PvP update and ruminations

When I first started doing RBGs, it was hard to get into groups as Feral. I thought maybe I could put together a half-decent set of gear for Boomkin and queue that way, and it did end up being easier to find groups willing to take a Boomkin than Feral (which is kind of weird, since Feral is pretty strong at the moment). But I am a terrible Boomkin. I did fine in group settings, but 1 on 1? Awful.

So I scrapped that idea and decided to try resto out. I have actually really enjoyed healing in RBGs. So much so that I went ahead and spent Conquest points on a full set of ilvl 660 gear for Resto! I now have full gear sets for both Feral and Resto (how unfortunate is it that not all of the pieces overlap?! ugh).

I actually find that I prefer healing in RBGs to dpsing. It makes me feel like I have more control over the outcome of the match as one of three healers as opposed to one of 7 dps. Plus the play-style is a lot of fun - throw hots on everything, run away, throw out some CCs. It probably doesn't hurt that my record as resto is worlds better than as feral. I muddled my way through a lot of games as feral, sometimes going .500 for the week. As resto, my winning % has got to be fairly close to .900. Part of that might just be that I am able to be more picky when it comes to choosing groups as a healer than as an unwanted dps spec. My RBG rating is up to 1670, the highest it has ever been.

In arenas I've stuck to Feral though. This is largely due to the fact that my partner is a priest, and while Disc priest is (unfortunately) one of the lower tier healers, shadow might be in an even worse place (at least for 2v2s). As feral/disc we've gotten pretty close to 1900 a couple times ... we'll get to 1890, a win away from 1900, and then face a bunch of teams that give us matchup troubles. It is remarkably unfortunate that Hunter/Healer basically counters us since Hunters are the most represented class at the moment. It is disheartening to start a game and know that unless you play perfectly and the other team screws up, you're going to lose. Our rating hovers between 1850-1900, though with more practice we might be able to break through 1900.

Due to the lack of balance in 2s, we gave 3s a try. Starting with a base of Priest and Druid, there are a couple common 3s comps that are popular and doing quite well in the current meta. The two most popular are God Comp (mage, shadow priest, resto druid) and Jungle (hunter, disc priest, feral druid); Jungle can be played with just about any healer, while God Comp generally restricts itself to Druid. This past weekend we decided to give either one a try and ended up finding a hunter before we found a mage. With varying levels of rating between the 3 of us, we started off around 1600 matchmaking rating and went 8-2 all the way up to 1800. The two losses were due to disconnects from our hunter. Given our immediate success in a mode we were largely unfamiliar with (3s), a comp we hadn't really played (jungle), a third teammate with whom we had never played before (the hunter), I felt really confident we could get up to 2k pretty easily.

Of course, then we had some time to play on Monday night and that did not go as well. We went roughly .500, and though I got my own personal rating up over 1700, I'm not sure our team MMR went much past 1800. This was a little disappointing, but understandable. But it also led me to wonder what would be the best possible comp we could play with once our alts (my priest, my partner's rogue, levels 88 and 93 respectively) are 100 and geared?

Of the two possible healing combinations we have, priest and druid, druid is currently much stronger. Priests lack the mobility and healing power that druids have, and you could certainly argue that druid's have stronger CC with cyclone, roots, and a stun compared to a priest's fear OR roots. So if we go resto druid then that leaves either shadow priest (god comp) or rogue (a variety of comps) as the DPS. In 2s, rogue would be the clear choice. Rogues are quite strong right now, though they are getting a pretty big nerf to the main PvP spec in the upcoming patch. For 3s, I don't have enough experience with either comp to know whether shadow priest or rogue would be better overall. One thing to consider is that shadow priests are basically limited to a mage (in rare cases feral, sp, and resto shaman have done well, but it would be harder to find a healer than DPS, I think) as the third partner while rogue has 2 top tier combos (mage or warlock) and another high tier combo (hunter).

Of course, all those hypotheticals never address an important question - would we want to ditch the specs (or classes?) we used for all of season 1?