We bounced back from our amazing tank-fest on Saturday. We lost something like 70 rating on Saturday and made about 80 back yesterday. WHEW. I can't tell you all how relieved I am about hitting 2k... it's like one of those hurdles that feels insurmountable until you get there, and then you can mock everyone else who can't do it. Just kidding, I wouldn't do that... except to Ret pallies... you deserve the mockery.

So, we went back to Disc+Feral and I changed up my build SLIGHTLY to help out in the burst department. This is the build, and as you can see, it has given up Predatory Instincts in favor of Protector of the Pack. The reason for this change is that when dealing with Ret pallies, I need to be able to turtle and burst effectively, and while 10% extra critical strike damage is very good, I need 12% less damage taken while in bear form a LITTLE more. This is also true when facing a good rogue+priest team, as I will almost ALWAYS be getting trained and I will need to survive in bear form without getting tons of heals, and reducing overall damage is paramount to that point. Other than these small changes, the mangle build is the same.

Another fact worth noting: Survival Instincts(glyphed) + Barkskin(glyph) is absolutely insane survival. I can literally pop these both with a Ret pally with Bloodlust and Wings up and sit in bear form letting him attack me and I won't die, even with Guntir CC'd. The Barkskin glyph is the best glyph for a feral right now... if you don't have one: go get one. Another thing is that we FINALLY faced one of those frostdk+protpally teams we have been hearing about lately (apparently 2k is where they live). We don't have anything to worry about from this team.

The ONLY marketable attack that the Frost DK brings to the table is Frost Strike (with Rune Strike being a VERY weak second), and it requires diseases to be up to do full damage. The problem with this (for the opposition) is that Guntir has Abolish Disease and a brain stem. Essentially, the DK sat on Guntir for a minute or two dealing damage while I sat on him dealing damage (quite a bit more, in fact) and then he pulled his ace in the hole. See, the Frost DK build relies on stack up diseases on everyone, popping Hungering Cold, and insta-gibbing the non-healer while the healer is CC'd (Hungering Cold is usually followed by HoJ or Repentance, depending on the spec of the pally). The problem that this team runs into is that Hungering Cold gives me enough time to get my Barkskin going, so when the DK turns to me, he has -25% chance to crit and -20% damage. After the Hungering Cold breaks, I pop bearform and soak his damage, which isn't going to be NEARLY enough to down me (unless Guntir had been slacking... which doesn't really happen). Also, since this is the staple of this team and the damage output is kind of meager against a disc priest, Guntir can set up the DK has his focus and get ready to counter it.

Here's how it works: Hungering Cold is a 1min CD and Death Grip is a 35 second cd (25 if talented... not many DKs forgo the extra damage in the blood tree to get 25 second CD on DG). So, after we survive the first Hungering Cold, Guntir can line up every other Death Grip with Shadow Word: Death. Essentially, I'm slowing the DK to the point where he's going to lose Guntir, and if Guntir gets around a corner, then the DK will USUALLY switch to me. As soon as Guntir pops his head back around the corner to shield me, the DK will be thinking "I've been dpsing this druid for a bit now, let's go for a gib" and he will use his only CC by Death Gripping Guntir and mashing Hungering Cold to CC us both... so Guntir is firing SW:D once he lands from DG in the hope that Hungering Cold will fire at the same time as SW:D, SW:D will either kill the DK (cool) or not and return damage to Guntir, knocking his Hungering Cold CC off... and the DK will either hit me or Guntir will dispel it.

It's pretty hard to time it appropriately, and we haven't played enough Frost DK teams this season to actually get it working EVERY time (like he does with Poly), but it's pretty much good enough in the couple matches we HAVE played against FDKs where I'd bank on it... and in either case, Barkskin is ALWAYS up during Hungering Cold because they're both 1min CDs (By the way, I usually save my trinket for Repentance or HoJ since those are usually used as a last-ditch effort to stop me from killing the DK/Warrior... and the CC either of those dps can bring are otherwise ignorable, imo).

Well, we have got a long way to go, but we're still looking at climbing higher and higher, so I'll report back with what I see. Hopefully, I can start recording matches soon and getting some footage up... I'm working on a video currently as well, but it's sort of at a hiatus because of all the changes that happened in S5 to S6... some of the footage would have a Shred spec and others would have Mangle spec, etc. I don't know, it'll be a while, but it's definitely something I'm working on.

Well, we're going to shelve the idea that Holy could still work in the arena. No, it isn't because Holy doesn't have enough survivability, and it isn't because Holy can't live through the burst that is running rampant (ret pallies, you know what I'm talking about). The problem is that the problem that Holy would have resolved is not an issue any longer.

I'm talking about Disc+Rogue. Taken straight from the SK Gaming 2v2 bracket standings, the most popular comp is no longer Disc+Rogue by the margins we were seeing before. While two weeks ago we saw Disc+Rogue being dominant at something like 40% of the teams above 2k, now we see Disc+Rogue at around 19%, with Resto+Warrior catching up quickly and DK+Pally and Pally+warrior nipping at the heals.

Plainly, we didn't do our job. Our job is to walk into the arena with some semblance of an idea of what we're likely to face, and have strategies against those comps. We went into the arena this week and did fine the first day (got up to 1989), but then did some more arena on Saturday and curbstomped ourselves back down to 1922 (and our MMR is in the mid 1800s apparently, though I'm going off what Guntir said in a fit of anger at In-and-Out Burger... we drown our sorrows in burgers... skinny bastard doesn't gain a pound while I'm... nevermind). While we could make the statement that Holy would still work, it would require SOOOOO much reworking that it almost isn't worth it, particularly when the one strong dps that Holy works well against is no longer the most-played dps in the arena (rogues).

See, on Saturday we came across a phenomenon I like to call "lawlret". Not the Ret pallies of yore, but the new burst-cannon instantiations of them. Now, keep in mind that I claimed we didn't have any trouble with the Ret pally teams and even posted some strategies for facing them. However, Ret pallies who have finally picked up some Deadly gear and a Tier1 PvP weapon have become some sort of portable atomic blast. The problem that Holy has with Ret pallies is that the cooldowns just aren't enough: Guardian spirit is good, but when a Ret pally with Wings can do 75% of a target's health with just 1 button and a white swing (and Seal of the Martyr), it just won't be enough to keep any target up.

Disc is just much more suited to live through the burst, though Sanctified Wrath makes it even more difficult. Essentially, our strategy has to change from "kite when wings are up" to "cyclone when wings are up and kite like crazy because if he hits you with wings up, you're going to die; pain suppression or otherwise." Personally, I feel like this is bullshit. No class should have the ability to turn into an unstoppable killing machine the way Ret pallies can.

Oh well, live and learn, right? All we can do is change our playstyle and hope that we come out on the other side successful. Switching back to Disc is likely going to help because Disc is largely preventative in nature. That is, the staple of a Disc priest is the ability to throw out shields, Renew, and ProM in the hope that the shield will prevent enough damage to keep a Ret pally from killing you with their 3 buttons. However, it is becoming less and less reliable as time progresses and gear improves. Essentially, while Ret pally burst was always strong before, now that they are all sporting Tier1 weapons, they are given almost free reign to kill. Before, they would burst you down to 30% with their 3 buttons and since they don't have an MS effect, you would get picked back up to 100% from Mendflay. Now, they can burst you to 10% hp (or kill you if they get enough crits), and Mendflay MIGHT take you back to 100% if it gets some crits.

The aspect of the whole matter that is really irking me is that Blizzard has stated that they don't like how bursty Ret pallies are, but they haven't done a damned thing to deal with it. The first action they took was largely preventative in nature: they disallowed Exorcism to be used against players (I shiver when thinking about how this would have played out had they not made this change). However, the damage output of Ret pallies is STILL extremely strong in burst. The paladin walks over, hits his 3 attacks, and you MIGHT have died with 1000 resilience and 22k hp... largely depending on the pally's crit rate. During one Hand of Justice, a pally will get off the following attacks:

White swing
Martyr proc
Crusader Strike
Martyr proc
Divine Storm
White swing
Martyr proc
Judgment
Execute
... martyr proc

I think we're starting to see why Ret pallies are currently the most overpowered dps in the game. I am extremely curious as to why Blizzard keeps giving Ret pallies damage that is not resistible, bypasses armor, and does the biggest chunk of all their damage. Seal of the Martyr/Blood accounts for 20% of my guild's ret pally's damage on most fights, while everything else is about 10%. I'm waiting for a revamp on Ret pallies.

The other thing that's bothering me is that I don't see any downside. That is, I could understand that priest+rogue was the strongest team because druid+warrior was still trying to get some gear and pick up their numbers... but essentially druid+warrior completely countered priest+rogue. There is seemingly no counter to a ret pally with a healer. If the ret pally gets on your healer, you have to peel him with SOMETHING and stuns won't do it (HoF removes stuns), snares won't do it (HoF makes them immune to stuns), speed won't do it (smart ret pallies judge justice), and soak/mitigation won't do it (Sanctified Retribution ensures that Pain Suppression won't be useful). So, it seems like feral+disc is the best comp to play against them because we have something that actually counters wings: cyclone. However, a good ret pally will simply wait out all the cyclones and what-not without using his trinket because he needs diminishing returns... then he'll either be immune to Cyclone when he finally gets on my priest with wings up, or he'll have his trinket ready for it.

Our strategy is just going to have to change. Unfortunately, it's going to have to change to something along the lines of "put pressure on the healer and hopefully Guntir can kite the pally NEAR me to the point where if he needs a Cyclone peel, I can give him one," and this strategy will NEVER succeed against shammy healers. Shamans, as much as they hate to admit it, are the best healers in the game with regard to mana conservation, particularly when they have someone attacking them (and only them); Water Shield sees to that. To add insult to injury, shamans are simply a pushover against classes with an MS effect because all the mana in the world won't make your heals hit any harder.

So where does this leave us? Well, it leaves us asking the question "wtf are we supposed to do against shaman+ret?" It also leaves us in a tight spot against ALL ret pally teams, particularly double-dps ret teams (since ret pallies can just walk over and kill someone without effort, especially if they're getting help).

... We'll just have to hope that we don't have to face any ret pallies. Another thing we're going to try is dispel-training them, as a lot of the time you NEED to be able to dispel Wings as an option, and unfortunately they have lots of abilities that stack up on themselves. This makes the mana war even more intense as they passively apply buffs, and dispelling those buffs is usually a waste of effort.

I'm running out of ideas... we'll see how it goes today.

Okay, I've been talking about the new specs and what-not for a couple days now (almost a week) and I haven't really gotten into the specifics. I get questions like "how the hell are you running holy+mangle with any success at all!?" all the time, what with neither being well represented at all above 2k. The quick-n-dirty answer to such questions is that Guntir and I have almost always explored the realms of untouched territory in hope of finding something off the wall that no one has ever seen. I believe we may have done that (again... our spriest+destro team was pretty strong in season3/4 but we couldn't get past rogue+priest at 1800 to the 2k druid+warrior teams... if we got above 1900, we would have likely skyrocketed to 2k+... but that's neither here nor there).

Here is Guntir's Holy spec... it's insane, we know. It's a hodgepodge of all the good talents at the bottom-tiers of Disc and basically all the HoT talents in Holy.

Here is my spec, which is a pretty basic Mangle build... but it's a bit unorthodox for me given that I am always talking about how our team is such a strong turtle-team and I don't have Protector of the Pack.

Let's talk about the strengths of each spec. Obviously, I've been going on and on about Feral stuff forever, now. The Mangle build has all the same stuff one would expect a PvP spec to have: SotF, iLotP, Primal Tenacity, Improved Mangle, etc. The only thing I have switched up is taking Improved Mangle makes me drop points out of Protector of the Pack and because of this, I have taken up HotW (for the extra stam in Bear form ... and the extra AP in cat as a side-note) and Survival Instincts. I know, I said I never used Survival Instincts, and when I have PotP, I don't usually need to because that inherent 12% damage reduction in bear form is just SOOOOO powerful. Another thing I should make mention is the glyph choices: Rip is obvious as it is the bread-n-butter of the Feral PvP dps cycle; Mangle is there because I was a Shred spec and just never found a better choice (although, Glyph of Survival Instincts is looking better every day), and Glyph of Barkskin.

In case I haven't made the point before now: go get Glyph of Barkskin before they nerf it. Glyph of Barkskin essentially gives you the 20% damage reduction you normally get AND -25% chance to be crit every minute... it's insane. Couple that with resilience (I have about 600 which is ~6% crit chance reduction) and Survival of the Fittest and you're talking about -37% chance to be crit every minute on TOP of -20% damage reduction. Have you any idea what happens when rogues attack me with this up? Not a damned thing, they find me like water on rock. Ret pallies, too, find me very difficult to kill as their wings is on a similar (though shorter) cooldown; if you can time your Cyclones appropriately, you can completely negate their wingsbomb with bearform and barkskin... you can even toss yourself heals with Frenzied Regeneration.

Changing directions, for a moment, I would like to talk about the reason I am even trying out the Mangle spec. The reason is that while Shred is certainly more damage and comparable combo point generation in its best case, the majority of the time at the higher ratings, teams realize the weakness of most ferals and can strafe-defense their way out of effective burst damage. Getting the best damage possible out of Shred requires so much build up that the rest of the strengths of the spec are almost lost completely. Shred requires Mangle, a bleed, and Savage Roar to be effective. It also requires you to be behind your opponent and NOT energy starved. The main problem we were running into was that good teams would just focus me toe-to-toe and I would lose the ability to effectively build up combo points, pressure the opposing healer to heal, and keep up the prerequisites for making Shred more effective than Mangle WHILE using Maim to get behind the opponent. The entirety of the damage hinged upon Maim hitting for full duration and Tiger's Fury being up. This isn't usually a huge problem, but it led to inconsistent damage output against the higher rated teams which allowed the opposing healers to almost drink at will.

Switching to Mangle as my primary attack, it doesn't actually matter anymore if there is a bleed up on my target when I'm hitting mangle. Obviously, I want to keep bleeds up as much as possible, but if there isn't, I'm not penalized for using Mangle instead of the bleed THEN Mangle. Also, many opponents find it hard to believe that I would be spamming mangle anyway, so they still try and strafe-kite me to stop my damage, which can get them in trouble if they aren't careful. Also, because I'm using Mangle so much more often than Shred against good teams, I'm also generating combo points much more frequently, which allows me to effectively get up my bleeds and apply pressure, which forces the opposing healer to stay in combat and not drink, which allows Guntir to pressure with mana burn more effectively and often.

Speaking of Guntir, his Holy build basically relies on a few tidbits in order to be effective. I have written before about Blessed Resilience and Lightwell, so I will not bore you about those ad nauseum. The other aspects of the Holy build that are strong are Guntir's HoTs; if you notice, Guntir is taking Empowered Renew, Divine Providence, and a few other HoT-related talents. The reason that he takes these is because Renew and ProM have become his bread-n-butter. While I am in cat form, his ProM will tick off of me for about 6k and his Renew will tick normally on me for 4-5k. These abilities are instant cast, they are easy to keep up during points of pressure, and many teams won't think about dispelling them under normal circumstances (because they're so cheap as compared to dispel, especially when the opposing team has mana burn; the one-track minds of priests is astounding. Priests could honestly just sit on Guntir mashing dispel and their rogues would kill him in a matter of seconds, but most priests think they're facing a disc, so they're just going to mana burn). Another aspect of Guntir's build that is very powerful is Body and Soul, which does a couple of really neat things: first, it allows him to get ANOTHER abolish poison on himself against rogues, it allows him to do double-trouble-dispels against rogue+dk teams, and it lets him break away from melee on a fairly regular basis, especially with me snaring them. The only other ability that makes the build interesting is Guardian Spirit, which is particularly effective against teams which do big burst damage and do not have an MS effect (read: ret pallies). Essentially, Guntir can use it as a burst heal that does 50% of his health, or he can use it to heal with since the 1 minute cooldown when it isn't consumed is very strong (from the glyph).

Okay, well that's basically all the nooks and crannies of our specs, but it is not yet time to say "well that makes sense, time to spec that way and play, amirite!?" You would be wrong, particularly so if you are not a feral being teamed with a Holy priest. Guntir seems to think (and I believe him) that Feral is the ONLY class/spec that could be effectively teamed with a Holy priest. The reasons for this are simple: Holy is an extremely mana inefficient spec and requires drinking and peels a LOT of the time; Holy's mana inefficiency gets worse when it has to dispel CC effects off partners because dispel is no longer a cheap spell; Feral is an extremely mobile spec with access to great survivability if played right.

Mobility is a HUGE factor for Holy priests; being able to get away from an opponent isn't helpful if you've just gotten away from an opponent who then quickly turns his attention to your teammate and needs heals, thus pulling the priest back into the fray. Feral druids have huge amounts of mobility given the right talents, so it is very natural feeling to see Guntir "sprint" away from an opponent which leads me to CC him and switch to his partner. This gives Guntir ample opportunity to drink back some mana and drop MS effects while I apply pressure to the healer. This strategy really trips up most healer+dps teams because the dps who was CC'd now has to decide what is more of a threat: his healer being attacked or my healer getting back to full/full. If the dps decides I'm the bigger threat, I can turtle until Guntir arrives on scene winning the mana war, and if the dps chooses Guntir, I can pressure the healer until it's time to restart this glorious cycle again (Guntir "sprints" away and I CC and pressure the healer).

So there you have it, that's the long version of why this comp actually works and why it likely wouldn't work for any other dps (although, one could make the argument that it would work with an Arms warrior, being both ultra-mobile and essentially un-fearable... plus an MS effect would make this comp a little stronger in terms of pressure output. The only problem is that warriors can't turtle quite as effectively as ferals... but I'd trade it for an ms effect... let alone two >_<).