Rogue / Priest Strategy: Position Discussion Audio

One of the most important, yet most overlooked aspect of playing rogue / priest 2v2…or for that matter any arena team comp, is without a doubt positioning. Too often I think players and teams get so caught up in the ideas 100 other factors that they completely forget about their positioning.

Being in the right place at the right time isn’t an accident, in many ways it’s the only true strategy in arena. Knowing the type of strategy your opponents are going to attempt will allow you to develop a strategy to appropriately counter your opponents.

This is the very essence of arena position strategies, but believe me, learning how to do this is no easy task. It takes a lot of experience and practice, but by simply being aware you’ll have a keen eye for areas where you can exploit your opponents position and quickly take advantage of their mistakes.

I say all of this in preparation for the very first Zug Gaming audio strategy discussion. A few weeks ago I had a brief conversion (relatively speaking!) with a member of the Zug Gaming community. He had a some questions regarding different strategic aspects of rogue / priest as well as overall positional awareness factors in arena.

The following recording includes:

• Priest / Rogue strategy discussion
• Positional strategy points
• Healer / DPS movement factors of arena
• Among other points

Rogue / Priest Strategy: Audio Discussion

I’ll try to get an actual player up later this evening.

Arena Position and Line of Sight Strategy

If there’s one aspect of arena that is most overlooked it’s without a doubt the influence of position and line of sight. Understanding the correct positional requirements to successfully counter a team is extremely important, as just one minor error could easily lead to a quick loss. That said, once you’ve mastered the basics of your position and line of sight healing, both from offensive and defensive positions, you’ll improve your level of arena performance significantly.

While I’ve done a few strategies, guides and tutorials related to line of sight, I’ve largely ignored it. Though with this inaugural guide I’d like to re-open the strategy discussions on positional awareness and LoS strategy.

In the coming days and weeks I’ll be covering both offensive and defensive positional strategies for every arena. With the hope that in learning these positional awareness factors and strategies will allow you and your teammates the chance to really push yourselves to that next level and take a slice out of the arena ladder.

Line of Sight and Position Strategies

• General Line of Sight and Position Strategy
• Blade’s Edge Arena Line of Sight
• Nagrand Arena Line of Sight and Position

This list will be added to in the coming days and weeks.

Arena Strategy Guides

The following is a listing of all current arena strategy guides currently on Zug Gaming. This list will be updated as new guides are added. If there is an area you feel needs some additional attention feel free to suggest it on the Zug Gaming forums, thanks!

Arena Team Strategies

2v2 Arena Team Strategies

• Rogue / Priest
• Rogue / Warlock
• Rogue / Rogue
  
• Rogue / Druid
• Rogue / Shadow Priest
• Rogue / Mage
• Warrior / Druid
• Mage 2v2 Strategy & Tips

3v3 Arena Team Strategies

• Rogue / Mage / Priest
• Rogue / Warrior / Druid

Arena Talent Specs

• Rogue
• Hunter
• Mage
• Paladin
• Priest
• Warlock
• Warrior
• Shaman
• Druid

Arena Macro Guides

• Rogue
• Warlock
• Hunter
• Druid
• Priest
• Shadow Priest
• Warrior
• Shaman
• Mage
• Paladin

• Rogue Focus Macros
• Shaman Focus Macros
• Mage Focus Macros
• Druid Focus Macros
• Warlock Focus Macros

Other Helpful Strategy Guides

• Hotkeys Guide – Building for Speed
• Kiting, Line of Sight, and Position Strategy Guide
• Focus Macro Guide – and How to Use them!

Arena Videos

• Zuggy 2 – Rogue Arena Videos: 2s, 3s, and 5s.
• Zuggy 1 – Rogue / Priest 2v2
• Buddhist / Lewt 2v2 – Druid / Rogue
• Kollektiv – Elemental Shaman Arena Video
• Destram – Killer Instinct II, Shadowstep Rogue PvP

Zul’Aman Bear Boss Strategy

Nalorakk is the first boss of Zul’Aman and is known as the bear avatar of the dungeon. While it is the first encounter it is by no means an easy fight. More than anything is encounter requires both very attentive tanks and healers with quick reaction.

Bear Boss Strategy

Nalorakk has two forms, troll and bear. These two forms will alternate throughout the fight and require a separate tank for each stage. For simplicity purposes let’s go through all of the attacks you’ll be dealing with in each stage.

Troll Form

Brutal Swipe – This is a physical damage attack that deals 28,500-31,500 in a 180 degree cone in front of the boss. Now obviously this would be too much damage for even the best geared tanks, so it’s of utmost importance that both tanks stand on top of each other. This will split the damage between the tanks, making it a manageable amount for your healers to handle

Surge – The bear boss will charge a target, knocking them back and doing 3,700 to 4,300 damage. Nalorakk periodically will use this ability, typically on the ranged classes standing furthest away from him. For this reason it’s important healers stand between tanks and ranged DPS, so they can continue to heal without interruption.

Mangle – Causes all bleed effects to do 100% damage for 60 seconds. Only a factor between transitions, not much you can do it avoid this. If a tank gets mangled they should make certain to call it out in raid chat or on your voice communication server. This way healers can increase healing on that target in the event he gets hit by a lacerating slash or rend flesh.

Bear Form

Lacerating Slash – Causes the target to bleed for 1735 damage, ticks ever 2 seconds for a duration of 18 seconds.

Rend Flesh – Deals 5,525 to 7,475 physical damage and also applies a 2335 damage bleed, the bleed ticks every 1 second for 5 seconds. As I mentioned above, you need to be very aware of both of these bleed attacks. If you take a mangle and a bleed immediately after you’re going to be feeling it. Informing your healers immediately of these debuffs is crucial.

Deafening Roar – This ability will deal 1235 to 1365 to all members of your raid. Additionally, it also casts a 2 second silence on your raid. This is the major make or break point for the healers in your raid. Granted, 2 seconds is quite short, if a tank isn’t properly HoT’d up and is taking large amounts of damage they could easily die. The bear boss will roar twice during his bear phase, be aware of this and plan ahead.

Bear Boss Tanking Strategy

In order to properly tank the bear boss you will need two tanks, one of each of Nalorakk’s two phases. While any tanking class is capable of doing either phase it is preferential not to have a protection paladin tank the bear phase. This is due to the deafening roar ability, which will silence the paladin, preventing him from using his most potent threat producing abilities.

The most important aspect of this encounter revolves around the tanks maintaining proper positioning. If both tanks are not standing in front of the bear boss during a brutal swipe then the damage will not be split, likely killing the tank in one shot.

General Bear Boss Mechanics

The only other major point you’ll want to be aware of is the engage timer. Nalorakk will enrage after 10 minutes, that said, the only way you’d hit this timer is if your damage dealers were severely lacking. Just maintain the raid’s focus, settle in, and get done what has to be done.

Now, enough boring mechanics…onto the loot!

Bear Boss Loot

Badge of Justice (Drops 100% of the time, everyone in the raid gets one)
Fury
Fury of the Ursine
Bladeangel’s Money belt
Jungle stompers
Robes of Heavenly Purpose
Pauldrons of Primal Fury
Mask of Introspection
Formula: Enchant Weapon – Executioner

Arena Team Strategies (Compiled)

Below you’ll find a complete listing of all of the arena team strategies that Zug Gaming currently has to offer. Keep in mind this list is always growing as a new need presents itself. If you would like to suggest a strategy please post a comment here, or over on the Zug Gaming forums.

2v2 Arena Team Strategies
Rogue / Priest
Rogue / Warlock
Rogue / Rogue
Rogue / Druid
Rogue / Shadow Priest

Warrior / Druid

3v3 Arena Team Strategies
Rogue / Mage / Priest
Rogue / Warrior / Druid

Agility vs. AP Gems

This post is in response to a question I received from a fellow arena player. I’ve posted it here as a reference for future players who may encounter a similar question.

Rogue Arena Gem Question…
Recently ive wondered if its better to stack agility (8agi) gems or attack power (16ap) gems. I have seen some rogues with one or the other, and now im not sure which is more beneficial. If anyone knows or can recommend something, please do!

Rogue Arena Gems Answers…
Zuggy’s Response:

Personally, I’m a fan of the attack power gems. Simply because stacking AP gives you a direct increase in damage on every hit. Greater AP = Greater damage.

Agility gives you ap / armor / crit / dodge…and while some rogues find this school of thought appealing, it’s just not for me. I don’t really care about defensive stats and crit is simply a chance to do additional damage.

The only way you could really justify all agility gems would if you were a fully committed sub rogue. Otherwise, I still think you should stack AP gems instead.

S-Scythe’s Response:

I prefer AP simply because I play more than one spec for PVP. I play Shadowstep and Combat so AP serves use for both of these specs. Whereas Agility really only benefits the 15% bonus of a Shadowstep spec. So if you only utilize a shadowstep spec in pvp I’d definitely say go for it, but if you change up specs for different teams AP is your optimal choice.

Diggu’s Response:

This is a question that doesn’t have a straight-forward answer imo. I like Zug’s comment about the different specs. I personally enchant/gem for Agility (if it’s not a hit gem) for PvE. Assuming you’re Combat PvE spec, the Agi (according to Elitist Jerks spreadsheets and others) maximizes your dps.

For PvP most of what I have seen is AP gemming. I seem to remember a lot of our top PvP rogues on Manno used to gem Agi back before/during S1, but now that everyone in Arena has 400+ resil, they all have AP gems.

Locking Down Warrior as Rogue

This post is in response to a question I received from a fellow rogue. It’s been posted here in the hope that it’s contents may be of assistance to other players who have similar questions.

Arena Strategy Questions…
Hey Zug, I’ve asked you questions here and there in the past, and there’s a few more that I’d like you to answer. My priest and I hit our highest rating of 2091 about two weeks ago, and since then have struggled a bit.

The warrior/healer teams that we seemed to have no trouble with have been really giving us a hard time. I find that in nearly all cases the warrior is sticking onto my priest, and I have a hard time keeping him locked down. They can break out of gouge, and I’m wondering if I should use my blind on the warr. (I feel like I should)

Another team, although rare, which we seemed to have no hope of beating, was the hunter/priest teams. Getting on the priest is out of the question, as doing that caused my priest to go OOM within a minute. We try to kill the pet, but when we can’t keep pressure on the hunter, my priest gets drained hard.

Is 41/20 the best priest spec?

Arena Strategy Answer…

As far as your first question is concerned, I find that it really is more of a 2 part solution. Generally speaking you are going to be sticking to the warrior the entire time, making it as difficult as possible to get both position and line of sight on your priest.

However, your priest needs to be very aware of both your position and the warrior’s position. He needs to constantly reposition himself in order to allow you to do your job easier.

If the warrior is just relentless to get to the priest then this really opens you up to drop bombs on the warrior. Position yourself on his back and just lay into. Beyond that, just use everything within your power…including blind if necessary to prevent that warrior from getting on your priest.

Then again, even if he does get on your priest you’ve got reflective shield going for you, further increasing the damage output.

As far as hunter / priest goes…well, it’s just a rough match man. It’s so far one sided in their favor that even winning 1 out of every 10 of these matches is a good ratio. Our typical strategy just revolves around a gig strategy on the hunter with a lot of very early CC on the druid.

It’s very fast paced and risky, but it’s still the best strategy we’ve come up with at this point.

Combat vs. Shadowstep Arena Spec

This post is in response to a question I received from a fellow rogue. It’s posted here in the event other rogues encounter similar questions.

Rogue Arena Questions…
I started with shadowstep and for the longest time loved it. After playing arenas for a few weeks as combat when I go back to shadowstep it feels like its much harder to kill geared players. Currently, my gear is all season 2/3 and my weapons are maces.

What am I missing?

Perhaps im missing something, but with a geared paladin or shaman spamming heals in shadowstep spec most of my energy is used kicking or kidney shotting to stop him from healing. Thus reducing in barely enough energy to hemo. If I focus on the healers partner, even with cyclone (from my partner) the shadowstep build seems hard to override the healing ability of the healer.

My partner (druid) and I can win most of these games but it always ends in one of the other team running out of mana. With combat spec, we can time a 3 cyclone cycle from the druid with my adrenaline rush when my target is 50-60 percent and its almost guarenteed to kill him.

Except for 5s, I am having a hard time seeing how anyone can feel a shadowstep build is superior, even though its 4 times more popular than combat maces.

Even when I am shadowstep, its not hard to stay on target enough to justify the points in the talent tree. The extra stats are great +attack pwer and agility but I still do way less damage, so to what benefit?

Rogue Arena Strategy Answers..

It’s hard to judge without really watching a match all the way through. Generally speaking I would guess it just comes down to managing your energy consumption a bit better.

One of the big strengths of combat spec is the raw damage output, while shs doesn’t have quite as good of output it’s still solid. But you absolutely must keep your slice and dice up, without it you’re really going to have difficult time taking out healers.

In my experience when fighting healers virtually 100% of my energy goes to stopping heals, because I know if I can get ahead briefly I can immediately send the healer into a panic mode situation.

So I basically open up, get a slice and dice going with my initial CPs then just play the position game making certain to always stop the healer.

Here’s the interrupt sequence I use.
1) kick
2) KS
3) gouge
4) vanish / CS
5/ blind

preferably I’d rather not get to 4 and 5, but If it means stopping a heal in a clutch situation it’s something I have to do.

Additionally you might enlist the help of your druid here to help stop heals. You can very easily just cyclone one target, go through all your rogue CC…kick, into, ks, into gouge…then you switch targets, pressure the other guy with just good auto attacks, get another slice and dice going.

Meanwhile your druid is putting a 3 cyclone combo on your previous target. Once DRs are up on the cyclones you can switch back to your previous targets, now you’ve got a SND cooking, hopefully full energy and all your CDs.

I would say with virtually any rogue spec keeping a constant slice and dice up is an absolute must. There just is no better use of energy or combo points.

Even though you don’t have imp. snd and not as much +hit, it’s still an insane amount of damage. Consider the fact that your rupture does…well just using round numbers let’s say 2000 damage over it’s duration.

If you get just 4-5 extra attacks you’ve probably already exceeded the damage of your rupture. Toss a trinket + mongoose proc on that…you’ve got some serious white damage coming out.

About the only time I think rupture is the better finisher is vs. a defensive stance warrior / feral spec’d bear druid / protection paladin.

Similarly the only time I really use expose as shs is vs. priests and some warlocks.

Discipline Priest Arena Strategy

This post was a question I received via email, I thought I’d just cross post it here so anyone with similar concerns might be able to get something out of this as well.

Priest Arena Questions…
Hey zuggy, I’m a disc priest who runs currently with a shadow step rogue. I have trouble keeping up with all my dispels and strats as the matches progress. I don’t have any addons currently except Proximo. Could you give me some advice on what addons to use?

Thanks so much

Things i would like:

Low health warnings for my rogue partner.. sometimes i miss it when his health gets low.. an alert of some kind would be nice.

CD tracking. I would like to know when my fear is ready I would like to maybe know when my inner fire is not up on my toon alerting me i need to re-apply. Please tell me if you think this is a good idea.

Also mass dispel for pally bubble or mage iceblock? How should i configure the spell sometimes it seems it takes too long to get it fired off. Also along the same lines… Heroism! I need to get this dispelled quickly .. how do you typically handle this?

My team seems to shoot up to 1600 or 1650 then go on losing streaks. We’ve beat teams with rating around 1700 and lost to teams with ratings much lower than ours I just can’t seem to always figure out what to do.

ON the map with he coffin in the middle i struggle with positioning of my priest. I generally move around the coffin trying to LOS but i definitely struggle on this map. Sometimes I don’t know if i should mana burn or heal myself.. so i have so many questions. I’ve read your dis priest rogue guide and it was very helpful but I need more help!

Priest Arena Strategy Answers…
As far as addons are concerned, I’m more of a minimalist. So I wouldn’t concern yourself too much with trying to pound your screen with additional buttons and flashing warnings.

In my opinion keeping a clean UI allows you to much better manage targeting and awareness, as you can see everything much easier.

As far as low health warnings go, I’d just suggest looking at getting a unit frame mod. My preference is AG unit frames, but there are lots of others out there. Check out this article I recently did on best unit frame mods if you’d like to check out more.

For cooldown tracking I keep it simple. I use SCT and OmniCC. Configure your SCT to bring up cooldown warnings, and in addition omniCC will overlay textual cooldown counters on all of your abilities.

Dispel Macros
As far as managing your dispels goes, I’d just create a few macros to better deal with it. Here’s a few that I use.

/target (name of your rogue)
/cast Dispel Magic

/assist (name of your rogue)
/cast Dispel Magic

/cast [target=focus] Dispel Magic

You may not want to use them all, but at least having an assist dispel is absolutely crucial in my opinion. Check out Dispel Macros discussion for additional help.

Arena Positioning
As far as positioning is concerned, all I can say is keep moving and keep using your globals. Too often I see players just panic when they are under fire. You need to maintain focus and stick to your game plan.

Conclusions
Keep the hots up, heal before you “have” to heal. Don’t let yourself red line before trying to los and heal. If you’re comfortable playing the offensive mana burn game this is a great way to put the opposing team into a defensive position.

Here are some additional resources you might find helpful:
Priest / Rogue 2v2 Arena Strategy

Addons..
Quartz Casting Bar

Hope this helped answer some of your questions, as always feel free to shoot me any additional questions if you have further concerns.

Rogue / Priest 2v2 Arena Guide (Compiled)

If you’re looking for rogue / disc priest strategy then you’ve come to the right place. Below you’ll find a complete listing of all of the essential resources you should check out to take your arena team to the next level!

Rogue / Priest Arena Strategies
Rogue / Priest 2v2 Arena Strategy (includes all team vs. team strategies)
Rogue / Priest 2v2 Arena Video (video of myself and my 2s partner, Engage, playing in the 2300 bracket, article includes link to video as well as contextual commentary)

Rogue / Priest Specific Strategies
Druid / Hunter
Druid / Warlock
Druid / Warrior
Druid / Rogue
Mage / Rogue
Mage / Warlock
Paladin / Warlock
Paladin / Warrior
Priest / Rogue
Priest / Warlock
Shadow Priest / Rogue
Shadow Priest / Warlock
Shaman / Warrior
Warlock / Rogue

Rogue / Priest Arena Talent Specs
rogue arena talent specs
priest arena talent specs
Arena Builds Choosing the Right Spec (generic guide)

Rogue / Priest Arena Macros
Rogue Macros Guide
Rogue Focus Macros
Priest Macros Coming Soon!

Individual Forum Questions Answered
Discipline Priest Arena Strategy

Arena Enchants
Rogue Arena Enchant Guide

Arena Gems
Rogue Arena Gem Guide

Arena Gear
Coming Soon!

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