Just want to say thanks for the continued posts. I pick up some stuff I've never thought of before for feral/priest most of the time I read your blog.

I was wondering what your thoughts are about the pvp feral idol, Idol of Resolve. Do you use one when you arena or do you stick with the shred idol? the rip idol?

Cheers,
Urshanabi

Since 3.1 I have been using the Rip idol. It's just better dps in the longer fights. Obviously, I'm running with a mangle spec at the moment, so the Shred idol is useless to me, but even with a Shred build, Feral PvP is more about sustained and less about burst, now, so I would still use the Rip idol even if I was shred-spec'd.

In previous posts you have discussed various strats for fighting disc priest/rogue.

I recall you mentioned pouncing the priest, shifting to bear and demo-roaring in hopes of squirreling the rogue out of stealth.

I've tried this and everything I can think of to little success:
- Sticking on the rogue and cycloning the priest.
- Sticking on the priest and cycloning the rogue.
- Splitting dps rip cycles between the priest and rogue and hitting berserk to finish off whoever is lower when we fear.

The last two have worked on occasion but we still lose more than half of the matches we play vs this comp, and a hefty percentage of the teams we play ARE this comp.

We've been hovering around 1800 for three weeks now and we're really beginning to despair of ever hitting magic number 1850. Priest/rogue feels like the biggest hurtle to overcome.

If you have any additional thoughts about a way to have a fighting chance against this arch nemesis (forget resto druid/rogue, I doubt there was never such a hard counter in the history of arena - why even bother?) they are very very welcome.

My experience with good rogue+priest is that feral+priest just cannot beat it. That is, if the rogue and priest are both human both with engineering, and the rogue realizes that our bear form is simply a sign that means he's winning, then we will lose 100% of the time without a little luck. That being said, this comp can be beat, but it takes superb play on your team's behalf and amazingly dimwitted play by them.

Firstly, I think that Pouncing the priest and directly shifting to bear to try and weasel out the rogue with Demo is the best strategy when they sap your priest and start charging to dispel everything he's got. This means they're going to play offensive and you need to keep most of those buffs up on your priest or you'll be in a bad way (Shadow Protection in particular; with it up, your priest might actually resist a Mana Burn or two... or a key fear... but if they strip all his buffs off, he'll be fighting a losing battle mana-burn wise as even 1 resist can cost you a match as long as they don't get a resist).

However, the bad priest+rogue comps will illustrate a few different tactics: the priest will not charge to dispel after the first sap; your priest will get sapped multiple times without the fight starting (presumably because they're looking for you); they will sap you and Cheap Shot the priest before their priest has a chance to dispel anything; etc. If any of these scenarios hold true, then you have ~50% chance to win, really depending on how bad they end up being. If they open on your priest or have you sapped and don't end up stripping all his buffs... eat the Sap (or Pounce the rogue from behind if they just opened on the priest... if he's any good he will be trying to evade your opener, but from behind they get no dodge or block). During the Pounce, you need to immediately Rake, then Rip. Essentially, this tells the rogue "you aren't stealthing until I say you can" and throwing Feral Faerie Fire up every cooldown (if it's getting dispelled) hammers the matter home.

At this point, you'll either eat a Blind, or the Priest will set up for a Fear (can spot it a mile away - the priest, who was at range, starts running straight toward you). Trinket the Blind, or tell your priest that the Fear is coming; your priest needs to know when it is possible to use a GCD without completely getting himself killed; if he can manage it, knocking that Fear off within the first 2 seconds can win matches, but it will only last ~3 seconds anyway (blind and fear share DR) if the rogue used blind first. If the rogue didn't use Blind, consider eating the Fear (or if your priest can manage to knock it off without killing himself, good on 'im) and saving your trinket for Blind.

One thing I have been toying with (but never worked up the nerve to do) is popping Berserk right before the priest gets to me and setting up to use my trinket on the Blind which is bound to land any millisecond later and just keep dps'ing the rogue. I think this strategy might have some merit, but if the rogue is smart, he will kite me hard with evasion, drop his bleeds, and vanish to wait for me to drop Berserk and reset the fight... this strategy MIGHT help you at the 1800 bracket, but I'm doubtful it would work above 2k.

Okay... so you've either trinketed the Blind, or ate/dispelled the fear (and presumably gotten out of combat and stealthed back up for Pounce... nothing throws a Rogue off of a priest like Pounce-cyclone-abolish combos... which I highly suggest to keep your priest from spending too much mana healing. Keep in mind that their priest is likely on the offensive, so he's spending more mana than your priest anyway, and you have an extra mana recovery agent that he does not), so I suggest getting back onto the rogue, getting Faerie Fire up again (dispel costs mana, FFF doesn't... keep using it at every turn when it's not up) and keeping up Rake/Rip combos... it doesn't really matter how many CPs are used on Rip... the extra bleed effect will simply keep him from restealthing/vanishing.

If your priest hasn't burned Pain Suppression before this point (and there's USUALLY no need to unless some AMAZING things happen), we use Pain Suppression and Innervate together. The extra dispel resist is nice, but bad priests will see the Pain Suppression graphic and stop even attempting to dispel... so you MIGHT get the whole thing off if you can land Cyclone right as Pain Suppression lands. This has to be played by ear... and certainly don't use Pain Suppression for Innervate if your priest is having trouble keeping himself up. One thing to look for is an addon called "Afflicted" which can be set up to show when your opponents' interrupts are spent and on CD; Guntir thinks the world of this addon as seeing a something akin to "kick on cd for 10 seconds" after attempting to juke something is HUGE... just spam heals. I don't have a link to it, but it's pretty prominant, google should be able to help out in that regard.

Okay, so you've got bleeds up on the rogue and your priest is still alive... going bear form would be bad. I know, it's bonkers, Bear Form used to be our claim to fame, but it's pretty weak now without its extra armor or hps. Obviously, if the rogue is bad and you can time it, make him hit you with Kidney Shot while in Bear Form then shift back out to keep up dps. If I haven't made it clear to this point: the rogue will usually switch to you now (good or bad), and you need to be ready for it, and more importantly your PRIEST will need to be ready for it as he's been running away all day, and now he needs to stay in the fray... it's not time to drink. Essentially, at this point it becomes a war of attrition; you need to keep pressure on their priest so he can't run off and drink, so I switch to him and use a focus macro to keep Feral Faerie Fire up on the rogue (/cast [target=focus] Faerie Fire (Feral)(Rank x)). Keeping Faerie Fire up on the rogue is of VITAL importance, as he will have likely spent Preparation, but he might be coming up on Vanish's cooldown again soon, and if you're on his priest, he won't be getting dispels (though he might get a CloS, and you should ensure that you can turn around and Rake before he vanishes).

Your priest will be spending ALL his mana trying to keep you up through Wound Poison, but he should still have either Innervate or Shadowfiend, while the opposing priest should have nothing left. Knowing this, he will probably be saying things on vent like "out of CDs, running out of mana, kill something" and when rogues hear that, they switch back to your priest. ALSO, if the rogue turns and start charging your priest, he has to know that blind MIGHT be coming in an attempt to gib you within 10 seconds... set up for SW:D to try and break it (though he should still have his trinket up... this will make them wet their pants as he can now Trinket a kidney shot later <1 second in and run like the wind). Now, you've basically won the match (and you most certainly have won the match if your priest has enough mana to use Shadowfiend offensively), as both priests will be low but your priest will still have either Innervate or Shadowfiend (preferably the latter).

Berserk should be coming back up soon (or is still up), so as soon as you get the priest stunned at 50%, pop TF+Berserk and tell your priest to throw Shadowfiend on the priest (if he needs mana... say <50% or so... Shadowfiend does like 1000 a hit... he's usefull offensively) throw DoTs up (if he can). Essentially, you need your priest to be able to spend a GCD or two and get back to healing either you or him. Kill the priest. Kill the rogue.

Against "good" rogue+priest (again, double-human-double-engineering) will have already killed your priest by the third step in this plan... which is a bummer. However, I hope this helps.

Aside from strategy, something we were doing was basically we took 1-2 weeks where we played ~100 games and wrote down (or otherwise logged) which comps we saw when. We found that for our battlegroup (Vindication), we saw fewer Rogue+Priest teams ~6pm server time on Mon/Tues/Weds/Thurs, so we've been playing our matches around those times and avoiding that comp as best we can. We had 1 rogue+priest team that we faced last week, and 1 the week before... we lost them both, but still climbed rating because we faced other teams we CAN beat more reliably. This can also be helpful.