Taugrim's MMO Blog

We’re finally running 3v3 baby!

Excerpt from the YouTube video description:

This HD video is narrated footage of my 85 Prot Pally in Cataclysm Patch v4.0.3a in Arena 3v3 with an Enhancement Shaman, Kashmír, and Restoration Druid (Skipz). This is my fifth Arena video for Cataclysm for Season 9 and first for 3v3.

Kashmír and I have been looking for a geared non-Pally/non-Shammy Healer for 3v3 for the past couple weeks; most of the geared Healers we know were already part of a 3v3 team and other Healers who didn’t know us said “no thanks” because of our specs. Thankfully a new guildee, Skipz, was willing to give us a shot after watching some of our 2v2 videos.

Skipz had just formed a 3v3 team this week. We were able to quickly raise the Team Rating from under 1k to over 1700 by going 14-3 over our first 17 games. The comp has been a blast for us to play. Because Kash and I can offheal and are reasonably durable, Skipz has time to CC and his role is our comp is very dynamic. As you can see in the footage he throws out a lot of Cyclones, insta-Roots, and Bear-form Bash.

Opposing Comps

• Rogue / Warlock / Resto Druid
• DK / Warrior / Holy Paladin
• Mage / Warrior / Resto Druid

If you have questions for Kashmír, post them as a Comment below, as he tracks the comments on my blog.

I’ll ask Skipz if he’s willing to field Resto Druid questions as well, as he’s the expert.

P.S. we’re now over 1900 with 44 games played together. I’ll be recording more footage for videos as we make our way to 2000+ Rating.

Excerpt from the YouTube video description:

This HD video is narrated footage of my 85 Prot Pally in Cataclysm Patch v4.0.3a in Arena 2v2 with an Enhancement Shaman, Kashmír. This is my fourth Arena video for Cataclysm for Season 9.

We started the week at 2002 Rating and finished at 2005, with a record for the week of 31-25. It was an up-and-down week but we continued to learn a lot from our mistakes – hopefully you will too

Last week was not a great week for us – we had a couple ugly slumps, but we managed to dig ourselves out. We finished the week ranked at #221. I looked through the top 200 teams on Shadowburn, and there were 0 Prot Pallies and 7 Enhancement Shamans.

Last night (Tuesday) we did go 6-2, which raised our rating to 2036 and our ranking to #175 in our battlegroup. Onward, upward!

Opposing Comps

• DK / Holy Paladin
• Mage / Shadow Priest
• Mage / Resto Druid
• Rogue / Resto Shaman
• Rogue / Shadow Priest
• Rogue / Feral Druid
• Mage / Shadow Priest
• Mage / Rogue
• Mage / Warrior

Tips

• As discussed in the video, Kashmír switched from 8/33 to 5/33/3, putting points into the Spark of Life talent. For a dual-DPS comp that has been a great move, as I have an easier time keep his HP up with my healing
• One thing I forgot to mention in the video: if we know that we are facing a Caster/stealth MDPS comp, we have Kashmír wait out of LoS, so that when the  MDPS opens up on him, the Caster has to ride around the pillar to DPS Kashmír. This buys us valuable time until we can get control of the situation
• I treat Divine Shield as a second trinket. Long gone are the days where a non-Holy Pally can bubble and heal to full. I can heal about 30-35% of my HP while bubbled
• As I said in the video, against Rogue/DPS comps, I will break Sap with my PVP trinket, because these fights go quick and if I ride out the Sap duration the outcome may already be determined. This isn’t 1v1, where you wait out the Sap against a Rogue
• Check out my Prot Pally PVP Guide for the full scoop on the Prot spec, including my take on the upcoming changes for Prot in 4.0.6 (Rebuke!!!)

If you have a questions for Kashmír or me, please post ‘em below.

P.S. there are over 330 comments posted on the Prot Pally PVP Guide – there are dozens of Pallies sharing their tips and tactics there, and I am glad to see the Guide grow as a resource for the community.

P.P.S. blog readers and players from other servers in BGs been kind enough to express their thanks for the material I’ve been posting. One player last night found a funny way of contacting me:

My buddy Kømuri just uploaded another video to YouTube:

Excerpt from the YouTube video description:

Video explaining the basic enhancement shaman tips for getting the most out of it. This is the first one of several, so if you want me to make a video for a special issue you guys have with your shamans let me know and I might be able to help you

Feel free to post questions about the video here, and Kømuri or Kashmír will answer them.

The two best Enhancement Shamans I’ve seen in Cataclysm PVP happen to be in my guild: Kashmír and Kømuri.

For some odd reason they both have names that start with a “K” and contain a special character, which makes it a pain in the ass whenever I want to write their name. But I digress.

My 2v2 Arena videos have drawn quite a bit of attention from Enhancement Shamans, and they’ve been asking questions for PVP. All I really know about Enhancement Shamans is they have pet wolves, can shift into wolf form, drop totems, and are ambidextrously able to smack opponents around with both hands. So I’m not really qualified to answer most questions.

Kashmír and Kømuri love talking PVP with other players, and Kashmír has already been answering questions on the Arena video posts here.

Kømuri played a Rogue on an EU server in 2v2 in previous Arena seasons (i.e. at level 80) to 2.2+K Rating. I’ve run BGs with him and he is an exceptional player and very knowledgeable about Arena and PVP in general.

Kømuri said that he is willing to answer questions and make videos on subjects that Enhancement Shamans are curious about. He is not going to narrate his videos, but my understanding is that he will annotate his videos with text to describe what he’s doing.

Kømuri just posted his first 85 BG video, check it out:

So post your questions for these two stud Enhancement Shamans and (hopefully) they’ll get back to you

I will continue to post Kømuri’s videos on my blog as I expect them to be quality content and I want to help drive traffic to good resources.

This HD video is narrated footage of my 85 Prot Pally in Cataclysm Patch v4.0.3a in Arena 2v2 with an Enhancement Shaman, Kashmír. This is my third Arena video for Cataclysm.

Our Team by the Numbers

We worked our way up from 1850 to 2000 rating in the 4th week of Season 9 and earned the 2k Achievement

We started the week by going 9-9, adjusted our tactics, and then finished with a 16-7 run over the next 23 games. We barely missed out on the Hotter Streak Achievement (10 consecutive wins at 1800+).

We were ranked #213 for Shadowburn as of Tuesday morning, and we have climbed up to #119 as of the time of this post.

We are the only Prot Pally / Enhancement Shaman comp in the top 200. We’ve never faced a mirror comp.

Here’s the link to our team page, if you want to check out our gear/spec/enchants/gems/etc:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/arena/wildhammer/2v2/beasteh/

Opposing Comps

This video features the following opposing comps:

• Mage / Shadow Priest
• Rogue / Shadow Priest
• Mage / Shadow Priest (same team, different map)
• Warrior / Mage
• Rogue / Shadow Priest
• Death Knight / Holy Paladin
• Death Knight / Restoration Druid

Tips

• As discussed in the video, “reverse kiting” has worked really well for us. Basically we kite a MDPS out of LoS from his team mate. If the team mate is a Healer this makes it difficult for the Healer to heal the MDPS without using instant casts or fast-cast, mana-inefficient heals. If the team mate is a Caster this prevents them from freecasting on us. I call this reverse kiting because teams usually expect us as a dual-melee comp to come after them. We’ve learned the hard way that that can put us in very vulnerable situations
• Check out my Prot Pally PVP Guide for the full scoop on the Prot spec, including my take on the upcoming changes for Prot in 4.0.6 (Rebuke!!!)

If you have a questions for either me or Kashmír, please post ‘em below.