CHAPTER 2: CC MASTERY

CC MASTERY INTRO

Welcome to our course on Mastering Crowd Control in WoW PvP. So by now, you know everything about the different CC categories and how diminishing returns work, but we need to take things a step further.

These days, players are exceptionally good at avoiding CC in the first place. They won't make it easy for you to land your trap, your poly, your fear, well, you name it.

Not only that, but even if you manage to land your CC, you really need to make it count because kills can only happen in very, very small windows. This course is going to take what you learned about CC so far and elevate it to the next level.

GAME LOSING MISTAKES: STOP FAILING YOUR CC - SKILL TEST

Did you know that rank 1 players are actually playing a different game than you? I'm sure you've seen clips of tournament players getting perfect CC chains all the time, but then you try and CC and it seems like everything fails.

But why? It's because you're playing the game on hard mode.

You see, the best players in the world do things to make the game easier for themselves, and CCing properly is a huge part of this. So to make the game easier for you, we have 5 rules that you should be following when going for CC.

It doesn't matter what class you play, because today's guide has something for everyone. CC seems simple enough, right?

All you need to do is target the healer and cast your spell, right? No!

Unless you're using your CC on a boar in Elwynn Forest, chances are it's going to be hard to land your cast. There are an infinite number of things that can go wrong while going for CC.

The first are immunities, like greater fade, grounding totem, and obviously divine shield. There are also a number of interrupts and positional requirements that can make CC difficult to land on its own.

And as you start playing higher rated players, enemy teams will be much better at throwing their stops into your CC spells. So what do you do?

COMBO INSTANT CC

Our first rule for using CC properly is to avoid using it on its own. You should try and make your CC as guaranteed as possible, because once again there are so many different things that can prevent it from landing.

Many inexperienced players are actually making the game harder for themselves and their team by trying to CC on their own. High rated players like going for guaranteed options.

They understand the enemy team will be trying to do everything they can to stop the CC from landing so they only go for it when it has a high chance at actually working. This is something you might do already, but in case you're a newer player you really have to focus on making your CC as guaranteed as possible.

Here for instance the enemy priest has multiple tools that could prevent our trap from landing. Shadow word death and shadow meld are the most likely counters on top of just avoiding the trap with movement.

So in order to guarantee the long CC our hunter simply uses his stun before going for freezing trap. This dramatically reduces the chance it will be countered and in turn makes the setup much easier for us.

Ok but what if you have no CC spells you can combo together? This means you are screwed when it comes to landing CC against good players right?

No! That is why you have teammates!

Almost every class in the game has instant cast spells it can use to keep your target locked down so that you can land your CC.

HELP FROM TEAMMATES

That brings us to our second rule, which is to use your partner's instant cast CC to help you land your spells. Let's take RMP as an example to show how many spells can be used to set up Polymorph.

From the rogue, there is cheap shot, kidney shot, and blind, and from the priest, we have psychic scream and chastise. But I know what some of you might be thinking, not everyone wants to or can play with a rogue.

But let's make a quick list of some of the other spells that could be used to guarantee longer CC. The list we have here is not every spell, and some classes have more than others, but almost every spec in the game has at least one instant cast spell it can use to help you set up longer CC chains on enemy healers.

Even melee cleaves need to be doing this. Here, our team needs to find a way to land a hex on the enemy shaman to finish out this game, but once again, there are plenty of things that could get in the way.

The shaman could win sheer, grounding totem, fleshcraft, or even line of sight to avoid our hex. So, what do we do?

We use our stun so our shaman doesn't have to use it. We don't have to deal with any of these stops.

Without this hammer of justice, it would have been a complete gamble to try and hex. By playing with your team and asking them to help you set up CC, you will have a much easier time actually landing casts.

Remember, the goal is to make the game easier for yourself. When your partners can help set up CC for you, the game becomes way less stressful.

This works both ways. You should help CC for your partners, and your partners should help set up CC for you.

Here, our mage uses DB on the monk, while our rogue uses cheap shot on the enemy priest. This will allow our mage to cast a polymorph while giving our rogue enough time to move across the map to open on the monk.

These are the sorts of plays that you should be looking for in arena. Regardless of what comp you're playing, you should try and make the game easier for you and your partners with coordinated CC.

Okay, so all you need to do is just have your partners press their instant CCs to allow you to land your spells, and we don't have to worry about anything else, right? No!

Because it's never just the enemy healer that can prevent you from landing CC. They have partners too.

And you can bet money that their teammates will try and stop your spells. So, what do you do?

CROSS CROWD CONTROL

That brings us to rule number three. Make sure you are cross CCing as a team, but what the hell does that mean?

In simple terms, it's using multiple CC spells across different players on the enemy team all at the same time. Sometimes this can be done by simply counting down from three.

Just say three, two, one in Discord, and you and your teammates will all press CC at the same time. But why is this important?

Every class in the game has some form of team utility, whether this be off heals, damage mitigation, HP boosts, or simply heals. We voted an entire video ranking each class by how many team wide utility options they have.

And the most extreme examples, like arms warriors, have over ten things they can do to prevent their team from dying, and that is just one person in the arena.

So you can begin to understand why warriors have been so popular and well represented this expansion, because they are a swiss army knife of defensives for their team.

And that is just one class, so when you pair something like an arms warrior with another highly disruptive class like a fire mage, you can begin to see why controlling multiple targets is important for landing kills.

Hybrid DPS are especially important to cross CC when going for kills, since their off healing is usually enough to shut down setups. Here our RMP lines up three separate CC abilities on the enemy jungle cleave in order to create a 3v1 situation.

If all three players aren't CC'd at the same time, there is a chance the kill could be ruined. This triple CC allows our team to build maximum pressure and gradually wear down at the enemy team's defensive cooldowns.

Repeating setups like this over and over is what truly wins arena games. But it is not just RMP that has the necessity or the ability to do this.

It is the ability to do this. Or even the tools to cross CC.

Almost every popular comp in the game has cross CC options and will benefit enormously from using them. As you can see here, even a melee cleave is capable of cross CCing, with all three enemies being controlled during a setup, once again maximizing pressure.

So by now I hope this dispels the myth that cross CC is only for rogues and mages. No, it's for every comp in the game.

INTERRUPTS & IMMUNITIES

Okay, so let's just say you don't have any cross CC available, but you really need to set up a kill. What do you do when the enemy team has interrupts ready?

The trick is to bait some kicks. One thing you will notice about pro players is that they don't really juke their spells much.

This is because every caster in the game has multiple spell schools, so getting interrupted really doesn't matter all that much.

So if you can manage to tank a bunch of kicks before you set up your CC, you leave yourself a small window where no one on the enemy team can stop your casts, giving you the ability to land your spells without the need for cross CC. This is an easy outplay that works really well at lower ratings.

Here, our mage goes for a polymorph on the hunter. This is a win-win no matter what happens.

The priest might think the polymorph is for him, so he might waste shadow or death. But even if the polymorph lands on the hunter, the priest will probably burn a dispel, and if we have a shackles trinket ready, this can be a huge problem for the enemy team.

The hunter kicks the poly, but now there will be one less stop available for us when we actually go for CC on the priest. So if you want to guarantee CC in the future, try and bait as many kicks as possible before you actually set up your kill.

It's not just interrupts you have to worry about though. There are multiple abilities that provide immunity to spells.

We have some of the most important ones listed here, but there are a few more niche ones you should be aware of. Playing around these spells often requires a bit of mind games, but no matter what, you should keep track of their cooldown using omnibar.

This will allow you to see when they are available so you can plan your counterplay. Sometimes simply moving towards the healer is enough to force out one of these immunities.

Like we have here in this example. As you can see, simply running towards the healer forces them to use their shadow word death, allowing our player to wait it out before using their CC.

Okay, so just to recap. First, you need to set up longer control with shorter spells, which sometimes means having your partners throw in a few instant CCs to help you.

Then your team just needs to make sure they cross on multiple players, and that's all you need to do to land kills, right? No, your CC is only half the battle.

There is a health bar you have to deal with now.

COMBINE CC & OFFENSIVES

And that brings us to rule number four, make the most out of your CC by combining it with offensive cooldowns. Maximizing pressure is fairly easy to understand.

Crowd control causes pressure and so does damage, so when you combine the two you get twice the value. This is a mistake we see over and over at low ratings.

People think oh all I need to do is damage, or oh all I need to do is CC, but they really fail at combining the two. This is something that high rated players understand.

If you want to get value out of your control you need to combine it with damage and vice versa. Here our rogue mage will open up with cross CC on both players while also using cooldowns.

This creates a situation where the enemy team is forced to react, and in this case trinkets get used by both enemy players. Once you burn major cooldowns the goal will be to try and repeat the same setup over and over, combining offensive cooldowns with control until the enemy team has nothing left.

When done consistently you will hopefully arrive at a point where your pressure becomes too much. If you are able to perform setup after setup focusing on cross CC with damage, you set yourself up for victory.

To see if you can do this, go to the link in the description below. To see if you can do this, go to the link in the description below.

To make your CC even deadlier you need to make sure the enemy healer stays controlled for as long as possible. This involves chaining multiple CC casts together in a process called, well you guessed it, chain CC.

You can chain your own control spells together and some common examples include blind into sap for rogues, dragon's breath into polymorph for mages, and intimidation into trap for hunters. But you can also chain CC spells together with your teammates abilities.

Here our mage needs to recast polymorph on the priest but has been stunned by the enemy warrior. By the time the stun ends the polymorph will have ended.

As a work around our druid casts a cyclone on the priest. This is one benefit when playing with two classes that have spammable ranged CC.

If one fails the other can sometimes go through. It is quick adaptations like this that separate low rated and high rated players.

And communicating that you can't land CC signals to your team that someone else needs to help you. And if you want your CC to be as deadly as possible, you need to make sure there aren't any gaps left between spells.

If you have a spammable casted CC like polymorph, time your follow up cast with the duration of the current spell on your target. If your poly cast is 1.5 seconds start casting it on the healer when there is around 1.5 seconds left on their sheep.

The easiest way to do this is with an add on like gladius or big debuffs which will display debuff timers on unit frames. Ok ok woah that's a lot to remember.

So all you need to do is set up your control which means cross CCing with your partners and then combining this with damage and making sure you leave no gaps. That's it right?

No! Ok look we're almost done we promise.

But there is one more thing you need to do.

DIMINISHING RETURNS

Final rule for CCing properly is making sure you don't waste diminishing returns. This is probably one of the most difficult parts of CCing, and if you need a refresher on how diminishing returns work, we have an entire video explaining it in detail.

The first thing you need to track before going for any CC is making sure your target isn't on diminishing returns. If you are trying to go for a kill setup, check DRs with Gladius, Esserina, or Diminish before casting your CC.

That way, you can make sure your CC lasts for its full duration. You should become familiar with the different categories of DRs on your team so you know which of your partner's spells share diminishing returns with your own.

Polymorph, for instance, shares a DR with Sap, and Dragon's Breath shares a DR with Blind. Once you know what categories of CC your spells belong to, you can get really long CC chains.

Pay close attention to the top right corner and see just how many full duration CCs this druid takes. It starts with a full kidney shot, which will last long enough for the druid to drop combat, allowing our rogue to sneak in a quick sap.

Our pre-game CC is a little bit more complex, but it's a little bit more fun. The priest will move into position to fear in case the sap breaks to any damage.

Fortunately though, the sap lasts long enough to cast another one since the druid has not yet entered combat. This half duration sap will be followed up with a full blind.

This will last its full 8 seconds since it is on a different DR category than kidney shot and sap, which were the last two spells to hit the druid.

Unfortunately though, the double sap into blind will mean the druid has sat 20 seconds of CC since the last kidney shot, and this will mean that stunned DRs have reset on the druid, allowing our rogue to get another full duration stun. If you're not sure what to do, you can use the skill to cast another one.

If you're not sure what to do, you can use the skill to cast another one. This is obviously an extreme example of diminishing return rotation, but it shows just how important DR monitoring is.

Once you know what spells share and don't share DR, you can aim for really long CC chains as a team. Part of monitoring DRs also includes planning ahead and making sure your DRs on your current kill setup don't interfere with your next one.

I know a while ago we told you never leave gaps in your CC. While this is true in many cases, sometimes it's actually okay to abandon your CC chain.

For instance, if the enemy team uses multiple major defensives on the team, you can just stop your CC chain entirely and wait for the next setup. If you were to recast your CC for its half and quarter duration, you would be extending the DR lockout period by an additional 6 seconds.

Instead, by abandoning your CC when the enemy team uses multiple defensives, you can get a 6 second advantage on your next setup since you won't be wasting DRs. Don't worry too much about this though, since it's something that even the best players in the world don't do.

If you're going to be wasting your CC chain, you can just wait for the next setup to be done. If you're going to be wasting your CC chain, you can just wait for the next setup to be done.

If you're living this attack and get away but instead of abandoning the kill and holding off on CC for DRs to reset our mage will recast another sheep. While this only delays DRs by 2 seconds it was better here to just hold off on the third cast since the kill attempt was pretty much over at this point.

Well guys there you have it. Learning how to make the most out of your CC is really important and is one of the biggest pain points for newer players in arena.

We hope you guys learned from this guide and are able to implement some of these strategies into your own gameplay.

And since this was just a beginners introduction if you're interested in seeing more be sure to subscribe and check out skill-capped.com slash wow where we have detailed arena guides and commentaries to help take your gameplay to the next level. As always though thanks for watching see ya soon.

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