SONG ONE - "My Sanctuary" by Pig
- Duelist Gnome Arms Warrior w/ Deep Thunder
Misdirection is a pvp skill. I use misdirection quite often in the BGs and this clever gnome warrior tried to use it on me. He was running around on his mount pretending not to see me. However, I knew that was a sham because he had me targetted. He changed directions quickly and due to the mount was able to get his charge off simultaneously to my SW:P. Some shadowpriests would advise you to use SW:D as it has better range, but even as liberally as I use SW:D I just don't feel comfortable opening with it unless the guy is already near death to begin with.
To be fair, he started this fight at about 90% health. However, I don't think that would have effected the outcome when you look at our final relative health. This is because the Gods of the psuedo-random role were on my side in this fight. His charge stun was resisted. That gave me an oppurtunity to deadzone kite him a little bit. I used a net on him, and he quickly used escape artist to get out of it. However, even that fraction of a second was enough time to safely get off a mindblast / SW:D combo. The SW:D procced blackout and I followed that up with devouring plague.
He was then finally able to get off his intercept. This time the stun stuck, and it was followed up immediately by a mace stun proc. The one nice thing about being a shadowpriest in this situation is that if you have already got your DoTs up you are doing damage and getting some heals even if you are stunned. The gnome got unlucky with crits, but I didn't it as I managed to sneak out a 1800+ SW:D crit between the first macestun and a second macestun.
WoTF being used is an issue with a macro I'm trying to build that uses WoTF or the PvP trinket intelligently. It rarely fails to do the correct thing. In this situation I was trying to use my PvP trinket to break the mace stun, but my PvP trinket was not up and it reverted to using WoTF once that stun broke since I spammed it like a goofball. I expect the issue to be almost completely resolved when I have the 2 minute PvP trinket.
- Challenger NE BM Hunter
In my limited experience I've found hunters to be the easiest kills for shadow priests. Basically, the only time I lose to these guys is when they get a snake trap down on me. I haven't encountered a really good hunter since starting the shadowpriest. They all try to stand and out DPS me rather than kite. Of course, I'm also using hunter-killer gloves. Hunters rely more on knockback than other classes against casters and these gloves can really shut that down. IMO, they are the best PvP gloves available to a shadowpriest at L70. That's kind of sad, really. The bonus on the arena gloves sucks, but if you are holy/disc you should pick them up for the stats alone, of course.
- Challenger NE Arms Warrior w/ Stormherald
Awareness of your surrounding is part of PvP. I lined this warrior up from the side for a dismount/fear. He was a bit slow getting off of his mount, but he would have been feared or stunned anyway. I dumped devouring plauge on him after he got to me and things were looking pretty good. I noticed that he switched to battle stance to overpower me so I feared him. Unfortunately he got off a simultaneous mace stun which I removed with trinket, but it cost me the time to cast a mind blast/SW:D which would have killed him. I was only able to get off SW:D, which almost killed him but not quite. So, I took that damage and at the same time he used deathwish and intercept stunned me. I took a huge round of damage along with my SW:D damage and almost died. Fortunately he went down to DoTs while I was stunned.
- NE BM Hunter and NE Feral Druid
The hunter makes a nice move with a quick dismount, scattershot, trap attempt but I trinket out of the scattershot and jump away from the trap. You can almost see the look of surprise on his face after he gets range, turns around, and realizes that I'm right on top of him. A druid jumps me, I switch targets to DoT him, then switch back and make sure the hunter has died. I kite the druid a little to let the DoTs work. I then net him to give me an uninterrupted mindblast, put the pet on him and kite him some more til he is a bit low on health. Fear with the mindblast/SW:D combo finishes him off.
- Duelist Human Affliction Warlock
I start this fight with low mana and all of my buffs stripped from returning the flag in a previous fight. My basic strategy with warlocks is to frontload as much of what I can early. Silence early, fear early. I'll get all of my DoTs up including my pet in this case since I was low on mana anyway. This fight is, of course, much harder with a warlock who uses his felhunter well. In this case the warlock was using an imp. Here I started off with silence and got vampiric touch up. Vampiric touch is generally a hard spell to land in solo PvP. It is subject to pushback, interrupts, counterspells, etc. Since I'm using the L60 PvP gloves which decreases pushback for mindblast that is the spell I usually use when it comes to casting times. However, I feel that getting vampiric touch is of such importance against warlocks that it becomes the fist thing I try to do agains them. After I get vampiric touch up, I fear allowing a quick mindblast/SW:D combo. I put the pet on him and run out of range for my CDs to come back up.
I'm really not sure what the warlock is thinking or doing at this point in time. He's already hurt pretty badly and just kind of seems to give up.
- NE Moonkin and Human Fury Warrior
My intent here was to focus on the moonkin til he died. Fury warriors usually can't hurt me (even well-geared ones). I was concerned the moonkin would change forms and heal, so I just put everything into him. Fear with an early mindblast/sw:d almost took him out, and did a nice chunk of damage to myself as well. I then silenced the moonkin and finished him off with mindflay. Switching to the warrior, I threw my shield back up and netted him to give me a mindblast and some kiting room to let DoTs work. He went down easily after that.
- Human Challenger Mage
This was a really close fight. I dotted the mage up, got the fear off, and did mindblast/sw:d. Coming out of the fear she got an impact proc and quickly lit me up to about half of my health. I silenced and put vampiric touch up. I then went totally n00b and mindflayed. That was like hanging a sign on me that said, "Please counterspell me now." And she complied. Don't be afraid to change out of shadowform, especially after a bonehead move like that. If I hadn't of immediately changed out and did PoM/Renew I would have lost this close fight.
- NE Marksmanship Hunter
This guy had pretty fast reactions. I was coming at him from the side but he saw me and immediately went into action. He was hitting pretty hard with his gear and the berserker buff. Even though he had built up a lead, I never really got that concerned. Hunters just don't have any defense against DoTs and he had used up all of his ways of stopping my casts (scatter shot and silencing shot). Well, all except one. Feign death. He literally mistimed his feign death by a fraction of second and that was the deciding factor in this fight.
SONG THREE - "Destroyer" by Messiah
- NE Challenger Moonkin
I had debated whether putting this clip in the movie or not just because of the ease of victory. I decided to leave it in to make a couple of points. First, awareness of your surrounding is a PvP skill. And two, bluffs work sometimes. Towards the end of this fight the NE shifted out of form and wanted to heal. Although everything I had was on cooldown, I charged her bluffing a fear and she fell for it. She MOVED! This bought me time for my mindblast/sw:d combo to come online which killed her before she could heal or CC me. If she had not fallen for the bluff and stood still then she could have easily got off the heal or a CC to reset the fight.
- Human Grand Marshal Warrior with Stormherald
This warrior is on the #4 3v3 team in my battlegroup. I caught him on his mount and dotted him up. He tried to get to the regen hut before engaging me at a disadvantage. A blackout proc prevented that, I then feared him away from the regen hut and took it myself to keep him from getting it. I shielded up, hit him with mindblast/sw:d. Once again, sw:d is meant to be used during fights IMO. A lot of people will say you should only use it when they are near death. They are dead wrong. Keep in mind, that with vampiric embrace up I get health back from the mindblast and sw:d to help mitigate the damage it does to me. The warrior on the other hand takes all that damage and it is hard for them to recover once low health. He pummels my mindflay, but at this point I am at 50% health and he is at 5% health.
Benign, one of my teammates, had asked over vent if I wanted help but I didn't hear him since I was concentrating on the fight. He came in and landed a shadowfury, then the warrior died to my DoTs. His late participation did not change the outcome of this fight.
- NE Grand Marshal Feral Druid
Druids can be a PITA because of their relatively high resist rates. And sure enough, this bear resisted my fear. I dotted him up and chased him a bit to keep him inside feral charge range. He eventually got range and charged me but to his misfortune my touch of weakness procced blackout on him. He caught me offguard switching out of form to cyclone at halfhealth and I got caught in the GCD. However, I did manage to get off the silence at the last second and we got a simultaneous silence&cyclone. I quickly trinketted the cyclone and lit him up with a timely double crit mb/sw:d to put him at death's door. Then, mindflay procced blackout sealing his fate.
- Human Warlock
This warlock was horrible. I can't even say what spec he was for sure, because he didn't get to do much of anything and he might have changed specs since then. The only reason I put this guy in was to fill some space in a song and also because he was in a preform that were acting like a bunch of asses by farming the graveyard. I love getting these pricks alone, and this is usually what happens when I do. Farming the GY DOES NOT equal skill. Go screw yourselves GY campers.
This is however, my general strategy for warlocks. Throw everything at them, the kitchen sink, the works and do it early. I lock him up with fear with silence and put everything single I have on him.
- NE Challenger Feral Druid
This cat pounced me from stealth. I broke away, got a fear off which was quickly trinketted. However, it gave me just enough space for a mindblast. I then kite him as best as I can to let the DoTs do the work. Here is another example of an "early" sw:d. I did this sw:d when he was around 45% health. I knew it wasn't going to kill him, but it did put him in low health with a bunch of DoTs ticking on him. That caught him offguard, and by the time he bashed to shift and heal it was too late.
- NE Fury Warrior
This is just for pure comedy. Why do people play fury warriors? Seriously? ;)
SONG FIVE - "Wires and Pins" by End User
- Human Mage and Human Fury Warrior
Here I just DoT the warrior up and switch to the mage. Once again, I'm just not generally concerned with a fury warrior or what they can do so he is second priority. The mage and I simultaneously silence and counterspell. For whatever reason, mine sticks and her's doesn't. I fear for control and from that point she doesn't really do anything at all to hurt me. The warrior is an easy kill after she is gone.
- NE Moonkin and Dwarf Hunter
The moonkin adds and I notice he is not full health so he becomes the primary target. I silence him right before I get scatter shotted, so he never really has a chance to do anything. The hunter is trivial after the moonkin dies.
- Draenie Mage and Gnome Warlock
This was a tough 1v2 to pull off. The gnome warlock did not want to play with me by myself so he waited to come back until I had already engaged the mage. At the beginning of this fight I get a bugged fear. Bugged fears are quite common for priests, almost as common as bugged vanishes. A bugged fear is when you are right on top of your target and you fear, but nothing happens. There is no fear message, there is no resist message, no immune message. No message period.... BUT, your fear cooldown gets used. It's great. It happens to me about 2 times a night of heavy PvPing. I asked my friend (who used to play a priest) about this, because I never hear priests complaining about it. He said they just gave up trying to get it fixed.
Against a good mage that would have been bad, but fortunately I wasn't up against a very good mage. He disoriented me with breath and laid a frost nova on me, but I silenced. Since he was silenced breaking the nova wasn't a priority so I used the time to VT him then dispelled the nova. He got a few shots in but went down easily. By this time the gnome warlock who ran away from me earlier had come back and was casting on me while finishing off the mage. He had me at a complete disadvantage as all my control was on cooldown. I changed forms to renew and PoM to prolong what I though would be the inevitable.
Fear came back off of cooldown so I was able to get his pet off of me. This warlock was using a strange soul link/destruction hybrid, which meant... no unstable affliction. And that is the only reason I lived. I was able to PoM/renew myself while at the same time dispelling his DoTs. I kept on the move because I knew he couldn't hurt me too badly without using a casting time spell. I put my pet on him to get some mana back and do some damage to him. I put some DoTs on him and when his health was low enough I threw my shield up and turned to do sw:d. That and a DoT tick killed him. Never give up as Evertras says.
- NE feral druid and Human Arms Warrior
I had killed this druid solo easily about 10 minutes prior to this fight, but this time he got an friendly add in the form of a well-geared human warrior. As soon as I noticed the warrior I dotted him to put him combat as I didn't want him to get a free charge. I then switched back and forth between the druid, who broke my fear instantly with his trinket, and the warrior to keep them in combat. Eventually the warrior did intercept stun. Now, here is one of those really subtle situations where fast reactions can get you in trouble. If you immediately trinket to break the stun you are going to hit by a hamstring.. and then, you are screwed.
In this situation you need to wait out the stun and look for the warrior's hamstring. After he hamstring's, then use the trinket to get away. The warrior is basically kiteable now because his intercept stun is on cooldown. I put the pet on the warrior to keep him combat so he couldn't drop and charge and turned my attention to the druid. By this time I had also slipped out of shadow to PoM and renew myself. I kited until my fear came back up from cooldown. I used it to get the druid off of me. The warrior by this time had decided to kill my pet since he was basically turned into a non-factor. Mindblast and sw:d finished him off.
I turned to the druid, but I just didn't have the mana to finish him off and a resisted fear put the nail in the coffin. In hindsight, I should used vampiric touch on the druid immediately after the warrior and it might have been enough to eek out the win. Lesson learned.
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