CHAPTER 1: RECOGNIZING DANGER

RECOGNIZING DANGER INTRO

Welcome to the first course in our Defensive Play series. This one is all about recognizing danger.

Now, we intentionally made this our first course because knowing when you're in trouble is the first step to making smart defensive plays. Our goal is going to be to eliminate feelings of tunnel vision, and we're going to do this by isolating the exact moments where a cooldown trade might be needed.

Now, as you progress through our defensive courses, we're going to be building on the foundations you're going to learn in this introductory course. So without wasting any more time, let's get into it.

YOUR HEALER IS IN CC

Nothing feels worse than dying in the first round of solo shuffle. You now have a small mountain to climb, and suddenly it feels like you have a giant target over your head, with a pack of bloodthirsty dps ready to hunt you down.

Our goal for today is to stop this future from happening, and we are going to do this in 3 different levels, showing you the steps you need to take to become a live lord in solo shuffle. First though, we need to remind you of your main goals when playing the bracket.

Above all you want to minimize the damage you take, while maximizing the damage you deal. This is something we covered extensively in a recent video, where we explained how this concept is not as obvious as many players think.

The following 3 steps are designed to not only reduce the damage you take, but also give you a higher chance at avoiding losses caused by lack of communication inside of solo shuffle. So without wasting any more time, let's get started.

Level 1 is what to do when your healer gets CC'd, which is a situation you are bound to encounter multiple times per game. This is something that can easily spiral out of control if you aren't paying attention to the right things.

And trust us, we already know how chaotic solo shuffle can be. It's a situation where you can't even see the enemy's CC, which makes it easy to tunnel vision.

Chances are, you are probably looking at a few different places on your screen every game. More often than not, you're probably staring at nameplays.

This makes sense, because you need to constantly check on enemy positioning. You might also be looking at gladius, checking to see when DRs are ready for your next setup.

And if you're a really smart player, you might be looking at omnibar to see when enemy CDs are ready. This is already a lot of information to take in, which is why seeing your healer in CC might be hard to notice, but this is where you can make one simple adjustment and make everything much easier.

First up, you will absolutely need some support from addons, specifically big debuffs, which we've included in our addons package available right now on our discord server. This makes important crowd control debuffs appear larger on your raid frames, making it easier to see when your healer is in CC.

But this doesn't mean you have to be staring here all game, because you have to pay attention to more important things as a dps. Instead, you should use information from the places we discussed earlier to signal when you might need to glance at your healers frame.

For example, since you are already looking at nameplates or gladiators, you might want to instantly notice when someone is casting a CC, which means if you can't interrupt the cast you need to quickly check who it was for.

You will know instantly if it was for you, but if that's not the case, then you should immediately check your big debuffs. Now you see your healer is in crowd control, but let's pause here since not all CC is casted.

Maybe instead you were looking at your omnibar, when suddenly you notice intimidation suddenly appears. In over 90% of cases, a hunter using intim means a trap is headed for your healer, and if you cannot stop this trap, you can use your healer to get the trap.

Now we have two different scenarios that use two different addons to signal to you that your healer is in CC, but that doesn't mean we instantly need to blow a defensive. Instead we need to check two more things.

The first is checking for enemy offensive cooldowns, which you can primarily do through weak auras, which again we have an entire package for in our discord including pvp specific imports. Anyway, if you notice that your healer is in CC and the enemy team is popping offensives onto you.

This will instantly signal that you probably need to trade a defensive cooldown as soon as possible. Because dampening stacks so high, it is best to trade your CD's even if you are at high HP since it will be harder for your healer to recover you after they leave CC.

With that said, you should also look to trade a CD anytime your healer is in CC and you are low on HP.

Again as the game progresses into deeper dampening, your healer is going to have an increasingly difficult time recovering your health, which means you need to prevent yourself from dropping critically low whenever possible.

In the end, there is one major thing you need to look out for, and that is noticing when your healer is in CC, which is done through big debuffs. Then there are two triggers that you need to react to.

The first is enemy cooldowns, which is tracked by weak auras, and the second is your own HP, which you can simply track with a default UI. Once you notice your healer is in CC, you need to be checking your health bar, while also monitoring enemy CD's, which can be done with weak auras and an omnibar.

YOUR HEALER IS OUT OF CDS

Now it's time to take things a step further, and this is where we enter the next level. As you climb in raiding, you should notice that your healers are doing a better job at keeping you alive.

Even though it might not seem like it, chances are they are cycling through their cooldowns to keep up with damage and dampening. Some healers do this better than others, of course, and as a DPS, you need to be aware of what cooldowns your healer has to save you at any given time.

On top of this, you need to be aware of when your healer has nothing to save you, since that usually means a loss is incoming unless you can do something about it. The first part of solving this crisis is with another addon, Omni CD.

This will display all of your partner's cooldowns next to their raid frames, allowing you to keep a budget of your team's CDs. Again though, that doesn't mean you need to be staring here all game.

You have more important things to care about 90% of the time. Instead, you should glance at this addon during very specific moments, like when you are stunned, for instance.

This usually means you are going to be under pressure, so a quick glance at your Omni CD should let you know what cooldowns your healer has left. You should familiarize yourself with all of the major defensive CDs.

Like pain suppression, blessing of sacrifice, or life cocoon to name a few, since these are typically enough to stop a kill from happening. There will be a time when your healer will not have their biggest defensive CD, which means it is now up to you to stay alive, even if your healer isn't in CC.

This is why it's important to periodically check Omni CD, since it lets you know when you might truly be in danger.

AVOID OVERLAPPING CDS

Our third level is where we deal with the classic solo shuffle dilemma. This is arguably the most complicated problem to solve.

At this point we've shown you what to do when your healer is CC'd, and then we told you how to track when they are completely out of cds. In both these cases, the play is pretty obvious, and it is up to you as the dps to do the carrying.

Now though we have our third situation. The enemy team just pops some cds, but this time your healer isn't in any cc, and has all their cooldowns ready, and so do you.

This is tricky since both of you can trade, but you don't want to overlap. Instead you should take a brief moment to check if your healer has used a defensive cd onto you, like ironbark, pain suppression, or time dilation to name a few.

Normally these can be hard to see since you will usually have a bunch of active buffs anyway, but with our buffs and debuffs week aura package you can easily tell when your healer has used a defensive onto you since the buff will be displayed directly on top of your character.

So in the event that the enemy team pops cds, and both you and your healer can respond, you should take a very brief moment to let your healer trade first, and if they don't, then you need to trade. Respond as quickly as possible.

Due to the nature of solo shuffle and its lack of communication, there will be some times where you do this and your healer winds up overlapping anyway. But don't worry, this even happens at the highest ratings.

Instead, by utilizing these three levels, you can be way more consistent in how you flowchart your survival in solo shuffle, even when you are playing with weaker healers.