Beating that Warlock/Healer comp

Hey folks,

As promised I'm going to write about how to beat a comp that was giving us problems these last couple weeks, warlock/healer.

Traditionally in 2's if there's a healer you go straight for them. I interrupt the heals and the warrior beats them into submission! When it's a warlock though, this strategy has been a big FAIL for us. Despite my partner's high DPS the constant fear's the lock puts out doesn't let my warrior partner put out enough sustained damage, giving their healer a much needed break to heal to full.

Our next though was for me to CC the warlock and the warrior continues with the healer. Unless the healer is very squishy, it's a fail again. I have about 9 seconds of CC followed by a 11 second break. Easily enough time for that fear to strike, especially with resilience keeping the healers up longer.

So we moved on to the Warrior beating on the warlock, and me CCing the Healer. WIN ! With me interrupting the first two heals the warlock is usually pretty low on health, forcing the healer to spend precious mana on large inefficient heals and/or blow a trinket to get out of one of the stuns. 11 seconds later I rinse and repeat.

If we're especially lucky the warlock panics a bit and LOSes his healer allowing a quick victory, if not my excellent mana use/regen allows us to win a protracted mana war, since the healer is feeling too pressured to start mana draining or CCing me too much.

Of course I've been seeing a lot of Druids as healers and the good ones will chain Cyclone me. This becomes a question of who can CC the best, me or the Druid. Many times with this comp we need to switch to pressuring different members depending on how low their mana is. If we can force those big, mana ineffienct heals or get the lock to blow most of his mana right away we come out on top....eventually

Arena S7 week 3 - Ding! 1800

That's right folks, Jeddak and I hit 1807 in 2's last night. I immediately called a stop and let the points roll in on Tuesday. That means on Tuesday I'm going to have a nice shiny Relentless Gladiator's Gavel !!

What a huge update from my current Titansteel Guardian.
49 Int
16 Sta
21 MP5
41 Resilience
164 Spell Power
30.6 DPS
1 Sockets

I owe it all to a decent partner and the Prot/Holy spec 19/52/0. This spec is insane, with two available stuns on short cooldowns and excellent survivability. Considering that our win percentage last night was 75% (15-5) with gear upgrades I'm thinking 2k might even be possible for the first time ever!.... At least until the nerf comes thru.

I'll talk a little bit about some match strategies in a later post, but for now I'll mention the match that put us over the top.... It was a priest/rogue combo. We head out and I put Blessing of Sacrifice on my partner along with Sacred Shield. The rouge does his stun on me and we wait for the priest to show himself....Somethings different about that priest though

He's Shadow! ... Now I haven't seen a shadow Priest in arena since climbing out of the 1500 bracket and I'm not very familiar with their spells. But but I pop Hand of Freedom on Jed yell at Jed to wail on the guy. I use both of my stuns to lock him up and he's almost dead... to easy!

BUT WAIT... he turns into a purple ball and is basically immune to Jed's attacks. So Jed switches to the rogue. Suddenly the priest reverts back to his normal form and we start taking a lot of damage, my stuns aren't up yet - the rouge is back at 100% health and I'm thinking OH NO don't screw this one up!

Jed hops back on the priest and combined with HoF and my 2 back to back stuns we have the priest dead shortly. Wrap up the rogue and it's 1807 team rating!

Next time I'll talk about one of our problem comps (Warlock/Healer) and how to beat them.

Rumors of 2v2 death have been greatly exagerated

So you may have read that 2v2 is dead. Blizz has mandated that only 3v3 and 5v5 teams will be eligible for a Gladiator title and weapons. They will also not balance around 2's.

This has effectively killed off the 2v2 bracket with everyone rolling 3's teams, right? WRONG! In fact almost nothing has changed.

What do you say Drunkenclod? Have you been hitting the alcohol particularly hard this morning?

No sir.. but as they say in WOW "Screenshot or it didn't happen"... Sure I got your screenshots right here baby! Check out my excellent article from May of this year (aka season 6)
http://blessingofmight.blogspot.com/2009/05/finally-3s-team-but-no-one-to-play.html

In it you'll see roughly 2,200 active 3's teams back in Season 6.... How many are active today? 2,125 !!

SAY WHAT?!? How can this be? Everyone says 2's has died.

Here's why 2's aren't going anywhere

#1) If you play in the under 1500 bracket (and 60%+ of you do) nothing has changed for you
#2) If you play in the under 1800 bracket (and 90%+ of you do) nothing has changed for you
#3) If you play in the under 2000 bracket (and 95%+ of you do) nothing has changed for you

Why is this? All but 2,200 rated gear is available in 2v2 play, points earned are the same and on the blizz forums (unofficially at this point) it seems that titles EXCEPT for gladiator will still be awarded.

So if you were playing arena in S6 at under 2k keep on PWNing and getting PWNed in S7 - Everyone else is!

Easy points Calculator

Ever get tired of plugging numbers into the amory? I sure do. Here's a little cheat sheet on all brackets from 1500 - 2000. Since now fifteen hundred is the lowest points you'll get as long as you play ten games a week you'll get points as if you rated at fifteen hundred.

I've also done three color codings, green, red, and blue.... This is based on the full 5v5 points given. So you can see that in order to equal the (roughly) same amount of points in 3's team as a bottom rank 5v5 team you'll need 1550 or in 2's team you'll need 1600.

I find that to be beneficial for me for time managment. If I know I'm getting 344 points for 5's this week and there's no way I'll be able to get 1550 in 3's I can skip it since I'm already getting more points- make sense?

	2v2	3v3	5v5
1500	261	303	344
1525	282	327	372
1550	305	353	401
1575	328	380	432
1600	353	409	465
1625	379	439	499
1650	405	470	534
1675	433	501	570
1700	461	534	607
1725	490	576	644
1750	519	601	683
1775	548	635	722
1800	578	669	760
1825	607	703	799
1850	637	737	838
1875	666	771	876
1900	694	804	914
1925	722	836	950
1950	749	868	986
1975	776	898	1021
2000	801	928	1054

Drunkenclod - WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

Right here Baby!

Seriously though, I took a break from the blog because all the nefs to Ret have forced me to abandon RET. Yeah I can't belive it either. If you would have asked me this at level 70 I would have looked at you like an insane person.

At 80 though it's a whole new game. At 80 Blizz has provided NO pvp weapon upgrade path in Season 6 for people under 1800 rating. In Season 7 I (recently) get a very slight bump with 5 man TOC drops but it's not enough.....

Ret has always been extremely gear dependant, and your Weapon has been the single biggest improvment you can get. With me rocking a Titansteel Destroyer all of S6 no half serious team wants me as RET, so I switched to holy. This was a bit more forgiving with titansteel weapons as long as the armor was good.

This Season I've got prot/holy (19/52/0) and so far it's been AWSOME. Incredible survivability, excellent CC and most importantly my partner and I are steadily increasing in ratings.

SO.... I can no longer speak to RET as well, but I'm going to chronicle this season week by week, we'll see if I stay protection after the 3.2.2 nerf.. but for now 19/52/0 is where it's at.

Season 7 starts today - Items/ratings below

Arena Season 7 has now officially begun, and players can immediately begin competing for the new Relentless Gladiator PvP item sets. We have reset all Arena team ratings, Arena points, and personal ratings though players retain their honor points and matchmaking rating going into the season.
Also, to coincide with the launch of Arena Season 7, players who were on the top teams from each battlegroup at the end of season 6 should be receiving their end-of-season rewards today. These include Arena-specific titles until the end of the new season, and for players that have earned the rank of gladiator, a Furious Gladiator’s Frostwyrm.

Here is a list of some PvP items that will be available in Arena Season 7 and their expected rating requirements:

No Rating Required:
Deadly Bracer
Deadly Belt
Deadly Boots
Deadly Neck
Deadly Ring
Deadly Cape
Deadly Trinket
Furious Bracer
Furious Belt
Furious Boots
Furious Neck
Furious Ring
Furious Cape
Furious Trinket

Rating Required:
700+: Furious Relics
800+: Furious Gloves
900+: Furious Legs
1000+: Furious Chest
1100+: Furious Helm - 12,000h /700 arena
1200+: Relentless Bracer (honor) - 39,400
1250+: Relentless Belt (honor) - 62,000
1300+: Relentless Boots (honor) - 62,000
1350+: Furious Shoulders -9,600h /550 arena
1400+: Relentless Gloves - 1,300 arena
1450+: Relentless Neck (honor) -47,400
1500+: Relentless Ring (honor) - 47,400
1550+: Relentless Legs - 2,150 arena
1600+: Relentless Chest - 2,150 arena
1650+: Relentless Trinket (honor) - 62,000
1700+: Relentless Wands/Relics/etc
1750+: Relentless Cape (honor) - 47,400
1800+: Relentless Weapon - lvl245 35,000h / 1,200 Arena
1900+: Relentless Helm
2000+: Relentless Shoulders
2200+: Relentless Weapon - lvl258
2300+: Relentless Tabard

Wow Armory on iphone

I've just installed it and it's absolutely, positivly, insanely FANTASIC. It's what I've been looking for from a warcraft iphone app since i got it and it's FREE.

Here's a video