CHAPTER 2: DEFENSIVE MISTAKES IN SOLO SHUFFLE

DEFENSIVE MISTAKES INTRO

Welcome to our course that is all about defensive mistakes in solo shuffle. Right now there's a healer crisis in solo shuffle.

Now why is that? Well it's because healing is freaking hard in a world with zero communication.

These guides are going to cover topics ranging from positioning to defensive cooldown usage from the DPS perspective. And every video is designed specifically to make your healer's lives feel 10 times easier.

So stay tuned as we show you some crucial mistakes to avoid every time you solo queue.

MISTAKE 1: KITING TO YOUR HEALER

Attention all WoW PvPers, this is an important message from the future. Solo Shuffle is in a state of crisis.

Queue times are so long that you can watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy before getting a pop. But how did we get here?

Was it some broken class dominating the ladder? No, it was far worse.

You see, all the healers, well, they just stopped queuing one day. Apparently, they couldn't take it anymore.

Healing got so difficult that Seedoo started playing Rogue again in Warlords of Draenor Classic. Yes, it's that bad.

So how can we stop this future from happening? Well, that's where you come in, brave DPS.

You can save the future of Solo Shuffle by helping your healers. It's not going to take that much effort, and in this video, we will show you how to prevent the collapse of PvP's future.

We need every DPS to start doing a few simple things. To keep every healer happy and save the bracket.

Your arena rating and the future of PvP are counting on you to handle this task. Are you ready?

Alright, so what can you do to help your healer? Well, the first thing is to stop kiting towards them for no reason.

We see this problem everywhere, and it's an honest mistake. DPS players think that the safest place to run is right on top of their healer no matter what.

Sometimes this is okay to do, but other times, this just leads to bigger problems. Let's see why.

We're going to zone ourselves into an imaginary lobby on Nagrand Arena, where you are playing any DPS. But for this example, let's make you a warrior paired with a ret paladin and a resto druid.

Your opponents are a demon hunter, feral druid, and disc priest. All of the melee DPS are attacking each other in the center of the map, when suddenly you find yourself in trouble.

No worries, because you simply heroic leap your way back to your healer. Everything is good, right?

Well, not quite, because before you know it, the feral druid and demon hunter are instantly on top of you again. And now your whole team is on top of you.

Your whole team is clumped behind a big annoying pillar. This means that everyone is now vulnerable to an AoE stun from the demon hunter, bleeds from the feral druid, and potentially a fear from the priest, which could hit your ret paladin and druid at the same time, preventing blessing of sanctuary.

The priest also has an AoE defensive for this exact situation, while your healer is now vulnerable to both melee interrupts. Even though you thought you were being safe when kiting to your healer's pillar, you just made everyone miserable.

So, what would have been the better option? For one, if you're absolutely worried about dying, you could instead kite into the pillar across from your healer, which now creates a triangle formation between you, your healer, and the enemy DPS.

This would have still allowed you to temporarily avoid some damage, while making sure your healer isn't as vulnerable to AoE CC, interrupts, or cleave damage if the enemy DPS decide to chase you. While also forcing the enemy priest to leave their pillar, potentially putting them at risk of getting CC'd.

There's a slightly riskier option you could take too. If instead you were more confident in your healer to keep you alive, you could also kite towards the enemy healer.

This mostly applies to melee DPS, and is a more aggressive option. By doing so, you force the enemy melee as far away from your healer as possible, while now turning the tables to potentially cleave and AoE CC the enemy team.

In any case, when you find yourself in the center of the map and in danger, you have a few options. The pillars across from your healer are generally safest, as long as you can stay in line of sight for heals.

Counterintuitively, the enemy pillar can also be safe, so long as you are fairly confident in your healer's ability to keep you alive. But unless it is 100% safe and there is no risk of AoE CC, you can still keep your healer safe.

But unless it is 100% safe and there is no risk of AoE CC, you can still keep your healer safe. But unless it is 100% safe and there is no risk of AoE CC, you can still keep your healer safe.

Avoid ever kiting directly on top of your healer, since that could end in disaster.

In any case, whenever you reposition in solo shuffle, it has to be for a specific reason, while taking into consideration the positioning of your healer, making sure you stay in their line of sight without making them vulnerable to damage or CC while you are kiting.

MISTAKE 2: KITING OUT OF AOE DEFENSIVES

On the topic of positioning in bad places, one of the worst places to kite is out of your teams own aoe defensives. There are a handful of defensive cooldowns from both healers and dps that have enormously strong effects which you can only benefit from by standing in a tight radius.

Lets cover the biggest ones. From disc priests we have barrier which represents 50% damage reduction with the dome of light pvp talent.

It should be easy to stay inside of its radius since the animation is so obvious. What is less obvious is earthen walled totem for restoration shamans.

This is better at mitigating smaller sources of damage, but it is still super important for the shamans since their healing output is a bit weaker by comparison. Some dps even offer aoe damage reduction too.

An obvious one is anti magic zone which is useful against both casters and some melee dps since there are very few specs in wow that deal pure physical damage. Darkness from demon hunters is a bit less obvious, but super important nonetheless.

This one has an additional RNG element, but doesn't mean you should ever kite out of it especially since it has a massively long cooldown. The two problems we've covered so far are some of the most common mistakes we see, even up to high ratings.

If you don't know how to position or what defensives to look out for on your own team, you will eventually run into some problems. In just a second we're going to show you how to make all this information easy to track.

MISTAKE 3: NOT RESPONDING TO ENEMY ABILITIES

Alright, so now we need to go a bit deeper. The third mistake is not responding properly to enemy cds.

Ok, look, by now you know the drill. Someone on the enemy team pops an offensive cd.

That means you need to trade instantly, right? Well sometimes, but not always.

Lets explain. Its true that some cds need to be respected with trades, like death mark, avenging wrath, serenity and so on.

These are all big damage increases, and usually the only way to survive through them is by trading a defensive. We've included big cooldowns like this in our addons package, which is found in our public discord server, which you can join using the link below.

But our package also includes some cooldowns that don't follow the standard 1 to 1 trading pattern. A prime example of this is psy fiend.

Yes, this is one of the most important offensive cooldowns for shadow priest, but it doesn't mean you need to blast a defensive when you see it. No, you just kill the psy fiend.

Better priest will shield it first, so this might take some time to kill, but it is 100% worth it, otherwise you might need to waste a defensive if it stays alive. Another unique example is tyrant from demo warlocks, which again, doesn't necessarily require you to trade.

Instead, the tyrant can be interrupted, cc'd, or even kited, and if you want to help your healer out, doing any of the above will make them very happy. And speaking of warlock spells, with the growing popularity of destro, you are bound to encounter fell fissure.

We already talked about the aoe spells you want to stand in, but this is one you want to move out of right away. With dampening already being high in the bracket, you can't afford to take more healing reduction.

Again, we highly recommend checking out the addons package in our discord, as it includes all the major cooldowns you need to be responding to as a dps. I'm going to be using the dps for this one, but I'm going to be using the dps for the dps.

Now to show you how to control the dps, we're going to take a look at one of them.

MISTAKE 4: AVOID OVERLAPPING CDS

Many players neglect to track enemy CC with omnibar, and this is crucial, since knowing when the enemy team has their main CCs ready can help you predict when you will be in danger, especially if your healer doesn't have their medallion ready to save you.

You can track enemy cds with omnibar too, but alternatively you could get this information directly from weak auras to know when enemy players have damage cooldowns active. Step 3 is knowing how to put your cooldown budget into action the moment enemy cooldowns are popped, or when your healer is about to take a long cc.

This can be done with a very simple flowchart. If enemy cds are popped you should first check to see if your healer has already used a defensive on you.

This is made super easy with our buffs and debuffs weak aura pack that places important buffs like pain suppression or time dilation right over your character. If nothing has been used you should check to see if your healer is in crowd control.

If they have been cc'd then it's going to be your job to keep yourself alive by trading a cooldown.

There are of course going to be some exceptions to this as priest can use pain suppression while stunned and preservation evokers can use emerald communion in most cc, but as a general rule of thumb you can follow this flowchart. And make the call to trade a defensive if your healer is cc'd.

If however your healer is not crowd controlled then you'll have to choose whether or not you need to trade a defensive based on a number of things. First you need to consider, 1.

How much damage is about to come in, which you'll be able to learn by just playing a lot and getting a feel for how much damage every class is able to do with certain cooldowns. 2.

How much damage you can mitigate with other tools such as your mobility, which again is something you'll get from just playing a lot and getting familiar with what your non defensive cooldown related tools can do to help you avoid damage. 3.

How much healing you expect your healer to be able to do, with this point being the most complicated one.

This is where you have to look at things like whether or not you have full hots from your resto druid and are not dealing with enemy purges, or if your resto shaman can freely cast heals without the threat of interrupts.

Ultimately there's plenty to consider and you only have a few moments to do it, but these considerations are what set players apart and allow good ones to consistently trade cooldowns at the right time. In any case, it's clear that healers have a tough time in solo shuffle.

When you combine high sustained damage with increased levels of dampening, there is a lot you can do as a dps to help ease the load.