more actively. I have played feral/rogue and feral/shaman to about 2300 rating and feral/disc to 2500 rating. I’m less experienced as feral/hunter as I don’t personally like this comp in wrath of the lich king. I played it during cata retail to about 2500 rating, also on cyclone EU. Even though I achieved quite decent ratings as a feral druid, you shouldn’t take this guide as an absolute truth. The game is still evolving and it’s important that you think critically at all time. Before we begin the actual guide I would like to thank Chrille, Sonny, Choe, Crizp and Freeral for being an inspiration to the feral community and for motivating me to get better at it every day. If you want to contact me, you can whisper me ingame (zephii or zephl) or contact me on the forums (Zephi or Zephii) on www.arena-tournament.com Lastly I want to thank the Arena-Tournament staff and community for creating this wonderful server. I hope you enjoy this guide Sincerely Zephi

4

Spells Let’s take a look at what spells are available to us: Note: Only relevant spells are included, starfall will not be mentioned for example. Direct Damage – Bleed – Finishing move – Healing – Special- CROWD CONTROL

No cooldown spells

Feral

Mangle: Increases bleed damage and shred damage Shred: Only useable while behind the target, increased damage on bleeding targets Rake Rip POUNCE: Stuns the target for 4 seconds, only useable in stealth Ravage: Only useable in stealth, must be behind the target Ferocious Bite: 25% increased critical strike chance on bleeding targets Savage Roar: Increases physical damage done by 30% Swipe: AoE in front of you Faerie Fire (Feral): Reduces armor and makes it impossible to stealth or go invisible. (Magic) Demoralizing Roar: AoE around you that breaks stealth and reduces attack power of anyone hit. Lacerate: Also direct damage Maul

Resto

Rejuvenation Regrowth Lifebloom Healing Touch Abolish Poison Remove Curse Mark/Gift of the Wild: Buff, adds 750 armor, 37 of all attributes and 54 of all resistances

Balance

CYCLONE Moonfire: Also leaves a magic DoT. HIBERNATE: Only useable on beasts (Any druid form except for Tree Of Life, ghost wolf (shamans) and hunter pets. Faerie Fire ENTANGLING ROOTS Hurricane Wrath Thorns: Magic Buff that damages opponents who attack you with melee (low damage)

5

Short cooldown spells (max 1 minute)

Feral

Tiger’s Fury: Restores 60 energy and increases your damage for 6 seconds (30s cd) BASH: Stuns the target for 5 seconds (30s cd) Enrage: Generates 20 rage instantly and an additional 10 over 10 seconds, reduces your base armor by 16% for the duration. (1 minute cd) FERAL CHARGE BEAR: Also physically snares the target for 4 seconds and interrupts any cast for 4 seconds. (15s cd, shared with Feral Charge Cat) Feral Charge Cat (30s cd, shared with Feral Charge Bear) MAIM: Stuns the target for 1/2/3/4/5 seconds (depending on combo points). (10s cd) Mangle (Bear) (6s cd) Prowl: Stealth, 10 seconds cooldown

Resto

N/A

Balance

Barkskin: Dispellable magic buff that reduces melee damage taken by 20% and stops pushback while casting. Useable while CC’d. (1 min cd) NATURE’S GRASP: Any melee striking you will get rooted by entangling roots. 3 charges (1 min cd)

Long cooldown spells (minimum 1 minute)

Feral

Berserk: Reduces energy cost of all abilities by 50%. Tiger’s fury cannot be used during berserk. (3 min cd) Dash: Increases moving speed in cat form by 70% for 15 seconds (2.4 min cd with glyph) Frenzied Regeneration: Usable in bear form, converts 10 rage per second into 3% health for 10 seconds. Healing you for 30% in total (without MS effect). (3 min cd) Survival Instincts: Increases your maximum and current hp by 30% for 20 seconds. Afterwards the health is lost, returning you to 1hp in case your hp is lower than 30%. (3 min cd)

Resto

Tranquility: AoE channeled healing spell that heals everyone around the druid for 3035hp every 2

seconds for 8 seconds. (8 min cd)

Balance

Innervate: Magic buff that regenerates the target’s mana equal to 225% of the druid’s base mana pool over 10 seconds. (3 min cd)

6

Talents, glyphs and gear

Over the years many different talent builds have been created along with fitting gear setups. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

Crizp’s setup (high resi with disc priest)

This talent build is a well-balanced shred build that focuses on doing high damage in the long run. It takes 3/3 in natural shapeshifter in order to not oom while spam shifting. Glyphs: Berserk, rip, shred, the wild, dash, thorns Let’s take a look at his gear: Enchant - Gem Wrathful helmet – 50 AP 20 resi – 18 stam 15% stun red – 20 agi Wrathful shoulders – 40 AP 15 resi – 10 agi 10 resi Wrathful chest – 10 stats – 20 agi – 10 agi 10 resi Wrathful gloves – 20 agi – 25 spell pen Wrathful legs – 75 AP 22 crit – 20 agi – 10 hit 13 spell pen Victory necklace Victory cloak – 35 spell pen

7 Triumph bracers – 50 AP Wrathful Mace – Mongoose – 20 agi – 10 stats Idol of the crying moon Triumph belt – 10 hit 13 spell pen – 20 agi Triumph boots – 16 agility – 10 agi 10 resi Triumph ring Band of the bone colossus – 10 agi 10 resi HC Death’s verdict Pvp trinket

Choe’s high arp low resi setup (with resto shaman)

This build focuses more on burst damage (ferocious bite talent) and less on longevity. Choe uses an

extremely low amount of resilience with this (892) with a rather surprising trinket use. This build is

entirely based on maximizing armor penetration.

Wrathful helmet – 50 AP 20 resi – 42 AP 10% stun red – 20 ArP Sundering necklace Wrathfhul shoulders – 40 AP 15 Resi – 20 ArP Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape – 35 spell pen – 20 ArP

8 Sanctified Lasherweave Raiment – 20 resi – 20 arp – 20 resi Toskk’s Maximized Wristguards – 50 AP – 20 ArP Wrathful Mace – Berserking – 20 agi – 10 stats Idol of the crying moon Wrathful gloves – 20 hit – 20 arp Astrylian’s Sutured Cinch – 10 crit 13 spell pen – 20 arp – 20 arp Wrathful pants – 75 AP 22 crit – 20 arp – 10 hit 13 spell pen Taldaram’s Soft Slippers – 15 stam and minor speed increase – 20 Arp – 20 arp Saurfang’s cold forged band – 20 arp Frostbrood sapphire ring – 20 arp Mark of supremacy Pvp trinket

Variations in resilience If you feel more comfortable with less or more resilience when using crizp’s or choe’s gear setup, consider the following options: Replacing the chestpiece on choe’s gear setup by the wrathful chest with 20 resilience enchant, 20 arp and 20 resi gems will bring your resilience up to about 1k. Replacing the belt, boots and bracers by wrathful ones will lift you even higher to above 1200 resilience. Of course this means you will lose ArP. The higher your resilience is, the lower the effectiveness of your ArP is going to be. That’s why it’s better to switch to agility when you reach a certain level of resilience. Above 1250 resilience I would not recommend playing ArP, as agility will net you better results.

But I like Deathbringer’s Will Then by all means, play with it! If you switch out your mark of supremacy you will lose a lot of hit. Make up for it by using the victory necklace and the band of the bone colossus instead of saurfang’s cold forged band.

What about mangle spec? Mangle spec can be an interesting choice if you are having problems shredding. This can be due to latency or a general disliking to getting onto people’s backs. The advantage of mangle spec is that you are generating combo points faster (energy cost of mangle is lower than shred) and thus getting more finishers and more predatory instincts procs. The downside is that you will be less bursty and that you will get parried, blocked and dodged all the fucking time. If you still want to play mangle spec, here it is:

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This spec obviously specs into improved mangle and drops shredding attacks. Replace the shred glyph by the mangle glyph and you’re all set! You can choose whether you’re going to use the ArP setup or the Agi setup, but I’d go with agility with 1.2+ resilience and HCDV as the entirely point of ArP is to burst and you have already made the choice not to play a bursty game style by choosing mangle over shred.

What it all comes down to Preference. Nothing else. There is no right or wrong way to gear. Adjust your gear to your playstyle and you’ll do just fine. You like to play extremely offensive and bursty? Play with a lot of armor penetration. You like the faster run speed by using the boot enchant? Use it! Don’t care so much about that? Enchant agility then! Getting sapped off kidney all the time? Use the 15% stun meta! Does it never happen to you? By all means use the 21 agi 3% crit damage meta! Find yourself getting destroyed by double dps all the time? Play with lots of resilience! If your playstyle is in line with your gear and your talents, you’re doing it right.

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How to deal damage Now we have a clear list on what spells there are available to us, let’s take a look at how we can combine them to maximize our damage. Let’s describe the ideal situation: Active buffs: Mark of the wild, Thorns Savage Roar Active debuffs on your target: Mangle Rake Rip At this point you want to do damage by using shred to 5 combo points, and using maim or ferocious bite depending on the situation. At all times: Make sure savage roar is up (priority!) Make sure rake is up Make sure rip is up Don’t spam shred but pool energy to be able to burst. Tiger’s fury right before rip increases rip damage by quite a lot. Example given: Prowl – Pounce – Mangle – Rake – Shred to 5 CP – Pool energy to 100 – Savage roar – Shred to 5 CPs (reapply rake if necessary) – Tiger’s Fury – Rip – Pool Energy to 100 – Shred to 5 CPs (reapply rake) – Pool energy to 100 – Berserk – Maim – Shred to 5 CPs – Pool to energy to 65 – Ferocious Bite This example is good for an early berserk. The feral way of doing damage requires practice!

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How to use crowd control effectively There are many reasons to use CC on your enemies.

1. To stop healing/buffs going on your kill target 2. To stop damage coming in on your partner/yourself 3. To stop your partner or yourself from being CC’d 4. To force opponents in a bad position (out of LoS or in range of your partner’s CC) 5. To stop mana burns going out

Feral druids have a wide range of abilities to use to CC opponents. Cyclone is our most powerful crowd control. You cannot get out of cyclone in any way except for using your pvp trinket. It cannot be dispelled nor can it be BoP’d or even bubbled out of! This means that it’s entirely possible to kill a holy paladin’s partner without forcing bubble. Cyclone is a 1.5 second cast, unless you have just used a finishing move. The talent Predatory Strikes will give you a 20% chance to gain a buff that will make your next nature spell (healing touch, entangling roots, regrowth, cyclone, hibernate) instant after using a finishing move (savage roar, rip, maim and ferocious bite). This chance is increased per combo point used up by your finishing move. At 5 combo points you are guaranteed a proc. Entangling roots can be used to root people up to 10 seconds. Dispellable (magic). Hibernate can be used to put opponents to sleep for up to 10 seconds if they are in beast form. Dispellable (magic) Feral charge bear physically snares opponents for 4 seconds. (Can be freedom’d) Pounce/maim/bash are stuns that stun for respectively 4/5/5 seconds, shares DR. The important thing to remember about all these CC’s, is that you have to make sure you use them on the right targets, for the right reasons. I’ll illustrate this with a few examples:

Example 1: Holy paladin/warrior This team tends to go for your priest, although good warriors will sit on you if you use a low resilience gear setup. The main strategy we use is to kill the warrior while dispelling his buffs and CCing the paladin. So I have all my debuffs on the warrior and he is fully dispelled. I have a proc up and use it to focus cyclone the paladin. My priest wants to fear after the cyclone, but he is not in range. Cyclone ends and the holy paladin starts casting a flash of light. I switch to bear to focus charge him (interrupting the cast and snaring him for 4 seconds). I then focus bash him for 5 seconds. I switch back to cat to dps the warrior. In the mean time my priest is in range of fear and successfully fears the paladin. This drops the warrior so low that we force trinkets/shield wall/bubble. We repeat this until they are out of cooldowns and the warrior dies. But wait After our first cc chain the warrior goes offensive and is hacking into my priest. We need to peel the warrior so we can let mortal strike fall off and my priest can heal up. I have a proc up, but the warrior I’m playing against is predicting my cyclone and reflects. I moonfire the reflect down and cyclone him full. He trinkets. There is no freedom up so I bear charge the warrior, snaring him for 4 seconds. My priest is able to run around the pillar and get a penance off. However, the paladin freedoms the warrior and my priest is again in trouble. I switch to cat and start dpsing the warrior until I reach 5 combo points. I now stun him for 5 seconds and then cyclone him for 3 seconds (DR). These 8 seconds are enough for my priest to get back to safety. I restart my rotation on the warrior while my priest drags him LoS of the paladin. The paladin runs closer to the pillar to get in LoS of his warrior. I

12 get a proc and cyclone the warrior for 6 seconds. My priest has no problems getting in range of the paladin and lands the fear. Eventually we get the kill on the warrior. This example illustrates how we should use CC to both go offensive and to go defensive. Try to be creative with your CC and be smart. If you bash the paladin you can use your proc to root the warrior without him getting dispelled. Hard cast a cyclone into the paladin to follow up the bash and you effectively CC’d the entire enemy team for 10 seconds!

Example 2: Shadow Priest / Sub Rogue This team is tricky to play against. Most shadow priest rogues tunnel the feral and try to CC the priest. Good shadow priest rogues will cheap shot kidney shot the feral into a sap and kill the priest. I will go into more detail about how to play against spriest rogue in a later section of the guide. Now I want to illustrate how to stop CC on your priest by using your own CC. My priest was sapped, and to avoid him getting fully dispelled and opened on, I pounce the shadow priest as far away from my priest as possible after the sap happened. I am being cheap shot and kidney shot while the spriest is dispelling me and making his way to my priest to fear him. After the kidney shot the priest isn’t quite in range yet to fear but my priest is still sapped! I switch to bear form and feral charge him, rooting him into place for 4 seconds. Now the sap has ended and my priest can start shielding and buffing me, while moving away from the priest. I then bash the priest to ensure my priest gets a safe distance. If I hadn’t charged the spriest, my priest would have gotten a full fear and they would have forced our cooldowns. As I said, there are many ways to use your CC effectively. It’s one of your main assets as a feral druid! Another example would be hibernating a resto druid who wants to avoid a mana burn or who switched to travel form to avoid a fear!

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Feral / Disc This is by far my favorite 2v2 comp. It is a very, very strong comp you can go very high with if played right. Currently I play Feral / Disc with Crizp’s gear setup. I absolutely love being able to casually take out shadow priest / rogue and ret / mm teams without too much hassle. If you face these teams in 900 resilience you are about to experience absolute nightmare. The advantage of playing with high resilience is that you are able to stay in cat much longer than if you play with low resilience. Being in cat means pressure, staying in bear makes you a target dummy. Staying in cat means you’ll get instant cyclone procs that can be used to CC the incoming damage, sitting in bear means no cyclones, unless you go for an extremely risky hard-casted cyclone.

The general game plan of feral / disc This comp has no MS, which means keeping pressure without CC is very hard to do. This comp relies on its excellent CC to create long-lasting 2v1 situations to force cooldowns. Healer/dps teams are usually defeated by putting long CC chain on the healer while dispelling and dpsing the dps. Here is a list of comps I usually beat in this way: Holy / warrior Holy / death knight Disc / hunter Disc / muti Disc / mage Disc / warrior Disc / Death Knight Resto druid / warrior Resto druid / death knight Other healer/dps comps are more easily beaten by killing the healer. Here is a list: Holy / lock Resto shaman / lock Resto shaman / prot or ret paladin Resto shaman / feral Disc / feral Disc / sub rogue When you face a double dps team, the key to win is to use your excellent CC – chain to make the incoming damage healable while killing the other dps. Don’t be afraid to CC your kill target when you have DR’s on your focus target. If your kill target runs away and you think you will die if you chase him, don’t get seduced into chasing him! You can make some very surprising switches and global the focus target while his partner is trying to reset. Remember that surviving is the most important part of playing arena: you are worth nothing when dead. Don’t LoS your partner unless you have good reasons to and have the defensive cooldowns to back it up. Don’t outrange your partner. Don’t make him leave his pillar because you are being greedy for a kill. This is especially true against comps like shadow priest / mage who will always try to drag you away from your healer so they can get easy polies on your priest. Take your time! Your priest will love you for allowing him to stay at his pillar. There are two categories of double dps teams, based on their strategy. The first category will try to kill your priest. The second category will try to kill you. Examples of comps who kill your priest (note that some comps can do both, kill your priest or kill you!):

14 Feral/rogue Enha/ (combat) rogue Good shadow priest / rogues Feral/mm hunter Enha/bm hunter Ret/rogue Warrior/ret Sometimes ret/hunter (usually in a series when they have gone on me as the feral and lost 5 times in a row they try to change strategy). The following comps tend to target the feral: Shadow priest / mage Shadow priest / rogue Ret / hunter Lock / rogue Mage / Rogue Shadow priest / DK As a rule of thumb to defeat double dps: If it contains a ret paladin; kill his partner and cc the paladin. Why? Because we can fear the ret. If we fear his partner he will just get dispelled. If it contains a shadow priest: kill the shadow priest. Only switch when you know you cannot get on him without exposing your partner (like an SP/Mage dragging you out). Against hunter teams: always kill the hunter, bleeds absolutely destroy hunters. A note about innervate: Innervate is an incredible tool you have at your disposal. Obviously you use it on your priest in 99% of the cases. Use it as early as possible! Meaning that you use it when your priest is at about 50% mana. It’s important to protect the innervate from being dispelled or cycloned. It can be very tricky to innervate against teams like disc/ele or disc/mage because of the double purge. It can be worth it to CC the entire enemy team before innervating. In desperate cases (my priest is completely oom and we have no way to stop the purges from coming in) my priest will PS himself to avoid getting innervate dispelled. Let’s now take a look at specific strategies.

Holy Paladin / Warrior Pounce the warrior while your priest tries to get as close to the paladin as possible while mounted. Try to land an early fear on the paladin. Your priest will probably get HoJ’d which is excellent as HoJ is extremely dangerous when the warrior gets pressure on your priest. Take your time to get a full SR going and pool as much energy as you can. The position we are aiming for is to be near a pillar and as close to the paladin as possible. The hardest part about beating hpala/warrior is getting the fear after cyclone. Most holy paladins will try to max range the priest. That’s why it’s a good idea to tell your priest to LoS the paladin. The warrior (who is on your priest) has 2 choices: stay on the priest without getting heals, or stop damaging the priest to get in LoS of the paladin. If you maim the warrior for 5 seconds behind LoS you can force a lot of pressure. The paladin will probably move very close to your team to get in LoS of his warrior, making him vulnerable for fears.

15 Try to avoid cycloning the paladin when he’s really far away from your priest. The 6 seconds won’t be enough to force cooldowns and your priest will never get to the paladin in time to fear. If your priest is almost at the paladin but not quite yet, it is often a good idea to follow up cyclone with feral charge (bear) and bash. Try to feral charge on cast to lock him out for 4 seconds. Most warriors will try to stop the priest fear by taking distance from your priest and charging or intercepting him when he wants to fear. This can be avoided by maiming the warrior before he can charge. If you can see that your priest won’t get a fear in time no matter what you do, it’s critical that he returns to the pillar. If not, the warrior will be able to pressure your priest as he can just tank your damage while the paladin healbots him from max range. As I said before, dragging the warrior LoS will either create pressure on them, or reduce pressure on you. Don’t necessarily use your cyclone immediately when you get your instant cast proc. It’s pointless to cyclone the paladin when his warrior is still out of LoS. Sometimes you will be able to get in another 6-8k damage without the warrior getting any kind of healing before the paladin gets in line of sight. Cyclone the paladin when he is able to heal. If at all possible, try to have max energy when you get back on the warrior after cycloning the paladin. Make sure your priest keeps the warrior dispelled during CC. Getting Sacred Shield dispelled is critical to killing the warrior. If you cycloned correctly, your priest should be able to get in range of the paladin to fear him. As I said before, try to stop the warrior from charging/intercepting onto your priest to avoid the fear. Chaining cyclone and fear is the best way to force their cooldowns. Let’s take a look at the cooldowns we want to force: Paladin trinket Warrior trinket Bubble Shield wall Shield block BoP If you are able to create a lot of pressure you can often force many cooldowns at the same time. If you manage to stun the warrior out of LoS he will trinket 9 out of 10 times. Often warriors will shield wall at the same time as their paladin bubbles. Shield block is a rather annoying little ability as it is usually coupled with the warrior spamming piercing howl while turning his back away from you, making it impossible to shred. I often just wait for shield block to be over to continue dps-ing him. Just return to the pillar until shield block is over. Keep rotating crowd controls on the paladin while dispelling and nuking the warrior until all cooldowns are used. Now is a good time to berserk and finish off the warrior. You can also use an early berserk to force many cooldowns quickly. By the time all cooldowns are used you will have berserk again. Note: Cyclone the warrior when you cannot control the paladin any further to stop heals on the warrior. Be alert when cycloning warriors, as many of them look out for your proc to spell reflect. Just moonfire the reflect down before cycloning. Don’t forget to take really good care of your priest. Warriors can create a lot of pressure on priests very easily. Use your cc to help your priest manage the damage on him. Always cc the warrior if your priest gets pummeled and always cc the warrior straight after bladestorm. A feral charge -> bash -> cyclone is cheaper than having to use PS or desperate prayer.

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Other healer/warrior comps

Disc / warrior

This comp has become increasingly popular ever since despondency and serenity reached rank 1 with it. This comp can be a bit tricky as warrior damage combined with offensive dispels is very rough on your priest. Double fear and mana burn only add to the potential threat this comp forms. The strategy is pretty much the same as versus hpala/warrior. Don’t be tempted to go on the priest, you cannot leave a warrior on your priest for a long time before he’ll have to use cooldowns or die. Priest heals are weaker than holy paladin heals and once you have cleaned the buffs off the warrior and cycloned the priest, you can drop the warrior very quickly. Mana burn the priest whenever he’s in LoS to force him to move away from your priest. Try to avoid getting double feared by running out of the fear range when the priest comes in to fear. Getting double feared against disc priest teams is the first step to losing. Remember that. Control the shadowfiend as soon as possible. You will either win by just killing the warrior (your priest needs to land good fears for this) or by winning on mana. If you go for burns you can use feral charge and bash to keep the priest in LoS. Don’t forget to protect your innervate.

Resto shaman / warrior

This comp can also be very dangerous because of offensive dispels. The advantage is that there are no defensive dispels, which means you can root the warrior. Going on the resto shaman is a viable strategy (and might be the best strategy) for this reason. If you go warrior you might run into problems CC’ing the shaman. Good shamans will spam purge you to instantly get your proc and/or will ground your cyclones. Good tremor placement can make it a nightmare to get reliable fears. That’s why it’s a good idea to go on the shaman with burns/damage from the priest. Keep an eye out for your priest at all times. He can drop very randomly to warrior damage. Rotate cyclone, root, feral charge and bash on the warrior to reduce his damage. If you can, try to cc him right before he refreshes mortal strike to allow your priest to heal up fast and without using a lot of mana. How to kill a resto shaman: Take your time. Get a full SR and a full (tiger furied) rip up. Now shred slowly. This means staying at high energy at all time. Shamans get a lot of heals by actually casting (unlike holy paladins). Often shamans will drop to ~50% hp before starting to cast heals. If you stay at high energy and don’t immediately finish your 5 combo points you can maim right before a cast ends. At this point you can spam shred to drop the shaman very very low. At this point you are low on energy and the shaman will freecast. Cyclone him. Kill the tremor and fear him after cyclone. He will still be at very low hp and you’ll have full energy. Your maim will come off cd again and even though stun DRs will still be in effect you can probably stun his next cast as well. If you cc the warrior while doing this your priest is free to assist you by burning or dps’ing. It’s not always an easy to choice whether to go for burns or damage. Usually we go for damage if the shaman is using water shield and for burns if he uses earth shield on himself. Kill the mana tide asap when he uses it. Eventually the shaman will not have trinket or NS and he will die in the stun. Ooming him is also a good way to kill him.

Resto druid / warrior

This comp can be hard to beat when you (as the feral) get stuck in 3x cyclone while your priest gets hammered down. There are two ways to beat this comp. The first is a straightforward killing the warrior while cc’ing the druid (works on bad and average WDs), the second is harder to execute but works better against good warrior druids. The first strategy is very useable when the druid starts in stealth and you can just dispel the warrior. Druid healing requires some ramp-up time. If the druid starts you can let the warrior charge your priest behind a pillar, open on him, load him up with bleeds (after SR) and let your priest aid you with nuking. Usually the priest will pounce you and hardcast a

17 clone on you. Your priest has to fear the druid to stop the clone. If the druid chooses to not pounce you but hardcast a clone from a distance straight out of stealth you have to react quickly by switching to bear and charging the clone. Shadowmeld also works. Bash the druid out of it and let your priest fear him (or hardcast a clone if your priest is out of range). Look out for opportunities to hibernate the resto druid, getting a hibernate forces a fuckton of cooldowns. Letting your priest chase the druid for fears can lead him to go into travel form, being vulnerable to a hibernate. Don’t forget that hibernate is instant when used with your predatory instincts proc. Another great way to get a hibernate on the resto druid is by burning the druid, forcing him to switch into bear. (Credit to sonny, sonny 5). If you get a hibernate you can essentially CC the druid for 10 seconds (hibernate) + 8 seconds (fear) + 6 seconds cyclone + 5 seconds bash for a wopping 29 seconds of CC. Needless to say you will force at least a trinket by doing this massive chain. Eventually you should be able to kill the warrior. The second strategy is harder to do. The end goal is to kill the resto druid here by switching onto him when he has no hots. There are two obstacles that you will need to get out of the way before doing this: trinket and barkskin. The problem with barkskin is that its cd is only one minute. I often start on warrior and try strategy one, as it is easier and more straightforward. If we force the trinket on the druid and I find that I cannot get pressure on the warrior anymore, and the druid is managing to kite my priest really well, it’s a good idea to try strategy 2. So first of all you force the trinket by going warrior and cc’ing druid. Now listen carefully: don’t switch on the druid without having full energy AND tiger’s fury. Without sufficient energy you won’t force anything. Get full energy and a full SR on the warrior. Root him. Quickly switch on the druid, don’t get rip up, just rake, shred to 5 CPs (with mangle ofc) and stun him. Use tiger’s fury to nuke him in the maim. He will barkskin the maim. Great. Switch back on warrior. Wait for your tiger’s fury to go back up, barkskin will still be on cooldown. When you have tiger’s fury again you switch on the druid again. This time he has trinket nor barkskin. Use tiger’s fury then berserk to maim him and nuke him down with shred and ferocious bite. Your priest can fiend here and PI nuke the druid. He will not get out of that alive. Obviously this strategy works better when playing ArP than when playing agility, although it’s still a viable strategy as agility. End note about playing against warrior / healer: Keep an eye out for your priest at all times. Priests WILL die to warriors if you don’t peel.

Holy paladin / DK This comp is fairly easy to beat. The most important part is not to not allow your priest to get gibbed by the DK. If you face an unholy DK it is very important to cc the gargoyle. Most DKs will AMS when nuking to avoid getting cycloned. Use your instant cyclone on the gargoyle and use feral charge to stop the DK. If he gets freedom’d out of it use bash. Don’t forget to look out for Icebound Fortitude (IBF) before stunning. IBF makes DKs immune to bash. If you cannot stop the DK in any way (freedom + AMS + IBF) I often pop berserk, cyclone the paladin and try to blow up the DK while the priest runs LoS of the paladin. This will cause the DK to either get off your priest or forced to use runes to heal himself instead of doing damage. Outside gargoyle duration UHDK’s aren’t that scary to feral / disc. Make sure to peel the DK in case your priest gets strangulated / mind frozen. In general the strategy is quite similar to hpala / warrior. Kill the DK while cc’ing the holy paladin. In stead of charging your priest to stop him from fearing DKs will try to grip him before he can fear. Similar to holy paladin / warrior you should try to maim him before he grips. Use maim to go for a kill as he cannot death strike or pet sac while stunned. Frost DKs are usually easier to kill than UHDK’s but are burstier than UHDK’s. Make sure to communicate peels well with your priest and make him call out how the healing is going. Make sure you don’t both trinket hungering cold at the same time.

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Other DK / healer comps

Disc / DK

Quite an uncommon comp. Going priest is an option but very risky. DK’s can easily solo a priest. This plays very similarly to Disc / warrior. Just go on the DK while burning / CC’ing the priest. Avoid double fears at all cost and peel hard during gargoyle. Use bash to be able to get fears on the priest without getting feared back.

Resto shaman / DK

This comp can be quite scary because of offensive dispels and bloodlust. Luckily this comp isn’t played very oftenly. Make sure to keep your priest safe during gargoyle / BL. Keep peeling until gargoyle’s gone and bloodlust has been dispelled. Again, going on the shaman is a viable strategy. If you are playing against a shaman who is slow on grounding / dispelling your proc it’s easier to kill the DK while cc’ing the shaman. Nuke or burn the shaman according to his shield. (Nuke on water and burn on earth).

Resto druid / DK

Very unusual comp on AT at the moment. Again, protect your priest when they go offensive. It can be quite tricky to beat this comp because getting fears on the druid is near impossible if they play right. Assess the skill level of your opponents by trying to kill the DK while cc’ing the druid. If they aren’t good enough to avoid fears you can kill the DK quite easily while dispelling his hots. If they play very well you can attempt the second strategy described in the resto druid / warrior section involving switches on the druid to kill him in a maim. If the druid plays very offensive (he probably will) you can fear him more easily and burn him to either 1) oom him or 2) hibernate him when he switches to bear. I wish I could give a more detailed explanation on how to reliably beat this comp but I can’t say I have faced this comp a single time in the past few months.

Disc / Rogue Keep faerie fire (feral) up on the rogue at all times.

Disc / Mutilate Rogue

Open on the priest as early as possible. Try to keep a maximum range between your priest and the enemy priest. Your priest will get sapped, that’s unavoidable. The key is to avoid getting him sapped and dispelled. If your priest gets opened on without any buffs, it will take a tremendous effort to save his life. If you open on the priest and the rogue opens on you, just use barkskin. Your priest should be too far away to get feared straight after sap and he will be able to top you off quite easily. If you get feared by the priest and the rogue opens on your priest, use berserk. You cannot leave your priest alone when the priest and the rogue connect on him. If the rogue is going on your priest, go on the rogue. Mutilate rogues die easily as they run with little resilience, their evasion is useless against shred, and they have no cheat death to save their asses. Make your priest LoS the other priest to make the rogue stop pressuring your priest. Try to cyclone the rogue during kidney shot. It reduces pressure on your priest tremendously. If the rogue decides to go on you, just switch priest. Trying to hit a rogue who is on you with evasion is unproductive and very frustrating. Just go priest while your priest burns and dispels him. Try to avoid double fears on you. Getting double feared will lead to you getting sapped and them getting another deadly opener on your priest. 9 out of 10 losses against disc / rogue are because you got double feared. Don’t use your trinket for anything but blind. The only exception is when you are 100% sure you will get the kill and you get kidney shot with deadly poison on you (making you

19 immune to blind long enough to get the kill without getting blinded). Trinketing kidney can easily lead to a loss by getting blinded and sapped later in the game. Depending on the opposing rogue’s target, you can either kill the rogue, kill the priest or oom the priest (leading to a kill on either target).

Disc / sub rogue

Sub rogues have lower sustained damage but can burst extremely hard during dance. They are harder to kill because they can gouge – kidney very often as they don’t have deadly poison breaking their gouges. It can be extremely frustrating to kill a sub rogue for this reason. Usually they will peel all game and only burst during dance (usually after a double fear on you). The same rule as against the mutilate version applies. Go priest when the rogue goes on you and go rogue when the rogue goes on your priest. Cyclone kidney shot (on your priest). Avoid double fears at all cost. If you can, cyclone every dance. If he cloaks it, feral charge and bash him. Don’t trinket anything but blind, even when close to the kill. As there are no dots on you (no deadly poison), sub rogues can blind you instantly after you trinket, usually into a full sap. Be patient, try to play the mana game with burns and a well-timed innervate and fiend. Eventually you should be able to burst either the rogue or the disc down, depending on the rogue’s target. If they go on you and your priest gets feared, do anything you can to stop the follow-up sap on your priest. CC the rogue or try to demoralizing roar him out after vanish. The hardest part of playing against this is not getting seduced into trinketing a kidney. Most of my losses against this comp were because I got impatient and trinketed a kidney leading to me getting blinded and then sapped while my priest gets destroyed in a dance or burned to 0 mana.

Disc / mage Feral / disc has the advantage in this match-up. However, you can still lose quite easily if the mage / priest plays well and you fuck up. You have to stop their cc-chain on your priest at all cost. Your priest needs to avoid getting polied. If he is deeped or cs’d while nova’d it’s your responsibility to stop the poly. You can do this by cycloning the mage (if you have a proc), charging the cast or bashing the mage. If you do not have access to any of these, it is still worthwile to hardcast a clone on the mage, as you will stop a lot of potential damage on you. Likewise, if your priest gets feared, clone the mage near the end of the fear to stop the polymorph from going out. How to win: Tunnel the mage. Make sure your priest dispels the mage clean and keeps you out of deep. You can sometimes one-shot a mage with ferocious bite before he can even block. Kill water elementals and mirror images (with swipe if necessary). Water elementals are deadly. They allow easy deeps on your priest which lead to polymorphs and fears. Killing a water elemental quickly increases your chance to win by a large margin. Mirror images make it impossible to get on the mage as they slow you faster than you can remove slows by spam shifting. 2 or 3 swipes are enough to kill them. After both pets are dead it becomes a lot easier to avoid polymorph and to do damage to the mage. You can burn either the priest or the mage. Try to stop evocation. If you manage to oom the mage after evocation it’s pretty much over.

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Disc / hunter This comp kind of counters us the same way we counter them. It is very well possible to beat them but it’s an uphill battle. Go on the hunter. They will go on you. They will scatter – trap – fear your priest and nuke you down. Good hunters can kite extremely well and it can be very challenging to get on them. Try to stop traps at all cost. This can be achieved in a few ways: You can eat the trap (this means standing on top of the trap to take it from your priest after he gets scattered). You can also cc the hunter after the scatter has gone out but before the trap has been launched. If you have a cyclone proc up this is easy to do. Just cyclone the hunter right when he scatters to stop the trap from going out. You can also bash him if you are near him, or maim him if you have the chance. If you cannot eat the trap, feral charge and bash the hunter into a hardcasted cyclone to avoid taking damage during trap. In the meantime, try to stop the priest from following the trap up with a fear by cycloning him. How to win: Kill the hunter. If you get the chance, gib his pet while cc’ing the priest (have your priest assist in damage). You can burn the priest to win on mana. After the pet dies it’s quite easy to stay on the hunter, after that it’s just a matter of getting him down while cc’ing the priest. Don’t forget that you can shred through deterrence. Lastly, use your maim often to inflict a huge amount of burst damage to the hunter.

Disc / Feral In a mirror match the goal is usually to kill the other priest as fast as you can. Try to outplay them by dispelling the other feral’s proc and get ahead in mana. Burn the priest as much as you can. Use your procs (if they don’t get dispelled) to cyclone the other feral and cc him during berserk. You can use hibernate together with maim on the priest or when the feral is out of LoS of his priest. Try to avoid double fears while trying to land them on them. In the end the winner is sometimes decided on whoever geared better. If you have just faced a lot of double dps teams and your priest went full resi, while your opponent stacked mp5, you may lose on mana rather quickly. Protect your innervates and time your fiend so it doesn’t get feared or cycloned. If you see an opportunity to switch on the feral, use it. You can drop ArP – geared ferals in a maim (dispel barkskin) if you cyclone – fear their priest.

Healer / UA lock

Personally I struggle a lot with healer / lock teams (both UA and destro). It is very hard to pressure a warlock and the constant fears force your entire team in awful positions. Bad healer / lock teams are easy to beat. Good healer / lock teams are incredibly hard to beat. Because UA locks are very hard to kill I often go on the healer. Disc priests, resto shamans and holy paladins are definitely killable if you pool energy and time your maims well. Try to LoS as many fears as possible and cc the warlock when your priest gets feared out. Holy paladin / UA lock is probably the easiest variant to beat because they lack offensive dispels. You can train a paladin pretty easily and if you time fear and maim well you can force him to trinket or bubble rather easily. Disc / UA lock is hard to beat. I played 2 games versus Marm playing this comp and lost both. I was unable to pressure the priest enough to kill him as I had to leave him to get in LoS of my priest. They were spam burning my priest until he was completely oom and we succumbed to the pressure of the dots. Bad healer / lock teams can be defeated quite easily by killing the pet twice and then killing the lock with berserk. Locks take a tremendous amount of damage without soul link and can be zerged down

21 quite easily. Felhunters are harder to kill than succubusses (which should be killed as soon as possible). Overall it’s an extremely frustrating match-up. You will get spam feared, covered by UA, you’ll have to switch away from the healer you’re trying to kill to get into LoS, and if you position yourself badly you’ll get into double howls. Against resto shaman / lock you have to try to dispel hex asap. Unfortunately good teams will fear / coil / cs you during hex so you are unable to dispel it. Stop drain soul ASAP when it gets cast on anyone or you will lose. To summarize you have two options: Either kill the healer or kill pets. As soon as I have a better strat to beat this setup I will update the guide!

Healer / destro lock I find this a little easier to defeat than the UA variant. The only exception is when facing resto druid / destro lock. This comp is extremely hard to beat because of the spam CC that’s going out all game long. If the lock is playing with a succubus you have to kill the succubus twice and then kill the lock. However, most locks will play with a felhunter. Because of the delay of resto druid healing it can be possible to kill the felhunter twice but you’ll need good coordination. Try to CC the druid and the lock at the same time (fear on lock and clone druid for example). Cover the fears with Faerie Fire and shadow word pain to reduce the chance of the fear getting devoured by the felhunter. If you manage to kill the pet twice you’ll have a chance to kill the lock. If your priest gets feared out and nuked you have to try to interrupt either fear or chaos bolt. CC the lock until your priest gets to the pillar safely. Usually I find that I cannot kill the felhunter because we cannot get the double CC out without something going wrong. To make it easier I usually go on the healer in case of holy paladin or resto shaman. LoSing a destro lock is quite easy to do and if you pool energy well, you can kill the paladin or shaman quite easily. I haven’t faced disc / destro lock yet so I cannot really comment on it. I would assume killing the priest is a viable strategy. Again: If I come up with a more viable strategy to beat this comp I will update the guide with it.

Resto shaman / ret paladin The easiest way to win is to go on the ret paladin while burning him to 0 mana. At this point he cannot dispel his shaman anymore and you can simply fear him fully after a clone. The ret will die pretty easily. Make sure to CC the paladin during wings or to dispel the wings. This comp doesn’t pose that much threat as they have very little CC. If you cannot burn the ret paladin oom you can also time your maim with fear (beware of freedom). If you feel that your priest is quite capable of tanking the ret, then going on the shaman is also an option. Burn the shaman if he uses earth shield and let your priest dps him if he uses water shield.

Resto shaman / prot paladin Prot paladins can burst quite hard and silence often. It is pointless to burn them as their plea is permanently up. Versus this comp I just train the shaman while having my priest burn/nuke according to the shaman’s shield. This comp is very easy to beat as long as you cc the paladin during HoJ. Your priest needs to stay alert and not get randomly gibbed. Kill mana tide quickly and within a few minutes the shaman will either be dead or oom.

Disc / ret paladin

22 This comp is also very easy to beat. You can either burn and kill the paladin while cc’ing the priest, or you can simply tunnel the priest with burns and dispels until he dies. The paladin has no real way of peeling you off his priest which means you’re free to do whatever you want. The only thing you have to be mindful off is getting double feared without trinket while the paladin uses wings, the priests uses fear and PI to nuke your priest while he’s in a hoj. Situations like that you have to try to avoid at all cost. Still, this comp is very easy to defeat, I have only lost to it once or twice because me or my priest got distracted or made a big mistake. As long as you cyclone the paladin during HoJ your priest will never die.

Disc / ele This comp is quite easy to beat. It usually turns into a mana-fight as they don’t have the necessary cc to kill you. Just tunnel the priest and cyclone the shaman. Your priest has to burn the priest. Eventually you’ll land a kill on the priest. Remember that you can root the shaman if the priest runs out of his LoS. Just LoS or bear charge the lava burst if your priest gets feared and don’t forget to instantly dispel hex if your priest gets caught in it.

Shadow Priest / Mutilate Rogue The burst of this comp is quite scary. If you are running with Choe’s gear setup you are in for a very hard match-up. Low resilience ferals get destroyed by spriest rogue. This comp along with ret/mm is the sole reason I personally run with a high resilience. Both these comps are incredibly popular and being able to win against them reliably is huge. The mutilate variant of this comp is easier to beat than the subtlety variant (which I will cover next) because their switching options are limited (due to step and deadly poisons). Wait for the rogue to sap your priest and then open on the shadow priest as soon as possible. You want to avoid the shadow priest getting a fear straight after sap at all cost. You can achieve this by pouncing the shadow priest as far from your priest as possible. The timing of this can be quite tricky as preferably you’d wait for the sap to land on your priest. If the rogue doesn’t sap and the priest rushes, open at once! Stopping the shadow priest from fearing your priest is a fundamental element in beating this setup. After you pounce the priest you will get opened on by the rogue. Use barkskin during cheap shot and kidney shot. Keep faerie fire feral on the rogue at all times. This means it’s the first global you spend out of kidney shot. Use feral charge bear or cat on the priest, depending on his position. If he’s near your priest it would be wise to use the bear charge in order to allow your priest to back away from the priest. If he’s far away from your priest still you can choose to use the cat charge. Don’t berserk straight away. Start getting SR and rip up and try to do as much damage to the priest as you can. Use your first cyclone proc on the rogue given that he doesn’t cloak. Your priest doesn’t need to get an early fear on the enemy team if he doesn’t have fear ward, the risk of getting feared is too great. Most shadow priest rogue teams will try to reset when being pressured, the priest will run away (or disperse) and try to flash heal up. Versus mutilate rogues I always trinket the second kidney shot and finish off the spriest with berserk. Your priest should use bauble during silence and save trinket for blind. If you play with high resilience you should be able to stay in cat during the entire game and finish the priest rather quickly. If the priest is able to get away and reset, it might be a good idea to switch rogue. Mutilate rogues can die quite easily if you manage to stun them. Use your survival instincts only when you are on low health and make sure your priest pays attention to its duration. Remember that you lose the hp gained from SI after it’s over, which can be very hard on your healer. A good time to use nature’s grasp is after cloak and during disperse, as the priest cannot dispel his rogue. If the rogue has no evasion up you can easily focus bash him.

23 Most teams won’t do this but if they happen to go on your priest you can just go all out on the priest and destroy him within 10 seconds.

Shadow priest / sub rogue I find this much harder to beat than the mutilate variant because of how much control the rogue can provide and how hard dance can hit. Bad and average teams will simply try to rush the feral down. The opener is the same: Try to open on the priest as far away from your priest as possible, but after the sap has landed. Use barkskin during cheap shot and kidney shot only when being danced on. Then proceed to kill the SP in much the same way as described in the section about SP/Muti. Don’t trinket kidney if you don’t have dots on you as they may want to blind-sap you while killing your priest. (If they don’t dance in the opener that’s often what they intend to do). If they ride you all game it is not that hard to win, just use the steps described in the mutilate section and you’ll be fine. Switching on the rogue is often not a good idea because of the survivability of sub rogues (especially cheat death). Good SP/rogue teams will do the following. Cheap shot and kidney shot on the feral, don’t touch the feral (SP dispels the priest). The rogue will either dance sap or vanish sap the feral out of kidney. They will then dance on your priest while the feral sits a full sap and then often a half sap. If the sp rogue are playing good they can kill your priest in those 15 seconds. Obviously you will get fully blinded if you trinket. For this reason I use the 15% stun meta, it allows you to not drop combat after KS ends and if you are quick you can faerie fire something to stay in combat and not get sapped. If they play well and LoS you may well get sapped anyway. At this point you rely on your priest completely to survive the SP rogue damage. After the cc on you is over you have to peel for your priest and then kill the shadow priest.

Shadow priest / Mage This comp is definitely tricky. The key to beating it is to not get tempted into going into the open too much. Definitely avoid getting dragged out of range of the pillar. If the shadow priest rushes towards your priest to fear him out, open on him near the pillar and start dpsing him. Use your focus cyclone to cyclone the mage. If the priest kites out to outrange your priest, don’t follow him unless you are a 100% sure you can kill him before they kill you. The most important part is keeping your priest out of CC. The enemy mage will try to poly him very early by deeping or stacking CS with a nova. Try to cyclone/charge/bash the cyclone. Your priest needs to try to fear ward the fear or position himself in such a way that he cannot get feared. Since you are dps’ing the spriest you can effectively maim him at the right time to avoid double fears. If the shadow priest stays in the open and the mage comes in to try to poly, pounce the mage. You can win this match-up by killing the mage as well. Going mage stops a lot of their polies. The downside is that the priest is free to fear your priest. One cc-chain on your priest can finish you. That’s why it’s absolutely critical that you stop the fear and/or the poly. If you get kited out return to the pillar asap or you will lose. If your priest is forced to leave his pillar you cannot win as a poly is unavoidable. Any decent mage will fake the shadow word death and then poly your priest full. Even in 1350 resilience you’re a sitting duck in the open versus this comp. If they are good at kiting and resetting I switch to whatever is within pillar range. Eventually they will run out of cooldowns and you can force them defensive. (If a shadow priest has to start healing you know you are about to

24 win.) Don’t get greedy. Don’t chase a shadow priest across the map only to get stuck in a deep while your priest sits helplessly in the open getting spam polied while you eat 5k frostbolts back to back with a full row of dots on you. Barkskin is absolutely useless against this double purge comp and survival instincts is a poisoned gift as it destroys your hp after it has ended. Be patient, play smart and you’ll land a kill eventually. Don’t forget to babysit your priest and keep him out of trouble. Greedy SP/Mages can often be blown up.

Shadow Priest / DK You pretty much cannot lose to this comp. It used to be more common than it is now but every now and then I still queue into one. It’s very easy to beat as they have almost no control over you. Just open on the priest (don’t charge on him in stealth because you’ll need charge for grip) and berserk after disperse to finish him off quickly. Use focus cyclones and roots on the DK (watch out for AMS). Usually this game is won within 30 seconds.

Ret / MM Hunter This is the second comp that is very hard to beat in low resilience, but quite acceptable with high resilience. The key to winning this is fear. Most ret/hunter teams will go on the feral while trapping/HoJ’ing and repentencing your priest. Try to eat every trap. We will go on the hunter and cc the ret. Use barkskin during wings and try to get rip up on the hunter as quickly as possible. Your priest needs to fear the ret on cooldown. If your priest runs with you as much as possible, it is quite easy to fears on the paladin. A good fear-cyclone chain on the paladin can force the hunter defensive easily. Be aware that the hunter might trap on HoJ. Use your SI as late as possible. Don’t stack barkskin with PS. If you are having problems getting on the hunter, and their offensive cd’s are down, it might be a good idea to LoS the hunter and quickly kill his pet. A hunter without pet is much easier to kill. Eventually they will run out of offensive cooldowns and you’ll be able to kill the hunter. My priest usually fiends quite early to maximize our pressure on the hunter. If the pressure on you becomes too much and the paladin is DR on cyclone, use it on the hunter. It will stop his damage and give you a chance to get to his position without using feral charge. Bear charge can be more useful than cat charge vs hunters because of the 4 second snare. I use focus bash on the ret paladin very often because he will freedom himself, making it easier to get on the hunter as he cannot freedom him. The bottom line is: Rotate your defensive cd’s cleverly and fear the ret paladin on cooldown. The hunter will die eventually and the damage on you should be healable. It can be tricky if they go on your priest. However, you should be able to do a lot of damage on the hunter as he cannot kite you while going on the priest. Your priest needs to play well and time his cooldowns well. Most paladins will trinket the fear to get on the priest at which point you can fully clone him.

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Feral / MM hunter This comp does a lot of damage. I often find that it’s much easier to win if they go on me than on my priest. I usually kill the hunter and cyclone/fear/hibernate the feral. After berserk is over it’s quite easy to win. The problem is when they go on your priest. A priest under pressure often doesn’t have the global to dispel you so if you get scattered, trapped, hibernated and cycloned it can be very hard to do any damage or to peel for your priest at all. Good feral/hunter teams can finish your priest off in seconds after PS is gone. Your priest needs to stay in LoS of you and dispel the trap immediately to have a chance to win. At that point you can safely trinket cyclone and bash the feral into a clone. Then you can dps the hunter and hibernate the feral for 10 seconds. If your priest manages to stay alive until this point, the game is won. After berserk you can also fear the feral and then clone him full again. It all comes down to getting dispelled quickly and generating combo points fast.

Enha / BM hunter This setup is similar to feral/hunter in that it’s quite easy to beat if they go on the feral, and pretty challenging when they go on your priest. I always try to rush down the hunter fast with berserk. The advantage is that they have only on deterrence and that the cc on you is pretty much non-existant. The problem is that they can destroy your priest even quicker than feral/mm can. Use roots/feral charge/bash/cyclone to stop the shaman from zerging your priest and quickly finish off the BM hunter. This setup isn’t terribly hard to beat but if you are a bit unlucky with dodges and purges it can be a quick loss.

Enha / Combat rogue This comp is a nightmare to face. They finish your priest incredibly fast. I usually pounce -> root the shaman and go on the rogue. Keep abolish poison on your priest and try to global the rogue. Unfortunately I have lost every single game to this setup so far, so I cannot give a solid strategy against it. If I do, I will update the guide! Feel free to pm me suggestions!

Lock / Rogue This comp isn’t very hard to beat. Treat it like shadow priest / rogue but without disperse and without healing. Use your barkskin on the dance (in case it’s a sub rogue) and trinket the second kidney if you are sure you won’t get blinded. Fear DR’s with blind so the cc they have for your priest is quite limited. When you trinket kidney and berserk there’s not much that stops you from gibbing the lock except for coil.

Ele / destro

I pretty much hate to play against this comp. You have to play extremely defensive and stay close to your pillar at all times. If they have a succubus I try to kill it twice and then kill the lock. At all times make sure to interrupt seduce. During lust you have to LoS and wait for your priest to get it off. Dispel hex asap. Don’t go chasing the lock or the shaman across the map as you will get zerged down very quickly. Lava burst and chaos bolt hit extremely hard and your barkskin gets dispelled instantly. This is a comp I regurarly lose to, and the tiniest fuck up can lead to a loss. Save your charge for seduction. Trinket coil if you have to do stop the seduce. Every second counts against this comp.

26 Another viable strategy is to zerg the shaman. Use charge on seduce and then dash back on the shaman with berserk. Trinket coil and kill the shaman quickly with fiend and priest nukes. It is a risky all-in method that can go wrong quite easily. If the shaman starts spamming lusted lesser healing – waves he can often outheal the damage you do in berserk. I haven’t yet decided on the best strategy against this comp. The most important thing to remember is to not over-extend and to keep your priest out of cc.

Ele / Mage I found the easiest way to beat this was to go on the mage. It’s far easier to do damage on an ele shaman, but leaving a mage alone will cause problems. He’ll get a free poly on your priest and the shaman will kite you away from your priest. If you go mage he cannot easily do damage to you. If the mage kites away from your priest you can just run back to your priest and reset. Your priest needs to keep you out of deeps and try to get the ice barriers off. If you get the upper hand in pressure (basically forcing the mage to run for his life) you will win rather quickly. The key is to not let them get cc on your priest, because you can get zerged by this comp really quickly. LoS them during lust while your priest dispels the lust. A lusted poly is almost impossible to avoid. Since their only cc shares dr (except for deep) they aren’t that scary and you shouldn’t really lose to them. Just don’t get baited into going after them in the open and get zerged down.

Destro / Mage This comp can be very challenging to beat. Fear and poly not sharing DR means they can cc your priest for an extremely long amount of time while bursting you down very quickly. Most destro/mage teams play with a felhunter. If the mage stays in back in the open I would go on the lock. If however, the mage comes in to the pillar of your priest to poly, open on him at once. A mage who is close to your priest can be killed incredibly easily as your priest is free to dispel. This team has almost no healing so any damage you can do on the mage is permanent. Don’t be afraid to switch away if your kill target runs out of range of your priest’s pillar. Both the lock and the mage can be killed quite easily. Use your defensive cooldowns cleverly (i.e. don’t use SI while your priest trinkets as well). The key is to stop polymorphs going out. Get the upper hand early and keep it and you can win very quickly. Luckily this comp isn’t very popular right now.

Ret / Rogue If the ret rogue decides to go on you it’s fairly easy to win. Just kill the ret while using cyclones on the rogue. Your priest has to stand max range in order to death repentance and blind. Keep faerie fire on the rogue and use nature’s grasp after cloak while stunning the ret to root the rogue. If you get the bubble off quickly you can finish off the ret. If the ret rogue goes on your priest it’s a lot more tricky. In this case I kill the rogue as dealing damage to a rogue who isn’t going on you is easy to do using shred. You have to peel early and use PS during wings. Pounce the rogue when he opens and hardcast a cyclone on the ret. If he trinkets you can fear him full. If you load up the rogue with bleeds early he can die within seconds. Get BoP off as fast as you can and you can win quickly. Don’t trinket anything but blind. It’s not a very common comp at the moment so I don’t have a lot of experience against it. If you are getting hoj’d or repentenced and your trinket is in KS in the mean time, he has to trinket KS to get you out of cc. Use feral charge (bear) for peels and keep abolish poison on your priest. If you’re out of cc on the ret,

27 cyclone the rogue instead. Try to avoid having them connect on your priest as ret/rogue does a lot of damage.

Priest gear, talents and glyphs Credit to Dogtaco

Glyphs: Penance, Pain Suppression, Fear Ward Levitate, Fortitude, Shadowfiend Gear: Wrathful Mooncloth Helmet – 29sp 20 resi – 21 int mana restore – 12 sp 10 resi Ascendancy Necklace Wrathful Mooncloth Shoulders – 23 sp 15 resi – 20 resi Salvation cloak – 35 spell pen Wrathful Mooncloth Chest – 20 resi – 12 sp 10 resi – 20 resi Salvation Bracers – 30 sp Wrathful haste dagger – 63 sp – 10 hit 13 spell pen Wrathful Mooncloth Gloves – 28 sp – 10 resi 5 mp5 Salvation belt – 10 resi 5 mp5 – 10 resi 5 mp5

28 Wrathful Mooncloth Pants – 50 sp 30 stam – 12 sp 10 resi – 10 resi 5 mp5 Salvation Boots – 15 stam run speed – 10 resi 5 mp5 Valanar’s Other Signet Ring – 10 hit 13 spell pen Marrowgar’s Frigid Eye – 20 resi Bauble of True Blood Heroic Solace of the defeated

Useful macros

Focus macros #showtooltip Cyclone /cast [target=focus] Cyclone #showtooltip Entangling Roots /cast [target=focus] Entangling Roots #showtooltip Hibernate /cast [target=focus] Hibernate #showtooltip Faerie Fire (Feral) /cast [target=focus] Faerie Fire (Feral) #showtooltip Feral Charge (Bear) /cast [target=focus] Feral Charge (Bear) #showtooltip Bash /cast [target=focus] Bash

Stealth / NoStealth Macros This macro will cast Pounce when stealthed, and Rake while not stealthed. This saves a keybind. #showtooltip /cast [stealth] Pounce; [Nostealth] Rake This macro will cast Ravage when stealthed, and Shred while not stealthed. This saves a keybind. #showtooltip /cast [stealth] Ravage; [Nostealth] Shred

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Abolishing / Decursing Partner This macro will cast Abolish Poison on your priest. #showtooltip /cast [target=party1] Abolish Poison This macro will decurse your priest (very useful for hex) #showtooltip /cast [target=Party1] Remove Curse

Attitude in the arena This section is pretty much applicable to any part of your life, feel free to skip it if you don’t believe in this sort of mumbo-jumbo. I find the way our attitudes affect our life quite interesting. Here are a couple of rules to increase your success in the arena: 1) Don’t blame it on the game. It’s pointless. Whether or not some comp counters you or some ability is dumb is irrelevant. The game is the way the game is. You complaining about it or attributing the loss entirely on that kills your chance to learn from it. The moment you tell yourself that “there is no way to beat this comp” is the moment you destroy any chance for you to ever beat it. If you choose to believe that it is beatable but you just haven’t found the way to do it yet, you will unconsciously keep trying to come up with ways to win. 2) Think outside the box. The strategy to burn ret paladins oom so they couldn’t dispel their partners anymore is an ingenious strategy that required out-of-the-box thinking. Try to come up with unusual and surprising ways to gain an advantage in the arena. 3) Don’t blame your partners. A negative atmosphere while playing not only makes both of you play worse, it also kills the point of the game, which is to enjoy it. 4) Try to learn from every mistake. After every game you should reflect on what you did well and what you did wrong. What could be improved? At what point did we start losing? Which event initiated the balance of pressure to tip over to our opponents’ side? Even when winning, you made mistakes, or you could have won easier or faster. Try to constantly improve. 5) Set specific goals. Don’t just say “I want to become better”. Say that you want to get weapons within two weeks. Say that you want to get 2k to get the s2 transmog. Say that you want whatever rating you haven’t achieved just yet. During the last week of last season I was a 2350 feral. I told my disc buddy that I was convinced we could get 2500 before the end of the season. We queued up and kept queueing until we found ourselves at 2366 personal rating, having endured many losses (including that damned enha/combat rogue team that kept farming us). We started queueing again and had 12 straight wins, ending up at 2510 rating, granting us the awesome season 4 transmog. 6) Stay postitive. After 5 straight losses against a certain team, and you face them a 6th time: say “We got this now.” Instead of “Fuck this shit, might as well leave.” The little things make a difference.