CHAPTER 1: CC FUNDAMENTALS

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CC IN WOW PVP INTRO

Here's the hard truth. If you aren't using your CC properly in arena, you are doomed to be hard stuck.

We know it sounds dramatic, but the reality is, it doesn't matter if you're topping the damage meters every game because that is only half the work. To consistently fine kill windows, you need to combine damage with control.

Sure, maybe some specs can win the game with absolutely no CC, but not everyone can rely on overtuned damage. In fact, CC is so strong that Blizzard was like, uh, yeah guys, maybe we should nerf this.

So they did, to literally almost every single CC in the game except cyclone. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to practice crowd control outside of arena.

It's not something you can just level up on a target dummy or buy from the auction house, at least for now. To make crowd control easy to understand, we will be separating it into three different categories.

At the top we have primary CC, which is the most vital for setting up kills in arena. Below that we have secondary crowd control, which is a bit more dynamic but often the easiest to mess up.

And finally, we have primary CC. We have accessory CC, which includes abilities that might seem weak on paper but have tons of hidden potential.

DIMINISHING RETURNS EXPLAINED

First though, we need to explain diminishing returns, which is honestly a bit spooky, so let's get through this fast. One of the most vital skill sets to learn in order to succeed in PvP is being able to play around diminishing returns, commonly referred to as DRs.

With very few exceptions, every crowd control spell belongs to one unique DR category. Stuns, incapacitates, disorients, silences, disarms, knockbacks, and roots.

DRs are a way to lower the duration of crowd control abilities in the same category happening within a specific time window. The first CC cast on a target will last its full 100% duration.

Once the CC ends, its DR timer will start for 18 seconds, which means the next CC in the same DR category will last 50% duration. This will then repeat for 25% duration, and then the target will be immune to the DR category until DRs fully reset to their full duration.

Note that spells will only DR with other spells in the same CC category. For instance, Polymorph is on the incapacitate DR, which means it will not DR with fear.

The only DR category that breaks rules are knockbacks, which completely DR from 100% to 0% effectiveness after just one use. You can check the remaining DR of any spell by using Gladius or Esserina.

By default, DRs are displayed right next to the enemy unit frame. The best players are constantly monitoring the DRs of their spells, making sure they are completely reset before initiating any major offensive push.

As we will explain in a moment, the most important DR category to track, followed by incapacitates and disorients. These three CC types are fundamental to every arena game and help define class balance and synergies.

STUNS EXPLAINED

The first and most important category we'll be going over includes everything on the stun DR. Stuns are the primary way kills are landed in arena and every class has them, so we're not lying when we say they're the most important.

So if we want to use them properly, we're going to have to follow some rules. The first rule we want to follow is to always sync up our burst with a stun on the kill target whenever possible.

If you have a major offensive cooldown ready, you will get the most value using it while a kill target is locked down with a stun, preventing enemy players from simply escaping out of line of sight when you are trying to burst, or more importantly trading a defensive cooldown to counter your damage.

Now there are of course exceptions to this, disc priests can pain suppression while stunned and druids can press bark skin. Also there is always the possibility of landing kills outside of stuns too, but every setup is always better with a stun no matter what.

This means messing up a stun DR leading up to a kill window can really destroy your chances in securing a win. So how can you play around situations where your team has more of a chance of getting a kill than you?

Well, you can play around situations where your team has more of a chance of getting a kill than you. You can play around situations where your team has more of a chance of getting a kill than you.

Let's imagine you are a warrior playing with a sub rogue. You obviously have storm bolt and shock wave while they have cheap shot and kidney shot.

Let's pause to ask the question, who should be stunning the kill target? There is an obvious answer here, ideally it should be the rogue, and there are a few reasons for this.

For one, kidney shot is the longest stun available, and generally speaking we want to prioritize keeping the kill target locked down the longest while our team bursts. Even if our rogue leads with cheap shot on the kill target, it will still last longer than storm bolt, which now only lasts 3 seconds in pvp.

This leads us to rule number 2, prioritize using longer duration stuns on the kill target if multiple stuns are available since we want to maximize the time our target is locked down. Another use of stuns outside of lockdown on a main priority target is to extend cc chains on an off target, typically a healer.

By stunning a priest for instance, you deny the ability for them to avoid subsequent cc, denying the use of shadow word death, fade, and even shadow meld if they are night elf.

One example of this is hunters using intimidation stun to make the off target unable to dodge the incoming freezing trap while also extending the cc chain by 3 seconds, as these are different dr categories and don't diminish each other.

This means our third rule for using stuns is to apply them to off target, usually healers, in order to start or extend cc chains. We can combine both uses of stuns, on the kill target and on off targets, in order to establish cross cc.

This is quite powerful in comps that have two stuns, such as the popular retribution paladin slash arms warrior combination, using the shorter off target, and the off cc chain. This is a good way to make the off target stuns more effective, as the longer stuns are more likely to be used to kill the off target.

When done at the same time, it will negate any incoming healing effects or potential cooldown trades, while keeping the kill target pinned down for maximum burst.

On the more rare occasion, stuns do also have a defensive usage in peeling for yourself or a teammate by securing instant crowd control, making you able to build space and recover. This type of stun usage is almost synonymous with rogues using cheap shots to relieve their team of incoming pressure.

Using stuns defensively is inherently a good way to get the kill target to recover, and this is a good way to get the kill target to recover. Using stuns defensively is inherently risky, as this means having the target on stun DR for the next 18 seconds, which severely limits your kill potential.

Stuns are also pseudo interrupts, and can be used to stop casts when nothing else is available. Again, this does carry some risk if stun setups are required for your team to secure kills.

Sometimes though, there isn't any other option, and in order to stop an important cast, a stun will have to be used. One final note is that some stun effects are on a unique diminishing return category, including the destruction infernal sun, and the destruction of the sun.

This is a good way to get the stuns to recover, and to get the kill and the demonology warlock stun from call fell lord. If you know why this happens, let us know in the comments below.

INCAPACITATES EXPLAINED

Anyway, by now it should be obvious why stuns are the primary crowd control type in arena, but right below them we have two other DR categories including incapacitation and disorient effects.

These two CC types are often necessary to gain full control of off targets during kill windows in addition to having the main target locked down by a stun, which is why we're considering them secondary CC effects.

Most incapacitate and disorient effects will break on damage, but generally have a longer duration than most stuns, which makes them optimal to use on off targets during kill setups. While disorients and incaps are similar by design, there are some specific use cases for each.

We will start with incapacitates which are what help define setup based specs and compositions.

When pushing for a kill, the target for long duration incapacitate effects such as freezing trap for hunters or polymorph for mages are usually healers, as a way to deny them trading any cooldowns that would prevent the kill from happening.

When long duration incaps on healers are combined with stuns on off targets, they are usually used to block the enemy's attack. This is a good example of how incapacitates can be used to block the enemy's attack.

Incapacitates are often used to block the enemy's attack. Incapacitates are often used to block the enemy's attack.

When long duration incapacitates are combined with stuns on kill targets, there is a multiplying effect, creating a true setup where multiple targets are locked down, unable to escape or trade major defensives, which sometimes forces out a pvp trinket.

Another great off target for incapacitation effects are specs with lots of defensive utility. Take shadow priests as an example.

They have various tools that can deny a kill, such as off heals, instant cast cc, life grip, or even major defensives like void shift. If they are left uncovered during setups, then there is a high chance that the kill can be disrupted.

Keep in mind this should only happen if you have a lot of time to kill. This should only become your priority if you have some other form of control on the healer or if they happen to be out of line of sight.

Defensively, incaps can be used as a stalling or peeling tool to relieve pressure, which is often the case for anyone with a spammable incapacitate, which is commonly seen with mages spamming polymorph on dps targets to relieve pressure.

Spamming necc, but especially something like polymorph, is something that should be done intentionally, for instance stalling the game until a stun is ready or as a way to peel enemy players when their major cooldowns are used. This is why mage-spell is a good way to use it.

The mage-spell is the true kings of dampening, because they can completely dictate the pace of the game by shutting down the momentum of enemy players with their spammable cc and delaying the game for stun drs to reset.

On the other hand, non-spammable incaps like freezing trap get significantly less value when used onto dps targets as a form of peeling, simply because the cc effect can be dispelled by the enemy healer, which is why most hunters typically peel with scattershot when needed, since it cannot be dispelled and allows them to save freezing trap to cc chain the enemy healer later on.

One important thing to note with most incap effects is that they can automatically cleanse any damage over time effects from the target, and sometimes even heal them, so make sure to be thoughtful before using specific incaps if you have a dot based dps on your team to increase your chances of winning, and ultimately to avoid some unpleasant whispers.

Finally, a more advanced use of incapacitates is using them as pre cc while waiting for the stun dr to fade or to prevent enemy players from preemptively using a defensive before a stun lands. This is a highly technical skill, but it's worth noting that it's a very useful skill to have in a team.

It's a very common setup based comp, and is most common in setup based comps like rmp. It's quite common to see mages sheeping an enemy dps, or rogues even gouging their target before using a stun, once again denying any opportunity of avoiding the setup with a preemptive cooldown trade.

This is less common at lower ratings, but is immensely powerful for creating the strongest setups.

DISORIENTS EXPLAINED

With incaps covered, disorient effects are the only other class of DRs in the secondary CC category, and include spells like fear and cyclone. While some disorient effects also break from damage, they often come with a threshold.

Unlike incapacitation effects, that usually break from any incoming damage number, this threshold is still quite low, so the effect will probably break to most direct hits while being able to take a few ticks of dot damage or smaller AOE effects.

Just like incaps have their spammable variants, so do disorient effects, some examples of that being fear for warlocks or cyclone for druids that mostly are used to disrupt and control the pace of the game, as well as having the option to cyclone or even fear a target low on HP without having the stress of it breaking to any small hit, and for the case of cyclone, not having it break at all.

Just like polymorph and other incap DRs, disorients have a spectrum of uses, but unlike incaps, disorients are typically used defensively as a stalling tool, fear and cyclone are prime examples.

Of course, both of these effects can be used on healers, especially in CC chains, but more often than not, fear and cyclone are used to slow down the momentum of the enemy team, temporarily denying damage without worrying about cleansing dots or the CC breaking to AOE damage.

This is especially true for some AOE disorients, like intimidating shout for warriors, howl of terror for warlocks, or even psychic scream for priests.

These all have the ability to instantly shut down momentum from the enemy team, making them ideal for situations where they can't even deal with the enemy team, and even in the most dangerous situations where peels are needed in a pinch, without needing to worry about cleansing dots or putting targets on stun DR.

On the other hand, some disorients do in fact remove dots, and instantly break on damage, and because of this are more commonly used for setting up kills, much like incapacitate. Two examples of this include blind from rogues, and blinding light from paladins.

Because of their long cooldown, these spells are more of an investment compared to a spammable fear. And due to the fact that they will break on damage, they are almost always used on healers, who are generally far away from the enemy team, limiting the possibility of the CC accidentally breaking to AOE damage.

We don't want to suggest that fear and cyclone cannot be used on healers as well, because they certainly can, but just like incapacitates, they are best used on healers when deliberately trying to secure a kill with a stun on the kill target.

Once again, due to the multiplying effects of cross CC, this tends to be more effective than simply stunning the kill target, or CCing the healer in isolation. The best setups typically involve both.

SILENCE EXPLAINED

With our primary and secondary DRs covered, let's move on to accessory CC. This includes what's left over, like silences, disarms, knockbacks, roots, and snares.

The common feature between all of these DR categories is that, with a few exceptions, there are no spammable variants, being the reason why we have them categorized as accessory.

Most of the time you are not stressing about the target being on a diminishing return from any of these accessory CCs, and they are typically unique enough that you might have one or two of them on your team. The only exception are roots and snares, which your team might have a few of.

Snares do not DR anyway, but are actually insanely OP. More on that later.

The first accessory CC on the list are silence effects, and are some of the least common DRs you will encounter in arena.

With the exception of Garrett, there are no spammable silence effects in the game, but one core feature of every silence in WoW is that they are instant cast, meaning they have the potential to enhance setups by instantly extending a CC chain.

Because healers cannot press most melee CCs, they can't be used in a CC chain. This is why they are so important.

Most of the time, they are not used in a CC chain, but they are used in a CC chain. Because healers cannot press most melee CCs, they can't be used in a CC chain.

Most of the time, they are used in a CC chain. While silence effects are used in major defensive cooldowns while silenced, they are typically the target of any silence effect.

One of the most common uses of silences is to extend an ongoing kill window, such as shadow priests silencing out of psychic horror, or death knights using strangulate out of a stun. This is done to prevent the usage of both utility and defensive cooldowns for an extended period, again, especially on healers.

Due to the pressure that silence effects can create, they are most commonly used as an offensive tool, but that doesn't remove the ability to use them defensively. Silence effects, like any other CC, can act as a pseudo-interrupt, stopping important spell casts when kicks aren't readily available.

In some cases, silence effects can be used to relieve pressure against spellcasters when major offensives are popped. For instance, a fire mage might be silenced on their combustion in very dire situations.

This is typically not ideal since many silence effects can be dispelled, so it is typically a last resort when other options aren't available.

DISARMS EXPLAINED

The second accessory CC includes Disarms, which are like the melee counterpart to silence effects, once again with no spammable variants. Unlike silences, the most common use of disarm effects is to trade them into major melee based offensive cooldowns to shut down kill windows.

If a red paladin is pressing wings, or if a warrior has just used colossus smash and avatar, then a quick disarm is a safe response to deny pressure without putting the target on any other DR, sometimes avoiding the need to use a major defensive.

A less common way to use disarm effects is denying some ability usage from enemy players, such as die by the sword for warriors and death strike for DKs, neither of which can be used while disarmed. This is less common due to its inherent risk.

If the disarm fails to convert to a kill, then it means the target is more likely to get full value out of their offensives later on, which can be a scary situation unless other peels are available.

An important thing to note is that even though disarm effects are used strictly into melee, they do render useless against some specs, such as windwalker monk and feral druids, because monks use their fists to attack, and they can't use their fists to attack, so they can't use their fists to attack, and druids use their claws.

KNOCKBACK EXPLAINED

Moving on, an often overlooked category is knockback effects, which have a very unique DR interaction as the diminishing effect after one knockback effect goes to full immunity to other knockback effects for 10 seconds.

The most common use of knockbacks is to manipulate enemy positioning, where the most obvious case is to simply build space between you and the enemy by knocking them away. This is especially strong on maps with vertical differences, such as knocking people down from the bridge on blade's edge.

Knocking one or more players off z-axis is a highly effective way to peel, since it will stall their momentum without placing them on any other major DR. Even without a z-axis, knockbacks are great anti-mobility tools, acting as instant counters to any gap closers.

For instance, a mage might blast wave an enemy warrior immediately after charging. If no other gap closers are available, this will allow the mage to build distance and safely free cast.

Another use of knockbacks is to deny a cast without using an interrupt. For instance, thunderstorm can allow resto shamans to avoid critical cc casts even while stunned.

So when wind shear or grounding totem aren't available as counterplay, a quick thunderstorm is the correct play. Using knocks to interrupt becomes a risk-free way of denying a major spell cast without worrying about getting juked and giving away a free precognition.

Knockbacks even have a distinct offensive use, by displacing players out of major static defensive aoe cooldowns such as power ward barrier for priests and anti-magic zone for dks.

It is quite common for monks to save their ring of peace for these abilities specifically, since the radius is large enough to repeatedly knock players out of the helpful zone of the aoe defensive. . . . . . . . . . . . .

ROOTS EXPLAINED

Next up on the list is another very undervalued category being root effects. Generally root effects are used to create space by rooting an enemy player, typically a melee dps, and running in the opposite direction.

But this should be obvious. What's less obvious are all the other ways to use roots.

One key use of any aoe root effect is to cc pets against demonology warlocks or bm hunters. Since these classes primarily deal pet based damage this can dramatically reduce their output, especially while they have major offensive spots.

Roots can even be used to combo with other cc, such as balanced druids using their infamous root beam combination, forcing healers to stay inside of the silencing beam, not being able to dispel their own root and move out.

Even though it is less common, roots can also keep healers out of line of sight of their dps assuming a dispel isn't available. This situation is quite rare but worth exploiting if given the chance, because at the very least it will force the enemy healer to burn their dispel, potentially allowing you to cc their dps.

This is a very common use of root effects, but it's also a common use of root effects for free.

SNARES EXPLAINED

Finally, let's go over snares. Now, the biggest difference between slows and every other type of CC we've covered so far is that slows do not DR.

You can infinitely spam multiple slows on a target and they will always last their full duration. The reason we are including snares in a guide about CC is because slowing targets is a criminally underused form of crowd control, despite being super useful.

We are going to give you one simple rule. It should be your goal to keep snares constantly applied to as many targets as possible.

For melee, keeping targets slowed is not only a passive peel for you and your team, but more importantly it allows you to have higher uptime, deal more damage, land more CC, kick more often, you name it. Keeping up snares is like a buff to everything else you do.

The same is true for ranged DPS. By keeping enemy players snared, especially melee DPS, you give yourself a higher chance to safely deal damage, land important CC casts, and avoid as much damage as possible.

If you want any chance at winning the mobility war, you have to keep targets slowed.