So, we decided to try out our 2s team again since I had spec'd out of Primal Tenacity (which ended up being the cause of PW:S not absorbing damage). Interestingly, I have a PvE dps spec at the moment, and I was actually living longer without the 30% reduction to damage while stunned but with PW:S. Crazy... I know...

Here's the spec.

Notably missing (and obviously PvP-centric talents) are:

1) Nurturing Instincts - Definitely felt the pain in the regard that guntir had to heal more often because I was receiving a perceived 20% less.

2) Brutal Impact - My pounce only lasts for 4 seconds instead of 5, and bash is on a 1 minute cooldown. This is definitely a PvP-centric talent (unless tanking) that I could have used in a couple of matches.

3) 3/3 Feral Instinct - I had one point in it... but basically you have to take full stealth ranks or else rogues will spot you... which they did... a lot.

4) Survival Instincts - Definitely has its uses in PvP when guntir is CC'd, but it usually doesn't make up enough difference to matter.

Here is what I had instead:

1) 5/5 HotW (as opposed to 0/5) which equated to 10% more AP. This was handy, but never felt necessary at any point.

2) 5/5 Feral Aggression. This has been LONG thought of as "the useless talent in the feral tree" but with the addition of Rend and Tear, Ferocious Bite is guaranteed to crit better than 90% of the time... and it crits BIG.


We had a couple matches which really were decided out the gate. They were mainly double dps, and the idea behind us fighting double-dps is to gib one of them before they gib one of us... then we win. We fought a dk+mage team, which is usually our bane as they will simply spell-lock guntir and gib me pretty regularly, but we were playing with reckless abandon, so I just ran out and opened on the mage. Pounce, Mangle, Tiger's Fury, Berserk, Shred, Ferocious Bite. Either the mage didn't think to blink out of the stun, or he was saving it... either way, he should have blinked. Mangle crit for 2400, Shred crit for 7k and FB crit for 8k. Coupled with the white swings going on at the same time, he was dead in the water (and actually the FB landed as he blinked, so he appeared dead at the other side of the blink). We had a few matches like that, but very few actually went so well as us killing one before they did anything. The majority of our matches were against healer+dps... a setup which we are much more prepared and able to take on.

Rogue+pally
Ret+shamang
dk+shamang
pally+dk

Pally+DK matches we have down to a science. I stick on the DK and keep the pally as my focus. I get full bleeds on the DK, cyclone the pally, then go back to dps'ing the dk. The pally gets out of cyclone and (if the dk is decent enough to pop his cds while cyclone was up to survive without a healer) starts casting Holy Light on the dk. We have come to terms that we won't likely kill a DK during a CC-chain with a pally healer, but what we CAN do is use those Holy Light casts as an opportunity to do mana burns. So, after the pally breaks Cyclone, I Maim the DK so guntir can fire off mana burn without fear of getting interrupted or silenced. If guntir ever gets low on mana I have innervate, entangling roots, and cyclone to peel them off long enough for him to drink to 50% (depending on the map, sometimes more). We keep this up until the pally runs out of mana, then I switch and kill the pally while we cc the DK.

DK+Shamang is really just a different type of dk+pally, except where they had a defensive dispel before, they have an offensive one now, so guntir can use abilities like Devouring Plague and SW:P without worrying too much. This is also important because this fight will revolve less around running the shammy out of mana (since that's impossible against well-geared shammies who know how to use water shield appropriately) and more about actually gibbing the DK while the shammy is cc'd. I wait for the go-ahead on grounding totem going down, the cyclone the shammy, then pop all my cds on the DK while guntir gets into position to Psychic Scream once cyclone has worn off. If the dk lives through this, I'm usually already in bear form ready to charge+bash the shammy and finish off the DK.

Ret+Shamang is much harder a matchup than I figured it would be. This is mainly due to wings and bloodlust being up at the same time... which can be scary. Basically, I stick on the retadin, who was trying to kill guntir. This is good because I can keep him off guntir once BoF is gone. Basically, I pounce, he trinketed (which was retarded of him), then bloodlust and wings went up and they got on guntir. At this point I used Maim on the pally, followed by cyclone on the pally (so guntir could get himself topped off without any pressure) and roots on the shammy. Essentially, this team is all about burst, if you can live through BL+Wings, we will win because we do more sustained damage. After BL+Wings, we treat this team like DK+Shammy, I dps the DK and we CC the shammy.

Rogue+Pally was my favorite match yesterday. It was most certainly the silliest. The rogue sapped guntir, then caught me in stealth and hit sap on me... which was a little odd because he could very well have simply cheap-shot me and let HoJ and Blind take care of guntir... but he didn't. So, then he cheapshot me (who was on top of the pally randomly) followed shortly thereafter by guntir running in and using Psychic Scream. At this point, his Cheap Shot had worn off, so I tossed Faerie Fire up assuming he would trinket and try to immediately vanish. Instead, he ate the fear so I made up the distance and immediately stuck a bleed on him. Guntir, meanwhile, decided that the pally posed a threat, so he started casting Mind Control on the pally, who immediately broke LoS on both guntir and his rogue partner while I was applying the beatdown... which went Rake, Mangle, TF+Berserk, Maim, Shred, Shred, FB, dead. Rake was to get him bleeding, Mangle was to make Shred hit harder, TF+Berserk for energy, Maim to stop him from using Evasion (he broke fear ABOUT the same time I hit him with Maim), 7k, 7k, 19 (5,215 overkill... but it was only a 4-pointer).

These were our wins... we lost to moonkin+ret twice and mage+rogue once. Essentially, both the moonkin+ret losses were from Starfall proc'ing stuns at AMAZINGLY perfect-for-them moments. The mage+rogue loss was a bummer, but we aren't strong against that comp. We DID learn something interesting, on the other hand, which was that sap and poly now share diminishing returns... randomly. Guntir got hit with sap, then poly which only last 5 seconds, then poly again for 2.5, then he was immune. If it weren't for Mirror Image's poly not sharing DR with every other poly, we would have won that match too. Basically, guntir is immune to the main mage's poly, but his mirror image casts a poly and it hits for 5 seconds, followed by a 5sec poly from a different mirror image, followed by... you see how this goes. If I can kill the mage quickly enough, it isn't a problem... but half the time it is.

All things considered, we did really well this week (7-3), and I have to assume it's attributed to PW:S.