WoW PvP Guide

Warrior PvP guide

2009-06-21T05:18:00.000-07:00

Introduction

(In Patch 3.1)
In PvP, many classes will avoid melee combat which will make defensive equipment significantly less usable, as well as Protection talents.

The warrior is a very capable player killer with a mix of strong offensive and defensive abilities and excellent burst damage. The class has good attack speed and mobility and can close on a target quickly, combine this with an essential pvp debuff of 50% less healing on his target and a talented Overpower debuff on healers reducing their effectiveness by another 50%, makes the class very dangerous. The warrior always does damage and does not need to break for mana. The more damage warriors take the stronger they become, give them a healer and they become one of the best group pvp classes. Warriors have retribution damage: if he suffers damage, he gains rage and his strikes will become much more deadly. A warrior's major problem is often to avoid being kited by more ranged-oriented classes or being starved for rage. For this, combat controlling abilities such as Hamstring and Intercept are excellent remedies, also this simple array of abilities means damage can be maintained even with limited rage.

These are general guidelines for PvP warriors.

Always have Battle Shout applied in any fight - it's a big damage bonus! Or you can use Commanding Shout, for a health buff (recommended in arenas). Although this is open to debate, in PvP most warriors use a slow, high-DPS 2H weapon, and have spent talents mostly in Arms for Mortal Strike, Bladestorm, Sudden Death and his weapon specialization (MS). Few points are spent in the Fury tree, like Cruelty (+ crit chance). Many warriors take Tactical Mastery in the Arms tree to maintain Rage when switching stances in battle, but most of the time you (as a warrior) will be fighting in Battle Stance.

This setup makes Heroic Strike less useful. In WoTLK, Heroic Strike became a tanking skill. It costs half the rage of Mortal Strike, true, but Mortal Strike is an instant attack and therefore is an extra 'free hit'. This is the advantage of having a slow, heavy-hitting weapon as MS is unaffected by weapon speed. Heroic strike gives additional damage to a swing you get. MS also does more damage and decreases the effectiveness of any heals. You will often find yourself with extra rage to 'dump' on your target while MS is cooling down. If this is the case, spend some rage on other abilities, like Sunder Armor, talented Slam, Demoralizing Shout and Thunder Clap. When fighting casters, never use all your rage; you may have to interrupt a spell at any time.

The use of Heroic Strike however does vary, if used correctly and timed with Mortal Strike can allow you to hit your opponent twice in rapid succession. Since one is an instant, and the other a free swing attack, they can hit directly one after the other for a large burst of heavy damage. However, this is extremely taxing on your rage meter, but well worth the effort in high-rage situations, a fairly common event in PvP. It effectively adds a lot of extra damage to your burst capability.

Your talent build should comprise of the following essentials in the Arms tree: Mortal Strike, Improved Overpower, Deep Wounds, Impale, Iron Will, Taste for Blood, Second Wind, Unrelenting Assault, Juggernaut, Sudden Death, Bladestorm and your Weapon Specialization.

Which weapon specialization you take is largely personal preference and has been the subject of hot debate. Mace specialization now is a direct counter to resilience since Patch 3.0.2 where it removes your opponent's armor constantly, much the same way to Executioner. However we have compiled some advice on which weapon to choose:

Axes and Poleaxes: Use when you want to surprise your target with high-end burst damage. Poleaxe Specialization gives you +5% critical chance, and your enemy must have more than 410 resilience to reduce it. Orc warriors have an expertise bonus when using axes.
Swords: Specializing in swords gives you a chance to hit your opponent twice in one hit. It's a low rate, but it will be, roughly, a 5% bonus damage. Humans have an expertise bonus when using swords.
Maces: Used by warriors to increase overall DPS. 15% armor reduction will be deadly against cloth targets. Recommended only if you have at least a 30% critical strike chance.

The patch changes that really apply to warrior PvP are the following abilities:

Recklessness, Retaliation and Shield Wall being changed to 5 minutes, and no longer share a global Cool-down. This means they are now usable in PvP.
Sudden Death A 9% chance to allow the execute ability after any hit. It's effect will not damage like an execution on targets less than 20%, but can crit up to 6500 (at least 20% of target health).
Bladestorm Essentially a warrior version of a BM hunters CDs, you are immune to all stun and CC, while constantly whirlwinding your enemies. It has many, many pvp uses.

Recklessness should be used on cloth wearers and casters, or people who aren't hitting you back with melee attacks. It is very useful when combined with execute allowing for guaranteed critical strikes which can take out your enemy instantly. Use macros on your skills to use Recklessness, make sure it's always up.

Retaliation is best used against melee classes, such as rogues, other warriors and even Warlocks in some situations. It is a very good defensive ability and can force people to keep a healthy distance from you.

Shield Wall is best used when you're caught off-guard by a ranged class which is damaging you heavily from afar. Useful for outlasting damaging attacks from enemies when they use their best CDs, examples include BM hunters, demon form warlocks, mages and elemental shamans.

General PvP Tactics

In PvP, warriors primarily focus on:

Keeping enemies within melee attack range (and facing the enemy).
Proper counters to enemies abilities, or proper usage of ability-attacks.

Against ranged classes, (Mage, Hunter, Warlock, Priest, casting Druid, Elemental Shaman) the major theme in the battle is whether the warrior can keep the target within, or at least close to, melee range. While in melee, the warrior should be dealing significantly more damage to the low armor foe. Additionally, any non-instant spells cast by the warrior's opponent are in danger of being interrupted or effectiveness reduced. If the target is kept within melee range, the secondary requirement for a warrior win revolves around properly interrupting key spells or at least put a talented overpower debuff. Intimidating Shout can be used from 10 yards away and will stop the targeted enemy in place. This is very useful for closing the gap on ranged attacker or stopping them from damaging you while you wait for an immobilize effect to wear off.

Against melee classes, (Rogue, Warrior, Shaman, Paladin, melee Druid), the warrior tactics are much more class-specific. The common tool against all melee enemies is Disarm. This ability will deny enemy abilities that require a melee weapon (there are many of these for these melee classes), as well as maximize damage differential in the warrior's favor. The timing of Disarming a rogue is critical to preventing of the rogue's finishing move, whereas against Shaman and Paladin, you just want to get in this move as often as you can. Other than Disarm, increased melee combat means more "swings" of the melee weapons by both warrior and foe, providing more opportunities to use the high-value/rage warrior counterattacks of Overpower and Revenge (Revenge is only worthwhile if stun-talent added, and can be caused by shield-block). These two counterattacks can be the difference if they are used within their relatively small time windows (management of weapons and stances required).

Rogue

Notable Rogue Abilities:

Vanish (Rend damage-over-time breaks stealth.)
Stun Attacks: Gouge, Kidney Shot, Cheap Shot
High Damage Finishing Moves: Eviscerate, Envenom
Weapon Poisons: Crippling Poison
Damage over time (DoT) bleed attacks: Garrote, Rupture
Powerful cooldown abilities: Evasion, Adrenaline Rush, Blind

Rogues deal tons of damage and have lots of ways to control the fight. However since they must get down and dirty with your plate-covered self to do this; unless a Rogue catches you completely unaware, you will have a fairly easy time whacking them down if you know what you're doing and keep your head cool.

Use a two handed weapon and Overpower as much as possible. Rogues dodge quite a bit because most rogues stack agility which simply makes them dodge. Remember to activate Beserker Rage before you switch to Battle Stance for Overpower, otherwise the rogue will Gouge you. You can use Hamstring and other instant attacks to 'probe' for a dodge. The improved overpower talent is amazingly effective, especially with a slow two handed weapon. Disarm can also be useful against rogues and it frequently surprises them and causes them to move away from you, which is the perfect time to Intercept.

Furthermore, many rogues will attempt to backstab you, or use any other attack through Stealthing, if you get your timing right, you can use a Demoralizing Shout or any other Area of Effect spell to remove their Stealth, if successful, you will have a large step ahead from the Rogue, since it's a large part of their Stun Lock tactics. The 'Second Wind' talent is very good at mitigating some of the damage done to you while incapacitated by one of the rogues stun lock abilities, but keep in mind that it cannot outheal a rogue's attacks. In order to avoid in-combat stealthing try to always have a Rend or Deep Wounds on the rogue.

Rogues' Gouge and Sap abilities are often used to buy them time, either to kill another target or regenerate their energy. If hit by either of these abilities while in Berserker Stance, you can activate Berserker Rage, giving you immunity to these Disorient effects and breaking you free to continue fighting. Since a rogue's lower armor makes it difficult for them to beat a warrior in a straight up fight, they often make good use of stuns and disorients to get in extra hits--by breaking a Gouge, you can often turn the battle in your favor.

Remember lots of the rogue's abilities revolve around positioning and by hamstringing him you seriously impair his ability to maneuver around you and use these abilities effectively. DON'T just stand still while fighting a rogue, run round, jump, spin about on the spot......anything you can do to make it difficult for him to use his incapacitate abilities on you, if he can't stun lock you he has no chance against you. Remember you have the upper hand in terms of damage and armor. As soon as it turns into a stand-up fight the rogue is simply outclassed.

A typical rogue fight goes like this:

First of all, most rogues are going to open up with a Sap. They generally do this to stop you from moving, which allows them to position themselves for their opener. In a ranked Arena situation a stealthed rogue that's sprinted over to your side and sapped one of your team-mates will often immediately throw even everything out of kilter, so try to have a strategy for rogue saps (in duels it's going to happen and there's not much you can do about it).

Almost all rogues are going to go with a full stunlock for their opener. The solution to this is to start in Defensive Stance with a sword and shield to mitigate their damage (sometimes not possible, but in the Arena always keep a macro for a shield and defensive stance handy, or a key bound). You can't do anything about the stuns. Do not trinket out of a stun in a one-on-one duel vs a rogue, because you are liable to eat a full-duration Blind which you can do nothing about while the rogue does something to regain health or re-stealths and in that case he gives himself the advantage.

For the rogue, it's a race to do as much damage as possible before you start laying the huge hits down, which means that they're very likely to blow their cooldowns fast. After the stun lock fades he'll likely pop Evasion to avoid most of your damage except for the occasional overpower or hit he doesn't dodge.

Despite what many rogues think, evasion is actually not a bad ability to use when versing warriors, unless the rogue has a remarkably low health pool. They will eat one or two overpower crit's and avoid the rest or most of the rest of your damage. Blowing evasion for them means that they will take one huge hit every few seconds and then avoid the rest, which is far better than being hit by everything. In other words, they'd prefer getting run over by a train once than to get smashed by a truck repeatedly.

Once the rogue pops Evasion get an overpower crit in and a Thunder Clap, then immediately switch to Defensive Stance and go into full tank mode. Demoralizing Shout on him first, then start spamming Shield Block and Piercing Howl (once again that macro comes in handy). I suggest disarming him too, but most of the time that's liable to be dodged as well anyway. I'd also suggest using an Intimidating Shout, but most rogues will be saving their trinket for that, especially against warriors.

After evasion has gone onto cool down, the rogue has very few options. They will attempt to Blind you and get away to restealth for a Round 2, but you can simply trinket out of that. You should always save your trinket for Blind. They can Vanish, but assuming you got at least one crit in, they'll have at least one Bleed effect on them which make it useless (if you're not specced into bleed effects for criticals then keep a rend up on them, otherwise you're just allowing them a huge advantage). If they pop evasion again, you can just stay in your Defensive Stance and mitigate their damage. If you have a good shield with a very high amount of armor and block (hence, why the PvP shields have ridiculous amounts of armor, block, and raw stamina compared to their PvE counterparts, not to mention resilience), they shouldn't be doing very much damage to you at all unless they're very well geared and you are not.

Warrior

Notable Warrior Abilities (Which you should know):

Second Wind
Death Wish
Disarm
Mortal Strike

Warrior abilities are a guessing game as to what their talent build is, in order to guess effectively you must base your assumptions on what gear they are wearing as well as what weapons they are using (or by the less reasonable way of engaging them and hoping they will reveal their higher talent tree abilities). In general, a warrior using a two hander will be Arms, dual wielding will be Fury, and a one hander and shield will be Protection.

The most basic rule in warrior vs warrior is: better gear wins. Warriors are one of the most gear-dependant classes ever and PvP is no exception. It's a DPS race to the finish.

Sword-specced warriors will most likely win against other warrior weapon-specs. The mace-stun might be useful for getting an extra hit in, say, but then Second Wind procs, which just gave the other warrior a healthy amount of rage, and about a HoT worth 10% of their life, which even with a Mortal Strike debuff on will very likely mitigate all damage that the mace-specced warrior is going to do while the other warrior is stunned. And resilence from PvP gear negates the 5% crit that axe/polearm spec grants.

Against a warrior, you just want to start out in a guard mode. Most warriors don't realise this - they simply charge into battle and whack away. Demo shout and Thunderclap, and immediately start stacking Sunder Armor. Stay in Berserker Stance and immediately Berserker Rage so that you take as much rage as possible.

At this point, a lot of the warriors reading this guide will say, "But...warrior vs warrior is just a DPS race, you have to kill him ASAP. Why stack sunder armor and waste rage like that?"

Well, I would agree with you, but there's one mechanism that works to your advantage: Rage.

You see, if you apply Thunder Clap and Demoralizing Shout to them, it cuts their DPS significantly. Less damage dealt = less rage gained = less abilities to use.

Also, if you're not attacking him directly too much (sunder armor does not do any direct damage) he's not taking that much damage either. Less damage taken = less rage gained = less abilities to use.

You don't even need to stack the full 5 sunders on the warrior - 3 is fine. At this point you should have enough rage built up - refresh your Peircing Howl and blow your soft cooldowns (Death Wish, DPS trinkets, and Blood Fury if you're an orc) and open up with a huge sustained burst of DPS(Mortal Strike + Heroic Strike, Whirlwind) using all your saved rage, which should easily match (if not overtake) the damage dealt to you in the time that you were stacking sunders.

Now, you two should be on an equal footing in terms of health, but he has a few stacks of Sunder Armor up on himself, which puts him at the disadvantage. You're in more of a position to win the DPS race now.

If you are prot then you should Charge then throw shield block followed by revenge(and if they are speced right this can stun you for a sec.) followed by demo shout, thunderclap, concusion blow(stuns you for 5 sec.) then devistate which is a damaging sunder armor, then shield slam. The reson you should do this and not really have to worry about the other warrior is because you will have alot more health and more armor. If you end up having trouble because the other guys gear is alot better than yours you should pop last stand and shield wall but only if you get below 25% health as not to waste it.

Note - I did not mention Disarm. Why? Because for some reason if you get disarmed, you can just siwtch to Defensive and disarm the other warrior too even if you're already disarmed. What a strange game mechanic. In my honest opinion, it's a waste of 30 rage.

Priest

Notable Priest Abilities:

Power Word: Shield
Mind Flay
Holy Fire
Devouring Plague
Shadowguard
Prayer of Healing
Shadow Word: Pain
Desperate Prayer
Flash Heal
Psychic Scream
Mind Blast
Mind Control

Holy/Discipline priests (i.e. pure healers) are usually overmatched by a Warrior, but Shadow priests are a different story. With the ability to jump out of their Fear using Berserker Rage and with use of Pummel to stop casting, combined with high physical damage that is the bane of casters it would seem that Warriors would have an easy time of them, but the combination of the defenses of a Priest (especially Power Word: Shield) combined with respectable damage of a type that warriors cannot mitigate can often make for an almost unbeatable combination. Beating on a Priest whose shield is up and who is draining the Warrior's life from behind it using Mind Flay is the definition of futility: the Shadow Priest can damage the Warrior, but the Warrior is powerless to respond. Nevertheless with a little luck, judicious use of Pummel to stop the larger, longer cast-time heals, and Bloodrage to recover from the loss of Rage while the Priest is bubbled, they can be defeated. As is usual with casters, a Warrior should try to get the jump on them with an initial Charge, fight always in Berserker Stance, and Hamstring them to keep them from getting out of melee range. If possible, it can help a great deal to save non-rage generating attacks for the shield, leaving your white attacks to generate rage when they can actually deal damage. Though the best advice for encountering a shadow priest is just to mount up and get out there if you can - there's no shame in a tactical retreat! You're 95% sure to lose unless you're seriously kitted out, which most of us aren't. Even with only half a health and mana bar they can often beat a full health warrior! A shadow priest is without doubt the warrior's worst enemy, even more so than the mage now - thanks to spell reflect.

Warlock

While you may often lose to a well-geared Warlock because of the heavily beefed-up damage-over-time spells they can spam onto you, which will eat your health away like popcorn, and the fact that most high-level warlocks have health pools exceedings yours, they are not entirely impossible to beat. To stand a chance against a Warlock you can't really afford to make any mistakes, and even then you can still lose if they don't either.

To fight against a warlock is to fight against the clock. The longer you fight the bigger the chance is that his DoT's will eat you up. So keep the initiative and attack him constantly. You can use your PvP-trinket to break his Death-Coil which will surprise most warlocks and still have your fear-breaking abilities ready. Always keep Hamstring on and try to interrupt his longer casts.

Additional notes: Since warlock play styles vary a great deal, it is very important to watch what spells your opponent is casting. If encountering lower damage dealt onto the lock than you would expect against a cloth player, the lock is most likely Soullink specced. If the warlock has a felguard out, he or she is definitely specced for soullink, and 20% of the damage you deal is transferred to the pet. Soullink is usually the hardest spec to deal with for a warrior since you're generating less rage and his dmg dealt to damage taken ration is in his favor. In a group situation such as arena it may be worthwhile to kill the warlock's pet, since they die quickly to focus fire or a few lucky crits. Destruction warlocks, while rare, can be even more deadly to a warrior if the warrior is not careful: Backlash makes for impressive burst damage. Generally you want to only deal physical damage to the destruction warlock when you are ready to finish him.

Other things to keep in mind: Pummel any shadow school spells. This will mean either an interrupted drain life, drain mana directed towards your healer, shadow bolt, fear or howl of terror. These are all spells you do not want him to cast. While this may leave him open to casting fire spells, generally they'll deal less damage and locking down the warlock's shadow school denies him most of his defenses. Another option is to quickly switch to a shield and cast spell reflect if the warlock is casting fear or shadowbolt, and if you are familiar with warlock playstyles you can occasionally reflect a death coil.

Mage

Notable Mage Abilities:

Blink - instant cast, 15 sec cooldown, teleports caster 20 meters in front of the caster. frees the caster from stuns or bonds (roots)
Ice Barrier (31 point Frost talent) - instant cast, 30 sec cooldown, absorb next 838 (at lvl 60) damage to caster, lasts 1 minute. While the shield holds, spells will not be interrupted.
Ice Armor - instant cast, lasts 30 minutes, increases caster's armor by 560, enemy melee attacks have a chance to cause the attacker to have movement slowed by 30%, and attack slowed by 20% for 5 sec.
Frost Nova - instant cast, 25 sec cooldown, enemies near the caster take 71-79 frost damage, and are rooted for 8 seconds.
Polymorph - 1.5 sec cast, Transforms the enemy into a sheep, forcing it to wander around for up to 50 sec. While wandering, the sheep cannot attack or cast spells but will regenerate health very quickly. Any damage will transform the target back into its normal form. Only one target can be polymorphed at a time. Only works on Beasts, Humanoids and Critters.
Cone of Cold - instant cast, targets in a cone in front of the caster take 335 to 365 frost damage and are slowed to 50% of their normal movement speed for 8 sec.
Frost Bolt - 2.5 sec cast (with talents), deals 429-463 damage, reduces movement of target by 40%.
Pyroblast (11 point Fire talent) - 6 sec cast, deals 716-890 damage plus 268 damage over 12 secs.
Presence of Mind (20 point Arcane talent) - instant cast, 3 min cooldown, any mage spell with a casting time less than 10 seconds will cast instantly.
Ice Block (21 point Frost talent) - instant cast, 5 min cooldown, encases mage in a block of ice protecting them from all forms of damage for 10 seconds and removes all negative effects (stuns, roots, disorients, magic, poison, disease, etc.) Mage cannot move or cast spells during this time.
Arcane Power (31 point Arcane talent) - instant cast, 3 min cooldown, when activated increases mage spell damage by 30% while also costing 30% more mana to cast. Effect lasts for 15 secs.

Warriors have a good chance against mages these days (it was not always so). Generally speaking you should have no problems against Fire and Arcane mages so we'll be talking mostly about Frost Mages.

Mages are very soft targets so they will naturally try to put distance between you and them and for this purpose Frost Nova and the snare of Frost Bolt are very good. Always keep Hamstring on a mage (also after an Iceblock) and you should be able to run up to him or at least keep him from casting non-instant spells. There are several options to battle Frost Nova. The first is of course your PvP-trinket but cherish its long cooldown. Another good thing to remember is that the mage must be in melee-range to cast Frost Nova so you can easily fear him, making him waste his Frost Nova or his Iceblock.

Intercept is best used if done in reaction to blink, so that the mage cannot blink away immediately in response to intercept and leave you high and dry. Unfortunately, the mage will have to blink first - hopefully in response to a charge you've gotten off. A mage may actually blink *into* you in order to prevent the intercept and confuse you, so be ready for this. Forcing mages to blink before your intercept is difficult, but can be achieved through mace stuns, improved hamstring, fast dps through ice barrier as soon as it's up, or concussion blow if you're a little prot. Canny mages will do everything in their power to avoid blinking until you've used your intercept. However, blink will teleport the mage directly forwards, and if they are blinking out of your intercept they cannot turn to a new facing. So if you are forced to intercept a mage before they have blinked, immediately run in the direction they're facing. Depending on their reaction times and the openness of the terrain, it is possible to be back in melee range before they have a chance to do anything. Keeping the mage hamstrung really helps with this tactic.

Mages will often open up the fight by trying to sheep you. This allows them to re-establish range and open with long casts with no fear of a charge or intercept. Usually, you should just eat what they're throwing at you and save your trinket for cutting down the last few % of health while they try to kite you at the end of the fight, but it is occasionally worth trinketing out of the sheep. If the mage is trying a pyroblast, you will have enough time to get out of combat, trinket and steal the opener with a charge; in these circumstances the mage may even mistake your charge for an intercept. If the mage used frost nova before sheeping you, or you have just come from another combat, you will have enough rage to bloodrage/spell reflect if you trinket out of the polymorph.

Most Frost mages also have an Water Elemental who can do a ranged Frost Nova and some good damage as well. These fellows are very low on health so it can be wise to dispense of them when you see them and get some free rage. However, don't go chasing them on expense of the mage. Additionally most mages shoot themselves in the foot by Frost novaing you while having the pet firing at you through the fight, thereby making the Frost Nova's break very soon!

If you're quick, you can oftentimes reflect a mage's heavy nukes or polymorphs with a timely spell reflect. Be careful not to let a mage on low health be polymorphed for too long; cunning mages have been known to throw a polymorph when they know you can reflect it just to regain health and buy some time to let their cooldowns reset.

Druid

If a Druid engages you as a bear at the beginning of the battle he has about 1.5 to 3 times as much armor as you do, so do not expect a quick kill. As with all casters, shield bash/pummel is crucial to fighting a druid: you cannot afford to have them get off a heal or they simply will bleed you to death or tank you down. The majority of Feral spec Druids tend to favour Cat form, which is substantially more fragile than Bear. Note, however, most druids will shift into bear form against other melee classes, making use of the form's superior mitigation and substantial stamina boost. Balance is by far the most effective Druid tree for PvP against warriors, but most of them aren't willing to respec to specialize as warrior killers, so they don't use it (The Moonkin form is essentially their caster version of the feral dire bear form, with equal armor but no stamina boost -- a 'mage in plate'). A Cat form Feral Druid is unlikely to cause you significant problems, unless he is well geared or very smart. However, once Druids gain their level 62 skill Maim, they earn some of the stun-lock capabilities of a rogue and Cat druids become significantly more difficult to kill, as they can now stun, heal, and climb behind you for major burst damage at the middle to end of the battle. Druids will often open in cat form, seeking to keep you stunlocked and stacking as many bleeds as possible before shifting into bear form for the long-haul. If you suspect a druid is nearby, don't hesitate to use aoe's to break his stealth and deny early control of the fight. Though only one bleed is dependent upon stealth (Pounce), you will make it more difficult for him to build up combo points with relative immunity. In the worst case, if you are caught off-guard, it is preferable to eat the three- to four second stun duration than to trinket it and risk losing any possible chance of interrupting a heal.

Things to watch out for: druids have the ability to stun you for a few seconds, either utilizing Bash in bear form or Maim in cat form. Expect them to use this as they are getting low in hitpoints. They stun you, change back to caster, heal, then shift back to bear. To counter this, make sure you are in berserker stance (ideally have your rank 2 PvP trinket for breaking stun ready and equipped). When they stun you, hit your trinket. When their hands turn green as they begin to case heal ... pummel them to stop the heal. Blood rage if necessary to get the rage for this, as that heal will likely mean death for you. Also if you are MS spec, keep that on them, that 50% healing reduction goes a LONG way in winning the battle as druids have several Heal Over Time spells, that your MS will nicely gimp. Another classic trick is to cast cyclone giving them ample time to heal. This can be prevented by using trinket to break the cyclone, then pummel his attempted heal. You can be sure hes gonna heal if he casts cyclone or entangling roots so get you finger on that pummel button! Remember to interrupt his Cyclones as they are easy to spot. Note that even if you trinket out of entangling roots or a cyclone, most druids of any spec will have spent one point on Nature's Grasp, which is an instant-cast spell with a minimum 35% chance to passively proc entangling roots. Do not be surprised if upon reaching the druid you find yourself instantly re-rooted and beyond melee range despite no visible cast. Your best bet is to hope the spell is on diminishing returns.

Unfortunately, a good druid is always anticipating interrupts and will generally do everything possible to avoid getting into such a 'heal-now-or-die' situation (druids with Nature's Swiftness don't even have to worry about an interrupted heal). One way he will do this is by shifting earlier than you might expect so that if he is pummeled at that point, he will still have at least one more opportunity to heal (often back to full). He will usually return to bear form ('turtle') to wait out any spell lock before shifting once again to heal. Even if caught in caster form -- by far the best time to catch a druid -- be aware that he will likely instant-cast Barkskin, significantly mitigating damage even in that form, at least over its short duration (as it has a one minute cooldown, it happily will not be used twice in a normal fight). If your pummel missed, note that normal damage will not cause any spell push-back while barkskin is active. Smart druids will also often feign casts if at all possible in an attempt to get you to mis-time your interrupt, either by self-interrupting or by casting something in the arcane school. With any lag at all, this can be remarkably effective. Furthermore, this all assumes of course that the druid will actually need to heal during the fight, and to heal for more than Frenzied Regeneration will patch in bear form. More often than not, equivalently geared ferals do not nowadays need to top themselves off mid-fight in order to defeat warriors.

As druids are the best class at escaping slowing and snare effects be wary of a druid that get low on health as he can quickly shift forms out of a snare/speed debuff and run away much faster than you can catch him on foot. A good trick against an escaping druid is to continuously using Hamstring and Mortal Strike. The trick is to get the druid into his caster-form where he is a very soft target, and this is best done by causing massive damage to him in his other forms (often easier said than done against the armor bonuses in moonkin and bear forms).

Be careful with druids. Resto druids will die, however slowly, but an equivalently geared feral druid who stays in bear form, or a balance moonkin, can usually take out a warrior without a problem.

Hunter

The advice for fighting warlocks applies to Hunters as well, as does the bloodrage/intercept strategy used against Mages. Keep in mind that chasing a hunter who is stunning/dazing you is an entirely futile exercise until intercept goes away; switch to a shield, shield wall if necessary, and build up rage on the pet while doing what you can to mitigate damage until intercept recycles.

Another option is to try to get close enough to successfully cast intimidating shout (10 yard range). If you get the jump on them, the fight becomes even easier. If not, you can still attempt this next idea. Make sure you are targeting the Hunter, and not their pet. This will get their pet out of your hair for more than enough time to punish the opposing Hunter. Most of the time, they freak out that their pet is gone. All you have to do is hamstring, disarm (reason explained below), MS, execute. It really is that easy. If they get the drop on you, attempt to build up rage and intercept. That is one of your strongest weapons against a Hunter.

One tactic to easily kill a Hunter is as follows. If you charge in, the Hunter is very likely to have an ice trap waiting for you. Do not fret, though, because you (the cunning Warrior) has a plan. Spam the AoE taunt ability Challenging Shout as you are charging in. If you time it well, it may force the Hunters pet to attack you once you are frozen in the trap, causing the root to be broken and essentially screwing over your enemy. Once the pet has broken the ice trap, you should immediately hamstring the hunter. Next (this is crucial) you should disarm your opponent. "But Hunters can't do much damage at a melee range" you say? This may be so, but taking away your enemy's melee weapon will take away their single greatest ability: Wing Clip. If a hunter can't Wing Clip you, and they are kept at 50% movement speed for 15 seconds due to your Hamsting ability, you will have more than enough time to destroy your opponent.
Many Hunters have high dodge-rates so it's an good idea to Overpower them for easy damage.

Most of the Hunters you will meet will be Beast Mastery specced. This gives them around 18 seconds of immunity to fear/slowing/snare and all our goodies for keeping them in melee-range. However many hunters have become cocky and think of this ability as a I-WIN button against Warriors. Their arrogance becomes their downfall of course.
If you are fighting a BM Hunter (may it be in duels, arenas, or battlegrounds), be sure not to stand in the open field (which is optimal ground for a kite-class) and find terrain (such as columns or buildings) to hide behind to make the Hunter come to you, within melee-range. Most Hunters will send their pet against you to apply debuffs and inflict damage and this is where the fun begins.

You can use the pet to build 100 rage or you can simply kill it, breaking the Hunters Beast Mastery and making him/her very easy to kill again. A quality tactic would entitle to build 100 rage and fight the Hunter head on using every damaging ability that I have at my disposal. This is both fun and demoralizing for a BM-Hunter who previously beleived that they were invincible.

Paladin

From a Paladin's point of view, warriors are probably their easiest opponents. Should you be fighting a Paladin, you can't afford any mistakes. You need to keep them in front of you in order to maximize your damage output, and try to stay behind them to receive the lowest amount of damage possible. Keep them Hamstringed and have Rend applied at all times. If you are an Arms spec warrior, Mortal Strike won't do anything for you unless they heal before putting on Blessing of Protection or Divine Shield. If the Paladin puts up any of their "Protection" shields, stay back about 10 yards from them and bandage - this way you should be out of range for their Hammer of Justice and Consecration (which will interrupt your bandage). When the Paladin comes out of their shield, you should be far enough away from them to Charge; a paladin fight is all about rage generation. Without an ample supply of rage to fuel your abilities, you will be easily killed. Paladins are easily the most durable class, but also have the least DPS (Untrue if retribution now, they can out DPS a rogue with a good spec). They can survive for long periods of time with stuns, invulnerability, plate armor, and other abilities (e.g. Lay on Hands: Restores their mana and all their health, and costs no mana to themselves!), 1 hour cooldown, lowered to 40 minutes with talents. Luckily, most Paladins use this very rarely, saving it for a critical moment.

Keep in mind that since 1.9, 31 points in Holy tree is growing in popularity, allowing a Paladin to use the spell "Holy Shock", which will interrupt your bandage from 20 yards.
Which spec a Paladin is using can often be discovered by looking at their gear: A Paladin wearing a 2h and low mana gear such as BG-rewards are likely to be retribution spec'd or protection spec'd. If they wear a shield and 1h they are either protection or holy-spec'd, the latter being more common. Also, Paladins with epic dungeon gear, Judgement and/or Lawbringer, are very often holy-spec'd.

Notes:

MS MUST be applied whenever they are about to heal.
Keep Rend on them.
Keep Hamstring on them.
Keep them in front of you.
Stay behind them.
Try to keep them disarmed.
A Paladin survives based on their mana. A Paladin with no mana is a dead Paladin(LoH can help though).

Most of the time, if you are able to beat a Paladin, he either made a big mistake or underestimated you.
If they ever try to heal without their precious shields, punish them for their foolishness! Should they stun, just use your PvP-trinket, then pummel them immediately (macro). Don't try to do anything else; what you need to do is silence them, not interrupt their spell! Remember, all the Paladin's spells are holy, so if you silence them, they can't use any of their shields, giving you the opportunity to finish them off before they even realize what is happening. However the exception is that Paladins can divine shield out of a silence but a pummel which interrupts a holy spell locks out the entire holy tree.

If you're losing (which happens more often than not), there is really nothing you can do other than fight to your death and try to kill them. Watch out for their Hammer of Wrath from 25 yards, if they try to do it either pummel them, stand behind them, or Concussion Blow them if you have it. Your survival hinges on your ability to prevent this killing blow.

Now for the good news:
Warriors who spec protection have a better chance of killing any kind of paladin. Shield Slam takes away their seals and blessings (unless they are specced deep ret, then you would already have a much higher chance beating them), Improved Shield Bash silences them, and Improved Disarm takes away their weapon (which is devastating for any paladin, specifically ret specced ones which are starting to get popular). Remember that paladins do not stand around and heal most of the time, they do try to attack with their seals. Improved Revenge greatly increases your survivability when you parry/block/dodge their weak, seal-less attacks. If you can bash their heals, silence them and Shield Slam away their buffs, the paladin is greatly crippled. Recasting buffs takes away precious time and mana, which is exactly what you need to kill them.

Except for Retribution spec'd paladins, paladins have trouble regenerating their mana without seal of wisdom, and if you take it away constantly, they will generally recast it again and again until their mana pool is completely gone. To top it off, as a protection warrior you have Concussion blow which is usable every 45 seconds. Your concussion blow is not for you to beat on them while they're stunned (that's what improved revenge is for). Concussion blow is your queue to bandage (so prepare a macro for it!). Bandaging for at least 5 seconds every 45 seconds can keep you alive against a paladin for a very long time. At the same time they can trinket out of it so be ready for them to do that unless they haven't used their trinket already (this will always happen late fight, then they will bubble and heal, and probably interrupt your bandaging). Unless you can kill them extremely quickly, bandaging is always your best option after a concussion blow and if they do trink out of a stun and you havent started bandaging yet make them pay by using your intimidating shout to fear them then heal for almost the full 10 sec..

Keep in mind that if Paladins use Blessing of Protection, Bandage as much as you can. They can't stop you unless they remove their own blessing to interrupt your bandage (which they aren't likely to do). In the case of Divine Protection, you may try to bandage, but the paladin might just attack you to interrupt. Best thing you might want to do is switch to battle stance (if you haven't yet) and stay a good distance away to at charge them when bubble fades away.

Shield Slam can take away these buffs (which would generally kill non-protection warriors otherwise):

Holy Shield

Blessing of Sanctuary

All Seals

All Blessings

Shaman

Totems, totems, totems! Shamans depend on totems like Warriors depend on weapons. Bring down the totem and the shaman will fall. Unfortunately Hamstring is no longer viable for this as it no longer does damage as of 3.1.0. You should easily be doing more damage to him than he is to you while in hand to hand combat (which, as a shaman, he cannot realistically avoid). Disarm the Shaman early on in the fight and he will lose most of his DPS on you early fight. This will pretty soon force him to resort to healing himself. Interrupt any heals that the Shaman attempts and you will win, when he gets a heal in it generally results in a loss. Just bash him down. Shamans are probably the simplest (though sometimes not the easiest) fight for a warrior. The formula is always the same - Charge; Hamstring; Disarm; beat him up and Pummel his attempts to heal. You do not really need to do too much thinking, complicated tricks or stance swapping as you would when fighting a mage or a rogue. One thing to look out for is when the shaman drops down to 20-30% and panics. He will then use Bloodlust and spam Lesser Healing Wave which can be impossible to interrupt. Be prepared for this and save your stunning and fear for this moment and quickly nuke him down.

While not a shaman ability, the Tauren racial ability Warstomp is worth mentioning. The vast majority of Horde Shamans are Tauren, so you will likely see this ability used frequently. It can be very effective in close quarters. The simple solution to this is to use your trinket as soon as he uses Warstomp. He will be guaranteed to be attempting a heal when he does this. Just quickly trinket out and Pummel and you will be fine.

The other race worth mentioning is Draenei (as all Alliance shamans are Draenei). Gift of the Naaru is now an instant cast (15/4/09, Patch 3.1.0) and so cannot be interrupted, the way around this is to Mortal Strike the Shaman as soon as he casts it (plus it is a heal over time so fearing him will not work, he will still be healing).

Throughout levels 1-50, a skilled Shaman will probably beat a warrior. Level 51-59, Shaman start to become horribly gimped compared to other classes, and you should destroy them easily.. At Level 60+, a well-played warrior should never lose to a shaman, better geared or otherwise (in a one on one situation).

At level 70, a warrior will begin to have problems with Restoration Shaman. Restoration shamans are near impossible to kill because of Earth Shield, so Mortal Striking early may be a better the solution in order to cut down the heals they get back (as opposed to Mortal Striking when they're lower on HP). Earth Shield is expensive to cast, so the less they benefit from it, the better. Some shamans will try to kite you with Earthbind Totem and Frost Shock, but you'll only have to tap the Earthbind and Intercept before they become helpless again.

In the case of elemental shamans (which have a tad more survivability than that of an enhancement shaman, due to their shield), they are likely to put up Water Shield and kite using the method above. Mortal Strike when they're low to reduce their survivability further(about 60-50% is low enough). Most elemental shamans at this point will stop kiting and try to get off a quick heal. This is your cue to get in there and gib them. If you don't have Mortal Strike, the fight will be a bit harder, since most elemental shamans have the Nature's Focus talent which gives them a 70% chance to avoid interruption when casting heal spells, however you will still be able to kill them easily. The key is to hit really hard, or hit really fast. You never want to allow them one regular Lightning Bolt. If their only form of DPS on you is their cooldowns and shocks, the fight is likely yours. If you have Mortal Strike, save your Pummel for their bolts, not their heals. If you don't, then pummel their heals and try to delay their bolts.

DeathKnights

Death Knights (a.k.a. DKs) are very difficult to beat because they are very good at kiting and also very good at toe to toe battle. If you are prot then he will use frost presence to raise his armor above yours, if you are Furry he will use Unholy to counter Flurry, If you are arms he will choose either Blood to counter your Mortal Strike or Frost to prevent huge bursts of DPS. If you are a prot warrior like I am start out with just running up to them try not to use charge because if you do they are going to Death Grip you then you get no rage and dont stun them. Then an experienced DK is going to use Chains of Ice which slows your movment down so much if you are prot speced down to improved charge charge him if not intercept. Then you must HAMSTRING HIM!!!!! If not you are done. He will still keep trying to get away using Chains of Ice. He will DoT you with Plague Strike and if he is smart he will use Strangulate which silences you. I know what you are thinking so what I dont use spells silencing me wont do anything. You are wrong all of your shouts will be stoped and so will you Thunder Clap. This is detramental. With alot of luck and very good gear you can win, but if the DK knows what he/she is doing then you will be down faster than you can say "That Gnome is in my pants!!!!!"

When I was lv. 56 I took down a DK that was lv.60 and I was like DKs are way over rated. Boy was i mistakin The ones that know what there doing will frustrate you because there is nothing you can do. Even if you are a higher lv then them.

Arena

The problem most warriors have in arena is that they will have a tendency to close fast on the enemy team with a charge. Effectively all this does is 'run away' from your team-mates, and choosing the time to charge can be very difficult in the high pressure environment of the Arena. If you charge too early you will have closed on the majority of the opposing team and will be killed fairly quickly, thus disadvantaging your team early on. If you hold off charging until it is too late then a spell will probably hit you and put you in combat denying you necessary rage generation early on.

If you have a healer in your team make sure that you are within healing range of them so that they can heal you because with a well geared healer a warrior can be almost invincible.

If one of your teammates or you is hit by a sap (in early game, or when a stalemate arises because you can't see any of the opposing team) then you have two choices, move away and hope the rogue will show them self and allow you to beat on them before his team gets a look in, or your team can stay close. The former (moving away and hoping) is preferred as the rogue may deide to switch targets and stun-lock another player if you stay close to sapped player, effectively freezing two players in the early game (in 2v2 arena this is a fairly common tactic, with the rogue team then attacking and killing the healer or least armored member of your team).

Keep in mind that if the rogue is on your team and he has sapped someone ignore them and make sure any AoE's you cast (like thunderclap) do not hit them, it's up to the rogue to decide what to do.

If you see one of your team-mates getting beat upon, make a quick decision based on your health at the time and either intervene (and take some hits for the team) or run up to them and hamstring everyone in the vicinity and try to make them switch targets (which they probably won't do if they think they can kill the person, but may do if they can't get close enough to attack them).

If you are a Draenei then think of your Gift of the Naaru as a very effective weapon (even more effective in 3.1.0 as it is an instant cast) and be ready to use it. If you have any Draenei's in your group remind them of the ability as it can mean the difference of a loss or win.

Lifeblood (gotten from doing Herbalism) is another instant cast heal over time that should be used as much as possible, but especially in dire situations, remember that it can only be cast on you, and that your herbalism should be maxed out to give you the best healing possible.

PvP Macros

Please visit the macro page, http://www.wowwiki.com/Useful_macros_for_warriors, and try to build macros to do the following things:

Charge and Hamstring (Both in Battle Stance)

Intercept and hamstring (Switch to Berserker Stance, intercept, switch to Battle Stance, hamstring)

Switch to Shield and Defensive Stance

Switch back to main weapon/s

Intimidating shout followed by bandaging (especially useful in end fight when they've blown their trinket)

If you have a potion or plan on having potions in your fights then create a macro that you always have which tries to drink every potion in the game (arrange it so it drinks the highest healing potion first, second highest next and so on, followed by /cast autoattack). This macro allows you to not worry which potion/s you have in your inventory as you'll always drink the best one. The important thing to remember with this macro is the /cast autoattack, which means you don't have to right-click on the target again, because it does it for you immediately, meaning you get in those precious milliseconds of attack. Also, as warriors don't have to many ways to actively heal themselves it's always a good idea to have a potion for any scheduled arena fight (preferably several potions). This macro is not as useful in a Battleground because you die a lot more and will end up wasting your potions.

A macro that casts your trinket then immediately casts pummel (mostly for spell-casters and it may confuse you when not vsing spell-casters because of the trinket cast)

Concussion Blow followed by bandaging (if you think you can kill them in six seconds then just cast concussion blow, or if your health is so high that bandaging is made redundant, be careful they don't trinket out of it, because it is a 45 second wait each cooldown)

You should create macros that suit your PvP style, so you needn't create all of these, or indeed any.

Warlock PvP guide

2009-06-21T05:16:00.000-07:00

General Tips

A few general tips:

Since the WOTLK expansion, very few talent specs have found their way into the "famous" realms of past specs for warlock pvp like SL/SL. Many players find themselves dividing their talents in many areas.

One of the few specs which has begun to be popular in pvp would be the Haunt / SL (54/17/0): This spec goes deep into the affliction tree for the abilities of Haunt and instant AoE fear while still reserving enough points in Demonology for Soul Link and often Master Summoner. This spec allows for high DoT damage with minimal "casting" spells (often which lead to interrupts) while still providing some of the increased survival allowed in the demonology tree.

The most important statistic for pvp as a warlock is resilience... ideally 800+ however at a minimum you should strive for 600+ before concentrating on other stats.

Since WOTLK Blizzard has gone completely away from each class having their own 'set' of gear. This hits warlocks harder then most others simply because we always used completely different stats then other cloth casters. We cared nothing for spirit and Intel, opting instead for stamina... due to these changes, the days of warrior level health on a warlock are gone. This change hits at the heart of warlock pvp as tanking is rarely an option in the modern PvP battlefield. Therefor, it is more important that you learn tricks and gain resilance to stay alive... Time is your best friend as a warlock, the longer the fight lasts the more the fight will swing in our direction... whereas many other classes rely on short quick kills, we need to pace ourselves, fears are still very powerful and you need to learn to use them.

Keep your First Aid skill as high as possible. Not only is it handy when you Fear/Death Coil/Seduce an enemy off you in PvP, but it is more handy than food to regen health after Life Tap in an instance with long fights, since it can be used in combat and heals faster (though it is slightly more expensive).

Utilize time... unlike most class/builds, for the warlock (especially Affliction) the longer the fight goes on, the more likely the warlock will win. Thus controlling your opponent through CC and kiting is extremely advantageous. The warlock class is not a "burst damage" class, even as destruction... so don't treat them as if they are.

Although many trinkets and equipment provided by Engineering has been removed from use in arena, there are still enough viable abilities that warrant investment into the Engineering profession. Almost all are still usable in battlegrounds; and in world pvp they can be life-saving.

Learn the value of our newest skill (level 80): Demonic Circle (and the corresponding ability: Demonic Circle: Teleport). Once created, the warlock can summon themselves instantly to the circle, even when under the influence of a snare or trap affect. In addition, the teleport ability will allow the warlock to teleport up hills, through walls, and around pillars. For pvp, especially arena, this skill is invaluable.

There one big bonus of an Imp in PvP: you don't need a Soul Shard to bring them back. If you can keep them separate from the enemy, they can deal out some nice damage. Any class with a decent ranged attack or a way to use some form of crowd control on you will kill them pretty quickly, but if you can keep them up, they supply solid support damage, a nice stamina boost Blood Pact, and can be great for those annoying shaman totems.

The Voidwalker has long been viewed as a poor pvp pet; however since WOTLK the warlock's survivability has gone down considerably forcing the warlock to look to other sources to stay alive. With new additions, the voidwalker now has two main reasons to be used in pvp: Consume Shadows and Sacrifice. Consume Shadows now reveals all stealthed units within 30 yards, allowing the detection of both rogues and druids. Sacrifice grants the warlock a shield which is the most powerful 'non-divine' shield in the game with a base hp of over 8,000 (level 80) and over 11,000 when improved with talents. Combined with Fel Domination the warlock can summon back-to-back shields that prevent interruption and pushback on spell casting for over 20,000 hp, effectively doubling a level 80's warlock's health. Be warned, mages love to spell-steal this ability.

The Succubus is generally the best insurance while soloing when you are open to PvP attacks. Seduction works wonders. With you and your pet both having a form of Crowd Control, you can tag-team the opponent in a way. If they attack you, Seduce, if they attack her, Fear. Unless she is in combat, your Succubus should be invisible, and therefore there should be almost no way for them to prevent at least 1 attempt to seduce (unless you are attacked by another warlock who can see her and Banish her; in which case you Banish their pet as well). Even if you are fighting a class that has the PvP trinket to remove Fear, they will use their trinket to remove the Seduction and won't have it again for another 5 minutes. With a 1.5 second casting time, recasting Seduction isn't hard (instant with talents). They will be open to your Fear as well, but since they are more likely focusing on you, any class that has an interrupt will prevent that. She also offers solid DPS once the fight actually begins and you don't have to worry about her DPS stopping if she is out of mana, as you would have to consider with the Imp. Largest concern is she will die quickly to any enemy attack, so be prepared to summon a new pet upon the loss of her.

The Felhunter ever since Patch 3.0.2 is now a very useful pet in PvP. It's Fel Intelligence buff gives a good intellect and spirit increase to all party members within range. The felhunter can even does moderate dps if you're an affliction warlock, because of its Shadow Bite ability which does bonus damage for every DoT on the target. And probably the most useful spell for the felhunter is Spell Lock, which can interrupt and silence casters.

The Infernal is fun in PvP, but not something you can really rely on with the 1 hour cooldown; if you're losing to someone and just really want to throw them a curve ball, or if you get attacked by multiple people (or just want to scare the sh** out of someone). Keep in mind that unlike the rest of your pets, the Infernal does NOT disappear when you die. It will continue to attack people (even your comrades if they're close). An interesting little trick to play when you know you're going to die to 1-3 people and you are Soulstoned, is to summon the Infernal right before you die and let it beat on them a bit while you watch. When it looks like they're in trouble or one of them needs a heal, pop up and rejoin the fight. Try to Fear the healer if there is more than one enemy to maximize the Infernal's hurt on them.

The Doomguard is a even more fun than the Infernal in one-on-one or small group PvP. It does respectable DPS and its abilities are extremely viable in PvP. However, its low health won't help it much in large scale PvP since it looks pretty damn scary and everyone will want to focus on it. If you have a healer with you, remind them to keep it healed and you can have lots of good times with it. It will have all of its abilities except Dispel on auto-cast when you enslave it; it is recommended to take Rain of Fire off auto-cast since it will not only stop it's movement if it's chasing someone, but it wastes its mana for a low amount of damage. If there is a nice group to cast it on, you won't need auto-cast since you can command it to use the ability itself. Cripple will help it catch anyone trying to kite it. War Stomp can interrupt casting and it works on a sizable area (same as Tauren racial ability). Dispel can be used just as the Priest's Dispel Magic ability can - to remove debuffs from friendly units or to remove buffs from enemies. One of the downsides of the Doomguard compared to Infernal is that it can itself be feared; one way to remedy this is to cast Rank 1 Curse of Recklessness on it right before you enslave it; this will only last 2 minutes but if you know you're going to PvP soon, it can help.

If you get jumped by someone and take heavy damage early, attempt to Fear or Seduce them and bandage yourself. If at all possible, hold off using your potion or Healthstone until you've bandaged. Obviously there are exceptions, but it is generally better to do first. First Aid has a 60 second cooldown, while healthstones have a 2 minute cooldown, and potions can only be used once per battle, so it is possible to bandage multiple times in a long fight if you use it early. Sacrificing your Voidwalker if you have them out can buy you some time to fear / heal as well; if there are no other options.

Every caster has a defense against melee attackers. Priests have Power Word: Shield, absorbing damage. Mages use crowd control tactics with Polymorph and also use eluding spells like Frost Nova or Blink. Druids can use Roots and Travel Form to escape melee. Our main defense, Fear, is easier to remove or be immune to than some others. Make sure to remember Death Coil, Seduction, and Howl of Terror (when facing multiple enemies). Soul Link also helps reduce the hurt; if you have it, there should rarely be a time when you do not have it on (having an Imp out is one of those times, as it will die quickly). When you're being attacked by someone with many interrupts (namely a Rogue) or being attacked very quickly (namely a Hunter with a cat pet) it can be difficult to cast Fear. In these situations, open with Death Coil and follow it up immediately with Fear.

Most of these tactics assume that your opponent will do the most common thing the class does. You will probably fight people with several different tactics. So if someone kills you, go back in the combat log and see what kinds of things they did that messed you up. Often the choice of pet makes a huge difference. Duels are a good way to practice and prepare for PvP.

Drain Mana works fine against casters, especially healers. Draining their whole mana pool is almost impossible, but as soon as they are low on mana, you can easily keep their mana constantly near zero. Your DoTs can still tick, whereas the enemy will not be able to cause a lot of trouble. If your minion is still out, you can maintain a constant drain and watch as your pet whittles his or her health to nothing.

Rogue

The central problem with Rogues, from a Warlock's point of view, is the fact that Warlocks don't in general have any defenses against melee damage from other players -- Warlocks wear cloth armor and lack melee damage absorption. Some abilities of these types do exist but are interruptible (Fear, Howl of Terror), pet-dependent (Seduction, Sacrifice) or talent-dependent (Soul Link) -- moreover, all of them are easily dispellable. The same applies to Warriors, but Rogues' ability to prevent their target from taking any kind of action while doing massive melee damage is particularly devastating to Warlocks. A Rogue is a Warlock's natural enemy. More to the point, rogues even go so far as to specifically seek out warlocks as targets. Various PvP guides for rogues advise them to attack destruction warlocks in particular saying destruction warlocks are easy to defeat. Unfortunately rogues are a very tough class for warlocks but it isn't all doom and gloom.

DoT as soon as possible. Your goal is to use DoTs as a weapon against the rogue's famous ability of Stealth, while at the same time inflicting reasonable damage on the rogue. Rogues are frail at range so DoT as much as you can while kiting them, use Curse of Exhaustion to give yourself time to reinforce their damage taken with another DoT. Avoid melee as Rogues can stun or even cripple you when they finally do get their chance, focus on moving and using your pets to their outmost capabilities. DoTing early can also force the Rogue to utilize his Cloak of Shadows (CoS), which although effectively giving him immunity from your spells, gives you a chance to kill him during the CoS cooldown.

Rogues can now start pulling Cloak of Shadows on at level 66. This gives you even more incentive to put as much dots on him as you can to lure the CoS out of him. CoS removes all debuffs and boosts resists by 90% for 5 seconds, making them effectively spell immune for 5 seconds. With a 66+ rogue, try to get all your key abilities out when you can. If you wait too long the rogue will pull on CoS and attempt to burst you down you in those 5 seconds (or rack up enough cp and stunlock you during CoS, the impact of this however is largely reduced when you have enough stamina while having Soul Link up and your pets seducing or stun the rogue). Your Demonic Circle ability is your best friend during this horrible spell's duration.

The Succubus (as mentioned above) is the ideal pet for situations that you are jumped by a rogue. If they try to stun lock you with the succubus out, it will be much easier than if they crit Ambush followed by a Backstab before you move. Seduce them ASAP, move away, and bandage. If possible avoid using your potion or healthstone at this point unless they break out of the seduce. If they use their trinket to break it, recast it right away. Curse of the Elements and Soul Fire are handy on a seduced target regardless of the class (if you have Ruin and get a crit it can pretty much set you up to win). Immediately after the seduction breaks hit them with Curse of Agony (or Corruption if you have it as an instant-cast from affliction) to keep them from stealthing. It's ideal to keep 2 DoTs on them throughout the fight so they can't use vanish. They will most likely use Sprint to close the distance, which is your cue to begin casting fear. Their speed bonus will turn against them when they're running away from you and opening up the distance again. If they manage to gouge you before you can cast fear, hit them with death coil as soon as they hit, followed by fear. Teleporting away can give you enough time to cast a fear if needed as well.

No rogue in his right mind would focus his attention on your Voidwalker, but sacrificing it for the shield should give you some time to fear. The voidwalker's Consume Shadows is also useful since WOTLK has gave this spell a stealth detection feature. Finally, if you have Fel Domination, you can sacrifice the voidwalker and then immediately summon a second pet, either a void for a second shield or a succubus for the seduce.

The Imp dies quickly when confronted with the extreme DPS a Rogue dishes out, so it's best if you can put some distance between yourself and your imp before you have it start firebolting the rogue.

If you are a Warlock with the demonology tree maxed out, then you will have a Felguard. Now a Felguard can be used in your advantage against a rogue. When you know you're about to be attacked by a rogue this is the best situation to be in. First put the Felguard on defensive mode then put your Felguard on stand, you will then want to get a little distance from the Felguard. Then you jump around in the same spot trying to avoid a Ambush or Backstab, natually the rogue is gonna attack! Once the rogue does it's first hit (don't worry it won't hurt to much because of Soul Link), Bam the Felguard has locked on and used Intercept and therefore stunned the rogue for 3 seconds and disabling the rogue to hit you twice. The good Thing about this is the rogue stunned you before you stunned it!! therefore you will be free to run, as you're running use some dots to make the rogue use CoS, the rogue will naturally stealth again cause it can't catch up. Once the rogue does this the pet will disengage and go back to where it was. at this point it is optional to use a Health Stone while you run in circles so the rogue has a hard time catching up. By the time the rogue attacks again you pets charge should be cooled down if so the rogue is royally boned. You must then wait again for the rogue to make his next move then Bam!! (not again he cries!) this time he can't CoS! so run back dot and Death Coil then Fear and finish him of by running in circles and dotting or Drain Life. If your pets charge is on cooldown you will just have to take the first 3 or 4 shots which if you have plenty of health should be fine (if you don't believe you can take 3 to 4 shot then use a Health Stone or Potion ), then use death coil. Then fear and dot spam fear or run in circles and dot or dot and drain health. The Felguard is by far the best pet to use against our most feared class.

In general keep your distance, placing any instant DoTs you can. Kiting is the way to go. If the rogue gets upset enough about the seductions to focus on the succubus, take the opportunity to fear. Keep in mind that Undead Rogues will have Will of the Forsaken, and many opponents may have items that can cancel fear and charm effects. Rogues are all leather, so melee damage of the sort that the Succubus can dish out will actually be somewhat effective. They tend to have a fair amount of Stamina, but not a huge amount, so a well-timed Immolate plus Shadow Bolt will hurt them. Chances are high that he'll now try to gain on you, stun, and heal. Try not to expose your back to him - this allows you to avoid backstabs, which do a lot of damage. Also try to avoid facing him, as the rogue's gouge ability only works from the front. The best (and hardest) place to be is facing his back. Try running through him, jumping and spinning around if necessary. If you're stun-locked AND don't have out a succubus AND your death coil is on cooldown (even the best stun-lockers slip up for a split second sometimes) you could be in trouble. The hitpoints gained from a Healthstone might help get over the initial Ambush or similar attack, but don't count on it. There isn't much you can do against the poisons Rogues are so fond of putting on their weapons, and don't try to outlast him in melee. He'll win.

Destruction warlocks in general have a tougher time against rogues than affliction or demonology locks. Affliction and demonology trees have talents that either heal the lock or split the damage with the pet. In the destruction tree, there is Soul Leech which will return health on a dest spell hit when it procs, Aftermath and Pyroclasm might daze an enemy when they proc and Shadowfury will stun a target when it hits. Note that all these talents only proc on a successful spell cast and there is only a chance at that anyway (aside from Shadowfury). The problem is that if a dest lock is incapacitated by a rogue before the lock can strike then none of these talents will matter at all because no spells are cast and the warlock becomes a pin cushion for the rogue. In the end, the best defense against a rogue for a dest lock is likely attacking first because that will give you the best chance of maintaining distance between you and the rogue. Felhunter's Paranoia and the human trait Perception are all useful in this regard. Make no mistake, rogues are difficult for destruction locks but a well-prepared destruction lock can win if played well.

Note to Demonology warlocks with tlaent tree maxed out- USE MATAMORPHOSIS!!! Not only does it freak the rogue out hen you turn to this huge demon with a bunch of unique moves, that 600% armor really helps against their stunlock, destroy combo.

[Affliction] Hard
[Demonology] Hard to Medium Hard
[Destruction] Very Hard

Warrior

Warriors become more and more a challenge to Warlocks as you progress in level.

As with Rogues, your chances of success are increased the more you can stay out of melee range. Run around a lot -- run through them if they're on top of you. Warriors can't attack you if you're behind them. Anything that's instant-cast is good, because Warriors can Pummel to interrupt your casting, and having all your Shadow spells shut down is crippling. So the most likely way to win is to keep them covered with instant-cast DoTs and stay out of melee range.

Your primary defense, Fear, is all but useless against warriors. It's perfectly reasonable to want to kite a Warrior with Fear in the lower levels or when their abilities are on a cooldown -- although the problem is that pesky diminishing returns counter. Undead Warriors with WotF also make Fear less useful, as do Fear-canceling items. The 3 most annoying abilities they can use against your Fear (not horror from Death Coil or charm from Seduction however, see next paragraph) are:

Berserker Rage, usable only in Berserker Stance every 30 seconds, breaks Fear and makes them immune to Fear for 10 seconds. The warrior also gains triple rage from taking damage while affected. This is the most common method used to break fear because of its quick cooldown and its fear-breaking action. Also note that Fury specced warriors become a greater threat with Berserker Rage, as their level 31-point talent Intensify Rage will cut the cooldown of their Berserker Rage ability from 30 seconds down to 20.
Recklessness, usable only in Berserker Stance, will make them immune to Fear, increases their damage taken by 20%, and all of their hits will be criticals for 15 seconds. Has a 30 minute cooldown and is a level 50 skill. If you do not seduce the warrior, Recklessness will generally kill you.
Death Wish (21 point Arms talent) breaks Fear and makes them immune to Fear, increases their damage dealt by 20%, but increases damage taken by 5% for 30 seconds (3 minute cooldown). If you do not chain-seduce the warrior, Death Wish will generally kill you.

Remember that when a warrior breaks your fear with one of these skills, your next seduce will also be halved in duration. Thus, it is better to open with seduce and avoid fearing the warrior. It is quite possible (and entertaining!) to catch a warrior in Battle or Defensive stance and fear him, although on the occasion when said warrior has Death Wish, you will wish you had just seduced him instead.

Also note that a warrior will also try to either hamstring, fear or stun you pet.

If you have it, Curse of Exhaustion can help you keep one step ahead while running away, but it is likely to be countered with Intercept (30 second cooldown, 20 second cooldown if he is an arms spec and has the 26-point talent Improved Intercept). There is also a trinket that blacksmiths get from the Thorium Brotherhood that makes them immune to fear for 20 seconds. So if you're against any high level warrior that has any skill at all, your fear will not be much use. Curse of Weakness may seem tempting, but it makes little difference when taking into account the melee DPS of a warrior and the cloth armor of a warlock.

The Succubus is the ideal pet for warrior encounters; although the Voidwalker sacrifice has its perks, you can still be shield bashed and pummeled through the absorption shield. The Imp can do some damage if you can keep it away from you and thus the warrior. The Felhunter offers nothing but its meager melee damage. If you get the jump on them with a Succubus: Seduction, Curse of the Elements, Soul Fire is a nice way to start any fight (especially if you are Destruction spec). Also, all those fancy abilities that prevent fear do NOT prevent charm (remember you will likely have DoTs on them by the time they use their fear immunity abilities, so plan ahead). As with the Paladin bubble, coaxing them to use their fear immunities early in the fight (namely before you DoT them) will work to your advantage if you have a succubus out.

Kiting is the name of the game at higher levels. When they hamstring you, jump around them like crazy and use instant-cast abilities to minimize the damage you take. If you manage to get enough lead time, make the most of it with an Immolate or Shadow Bolt. Don't die without using your Healthstone and Death Coil.

Utilize your Demonic Circle AFTER you get them to charge. If timed correctly, the fight is yours after a successful teleport, especially with curse of exhaustion.

Above all, keep your health above 30%, or one solid execute will find you running back to your corpse.

[Affliction] Medium
[Demonology] Medium Hard
[Destruction] Hard

Priest

Priests can be a challenge, but there are some tools warlocks have to help out (namely the Felhunter). If you have a Felhunter out, it will be hard for you to lose if you use it properly. If you don't, managing to fear them and summon one will change your odds drastically (remember that the priest PvP trinket will remove fear though). The Felhunter can not only fulfill its usual role of interrupting healing, but it can devour Shadow Word: Pain from you and devour their Power Word: Shield. With its innate mage resistance, it is also less likely to be feared, or if it is, it doesn't usually last as long. (It can also devour Mind Control if they try to use you for some twisted purpose.) The Voidwalker sacrifice will be dispelled by any good priest, and the Imp or Succubus will fall to Shadow Word: Pain pretty quickly.

Remember that priests can remove most of our DoT spells, so unless you are specc'd for Unstable Affliction, your curses are your only reliable Debuffs. Personally I have found Curse of Tongues to be the most valuable spell to keep up to slow their heals and castable spells.
The Felhunter is the ideal pet for the priest for its silence and devour magic abilities. Remember that you can remove their shield or their DoTs through the use of your pet. At certain times, the Succubus can also be used but overall the Felhunter will be a better support pet for this fight. The shield of the Voidwalker can be removed through mass dispel, so careful not to waste this ability.
Drain Mana is probably one of the most useful abilities to use during this fight, especially once the Priest gets low on mana. If they use their Shadowfiend, throw a fear on it immediately as the longer it hits you, the more mana the Priest will regain. This pet only lasts for 15 seconds, keeping it out of the fight is very important.
Always be prepared for the priest the Fear, save your trinket and your racial abilities (undead) to neutralize this threat. Often you will see the fear coming as the priest suddenly charges straight at you.
One of the most valuable spells to use against Priests would be your Shadow Ward as many Priest spells are shadow. It will absorb over 3000 shadow damage and can be cast every 30 seconds.
Most critical is interrupting those timely heals through fears, deathcoil, or felhunter. Often the fight can be swung 180 degrees in the time of one priest heal.

[Affliction] Easy - Medium
[Demonology] Medium
[Destruction] Medium - Hard

Warlock

Pop up your Shadow Ward before they do. If you are Demonology a Felhunter brought out with Fel Domination can help out. They can banish your pet and any warlock whose worth his salt should, but the high resistance of the Felhunter can make them waste precious time and mana when they have to cast it several times for it to stick. With both of the pets out of the fight, your spec will play a major part in the difficulty of the fight. Destruction warlocks will probably have the greatest advantage in this situation and demonology will have the most trouble. The same curses work on them as the ones for priests, Curse of Tongues, Curse of Agony, Curse of the Elements. All your shadow spells are subject to getting through their Shadow Ward, which takes usually ~1.5 Shadow Bolts or 5 ticks of Corruption for Rank 4, which means countering a Shadow Ward with a Devour Magic will often put you ahead. Landing a fear will help turn the tide, especially if your pet comes out of banish to use its abilities while they are feared. There is no specific strategy to use or tactic to expect. The bag of tricks is too deep to take everything into account. Practice dueling with fellow warlocks and it gets easier. An undead warlock will have a slight advantage due to Will of the Forsaken.

Mage

The mage vs warlock setup heavily favors the warlock, especially if he has the felhunter out, and obscenely so if the warlock is also soul link-specced with the Master Demonologist's resistance bonus. Most of the mage's defensive abilities are about kiting melee targets and blowing them up before they can do harm, not about a caster that does comparable damage, has more crowd control options available, and potentially huge stamina and resists.

Curses can be removed instantly by mages, though if you catch them off-guard you may slip one in while they're trying to figure out what to do first (Curse of Tongues is ideal). Furthermore, removing the curse comes at the cost of time, which works in your favor (DoTs). Fear is handy, though they can remove it once with their PvP trinket (and again with WotF if they are undead). Corruption is the most reliable DoT to use on them since they can remove your curses and use Fire Ward to weaken (or completely absorb) the damage of Immolate.
Expect to be Counterspelled early, as such you often should first place your instant cast spells on them. Dequeuing a fear will often make them waste their counterspell. Counterspell has a 24 seconds cooldown.
If you have the Felhunter out, use Devour Magic regularly to remove any magic debuffs on you and then heal the Felhunter. The Felhunter can remove the two specifically annoying abilities. Namely it can remove Polymorph, which is something mages usually use early in the fight, and it can remove the 4 second silence if they have Improved Counterspell. The frost effect from any frost spell can also be devoured. Use Spell Lock to shut their casting down. When possible, pay attention to their spells and try to figure out where they have their talent points. Spell locking a line they are fully specced in is obviously much more useful.
The Succubus can use her seduction on mages if you are polymorphed, and it is a good idea to seduce several seconds after they polymorph you (your succubus should be invisible anyway). This way, polymorph will break before seduce does and you will have the upper hand. Your PvP trinket will break polymorph, but they can recast it right away (though for a lower duration of course) and set up a Pyroblast or take out your pet.
The Voidwalker is relatively useless, you can sacrifice him, but any mage worth his salt will Spellsteal the shield for themselves, negating your whole point in sacrificing.
The Imp is somewhat useful, while it can be killed with an instant-cast Fire Blast (if they have a good amount of fire damage) or arcane explosion, two points in the talent "improved firebolt" (1s casts) will provide a serious amount of damage and a good number of interruptions to the mage, if he fails to take out the imp early on - and many do. That said, your felhunter is definitely the preferred choice.
Many mages will try to get close to you. It is best to avoid this, as many close range spells (Frost Nova, Dragon's Breath, Cone of Cold) are deadly. Your Demonic Circle can be a huge help in this situation.
Finally save your Howl of Terror for when the Mage uses Mirror Image. Typically I will DoT each with Curse of Tongues and Siphon Life, you can find the actual mage by their buffs, since they will have many more. The actual mage will most likely be moving as well.
Overall remember your best defense against a mage is time. You need to keep them in a cc chain long enough for your dots to work their magic. When not being feared, spell lock them with your felhunter, or teleport out of range of their spells using your Demonic Circle. The longer the fight lasts, the more likely you will be the victor.

[Affliction] Easy - Medium
[Demonology] Easy - Medium
[Destruction] Easy - Medium

Druid

With the WOTLK expansion, Druids have become much more of a challenge for Warlock through the addition of the Berserk talent point, allowing the druid to break fear every three minutes. Between that and their trinket, you will find keeping the druid feared has become much more difficult. Remember that although they can break Fear and Howl of Terror, they cannot escape your Deathcoil.

For feral druids: The Feral variety of druids are your most dangerous opponent, with their largest concern being their burst damage and stuns. You need to keep your distance, which can be difficult between the druids fear breaks and charges. The succubus is a great pet choice in this situation as it could allow you to regain some distance when locked up... without a succi you may have to rely on Deathcoil or an instant fear (if spec'd for it). Throw out a fear, wait for them to break it and charge (which they most certainly will), then use your Demonic Circle and teleport away. Once their charge is on cooldown and they are out of melee range, the fight will have shifted into your favor. Most druids at this point will switch forms and begin healing or spell casting to snare you.
Expect this fight to last a while, even if you do everything perfectly, killing a druid is no fast task. If they are not feral or are forced out to heal / range dps, then you need to move into full dps. Get all of your dots up and keep them up; Siphon Life is a great help to keeping your mana full if you have the talent, along with the WOTLK talent: Haunt. You can curse the druid with Curse of Tongues however much of the druids heals are instant and the druid can easily remove the curse. Keeping Curse of Agony seems to stay up longer as the druid is less likely to waste the GCD or mana to remove it; however they will be quick to remove CoT when they find themselves slow to cast. Curse of Exhaustion is also a great choice for druids, keeping them somewhat more manageable.
If you are Affliction and are able to establish all 5 of your dots, plus Haunt, the match is essentially yours. The Druid can heal through them, but it will be relatively easy for you to keep the dots refreshed while refilling mana and fearing the druid to interrupt their heals. They will eventually end up out of mana and out of options.
Watch for the druid to charge and heal, or cast Cyclone before healing. Save your trinket for these moments; or keep your Felhunter nearby and ready to silence the druid. Although Cyclone is a pain, if your dots are up and ticking and your felhunter is silencing the druid, there is no need to utilize your trinket; take the time to enjoy some hp refill through Siphon Life and plan your next move.
The Felhunter is by far your best option when dealing with any kind of druid; however the Succubus has its place as well... but I wouldn't recommend a succubus unless you are full destruction and not utilizing very many DoTs. Be aware that a smart druid will root your pet and/or cyclone them out of a fight. With any luck it will be roots, which will still allow your felhunter to silence the druid so long as it is somewhat close.
Save your Demonic Circle for immediately after Feral Charges or you will find the druid back on-top of you without any way of escape. I try to avoid using this for roots... instead relying on my deathcoil or fears to save me. Your trinket is best used in die-or-use-it situations, be it for roots or cyclone.
If the druid is Balance, then at some point you will find yourself surrounded by Treants. Personally I use my Howl of Terror and drop a Siphon Life on each one... banishing one if I have to. Drain-tanking works well most of the time against Balance druids, as you can nearly gain as much hp as they can take withe moonfire / insect swarm spells.
Some final hints include keeping your mana topped off, especially when facing a restoration druid, where the fight is mostly a mana battle. Keep the druid slowed as much as possible (Curse of Exhaustion) and keep your dots ticking. If the druid is inexperienced and chooses to go into tree form, they can be banished if you need a break to bandage.

[Affliction] Easy - Medium
[Demonology] Medium
[Destruction] Medium

Hunter

Your number one goal against a Hunter is to maintain melee range and stay alive long enough for your DoTs to kill them. This is not a simple task, but with draining life and snares, for the most part it is doable.

Best pet to have out against a hunter in my experience would be the Voidwalker for their Sacrifice. Especially if you have Fel Domination and can re-summon one immediately, and if needed, sacrifice again, this will help provide you with enough buffer to survive long enough for your dots to work their magic.
If you are Affliction, keeping Curse of Exhaustion up at all times will allow you to stay in their melee range. If you are not affliction, this task becomes harder and nearly impossible against a skilled hunter. However even if you don't stay in melee range, forcing the hunter to keep moving will cut their damage nearly in half. Utilize Siphon Life and Drain Life as much as possible (if spec'd for them) for the damage you will be taking is significant, even at melee range.
Be cautious of a hunter's Traps, especially as you chase them or stay in melee range. Avoid these ground mines at all cost as they can swing the battle rather quickly into the hunters favor.
Many Hunters today are part survival spec and thus will have another danger in their weaponry. Wyvern Sting will put you out of a fight for 12 seconds, after which it will apply a dot. Utilize your trinket immediately upon this spell as the hunter will be powering up for a massive barrage to break you of the sleep. If the hunter succeeds or follows with The Beast Within you will find the fight over before it begins. Trinket and fear as quickly as possible, forcing the Hunter to use their trinket or The Beast Within prior to when they would prefer. If you can force the hunter to use his trinket before any Beast Within abilities, you will be miles ahead.
Finally, most dangerous of all, a beast-spec hunter will have The Beast Within. This nasty ability makes them immune to all fears and snares while simultaneously significantly increasing the damage of both them and their pet and increasing their speed. Surviving this spell is an extreme challenge... one of the best ways to do so is through Demonic Circle, especially if you have it well placed across a wall, up on a roof, or at least a long ways away (~40 yards). If you survive the hunter's red deathly form, the fight is yours. Fear both the hunter and his pet, dot up and Drain Life to replenish. Once through Beast Within, the hunter has only their trinket to escape fears and no way of refilling their own health.

[Affliction] Medium - Hard
[Demonology] Hard
[Destruction] Hard

Paladin

Paladins today do much more damage then pre-WOTLK; combined with their multiple lives they can be a significant threat to warlocks.

Most of a paladin's damage is melee ranged and also mana based. Therefor you have a couple objectives; keep them out of melee range and force their mana pool to go to 0. One of the quickest ways to force the paladin's mana supply to 0 is through Drain Mana, which you will find is your most valuable spell when facing a Paladin. Secondly, they have few ways of breaking fear beyond the bubble or their trinket. Ideally we want the paladin to bubble as early as possible in a fight, since it will effectively reset the entire match. Use any opportunity you can to increase distance. No matter what spec you are, the warlock has longer range then the paladin by a considerable margin and keeping this advantage throughout the fight will be critical.
Today the Paladin has several stuns at their disposal, trinket for the first one and use your Demonic Circle to escape after the second. Fear, fear, fear.
Best Pet: For the most part, having out your Felhunter will be by far your best option; between the Devour Magic and Silence these little beasts will drive the Paladin to insanity. Remember the Paladin only has one tree of magic; Holy... if you can lock them out of this they are effectively without spells.
Keep Curse of Tongues up the entire fight, as this will help tremendously against their heals (for Affliction warlocks, Curse of Exhaustion is also a valuable curse, although most paladins will blessing their way free of its affects).
Affliction grants the warlock a significant advantage when fighting a Paladin through Unstable Affliction, preventing the paladin from removing your dots. Destruction and Demonology Warlocks will find this fight much more difficult.
Paladins will very greatly depending on the gear, skill, and spec of the paladin; so where one may be easy, the next could tear you to shreds. Never underestimate them, for in the hands of a master, the paladin can become your worst enemy.

[Affliction] Medium - Hard
[Demonology] Hard
[Destruction] Medium - Hard

Shaman

As with the Paladin and Druid the Felhunter is your best friend for fighting these healers. However, Shaman can make life a little harder for you by using Tremor Totems (which pulses once every 4 seconds)to get in the way of fear kiting, using Earth Shock to interrupt your casting and lock that school out for 2 seconds, and many shaman have much better DPS then paladins or druids. It is also pointless to cast Demon or Fel Armor since any good shaman will just purge it right away. Therefore (as with priests), be careful with any mod that auto-casts your buffs, as casting demon armor multiple times in a fight is an embarrassing way to go. If you are preparing for the fight it is advisable to buff yourself with everything you have, including Underwater Breathing and Detect Invisibility

The first thing you need to when fighting a shaman is to check the ground for a Tremor Totem (they are green) and get rid of it ASAP. If you haven't cast anything yet, hitting it with your melee weapon or wand is often the fastest way. They also might use a Grounding Totem (dark blue). It is possible to create a macro which targets a Grounding or Tremor totem and then sends your pet to attack it. This kind of macro can be used even while channeling a spell like Shadow Bolt. Both totems work using similar mechanics - they 'pulse' at regular intervals. Using this knowledge to your advantage usually catches a shaman off guard, most consider themselves immune to fear with their totems up. The Grounding Totem will pulse when it is cast, and then every 10 seconds, adding a "Grounding Totem" buff to the shaman and his nearby party members. The next spell cast against the shaman will remove the buff, and redirect the spell to the Totem. The totem is immune to all debuffs, so that if you cast Fear or Corruption, the totem will tell you that it is Immune. However, Grounding Totems have 5 health, so any direct damage spell (Immolate, Shadow Bolt, esp. Searing Pain) directed at the shaman will redirect to the grounding totem and destroy it. A wand is useful for destroying a totem, or it can be handy to try to have your pet hit it, since the pet is usually right next to the shaman attacking when the totem is dropped.
The Tremor Totem is not a constant protection like the Grounding Totem, but it too 'pulses' at intervals of 4 seconds if the shaman is within its range. The first pulse is right after casting. Each pulse removes any of your crowd control debuffs (namely Fear, Seduce and Sleep), but the pulses are 4 seconds apart. On occasion, it is possible to fear (with some duration) a shaman with a tremor totem because your fear lands right after a pulse. Another interesting bit of info is that tremor totems cannot remove horror (the effect inflicted by Death Coil) so it is possible to use Death Coil to get them out of their totems range. Tremor Totem now has a 40 yard range, making it even more important to destroy the totem, rather than force the shaman out of its range.
After the totem has been taken care of - other shaman totems are of considerably less importance - try and see if you can get them to "waste" their earth shock on an Immolate or other fire spell, many times the shaman will Earth Shock the first casting spell you preform. If they fall for it cast fear as their earth shock is cooling down then fear kite/nuke them as you would most other classes.
Another strategy to deal with their totems is to just kite the shaman out of the range of his totems, however any shaman worth their salt with Frost Shock and Earthbind Totem to keep you in range. Get your Felhunter to eat this debuff or destroy the totem, allowing you to run at full speed again. Realize all their shocks are on the same CD, so once they shock they cannot use any shock again for a brief period of time.
The main shocks you will have to worry about are Earth Shock, which will interrupt you, and Frost Shock, to stop you from kiting. However the strength of one is the weakness of the other. If you are frost shocked, fear them (mind their totems). If you are earth shocked and they are not right on you, you can kite them and let your dots tick away, which will most likely lead them to frost shock you (then: see above).
Sometimes a Shaman that is losing or low on health may try to shift into Ghost Wolf form to escape or close the distance. If you have your Felhunter out, you're in luck. The Ghost Wolf effect is considered a magical effect and can be devoured. Their Lightning Shield, Earth Shield, and water shields can also be devoured... be aware that water shield is free for them to cast and will still proc when you devour it. Be wary of the cooldown on your devour magic however, since it is handy to remove frost shock to stay out of range of those nasty windfuries. Unfortunately, Windfury is a buff they cast on their weapon and cannot be removed.
With a Succubus out: The Seduction can be helpful, but keep in mind that it is also affected by the grounding and tremor totems. Also, many shaman have enough +spell damage to just about insta-kill any succi.
With a Voidwalker out: Your pet is going to do little more than tickle them, since shamans can purge the sacrifice shield. Not the best pet to have in this situation.
With an Imp: Try to keep it away from them, if you kite them or have a few moments before you engage, tell your imp to 'stay' so the shaman is less likely smack it in melee (although if they shock it and get a crit your poor imp may be doomed anyway). An imp can be very handy for quickly taking out totems however.
With a Felhunter: Kiting is much more viable when you can remove frost shock from yourself. If you can land some dots on them and keep your distance you can hurt them a bit while minimizing your own pain (there is a 2 second difference between their shocks and your fel hunter's devour magic, so keep that in mind before deciding to try to win only by kiting. You have one of the most important abilities available when fighting a class that can heal itself, spell lock (so make sure to turn off auto-cast).

Enhance Shaman: Recognized by their dual wielded weapons, these nasty characters can just about one-shot a poorly geared warlock and combined with a shock, kill most warlocks straight up. Keeping your distance is absolutely critical in this fight. Keep your Demonic Circle ready and utilize all your tricks... Curse of Exhaustion is a great tool for these guys.
Restoration Shaman: Recognized by their key spell, Earth Shield, these are probably the hardest class/build to kill in pvp, rivaled only by the druid. That said, for a warlock this is an easier fight then a resto druid since you have time on your hand. Having your Felhunter out will a tremendous help here, for both Devour Magic to remove their Earth Shield and the Silence to help against their heals, they can be extremely helpful. This will be a battle of some length, so keep your health up and your mana topped off. Utilize Curse of Tongues to help slow those heals and lighting bolts while your dots keep them healing. As affliction, a full set of dots (all 7) should be enough to force the shaman into near heal-spams, which makes the fight yours, since your mana will outlast his. Keep wanding their totems since they will pickup some of your dots and increase the shamans mana regen. In arena, a mana-drain can help immensely against them. Once the mana is empty, the fight is yours.
Elemental Shaman: Best way to recognize this build is the lack of dual wielding or Earth Shield. Keep up Curse of Tongues and Drain Life as much as you can, the shaman will out burst-damage you (possibly not as destruction) so be careful to keep interrupting his casts as much as you can. Remember that even if their tremor totem breaks the fear, it can still interrupt their cast. As affliction I have found that if you can get full-dots up on them before using your Demonic Circle to portal away, many shaman will stop to heal. From there I will utilize Curse of Exhaustion to kite them and let the dots tick. If you can force them into heal spams, the fight is yours.

[Affliction] Medium
[Demonology] Medium - Hard
[Destruction] Medium - Hard

Deathknights

The new deathknight class is a unique challenge to the Warlock class; most notable are their Interrupts and healing abilities. It is advisable to utilize as many instant cast spells as possible before moving into casting spells. One nice trick I have found is to throw up my instant dots before casting immolate. More often then not, the deathknight will interrupt my immolate, silencing my fire spells, but leaving all of my shadow spells still available to cast. In the past I often made the mistake of opening with Unstable Affliction, Fear, or Haunt; at which point the deathknight would silence all shadow spells, which includes most of the spells I have at my disposal.

Deathknights do an incredible amount of damage in melee range, often while healing themselves (depending on spec), so it is vital that you keep the knight at range through fears, Demonic Circles, or Kite'ing. They are one of the few classes to not have many natural defenses to our main cc ability: fear. There is a frost talent which can help and they can use their magic shell, but compared with most other classes the DK class is very susceptible to our fear and has only the trinket as a defense to break fear once running. That said, they have a medium range shock which will slow you; and there are also talents available to a deathknight which increase their speed by 15%; both of which make keeping your distance a challenge. Finally they have Chains of Ice which will lock you down for a period of time. For me, I save my trinket to break this cc. I often find a quick fear and then running while keeping my dots ticking to be the best strategy. If the deathknight can't get to melee range, they won't have much luck killing you.
For pets to have out, the succubus is great, but a smart deathknight will kill her before she has a chance to tell you how "she isn't touching you." For myself I am a huge fan of the voidwalker for their Sacrifice, but in this case the felhound works nearly as well, helping to keep the DK's buffs from stacking too high while adding considerable damage for you. Most Deathknights won't bother trying to kill your felhound if they can see and attempt to attack you.
Utilizing your Demonic Circle at the right times is probably one of the largest items to master when dealing with a deathknight. If used at the wrong time, the deathknight will simply Death Grip you back within melee range. Ideally you use your teleport immediately after being Death Griped in order to re-establish distance... staying close will lead to your quick death.
Watch for the Deathknight to cast his Gargoyle. This 'pet' can deal some significant damage and must be dealt with immediately upon its arrival. For me, I keep a macro to target the beast, which has relatively little health and dies quickly to dots.
If the Deathknight has a ghoul by their side, fear it and dot it with Siphon Life (if spec'd for it), otherwise try to refrain from heavy DPS on the pet (see Mark of Blood below). Chain fearing their pet can be a pain, but for the most part, relatively easy and effective. If the pet ends up in melee range you will find its interrupts and dazes to be troublesome.
Finally, be wary of the deathknight healing.... they have several abilities which allow them to do so. Simplest of all are when they deal damage, they get healed. If you keep your distance, this affect should be minimal. Secondly, the deathknight can heal through the use of bloodworms which deal you damage and heal the deathknight. These small bug-pets can be destroyed by a quick AoE, for me 1-2 ticks of Hellfire usually does the trick. Finally the Deathknight has Mark of Blood. Mark of Blood will refill a DK's health in a matter of seconds in larger areas like battlegrounds or 5v5 arena, where you may have DoTs up on several targets. This Ability will heal the DK for 4% of his health every time the marked target does damage. When you have multiple dots up on several targets, this can add up to 20% of their health every tick of your dots. In duel situations there is little that you can do except wait it out or dps through it with direct damage spells (ie: shadow bolt). Warlocks are especially susceptible to this ability as much of our damage is spread out across many seconds, and each "tick" will heal the DK.
Remember for many deathknights, death is only the end of round one, with round 2 beginning immediately thereafter as they rise from the dead as a ghoul. Don't be too discouraged, for although the ghoul does a great deal of damage, it has a relatively low amount of health and dies quickly. Be aware that although the Deathknight's pet is fearable, the deathknight himself when in ghoul form is immune to fear. Curse of Exhaustion is a huge help to keep distance.

[Affliction] Medium - Hard
[Demonology] Medium - Hard
[Destruction] Hard

Shaman PvP guide

2009-06-21T05:13:00.000-07:00

General

Specs to consider for PvP may be the Enhancement suicide spec (21/40/0), or Elemental (40/0/21 or 37/0/24) if you opt for Focused Mind. Enhancement is better for burst DPS, if you don't really care about living. Elemental is good for controlled DPS and great survivability; Nature's Swiftness is considered essential for any Elemental PvP spec. Resto spec gives a Shaman the best survivability, owing largely to the tree's 41st talent, Earth Shield. The damage output of a Resto shaman is close to 0 but they easily be considered one of the most durable classes in pvp (other than protection warriors/druids/paladin; but you don't see those much in pvp). A very common full pvp resto spec is 0/20/41; opting out of manatide for added +heal and toughness.
A good strategy with any casting class is to feign casting by starting a cast and either jumping or moving to interrupt it. It's very useful when used correctly and can have the opponent waste a silence or counterspell.
You can cast your trinkets and buff yourself with Earth Shield/Lightning Shield and your shield will get a +healing/+spell damage bonus from your trinkets.
A nice way to deal quick and easy damage with an Elemental shaman is to cast Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, then Earth Shock. By the time your bolt hits, your chain lightning will cast and instantly hit, and your earth shock will instantly hit as well. This deals a ton of damage and if they crit, you're almost guaranteed a killing blow.
You can cast lightning bolt and then follow up with Purge once or twice right before the bolt hits. This removes any buffs the opponent may have leading to even more damage or taking away what might have saved your opponent.
This may seem obvious but remember when to purge, dps or heal. While you're doing one thing, you're not doing the other two.
In world PvP, it may be a good idea to pull a mob to you. This will help you get out of crowd controlling abilities which include polymorph and ice trap (because the mob will damage you, breaking the CC).
GET RESILIENCE!! It is the best thing that a shaman can get. It increases your survivability by so much. The first thing you should get is the Medallion of the Horde/Medallion of the Alliance followed up by any Grand Marshal/High Warlord PvP gear, or the arena PvP sets.
When duelling, don't be afraid to cast totems before the duel starts. They are our buffs. If your opponent has a problem with this, tell them to remove their buffs and then apply them in the duel.
Cast Water Shield when low on mana. It is cost-free, and restores a decent amount each time you get hit. The damage you take can be negated by the mana you get back to cast a lesser healing wave.
In a contested area (Ashenvale, Hillsbrad Foothills, etc.) on a PvP server, be careful about leaving your totems lying around. If a member of the opposite faction sees some of your totems, expect them to come after you fairly quickly; most totems don't last long enough for you to get very far, so they'll probably be close to you if they find one of your totems.
Most people forget that healing is also viable in PvP.(0/5/56) is a good spec. Healing other players will keep you in range of the kills and will keep the other players fighting.
A possible trick, if your opponent has a counterspell or interrupt ability and isn't paying close attention, is to trick them into thinking you're casting a heal when in actuality, you're using your hearthstone! (Make sure you don't actually hearth.) This was a neat trick pre-BC when only the cast animation (and not the casting bar) was visible.

Rogue

Rogues specialize in doing heavy melee damage and controlling a fight.

There are two basic types of rogues: stun-lock and ambush.

A Stun-Lock rogue will try to keep you stunned for the entire fight. While they cannot actually achieve a perfect stun-lock, they can come very close. Your job is to wait for the gap in the stun and then break the stun-lock sequence. Make sure Searing Totem and Lightning Shield are up, to deal damage even while you are stunned. Get and use the Insignia of the Horde/Alliance to break out of stuns. It's better to use it when you are hit with Kidney Shot rather than Cheap Shot, because they can always kidney shot outside of stealth while they cannot cheap shot outside of stealth. (Saving your trinket for a blind may also be a better decision depending on the situation.)

An Ambush rogue will start with Ambush, and will eventually use Gouge, Backstab, and Eviscerate or Kidney Shot. You will be only be incapacitated during the Gouge.

Stealth

Rogues can Stealth while not in combat, with a 10-5 second cooldown. During combat they can Vanish, but on a 5 minute cooldown timer. A rogue trained in Preparation can Vanish three times in 5 minutes.

Flame Shock will keep the rogue from stealthing. However, the DOT duration is 12 seconds and the rogue's Blind is 10 seconds. If timed right, the rogue can wait until the DOT timer is 8 seconds (unless the rogue uses Cloak of Shadows), Blind, wait for the DOT to fade, then stealth. (Blind is no longer a poison, so cleansing totem will not counter this.)

Magma Totem is mana expensive, has a medium duration (20 secs) and only an 8 yard radius, but will unstealth a rogue within its radius on each pulse (2 seconds). If possible, judge the rogue's fire resistance first.

Contrary to popular belief (and pre-patch 2.2.0 behavior), Earthbind Totem will NOT unstealth a rogue.

General tips

Searing Totem and Lightning Shield are nice to increase your damage output on the rogue.
Use 1H weapon and shield to reduce the damage taken.
Nature's Swiftness + Healing Wave may be the first thing to do as you will most likely be at half life or less.
Use Cure Poison and Poison Cleansing Totem. Rogues rely on poisons on both weapons, especially Crippling Poison. This is the best water-based totem for PvP combat.
Use Searing Totem to keep the rogue in combat when he blinds, gouge, saps, or does anything to attempt to get out of combat.
Be wary of Kick when casting. If the rogue gets that kick off on you while you're casting, you're dead. It's generally safer to start healing once you notice his energy is dropping rapidly or is below 40%.
Rogues can't purge. If you're Restoration, make sure your Earth Shield is always up, and try to outlast the rogue. For resto shamans a 1v1 is usually a draw, the rogue can't kill the shaman but the shaman has a very hard time killing the rogue.
If enhancement, engage in melee fight relying on a Windfury proc, and dpsing w/ shocks.
Rogues can now Sap beasts, so Ghost Wolf is not a defence against it.

It is possible to kite a rogue. Use Frost Shock and Earthbind Totem to slow the rogue, and Flame Shock and Searing Totem to prevent him from stealthing. Spam shocks and Lightning Bolts. Make sure to remove Crippling Poison if you get it. If you're Enhancement, consider jousting with the rogue by running through the rogue, hoping for a Windfury proc.

A shaman can almost always beat a rogue in a duel, if the shaman attacks first. If the rogue applies poisons or stuns, the shaman can be considered defeated. Do everything you can to break the rogue's stealth.

EZ kill/Summary- If they jump you, you're in deep trouble. Snare them, chug a heal potion, remove any poisons, run back while dropping an Earthbind Totem and Lightning Bolt them to death.

Quick Summary

Air	Water	Fire	Earth	Shock(s)

Difficulty Rating: Hard to Impossible

Warrior

Heal. The key to fighting a warrior is timing heals right. The biggest problems shamans will encounter with a warrior are Mortal Strike, which reduces heal effectiveness, and Hamstring, which limits mobility.
Use a 1H weapon and shield. If the server isn't mature, fire resistances are usually low. This means that Flametongue Weapon is a useful weapon buff since the added fire damage ignores the armor rating of the warrior.
Use Strength of Earth to increase your dodge, but be mindful of Overpower.
Use Searing Totem for supplementary damage.
Use Fire Nova Totem for burst damage.
Don't melee a warrior unless you have to. More often than not, they will close the distance with Intercept.
Use your PvP Insignia, Earthbind Totem and Frost Shock to get away from a warrior who charged you. Since patch 1.8, Grounding Totem does not absorb the stun effect of charge anymore.
Use Frost Shock for the damage and to kite the warrior from you. Make sure you don't go too far or they will Intercept you.
Try to get them down to half health before you attempt to start melee combat.
If you have Elemental Mastery or Nature's Swiftness, use it!
The problem with warriors with Mortal Strike is that it makes your heals useless. The fight comes down to who can kill whom faster. As Elemental, try to kite with Frost Shock (which is kind of difficult with Intercept and Hamstring) and use fire nova, and lightning bolts followed by chain lightnings. If you have a good amount of resilience (300-400), warriors become a little bit easier.
If you are a tauren shaman, you can time your War Stomp and heals to when mortal strike is at 1 or 2 seconds. By the time you get your heal off, the debuff is gone and you will get the full benefit of your heal.
With luck, 2H or dual-wielded weapons with Windfury Weapon, and Strength of Earth Totem may be good enough to out-damage a warrior in melee. However, against a well-geared warrior, you will take damage very rapidly without a shield.
Heal early, not when you're dipping below 50%, with the occasional shock and try to get out of range.
Summary: Kiting is the key to victory (if you're Elemental). Good luck if you're Enhancement.

Quick Summary

Air	Water	Fire	Earth	Shock(s)

Difficulty Rating: Medium-hard depending on gear and spec. Pretty darn easy if they're Prot. Hard to impossible if they're a full Merciless with Stormherald warrior, which are the warriors you want to beat.

Priest

Non-Shadow

Use 2H weapon.
If you try to fight a priest, they will probably use their Psychic Scream spell to scare you away. So, try to drop a Tremor Totem at just the right moment to keep yourself in control of the situation.
The battle basically comes down to a healing match. Do as much melee damage as you can, and whenever you see them channeling a spell, Earth Shock them to interrupt. You always want to have Wind Shock] (at 8% of base mana) set up in addition to Earth Shock (18% of base mana) if you get low on mana, or don't want to waste mana. Bear in mind that Wind Shock does no damage.
Purge! A lot of priests will raise a Power Word: Shield and start healing when the situation becomes too dangerous. Dispelling the shield, followed by Earth Shock can effectively prevent this. Furthermore, priests will most likely have Power Word: Fortitude. Purge will remove that stamina buff and, consequently, HP. A neat trick for an Elemental shaman is to cast lightning bolt, and while the bolt is in motion, purge their shield before it hits.
Be wary of smart priests that feign a heal by first casting some other spell (which a shaman might shock out of a reflex).
EZ Kill: First, Purge their shield, and any other buffs. Drop a Tremor Totem. Then feel free to tank and use the instant DD shock for spell interrupts.

Difficulty Rating: Easy - Medium depending on spec. Most priests will try to outlast you by spamming mana burns and buffs for you to purge. Your best bet is to DPS them down ASAP or else you will go OOM and lose.

Shadow Priest

When dealing with a shadow specced Priest the battle changes drastically depending on who gets the first jump.
If you jump the priest first, make sure to drop a Tremor Totem, then as you run to the priest you should Purge to get rid of any buffs. Now the priest should Psychic Scream out of reflex. Well, that Tremor Totem you placed should only make the fear run for about 3 sec and the priest will probably cast Power Word: Shield, Inner Fire, and Power Word: Fortitude. All that probably took 3 seconds, so now is your chance to get into melee range and tank him until he is dead. Make sure you use insta DD shock to interrupt his spells.
As an elemental shaman, a good trick is to use earthbind instead of tremor totem. But why? Because by earthbinding and kiting the priest, the priest is at your mercy. But what about dispel? If the priest were to dispel, the EB would just reapply itself to the priest. If the priest continues to dispel, he will be playing defensive and giving you time to destroy him. It even better if a shadow priest tries to kite you because then he is giving everything to you for free. If the priest gets the jump on you, hope you have tremor down. When he fears you from himself, you will gain range on him and you will have the advantage yet again.
If they jump you, you're in some deep trouble. You will no doubt have to wait out the Psychic Scream for 8 seconds, by then you have Shadow Word: Pain, have gotten hit with Mind Blast or Mind Flay and have about 75-50% health left. Now that Psychic Scream is over try to get out of Silence range and heal. Heal early because if you heal when your below 50% he can use silence, and you're done for. Drop a Grounding Totem, Purge him, then get into melee range and tank him until he is dead. Make sure you use insta DD shock to interrupt his spells.
As elemental, try to kite him and stay at max range. You will be out of silence and psychic scream range. Purge any of his buffs and dps him down quickly. If you don't think you can kite him well enough, make sure you have tremor totem down. Don't cast it right before you think he will fear you; it's better to have it up a little bit earlier.

Quick Summary

Air	Water	Fire	Earth	Shock(s)

Difficulty Rating: Medium-Hard. Very hard if they have 900+ spell damage

Warlock

These will be your toughest fights, not the least because warlocks have multiple means of crowd-controlling you and they have the all-powerful Death Coil, a 500 dmg life steal that also sends you running horrified (doesn't count as fear, so tremor doesn't help) for 2-3 seconds. A good warlock will wand your grounding totem, death coil you, begin casting Fear, kill your tremor totem, dot you up, cast Shadow Bolt once or twice, depending on how long the fear lasts, recast fear, etc, etc. In addition to usually being able to keep you powerless at your keyboard, warlocks can also silence you with their Felhunter for approximately 4 seconds (locking down the nature school if they time it on a heal spell) with a 30 second cooldown, and purge buffs, such as the insanely-beneficial earth shield, for us resto shamans. Of course, this also means that felhunters can purge nature's swiftness, elemental mastery, etc., so you should use your buffs gained from talents as quickly as possible to avoid them being wasted. So, how do you beat warlocks? This section focuses first on duels, but most of this will apply to world PvP as well, with the major exception of the beginning.

Throw down your grounding, tremor, searing, and fire resistance totems, and challenge a warlock to a duel. (Or, if you/or your opponent prefers, wait until the 'duel starting...3...2...1...' flutters across your interface before throwing down totems.) You should purge immediately to remove Demonic Armor or any other buffs he has on. Tremor totems and grounding totems should be thrown down as often as you have them off cooldown, so that your opponent has to either stop what he's casting in order to wand it, or else watch as your grounding totem eats his Fear (yes it can eat fear), Shadow Bolt, Conflagrate, Soul Fire, Immolate, Death Coil, etc., or you break his fear after 1 second thanks to the Tremor Totem. The main key to beating the warlock is to prevent him from getting his death coil/fear/Spell Lock (the felhunter silence) combo rolling, and to keep beating on him with melee and shocks. Keep Flametongue weapon on your 1h or Windfury on your 2h to do maximum burst damage, and pound on him at melee range while you can. Use a Frost Shock to help close the distance if necessary, and don't worry about spell interruption: grounding totem works just as well as Earth Shock.

Resto shammies, if the warlock is not using the felhunter, keep that earth shield up; you'll regen health faster than he can kill you if his felguard, succubus, or voidwalker is beating on you. Don't bother casting it if he has his felhunter out since he'll just purge it.

Elemental shammies, use that instant crit power right at the beginning to hit the warlock hard and perhaps damage his pet as well, and chances are it'll be off cooldown by close to the end of the fight. Since you should have just as much, if not more, range than him on your spellcasting, focus on killing the lock from far away with lightning, rotating grounding totem and earth shock to interrupt his casting.

Enhance shammies, if you are duel-wielding, double Windfury can do significant damage to a cloth-wearing warlock in a short amount of time. Just remember to rotate earth shocks and grounding/tremor totems to keep the warlock effectively silenced as you pound on him.

A lot of warlocks will save their Death Coil until either you or they are low on HP (typically around 20-30%). Learning to roughly time your Grounding Totem so that it eats Death Coil dramatically increases your chances of surviving a fight with a warlock.

For hybrid classes and resto shammies, even if the felhunter is out AND you are caught within the lock's chain Fear/Shadow Bolt combo, you should be able to get a Nature's Swiftness and then a Healing Wave (should heal you for minimum of about 1900, even non resto). Just put the two buttons next to each other on your bar for maximum proximity. As a final note: you can out-heal anything short of a tier 2.5 or greater lock's spamming dots, Shadowburn, and Shadow Bolts on you just through Lesser Healing Wave. If you think you're getting low, throw down some appropriate totems to prevent fear/Shadow Bolts and start healing away. Best of luck killing your warlock friends!

A good tip when facing a felhunter and lock is to cast lightning shield,water shield or water breathing so that the felhunter will absorb that. You can then follow up w/ a nature's swiftness or elemental mastery w/o any worries of having it dispelled.

Difficulty Rating: depends on spec and gear and skill, but generally medium. Very hard if they have 800 to 900+ spell damage

Mage

Update: As of Patch 2.4.3 (2008-07-15)
Frost Armor, Ice Armor, Mage Armor, and Molten Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled(purged).

What you should do:

Use 2H weapon.
Purge! Mages will have Ice Armor and Arcane Intellect cast on themselves as a standard buff.
Drop a Grounding Totem when the "hands light up" (which usually is the first thing you will see happen in case of a Fire Mage).
Earth Shock whenever you see them channeling a spell.
Try to figure out which type of mage you're fighting quickly, and drop the appropriate totem - Fire Resistance Totem for Fire Mages. If they're an Arcane Mage... hope you've got some Arcane resistance built into your armor. It's better to use searing totem than frost resist against frost mages.
Use searing totem to slow down the mage's casting speed and add some extra damage. (As an Elemental Shaman it will also crit with your +spell crit value.)

What the mage will do:

A mage may try to Polymorph you. Don't panic though - you'll revert to your normal self if you take any damage, and while you're sheeped you'll quickly regain your health. With the newest patch you'll also be able to quit being a sheep with your Faction Insignia. Since the mage will most likely try to do a heavy damage spell while you're sheeped (Pyroblast especially for Fire mages) an interesting idea would be to hold your sheep form until they have 1-2 seconds left in the cast time, using the time to regenerate your health, then Trinket out with enough time for a Grounding Totem or Earth Shock.
As elemental, your biggest fear is Counterspell. Whenever you're fighting a mage remember when they've used counterspell. Never heal w/o grounding totem up while their counterspell is up. That's like asking to be silenced. Play it smart and use shocks as dps. Only cast when you know it is safe to cast. Nature's swiftness helps with heals and instant damage. Also, look out for Presence of Mind and be ready to purge buffs.

EZ kill/Summary: The best tactic is to drop a Grounding Totem and a Fire Resist totem and/or a searing totem (searing if they're frost, fire resist AND searing if they're fire). Use DD shocks for spell interrupts and purge any shield they bring up. Tank them, use the snare totem or DD snare to keep them from gaining distance. Mages can be a pain, since they'll typically root you. At this point you have a few options: the Grounding Totem would be the best choice, followed by casting your fastest heal, or chugging a health potion as soon as you take damage. If possible, shock them to interrupt, but more than likely you won't have range for it. Once free from the root, close the distance and snare/interrupt or you're dead. Mages have a big advantage because they have sheep (CC), counterspell (your dps and healing are both stopped) and they out-dps you as well.

Difficulty Rating: Medium-Hard (if they get the jump)

Druid

Purge! But, careful! If the druid's level 64 or above he may use Lifebloom, which your "purge" will trigger. Watch out, since this spell is so cheap and efficient they won't even care if you dispel it. Many shammies have fully healed their opponents by purging too much before understanding what was going on. It makes the match last so much longer than it should and it can run your mana pool dry. Get a druid friend to show you what lifebloom looks like so you know not to purge it. Or you can get an addon telling what buffs the opponent just buffed himself with.
The druid is a very versatile class to battle. They can switch forms quite rapidly during combat, switching from a caster class to a warrior class, to a rogue class. The key adaptation is to treat every form as the associated class (IE. Cat Form as a rogue, Bear Form as a warrior and Druid form as a caster).
Should the druid start to run in Travel Form, slow him down with Frost Shock and Earthbind Totems.
Get in their face early, make them use their mana for healing.
For low-level druids (40 and below) the best tactic is to make them come out of their forms and immediately silence them as they proceed to heal. At this point, most inexperienced druids will not know what to do, and the fight is yours.
Don't waste your mana! Most of your mana in this battle should be for healing yourself and keeping the druid as close as possible.
Grounding totem absorbs feral charge which is very useful when combatting a druid.
Tired of those darn trees slowing your cast time? You can use stoneclaw totem to take aggro off of you and have the trees attack it. It takes a while for the trees to take down the stoneclaw as well.
Don't cast if hes in bear form and hes walking backwards. He'll charge you and you'll get silienced.
EZ kill/Summary: Drop a snare totem, strip any buffs they may have with purge, then tank them. Follow this up with insta DD snare and use insta DD shock to interrupt their casts. The Druid offers a unique fighting style since they can root and heal. This can be problematic. Rooted:1 if you are weak heal yourself.2 If you are high on health and the Druid isn't if you have range use Earth Shock if not use your strongest Lightning Bolt.
Can be a tough battle if a cat druid gets in your face first, their quick attack speed devours totems and they have a limited degree of stun-lock any many bleeds that can sneak up on you, putting you on the defensive. Not so bad if you are enhancement, but if you are resto or elemental you will try to kite him and keep him from melee range if hes in the melee forms.Difficulty Rating: Medium

Hunter

Place Stoneclaw totem to distract the pet (note that this only works if their pet is set on aggressive)
Use Frost Shock and Earthbind Totem to keep them in melee range.
Use Poison Cleansing Totem or Cure Poison. If you are doing things right, you'll be moving within a small area.
Use Grounding Totem to absorb potential traps such as a Freezing Trap.
Hunter stings are considered Poison. The most important one to remove is Viper Sting.
If you need to heal, be sure you're in melee range first. Slow him with Frost Shock and try to get in a quick heal with Lesser Healing Wave. Even if the pet is on your back you should be able to heal no problem with Lesser Healing Wave. Regular Healing Wave will give them too much time. (Hopefully you have the talents that improve your Lesser Healing Wave.)
It's much better however if you kill him before you have to heal. Hunters are one of the few classes against which it's good to use almost all your mana on trying for a quick kill.
Cast Water Shield if the pet is on you. Depending on the spec, the pet's dps will not affect you much, while at the same time you are getting fast mana back. This a highly desirable tactic if ever you find yourself mana-drained by the Hunter.
The longer the fight, the harder it gets.
Had enough with those snakes on a plain? Use magma totem to kill those pesky snakes in one pulse.
EZ Kill/Summary: Hunters are mediumy if you manage to reverse-Kite. Make sure you are always in melee range. (The Dead Zone was removed in 2.3 so that's not an option.). Ignore the pet and force the hunter to melee you. You will most likely have more DPS at close range. Watch out for Wing Clip, with the deadzone removed they now have more than one way to slow you down.

Difficulty Rating: Medium - Hard depending on how hard they hit you and how they time their shots and abilities.

Paladin

Use 1H and shield. 2H is a debatable choice, but 1H and shield is usually better.
Flametongue Weapon is a viable alternative to Windfury Weapon. If you opt for 2H weapon, choose Windfury because a lucky hit could kill the paladin while he still has mana.
Purge! (Again and again when you see him cast a seal.)
Don't waste your mana! Paladins are the Shaman's polar opposite: their spells are extremely efficient, but tend to be low on the massive burst damage that a Shaman can pump out. Since your burst damage is sketchy, however, you need to be able to beat the Paladin at their own efficiency game.
Use Earth Shock or Wind Shock to interrupt any heals that the Paladin is doing. Earth Shock does damage, but Wind Shock is not on teh GCD, so it can be cast at any time (it is still on the shock cooldown), and costs 10% less mana.
Kite and harass until half of YOUR mana is gone. You will need the rest for healing.
Remember that Paladins can cast Divine Shield or the similar Divine Protection and then heal while invulnerable two to three times during the battle, while you watch helplessly. During that time heal yourself (if he heals under his magic shield, bandage yourself). Normal cooldown for Divine Shield and Divine Protection is 5 minutes. If the Paladin has spent talent points on reducing the cooldown, it can be as short as 4 minutes for Divine Shield. After using one of these two spells to become invulnerable or casting Blessing of Protection to become immune to melee damage, the Paladin will be unable to cast any other invulnerability spell for 60 seconds; they cannot, for example, cast Divine Shield first and then cast Blessing of Protection 20 seconds later.
This battle may last a while. Remember to let your naturally high spirit do its job. Also remember that--unless you have special gear--you CAN'T gain more mana while you're casting spells. So make sure you have some time between your casts. Mana regeneration only starts 5 seconds after your last cast.
Most of the time, whoever runs out of mana first loses. The best thing you can do is get them to use their mana. And watch out for Lay on Hands; it can be cast with 1 mana.
Divine Shield and Divine Protection cannot be purged, but Blessing of Protection can be. Blessing of Protection looks like a lot of whitish hoops traveling around them. If the paladin is using this, Divine Shield is most likely on cooldown. Blessing of Protection ONLY stops melee damage, but they can't melee with it. Thus, only Purge it if you're using melee as your primary damage output.
If they're holy, attempt to insta-gib him. If you go oom, and he has at least 30% mana, you will probably lose and you will lose slowly.
EZ Kill/Summary Paladins can easily outlast a Shaman if they're Holy or Protection. If you're Elemental, try and keep them out of range with Frost Shock and Earthbind, which will force them to use Cleanse or Blessing of Freedom (which you can Purge) to catch up to you. If you're Enhancement, get in their face and use your powerful mana-free melee DPS to force them to heal. Restoration has a much easier time thanks to their powerful, more efficient heals, as Paladins have very few ways of interrupting opposing casters.

Difficulty Rating: Medium

Shaman

It often comes down to who has Nature's Swiftness or not, and who's the better/luckier player.
If you are at least partially enhancement-specced, use your mana only for removing lightning shield from the other player, and to heal yourself. If not, you're probably screwed.
Proper Grounding Totem timing and paying attention your opponent is absolutely key to this battle. Unobservant players who don't notice when their opponents drops their Grounding Totem to heal and instead mash Earth Shock to try and interrupt will lose to their opponent easily.
Generally you are going to have to change tactics quickly. Observe what spells they cast so you know what spec they are. If they are closing to melee range with a 2 hander out/dual wielding, you know he is enhancement, if you see him using a 1 hand w/ an offhand or shield he's elemental, if you see he's using an offhand or shield w/ an earthshield on, he's obviously resto.
Elemental Mastery and Nature's Swiftness can all be dispelled using purge.
If you have time, Totem. But remember, only do the ones that will help you most in that situation.
BE CAREFUL OF GROUNDING TOTEM. You can end up wasting mana by spamming purge because grounding totem absorbs purge.

Spec vs Spec guides below (You vs Him)
Enhance vs Resto - Same thing as a priest or a paladin. Conserve your mana and wait for him (he will use it) to use Nature's Swiftness. If you're quick you can purge his Nature's Swiftness right off him. Go straight for dps close range and you will have him. Remember, go two hander since he will most likely be using his spells rather than melee. Earth shock any of his heals. Searing totem is preferable for slowing down his heals.
Enhance vs Elemental - Same thing as a mage. Earth shock every move he does. Purge any of his buffs and stay very close range. Earthbind Totem soon as you're next to him.
Enhance vs Enhance - Interesting Fight. Depending on Gear, keep him kited while using most of your mana. Once it's close to gone just go straight to melee. If you pile on a Stormstrike with a few Earth shocks as soon as you see a Windfury pop he won't have time to do a quick heal.
Elemental vs Enhance - Use Earthbind totems and shocks. You have the bigger mana pool so you can afford to use shocks. Elemental Mastery devastates if you can stop him getting close range for you to cast. Pile on the DPS and make it a quick fight. Be sure to keep grounding totem up when you go for heals. Earthbind and frost shock kiting helps a lot.
Elemental vs Resto - Earth shock fight. This will most likely turn into who can Earth shock the other's lightning bolts/heals. Purge his Nature's Swiftness and use your Lightning Overload fast. Be sure to cast grounding totem before heals and keep searing totem up to slow down the enemy's casting.
Elemental vs Elemental - Should be quick and simple. Earth shock most of his attacks and again Purge his top talent ability. Grounding totem before heals and searing totem to slwo down their casting.
Resto vs Resto - Purge his Nature's Swiftness and Earth shock his heals. Brace yourself, this one will be a long fight. Be sure to take down any totems and keep your totems up. Get your timing with mana tide down right (which you should have as resto). Use water shield because its mana efficient and most shaman will either purge it (wasting mana), hit it and purge it (giving you mana and taking their mana) or leave it (giving you mana for this enduranc fight)
Resto vs Enhance - I must tell you now. If you're attacking a enhance shammy as a resto, don't count much on your survival rate. Do not! let him in melee range. Purge any buffs. Kite with Frost Shock and Earthbind. Nature's Swiftness + Heal when close to death. If you mimic paladin tactics then you can kill him, but remember that you don't have a bubble so running away won't be easy. Pray that you're lucky and they don't get insane windfury crits on you.
Resto vs Elemental - Earth shock fight. Earth shock every bolt he casts. Purge his Lightning mastery and use Nature's Swiftness fast. Grounding totem for heals or when your shocks are on cooldown. As a resto shaman, you should have more mana and mp5 giving you an edge in this fight.
Water shield is your friend.

For the Resto Shaman

These are mainly taken from dueling or arena context

Warrior

The best tactic to use is this:

Make sure to have Earth Shield up
Always have Earthbind Totem down
Mana Spring Totem and Wrath of Air Totem help too but aren't terribly necessary.
They will initiate the fight with a Charge, which will also tag them with an Earthbind Totem. In PvP situations, you're probably facing a "MS" warrior, so be ready to have half-effective heals (keep Earth Shield up). Try to run away as quickly as possible to avoid hamstring.
- If you get away, turn quickly and Frost Shock. Lay down a Searing Totem and Earthbind Totem as soon as it's up. Keep doing this until the warrior is dead or they intercept. In the case of the latter, repeat from the start.
- In most situations, you won't be so fortunate as to get away. My tactic for when this happens is simple. Get behind them. As they hamstring you, lay down Searing Totem and Frost Shock him. Jump (or run, I just feel jump is more fun) behind them and quickly turn around. continue to Frost Shock him and lay Searing Totem as necessary. They shouldn't be able to get a decent hit on you, as you will hopefully be behind them most of the fight.
Use Stoneclaw Totem (assuming you have Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem) whenever you drop below 40% to recover fast.
Kite as much as possible in ghost wolf. The Improved Ghost Wolf makes this easier
You may want to stay too close for an Intercept but too far for them to use any attacks. Use Frost Shock/Earthbind Totem to make this easier. While you let you searing totem slowly tear them down.

Hunter

A very easy fight if you know what you're doing.

Totems to always keep down: Windwall, Earthbind, Poison Cleansing, and Searing.
When the fight starts, make sure to close in on them by using frost shock and earthbind. If you're close enough, they are forced to melee.
Hopefully the hunter has faith in his pet and keeps it on you. This will only make things easier by allowing earth shield to proc more often and keep you topped off.
They will most likely snake trap, in which case a Magma Totemclears that up.
If your poison cleansing totem is taking too long to cleanse viper sting, you have to take the time to manually dispel that. It is the bane of resto shaman everywhere.
If you keep close enough you shouldn't have to worry about their Mortal Strike-like shot or their dispel.
They will likely ice trap you sometime during the fight. This is the best time to use your PvP trinket. Previous editor stated that you cannot use a grounding totem on freeze trap this is incorrect you can and should ground a hunters freeze trap. there is no reason not to keep up a grounding totem in this fight at all times. The hunter will invariably either intimidate/scatter shot before the trap. a) never trinket either of these, b) spam grounding totem here if you are lucky you will catch the ice trap else this is the only time you should have to trinket vs a hunter
Keep an eye on your buffs, the hunter's arcane shot will remove your Earth Shield, so you may need to use water shield.
Instant ghost wolf can be a big help here to close the distance, but be careful as the hunter can fear you in this form.

Mage

Hopefully you've specced into Elemental Warding (10% less damage from elements). It makes this fight tons easier.

Expect them to try to spellsteal your earth shield at least once. Be ready to purge. They probably won't continue with this tactic as it is extremely mana-costly.
Along with purging your earth shield off them, spam purge to get rid of Int buffs and armors they have on them.
If they are inexperienced and pop a mana shield up, exploit it. Drop grounding totem and go to town on them with a flame shock, then lighting bolt while they're casting the spell that will hit the totem, and another lightning bolt while they try to cast again. If the shield still stands, purge and earth shock.
Be ready for the kamikaze mage. The bastard who blinks in and uses Arcane Explosion like there's no tomorrow. This is most common in arenas. To counter, frost shock and earth bind. Run as far away as possible. Heal up and lighting bolt or frost shock them.
Be ready to recognize their spec. If they have up Ice Barrier, throw down a frost resistance. If they have up Combustion, by God, a fire resistance totem best be down.
Once you have some resistance this fight isn't too bad, just be quick on your heals, keep earthshield up, grounding down and have earthshock handy. Do NOT let the mage evocate, be ready with anything to stop that.

Rogue

Mmm. Get ready to be on your toes.

First, if you aren't seeing anyone in an arena, it's a rogue or a druid. Hope for a rogue. Throw down magma totem and an earth bind. This will expose the stealth and slow him down. Stand on your magma totem to optimize effectiveness.
A small trick to use is entering in ghost wolf form, as you cannot be sapped as beast. Keep in mind that you can be hibernated by a druid.
Poison Cleansing totem is a must. As with hunters, if it's not proccing fast enough, expect to do it manually. Rogues hit fast and apply poisons almost as soon as you dispel them. **edit: Spam poison cleansing totem over casting poison remove, the mana cost is cheaper and the global cooldown is shorter.
Drop a searing totem as it will keep them in combat and occasionally break vanish which is a life saver.(its a bit bugged at the moment yay shaman)
A rogue will open Cheap Shot>Spam damage and chiv(applys wound poison if we're talking arena)>Gut Shot, if you're going to trinket anything here its the Gut shot, it lasts for 5s and also trinket will drop crippling poison, allowing you to pop ghost wolf and get out of there, if you trinket Gut shot and are in 400+ resil gear you shouldnt be below 80% hp if Earth Shield is up. Dont top yourself off, run, if he gets lucky with another crippling cleanse it and whilst you're out of ghost wolf frost shock the rogue and recast ghost wolf and run on. The rogue will now blow a cooldown to catch you (probably sprint) if you can line of sight him around a pillar whilst he's in sprint then you've saved a whole lot of hassle and force him to pop another cooldown/ you're away. If he pops cloak of shadows, stand still, make sure Earth Shield is up and heal, against a rogue try to fake a heal, that is start to heal and then stop straight away, 9 times out of 10 the rogue will kick and miss your heal meaning you're free to heal for 10s which is very important. Now he's used his cooldown you just repeat the process until all of the rogues cooldowns are used. With practise you should be able to completely lock down a rogues damage after about 30s of initial damage. If the rogue at any point turns aways from you pop a flame shock on him, this will prevent him from stealthing and restunlocking. If he does stealth immediately go into ghost wolf to stop sap *Important note: Try to save NS for when wound poison wears off(think its 30s after it was last applied) this is very efficient.
Earth shield is a must.
If you get stun-locked, the first thing to do when you get out is to NS+HW and then earth shield again.
With resilience+armor, they don't hit hard. You just need to watch for their stuns.

Shaman

Recall this is from a Resto Shaman point of view:

Vs. Enhancement: If you have under 350 resilience your best bet is to kite as best you can... frostshock and earthbind, you can try to burn his mana by casting Lightning Shield or Mana Shield, but Earth Shield will just get purged off, so you may not want to waste the mana. Keep up fire totems, healing totem, grounding, and earthbind as best you can. Kiting is very difficult, but if you time your grounding totems well you have a decent chance. Watch for them to heal, earthshock when they do. If you have 350+ resilience you may find it easier and more successful to stand up to them. If the enhancement shaman out classes you by gear this will not work. A big help is to be full pvp spec (0/20/41) as most of their damage is physical. Drop stoneskin, grounding, healing, and fire totems; keep your shield to the enhancement shaman at all times. Keep up lighting shield or mana shield unless they are not purging; lighting is great to drain their mana by getting them to purge, if they are not purging keeping earth shield up may be an option. Destroy any fire totems they drop, save the rest of your mana for healing... use a dps weapon if you have one with windfury on it; switch back to your healing weapon if you find the fight is not going well. If you can get him low on health, hold your shock until he goes to heal, then earthshock, drop fire nova totem, NS+lighting, earthshield and finish the fight. Enhancement shaman are similar to mages, glasscannons, they do a ton of damage but in the end don't take very much. One caution, a smart enhancement shaman will switch to a shield if they start falling behind and often they will joust with you; this will make the fight much harder. Switching you weapon enchant to flametougne may be a nice way to increase your effectiveness in this case.
Vs. Elemental: The above poster summed this up pretty well, earthshock and grounding totem. Personally I save NS for lighting if I can, keep up watershield and keep a fire totem down... destroy their fire totems (melee, don't waste the spell cooldown). Should be able to ground or shock most of his dps. If you are full pvp the elemental will have more mana lasting then you will, be cautious of this and all will be well.

Priest PvP guide

2009-06-21T05:09:00.000-07:00

Rogue

From the Rogue PvP guide page:

If you catch a Priest without his shields up, the fight is already yours. Stunlock him and kill him.

For most Rogue duels, the secret is simply staying alive at the beginning. Keep in mind that Rogues are capable of dealing ridiculous amounts of burst damage immediately after leaving Stealth. Consequently, keep a Power Word: Shield on yourself to absorb some initial damage. Try to cast it early so that you can beat the cool down should you have to Flash Heal immediately after a stun, which is likely to happen soon after the Rogue's opening moves. Also, do not forget to make sure Inner Fire is on at all times to reduce damage your shield receives and your damage once your shield wears off. Helpful talents here include Improved Power Word: Shield, Improved Inner Fire, and Healing Focus. Once you are able to use Psychic Scream, the duel should be yours to win. Keep Shadow Word: Pain on the Rogue and he will be unable to Vanish and return to Stealth effectively. Keep your back away from the Rogue if possible and use Renew on yourself. If you have Mind Flay, using it on Rogues can make it harder to maneuver around you and get to your back.

In the case of Undead Rogues with Will of the Forsaken or Rogues with Faction Insignia, or both, they may return to you immediately after you use Psychic Scream. Be sure to cast SW:P quickly after using Psychic Scream to prevent the Rogue from vanishing and stunlocking you to death. Against a rogue with Cloak of Shadows this is still a good idea since it forces the rogue to use this ability, but once they've used it, the DoT is gone, it can't be reapplied (till after the 5 second duration) , and the rogue can re-stealth at will. Sometimes when they do escape your fear it is possible to heal and shield yourself long enough to use it a second time.

It should also be noted that two other conditions exist that may extend your life in such a duel or faction PvP situation.

Namely the first being if your priest is discipline specced. And the second being if you're character is Horde.

Discipline priests by far have the best survivability of all priest specializations, and with talents in Improved Power Word: Shield, Reflective Shield, Unbreakable Will and Focused Will, you have a much better chance of surviving (and the case of a poorly geared, or unskilled rogue defeating him). Improved Power Word: Shield and Reflective Shield both synergize well with a priest in healer gear as Power Word: Shield benefits from 40% of your +healing. Thus as a disc priest attempt to always have your bubble up as this will not only efficiently mitigate a rogue's damage but at the same time the reflexive damage (with 5 points in Improved Power Word: Shield) with a DoT or 2 will likely kill the rogue. Pain Suppression will greatly extend the duration of your Power Word: Shield, but to most efficiently use it pop the shield first and then Pain Suppression as a luck crit will more likely be eaten by a shield than a reduction.

At level 66, Rogues gain Cloak of Shadows, an ability similar in appearance to Shadowform. Do not try to attack the Rogue as long as it is on! However, note that your shadowfiend can still do damage even when the rogue uses CoS. Simply try to heal through and hope you will be able to fear him afterwards.

When you fight a rogue, hope that you have a team member who happens to be kind enough to help you instead of trying to get the most kills. A rogue will probably shadowstep when you try to cast a spell on him. For those of you who have played death knights, this is similair to the ghoul's leap ability, only a lot faster. You'll soon hate this frustrating message "Target needs to be in front of you", or "Target not in line of sight, when he was a split second ago. A lot of rogues do this just to annoy people, and it works.

Warrior

Use Psychic Scream as much as possible in a dueling environment, although it is rare you will keep a warrior feared for long it can be used to buy you a few seconds or force an early intercept. Keep Shadow Word: Pain on the Warrior and Renew on yourself, with a constant renew and using Prayer of Mending and Powerword: shield you should be doing enough healing to counter a warriors damage. You should be able to beat any equal-leveled Warrior unless your opponent is noticeably better geared.

A Warrior is most likely to use Berserker Rage to make your Psychic Scream useless. Do not waste the cool down if you can, just try healing (hopefully you've got Healing Focus) while it's on and keep Shadow Word: Pain on him. The ability to keep a mental count down of spell durations is helpful with a Warrior's Berserker Rage. As soon as you think it's gone, Psychic Scream and use Mind Blast, depending on how much time you've got and if Mind Blast is cooling down. Pay attention to which stance the Warrior is in, Battle Stance is common for an initial Charge, but when they switch to Berserker Stance (noticeable by the large Dwarf head) he will have Berserker Rage which breaks all Fear and Incapacitate effects and shares the same cool down as Psychic Scream.

An experienced Warrior will try to strafe around you in order to avoid your spells. Avoid relying on Smite/Mind Blast unless they are at a distance. Throw a Vampiric Embrace on them, followed by a SW:P (and Vampiric Touch then Mind Flay if you're shadow specced)(Though how a priest would have Vampiric embrace without Mind Flay is quite questionable). Keep your shield up and a win is almost guaranteed.

Keeping Power Word: Shield on you also prevents the Warrior from gaining the rage he needs to hurt you.

Faking heals: Commonly, to heal oneself during a Warrior fight, a Priest would attempt to use Flash Heal. Warriors in Berserker Stance have a skill called "Pummel" which interrupts this spell and locks out heals for 4 seconds. If you think the Warrior is going to use it, a good method to attempt to bypass this effect would be to begin casting Flash Heal, hit Escape to cancel the Flash Heal quickly, wait for the Pummel sound, and then cast it on you. "Faking" heals is common strategy in dueling. Keep in mind that faking twice costs 3 seconds in global cooldown, whereas the Pummel itself is a 4 second Silence with a 10 second cooldown, so it is worth it to take the Pummel rather than to fake and fail 3 times.

Over enthusiastic warriors, will wait for the first sign of a cast and pummel it, using faking heals this works quite well, but did you know if you get a speedy version of that (casts on first sign of you casting regardless of spell) you can trick him? if you think your enemy is one, cast hearthstone and watch him pummel it, voila, free hits without pummel at your for 10seconds, just be careful you don't actually hearthstone!

Another trick if hearthstone is on cooldown is to dot the warrior with Shadowword: Pain and cast Mind Control. If the warrior Pummels it you are free to heal or do holy damage, if he doesn't Pummel it you are able to move him a small distance away while your renew heals you and your DoT damages him. It also gives a bit of free time for the Weakened Soul effect to end so you can reshield.

Priest

"He who is fastest with the Mana-Burn and he who has the most resilience will be proclaimed the victor"

Equal-leveled Priest duels can often be very close if Priests are of similar spec. However, your choice of talents will factor greatly into the equation should you be in the higher levels. The obvious favorite will be the fully Shadow specced Priest, with an arsenal of talents like Silence and Shadowform. However, Discipline specced Priests do stand a chance, especially with the inclusion of talents like Improved Mana Burn.

Often Priests will spend their time Mana Burning each other (otherwise you'll be pounding on him while he simply heals through it), with some mix of Psychic Scream and Power Word: Shielding going on (keeping in mind Power Word: Shield absorbs the damage from Mana Burn, but your Mana is still drained). Mana Burn is a long casting spell and a well timed Psychic Scream can be invaluable, giving you extended opportunities for a "free" window to cast. Another good idea would be to use a Warrior/Rogue's tactics and strafe around your opponent, disrupting things such as smite, mind blast, and mana burn. Mana Burn in conjunction with the priest talent Power Infusion will prove exceptionally dangerous in PvP situations as a priests with points in Improved Mana Burn will be able to pop a mana burn almost as soon as the GCD is up. If you note golden bald head buff DISPEL IT ASAP.

If the Priests attempt to use fear on one another, the Priest with the best ability to resist or overcome fear should win. Methods for countering fear include Faction Insignia and Unbreakable Will (available to all Priests), Will of the Forsaken (Undead Priests), and Fear Ward (available to all Priests). If your Psychic Scream is effective and your opponent's isn't, you should easily gain the upper hand.

Remember to Dispel liberally to get rid of Power Word: Fortitude, Renew and Power Word: Shield, along with any and all Magical debuffs the Priest may hit you with. However should you find yourself out of Mana or Silenced, things can turn rather sour. This is where it is a good idea to use the terrain you're fighting on to your advantage. While silenced break LoS either by running behind something or strafing around your opponent.

With a discipline or holy spec, you should be able to heal with rank 1 spells just from your mana regen. To counter another priest doing this in a healer vs. healer fight, use rank 1 or rank 3 Mana Burn to make sure they cannot cast any heal. It's generally at this point that the fight turns to wanding each other, but don't forget to constantly watch your opponent's mana, and if you can spare it use a Shadow Word: Pain.

Warlock

Besides the Shaman, this is perhaps the hardest duel you'll find. Equally geared Holy Priests don't stand much of a chance since the Felhunter is most likely to counter your heals. However, Shadow Priests do pose a certain threat to the Warlock.

Felhunter, Demonology: Try to use Psychic Scream on them both early and have your Insignia of the Alliance/Horde ready. 5 points in Unbreakable Will will help you to go through the Fear and Spell Lock. Make sure you Power Word: Shield AFTER the Felhunter devours your buffs so it will last long enough for you to absorb some damage; some people like to give themselves all available buffs so the Felhunter Devours some of the more useless ones (if you're lucky), such as Touch of Weakness and Inner Fire, which wouldn't normally cross your mind as anti-Warlock buffs. Before the real damage, the Warlock will probably DoT and Fear you. Use Fear Ward or Feedback right after the first Devour Magic. If you can time your Silence and Dispel (to get rid of his Shadow Ward or the DoTs he put on you), it's basically about burst damage and keeping yourself healed.

Felguard, Demonology: There is no easy way of doing this. Equally geared shadow Priests and Warlocks have 50% chance of defeating each other according to pure luck and gear. The Felguard will do extremely heavy damage if ignored so try to fear it ASAP. If you get a chance, get close to the Warlock and fear them both. Having shield and inner fire up is essential for you will receive heavy damage. Cast it early and be ready to cast it again after a good timed Silence. Discipline Priests with Improved Power Word: Shield will find this the easiest of warlocks to beat as the shield will reflect not only damage from dots but for the duration of a long match the felguard as well.

Succubus, Destruction: The commonly used tactic would be to Seduce you and then Soul Fire. Since Seduce (which some people forget can be removed by Will of the Forsaken, although it might be a good idea to save it for a Fear) is a short range spell, try to avoid it and open the duel yourself with a DoT, Vampiric Embrace and Mind Blast. If you're lucky enough to Blackout, use it to get close and use Psychic Scream on the Warlock. Save Silence for after the Fear because that's usually when Death Coil will be the spell of choice and that's when it gets ugly. A good trick for all priests is to setup a focus target and set your focus to the Succubus, this way when it begins to cast Seduce you will be able to cast a Shadow Word:Death and break it much in the same way you would break a Polymorph

Be aware of the new 2.0.1 Affliction spell Unstable Affliction when using Dispel on yourself or others. The damage you take after dispelling scales with the Warlock's +damage equipment, and is also capable of a critical strike.

If you have the proper Shadow gear, you might consider putting a single DoT on the Succubus and let the damage kill it while you take care of the Warlock.(Of course, Shadow word:pain is not gonna kill a succubus, even with their low health...)
Remember that if the warlock is simply using an Imp one Shadow Word: Death will be enough to kill it, removing both the Blood Pact and the extra damage.

Be aware, if a <Destruction> warlock is specific enough to spend 3 talent points on Nether Protection, a shadow priest is almost for sure to lose the battle.

Mage

As soon as the duel starts the most important thing to do is to put Shadow Word: Pain on the mage, Power Word: Shielding yourself before the duel starts is a good idea. Continue with a Psychic Scream and then Mind Blast, by now you should spam Flash Heal on yourself and Renew. Make sure to keep Shadow Word: Pain on the mage and a Power Word: Shield on yourself at all times. The mage can Counterspell you, which means that you will not be able to heal for 10 (8 in patch 2.10) seconds. Heal early in order to survive. Also note that mages with 17 points in the Arcane tree (a very common feature for PvP mages) are likely to have the talent Improved Counterspell which will silence you for 4 seconds even if the actual counter spell failed to destroy one of your trees.

Discipline Priests:
Protect yourself with Power Word: Shield. After that, use Shadow Word: Pain on them as soon as possible as they are going to polymorph you, atlhough you can SW: D to break it, however a smart mage will deke poly, take SW: D, then recast poly. Use this time to close distance on the mage so you can trinket then fear. Spam dispel magic on the mage until you receive "nothing to dispel." This will reduce a fair amount of their mana pool and also remove any bonus-resistance they have via shields. Against frost specs do not bother self dispelling as this only waste your time and mana. Typically the mage's mana bar is too large to mana burn, however it can be useful to absorb a counterspell which mages are fond of doing due to their perception of manaburn. Re-cast Power Word: Shield and Shadow Word: Pain, mana burn some more until they are close to 5% mana. Once they are here, if they are still alive from your reflective shield, DoTs and mana burns, do some Direct Damage (Mind Blast, Holy Fire or Smite, Mind Blast). Do not bother to Mana Burn below 5% as their spell casting will reduce them anyway and you don't want to waste mana on a non full effect, although it can give you an extra advantage.

Some useful info/things to watch out for:

-If they get close, fear them. if they are fire specced they're probably trying to use Dragon's Breath on you (which is nasty). Don't bother to fear them unless they get close to you, as you want to keep your fear free. Keep it handy in case they blink in on you.

-Keep them Dotted at all times. the last thing you want is for them to sheep you and evocate. If they evocate while Dotted they may get some mana back but the damage will interrupt the evocate.

-Make sure your Power Word: Shield is up at the start of the fight, and as much as possible during. You don't want to get hit with a Pyroblast without it.

-Throwing a holy fire in at the start of your DD should be fine, but only at the start when they are going to be getting low on mana. Remember, they have mana stones and Holy Fire takes forever to cast.

-Use a well timed Shadow Word Death to break Polymorph effects

-A mage will often silence your mana burn giving you free time to heal, make sure you use the time to get to full health, remember mages can do very high burst damage and with a well placed silence can burst down a priest without a problem.

Here is a useful video [1] for disc spec priests which during the first part shows how to duel a frost mage.

All level 70 mages get a very doubled edged sword by the name of Spell Steal. While priest without Silent Resolve are likely to have most if not all of their precious buffs (note it can steal bubbles as well) stolen over a short time frame, this can be used to your advantage if done right. All specs of mages are relatively short on mana with pools rarely exceeding 9k. The overactive mage will attempt to spellsteal every buff you have, at this point simply toss up Abolish Disease or Rank 1 renew. For the mana efficient Undead or Blood Elf priest Touch of Weakness Rank 1 can also be used as spellsteal costs the same amount of the mages mana no matter which buff is stolen.

Oh and remember to dispell all of their buffs(since they have only magic buffs) and every magic effect they put on you.

Druid

In general you want to act as already described on this page, in correspondence to which form the Druid is taking.

The Druid has to change back to humanoid form to heal, so it is very important to Psychic Scream or Silence him the moment he leaves Cat, Bear, Dire Bear or Moonkin Form.

The Druid can dish out some damage without spending any Mana (and are immune to Mana effecting spells such as Mana Burn) so saving Mana is very important. Spells such as Holy Fire are very useful here simply because of their small price of Mana.

Easiest way to beat druids.
Let them use all heals except healing touch. (if they use healing touch they are stupid anyways but you should silence it)
If they cast any other healing spell start spamming dispel. Even if they get a small heal (Ie: regrowth) they will consume A LOT of mana and its not worth it if u think about it. Note, however that Lifebloom instantly heals the druid when it is dispelled, and is a very mana-efficient heal, however the amount healed is small. Chain dispelling rank-1 lifeblooms will only help the druid, but dispelling stacked lifeblooms or lifebloom + another HoT is worth the cost of the dispel.

Decked out mages can't beat resto druids because of their continuous HoT heals. An ungeared priest can easily destroy resto druids as long as they are fast enough with dispels.

Hunter

I have found hunters to be one of the easiest classes to kill. They have no way to heal themselves so be sure to keep SW:Pain up at all times. When facing a hunter solo, pop on PW:S on yourself and then SW:Pain on the hunter. Don't worry about their pet. Focus on the hunter. I then try to rush in towards the hunter and fear him along with his pet. Night elf priests should use the Elune's Grace, a spell pretty useful against Hunters

The basic strategy here is: keep PW:S up at all times. Fear the pet when it gets close to you, keep SW:Pain on the hunter, and nuke the crap out of him from close range (if you can) or from a distance (if you are slowed, don't waste time trying to get close to him). Hunters do have the ability to do a massive amount of ranged damage but do not have many hit points, so a Priest's ability to shield will win the fight any day. Try to take down the hunter as soon as possible because viper sting will drain your mana very fast.

An uber geared hunter with the ability to crit on almost every shot does pose a problem for Priests.

Beast Mastery hunters are by far the most dangerous of the 3 specs as they can become immune to fear and with points in Cobra Reflexes and using Rapid Fire can quickly score multiple 3k white crits with good gear. In battles with these hunters your best bet will be to use your terrain and hope that he's slow to react to the LoS error.

Since the Burning Crusade, Hunters have a new anti-caster ability in Silencing Shot, a 3-second Silence on a 20-second cooldown. Incapacitate or Fear them if possible when you need to heal, and keep in mind that they can't Silence you if you aren't in line of sight.

Be very wary of freeze traps. Don't follow the hunter if he/she backs straight up. Instead try backing up yourself. Chances are that if non of your spell can reach him, none of his can reach you. He/she will hope that you follow their backwards movement in order to drag you through the freeze trap. Once you are frozen, a well placed aimed shot is all they need. If you are shielded, the aimed shot will undoubtedly take down your shield in one hit. They will most likely then use silence shot and send their pet on you to prevent you from casting while they get ready for a second aimed shot. If you are unsheilded and you are critted by an aim shot, based on your gear and the hunter's gear, the crit will surely knock a large chunk of your health down. Think of it as being backstabbed by a rogue while unsheilded. If they back up when they see you, don't follow. But if they just stop and try to take you out with brute force, shield, DOT, fear the pet (and hunter if you can), then throw mind blast and whatever else at them. The goal is to do as much damage as possible before fear wears off and to make sure there are DOTs on them. In many cases, when fighting someone of the opposite faction, and they KO you, they neglect to notice that they have DOTs and will surely die soon if they don't heal.

You can actually use freezing traps to your advantage; you will generally notice they lean down to place one, be wary of the spot. If you don't walk directly into it they try to stay around that area to get you to walk into it. Refresh PW:S, SW:P, and renew, then walk towards them, try to Fear them first if you can. While they wait for the 10 seconds of it to wear off while they're backing down, your spells are cooling off, you're healing yourself, and you're dealing damage.

Paladin

In general, A Holy Priest vs. a Paladin will for the most part be an endurance battle. The Priest will probably have a hard time beating a paladin because the paladin can keep up sustained DPS, while the Priests mana pool will eventually become empty.

A Shadow Priest can bring down a Paladin quite easily with some good burst DPS. Keep in mind that a Retribution-specced Paladin can bring the Shadow Priest down just as easily with better burst DPS. Also keep in mind the paladin can refill health with Lay on Hands (once per 20 minutes, unless they have talents which reduce it (Improved Lay on Hands), but its still a long time) and use Divine Shield to scrap all of your debuffs and DoTs, not to mention the invulnerability, use that time to heal/bandage if you have to, but watch out for consecration, as they can still cast it to disrupt you, or even whack you with his two-hander (Paladins still can attack in Divine Shield, albeit at half their normal speed, and Protection Paladins at their normal speed). You can only kill a paladin once he has used up both the Divine Shield and Lay on Hands abilities. So force him into using them, trying to avoid letting them use their normal heals, while conserving some mana for the end of the fight. Start the duel in Shadowform. Retribution Paladins in duels use mostly 2h swords with slow speed, use this to differentiate them from others. Jumping around in circles when you can will help to avoid melee strikes. Cast Vampiric Embrace, SW:Pain and touch/hex of weakness on them. When they stun you with Hammer of Justice, expect to eat some damage. Right after this you should fear him right away, if you're an Undead Priest use Devouring Plague to get back some health or put up PW:Shield (don't waste the mana on Devouring Plague if there's chance the Paladin could use Divine Shield, or cleanse). If you start to get really low on health don't hesitate to remove Shadowform and cast a large heal on yourself and do a portion of the duel while not in Shadowform. Only go back into Shadowform if your current mana allows and you're at near full health. During fear you can either mana burn, nuke or mind flay. If you want to conserve mana then you can shoot with a wand. In that situation (paladin is full of DoTs and debuff and getting low on health) they may panic and use Divine Shield, heal up or even use lay on hands. So at this point you are basically as if you started out new, but with only one half the mana. Redo debuff, Vampiric Embrace, DoT, touch/hex of weakness while trying to avoid getting in melee range, or being in front of the paladin. Shoot wand, melee, redo DoT, etc. You will probably need to save some mana to finish him off. If you see that the paladin would dispel your SW:P, try casting a rank 1 one.
He may not see how much damage it will deal and he will hopefully lose more mana than you trying to dispel it and the shadow vulnerability.

Another strategy you can use, which works very well if you are a holy, disc, or any combination of both. Shadow Priests might not have to do this if their burst DPS is high enough, but it's still a good strategy. Sometimes you will have to force the Paladin into using his long cooldown spells (Divine Shield, Lay on Hands, etc). However, if the paladin has no mana to do so in the first place, this isn't a problem. Once you get a hold of the situation, do a quick shield + fear immediately followed by a series of mana burns until the paladin has 0 mana. Then quickly do a couple dispels to get rid of any buffs the paladin may have. A paladin with no mana or buffs is like a disarmed Warrior with no rage. Now you can do DoTs and a couple mind blasts. Mana regeneration is inevitable, so you will have to do a couple more mana burns. Try to keep the paladin at 0 mana. The paladin can cast Lay on Hands even with 1 mana, so this is almost unstoppable. Just continue using mana burn, DoTs, and fear (with the occasional mind blast and PW:Shield), and the Paladin wont stand a chance.

Also, Holy Fire is a very useful ability in this fight. Paladins are most likely to use shadow aura so they'll never see it coming. It's also a VERY cheap spell so you could use it after mana burning him to 0 and still have some spare mana to heal. Oh and keep an eye out for the paladin's attacks: If he casts blessing of wisdom on himself, it'll be a lot harder to mana burn him. Always remember to dispel EVERY judgment he does on you.

If you're lvl 70 a very helpful trick would be to cast Inner Focus and then Mass Dispel when the paladin uses his bubbles. This should be followed by Silence since most paladins use their invulnerability time to heal.

Shaman

A good shaman is hard to kill by a Priest, albeit far from impossible. The most important thing to know is that a shaman without mana is a dead shaman. Shamans have low mana pools, horrible efficiency, and may only regenerate mana using Mana Spring Totem (a very slow mana regeneration totem) or Mana Tide Totem (a quick mana regeneration totem that requires 31 points in Restoration).

Therefore, Mana Burn becomes an incredibly potent spell. But it needs to be used carefully.

Shaman have 2 sources of DPS. Shocks and auto-attack, which can proc Windfury. A smart shaman will not spam shocks, so their damage is somewhat lowered, but since all their utility is in their shocks, this means that casting might not be the easiest thing.

Purge is the third offensive ability they have, and it is generally used judiciously. A shaman will purge the PW:S almost immediately upon it being cast, as well as renew. Purge is fairly expensive (140 mana). This means that sometimes, the shaman is forced to spend 500 mana, to remove a rank 1 renew. Use this to your advantage.

If a shaman starts to cast a lightning spell (his hands glow white-blue, instead of green), that's the best time to cast a shield on you. It will most likely absorb the spell, and it will be followed by a purge, and you just wasted 7-800 of his mana (with a bit more of yours, but that's important, you have more).

Fear should be negated by their tremor totem, but luckily, the latter rarely works. It's based on a system of pulses, which go every 3-5 seconds. However, it might take quite a few pulses for it to work, while your SW:Pain and mana burn deplete both life and mana. Tremor totems are cheap, and the shaman will drop them a lot, which is good, because that means no earthbind or +STR totems are being dropped.

Totems also have a short range, so running out is a good idea. If he/she plants totems, grounding or otherwise, you should not waste time attacking them. Just get out of the range of them; this is much more effective than wasting attacking or healing time. This is not applicable in a duel due to the range limit but should be utilized in every other situation. You need to get away from their tremor totem in order to fear them.

Shadow Priests have Silence, which is a great tool against any shaman. Silencing a heal, and applying a couple more mana burns, and then casting a fear, and you should be able to down the shaman very quickly.

There are many healing-based shamans out there with very little DPS but with the healing abilities of a professional Restoration specced druid. Do NOT underestimate them! If they start casting a heal (green hands) with a grounding totem down, don't try to destroy it nor use Silence on the shaman regardless. Use Psychic Scream for the grounding totem will be useless. Don't worry about tremor totems. The important thing is that you stopped him from healing... for now. If you are too far away for Psychic Scream, run into Silence range while hitting rank 1 SW:P. The totem can only absorb one spell every 10 seconds, and the global cooldown should be finished before their heal is, if they used their big one. Even if they chose to use two Lesser Healing Waves instead of one big one, interrupting the second heal will still help.

Paladin PvP guide

2009-06-21T05:06:00.000-07:00

Some tips

Spam Judgements.

Normally spamming Judgements would do high burst damage but cost a lot of mana. With the introduction of patch 3.0.2 and the introduction of the Retribution talent Judgements of the Wise, Judgements not only cause significant damage, but also gives you Replenishment. Along with Judgement of Wisdom, you shouldn't encounter a lot of mana trouble. Further, Judgements no longer consume your active seal, giving all paladins reasons to spam Judgements.

Don't get discouraged if a few moments of combat your health is going down faster than theirs.

This does not mean you have lost, or that you will lose. The core of the Paladin class is being able to last. With your efficient heals and many ways (via seals, blessings, and talents) to regain health and mana as a fight drags on, you will have it better in the long run than most classes.

Always use the best Blessing/Seal/Judgement for each fight.

Most of your victories are either ones of endurance or fast burst damage. Every one of your abilities requires mana. If you're OOM, then all you've got is your autoattack, and that isn't going to beat anyone. Seal of Command is nice for some burst damage. Learning what Blessings, Seals, and Judgments to use is the most appealing and complex aspects of the class, and there are more opinions on what is best where than there are Paladins. Develop your own groove and learn what you like and what works. With the new patch your mana should not be a problem, and instead of using Blessing of Wisdom using Blessing of Might can improve your damage.

Heal when you need it.

With patch 3.0.2 the talent The Art of War was introduced, this talent makes your Flash of Light instant whenever you have a critical Judgement, Divine Storm or Crusader Strike, you should never hesitate to cast Flash of Light when AoW procs, it can be a life saver.

Don't wait until your portrait is glowing red to start casting a heal. If you're fighting, and your health is such that you would get the full, or near-full, benefit from a heal, then heal. Don't neglect Flash of Light either. It's arguably the most mana-efficient heal in the game. You can use Flash of Light several times while your foe is stunned with Hammer of Justice, and if you notice that an opponent has foolishly wasted a spell interrupt (such as a Shaman using Earth Shock for its damage) then throw a few flashes of light to make them regret it. Don't get heal-crazy, but don't wait until you're near death to start tending your wounds, either.

Lastly, with the introduction of talents increasing spell power to Protection and Retribution specs, healing in pvp has never been more rewarding for non-Holy paladins.

Melee, dammit!

Get in there with that two-hander and put on the hurt! Paladins may be able to heal, but they can bring the pain too. Retribution (especially post 2.0) have a nice bag of tricks to do good-sized bursts of damage. Crusader Strike with Seal of Command can put a hurt on even the most hardened foe. With decent gear, a Paladin will have a good amount of strength, making their melee hit pretty hard. For Retribution paladins, while most of your damage will come from auto-attacks, combining your regular melee hits with both Crusader Strike and Divine Storm, you can take a big chunk of the enemies health.

Protadins now have on demand attacks as well, in the form of Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous.

When you combine these with your seals, you have what is arguably the best autoattack in the game.

When meleeing, put your back against a wall if at all possible.

Seasoned PVE tanks know this strategy well. It's used for different reasons in PVE (preventing knockbacks probably most common), but works just as well in PVP. If your back is against the wall, melee classes can't get behind you to attack you from behind. This means that you'll be parrying (and, if applicable, blocking) their attacks instead of letting them land. Parrying can increase your outgoing DPS (though note that it'll also increase your target's chance of parrying and increasing their DPS), and blocking is a boon.

Be careful when fighting classes capable of dispelling 'magic' effects. These are most notably priests and shamans. A shaman purging you will remove two beneficial magic effects (normally your current blessing and a seal). If you are inattentive, you can be caught without these on, and a much easier kill. With points in both Protection and Retribution, both your Seals and Blessings gain significant dispel resistance; Seals become dispel immune, and your blessings receive 30% resistance.

Death knight

...

Druid

Druids are hybrids, and as such the fight can vary greatly depending on their spec. Much like paladin vs paladin, this can be a very long fight.

Feral Druids in Bear Form act very similar to Warriors, and while in Cat Form act much like Rogues. What Feral Druids will often do is try to use cat form to sneak up on you, much like rogues will; see rogue section for ways to interrupt stealth. They have two opening moves that they will use when stealthed: Pounce and Ravage. Generally, Druids that stay in Cat Form will often attempt to burst down a target. This strategy is less effective against the Paladin and Warrior classes due to heavy armor mitigating much of their damage. Since they have quick attack speeds, using Retribution Aura against Cat Form Druids is a worthwhile strategy. If a Druid chooses to fight in Bear Form, use a strategy similar to that used a warrior. Druids in Bear Form are expecting to engage in a long, slow fight. A Paladin can generally expect to outlast a Druid so long as the Druid's interrupts don't land at exactly the right moment. An important note about Druids is that they cannot adequately heal themselves while in Feral Forms. Once you wear down their health, expect them to shapeshift to Caster Form and heal. They will often stun with Bear Form's Bash or (at level 62+) Cat Form's Maim. If a Feral Druid is unable to stun and heal, they often use Travel Form to escape the melee fight. This is one of the best times to stun them, as their armor is vastly lower and they are most likely low on health. A Druid in Caster Form may try to cast Entangling Roots on you in order to heal. This will be a mistake on the Druid's part because you can cast Blessing of Freedom or Cleanse and easily escape. While they are in caster form is the time to throw everything you have to burst them down. If timed right and with a little luck, you may turn what is usually a long and drawn out fight into a quick victory. As an additional note, Dwarf Paladins can use Stoneform to counter a Feral Druid's Bleed effects.

Balance Druids are a little tougher. They will try to act more like shaman with some dots plus standard nukes. When a druid specs balance they gain another form called Moonkin, which greatly increases their armor to something comparable with plate armor and some benefits to spell casting abilities. They will may use roots on you and attempt to kite; unfortunately for them you have Hand of Freedom, after that you run straight for them and put the hammer on their head with your Hammer of Justice, Seal of Command and Crusader Strike. However, since their main form of damage output is magical, your higher armor won't help much in this fight, but this will only be a problem if you give them time, running towards them with your ten ton hammer and Hand of Freedom will definitely make them panic. Move around, keep out of their casting line of sight and you will cancel their spells. Try to stay behind them as much as possible to get parries and blocks off the damage table. Balance druids enjoy spaming Moonfire, which causes direct damage and also starts a rather potent DoT, which you can and should Cleanse. If you don't it can cause significant damage over its duration. Your main strength is your ability to endure; use your mana efficient heals and your stuns to their best effect if and when they try to heal. If you play your cards right you will outlast them. This is a fight of moderate difficulty.

Restoration Druids act much like restoration shaman. These guys are specced and geared for major healing duties, which means a massive mana pool. Given that Druids live off instant cast Hots such as Lifebloom, you will rarely have a chance to interrupt their heals. Further, they will cast mostly instant nukes such as Moonfire, also un-interruptable. This is going to be one of the longest fights you will ever face: all you can really do against restoration druids is attack however you can and keep your health up and slowly chisel away the large mana pool. Be warned though that they have their own bag of tricks to keep their mana up, such as innervate and other buffs to increase their already large mana supply. If they have mana potions on top of these tools, be prepared to hang in for the long haul, you are going to be here for a long time. This fight will probably be one of the longest and possibly one of the hardest fights you will encounter.

Hunter

Hunters are well known as being one of the most annoying PvP classes out there. Their ability to kite (keeping you at long range constantly and firing on you) is very, very annoying. Hand of Freedom all the time (The 3rd tier protection talent is a must here) to avoid Wing Clips. CLEANSE THE STINGS! A hunter will waste more mana casting a sting than your mana spent cleansing it. Otherwise, just keep attacking, and hope for the best.

Another way to approach this battle is head on, and it's scary for the hunter. We can guess that the first thing he'll do is Freeze trap, if you step in that, you'll give him an open invitation for an Aimed Shot or Viper sting, but whats worse you'll give him the opportunity for distance, which means kiting - that's the last thing any class wants when fighting a hunter. So, as soon as the battle starts, duel or otherwise, you want to Shield yourself (the sooner the better) and head towards him. He won't be ready for this, and most hunters will have a whole lot of their combat strategy go right down the tubes. They will waste time wing clipping out of habit (90% of them will), their concussion shot, Freeze trap, scatter shot, and probably viper sting. In other words, when you approach them, take your time - to a certain extent. You want to be close enough so that when your shield goes down you can hit them with your Hammer of Justice, but you don't want to get there too quick, let him spend some mana and get some cooldowns going. Time it so that by the end of your shield he's locked in melee with you. (He knows your shield is up, but most hunters will still use their good shots out of habit, or perhaps panic, the force of habit is one you can count on with most hunters, trust me on this). If he's still running around while your shield is up, and you're having trouble catching up, don't do anything until your shield is down, when it's down use Repentance, or Holy Shock will daze him if he has his aspect of cheetah on, don't forget to cleanse - just in case. Now, when your shield goes down - it's your turn, now it's Hammer of Justice time whack away - and stay close (I use Crusader->Judgement->Seal of Command... But feel free to use your Seal of Justice, that can work nicely as well). Go ahead and put on your Blessing of Freedom - now that you are close, and you'll be able keep it that way, you really should be able to finish the job most of the time, in this manner, with no healing. If he manages to wing clip you while your Blessing of Freedom is still cooling down he should be close enough to use Hammer of Wrath, especially if you've had a couple of lucky procs.

Mage

Outlast him. A mage with no mana is a dead mage, and they have no good way to heal so every point of HP you whittle away is usually gone, while you can get yours back. Pray that he doesn't crit a lot and burst you down, although there's not much you can do to prevent it. Just heal, heal, heal some more. Heal early, and beware the counterspell, which completely locks out the Holy school of spells. This effectively prevents you from using any abilities, including blessings, seals, auras, heals, and even your bubbles for 8 seconds, which means, that if he is frost specced and has an elemental by his side at that time... you're in for some hurt without being able to heal. If you can, cast Blessing of Freedom as mages are very good at getting away with Frost Armor, Nova, and Blink. Mages can keep you at a distance using a large variety of chill and freeze effects as well as the ever annoying polymorph. Use your trinket to escape the sheeping if you can and don't let them get far. If you stay at a distance the mage will blast you into bits and pieces. Protect yourself as much as you can until he runs out of mana. Then destroy him. If you are in melee range early in the battle, you may want to cast seal of justice instead of the usual crusader/command or whatever you use. While many people say it isn't viable for PvP, I find it useful just as a spell interrupt. It procs fairly often, anyways...

Mages tend to have a lot of mana, and also have things like mana gems and evocation (which they can use while you're sheeped, for example) to regain nearly a full mana bar. Trying to wait until a mage is out of mana could be a long wait.

Retribution paladins have an extra tool for this fight in the form of Eye for an Eye. Returning 30% of their spell criticals to them will cook a mage fast.

Your most profitable aura in this fight is most likely Frost Resistance. Frost spells are what they use to kite you the most, and around 50% of mages are frost talented anyways, aiming for the shatter effect (50% increased chance to crit). Try and figure out what kind of mage you're fighting. If you can be certain he's a fire mage, feel free to put up fire resistance. (Note: Getting the 'ignite' debuff is a good indication you're fighting a mage that relies on his fire spells for damage, even if he does have some points in the frost tree for things like shatter).

Also keep in mind that anything and everything a Mage can stick on you, you can remove with Cleanse, including Ignite. Cutting off the Over Time portion of their already dangerous spell crits can help your survivability in a big way.

Another good idea is going round the mage when you're near (of course you hit while going round). It gives you time between attacks, because he/she will always get a facing error.

Paladin

This battle will be the longest battle you have ever fought. Unless you somehow manage to get one who has Divine Shield on cooldown, Lay on Hands on cooldown, their stun on cooldown, and no mana. Even then it can become a long battle. These battles are entirely about conserving mana, and possibly Trinkets, Profession items, and simple equipment advantages. This fight is far more likely to end from another Alliance/Horde member wandering by than anything either combatant can use or do.
One tip is to wait for your opponent to try to outlast the Paladin for aslong as you can and let him activate his Divine Shield first, then you can heal yourself while he's in his shield unable to do any serious damage on you while he's healing.

Priest

A shadow priest is a very formidable character in all PvP situations. S/he will cast several DoT's and then fear you. There are several trinkets to prevent fear and these will usually decide if you can win or not. Holy priests are about average with paladins. If they don't mana burn you, then try to outlast them, which should work as you can deal decent damage without spending mana and they can't. If they start mana burning you, start healing, judging and anything else you can with your mana. The idea is to use your mana in a beneficial way before they burn it, then use Judgement and Seal of Wisdom on the Priest and heal and DPS the rest of the fight on regen.

Shadow Resistance Aura is the best one to use, as the most pesky of their abilities are from the Shadow school. Switch to Concentration Aura while healing. Expect a shadow priest to silence you; Improved Concentration Aura will reduce the duration of the silence effect by 30%.

You can Cleanse everything they throw on you, as well. Don't count on your bubbles to save you, although feel free to use them to do a full cleanse of their debuffs, and make them waste mana Mass Dispelling you - they just can't seem to resist the novelty of this.

Fighting a discipline priest is even tougher. You will know you are fighting a disc priest when you are hitting them while they are shielded and you are taking a lot of damage when they seem to be doing relatively nothing. Say hello to reflective shield. Added with pain suppression, disc priest are an extremely formidable yet rare foe.

Rogue

A rogue will generally not take you head-on. Unless they have epic gear, a rogue that attacks while a paladin has full health + mana = a dead rogue. If you see a rogue from far away suddenly disappear then if you can, jam the Hammer of Justice button while they come in. You may be able to stun them before they get off the cheap shot. You may want to save it for healing later though, especially if you don't have Repentance, as a rogue will always try to interrupt your heals. Be sure to Purify any poisons the rogue may use. You may want to use Judgement of Light for some passive healing (as you will be losing some handfuls of health due to their damage), and later on in the fight, Judgement of Justice to ensure the rogue won't be able to use Sprint to either run away or restealth.

Retribution Aura helps for making sure the Rogue takes damage from when it hits you.

Protection spec makes fighting a rogue very easy. Using Holy Shield, Retribution Aura, Consecration, and Blessing of Sanctuary, you take very little damage and your reactive and AoE spells do as much if not more than your auto attack. Keep Holy Shield up, as the rogue attacks fast enough that he will almost always use all of the charges. Stun him when you need to heal, and don't worry too much about being stunned yourself, as with all your armor you don't take very much damage, and even when you're stunned, you're still doing quite a bit of damage to him every time he melees you; if it gets too hairy you can just bubble. In fact, with Improved Hammer of Justice, you basically have as many stuns/bubbles as you need, and then some. When you're not stunned, his constant attacks will keep Redoubt (which will mitigate much of his damage due to low damage/high attack rate type of fighting) and Reckoning (which will double your autoswing damage) up almost constantly. This is the easiest fight you can have with the exception of a fury warrior. Laugh when a rogue Cheap Shots you.

For Retribution Paladins, just DPS them down like crazy. When they use Evasion (that skill which makes them slightly transparent and gives them tons of dodge), use Repentance. Although most of the time they will either have a PVP trinket on to counter it, if they don't, wait for repentance to run for full duration, and they just wasted a five minute cooldown "OH SHI-" button. If they do use their pvp trinket to counter it, try to stay back, run around in circles (to give them facing errors and thus lowering their DPS), and spam Judgements. Sometimes, I find using Consecration while they pop Evasion to be useful; they just can't resist the novelty of being able to flee from a stationary AoE spell, and plus it makes up for some of the damage they dodge from you.

Most Rogues (and everyone who has First Aid) will bandage themselves while you're in Divine Shield healing yourself. To counter this, use any spell you can cast to make sure they won't be able to heal themselves when you are.

Another option (useful especially for flag-guarding) is to use consecration to detect the rogue. The damage will take him out of stealth, and prevent the all annoying cheap shot.
NOTE!!! A level 66 or above rogue can simply use cloak of shadows, which will negate consecration, than shadowstep behind you, use distract, and during your "WTF!!" moment, ddestroy you with stun-lock

Seal of Vengeance/Corruption is a great seal to use as the DoT that's applied from your swings can stack. Judging this seal can cause it to cause more DoTs. However, this can be resisted if the Rogue is Subtlety specced. The only disadvantage with this, is that it can be pretty slow, as this seal relies on your weapon swings/speed. Similarly, if you are Retribution specced, your Judgement and Divine Storm criticals will apply a DoT as well.

Shaman

Shaman is, like you, a hybrid class, each tree designed to work very differently from each other. Shaman's Restoration tree is aimed at healing, Elemental is aimed at being a casting dps class, and Enhancement is designed for melee dps. In all cases, a shaman's main tools are their totems, and they can have up to 4 at any given moment. Also be weary of their Purge, which removes your buffs.

Enhancement shaman will be likely to charge into melee range, as that is where he is the strongest due to his spec. Get up into the melee where you belong! They will mostly be using their much smaller mana pool for their heals and shocks. There really isn't much that can be done about the heals because you don't have any tools besides your stuns that can interrupt spells. Shocks, there is absolutely nothing that can be done as they are instant casts. Simply heal early and quickly, let them waste their mana with shocks which you can easily heal through, while knocking down their health, forcing them to heal. Keep them under the 5 second rule, and this is going to be a easy fight. Consider using Seal/Judgement of Light or Wisdom to keep your mana up. This is going to be mostly a battle of mana endurance, so keep Blessing of Wisdom up if they don't purge you. Devotion aura is your best choice to help mitigate their damage. If you are holy specced, it is crucial that you heal as early as possible, as they will try to burst damage you down once you get under 30%, so HEAL EARLY.

Elemental shaman tend to act more like mages, but with much smaller mana pools and significantly less burst damage. They will probably use Earthbind Totem with Frostshock and attempt to kite you. If such occurs, use any tools you can to get back into melee range. Simply kill the totem and cleanse the Frostshock since it is a magic debuff and you are back to normal running speed. Try to save you stuns if you can but if need be, use them, you don't do any damage without putting your weapon on the target, period. As with other casting classes, you have to be in line of sight when they cast their spell or it will not cast, so while whacking them down with melee try to stay behind them if possible. These guys are going to burn their mana a lot faster because of constantly casting spells and heals. Like above, simply outlast their mana pool, and then its down to a fist fight: and they use mail armor, and you have plate. Once it gets to this point, if the shaman is smart, he will try to run away. If not, congratulations on your latest honorable kill.

It is rare to find a deeply speced Restoration Shaman in a 1 vs 1 pvp situation, but if you do, he certainly has talents in Enhancement or Elemental, and based on that will guide how he tries to fight you. Based on that, refer to above, as it will be more or less the same but with larger mana pool and more healing. Will take awhile longer, but is definitely more than doable. However, while his heals aren't mana efficient, he has the ever annoying water shield which is free, and instant cast, prepare for a long battle.

Overall, a fight with a shaman is one of easy-moderate difficulty.

Warlock

With 3 diverse talent trees, a warlock's style of play can vary, depending on their spec.

Destruction warlocks can be compared to a mage, with their heavy crits and burst-damage.

Demonology warlocks relies more on their demons, with them being more powerful and giving bonuses to the warlock. A felguard is usually the most obvious sign for a demonology-specced warlock, while the Soul Link buff is a good indicator of one. Demonology warlocks have a significant disadvantage against paladins because of exorcism. Usually, it allows you to quickly take out their demon and proceed from there.

Affliction warlocks are usually tricky, filling you up with dots while kiting you using Curse of Exhaustion. They usually possess an instant-cast version of Howl of Terror, their aoe fear, and the ever-nasty Unstable Affliction and can even occasionally bombard you with instant Shadowbolts thanks to their Nightfall talent.

Shadow Resistance Aura is the best one to use, as the most pesky of their abilities are from the Shadow school. Hope that you've got the Unyielding Faith talent for the 10% reduction in fear duration. Use your trinket to break fear, and use the shield to break the second fear, and you should be able to get close enough to stay in range and stun / kill the warlock. Commonly, a warlock has either a succubus or a felhunter out in battlegrounds. If it`s a succubus, the tactic will be to seduce you first, get range, then cast immolate, corruption and curse of agony, then fear. Cleanse the dots as often as you can and again, heal early and often. A good warlock will cast curse of tongues on you when he sees you healing (or preemptively) and many warlocks have shadowburn to finish you off quickly if you are low on health. Holy shock/Judgement of Light can help, as these are instant cast. If s/he has an imp out, kill it first (also rejoice, because this means that they are either out of shards or incompetent). 3 blows should do it. Beware the felhunter, its spell lock ability is one of the most annoying ones in the game. (It takes out a school of magic for 6 or 8 seconds depending on rank). Paladins only have one school of magic (holy). If, by completely random circumstances, they summon a inferno or doomguard don`t worry, these pets look impressive, but are not very powerful. Be warned, a common tactic of warlocks and shadow priests is to cast a ton of DoTs and fear you, letting your health tick away. Heal only when the warlock is stunned or if you know the fear is on cooldown due to diminishing returns.

It should be noted that affliction warlocks usually has access to Unstable Affliction, a dot which deals a good amount of damage to anyone that dispels it. In addition, unlike the dot itself, the damage received from dispelling it CAN crit. Unless you want to use Divine Shield or Divine Protection to remove the debuff, you will have to wait for the dot to run its course, which means that the other dots will chew up a considerable amount of your health before it runs out. A final note on Unstable Affliction is it will silence you if you remove it; again locking you out of your spells.

Also beware if they are destruction specced, they will have Chaos Bolt which is a 50-point talent. Why this is a problem is that it damages you regardless if you're bubbled, shielded or protected from damage. If you figure out that s/he is destruction specced and is high levelled, DON'T BUBBLE AT LITTLE HEALTH! It only can take one casting of Chaos Bolt to finish you off. So only bubble and heal when you are low on health if you are sure they are not a destruction warlock.

Warrior

Warriors are, far and away, your easiest kills. 1v1, a paladin will beat a warrior.

Warriors come in two varieties. Protection warriors are much like a protection paladin: geared and specced to take serious physical punishment. Arms/Fury warriors have much less health but trade that in for a significant damage output increase.

If they are Arms/Fury, Devotion aura is the best aura to use here to help take the edge off their attacks, all of which are physical. If they get the jump on you, they will Charge you to stun you for a short time and get into melee range, which also gives them some rage for their special attacks. A smart warrior will Hamstring you which reduces your movement speed, and they will try to stay behind you as much as possible, which is exactly what you need to do to him. Stay behind him and whack away at him. Seal and Judgement of Command are magical in nature and are unmitigated by his plate armor.

A tactic warriors like to do is wait for you to heal and then Shield Bash you which interrupts your heal and prevents you from healing again for 8 seconds, so pull a fake heal off early and let them interrupt you then. Warriors have an ability called Mortal Strike which reduces your healing by 50%, so if you need to heal use Divine Shield or Divine Protection which removes the MS effect. Bubbles are safer anyway as they can trinket out of your stuns, and thus they can be unreliable when you need to heal.

If he tries to bandage and is close to you, use consecrate as it will interrupt his healing, or if you are holy use Holy Shock to prevent him from bandaging. Keep beating him down and he will fall to your might easily. Don't be surprised if you are still full of mana and health, ready to take down your next opponent.

Protection Warriors usually stay away from PvP, but they do come occasionally. Use the same tactics as above and you will pretty easily take another victory.

If they are arms specced, have the Sudden Death talent and score crits, they can use their execute ability without depending on how much health you have. This is good for you, for two reasons: 1. They need rage to make their abilities function, such as Hamstring. If their Sudden Death ability takes place, they lose all of their rage despite how much extra damage they may cause, which brings the second reason up. 2. The ability can practically deliver a killing blow to the cloth classes; to you, it doesn't do much because of your abilities, high armour and high health. Enjoy!

Additional Tips: Warsong Gulch

Flag carrier

Despite reduced speed and lack of stealthiness as compared to a druid or rogue, the paladin still makes a decent flag carrier nevertheless. A paladin with specialization in protection talents works great in PvP. Devotion Aura will not give a significant advantage , your better of with a resistance aura but switch aura to match the occasion, and Guardian's Favor decreases the cooldown of Blessing of Freedom. This allows the paladin to escape Earthbind Totems placed in enemy flag rooms and other slowing effects.(keep in mind that Blessing of Freedom does not remove the 'daze' effect.

Depending on the strategy used and the character's build, the paladin can flee quite well with Blessing of Freedom, or may choose to attack and kill an enemy or two before running, to avoid being hit with curses and ranged attacks later. Hammer of Justice works well for the carrier too, to stop chasers from following and interrupt spellcasters.

And of course, having healing options available is extremely beneficial. Although the paladin cannot use Blessing of Protection or Divine Shield while carrying the flag (without dropping it), Holy Light can be used if not being attacked or silenced by enemies. Lay on Hands fortunately works on oneself too. A paladin could have multiple healing sources at the same time — seal, blessing, healing spells and of course health potions. Having different ways to get healed helps deal with cooldown times.

Flag carrier assistant

Perhaps the best suited role for a paladin is as a flag carrier assistant.

Blessing of Sacrifice allows you to transfer damage from the blessed group member. This will break crowd control spells and abilities like Sheep, Seduction, and Sap on the friendly target. Since the only thing important is getting the carrier home alive, this spell is essential to use.

A second powerful tool paladins are equipped with is Blessing of Freedom. This will prevent any kind of movement-slowing and stun effects, including the mage's Frost Nova and the warrior's Intercept. Guardian's Favor is an essential talent for this very reason.

Hammer of Justice and Seal of Justice are indispensable tools for stopping chasers from getting to your carrier.

Finally, as a healer, the paladin can heal the carrier, either with Flash of Light or with the more powerful Holy Light spell. Cleanse can remove a Poison, Disease, and Magic effect at once but not Curse effects. Keep in mind this is most powerfully used in this case as a counterspell to the previously attributed movement debuffing effects on your flag carrier or yourself; such as Freezing Trap (Which Blessing of Freedom has no affect on making this your only recourse), Frost Nova, stuns and poisons that snare, etc. Note that Physical snares and stuns are not affected. Blessing of Light may be an option, especially during the cooldown time waiting for Blessing of Freedom again. Lay on Hands is maybe the most powerful tool available, allowing you to heal the target instantly for your entire hit points. Note that this will take up your entire mana, but if your carrier is nearing or in home base, that extra push may decide between victory and defeat.

Note that as of Patch 3.0.2, Lay on Hands no longer drains all of your mana; it has no cost at all.

The paladin also may very well be the best defender for the carrier when back to base. In a situation where the carrier cannot score because team's flag hasn't been returned, the paladin has the ability to heal the carrier and fight off intruders as the offense attempts to return the flag.

Flag carrier decoy

Even better, the paladin works effectively as a decoy. In a heavily defended enemy base, with a little help, the paladin may be able to get through with the flag using Blessing of Freedom, Hammer of Justice, Insignia of the Alliance/Insignia of the Horde, Cleanse, and Lay on Hands — anything to get far enough away while easily attracting defenders to chase after. To perfect the stunt, when about to die, cast Divine Shield, which will delay your death and hopefully catch the attackers off guard and occupy them by trying to attack you further while another teammate picks the flag.

Flag returner

Although not quite as effective as a warrior or hunter in this role, the paladin can nevertheless make use of improved running speed and stun abilities. Seal of Justice is excellent for stopping flag carriers. Blessing of Freedom becomes useful chasing after carriers when enemies are placing Earthbind Totems. Pursuit of Justice may be critical for running down opponents to get within attacking or hammer range. If the enemy carrier is below 20% health, Hammer of Wrath can work and potentially kill the escapee, enabling a flag return. Divine Shield is a nice last ditch effort to counter any slowing effects and prevent damage, while still allowing the paladin to attack.

Mage PvP guide

2009-06-21T05:04:00.000-07:00

Rogue

The outcome of a Rogue vs. Mage battle is predominantly based on who attacks who first.

Rogues are defeated much like Warriors. Do not Blink out of the initial attack; you won't gain much ground considering the Rogue will likely Sprint, and then you'll be unable to Blink out of the endless stun. Instead of Blinking initially, Frost Nova. Then run just out of melee range and Polymorph the Rogue. That move will effectively reset the battle, except now our Rogue friend is unstealthed and thus weakened. From this point on, it is literally almost the same as fighting a Warrior (especially for a Frost Mage). Get to maximum range ASAP and begin to kite the Rogue. You should make quick work of him once you're at maximum range.

In the past, Rank 1 Arcane Explosion and Rank 1 Blizzard were the preferred methods for flushing out a stealthed opponent. Changes in the mana cost mechanic have since ended "downranking," so use the highest ranks of these spells to inflict as much damage as possible when finding a stealthed rogue. Remember, Hyper-Vision Goggles and Elixir of the Searching Eye exist to increase stealth detection, and the Human racial passive Perception helps to a lesser extent.

If the Rogue manages to Vanish out of your Frost Nova before you can Polymorph him, stay as close as possible to the spot where he was and use Arcane Explosion as quickly as possible. Since Rogues don't move as quickly in Stealth, he likely won't have gone far. Also, after he Vanishes, he'll likely be moving TOWARDS you anyway attempting to CS/Ambush you, so it's beneficial to use Arcane Explosion immediately after he uses Vanish. If you're quick, he'll rarely get another jump on you via Vanish. Remember, Rogues CAN Sprint while stealthed.

The DoT on Fireball, Pyroblast, and Frostfire Bolt are useful in keeping a Rogue visible. Once he's visible (and staying that way) work on keeping him under control. It's dangerous to Polymorph him without Presence of Mind. A Rogue can Sprint in Stealth and when Chilled, he can Vanish out of Frost Nova, and he will almost certainly Kick you when you're trying to Polymorph at point blank range. Assume all rogues have their PvP Trinkets, and watch for your opponent to use his. However, if you can sheep him when he doesn't have his Vanish and Trinket, he is yours to play with. Get to max range and let him have it.

Most Mages consider Rogues an even matchup; usually the one to initiate battle wins.

Since the new patch, Rogues can start popping Cloak of Shadows (CoS) on you once a minute. This basically amounts to a 5 second stun as there isn't really much you can do except Blink away (and if you do you'll probably end up getting stunned). A Mage's best bet is to save Ice Block for these moments, as CoS makes Rogues extremely difficult opponents against Mages. Save your Blink for his Cheap Shot/Kidney Shot.

When a Rogue opens on you with a Garrote Silence, immediately move away and Frost Nova. This will usually prompt the Rogue to pop his Cloak of Shadows. You have five seconds to run immediately away from the Rogue (flipped camera on keybind helps here) until the Cloak wears off; don't stand still as five seconds is shorter than you think. Usually it's much easier to burst the Rogue down at this point with instants and slow than to risk getting Kicked or being the target of a Deadly Throw while trying to Polymorph the Rogue. If he uses his PvP Trinket to escape your Frost Nova, use Cone of Cold to keep him at distance until the cooldown on Frost Nova is over. Frost Mages can use their Water Elemental's Freeze ability to great effect, or simply use Cold Snap. Remember, don't panic and Blink; tank some of his hits while saving Blink for when you know the big damage is coming. Prepare for possible encounters with Stamina gear and a supply of Healing Potions.

From a different point of view, never keep your Mana Shield up, unless your health has decreased disproportionally to your mana. Using Mana Shield will quickly leave you with half health and no mana when fighting a Rogue. My advice is to take that first hit or two.

Frost Mages can kite Rogues with relative ease. Note that Sprint is on a 5 minute cooldown, and Preparation is on a 10 minute cooldown while, for a Frost Mage, your Ice Block is on a 5 minute cooldown, and Cold Snap is on a 10 minute cooldown (HINT HINT). Then again, cooldowns are not always necessary.

An easy way to combat a Rogue in fact comes down to talents. As said above PoM is very, very useful, and can make the idea of "first hit wins" incorrect. Allow me to explain: If it's at the start of a fight and you find yourself in trouble, then use it to Polymorph the Rogue. But if, let's say, you're struggling near the end of the fight, and he has approximately a few hundred/1-2k health points left, then using PoM - Pyroblast, or PoM - Fireball/Frostbolt is actually better; if you know your damage for them and feel you can finish him by using them, go ahead. I've done this quite a few times and have changed from losing to winning a duel very, very quickly.

[Arcane] medium.
[Fire] medium.
[Frost] easy-medium.

Warrior

Mages have a big advantage over Warriors. Keeping distance is about all you have to do here. Your tricks are Frostbolt, Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, and Blink - his tricks are Charge (out-of-combat only, unless they are prot speced and have the talent-improved charge then they can charge in battle and it removes all movment imparing effects), Hamstring, Intercept, and, perhaps, Shield Bash. You may have other tricks as well, depending on your race or spec, that will help in this encounter: Slow, Blast Wave, Dragon’s Breath, Escape Artist, Every Man for Himself, and Will of the Forsaken will all come into play against a Warrior.

Beware of Warriors using a combination of Hamstring and Piercing Howl/Intimidating Shout. This combo slows you to a manageable pace, then Fears you out of control, letting the Warrior bash you at his leisure. This can be countered with Ice Block, a PvP trinket, Every man for Himself, or Will of the Forsaken. Escape Artist can help, so long as you get it off before the Fear effect.

Although a lot of Gnomes completely ignore their racial ability, a Gnome Mage can easily defeat a Warrior. Escape Artist can give you the edge on a Warrior, destroying their Hamstring and Charge/Intercept stuns. This ability doesn’t share a cooldown with your trinket, allowing you superior kiting abilities against a warrior.

Warriors with exceptional life and decent resist will be a big challenge to Mages, especially Fire Mages. Spell penetration gear will be handy in this situation. Generally, Frost Mages will have an easier time against Warriors through effective kiting. For Fire Mages, your best bet is to hit the Warrior as hard as you can after you sheep him/her, blow all your cooldowns, and hope to kill him before he kills you, for Warriors can easily 2-3 shot a Mage.

Always use whatever damage absorption abilities you have. Ice Barrier is best, Mana Shield if it’s not available. A single hit from a big two-handed Warrior weapon can take out more than half your health bar, and a critical at the wrong time can kill. Some mages use Frost/Fire Ward if they notice an elemental enchantment on the Warrior’s weapon. This is often a waste of mana, but the game will mitigate the damage between the Ward and your bubble correctly.

An alternative and highly effective method for dueling Warriors as a Mage is based on preventing the common Warrior tactic of Charging. This can be achieved simply by Counterspelling a warrior when you see him coming. Counterspell has a larger range than Charge, and will put the Warrior in combat, disable his ability to Charge (thus disabling his instant rage generation unless he has improved charge), and put him at a very volatile range from which you can pelt him with magic. Virtually every Warrior expects you to Blink away from his initial charge, allowing him to switch to Berserker Stance and to immediately Intercept you, leaving you helpless to get out of the stun. In a duel you should stay very close to your Warrior opponent as the counter ticks down; he can't charge you at close range. As soon as he becomes hostile, Frost Nova him, take a couple of steps back for safety, and then sheep.

Some Warriors will use their PvP trinket to free themselves from Frost Nova, and then do an Intercept on you. This is why you saved your Blink. If he does it, Blink away, and sheep. His trinket is on cooldown, as is his Intercept; he is yours to play with. Charge up your largest crit, Fire Blast, then either Scorch, or if he manages to get close to you either spam AE or use your Frost Nova if it is back up, and repeat-- but without sheeping.

This strategy is risky against Arms spec Warriors with high DPS two-handers who may very well need only a couple of lucky crits to finish you, but is virtually guaranteed against Fury Warriors.

Beware of Warriors carrying shields. While Protection Warriors may deal less damage (and are, frankly, easier to kill), your tactics must be adjusted for such encounters. Shield Bash is a nasty spell interrupt with some damage and, potentially, a short Silence effect. Shield Slam removes a magic effect on the target, so you may lose your Arcane Intellect or other buffs. Spell Reflection allows him to reflect the next spell that hits him in the next 5 seconds back on you. The cooldown for this is only 10 seconds. A nice counter-tactic for this is to throw a Polymorph spell on the Warrior when you see the animation of the skill, which will give you several seconds of regeneration before the Warrior breaks it.

Arcane Mages should apply Slow liberally to Warriors. You should have no problem beating a sword-swinger when he’s trying to run through molasses. As soon as he Charges, cast slow, and run away; save your Frost Nova. He will most likely go Berserker then Intercept, which is very easily countered. Either Blink or Frost Nova; you've just survived both charges. Enjoy your free HK.

[Arcane] easy-medium.
[Fire] medium.
[Frost] easy (if you know what you're doing)

Priest

Priests frequently Fear you first, apply Shadow Word: Pain, and then start inflicting any other damage according to their build. Some Priests are attentive enough to dispel your buffs, but frankly, your innate buffs won't matter much against a Priest.

Killing a Priest, as against any healing class, requires surprise and burst damage. Improved Counterspell helps since it can temporarily block attempts at reshielding, fearing, and Silence. The usual sequence of events against a surprised, but full-health Priest as an Arcane-specced Mage is to start by activating Arcane Power. Follow up with Fireball or Frostbolt, depending on your build and preference, Presence of Mind, your largest nuke, improved Counterspell, Fire Blast, and Cone of Cold. Use instant-cast Arcane Explosion or Scorch until your target dies. After the first damage spell, you should be running towards the Priest to get in range for Cone of Cold.

Frost-specced Mages should exercise caution when attempting to Frost Nova a Priest. Psychic Scream is short-range, and moving in to nova a Priest can get you feared, giving him time to heal, shield, and attack. Use your Water Elemental’s ranged Freeze, move in to Frost Nova when the Priest is Silenced (or their Shadow school is Counterspelled), or try to get a Frostbite proc for your Shatter combos. If you get Feared, your course of action should be routine: Ice Block, PvP Trinket, or Racial Ability to escape ASAP.

Priest players are often prone to neglecting stamina gear, possibly due to having a Shield, Fortitude, and excellent healing spells, and this trait is the main reason surprise attacks can work. Beware Priests in non-set item damage gear; they are hard enough in healing gear because of their ability to self-shield and heal, but in damage gear, they are even more lethal without sacrificing much of their regenerative ability.

Remember, the Priest has several helpful buffs that can become YOUR helpful buffs through Spellsteal. Snagging Power Word: Shield is like winning the lottery, especially if you stack it with Ice Barrier or Mana Shield, and it leaves the Priest exposed and still under the effects of Weakened Soul. You can also steal Renew for a nice HoT or Power Word: Fortitude for some extra durability. Inner Fire and Inspiration boost your armor, but aren’t too helpful in this particular fight. If you’re lucky, you might get Inner Focus, which will reduce the mana cost and increase the critical strike chance of your next spell. Learn the icons for Priest buffs to help you determine when it may be time to use Spellsteal.

If a Priest begins the fight with a shield, and you don’t want to spend the mana to try and steal it, open with a Polymorph. If the priest doesn’t immediately use their trinket, Polymorph will give you time to wear away their shield. Remember, damage to the shield won’t break the polymorph, so don’t feel obliged to use a nuke here. Save that for when the shield is gone and polymorph breaks. Either follow up with a second Polymorph (then a Pyroblast or Arcane Blast) or head for a Shatter combo. If they DO trinket out of the first polymorph, recast and rejoice; they no longer have the trinket, but you always have your spells.

The most important part of fighting a Priest is to Counterspell the heal. Unless the Priest is shadow, the only way for him to get off a heal uninterrupted is to Fear you. It is very important that you break the fear to counter the heal, otherwise the fight has just swung massively in his favor.

For Mages, skillful use of the Ice Block is key. The most useful time to use Ice Block is when you are either Feared or have numerous DoTs and debuffs on you or both. Should the Priest get the jump on you, DoT you up, Fear you, and be about to Mind Blast, a well-timed Ice Block will negate all three attacks simultaneously.

In normal combat, the outcome is determined mostly by gear and your ability to break Fear.

In TBC, Priests who PVP are generally taking talent points in Holy and Discipline that drastically reduce the amount of damage they take. In addition, their Mana Burn can eat through your bar with heals outlasting the damage you do. Offensive sheeping to interrupt spells when Counterspell is on cooldown works if you immediately damage the Priest to prevent sheep from healing too much. Beware of Priests who are skilled enough to use Shadow Word: Death to preemptively break them out of sheep.

[Arcane] easy-medium
[Fire] medium
[Frost] medium

Warlock

Try getting close to him, or even behind him, to make his spellcasting fail. You'll want to Counterspell anything from his Shadow tree, and you'll get many chances to do that. His Fear is recastable (though it is subject to diminishing returns, and can be broken by damage), and won't heal you like Poly does. A Warlock can easily equal your damage if he's willing to sacrifice Soul Shards.

Three key things for any Mage regardless of spec will be a PvP trinket, Remove Curse and Fire Ward - these will nullify two DoTs (Immolate and Curse of Agony) and enable you to escape the worst of the Warlock's Fear.

Succubus: Seduction is a 1.5 second cast with no cooldown, and does not heal you like Poly does. If you can get a Poly off, you will get Seduced. Seduce is considered a charm effect and is subject to diminishing returns. The sole upside to this is that he can't put any DoTs on you without breaking Seduction, which puts a crimp in his damage output and reduces the risk of death-from-dots even if you kill the 'lock. The Succubus can be worth killing at times - her hp is low enough for her to be feasibly killed within the time span of a Polymorph.

Felhunter: Felhunters are the preferred Pet for PVP, due to their ability to Counterspell and Dispel Magic. You can Polymorph the Warlock, but the Felhunter will Dispel the debuff (it might be worth keeping Dampen Magic up just to provide a screen for the more useful buffs). Additionally, the Felhunter can Counterspell/Silence you. The Felhunter Counterspell and Devour Magic are on a medium cooldown timer. To counteract Spell Lock, use a weaker school of magic (i.e., Frost Mages use Fire) in an attempt to fool the Warlock into shutting down your weaker school of magic for 6 seconds. If the Warlock has put points in Master Demonologist, the Felhunter provides 10% reduction in all spell damage. You are going to need a lot of mana for a fight with a Felhunter given the big reduction in damage and dispelled debuffs you'll get, and if you don't have Ice Block or Barrier it will most likely outlast you.

Imp: This is the only Pet you should consider trying to kill, as its Fireballs interrupt your non-instant spells too often, and it goes down fast (losing Blood Pact will also knock some HP off the Warlock).

Voidwalker: For the most part, you can just ignore it. The chief danger of the Voidwalker is that the Warlock may sacrifice it giving himself up to 30 seconds to escape, heal up, or call for help. If it does get sacrificed, SPELLSTEAL. You may find it useful to Polymorph the warlock, especially if you can dispel the dots on yourself - it only lasts 30 seconds, and damage done to the shield will not break sheep unless it breaks through the shield. The shield is only a minor annoyance, and after it you are fighting a petless Warlock - just don't let him summon another. Also remember as a level 70 mage you have access to Spell Steal and can simply remove his Voidwalker shield and use it for your own protection.

Felguard: Another dangerous pet. Expect to be stunned by Intercept, which you can Blink out of. Make good use of Ice Armor to slow down his melee and movement speed, because he hits hard and fast - if this thing is pounding on you, you won't be able to cast much of anything. Don't even think about trying to kill this; they have a huge hp pool and a lot of magic resistance and will just waste your mana.

(This may have been changed recently.) If a Warlock sacrifices his Voidwalker, the shield will stop Polymorph from breaking; so, if it happens at the start of combat, you may wish to consider sheeping him. Even if he is DoTted he won't unsheep from the hits unless the Shield fails. (Of course, there is the matter of any DoTs on you; hopefully there will be only a CoA, unless you don't mind an Ice Block-Bandage combo.)

Succubus, Felhunter and Felguard will probably get you killed, while the other two will probably get the Warlock killed.

Talent spec makes an enormous difference. Frost Mages are in an excellent position to beat a Warlock. Keep Ice Barrier up, and remember to time Ice Block right. Are you Seduced with them charging up a big spell? Ice Block it just before they cast. Got an unholy number of DoTs on you? Ice Block them all away nice and early. Large waste of mana for them. Just been Feared with a large spell on the way? Ice Block it. This has got to be the #1 most useful spell for fighting Warlocks.

An awesome way to beat a Warlock is with Counterspell. As was said, Counterspelling his Shadow tree gives you a small packet of seconds to play with. This leaves you with a few options:

Take out the pet; a nice Fireball/Frostbolt will nearly kill it; possibly following up with a Fireblast or something along those lines will finish the majority of them off. This is best used versus a Voidwalker where the Warlock hasn't sacrificed it yet.
Dish out some damage; one nice Fireball on a Warlock will give you a nice bunch of health points to play with, and will probably allow you to win.
Escape; admittedly, not many people do this, but a Frost Nova - Counterspell can give you time to mount and escape or just run.

[Arcane] Hard
[Fire] Easy-Medium
[Frost] Medium

Mage

Fighting a Mage is like fighting any other caster, except you’re sure to be familiar with their tricks. Have Dampen Magic up early. Mage Armor is your best bet here, followed closely by Molten Armor for critical hits. Ice Armor is a distant third, with no helpful benefits other than increased frost resistance.

Try to determine what the Mage’s spec is early on. Look for an Ice Barrier or Water Elemental to mark a Frost Mage, Blast Wave and Dragon’s Breath mark a Fire Mage. Things like Presence of Mind and Slow are harder to detect on a potential opponent, but watch for them nonetheless, and treat the Mage using them as an Arcane Mage even though he’s probably dipping into the other trees. As soon as you know the mage’s spec, throw up the proper ward. Use Fire Ward against Arcane Mages, since they’re likely to use Fireblast and the ever-popular PoM-Pyroblast to supplement the slip-shoddy damage of the Arcane tree.

Don’t use mana shield unless you have very little life and a lot of mana. You should know by now that mages are the kings of burst damage, so it will only buy you a few seconds, at best.

If you’re Fire or Arcane specced, open with polymorph as soon as possible. If you see your opponent trying the same thing, and he’s going to beat you to the punch, use Counterspell. If you have Improved Counterspell, open with that instead of Polymorph to silence him and ensure a successful sheeping. As soon as he’s sheeped, hit him with your hardest nuke, but don’t blow Presence of Mind just yet. By the time you hit him Counterspell (if you used it) will have worn off, and he’ll either try to return the favor (and gain the upper hand) or hit you with some damage of his own. If you’re Arcane, cast Slow and let loose with your favorite nukes. You’ll be Counterspelled quickly, so be ready to switch schools or start wanding. If you’re Fire, now’s the time for some heavy damage. PoM-Pyroblast would be nice, but work with what’s best for you. Dragon’s Breath and Blast Wave can keep your opponent under control while you lay don the hurt. Don’t forget to use your damage trinkets and Arcane Power.

If you’re a Frost Mage, life is sweet. Polymorph your foe as detailed above, but don’t just blow a nuke to break it. When your opponent has been sheeped, summon your Water Elemental. This can be done beforehand, but doing so runs the risk of a defensive Elemental breaking polymorph before the proper time. Begin casting Frostbolt, and just as it leaves your fingers cast your Elemental’s Freeze ability at the feet of your opponent for an instant, risk-free Shatter combo. With proper timing, you can work an Ice Lance into that mixture. If you haven’t use Counterspell already, use it now to stop the inevitable Polymorph your opponent is now casting. Order your pet to attack, use Icy Veins and any damage trinkets, and go on the attack. Be sure to keep moving, as a well-placed Dragon’s Breath or Blast Wave by the enemy can quickly turn this encounter against you.

Don’t forget Spellsteal. If your Ice Barrier or ward of choice is on cooldown, and you can spare the mana, feel free to steal your opponent’s. Mage buffs generally won’t be much use to you, since you’ve already got them, but stealing them keeps your opponent from using them (and stolen buffs no longer override existing ones, so you won’t lose your own buffs’ durations). Ideally, the enemy Mage will have buffs from other classes, like Mark of the Wild or Power Word: Shield, that you can steal.

Fights between magi often boil down to initiative, gear, skill and spec. Proper application of Arcane spells, like Counterspell, Polymorph, and Spellsteal are key, as is a working knowledge of your own spec. Your odds of survival are highest as a Frost Mage, but never underestimate the DPS of Fire and the control of Arcane.

[Arcane] Easy-medium
[Fire] Medium
[Frost] Easy-medium

Druid

Having Dampen Magic is an obvious must against any caster class, but even more so against the Druid, so that you might actually last a while against his Moonfire. The dangers are that you can't Polymorph-lock him, you can't Frost Nova him for long, he can heal, he has instant-cast Moonfire to kill you, and he has instant-cast Travel form to run you down.

The trick is knowing how to deal with the various Druid attacks. Bear form should be considered a low threat, even with the Frenzied Regeneration, the extra hit points, and the stun, which you can Blink out of. You will significantly out-damage the bear form Druid simply by standing your ground and having Frost Armor up. The two dangerous Druid threats come from a well-equipped Feral Druid in Cat form, and any Druid engaged in chain-casting Moonfire on you. The latter tactic can be counterproductive in mass combat, because any friendly healer can spend far less mana to out-heal Moonfire spam. If you spent talent points in making your Arcane Missiles uninterruptible from damage, it may be possible to out damage some Druids engaging in this tactic with Arcane Missiles, or to just counter with Scorch. Feral Druids in Cat form are particularly dangerous if, as certain players are prone to do, you neglect your stamina gear.

Contrary to popular belief Frost Nova and Polymorph aren't completely useless against Druids. They can escape any form of movement reduction by shapeshifting; however, it can require a significant amount of mana to constantly shapeshift.

Keep in mind that the usual reason to be in normal humanoid form is to heal. If the Druid is a specced Balance or Feral, you can wait for the switch back to humanoid form, watch for the healing to start (the instant-cast heal over time won't save the Druid from impending death) and use Counterspell. If the Druid is Restoration-specced, you may have to preemptively use Improved Counterspell to stop instant heals -- some say any Mage engaging in PVP should have Improved Counterspell to Silence the target; others maintain that the usefulness of the four second global cooldown is usually overshadowed by that of room for a second tree. Use whatever burst damage you can to finish the Druid off. Careful Druids, particularly Restoration Druids, know to heal well before they become low on health. With TBC, Druids were given Cyclone as a spell which immobilizes you for 6 seconds. Typically a druid will try to Bash or Maim you then Cyclone into a large heal for them. During their heal while you are Cycloned is a good time to pop your PVP trinket; otherwise you may want to save your Blink for the Stun that you know is coming when the Druid is low on health and may want a heal.

Keep in mind he is likely to shift out of movement-impairing effects - if you're specced Frost, it is a tactic worth considering to follow up larger spells with a Rank 1 Frostbolt - talent-improved, they provide a 10 second snare on a 1 second cast with the chance to Freeze. Keep firing these whenever your Druid opponent switches into an animal form and he can't hope to keep on top of removing them.

Running a Druid OOM from shifting can be easy depending on if you have Frost talents or Slow. Every time a (level 70) Druid shapeshifts into Bear or Cat he loses 800-1000 mana. Since you have a much bigger mana pool than a Feral Druid (7000 or so), you could spam Slow or Rank 1 Frostbolt every time he switches to Bear, Cat or Travel form until he is oom and cannot shift; then you can root him or even sheep his caster form. If he cannot reliably catch you in any of his forms he is likely to Feral Charge you in Bear form in which case you can Blink away.

Depending on the Druid's talent configuration and gear quality as compared to yours, you may have even chances against him. The player with the initiative will likely win.

With a level 70 mage, it's worth remembering that a Druid's Rejuvenation, Regrowth and Lifebloom can be stolen and used to heal yourself; just watch his buffs. Lifebloom is an especially good one to steal as the chunk of health comes when it completes, in contrast to Regrowth where you only get the over-time part of the spell.

[Arcane] easy-medium (depending on spec)
[Fire] medium
[Frost] medium

Hunter

Never engage a Hunter in long-range combat in a 1 vs. 1 situation and do not try to Polymorph the Hunter or Pet. The key to victory is to close the distance as soon as possible and get into the Hunter's melee range. The combo Frost Nova --> Fire Blast --> Cone of Cold is essential and should be done immediately try to stay in his melee zone, using Arcane Explosion to nuke him down. Depending on the Mage specification there are some slight variations after the Frost Nova --> Fire Blast --> Cone of Cold combo to stay into melee range. As a Arcane Mage you can maintain melee range by using slow after the Frost Nova --> Fire Blast --> Cone of Cold combo. A Fire Mage can use Blast Wave --> Dragon's Breath after the Frost Nova --> Fire Blast --> Cone of Cold combo. Spamming instant spells like Arcane Explosion at melee range is essential to beating a Hunter. However, you should beware of Bestial Wrath and Traps.

If the Hunter's Pet is large and red, you are in trouble. It is under the effect of Bestial Wrath; it does 50 percent more damage, and you can't sheep it, you can't stick a Frost Nova under its feet, and it runs faster than you. USE ICE BLOCK!

In addition, because the duration of Ice Block is 8 seconds shorter than that of Bestial Wrath, if the hunter for some reason pops his Bestial Wrath as an opener when his pet is right next to him, you shouldn't use Ice Block as soon as possible. Instead, wait for the pet to get to you, then Blink towards the Hunter (do it ASAP if the pet is already next to you when he pops it), use some fast nukes (if the Hunter himself is large and red as well, just like his pet, don't bother using Frost Nova here, because the Hunter has specced also for The Beast Within and therefore is immune to crowd control effects just like his pet for the duration of Bestial Wrath) and use Ice Block only when the pet has reached you again. This will waste a few precious seconds from his pets enrage effect, and if you are lucky and/or mobile enough, you will evade the damage from the enraged pet altogether.

If Ice Block is on cooldown, then Mana Shield and Blink into the Hunter after an Intimidation stun-- since you know the Hunter doesn't have Scatter Shot-- and keep close to him until the Wrath wears off then slow kite him with Slow or Cone of Cold/Blast Wave.

If a Hunter is using his Traps: You don't want to step on one, unless it is a Snake Trap which you can ignore while spamming Arcane Explosion. Move away quickly (Traps have a 5 yard range) before it can activate. If you get Trapped, use your trinket; otherwise you will eat an Aimed Shot and allow the Hunter to get distance.

-Trap Note: Ninety percent of the time, the Trap is right under the hunter, or, if he is circling, in the middle of the circle. Use a strafing pattern while remaining as close to the Hunter as you can, and through the course of the fighting you may actually detect the Trap you are circling. Hunters tend to back up to get range and to attempt to Wing Clip or attack while backing up, but use that to your advantage to run faster than your opponent since both of you will be slowed.

A hunter with gear equivalent to yours will beat you if you fall into his Trap and you cannot break out. If you don't get frozen, the fight is trivial; just stay in his melee range and use your snares to keep him from gaining distance while you nuke him down with instants.

Hunter Move - Response

Scatter Shot - Wait for FD/Trap then Ice Block, if he doesn't trap and instead tries for an Aimed Shot IB while shot is in the air
Freezing Trap - Ice Block
Concussive Shot - Blink
Aspect of the Cheetah - Any damage spell.
Attacking - Nova in melee range
Pet attacking you anyway because it has leet Frost resist and Nova didn't work! - Close range with the Hunter and Mana Shield. Pet damage is trivial unless it's Enraged and your Shield can easily take a few swipes from that annoying Cat/Bat. The main idea is to minimize damage you receive from the hunter by not allowing him to get his most powerful abilities off. Don't try to cast any spells with long cast times as a Hunter will have various abilities to interrupt your cast like Scatter Shot, Silencing Shot, and Feign Death. Focus on slowing the Hunter or Freezing him so he can't get the distance he needs.

Or, you could save your trinket for the Scatter Shot/Trap and continue to be in the Hunter's melee zone.

IMPORTANT: If you are caught off guard by a Hunter who's placed a Freezing Trap, it should be noted that Ice Block and Freezing Trap have the same animation in-game. If a hunter is not spec'd for Beast Mastery it is often a smart thing (and mildly comical) for you to Ice Block out of Freezing Trap (for which there is no transition animation, so it looks as if you're still trapped). Generally, a Hunter won't realize that you've Ice Blocked and will continue to cast Aimed Shot and will proceed to get a big fat "IMMUNE". From this vantage, you can usually Blink into the Hunter's melee range (or close enough to Nova him and THEN get into his melee zone). If you've got 31 points in the Frost tree and have invested in Ice Barrier, keep it up at all times; this way if he does Scatter Shot you and gets some range on you (usually minimal) you can at least mitigate some of the damage he can do before you get back in his melee range.

Since patch 2.3, a Hunter's Arcane Shot dispels one magic buff. Thus, don't buff at long-range combat; try to get in melee range first.

Note: Up to some time after TBC was released all Hunters had an area between 5 and 8 yards called deadzone in which they could not attack neither with melee nor ranged attacks, which was largely used in combating them. However, this deadzone has been removed from the game, so any tactics that relied on abusing deadzone, have become useless.

Another way to play around with inexperienced Hunters when fighting them is to abuse line of sight. Try to hide behind a pillar or a similar object (trees won't work, he can shoot right through them) and run around it, so the hunter is on the other side of the obstacle. More often than not, a hunter will send his pet straight for you, and you can try to immobilize and/or nuke it down with instants while the Hunter tries to get a shot at you. However, this is little likely to work against experienced Hunters, because they will recall and mend their pet when they realize that it is in danger. However, even against them it can sometimes be beneficial in 1v1 situations, because if you stubbornly stay out of their LoS, they will eventually have to come for you, that way decreasing the distance you have to travel to get in their melee range.

[Arcane] Medium
[Fire] Medium
[Frost] Medium

Paladin

Keep your distance. As against any healing class, you are automatically at a disadvantage assuming the Paladin doesn't foolishly wait until he's one or two-shottable to start healing. Paladins who sacrifice mana and stamina for attack power and increased crit chances, "critadins", are fairly vulnerable to defeat, but at the same time, they may kill you even faster.

Paladins can use Blessing of Freedom or Cleanse to undo any form of movement reduction you can inflict. They have two innate ways of inhibiting movement: Hammer of Justice (which you can Blink out of), and with the advent of patch 1.9, possibly the Repentance talent at the end of the Retribution talent tree. A Paladin has two forms of invulnerability and Lay on Hands, but since patch 1.9, there is a 1-minute cooldown debuff inflicted on the beneficiary of invulnerability effects.

Most Paladins will activate Seal of Command in small-scale combat to inflict a lot of damage, which has the peculiar advantage of proccing holy damage. The proc itself can inflict damage exceeding the actual weapon damage when used in conjunction with other gear, seals and judgement effects, and it crits like melee damage rather than spell damage. There are no known innate player resistances to holy effects in the game. The danger here is that in much the same way a Shaman benefits from a Windfury proc, a Paladin can get a sudden burst of lethal damage.

Should the Paladin manage to reheal himself to full health when you are down to less than half life, attempt to resheep to escape death.

All of this combined with their high HP and plate mail (although as a Mage, plate mail will not really protect your Paladin opponent against you) makes them hard to take down. However the Mage is the probably the best DPS class in the game so, you still stand a fair chance.

They might be able to escape your snares but that doesn't mean they'll always do it, or at least not within 1–2 seconds. Frost Nova can still be useful, and the same goes for Polymorph. How you fight depends on your build; just keep your distance and do as much damage as you can. However try to use up your instacast spells at the beginning so their cooldown wears off. You'll need them for when the Paladin heals. When he does heal, Counterspell it. As all Paladin spells are of the Holy Class, if you do interrupt his heal, that’s 10 seconds where he can do nothing except auto attack you. That's 10 seconds for you to do all the burst damage you can, be it Fire Blast, Cone of Cold, Blast Wave, or anything else that hurts him.

If you have Imp. CP Talent then it'll silence him for 4 seconds, but in this case, interrupting the heal is much better.

The key to winning, and this also applies to any healers, is hitting harder (with an exceptional amount of +damage and crit gear) than their heals. Expect spell resistance due to their aura combined with gear. You may want to consider resorting to AM or your secondary school if they have decked themselves out in full resist gear.

You may often hear "You can't kite a Paladin." While it is true you cannot consistently slow them, as said you can delay them for the time it takes them to cast Cleanse. You may also speed yourself up to make them relatively slower. Nifty Stopwatch goes far towards this, and your boots should be enchanted with run speed (avoiding even a single hit beats out +70 hp). Unlike Warriors, who can use Intercept as often as you can Blink, Paladins cannot HoJ as often as you can Blink, and Repentance breaks on hit.

A note on Shields: DS will most likely be used to break sheep, or to heal. Just turn tail and Blink and run until the shield is gone, then resheep, Bandage/Evocate, and start fighting again. Save AP (if you have it) until after the DS. If you by chance see their secondary shield, Blessing of Protection, relax; the shield prevents them from attacking while it is up, and from DSing until 1 minute after it has been cast. The Blessing of Protection shield also only prevents Physical damage being inflicted to them, so Magic spells will still damage them. And Mana Shield (as of patch 2.0.6) absorbs Magic damage as well. So if you were planning to run up and melee him, that's as useless now as before; stick with your class description and nuke him.

In short, keep your cool, and your distance, resheep if things start to look bad, and you should have no problem against any Paladin whose gear doesn't totally outclass yours.

[Arcane] Medium
[Fire] Medium
[Frost] Medium

Shaman

Shaman were arguably one of the most powerful classes in individual combat, although recent bugs and nerfs have diminished that severely. They have a balance of healing, melee power, and spell damage. Shaman are basically weak warriors, priests and mages, all in one. Their melee is limited to auto-attack, hoping for a Windfury proc and possibly Stormstrike, which requires them to invest 31 points in enhancement. Stormstrike causes weapon damage (the totaled damage from both weapons if they are dual wielding), has a chance to allow Windfury and Flurry to proc and causes you to take an extra 20% damage from the next 2 Nature damage based spells you are hit with. Against an Enhancement Shaman, it is best to immobilize him using Frost Novas and slowing spells to get range then blasting him down before he can heal.

Elemental Shaman will generally use Lightning Bolts to whittle down your health, using Nature's Swiftness to instantly heal themselves or to throw another Lightning Bolt at you generating incredible burst damage. Elemental Shaman will generally not heal themselves and will run OOM casting spells very fast so it is a good idea to whittle down their health as fast as possible while interrupting some of their longer casting spells with Counterspell.

The Shaman's Shock spell line is very strong, since it's on a 6-second (5 seconds with talents) cooldown, inflicting serious damage and having a detrimental effect. There are several downsides to this, however. First, mana efficiency. Shaman generally don't have a large mana pool, and their spells are very inefficient. They have no way to regenerate mana quickly (minus potions), and generally have terrible mana regeneration via spirit (unlike Mages, who need to concentrate on only 3 stats, Shamans need all 5 to be effective). Secondly, Shocks represent a high part of the Shaman's DPS, but due to the fact that most of the Shaman's utility is tied to them, they cannot be spammed as you would any other damage spell.

Shaman Totems are a unique class ability. Shaman can plant Totems, which consume valuable attacks to counter while continuing to benefit the Shaman unattended. Grounding Totems are very potent, being able to absorb most spells although a lot of bugs involved mean that some might get through. It can absorb more than one spell if they have travel time (such as a Fireball, and a PoM-Pyroblast). The shaman also have both frost and fire resistance totems which they will most surely use, often at the same time. The shaman have no resistances for arcane however, and grounding totem does nothing against frost novas.

Generally speaking, you'll want to keep your distance, 20 or more yards if possible (at this range, the Shaman loses his ability to interrupt your spells, and is left with a rather less effective ranged Lightning spell). Chain Lightning is generally a 2.5 second cast, whereas a normal Lightning Bolt is 3 second cast. If you force the Shaman to use these spells, it's assumed that you have already won the fight.(Update: lightning spells are the main damage source of an Elemental Shaman and their Lightning Bolt is 2 second cast now, with significant spell damage dealing as much as a Mage's Frostbolt. Although it has no snare effect, the faster cast time means that an Elemental Shaman can sometimes equal the DPS of a Mage at long range.) Normally Shaman will attempt to close to within melee range. Once there, they can interrupt any non-instant spell every 5 or 6 seconds, depending on talent build, not to mention the constant interruption from melee damage. Keep in mind that the Earth Shock only interrupts one school, so you can quickly switch to another.

So how do you beat a Shaman?

First, control. A successful Polymorph on a Shaman is almost half the battle, as the Shaman has no way to remove that except by using a PVP trinket. In addition to the really short range of effectiveness of his spells, and the long range of the Mage, you can remove a large part of his health before he can do anything.

Two words: Fast Spells. Grounding Totems eat a single spell. Earth Shock eats a single spell, and knocks out the Tree, so hopefully that was a Scorch rather than a Fireball that you just threw into the Totem, and hopefully you only invested 1.4 seconds, instead of 2.4 or even 2.9 seconds into that Earth-Shocked nuke, and hopefully it wasn't your only good Tree. Fireball Mages have FAR more trouble with Shaman than those that Scorch. You can also Wand the Totem, or cast Rank 1 Arcane Missiles. The first 'Missile' that hits the Shaman will destroy the Totem. The best spell for dealing with Totems in TBC has proven to be Ice Lance since it is instant cast with no cooldown and minimal mana cost. Generally before you cast any large spell (i.e., PoM Pyro) make sure you preface it with an Ice Lance to make sure your Shaman opponent has no Grounding Totem up. Similarly, Ice Lance any Frost/Fire Resistance Totems and any Windfury Totems that you see once a Shaman is sheeped.

The greatest weapon in your arsenal is probably Counterspell. Every Shamanic spell (except Frost and Flame Shock, as well as Frost and Fire Totems, which are pretty useless against you) is Nature-based. No more healing, no more Lightning, no more Earth Shock, no more Grounding Totem, no more Earthbind Totem... nothing. In 10 seconds, any Mage with Counterspell should kill any Shaman that's not ?? to him at that point.

A smart Shaman will only cast a heal if the Grounding Totem is up.

A Restoration Shaman will be able to out-heal your damage by spamming Lesser Healing Wave with a Mana Totem and Earth Shield up. Your best bet is either to save some burst damage and the Counterspell for when a lucky crit gets his health low, or to sheep and try to burst him down with a big spell without getting interrupted then Counterspelling his heal to win.

Improved Counterspell will Silence the Shaman no matter what is up. The Grounding Totem will absorb the initial Counterspell, but the Improved part will go through, Silencing it. This will allow you to Polymorph him, and subsequently destroy him.

Frost Nova and Blink allow you to get out of range (keep in mind, shocks have a 20 yard range only), and unleash hell from far away. By the time the Shaman gets in range, he'll be dead.

Any Shock you resist essentially means that you get a huge window in which the Shaman can only walk and auto-attack.

Any decent Shaman will Purge off your buffs at the earliest opportunity. This means that Ice Barrier and Mana Shield will often not be available, nor will Mage Armor. One thing to note, though: Purge gets resisted a LOT, so you might have the Shaman try it on you several times before it works. This gives you time, and will slowly deplete the Shaman's mana pool.

Some PvP Shaman will attempt a strategy which revolves around Windfury Proc + Stormstrike + Nature Damage Spell (usually Earth Shock), and which usually results in instant death for the target before they can react. If you see a Shaman with a 2-Handed Axe or Mace, it's very likely he'll be aiming to use this combo on you, so make sure you don't let him anywhere near you under any circumstance.

[Arcane] Easy if enhance, Medium else.
[Fire] Medium
[Frost] Medium

Death Knight

Deathknights in many ways are similar to warriors; they do an incredible amount of melee damage and can tear apart a mage in a matter of seconds. Therefor it is imperative that you keep distance away from the deathknight. Save your blink for after they deathgrip you and be prepared to switch magic schools when the deathknight locks you out of one. It is recommended to start out with an off-spec tree until getting silenced (ie: start with fire if you are frost until fire is silenced). It is advisable to keep up frost ward to help against the DK's snares.If they channels army of dead,try to use a quick spell(like ice lance) or a counterspell to interrupt the channeling.

Watch for their magic shields and destroy any pets that come in. Be especially wary of the flying gargoyle as it will tear you apart in seconds.

Counterspell can be effective, but there are very few "casting" spells the DK will use, so timing may be very difficult.

Be wary of their heals, primarily bloodworms, which can be killed in a quick AoE, like arcane nova. The Deathknight has very few range spells that deal any significant damage, so if you can keep away, the match should be yours.

Hunter PvP guide

2009-06-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

The Role of Hunters in Arena

The role and viability of the Hunter class in Arena is often contested amongst the class community, as between Beast Mastery and Marksmanship Hunters, there is a very large difference in play style. As a Beast Mastery Hunter, your role will be to put out as much damage as possible paying heed to little else, as a Beast Mastery Hunter requires less support from teammates. Your pet will be a source of damage with this spec and a very underestimated one. This style is generally preferred on teams without a healer, or 'gib' or 'rush down' teams. BM however does suffer the longer the match progresses so Marksmanship Hunters are preferred on 'outlast' teams.

The Marksman's role is one of utility, rather than oppressive damage. As a Marksman, you will be expected to keep melee damage classes off your healer or more fragile team members with Wing Clip , drain the enemy healer's mana with Viper Sting and keep one of the enemy players controlled with Freezing Trap. In many cases, all of these things are expected of you at once.

These styles have met with differing levels of success, but Marksmanship Hunters are generally more successful in higher level brackets while Beast Mastery Hunters are better against more unorthodox teams usually encountered in lower level brackets. This is however a generalization and there are exceptions to both.

If you are a Marksmanship Hunter, many of your fights will be long, since your most popular team setups will be drain teams. Be patient, and don't try to rush the game or rush the burst. A typical Marksmanship hunter team game can take anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes. Although your spells are cheap, you don't have a large mana pool, so it is very important for you not only to gem and enchant your gear to make up for this shortcoming, but also that you use your skills economically. If possible try to save Arcane Shot to dispel in your shot rotation, and DPS a target nice and easy while it or the opposing team's healer lose their mana.

Survival hunters are perfect for countering warriors, rogues, enhancement shamans or other hunters. With a diverse arsenal to immobilize (Improved Wing Clip, Counterattack, Entrapment for example), high avoidance (Deterrence, Deflection (Hunter), and for maximum effect, go for the Beastmaster talent Improved Aspect of the Monkey!) and 20% extra crit on Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite, it's possible to surprise your melee opponents with a barrage of alternating melee crits and short range shots while they are immobilized. Wyvern Sting and Readiness are excellent arena weapons and give the hunter that much more CC. The downside to a survival build is the decreased ranged damage output and because of that, less viability versus casters. Survival should be combined with additional marksmanship talents and Improved Aspect for the Monkey to retain its diversity.

Work on synergy with your team, and practice good decision making on utilizing your skills. For example, if you fight a team with no defensive dispeller like a priest or a paladin, it may be a better idea to Freezing Trap a target rather than kiting with Frost Trap. You could set this up by using Scatter Shot (if specced Marksman) or Intimidation (if specced Beast Mastery) on your intended trap target, laying it under him and then forcing him into the CC, and it can be followed up by an Entangling Roots, Fear, Polymorph, Blind, etc depending who you run with. Coordination with your team is vital to success.

If possible, flag warriors in combat from max range with a quick attack like Arcane Shot to deny them the ability to Charge.

The cast time for auto shot is 0.5 seconds, so as long as you stop moving 0.5 sec before your next shot, it will go off on time. A swing/cast timer like Quartz is extremely useful for getting the timing right. A slower weapon allows more movement.

As you are a ranged class, melee combat should always be your last resort. Melee is an entirely impractical style of fighting for hunters. Only three abilities besides Wing Clip are available to the class: Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite, and Counterattack (Only available with deep Survival). It is not recommended to use anything but Wing Clip when engaged in melee, since Raptor Strike is based on next attack swing, Mongoose Bite is situational and Wing Clip is spammable, meaning you can keep stacking it and hope for an Improved Wing Clip proc (Survival tree talent) to get away.

Pillars work both ways. Try to stick by them and duck out whenever ranged target you, or melee turn their attentions to you so they can Intercept or Shadowstep. Being comfortable working around pillars is crucial for survival as a Hunter in any bracket or level of play.

Protect your Viper Sting. It is one of the Hunter's most important tools in Arena. If you are draining a druid, following up a Viper Sting immediately with a Silencing Shot if you are a Marksman or Intimidation if you are a Beast Master, so the first few ticks are guaranteed protection from Abolish Poison. Conversely if your intended drain is something else like a mage, be sure to immediately silence or stun anyone on the mage's team who can dispel the sting. Be sure to work with any other crowd controllers on your team to chain CC effects to keep the sting up as long as possible.

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Use high points such as hills or buildings as firing locations. Any place that is hard to reach is perfect. High slopes in Alterac Valley and cliffs in Nagrand for instance. Also use bushes and trees as cover, making yourself harder to pin point.

There are areas where you can shoot through the terrain, such as a hill. Paladins, rogues, and others who aren't ranged and can't charge/intercept you have little to counter this with, since they can't hit a button to find you.

You can lay traps during combat (as of Patch 2.0.1). The best use of this is to drop a freezing trap, then run through it. Your opponent will likely follow. Once frozen (be sure your pet is not attacking or it will break the freeze), get as much distance as possible and load up an Aimed Shot/Arcane Shot combo. Possibly a Concussive Shot to slow them and/or if they are close, a Scatter Shot and then rinse and repeat.

The most effective abilities in the battlegrounds are those that have little to no casting time. Arcane Shot, Multi Shot (despite a 0.5 second delay), and Concussive Shot will be your best friends in the battlegrounds. Aimed Shot can still be effective (especially when you want to really put the finishing touch on an enemy) but pick your timing: any enemy can close the distance during the Aimed Shot casting time. Never sacrifice range by getting greedy and looking for the killing blow. Hunters are very powerful and versatile but require more than a button-mashing approach. Assessing the situation before you engage will always net better results for any class but no class benefits more from smart decisions than hunters.

Steady Shot is a powerful PvE tool but its usefulness is limited in PvP. As Steady Shot has a 1.5 second casting time, it should only be used when you are not the target of any attackers. It is during this time that the Hunter should take advantage of its mana efficient, yet surprisingly devastating damage output.

For the Eye of the Storm battleground, Frost Trap is a must. On the tight passageways one well-placed frost trap can effectively cripple an enemy's advance. In addition, using Flare in tight passageways like the two eastern and western bridges as well as the Flag spot is great against rogues as well as stealthed Feral druids.

Try to always keep your Insignia of the Alliance/Horde up, it will remove all crowd control effects from you when used. This is always useful when the enemy is in your dead zone.

Remember that as of Patch 2.3.0, you no longer have a dead zone. Classes with rooting abilities such as Mages and Druids may be unaware of this and attempt to exploit it.

Rogue

You will mostly need the following skills:
Flare, Track Hidden, Hunter's Mark, Freezing Trap, Concussive Shot, Wing Clip, Feign Death, Aimed Shot, and sometimes Serpent Sting and Scorpid Sting!

Place a Freezing Trap and stand on it.
Turn Track Hidden on and try to use Hunter's Mark on the Rogue before he fades away.
If you did not have the chance to, simply use your Flare on the last place he was. This way even if the Rogue tries to disarm your trap you have a 100% chance to spot him and he'll have no choice but attack you and get close to you, triggering the trap.
When he triggers the Freezing Trap just step back and place another Freezing Trap. Note that nothing gets on a rogue's nerves like immobilizing and slowing effects since speed is the source of their power.
Flare the trapped Rogue quickly and fire a Aimed Shot and then use Concussive Shot to slow him, then Arcane Shot for some quick extra damage and repeat until the Rogue is dead.

As of Patch 2.01 Arcane Shot and Aimed Shot are on separate timers. Previously you could not use arcane shot right after Aimed Shot as they were on the same cooldown.

If the Rogue manages to comes close to you, Wing Clip and run away at all costs. Although there are times when it is unavoidable, (such as if the Rogue surprises you from stealth, and you are in a confined space) melee combat is generally to be avoided with Rogues due to their speed and their ability to create stunlocks.

If you are survival specialized, it is possible to beat a rogue in nearly melee combat. Simply spam wing clip for an extra +40 DPS and the chance to immobilize, when you do, jump back and aimed shot, or use the 3 seconds of the time casting aimed shot to get greater distant and Arcane shot>Concussive Shot>Scorpid Sting/Serpent Sting>Multi Shot, rinse and repeat. This angers the Rogue - a lot.

Changing Aspects during that time (from Aspect of the Hawk to Aspect of the Cheetah) is not very wise if you do not know what are you doing. I suggest not doing that until you really know when to do that. Timing is everything. Aspect of the Monkey is ideal if the Rogue approaches you. If your time permits, changing from Aspect of the Monkey to Aspect of the Hawk for the duration of your mez-breaking Aimed Shot might be worth it.
If you are skilled enough you can use your pet and Scatter Shot but your pet must NOT be attacking the target otherwise the mez effect will be broken.
If you get jumped by a Rogue (such as being sapped and your pet is killed), use Feign Death immediately and repeat the same things as listed above. Freezing Trap and so on ...
Feign Death does not forcibly cancel combat mode, the only way combat is exited is if they stop attacking both you and your pet. So it would be a rare occasion where Feign Death allows you to exit combat mode in a PvP engagement. However, if you're very quick and are sure to have your pet follow you when you feign, you can freeze a rogue filleting you with an Eskhandar's set proc.
If the Rogue manages to get the first hit on you, or if you are lucky/skilled enough to see him before he gets the first hit use Scatter Shot>Lay a Freezing Trap right under his feet, and do what it says above.

Feign death does forcibly cancel combat mode, you must not have your pet out for it to work every time however. If I have my pet out for caster killing and I see a rogue stealth, the first thing I do is drop a Freezing Trap on him, then flare the Freezing trap, then dismiss my pet. Pets are more of a pain then they are a use vs a rogue. Some rogues will expect this, so try to distract them a little, and don't move in a circle around your trap-A LOT of rogues know not to go into the middle. Try to distract them with your pet, with bestial wrath, then drop the trap while he is preoccupied with the huge, red version of your pet.

A hunter can kite almost any class with talents in Hawk Eye. The trick is to stay as far away as possible and try to slow them down, a warlock will for instance be out of range for DoTs if you are at 40yd range.

NOTE: Since patch 2.01, hunters can now lay freezing traps while in combat. This negates the need to feign death in order to lay freezing traps. Additionally, it seems that pets will now automatically cease attacking a target that is frozen; however, normal guidelines, such as being sure that the target isn't DoTed and that your auto attack is off, still apply.

You can DoT the Rogue with Serpent Sting or an Immolation Trap keeping him from effectively staying stealthed if he vanishes or goes out of combat to restealth. This works best in groups where your freeze traps aren't the focus and you can help the team by keeping the rogue from opening on someone else, or in conjunction with freeze traps when you get the Rogue at distance and can force him to close it unstealthed. He may even not expect a freeze because of the DoT, and before he closes in going out of range, simply remember to apply Scorpid Sting to remove the DoT, allowing a safe freeze and acting as a safeguard if it does become a close quarters fight if the trap is resisted or breaks.

Additional Notes

Crippling Poison is your bane. A successful proc will essentially make this battle next to impossible to win since you will be slowed to 30% of your movement speed for the next 12 seconds, taking away your ability to kite. It's still possible to win if you're survival specced, but it will be highly difficult. Dwarven hunters can counter this with Stoneform (Racial Ability), dispelling any poison, bleed, or disease effects. Insignia of the Horde/Alliance also removes the poison. However, it is recommended that it should only be used after they land a Kidney Shot on you as they can poison you again if you're unlucky attempting to escape the deadzone.

Do not use Aspect of the Cheetah if the Rogue you are fighting against is quick and agile. Aspect of the Cheetah should never be on if you aren't moving or kiting at all, as getting jumped by a Rogue means you'll become instantly dazed for 4 seconds and that's another advantage for the Rogue. More likely than not the Rogue will use a ranged attack to daze you. Some may also use a DoT effect but as of patch 1.9 this does not apply the daze effect. Deadly Throw also reduces your chances of a successful kite.

Rogues that do not use Crippling Poison and don't get the jump on you are relatively easy since you can normally kite them to death. Rogues that do get the jump on you can use abilities like Ambush and Backstab to take away most of your health in one hit (unless you're quick to move out).

Rogues can Sprint once a battle (5 minute cooldown) for 15 seconds so they CAN close the gap at least once a battle. Improved Sprint only removes all movement impairing effects when activated, but doesn't provide immunity to them.

As of a recent patch you are no longer able to feign death during a duel to break combat and lay another Freezing trap. (but this is not a problem since patch 2.01, see above).

Subtlety specced rogues can use Preparation to permit an additional vanish and sprint. In addition, they may also have Premeditation, which instantly adds combo points. These will normally be used to stunlock you.

Freezing Trap has a 2 second arming time.

If the rogue is 66 or above it has Cloak of Shadows which will when used most likely make it resist your Freezing Trap.

It may be better to have the trap ready for use instead of using it in the middle of the flare, many rogues use Cloak of Shadows before entering flare to prevent getting trapped.

If you are Marksmanship specced Scatter Shot + Freezing Trap is a good combination, since the rogue won't have time to use Cloak of Shadows (if the rogue see you laying a trap down it will use Cloak of Shadows - at least a good one. This trick prevents that).

Rogues above level 64 have Deadly Throw which can be used from 8-30 yd range and slows your movement speed by 50% - although this ability requires at least one combo point.

If this happens while you have traps or eventually Scatter Shot on cooldown I suggest that you use Deterrence if Survival specced or Bestial Wrath if Beastmastery specced, and after Deterrence/Bestial Wrath use Wing Clip, get in range and kite.

Always be sure to have Flare prepared incase the rogue uses Vanish.

Another way of killing a rogue is the use of Snake Trap. First, it puts on the rogue the same Crippling poison they use on us, and second, it puts a DoT on the rogue, preventing a vanish. You can kite the rogue for 12 safe seconds of Crippling poison. Note that it eats up the cooldown of a Freezing trap, and a skillful Subtlety rogue can Cloak of Shadow, Vanish, Shadowstep in your back and stunlock you. Be ready to flare and scatter shot him if you have that skill. Remember that, as of a recent patch, Rogues no longer have to be in stealth to use Shadowstep.

Warrior

The king of the Arena, but an extremely limited brick on legs anywhere outside it. The typical strategy for fighting any warrior is to kite. Warriors have much higher damage mitigation than a Hunter, but on the plus side, they have no ranged capabilities whatsoever, which thus means that ensuring that they don't touch you is your main priority. If you have the jump on the warrior normally you would follow this technique. Charge and Intercept have a maximum of only 25 yards range(30 with Glyph of Charge), which is just 11 yards lesser than our maximum shooting range. A skilled Warrior will attempt to make liberal use of Intercept, but as long as you are constantly above 30 yards from the warrior, it shouldn't be too difficult at all.

The Warrior is the natural rival of the Survival Hunter; Warriors also have a tendency to view themselves as being the greatest overall class in the game, and so killing one successfully (especially if you can do so with a substantial amount of the fight spent in semi-melee) can help demonstrate how they are mistaken in that belief.

Lay Freezing Trap
Aimed Shot (or whatever other high damage shot you can do)
Concussive Shot
Multi-Shot
When he hits your Freezing Trap, run and then turn around to do another Aimed Shot, then send pet, Concussive Shot, Serpent Sting, and Auto Shoot.
When he reaches you, Wing Clip him and then start kiting.

Good Warriors will Hamstring you and keep it on you forcing you to stay within range. Note that it isn't affected by Diminishing returns.

If you want to use Scatter Shot, be wary of using Serpent Sting and watch your pet since both will break the already short mez effect early. Although Berserker Rage makes the Warrior immune to Fear and Incapacitate effects, it doesn't classify Scatter Shot to be a Incapactitate effect.

Be wary of Charge and Intercept. Intercept has a 30 second cooldown, which can be reduced to 20 seconds with their Improved Intercept talent (Fury warriors), and can be further reduced by 5 seconds with the 4 piece set bonus from Gladiator's Battlegear. Protection and Arms warriors can use Charge even while in combat , though Arms warrior has a 5 seconds longer cooldown as a trade for this ability. On the other hand , Protection warrior's Charge and Intercept will also remove any movement impairing effects from him , which makes him a really hard target to kite , combined with his high damage mitigation , and the ability to stun you for a long time (if you are not Beast Mastery speced) makes him the hardest warrior to beat as a hunter.

Alternate Strategy

Lay Frost/Freezing Trap
Concussive Shot
Send Pet
Keep running around, doing Shots and Serpent/Scorpid Sting (don't forget Aimed Shot)

Keep away from the warrior at all costs - if he manages to stun, he'll melee you to death.

Watch the Warrior - if the Concussive Shot debuffs, reapply it as soon as possible, then another Concussive or hit him with a Wing Clip.

If you have exceptionally high Stamina, Dodge percentage, (improved Aspect of the Monkey is a must) a strong pet, a powerful weapon, and are daring, it *is* possible for Hunters to successfully kill Warriors in melee combat , if he is not Protection speced; it should generally be avoided, however, as Warriors with Improved Overpower can be devastating. Note that, with a high enough dodge and something like Deterrence, you can actually survive quite well in melee with a Warrior; while his Overpowers might hurt you significantly, don't forget that most of the rest of his normal attacks will be dodged or be parried. Without this high Dodge/Parry percentage (such as on a Marksmanship Hunter), it's highly recommend that you avoid meleeing a Warrior as much as possible. However, if you can successfully beat a Warrior melee, the psychological effect will be as devastating for him as it is positive for you.

If you're Beast Mastery specced and have Bestial Wrath and The Beast Within, fighting against Warriors shouldn't be difficult at all. Once activated, nothing stops you from kiting them if you're immune to their Hamstring, Intercept, Piercing Howl and even Intimidating Shout. 18 seconds should be just enough.

Also keep in mind that Scorpid Sting is excellent against fury warriors! Dual Wielding Warriors already have a large chance to miss, another 5% just helps you that much more.

Priest

Priest killing is simple enough.
Begin with aimed shot or another high damage shot. Keep your pet on the priest to keep him in combat and distracted. Make sure you stay at a safe distance and keep using Viper Sting to continuously drain mana. Once mana is out of the way, just keep kiting. Without mana the priest is pretty much hopeless against you. Even if they try to melee you they have no chance against you without their spells. Keep in mind however that they need only a small amount of mana to cause some damage so keep the viper sting active. It may also help to run around in circles whilst draining their mana as they will have a harder time hitting you with their spells.

I would recommend not closing with a Priest to fight them, if they come close they may be trying to use psychic scream. Also bear in mind that Mind Flay has a short range (~20 yards, depending on talents) so you may be able to kite out of range of that, only eating mind blasts.

NB: Hunter vs Priest combat can sometimes be very gear dependent, since if you meet a well equipped shadowpriest he can quite easily down you fast with SW:Pain and mindblast/mindflay if you're not careful. Its advised to use scatter and feign death/trap when you get the chance so you can deal heavy dmg to him before he can start chewing down your health. Tapping their mana won't be effective if they get your health down 50-70% before you can start nuking them back.

Quick Tip: A smart priest may burn off your mana with their annoying Mana Burn spell, but don't let that get to you. The best counter to that particular ability is Aspect of the Viper and a good old Silencing Shot. If you are not a Marks Hunter, then the thing to do is trap.

Warlock

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Warlocks can be very dangerous opponents, their level of danger is reflected by which pet they have out. They will most certainly apply a Curse as well as other DoT spells which will inflict a lot of damage to you. Your pet will be a target of these as well. Be warned that Warlocks have a Fear spell and will use it on your pet to remove it from the battle. If you have the talent Bestial Wrath it would be a good idea to activate it before the pet can be feared. Also a hit with Intimidation just before Bestial Wrath falls will help. You should use Concussive Shot to allow you to keep the Warlock out of your dead zone. As always a Freezing Trap is very useful to keep the warlock or his pet at range. The bulk of a Warlock's damage is Shadow based but they have Fire based spells as well.

The Survival talent Wyvern Sting can be exceptionally useful against Warlocks, as it is an effective pre-emptive counter to the initial use of Fear. Use it as an opener, and if you are successful, the Warlock will be asleep for 12 seconds. You then have the option of an Aimed/Arcane/Multi crit combo if you have 20 points in Marks, or rapid dual wield pet-assisted melee with Blood Fury/Berserking (if you're Horde), and an Immolation trap otherwise, (an Immolation trap plus Wyvern Sting will give you 1500 DoT) which can work very well due to a 'lock's comparative lack of armor. Warlocks tend to expect Hunters to both kite and be afraid of them; the initial use of a spell they generally won't have heard of (Wyvern Sting), followed by a barrage of rapid fire melee has been known to surprise them sufficiently that they are uncertain how to react. While they're wondering what to do, you can finish cutting them up.

Destruction 'locks can easily be primarily fire hoping for soulfire crits and immolate and conflagrate. Most of all watch out for a start of battle death coil, it may waste the healing effect but gives them time to fear pet and seduce you. Be aware that some warlocks may try to close to your dead zone and use howl of terror, an area of effect fear.

How to deal with Warlock pets.

If they have the Imp out kill it first as it can be both a source of heavy damage to you or mana to the warlock. It has very little health and will go down quickly.

Send your pet to attack the warlock while you take out the imp quickly. The pet will help stop the warlock from casting non-instant spells. This can be very helpful especially if they are casting a long move like soulfire.

If they have a Succubus out don't let it get close or else you may find yourself Seduced while they try to kill your pet.

The Succubus can seduce at a good range. They are often invisible, making the warlock look petless. If you rush in foolishly believing that, you'll be defeated quickly. Seduce is a 1.5 or 2 sec cast and will probably interrupt something like aimed shot. Meanwhile the warlock will be fearing your pet. Some warlocks follow up a seduce with high damage moves, a common series is soulfire -> immolate -> conflagrate -> shadow burn, followed up by another seduce.

A Felhunter is not much of a threat provided you don't attack it in melee; as you will be inflicted with Tainted Blood which reduces your attack power.

A Voidwalker's damage can essentially be ignored and it does not have any special powers that function in PvP, however a warlock with a Voidwalker in a PvP setting is probably planning to sacrifice it. A voidwalker sacrifice gives the warlock a shield that is roughly twice as powerful as that of a priest. If you're facing a warlock with a voidwalker out, try to do as much damage as quickly as possible so you might kill them before they sacrifice. Using a DoT against a warlock is always a good idea because it will continue to damage them while you are feared.

With the addition of Burning Crusade a Felguard (Warlock pet) is now a prime Warlock pet to watch out for. They can do significant damage if left alone, and have an intercept stun which can stop you from getting into firing distance. The best course of action for them is to lay down a freezing or frost trap (freezing more effective to stop the intercept) and stay away from it. If the Warlock is distracted, killing the Felguard will actually significantly lower their damage and fighting capabilities in general since demonology draws much of its strength from the pet. If the Warlock's health is low enough then a simple Feign Death to drop aggro is quite useful.

An Infernal is not a normal pet. It will turn on the Warlock after 5 minutes of play. As such do not be distracted by it and instead either kill the Warlock or ensure that the 5 minutes elapse. But note that s/he can try to re-enslave it.

A general tip for all pet-foes a hunter encounters in PvP: Use Feign death, the pet will deaggro you, and some less experienced Warlocks might not think to send their pets back, or are too busy casting damage spells to resend

The Beast Within is probably one of the best Warlock counters in the game. Without their myriad of CC options, a Warlock can safely be brought low by your powerful bow shots or melee swipes. It's important that you kill the Warlock as fast as possible when using TBW, because you will be at a significant disadvantage once it wears off.

If a Warlock engages you at a close range, it's important to get away quickly. A skilled Warlock, especially with correct talents, can Drain Tank you and effectively drain your health to keep themselves alive, all the while killing you slowly with their DoTs.

Mage

While a competent Frost specced Mage can be a problem, they are rare. An important point to remember is that a Mage ideally wants range in which to operate to an even greater extent than a Hunter, because unlike a Hunter, a Mage has no melee component whatsoever. Because of this, although the advice given against a Warrior was to kite, the opposite applies here. If you can get close, apply Wing Clip, and engage in rapid melee, you will probably kill most Mages very quickly.

If you're lucky and get an Aimed Shot crit, you may kill or nearly kill a Mage in one hit. Especially at low levels, some inexperienced mages run around with very little stamina gear. This is a good indication that you are fighting a sub-par player.
Viper Sting may seem a wise choice against mages, but mages have a VERY large mana pool and while Viper Sting will hurt mages in the long run, Mages don't need much time to kill you. Mages have a high rate of mana regeneration, as well as mana gems they can consume if they run low on mana. Plus, the Viper Sting costs you a lot of mana. Due to the mage's low armor and health, it is wiser to go with the Serpent Sting, as it is likely their health will run out before their mana. Survival hunters can start the fight with Wyvern sting, then used Aimed Shot while the mage is asleep (alternative to freezing trap).

Mages can Blink over traps, and use Ice Block to get out of a Freezing Trap; it might be wiser to use an Immolation Trap - the resulting damage is quite a lot, considering the usually low HP of any Mage.
Mages can root the Hunter through Frost Nova and nuke the Hunter from the Hunter's dead zone.NOTE: The dead-zone for Hunters was removed. When that happens, use your Scatter Shot and/or your Insignia of the Alliance/Horde and get away. If you are specced for Beast Mastery you can also use The Beast Within to escape. Do not be misled by the Pet talent Avoidance, for while it will reduce AOE damage taken, it will NOT help the pet resist Frost Nova. If you and your pet are helplessly stuck in Frost Nova you can try to lay a freezing trap near the mage if he is close enough, or use Volley just to do any damage...
Mages will likely Polymorph you into a sheep while they work on your pet or vice-versa. Unless he uses it as an opener to be followed up with Pyroblast, if he is silly enough to sheep you mid-fight, thank him. He's most likely just given you all of your health back.
If you are a Beast Mastery skilled hunter, Mages are ridiculously easy targets. Attack with your pet, activate Intimidation, activate Rage, give him an Aimed Shot and a Serpent Sting to be sure, and look for another target. Pretty much the only thing he can use to survive is his Ice Block, and even then he'll be at a great disadvantage.
It can be a good idea to drop a damage dealing trap at the feet of a mage in Ice Block. Snake Trap can prove particularly effective if the mage fails to Blink fast enough out of danger.
Another trick that you can do against mage's Ice Block is to run 20 yards in the direction he is facing and drop a Freezing trap - many mages will blink out of Ice Block to Nova\Cone of Cold you.

Druid

NOTE: The dead-zone for Hunters has been removed, disregard any information mentioning the dead-zone, as it's no longer an issue
If you get the drop on them, an Aimed Shot is your best bet, followed quickly by Concussive Shot to keep them from getting inside your dead zone.
Frost Trap can slow them down, enabling you to get back into range.
They will root you and attempt to get inside your dead zone. There are some potions and a few items which you can use to negate this effect but do not count on them.
The talent Intimidation from the Beast Mastery talent tree can be used to stun to get range. Best used when they attempt to heal themselves.
Scorpid Sting is useful while they are in animal form as they have to shift to clear it. This can help burn up their mana.
Viper Sting on Druids is risky due to their instant cast Abolish Poison.

-Note, you can still drain a druid's mana while it is shape shifted as a Moonkin or Tree of Life. Plus, a druid can only abolish poison in caster form.

When the Druid is in one of his/her Forms (Bear, Cat, Travel Form, Aquatic Form) they count as a Beasts. Use your ability to Fear Beasts to get them off your back, but be wary of any DoTs, or your pet, as damage can and will break the Fear state. This is a good time for you to gain some distance, or to bandage.

-Note, a Druid will most likely have the "Enemy Cast Bar" active, so be prepared to cancel the cast if he shifts out. If timed correctly, you can hit him with a Scatter Shot before the Druid can shift back.

-Note, if they cast entangling roots on you then come in, in cat form it will be to hit you with tons of dots so place a freezing trap and get back fast.

Beware of balance druids (moonkin), they are the only spec that can do decent ranged damage, and as such the only ones you have to worry about in your dead zone. Their ability to sleep your pet and then root you in place can make you close to helpless against them. They can also summon their treants to help them get your health down in melee range and there is little you can do to stop them.

Your best bet is to damage them early on with an aimed shot and get them to a point where they have to come out of moonkin to heal. Unlike feral druids, the moonkin depends on its mana pool for damage as well as healing so if you can make them shift you've gone a long way towards draining their mana. Be wary however as moonkin can and will drink health and mana pots without having to shift out. If a balance druid shifts into bear form it's usually as a last resort and it's unlikely he will have spent the talent points in feral charge so now is your time to use concussive shot and put your pet on him, you should be able to keep him at bay until he's dead. That is, if you're still alive.

Hunter

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Melee combat for a hunter must be taken very seriously, and should only be attempted by survival hunters as marksmen and beast masters have very few reliable melee skills.

A good survival hunter, on the other hand can be a very lethal foe. Every hunter should put at least a few points in beast mastery in order to polish up their aspects to suit whatever build it is they are going for.

Improved aspect of the monkey gives an incredible increase to dodge (14%) when maxed out, and 2/2 pathfinding allows any hunter to easily outrun nearly any class except for shaman, druids and sprinting rogues, but any of these can be chased down successfully if the concussive shot is used well enough.

What makes a hunter lethal is his ability to deal out massive amounts of damage while taking very little in return.

An increased dodge ability means that roughly 1 out of every 4 attacks will be dodged, and this percentage will only get better as dodge bonus gear is collected over time.

If one acquires the survival ultimate skill Wyvern Sting, he will find himself at a great advantage over most other players. Wyvern sting does not enable the auto-shoot ability so you don't have to worry about firing off a round and waking up your target. Against Marksmen in particular, open with Wyvern Sting, get close, drop an Immolation trap, and give them a demonstration of why Hunter melee isn't as inviable as they think.

If the target is by itself you can simply walk up, point and laugh and wait for your traps to become re-enabled, an immolation trap plus the damage over time effects of the wyvern sting, in addition to the hunters raptor strikes and pet damage will have a tremendous effect on damage output.

Since you bothered to get wyvern sting you'll most likely have the deterrence ability, which is crucial for going toe to toe with any foe, as while active you will find that perhaps 1 out of every 4 attacks will actually hit you, if that.

This tactic can be devastating to any class in the game be it rogue, casters, mail classes or even warriors and paladins. You'd better hope you know what you're doing though, because don't forget you're still a hunter, and melee combat should always be the last resort.

When fighting other hunters, the trick is to control the battle. Weave in and out of close and long range. A hunter would prefer to stay at range, so just confuse them by not letting them know where you're going to be. If you're just standing there trading shots with your opponent, you'll only win if you crit more than they do, and that's not something you should be counting on.

Paladin

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Paladins are probably the single most highly revered class in the game, and there are a few key points to keep in mind when fighting them. The cave troll fight sequence from the first Lord of the Rings film is a useful analogy for a fight with a skilled Paladin. However, defeating them is not only extremely possible, but enormously satisfying for the Hunter, given that players of the Paladin class have a marked tendency to view themselves as being invincible.

First, keep your distance. Paladins have no base ranged attacks (with the exceptions of Hammer of Wrath, Avenger's Shield, and Holy Shock) so try to use Wing Clip and Concussive Shot to maintain a safe distance. Secondly, Viper Sting is the key to defeating Paladins, and is the main reason why they are more manageable for Hunters than other classes. Although it is true that the Paladin does have a number of awesome abilities, virtually all of these rely on their mana pool. Once the mana pool is empty, the only thing a Paladin has is their melee weapon, which very often won't be anything particularly special, since they have a tendency to lean on their magic.

Additional Notes

Use Viper Sting, but be aware of its limitations. Viper Sting costs a Hunter a great deal of mana. The Paladin can Cleanse the effect instantly for far less mana than the Hunter spent casting the sting. At level 36, Viper Sting costs 135 mana. At level 56, Viper Sting costs 215 mana. Cleanse costs 60. However, if you are a well-equipped Survivalist, after you have cast Viper Sting, switch to Aspect of the Monkey, send the pet, and close to melee range. If you keep a constant barrage of melee attacks focussed on the Paladin, it is likely that he will be so busy initially trying to fend of those that he will be distracted from using Cleanse until it is too late.

Generally this match is a long, drawn out battle with an edge to the Hunter. If played right, the Paladin will have a very hard time getting in range to do any kind of damage to the Hunter, but the Paladin's survivability is absurd and he'll just keep going and going and going thanks to his heals and shields.

Aspect of the Cheetah can be used against Paladins if you're good at measuring distance.

Beware of the paladins many survival spells. With a 6 second stun (the longest in the game, the paladin also has loads of other stuns), a full heal/small mana regen (usable once an hour), and the almighty bubble, a paladin can outlast a good number of enemies before falling.

Also bear in mind that paladins can use Blessing of Freedom, wich is really annoying for hunters, so when a paladin uses blessing of freedom run away from him as fast as you can, and keep draining his mana. when his mana pool is empty he's (almost: see Lay on Hands) safe to attack. also use arcane shot (rank 6 and higher) to remove his buffs when he uses his blessings.

Shaman

Shamans are difficult to deal with 1v1 because their abilities cater to this battle. Additionally, the shaman has talents that can make a huge difference in the performance of any of their three roles (caster, melee, or healer) and it's difficult to determine what spec a shaman is until you have been killed by him.

Some things however, are universally true of all shamans:

The first thing you note about a shaman is the lack of crowd control. A shaman cannot incapacitate you at all (minus the short-range Warstomp on a tauren), and one of the two abilities to slow you down has serious issues.

An extremely deadly weapon in the shaman's arsenal where hunters are concerned is the Earthbind Totem; however it only has 5 health, and has a short 10-yard range. It works in a system of pulses, which means that it will affect you slightly after it's dropped (the totem is actually casting the snare, so there is a slight delay), and that it doesn't fade from you when the totem is destroyed (the totem refreshes the snare, but the snare has a short duration of its own). The cooldown on the totem is 15 seconds.

Shocks also have 20-yard range, which is about half of yours.

Knowing this, you can usually keep the shaman at bay. Traps, range, concussive shot, and wing clip, as well as judicious use of your pet are key.

The shaman's greatest weapon is the Lesser Healing Wave it possesses. With a 1.5 second cast time, it's often hard to stop it. It is, however, not entirely impossible to either prevent him from using it (with abilities such as scatter shot, or the 20% improved concussion shot), slow him down (a fast attack pet, auto-shot, multi-shot and arcane shot), or simply outlast his small mana pool. In addition, Elemental/Enhancement shamans have 70% resistance to damage pushback at best, so your pet can be expected to noticeably increase the casting time of this spell.

Viper Sting is a good thing to use. A shaman will most often use a poison cleansing totem, which takes time to pulse, or cleanse poison, which might not remove it on the first application. Either way, you should come ahead in the mana race. Totems are expensive (some are 4-5% of his mana), and if he has to cast them often, you will bleed him dry. Your mail armor will soak up some of the Windfury damage, which means that often, he'll be forced to constantly shock you, in order to get you down before you can.

A marksmanship hunter is definitely something to be feared for any shaman. A 41 yard range is hard to overcome, especially as you can open up with an Aimed Shot, then kite them, and possibly destroy them before they even get into range (at which point, wing clip/frost trap, or Scattershot/freezing trap to reset the range). Hence, as long as you stay beyond 20 yards, about the only thing he'll be able to do is swear at you in frustration.

Facing a hunter, some shamans will equip a shield, and just try to outlast you by healing and nuking away. This is generally a terrible idea, as your pet will often out-damage a one handed equipped shaman in melee, and the shaman's limited mana pool means that he will lose the war very quickly. Your mail armor also means that that little mace or dagger he's wielding does next to nothing, even on a feared "windfury triple-crit", which happens once every 1000 or so attacks.

Weapon-switch macros, however, still figure in a good shaman's arsenal, and he will have Windfury on both a big 2h and a small 1h. He will keep the shield until he gets near you, to decrease damage, then switch back, and hope for a big WF to start whittling down your health. The longer it takes him to get there, and the shorter you can make that last, the better your chances are at winning.

Most of the above information is focused on melee shamans, and it's true, a melee shaman is an easy kill for a hunter. However, an elemental shaman is a force to be reckoned with. Consider the power of a chain lightning crit (around 2k) followed up by an earth shock (1.5k if it crits). This is enough to blast most hunters out of the water, and the damage dealt completely ignores armor. The hunter's single best defense against this is Silencing Shot. As you see his hands sparkle with lightning, hit him with a silencing shot, then pepper him.

Restoration Shamans are very well suited to fighting hunters. Their melee damage capacity is very weak, but their passive healing means that they can focus on doing nothing but closing with you. Since a hunter needs to stand still for maximum damage potential, many hunters attempt to stand their ground and get off a few shots and stings before running. This is often a mistake, because if that Restoration Shaman ever once gets into Frost Shock range, you are not getting away again unless he makes an error. The key in this fight is the Shaman's armor and passive healing. Any Restoration Shaman worth his salt in PvP will be wearing a shield, and Earth Shield and Nature's Guardian provide excellent passive healing. A Resto Shaman with as little as 1200 or so +healing will see his Earth Shield tick for over 700hp, and crit for 1K. This allows the Shaman to concentrate on only getting to melee range and staying there. They will then whittle you down with shocks. Nature's Swiftness also means that they can reach out and daze you at a range of 30 yards if you are using Aspect of the Cheetah to maintain range, allowing them to abuse server latency and the travel time of Concussive Shot (possibly in conjunction with Ghost Wolf) to daze you and get back into snare range. Maintain distance at all costs and be sure to heal your pet if it gets damaged; eventually it and your shots/stings will run him out of mana, since Earth Shield does cost around 900 mana to cast.

Do not fall into the trap that many fellow players put for you, by exaggerating and exalting the abilities of a shaman. With a bit of care, a shaman can be a fairly easy kill, as it really doesn't do much other than auto-attack and shock. If you have good control of your pet to take care of the very few totems that actually matter (which kills the shaman's low mana pool), it really should be no trouble to take one down.

Engineering is especially useful for hunters in taking down shamans. The area effect dynamite and bombs will knock out the shaman's totems, and the bombs have a chance to stun, preventing the shaman from casting for a few seconds. The bomb stun does not cause the target to wander like scatter shot, and the few seconds are long enough to drop an ice trap and step back for a 12 second distance.

Death knight PvP guide

2009-06-21T04:56:00.000-07:00

Mage

Death knights are well equipped to handle any threat that a mage has to
offer, but the opening sequence is key. The trump cards of this fight will be
Anti-Magic Shell, Anti-Magic Zone, as well as Death Grip.

Create a ghoul if you do not already have one and immediately send it after the mage.
How the opening sequence is handled will determine the rest of the fight. Run towards the
mage and Chains of Ice to keep them still, followed up with an Anti-Magic Zone if you are
unholy spec. The first reaction of the mage will be to blink, which is why you ran towards
them initially. Now it is time to use Death Grip, which will draw them back to you.
Immediately reapply Chains of Ice and keep the debuff on the mage throughout the fight. Cast Icy Touch as your rotation allows.

Apply spell interrupts like Mind Freeze and Strangulate as necessary. Keep enough runic
power for Anti-Magic Shell, should he/she use the Shatter combo. There is no bad time to use it
since all their attacks are magic based. The rest of the fight should solve itself in your
favor so long as you continue to damage.

Paladin

Currently, Retribution paladins are extremely difficult for death knights. As blood, you need to damage them to regenerate health, however whenever you are in melee range, they always seem to destroy your health too fast. Therefore, it's important that you start popping cooldowns early. Try to anticipate their Hammer of Justice and use Icebound Fortitude to counter it. Try and keep them at a distance, damaging them with Icy Touch and Death Coil. Staying close to a ret pally will never be fun, so I suggest keeping them a few feet away, and only coming in for Rune Strike/Death Strike/Frost Strike combos. If you're going to be close to them, only let it be for an instant, as their slow 2 handed weapon is going to cause damage faster than you can regen with blood abilities. Mark of Blood is relatively useless against DPS paladins, as their two-handed weapons don't attack fast, so keep them away, make them pop bubble, run away, rune tap and prepare to kill again.
Protection Paladins are similar difficult, but not for their damage, but for their toughness. Protadins will most likely avoid all your weapon blows, which gives them Mana if they have Blessing of Sanctuary. If they block an attack, it will most likely backfire some damage back to you, which is extremely dangerous for dual-wielders. Try using spells instead of attacking abilities such as Icy Touch and Death Coil. As Protadin have immense amounts of HP and Armor, you will need a lot of time for them, so try not to waste your lifedrainers by using them with almost full HP. When the Paladin is above lvl 75, they will have their Shieldbash, dealing out big amounts of damage.
Also, all Paladins can fear undead for 20 Seconds. This practically removes your undead pet, or worse: can keep you feared in your Ghoul form until you explode.

Death Knight

Against the same class, the only differences will lie in gear, skill and talent build. Eliminating gear and skill from the mix, on a purely build based competition, certain abilities are optimal against others.

For PvP, your enemy DK will most likely have some blood abilities. Rune tap is just too godly, unless they're full frost or unholy. Regardless of your build, if you are against a Blood DK, look out for mark of blood. Any damage the marked target deals, returns 4% of his targets health. When Mark of Blood is on you, don't attack your opponent with auto attacks, or weak attacks like Icy Touch. instead, save up your runes for Death Strikes, wait for Rune Strikes, and if you have the health, feel free to use Obliterate (only if you have the frost talents).

As a Blood Death Knight, against any DK with a pet, as well as any class that has a pet in general, it is usually more effective to place your mark of blood on the pet, rather than on the player. The pet generally attacks with faster, less damaging auto attacks, each replenishing 4% of its targets health. This works equally well against Hunter pets and Warlock pets, but not so effective on Water Elementals.

Against Frost DK's, who have weaker Deathcoils, effectively trading it for Frost Strike. That means, they're going to snare you with Chains of Ice, then get within melee range to alternate between Obliterate and Frost Strike for quick burst damage. Trying to keep them at range is the key. If they are dual wielding, all the more reason to Mark of Blood them.

Unholy DKs are going to kill more slowly, keeping someone confined with the area of Death & Decay and desecration. As Blood, again, try and stay out of their melee range as SS hurts, damage them from a range as much as possible. Blood DK's should have the advantage in this situation, due to far superior health regen/=damage output.

As a bit of a psychological trick, it is sometimes worthwhile to wait for the enemy DK to drop a Death and Decay. When you see where their radius has been laid, feel free to add your own which partially overlaps it. If the enemy is not perceptive enough to realize what just happened you can often lure or pull them into fighting on your side of the D&D. They will presume you are taking damage from their spread while inadvertently fighting in yours.

Rogue

Rogues are not a very difficult class for death knights due to our parry chance and heavy armour. Using your Rune Strike will make your melee attacks more powerful but don't use your Death Coil unless you decide to kite him.

Stun is still very bad for DK's, so save your trinket for his kidney shot. A good strategy if you have runic power is to trinket out of his from his cheap shot and pop Icebound Fortitude to block a Kidney Shot. If blood, asap put Mark of Blood on him as with a rogue's fast attack speed it will very effectively counter his ability to damage you for 20 seconds. Try and keep the rogue at range, damaging him with death coils or ghoul, and alternating with Icy Touch and Chains of Ice depending on the situation. Oftentimes, against Rogues, you might not even want to attempt the Icy Touch, unless frost spec. If you can break out of their stun lock and pop some cooldowns to mitigate the damage, and kite the rogue, the fight should be yours.

If you have a Glyph of Raise Dead you could try to get lucky, better in unholy presence because of reduced global cooldown. When he cheap shots you, trinket out of it, summon a ghoul for 20 runic power and Icebound Fortitude to get away from his Kidney Shot and turn the tides of the gank.

If you happen to stumble upon a rogue, or get him with a DaD, and he tries to fight, use Icebound Fortitude ASAP, as he'll use KS ASAP as well. If he spots your immunity and waits, at least it is not as devastating, as the stun is mostly bad when you have unused runes, and you can spam them before it wears off.

Casting any disease on a rogue is a good way to stop vanish, but CloS can remove them once. Instead, cast Unholy Blight or Summon Gargoyle whenever you can, as they'll keep attacking even while vanished.

Another good way to stop a running rogue is to tell your ghoul to follow you and then attack him again, if he stealths in the meantime he'll know where to find him.

Shaman

Shamans are about as diverse as druids, but far less annoying as they can't shift out of Chains of Ice (Ghost Wolf does NOT remove roots and snares). Enhancement Shamans are melee-oriented, whilst Elementalists are casters and Restoration are healers. The totems you'll have to watch mostly are the earthbind totem and the grounding totem.
The Earthbind Totem is an aoe slow of 50%, which is an easy kite for him, Icy Touch it or let your ghoul jump for it ahead of you.
The grounding totem eats a spell. The most damaging thing this can do is eat a chains of ice at a vital moment.
Regardless of spec, they deal a lot of magic damage, so Anti-Magic Zone is always nice to have.

Enhancement shamans deal their damage up close. They can deal damage at range with shocks, but they're not very good unless supported by Stormstrikes and Maelstrom Weapon fueled lightning bolts. Your own ranged attacks may well be better, especially if you have Howling Blast, so you can do quite well by kiting. He can slow you with Frost Shock and Earthbind, but Chains is better, especially if you destroy his totem quickly. He can summon two Spirit Wolves with Feral Spirit but they can be neutralised with Mark of Blood. If the shaman gets close and is beating on you then Mark of Blood is very effective on the Shaman as most enhancement shamans dual-wield, and the DoT from Flame Shock will also benefit Mark of Blood. If he runs low on mana he will pop Shamanistic Rage to regenerate it by attacking you, chaining him and kiting until it wears off will leave him at a severe disadvantage.

Elemental shamans are easy, just Chains of Ice and Strangulate him for some pummeling, then pop Anti-Magic Shell for some more one-on-one time. Save your Death Grip for when he blasts you away with Thunderstorm, just pull him with you and chain again. If he tries to Lightning Bolt or heal from melee range then Mind Freeze. It's best to allow him to cast Lava Burst even though it is highly damaging, because it has a cooldown and locking out his Fire school will still leave him free to Lightning Bolt and heal.

Restoration shamans generally do not provide as big as threats as Enhancement and Elemental, however some of the more experienced players may require more effort. Shaman heals almost all have cast times and can be taken care of with Mind Freeze.

Shamans over level 70 can summon powerful elementals which can cause problems. The fire elemental deals heavy Fire damage, but anti-magic zone will mitigate it. The earth elemental deals only moderate physical damage, but is quite tough. Using Chains to lock up elementals until they go away is a good tactic. The elemental cannot go far from his totem, so running away from it and yanking the shaman to you is also a viable tactic. If a fire elemental overwhelms you and causes you to retreat, be secure in the knowledge that he can't do it to you again for another 20 minutes. Fighting cooldown with cooldown and summoning your Army of the Dead will even the playing field again, but be sure not to let him interrupt your cast.

Warrior

Warriors are only strong at melee combat, and the common warrior will decide to close in on you with Charge to start the battle. You have two approaches to counter this: use Death Grip to pull him in and prevent a stun, or stay within a distance and cast Chains of Ice to prevent him from moving at normal speed.

From there, you should figure out what type of warrior you're dealing with: arms, fury or protection? If Protection, activate Frost Presence to raise your armor over his, whilst having the upper hand with shadow and frost damage attacks. If the warrior is Fury, then try to keep your distance, as he can gain extra attack speed through Flurry if he scores a critical hit. You may want to watch out for racials like Berserking as well. Use Unholy Presence to raise your attack speed and movement speed as well. Arms warriors can reduce your healing through Mortal Strike; it is up to you to choose between Blood Presence for extra damage and healing yourself a little bit, or Frost Presence to prevent lots of damage coming from his burst DPS.

Before he uses Demoralizing Shout on you, use Strangulate; it can also prevent you from being feared and then being stunned with Intercept if he decides not to heal himself. Whatever you do, keep getting behind him, and use all your strikes accordingly. Constantly refresh Plague Strike on him to keep up the DoT disease. Only use Frost Strike on a protection warrior whenever you have lots of Runic Power to spend.

Buffs: you have one main buff, much like the Warrior his AP buff and at higher levels Commanding Shout to raise maximum health. Keep up your buff, which is Horn of Winter due to the increased strength and agility gained, useful to dodge their abilities.
Rune Strikes can be used after the Death knight dodges or parries an attack made against him. If you are Unholy spec, Scourge Strike ignores armour, whereas Death Strike does not, so save your frost and unholy runes for Scourge Strike.

Warlock

Warlocks excel at long ranged DoT and has a lot of HP but not much armour. Make sure you death grip and Strangulate him quickly and Icy Touch + Plague Strike. Death Strike can heal you for large amount due to locks' low armour so use it often. Mind Freeze his Fear and Drain Life.

Anti-Magic Shell gives you 5 seconds (7 with glyph) of Fear as well as spell damage immunity, pop it when the warlock tries to fear you. If you have Lichborne, use it for fear immunity if you have the upper hand and rip the Warlock apart, or, if you cannot close distance fast enough, use it to break his first fear.

Mark of Blood is a most interesting spell on a lock, as the great amount of dots should only replenish your health. It is at this point uncertain, but can easily be checked <wink>, if the mark needs to be on the lock before dotting or if the dots get 'marked' at the same time the lock is, in which case you could just use mark as an emergency save, or if nothing happens at all to the dots.

--Min's--
Imps die pretty fast from any damage, and are mostly used as batteries or for their buff, both which you can remove with a few simple strikes.
Voidwalkers should, of course, not be paid attention too.
Felpuppies can eat your diseases off a lock, making your Strikes rather less powerful. They are nearly immune to spell damage, so only kill if you are blood, or just give them a Mark of Blood and let him eat away.
If a lock has a succubus, he could seduce-kite you, so tear the fragile thing apart when the lock can't harm you.
Felguards are dangerous, they're about as strong as a BM hunter's pet, but can easily be chained to the ground for extended periods of time.

Hunter

The key to fighting a Hunter is keeping him as close to you as possible, as this will render most of his moves completely useless. You can start off a fight by using Chains of Ice to slow him down, making it easy to get into his melee range. His first reaction will be to Disengage to distance himself from you, at which point you can pull him towards you again with Death Grip (Be careful in the use of Death Grip as a good hunter will use this chance to lay their trap, if they have not done so already). Simply stack your Diseases on him, saving Frost Runes to refresh Chains of Ice, and dps away. It might be handy to use Icebound Fortitude, to prevent a Beast Mastery Hunter from using Intimidate or other possible stuns, and make any dps he can do while in your melee range truly negligible. You can use your Ghoul to occupy his pet, or add some extra dps on the Hunter. If you attack the hunter with your ghoul, remember to instruct it to attack him again if he feigns death or taunts it with his pet.

If you are blood spec make sure to place Mark of Blood on their pet and try to summon your rune weapon as quickly as possible.
If the hunter is Beast Mastery and uses Bestial Wrath, then switch to Frost Presence to ride it out and keep Icy Touch on him and his pet.

Having Icy Reach to increase your Icy Touch and Chains of Ice range to 30 yards helps against hunters considerably. You do not want him to kite you with Aspect of the Cheetah.

Druid

Druids can be a tough fight for Death Knights, and much will depend on the skill of the druid you are fighting and their spec.

A feral druid will likely shift to bear form to try to mitigate your high physical damage. He won't do high damage in this form, so use Blood Presence to heal yourself and keep your diseases up on him and try to hit him with attacks like Death Coil, Scourge Strike, Frost Strike, etc that are not mitigated by armor. You should win the damage race. When the druid gets low he will try to heal himself, and preventing this is what will win you the match. Use Icebound Fortitude when he seems likely to heal to try to waste his Bash. If he tries to Cyclone you Mind Freeze to interrupt it and the fight will likely be yours before his Nature school recovers.

More experienced druids will use Nature's Grasp to root you and run away to heal, if so then a quick Anti-Magic Shell may waste his Nature's Grasp. If he succeeds in rooting you then Death Grip him back before he gets too far to give yourself some more time (he will simply run away again as you are still rooted, so it is not a permanent solution) and then Strangulate as he goes out of range to silence him and hope that this gives you time for the root to fade. Chains of Ice is a waste of runes as he will simply shift out of it. If the druid doesn't move far enough away before healing then wait until his heal is nearly done and use Death Grip or Strangulate to interrupt.

A balance druid is more dangerous, as they will try to root you and nuke from range, while shifting out of Chains of Ice, preventing you from keeping them close to you. Try to interrupt their initial Entangling Roots, which will force them to blow their Nature's Grasp instead. If you have Runic Power then Anti-Magic Shell will prevent them from rooting you immediately and cause them serious problems. If (likely when) they succeed in rooting you then wait for them to run and start casting and use strangulate to silence them if they are still in range. Summon a ghoul and send it at them, then go Frost Presence and use Anti-Magic Zone and try to survive the onslaught. Do not use your Death Grip, ghoul stun or Icebound Fortitude unless the situation is dire, as they will be needed later. If the druid allows the root to fade or you can trinket out of it AND they already used their Nature's Grasp, then death grip them to you immediately. If they keep it refreshed or they still have Nature's Grasp to root you, then you will have to survive until the diminishing returns on roots prevent them from refreshing it, THEN Death Grip them to you. In either case immediately unload on them as quickly as possible in Unholy Presence.

If they stand and nuke then use Mind Freeze only on Nature spells (NOT Starfire) as if you lock out their Arcane school they will be free to Cyclone you and run or heal while your Mind Freeze is on cooldown, and otherwise you should quickly gain ground your melee strikes are far more damaging than his spells. Unfortunately a smart druid will instead now Typhoon or Bash and use travel form or Dash to get away from you then root your ghoul and kite you until they can root you again. If he shifts to bear then use Icebound Fortitude to prevent you from being Bashed and then you pretty much have to hope that the several hits on their low armor form, followed by as many Death Coils as you have runic power for will kill them, as if they get away you are in trouble. A timely ghoul stun can be a big help at this point.

Restoration druids will generally use the same tactics as balance druids to do damage to you. A restoration druid's nukes will be much less powerful so you have much more chance of surviving a full duration root and nuke. A restoration druid will have to nuke in low armor caster form instead of Moonkin, so a death grip followed by an Unholy Presence broadside may yield a quick kill for you at lower gear levels if they aren't quick or knowledgeable enough to shift to bear form to mitigate it. In any case your ghoul can do heavy damage to them while they nuke you. Nature's Swiftness will allow them to root or cyclone you instantly, and they will probably use it in place of Typhoon (which they won't have) to get away from you. If their primary aim is to heal themselves and others then you will have a hard job locking them down. Keep your ghoul on them and try to keep Blood Plague on them and everyone else you can to remove HoTs.

Priest

The priest is a strange fight for the death knight. The trump card of any priest is the ability to heal and stave off damage, to which the only natural response is to lay as heavy a load of diseases as possible and focus on burst DPS. As opposed to other classes that you can pick away at with leisure time to spare, priest shields have received multiple upgrades over the last few patches, between actual mechanic changes and glyphs, and so this will be the indicator throughout the fight as to what happens.

Of note, it is important to remember three skills: Chains of Ice, to keep them still; Plague Strike, to strip away HoTs; Obliterate (or Rune Strike if available) to add burst damage between shields. Secondarily, Death Grip to close the gap (should one open), Death Strike to self-heal, and Anti-Magic Shell to prevent incidental damage. Runic power plays a larger role in priest fights than any other, due to its ability to translate into fast damage.

It is assumed that any fight is conducted with focus on Death Strike for health return. For the priest though it is important to let the diseases and circumstantial damage take care of the shield while "big damage" moves are used exclusively while the shield is down. Burn runes on whittling the shield and building runic power, then unload as fast as possible when it drops. If high powered strikes are used on the shield the priest will focus on fear and/or slowing spells (Mind Flay) while the shield is on cool. To counter this, you have to focus fire as hard as possible while the shield is down, forcing them to resort to large heals or HoTs, which can be interrupted or removed accordingly.

Forcing the priest into a healing pattern, instead of a defensive pattern, while doing your best to keep your own health as high as possible will result in a win for the death knight. It is a similar fight to the warlock, excepting that damage has to be unloaded at specific windows of opportunity.