08-23-2007, 03:49 PM
I'm not really sure there's much that a Rogue can do for CC that he's not already doing. Realistically, Rogues have stuns, poisons and blind that they can use in combat and I think Quark is using all of those.
Regarding Paladins, after playing one in the arena for a while on Terenas, I get the impression that a Paladin who gets a Rogue/Warrior combo on him is really at the mercy of the other healer and/or has to rely on a bubble. Since Paladins have, at most, one instant cast heal (which has a cooldown), it is quite easy for a Rogue and/or Warrior to shut them down via interrupts. Under that kind of pressure, a Paladin can only Cleanse, use that one heal and eventually bubble. The main problem to targetting them with a group like ours is that they will likely be wearing 10-16k armor, so they will mitigate a lot of damage. The good news is that a lot of Paladins don't wear as much resilience gear as other classes since their PvE gear is often more effective. Also, this might still be better than targetting another class since it will mean there is really only 1 healer trying to heal up the damage we do, rather than 2. The downside is that we would obviously be ignoring the other players who can run around wreaking all sorts of havoc.
Thinking about our team a bit more, we really have a generalist sort of group. Here's what we've got available to us:
Holy Priest (Healing, Mana Burn, Dispelling)
Resto Shaman (Healing, Purging, Depoisoning, Spell Interruption, Heroism)
Feral Druid (CC, Spell Interruption, Decursing, Depoisoning, Melee DPS)
Rogue (Melee DPS, Stuns, Spell Interruption, Poisons)
MS Warrior (Melee DPS, Mortal Strike, Hamstring, Spell Interruption)
Overall, I would say we have a little of everything, but no obvious overwhelming strength to use. Thus, I get the feeling we often try to adapt to what the other team is throwing at us and adopt a control/mana burn strategy, and that's a hard thing to coordinate and figure out on the fly. Maybe we need to better define a strategy for dealing with each type of group we might see (3 dps melee/caster heavy, 4 dps melee/caster heavy, etc) so that we're a bit more coordinated, going in. Plus, I'm not sure we are really a group that is designed to play the control strategy we've been using. We only have one mana burner (who is also a healer) and one real crowd controller (cyclone/roots). Maybe it would also be better to spend less time worrying about control (via CC and mana burns) and more about burning things down.
Here are some random other thoughts of things we could try that might help out:
- Disrupt Polymorph: It seems like we are at our worst when we get CC'd, so disrupting that might be more of a priority. Polymorph is the worst since they will generally go after the Priest and we don't have anyone else who can dispel the Polymorph. Possible options are Earthshock and Cyclone (I assume the Warrior and Rogue will be busy elsewhere).
- More Feral DPS, less worry about CC: I have generally been playing CC to try and help keep our healers alive. Perhaps it would help us out more if I were to go more on the offensive and try to help burst down a target. This could be particularly good when Heroism goes up - give a yell that it is going up and then we'll have 3 powerful melee dishing out damage rather than just the normal 2 that we have. Also, going to feral form means our melee DPS gets an extra 5% crit and they heal themselves when they crit.
Regarding Paladins, after playing one in the arena for a while on Terenas, I get the impression that a Paladin who gets a Rogue/Warrior combo on him is really at the mercy of the other healer and/or has to rely on a bubble. Since Paladins have, at most, one instant cast heal (which has a cooldown), it is quite easy for a Rogue and/or Warrior to shut them down via interrupts. Under that kind of pressure, a Paladin can only Cleanse, use that one heal and eventually bubble. The main problem to targetting them with a group like ours is that they will likely be wearing 10-16k armor, so they will mitigate a lot of damage. The good news is that a lot of Paladins don't wear as much resilience gear as other classes since their PvE gear is often more effective. Also, this might still be better than targetting another class since it will mean there is really only 1 healer trying to heal up the damage we do, rather than 2. The downside is that we would obviously be ignoring the other players who can run around wreaking all sorts of havoc.
Thinking about our team a bit more, we really have a generalist sort of group. Here's what we've got available to us:
Holy Priest (Healing, Mana Burn, Dispelling)
Resto Shaman (Healing, Purging, Depoisoning, Spell Interruption, Heroism)
Feral Druid (CC, Spell Interruption, Decursing, Depoisoning, Melee DPS)
Rogue (Melee DPS, Stuns, Spell Interruption, Poisons)
MS Warrior (Melee DPS, Mortal Strike, Hamstring, Spell Interruption)
Overall, I would say we have a little of everything, but no obvious overwhelming strength to use. Thus, I get the feeling we often try to adapt to what the other team is throwing at us and adopt a control/mana burn strategy, and that's a hard thing to coordinate and figure out on the fly. Maybe we need to better define a strategy for dealing with each type of group we might see (3 dps melee/caster heavy, 4 dps melee/caster heavy, etc) so that we're a bit more coordinated, going in. Plus, I'm not sure we are really a group that is designed to play the control strategy we've been using. We only have one mana burner (who is also a healer) and one real crowd controller (cyclone/roots). Maybe it would also be better to spend less time worrying about control (via CC and mana burns) and more about burning things down.
Here are some random other thoughts of things we could try that might help out:
- Disrupt Polymorph: It seems like we are at our worst when we get CC'd, so disrupting that might be more of a priority. Polymorph is the worst since they will generally go after the Priest and we don't have anyone else who can dispel the Polymorph. Possible options are Earthshock and Cyclone (I assume the Warrior and Rogue will be busy elsewhere).
- More Feral DPS, less worry about CC: I have generally been playing CC to try and help keep our healers alive. Perhaps it would help us out more if I were to go more on the offensive and try to help burst down a target. This could be particularly good when Heroism goes up - give a yell that it is going up and then we'll have 3 powerful melee dishing out damage rather than just the normal 2 that we have. Also, going to feral form means our melee DPS gets an extra 5% crit and they heal themselves when they crit.
-TheDragoon