Rogue/Feral tactics

Canine from Ahn'Qiraj here, I would like to ask all of you to help me with tactics on certain set-ups.
We mostly play around 2100-2200 on the Reckoning battlegroup with the Feral/Rogue combo. (Note that my arena partner is a night elf, and thus does not have the ability to pop perception)


First: matches against shaman/warr

We usually try to just nuke the shaman, while trying to keep crippling, mind-numbing and a bit of wound poison up on the shaman. However, his totem tends to dispell quite alot, and with the warr spamstringing both of us the shaman sometimes has the ability to just flee away in his instant ghost
wolf. Opportunity to CC the warr or to heal up seem to be rare, because you will loose dps on the shaman.
Now i saw Deep 6 in which the druid nukes the warrior and the rogue interrupts the shaman. But that just plain doesn't work with us, mostly because the warr will get too much rage.

Are we doing something wrong? Or should we use a different tactic?


Second: matches against frost mage/rogue

Here we both open up on the mage, where I ravage the mage, go bear and shout the rogue out of stealth (unless we found the rogue and sapped him ofc). After that, most of the time at least one person can stay on the mage, which will eventually die, which leaves a 2v1, sometimes 1v1 fight with a great chance of winning.
And while we won alot of matches this way, 50% of the mages we meet have rocket boots, with which he just flees leaving us in confusion about what to do next. Or they nuke one of us just way too fast so we don't have time to even kill the frost mage.

Same here: are we doing something wrong? Maybe a different tactic?


Now i thought about the disc/frost mage combo which pulled our rating down quite a bit last time we did arena. But that combo is rather rare, and I couldn't be bothered writing too much about it. You feel free to do so though, tactics for it are always appreciated! Since we didn't really have any ^^

I thank you for taking the time to read this, and maybe even commenting on it!

Greetings,

Canine

Edit: typos and armory: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ahn%27Qiraj&n=Canine

Shaman-Warrior

This is one of the hardest setups, because shaman heals really alot, even with lesser healing spells. He's got the instant healing wave, and the heroism, which allows for a quick regen of hp.
I've been following 2 tactics, one suggested by a very good fellow druid, and the other from deep. Both of them have major flaws. Usually in this setup, your rogue will eventually be killed, as you will be forced to go bear.

1. Warrior gets cc'ed, and you play interrupts in shaman, alone with some dps. Force him to use his instant heal after kidney shot, because that's when usually warrior comes in combat. You can blind-root-cyclone him, if you feel yo can do it. If you stay in cat, usually warrior targets you, and you'll probably have to go bear again.
   The tip here is to have perfect interrupt rotation, so that shaman only casts instant heal. Wounds are far better than crippling, but having one is never bad (mind-numbing is useful too, because it eases interrupts, and amplifies the heroism effect). Work on coop and maybe this will work, we stopped using this because warrior hamstrings rogue, and shaman finds a way to go away-los my charge. Plus, I got no time for healing, and that's easier for the warrior to kill my rogue.
   
2. Second tactic I've been using lately is deep's. The flaw of this one is that is quite based on luck (procs-crits). You need as much burst damage on warrior, and crits to accumulate 5 combos before he starts dpsing anyone. Well, many times that doesn't happen and shaman doesn't even bother healing him. Anyway, even if you manage to burn his instant on bleeds, your rogue will probably die , so just hope shaman doesn't heal warrior much before this happens.

Frost - Rogue

This is quite easier, and usually win is yours, if they don't burst you or your rogue. The longer the fight holds, the better for you, as they both will have cooldowns.
If we fail to find rogue, which is usual, my rogue goes for the mage to taunt rogue, garroting and immediately poping an evasion. When rogue comes, sneak behind him and pounce, get 2-3 combos and when stun is over maim - cyclone. During that you can hot your rogue, and send him pressure mage. If enemy rogue trinkets, you can try roots to burn his clos, and then blind (so that DR from cyclone is over).
The only hard part is if your rogue gets below 50% when rogue shows up, or if mage manages to shatter anyone of you. Also a good mage will know when to CS to break your cc.

Throw some tips everyone, these 2 matchups are so often in 2v2!

hi there,

shaman - warrior

last night i had the pleasure to meet i think 15 shaman warrior lineups out of ~25games, and i agree to Ifigenia, it's one of the hardest for feral/rogue.
(he described the 2 tactics, we basically cc warri and try to outlast the shaman)


rogue - mage

against rogue/mage setups it's me who opens on the mage. after he blinked i switch into bear hopefully screaming out the rogue who should be near you at that moment. so the main idea is to keep your rogue on their rogue while you try to avoid shatter combos forcing a fast insi / block on the mage. its very important, that the mage cant get any shatter combos or sheeps off your rogue. we didn't face that lineup to often untill now (~50 games played, ~2k) but untill now it worked pretty well.


warlock - paladin

nearly as hard as shaman-warrior, i think paladin-warlock is a very difficult setup against our combo. i still don't know how to play against it. we tried to sap paladin and both open on the warlock, when sap ends my rogue steps to the paladin trying to interrupt any heals and finally to force out both bubbles. at the same time we both dropped very hard due to the dots of the warlock so i have to throw some hots upon me and my mate (i often tried to cyclone lock while he's in melee bubble, but it rarely worked unless he used voidwalker).
so after bubbles are played and both - pala and lock are on 100% my rogue attacks lock again while i heal / interrupt pala....so finally i run out of mana and we lose an ideas?

Well if u are ally there are a few things u could do against teams with rogues, even if u don't have a human with u.

Go near the spawning place for the eye of true sight and ask your rogue to stay near the other eye in case the other team mate decides to take it when it spawns, so he can sap him if he atempts to take it.

When in position u use shadowmeld (u will insta shift out of form & get it dont worry, they shouldn't see if not passing by), after you get the eye shift cat, prowl, dash and gogogo on that rogue, your damage is enough to burn 70% of his hp (bleeds + shreds = win against a rogue) and after that its just a 2v1 against the mage.

PS: I have a human rogue, and when hes perception is up we do this drill, works 75% of the time. Kinda my way of compencating for not having war stomp

And for palla + lock, its aways good to nuke the pet, after taht you can get some time to drink while the rogue is preventing the lock from casting, you should be able to keep him up while drinking, provided u have enough waters.

PS:PS: sry for typos...

What about sap? If the enemy rogue comes to the eye you're guarding, you're sapped for sure. Shadowmeld can't save you if you don't have your back covered. And it's not sure you'll see rogue first, as he'll move towards you, so he won't place his back facing you. Also, if it's rogue-mage team, mage does random aoe, you don't wanna stand at eye-sites..... that's where he doesn the aoe.

Against such setup, you'd better have your rogue pre-vanish near the place you imagine the rogue could be, and search for sap. Else gogo mage and let him reveal, then your rogue vanishes-restarts.

I said it works 70% of the time, & I tell my rogue to follow the mage so he can sap no matter which eye the mage picks. Normally this happens a good minute after beginning & the mage isn't looking that much for you anymore, he is sitting somewhere w8ing for the eye with his rogue nearby.

Allowing me to pick the other eye and to let my rogue know what to do. Its not foolproof but it will gain you the upper hand if you play it right.

It needs to be practiced for it to work, and there is always a chance for it to backfire, I'm just giving you some ideas i've had and found useful

Edit: I would like to know a viable tactic against hunter/resto & restokin-rogue/hunter

Just reached 2k and the only setups we had any trouble with were these two. Yey i have vegy shoulders /brag

Edit: I need a good strat against Hunter + Resto(kin) Druid cuz i'm kinda struggling against this combo if hunter manages to get the flare off...

against frost mage/rogue me and my rogue usually make me open with pounce if the mage is good will usually automaticly blink and have my rogue waiting, in that time u switch to bear cuz the rogue is going to attack you, i normally charge we stunlock from there usually the mage dies, and we just pick off the rogue....but i do have to say i play at 1550-1700 l8ly stuck at 1600, so not sure if that would work at 2k

Saber wrote:

against frost mage/rogue me and my rogue usually make me open with pounce if the mage is good will usually automaticly blink and have my rogue waiting, in that time u switch to bear cuz the rogue is going to attack you, i normally charge we stunlock from there usually the mage dies, and we just pick off the rogue....but i do have to say i play at 1550-1700 l8ly stuck at 1600, so not sure if that would work at 2k

If my rogue fails to find the other rogue in time, be4 his perception ends, he goes on the mage, as soon as he does that i activate dash and w8 for the rogue to come out, than go on him as soon as i can, we just nuke the rogue after that. Remember to keep your distance from your rogue cuz the mage will be using frost nova & the rogue will do almost anything to get out of a tight spot, sooo be rdy to chase him or get out quick if they chase you.

I have problems with priest/lock & if the priest is a dwarf its even harder.

Priest - Warlock

Well, this goes similarly to pala-lock, though here priest doesn't have bubbles, and goes easier oom. He does have an aoe fear, which you should watch at all times, and dash away if comes near you.
Sap the warlock. Both you and rogue tunnel pet, you should kill it within 4 secs. If priest is close and tries aoe fear, you can blind him as soon as you engage pet, or stun him with pounce cyclone help with pet. If he trinkets that, that's ok, it'll help later. Killing pet isn't that hard, and usually they won't expect it (as for 1700), as they usually assume you are the common rogue-resto setup. Anyway, even if priest heals pet, we've managed killing it.
Watch for Fel Domination. I've never managed to interrupt the cast, maybe cause of ping, maybe cause of my own flexes. If it's a void, you can root-cyclone it, leaving it away, letting you do some heals. Put some pressure to the warlock to start burning priest's mana. Have your rogue interrupt every fear (try help with maims too), and watch for priest's fear.
It's 90% sure that you'll need some rest, or have to kill the pet to make this easier. Pillar kite the pet away from the others when your rogue feels he can hold them for about 20 sec, and start dpsing it down. They might try heal it, use pillars to los them. Remember you can taunt pet.
When second pet is down, you can finish them off quickly, and probably priest is oom, if you (or rogue) didn't let him drink. Anyway, a lock without a pet is 50% of his power, plus you can drink.
If your rogue drops on hp and doesn't have a clos available, tell him to sprint to you, and throw him some hots, then keep dpsing pet.

Well yeah with killing pet its gets easier, but after second pet i kinda am kinda just hanging in pretty much oom from healing & shifting.

& a good priest will notice us goin for the pet & do anything to prevent it, even seen some cast PS on pet lol

As for the fel domination when both me & rogue are on the lock I can interrupt it as long as i'm free of CC but normally they will try to keep us away for .5 sec to let the lock summon it, after the interrupt i just go cyclone & bash if he trinkets it.

My usual strategy is to sap the priest, let rogue go for lock & me kill the pet, the pet should go down unless the priest decides to trinket & throws mending, but than he gets blind & first pet goes down, by than the lock is on about 50% & i'm just w8ing to interrupt fel domination. Still i only developed this 1 lately so we still have some trouble with the combo but working out

You can have fear problems.
It can work sapping priest though, especially if they found out your tactic (rematch).

Ifigenia wrote:

You can have fear problems.
It can work sapping priest though, especially if they found out your tactic (rematch).

Yeah first time against any team is easy cuz we kinda surprise them

After that it get progressively harder as they build a strategy against us. Some combos have it harder than others tho

BTW u suggest we go on the pet while lock is sapped, And i aim @ interrupting the priest?

First pet is really really easy to kill. If noone gets fear, its a matter of 4 secs max, as both your and your rogue's load of energy should do the 6-7k damage needed for it. Remember it has low armor (Felhunter), no resiliense, so it's like pve fight. Priest may cast only 1 hel if he's fast. Sometimes they even put pain suppression misminded, which is good.
Anyway, even if your initial burst didnt work out, cause of a fear or something, get your rogue press lock (stuns etc) while you get pet away and kill it. The only problem is the 2nd pet.

And btw, if warlock has Void out at start, don't bother killing it, go straight for lock imo, and put some root/cyclone(no soul link effect from cyclone) if you got problem casting.

Yeah but lock will drain us quicker than we can kill him with void.

Hmm any suggestions for lock + Rdruid?

Btw i guess you don't play with a human rogue, so i want to ask you how u proceed against rogue/priest (especially if rogue is muti). We have a successful strategy against them if we find the rogue but if not its kinda 50/50 depending how good i manage to cc the rogue. After the rogue successfully has been CC-ed its easy, the priest goes down after i join my friend in nuking him down. But its hard to CC a rogue when he still has all his Cd-s. & ignoring him will allow him to lockdown my rogue, making nuking the priest slower...

We tried goin for the rogue but the priest will just heal him up till my rogue's evasions run out & after that it gets harder for us (they also have as much evasion time as we do)

Indeed I'm playing with a nelf mate.
I can't answer you the rogue-priest tactic, because it's a problem for us too. We usually try to get rogue down, as we can avoid some more fears (we know fear inc when priest gets close). Also, leting the rogue loose sends me to a no dps state, bear crippling trying to reach priest, or splitting dps, which doesn't always work.
My answer would be: improvise. Check what works best at any moment, see if priest can be nuked down fast, because your rogue can't do it alone. A priest with lots of hp/resil should be 2nd target.
Let your rogue keep his evasions by staying at cat, maybe enemy rogue will stand on you, which will give a good KS chance to your mate. Always keep an eye on enemy priest for casts, and do the charge(interrupt) - bash when interrupt is over - cyclone. Hots and abolishes are good, and remember to cyclone-interrupt priest when rogue uses clos (wounds get off), and cyclone on rogue when he gets the pain suppresion.
If you can hold these 2-3 interrupts, you should be ok. Don't forget to add dps to rogue with early bleed, or you'll end up healing.

I don't have problem with interrupting or staying on my target even if the rogue is on me, abolish & interrupts are ez, the problem is if my rogue is being attacked by the rogue, it ruins his stunlock & drops our control & dmg on the priest, lets be serous I don't do quite as much damage as the rogue & i don't mean dps alone, stunlock & poisons do a lot more than pure dmg could ever do).

Btw when goin for the rogue do u focus on interrupting the priest more or doing as much dmg as possible to get him OOM?

Check how fast he goes oom. They usually have a problem there, running oom faster than any other class. That's why you have to dps rogue as much, your rogue won't have much problem for the time he has evasion on. After evasions, problems start. You need to heal/abolish him. However, priest's mana is low already maybe. Try some cyclones on rogue if you can't dps much rogue-your rogue takes much damage, and see enemy priest casting greater heals (real mana-drinkers). Heal will cast on himself, wasting alot of mana.

After a morning dueling a priest-rogue at 1830, (we gained alot more points than them, seems they were alote above us in rating), the only problems we had were when rogue was on me all the time. You have to abuse pillars, stopping heals from priest, and making the rogue follow a chase, since your rogue is dpsing rogue, and there are few interrupts on priest. Of course that's what we tried, and it worked sometimes.

Don't forget you can always switch priest, making the rogue play defensively, which is the goal.

I read up on alot of stuff here, and one simple and (maybe easiest) tactic versus warr/sham might be this:

We usually start out by waiting for the purples.. If the warrior takes them, we go for him.. Sham takes it we go for him... Also a factor in desiding who to go for lies in the earth shield.. Belive it or not, but this makes a big difference. A good way to start out might be to pounce warrior, garrote from the rogue, mangle up some CPs then let your rogue do a 5CP kidney...
In most cases warriors will trinket this. With the warriors trinket on cooldown a world of CC opens up depending alot on what your rogue is capable of doing though.
After the trinket we often Cyclone the warrior and a root usually follows. (we do not blind at this point because it might be good to save for later on and he has loads of bleeds on him). Also I always feral charge the heal that the shaman is putting out, meaning warrior will get a kidney without having got a heal.. And as the cyclone follows, the warrior will stay on about 50% hp after the cyclone. (dots still ticking) If the rogue is successful on dpsing the shaman he will be quite busy healing himself.. And the ideal thing is for your rogue and you to make him trinket.

One way of doing this effectively is to save 5CPs for a maim. (rogue goes to DPS warrior) while me(druid) still dpsing shaman.. If he tries to heal I'll maim it, thats another 6 seconds.. Most cases I go to dps the warrior with a mangle and a shred or 2 since im usually at ~100energy when i do that maim. After doing a mangle shred and maybe a rip on the warr get ready for a feral charge, IF the shaman havent trinketed yet... The feral charge is followed by a bash... And here i usually go cat and spam mangles and powershifts to get 3-4 CPs so I can do another maim.. IF the shaman trinkets the first maim, blind and sap him.. followed by charge etc..

All this is actually played out in a short while. The time the warrior is on you or the rogue should be minimal and every time he is on the rogue he should have evasion up 95% of the time.

If all fails.. The shaman should be getting low on mana... If he manages to keep warrior up without trinketing.. blind the warrior and go for shaman once again.. If he pops earth shield on himself.. Change to warrior, CC the shaman with a fast cyclone.. If you can pull off switches like that, when the shaman pops earth shield it will burn his mana extensively, and if he doesnt pop earth shield it will burn his mana to keep himself and warr up..

Note, that I'am wearing misc gear. I use 2 T6 for 35 energy mangles and glad parts for high crit. Also ring of 2 x2, my mana with motw is around 9500 with full feral gear, so I got alot of room for healing and CCing/shapeshifting.

actually rogue mage i found very easy to beat, normally i remove the feral LOTP buff and go for the mage, they think i am a resto and open out on me, basicly i try los in bearform while my rogue friend kills them, if they go for him 1st even better, mage sure the frost pet is either taunted or killed 1st and simply heal your friend they wont have enough burst for it, save your trinket for blind, or kidneyshot if the rogue swaps targets while attacking you, this is not a very hard setup to beat imo.

Saw someone having troubles with restokin and hunter.

First and foremost, a resto kins healing abilities are vastly reduced. And lacking natural perfection, a feral druid hurts as hell!

What we do is, we start on the hunter with a shadowstep CoS if he has freezing trap and a cheap shot.. Instantly use expose armor, and we nuke him like mad. Your druid should get very ready to enter bear and charge any regrowth or cyclone/roots the restokin might want to try... If this goes well, he will have to use his NS on the hunter the first 5 seconds of the game (this works 95% of the times for us) an ideal fight the hunter trinkets something along the way here, and in many the hunter actually dies.. However if he dont.. You should prepare for a vanish, shadowstep-> cheap shot on the restokin. If your druid manages a switch to the restokin with 80+ energy it makes a hard time for the restokin to even stay alive for the cheapshot. And has to trinket the kidney, in some cases at this point the druid has not yet healed up the hunter... And we might even blind/sap the druid and kill the hunter. But remember, NO swiftmend for restokins... Makes it very easy to kill them. If your switch is flawless, you get a druid under 40% hp after the cheapshot, and his only source of healing will come from Hots which will give you quite some time before effective healing takes place.

Restokins die rather easy. However a hunter can be tricky, shooting you down withing seconds. (Just like warriors, they can have some damn big crits that drop you down to 20% during stuns).

Nepp wrote:

Elfbezushi wrote:

I don't do quite as much damage as the rogue

Was wondering cause I cc/heal/DPS and we are often tied for the lead on overall damage. I'm aware that it can differ from the comp encountered but my question is simple are you outdamaging your rogue ?

I might do as much burst as I want, or out damage him, but in the grand scheme of things his stuns + poisons do a lot more than my dmg & cc does.

A simple analogy, what do you think is easier: Trying to kill a healer with a healing debuff on him or a healer without 1 on him? And why do you think the first is easier? So that means he gets healed for 2k instead of 4? Well i guess thats an extra 2 dmg for us, yey

Same goes for stuns, which is better for you: A shaman healing for 4k or for 0(not healing)?

Thats what i meant by them doing more dmg., they simply don't do that much dmg, they just help us do with what dmg. we have.

Tutor wrote:

I read up on alot of stuff here, and one simple and (maybe easiest) tactic versus warr/sham might be this:

We usually start out by waiting for the purples.. If the warrior takes them, we go for him.. Sham takes it we go for him... Also a factor in desiding who to go for lies in the earth shield.. Belive it or not, but this makes a big difference. A good way to start out might be to pounce warrior, garrote from the rogue, mangle up some CPs then let your rogue do a 5CP kidney...
In most cases warriors will trinket this. With the warriors trinket on cooldown a world of CC opens up depending alot on what your rogue is capable of doing though.
After the trinket we often Cyclone the warrior and a root usually follows. (we do not blind at this point because it might be good to save for later on and he has loads of bleeds on him). Also I always feral charge the heal that the shaman is putting out, meaning warrior will get a kidney without having got a heal.. And as the cyclone follows, the warrior will stay on about 50% hp after the cyclone. (dots still ticking) If the rogue is successful on dpsing the shaman he will be quite busy healing himself.. And the ideal thing is for your rogue and you to make him trinket.

One way of doing this effectively is to save 5CPs for a maim. (rogue goes to DPS warrior) while me(druid) still dpsing shaman.. If he tries to heal I'll maim it, thats another 6 seconds.. Most cases I go to dps the warrior with a mangle and a shred or 2 since im usually at ~100energy when i do that maim. After doing a mangle shred and maybe a rip on the warr get ready for a feral charge, IF the shaman havent trinketed yet... The feral charge is followed by a bash... And here i usually go cat and spam mangles and powershifts to get 3-4 CPs so I can do another maim.. IF the shaman trinkets the first maim, blind and sap him.. followed by charge etc..

All this is actually played out in a short while. The time the warrior is on you or the rogue should be minimal and every time he is on the rogue he should have evasion up 95% of the time.

If all fails.. The shaman should be getting low on mana... If he manages to keep warrior up without trinketing.. blind the warrior and go for shaman once again.. If he pops earth shield on himself.. Change to warrior, CC the shaman with a fast cyclone.. If you can pull off switches like that, when the shaman pops earth shield it will burn his mana extensively, and if he doesnt pop earth shield it will burn his mana to keep himself and warr up..

Note, that I'am wearing misc gear. I use 2 T6 for 35 energy mangles and glad parts for high crit. Also ring of 2 x2, my mana with motw is around 9500 with full feral gear, so I got alot of room for healing and CCing/shapeshifting.

Casting anything against a shaman is a nightmare, grounding + shock makes things disfficult at best. And with all that switching the margin for error is quite big, altough i think you are on to something with the whole gettin the eye & watching earth shield stuff.

Gonna try some of this out wish me luck

And what would be the tactic against Ele Sgammy/BM Huntard?

Hmm that is tricky one. I say kill pet and go for shammy. Or totally leave pet and go for shammy. Try abusing los since they both suffer from it, and heal early since if you go 30% you're dead.