OK guys first I’ll introduce this Battleground. This is Warsong Gulch. It’s a 10-man Rated and Regular Battleground map that consist on getting three caps before the enemy reaches them. Since people are able to turtle in this battleground, Blizzard implemented this debuff system where your tank gets a 10% damage taken debuff after three minutes that the flag was grabbed. After those three minutes, the debuff will increase by 10% every minute until it reaches 100% damage taken debuff. If both flag carriers die with X amount of debuffs at the same time and no one has the flag, the debuffs get reset. One last thing that i need to add is that in case of a tie, the team that capped the flag as LAST, wins. If the score is 0/0 by the time that the BG ends, both teams get 0 points. (even though the scoreboard says -12, it’s a bug).

Preferred team composition :

- 4 Healers (1 Holy pal, 1 Disc priest, 1 Rsham and 1 Disc/Resto Druid)

- 1 Mage

- 1 Rogue

- 1 Warlock

- 1 Flag Carrier (Blood DK, or Protection Warrior..even though protection warriors are the most effective FCs)

- 2 Death Knights ( Even thought this might sound crazy, 2 frost death knights in Rated Battlegrounds will anihilate          everything in sight) and if you can’t get 2 Death knights, just add another Caster (moonkin preferably).

There are two main strategies that are the most effective in Rated BGs which are:

8-2 Split, and 6-2-2 Split which i will explain thoroughly:

8-2 Split:

What the 8-2 Split really means, is that you send the flag carrier with a holy paladin to get the flag and the rest of the team engages mid. The advantage of this strategy  is that if you control middle, you can easily get a cross kill on the enemy flag carrier.

6-4 Split:

This strategy requires a bit more co-ordination  than the first one. However if executed properly, you can get an easy kill on the flag carrier when he tries to return to his base. The main idea around this, is to force cool-downs from the enemy FC and their Main Healer (Holy Pally mostly) and also add delay on the flag capture. The warrior will have no cool-downs on his return and a simple smokebomb with all your DPS on him will have deadly results!

I hope you enjoyed the Guide and be sure to check the next RBG strategy guides in the future!!!

Hey guys, Priests have a lot of comps to play  in season 10 and it’s being really fun to play them. I’m going to to straight into the current setups and the play-style that I’ve seen that’s the most adequate for them:

RMP (Rogue Mage Priest):

This setup, while being constantly good over the seasons, got significant buffs that make a very aggressive play-style risk-reward exponentially better and here is why:

-         Fully gemmed mastery mages reach around 14% mastery. Each point in mastery, it ads 2.5% extra damage on your crits. 14×2.5 is 35% MORE damage on shatters.

-         Subtlety Rogues got 6% flat out damage increase. Even though their survivability got nerfed a bit with Cloak of Shadows sharing a cool-down with Combat Readiness

-         Priests direct damage spells (Mindblast and Shadow  Word Death)got buffed by 12%.

All these buffs indicate a very straight forward aggressive RMP play and with the right partners, this comp can be absolutely unstoppable.

FMP (Feral Druid, Frost mage, Disc Priest)

This setups power is the instant unavoidable CC. You have Instant Cyclones provided by the feral druid, Deep Freeze into sheeps, Blanket 4 second Counter Spells, and Fears.

Feral druids provide a lot of damage and mobility and synergize with Mages and Priests really well at the moment.

The goal on this setup is to overwhelm the healer with all your instant CC and ultimately get a kill. If you get your coordination working , you are set.

Shadowplay ( Shadow Priest / UA Lock/ Resto druid or resto shaman)

This comp is also an incredibly strong setup to play, but it hurts against melee Cleaves. If you manage to outlast the melee cool downs you should be in a good shape.  This comp relies on the shadow priest to land the kills since it’s the most significant single target damage dealer.

The Shadow Priest should focus on Faking his burst (arch angel with shadow fiend) with Vampiric touch, baiting the interrupt, and then proceeding to burst with 3x mindspikes, Mind blast  Shadow word Death..

You don’t need to have archangel to burst but it’s a significant damage buff. Always try to keep an off target dotted.

These are the strongest Priest Setups at the moment in my opinion , try them out and have some fun

Part1:

Part2:

Playing a Holy Pally right now can be extremely frustrating and can often times, seem not worth the headache. Were at a time in WoW, where cc is at its highest value. Pally’s by far, have the hardest time avoiding cc out of any class. Pally’s need hardcore babysitting from their teammates to be successful. It is nearly impossible to carry a team as a holy paladin right now. Currently, there is not one comp. that would be less successful with any other healer.

Some may ask. How is it we were so good in wrath, and now so bad? Well, the answer is simple. The game slowed down. And we lost some key abilities. The two biggest ones, were sacred shield and divine sacrifice. Now, I am not saying we need those things back. However, we do need changes. These are some of the ideas I think should be implemented.

1. Hand of Justice, give it a 20 yard range and a 30 second cool down – In its current state, hand of justice is almost impossible to apply.

2. Divine Shield has dispel immunity for the first 3 seconds - Too many times has our best defensive ability been removed instantly. There are games where priests will literally spam cast Mass Dispel while were getting trained, making it virtually a useless ability.

3. Hand of Sacrifice on a shorter cooldown, and cannot be dispelled – I would suggest a C.D. of 30 secs, and have it last for 3-4 seconds. This ability should not be used as a damage absorb, but as a way of breaking cc.

4. Rebuke: 25 yard range (same as wind shear) – I really think this change is needed and seems easy enough to change. Rebuke is seen as useless in 3s/5s and sometimes in 2s. You cannot expect paladins to run out in the open to interrupt a player, when we have no way of negating cc besides los’ing. This ability is amazing, and when able to use, gives reason to bring a paladin over other healers.

5. Allow bubble to be cast while cycloned – This change should have been implemented a long time ago.

6. Allow our 4 piece bonus to reduce the Blessed Life ICD by 4 seconds – Currently I do not think we have enough ways to generate Holy Power. And while I do not agree with making our class more RNG, I do think its necessary to do something with this.

7. Improve our dispel, by making sacred cleansing remove 2 magic effects – We are defensive healers. We should have the best dispel hands down.

8. Healing Shield (or any other name) – Similar to earth shield. You apply it on one target only, and it has 6 charges. Lasts 5-10 mins. Each time the healing shielded target gets hit by a damaging ability, you gain a holy power charge. It should have an internal c.d. of say 3 seconds. Meaning every 3 seconds you gain another holy power.

9. Word of Victorious(playoff of word of glory) – This would be another new spell designed to give us options on what to spend holy power on. It would be a heal-over-time ability. Similar to rejuvenation. Each point would give the HoT more healing. So 1 point holy power = 20k over 10 seconds, 3 points = 50k over 10 seconds, or something similar to that

These changes would not only increase the skill cap of paladins, but would be the right step in balancing holy pallys in arena. I really think the paladin community needs to be more out spoken on what is going on in arena, and help blizzard come up with ideas to fix our class. Despite what many people say, there are still ways to get high rating as a holy pally, and achieve gladiator type ratings, but that doesn’t mean they are balanced by any means. If anyone has come up with interesting new ideas on how to fix pallys, please post them below for discussion.

We are at a point where positioning is more important than ever. One landed CC can lead to a chain of CC effects. The fact that pallys must stand still and cast the majority of our heals, makes pallys the most susceptible to cc out of any class

…

Yes there is.

Focus:

Always take advantage of your focus target. /focus is a ability that should be bounded to a easy to move key bind. Throughout the game, you want to be swapping your focus target, depending on the cc you want to watch.

For example, your facing a warlock/mage team. You start the game training the lock. So you have your mage to set to focus to watch for poly. Then your team makes a swap over to the mage, you then want to set your focus to the lock to watch for fear.

Positioning:

This is probably the greatest determining factor in avoiding cc as a hpally. Positioning is so important right now. First well start off with symbols. Symbols on yourself and your partners can be used to keep track of the position of your teammates very easily. Simply make your group a raid, and throw up symbols on your mates (I’d suggest the star, since it implies you’re the boss). Symbols are seen through pillars, and across the map.

The next thing were going to talk about, requires a lot of patience and focus. Awareness. It may sound easy, but it’s a skill that many people over look and don’t use. Awareness should be defined as, knowing where you are, your teammates are, and where your opponents are. Having this type of awareness, will give you the best opportunity to win games, and will separate you from a mediocre player, too a great player. The best way to practice this, is to literally tell yourself to pay attention to the positioning going on around you. Once you have done this for a while (sometimes a while, is an entire season, sometimes it’s a week, sometimes its an entire expansion) it will become second nature to you and you wont even notice your doing it.

Abilities to avoid cc:

We have several abilities that allow us to line of site, interrupt cc, and avoid cc. First well start with interrupting cc. Most people have a very hard time finding a good time to use rebuke. I recently made a post on when/not to use it, but I wanted to give you guys a situation where it is perfect to use it. A lot of the time, when your pillaring, teams will come over to you to try to cc you or get you away from the pillar. If you see this happening, you can prepare yourself to interrupt a fear/sheep. Sometimes, if you end up getting feared away from the pillar, it’s not a bad idea to tie holy radiance/rebuke together for a sprinted kick at the next Cc’ing opponent.

Aura mastery, is a great tool but I often see a lot of players use this with a chance of them not being interrupted. I use afflicted to track all interrupts (pummel, CS, rebuke, etc.). I will never use aura mastery if these abilities are on c.d., as it would be a complete waste. The best time to use aura mastery, is when it is absolutely necessary to cast heals and are worrying about getting interrupted.

PVP trinket is one of your best outs against CC. However, there are many wrong ways to use it. You basically have two major cd’s that you don’t want to use at the same time. Which are bubble, and trinket. For example, lets say a rogue/mage/priest team open on you, lets say you trinket a kidney shot, but get put into a blanket counter-spell and are forced to bubble. At this rate, you would have been better off bubbling the kidney shot, and immuning the counter-spell, thus saving your pvp trinket for another time. Basically, you don’t want to trinket a fear, and get put right back into a poly. If you can avoid using bubble/trinket at the same time, do it.

Sacrifice is the last tools we will go over. Sac can really only save you from sheep, warr fear, and blind/sleeps. The main reason to use sac, is to stop polys though, so we will use that as an example. With so many dispels in the game right now, its very important we use our sacrifice at the right time. When you see the mage casting sheep, that’s when you need to be using sacrifice. This way, even if he spell steals your sacrifice after his sheep, you already broke out of one, and are now on DR. If you use it before he casts sheep, he will spell steal it, and then sheep you after, giving you a full set of sheeps.

Communication:

Talking with your teammates is very important. I always am talking (mostly screaming) when I cannot avoid a CC.

Depending on your teammates ability and using teamwork to avoid CC, is very important in every game. You must rely on your team to interrupt cc that you cannot avoid.

Hello everyone, I’ve decided to make a little article filled with general tips and
macros.

I’ll start off with a few very useful macros:

Vanish macro:
#showtooltip Vanish

/cast Vanish
/cast [@focus] Sap

Also works with Shadow Dance:
#showtooltip Shadow Dance

/cast Shadow Dance

/cast [@focus] Sap

It’s a pretty simple macro that’ll cast vanish and attempt to sap your focus target. This way if it happens that your focus target’s in range and out of combat for whatever reason, if you mash the macro he’ll be in a sap.

Arena 1-5 Blind:
#showtooltip Blind

/cast [@arena1-5] Blind

Make sure you use in addition to a focus blind macro arena 1-5, makes blinding much easier and faster once you get used to it. I’m currently using Alt 1-5 for those macros.

Use alot of focus macros:
#showtooltip Blind/Kick/Dismantle/Redirect/Kidney/Gouge/Sap and so on
/cast [@focus] Blind/Kick etc

Generally you should be working alot with focus macros given the control rogues can put out as of now.
(Note: For Redirect>Kidney, you’ll need to use 2 globals. I’m currently using 2 different binds + binds for fRedirect and fKidney, simply because I dislike the idea of using a castsequence macro because of the way the function.)

Sdance>Sstep>Garrote:
#showtooltip Shadow Dance

/cast Shadow Dance
/cast Shadowstep

/cast Garrote

I’ve got this seperately bound right now for whenever I’m switching to a healer. It’s way less clunky and I’ve got free binds for it too. You can obviously also use it with Cheap Shot.

Shadowstep + Kick:
#showtooltip Shadowstep

/cast Shadowstep

/cast Kick

This is a pretty handy macro, shadowsteps to your target and kicks it instantly. Once again, feels way less clunky than having to use 2 buttons instead of one and since I actually am forced to do it often, I feel like it’s pretty handy.

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Now we’re done with the handy macros. I’ll move along to some tips.

Tip 1:

If your partner(given you play with a Mage/Warlock) currently can’t CC the healer for example while you want to set up a kill, you can always just Redirect Kidney their healer if he’s close to you or even a DPS to give you more space and follow it up with a Sap since by the time that a full Kidney Shot will end, the person will be out of Combat given noone from your team attacks him.

Tip 2:

Always call it when you want to setup a kill or can put out heavy pressure. This is a major part of your communication.

Tip 3:

Don’t overextend unless you have CDs ready. Even in our current state of godlike survival, a rogue still will drop in a stun without trinket or even just get globalled by melees if you don’t have your CDs up.

Tip 4:

Whenever you know that you can’t get to a target, CALL it so your team can switch off. If someone is really kiting you far away or to the extend where you can’t stick to him effectively, it’s better for you to just switch off.
Surprising switches with a Shadow Dance and a Smokebomb have granted us alot of wins in 3v3, keep in mind that everything and everyone can die.

Tip 5:

Whenever you see someone overextending, don’t be afraid to call for a swap. It’ll generally force the other team defensive or even cause the guy to die.

Tip 6:

Always keep up-to-date with the class mechanics and how to counter them. As the rogue of your team, you should generally be leading and without understanding the game mechanics, you won’t be effective enough.

Tip 7:

Don’t ever use your Shadow Dance unless your teammates can connect and your healer’s free to dispel you.

Tip 8:

Get Unheeded Warning.

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I’ve been asked alot lately how to generally play Sub, what rotation to use and general stuff like that. As Subtlety, there’s no real rotation, but some general pointers to keep track off.

- I’ll advise you to always keep Recuperate up ALL the time.

– Use the Hemorrhage Glyph and keep the dot up at all times. It’s a 10% damage boost if you picked Sanguary Vein which you should have.

- I generally don’t use SnD unless I’m just trying to put out some steady damage and am not going for the kill.

- Rupture is worthless right now and not worth the combo points. Pretty much same applies to Expose Armor.