CHAPTER 3: COUNTER EVERY RANGED

COUNTER EVERY RANGED INTRO

Welcome to our course that will teach you how to counter every ranged, DPS, and WoW PvP. Now despite their appearance, casters can be deceptively deadly, especially these days when a single missed interrupt can lose you the entire game.

Whether you want to learn what spells to kick, or even how to stay on target when it seems like you can't even move, we've got you covered. Now, it's time to learn some unique tips on how to make those casters feel extra miserable in Arena.

And if you stick with this course until the end, you're going to be a menace in Arena.

COUNTERING AFFLICTION WARLOCKS

Struggling into Affliction Warlocks? Then watch on as we tell you exactly how to ruin their day.

Now back in Shadowlands Dragonflight, Affliction Warlocks were cursed with only one spell school, outside of those weird covenant abilities being nature. This meant that you could basically just kick whatever the lock casted and you would be effective as the Warlock would just not be able to cast.

Well unfortunately for us, this has changed now as Warlock Shard Dump of Malefic Rapture, which is quite often a major source of their damage if they're able to free cast, is now actually dual school with Fire and Shadow, meaning that if you lock them outside of this spell, they can still deal damage if they have shards for it.

Now you may be thinking, what does that even mean for me? Well, the simple answer is to always kick Malefic Rapture if you have the chance, as it's going to lock the Warlock out of everything, resulting in them dealing zero damage.

However, we can't just save kick for Rapture, as Affliction Locks have several other ways to do that. For example, if you have a Warlock that's able to do that, you can just other spells that we really want to shut down to prevent their damage, namely Haunt, Unstable Affliction, and Soul Rot.

Now to truly become a master at kicking into Warlocks, focus on stopping any of these three spells, as they're all very time sensitive.

If a Warlock can't get Unstable Affliction up, well then they can't press Soul Rot and their following Haunt and Shadow Bolts will hit far less due to not having the Withering Bolts mechanic.

If you kick Haunt, then they're going to have to reapply their dots, afterwards again, as they may be running out by the time their lockout ends.

And similarly, if you kick Soul Rot, they may have to reapply Unstable Affliction again, as otherwise, your healer may be able to dispel Soul Rot instantly, wasting one of their hardest hitting dots.

Just whatever you do, don't get baited into kicking Shadow Bolt, as they're just going to dual school and cast Malefic Rapture afterwards. If there is one thing Affliction Warlocks hate the most, it's when their Agony Curse keeps being used.

If you're a Warlock that's been hit by a Shadow Bolt, then it's because it's been dispelled over and over and over. Now, this is because Agony does more damage the longer it's on a target.

So when you dispel it, these stacks completely reset, turning one of the highest sources of damage into nothing more than a Shard Generator. Which leads us onto the second reason dispelling Agony is just so damn good.

When Affliction Locks apply Agony, they always want to do it through the Jinx talent, allowing them to save Globals by applying 3 Curses with one Global, at the cost of a shard.

However, if you keep dispelling Agony, the Warlock will eventually find themselves starving of shards as they keep having to reapply their dots, meaning that they won't just be doing less damage from Agony, but they won't have enough shards to get Malefic Raptors out either, reducing their damage a ton.

Now, if you're a healer, you may be wondering where you fit into this, as Warlocks have one of the most dangerous Dispel protections with their Unstable Affliction, which does deal some formidable damage in its own right. But you don't want to make yourself a swap target, or even worse, one-shot yourself.

Well, the simple answer is dispelling Unstable Affliction is good, as long as you're doing it at the right time. One of these instances is dispelling just as the Warlock uses Soul Rot, as this means that they essentially waste their one-minute cooldown.

Or dispelling just as the enemy Warlock uses Haunt, making the following Shadow of the Dead and the Warlock's Shadow of the Dead and the Warlock's Shadow of the Bolt deal far less damage. But most importantly, when you Dispel, you need to ask yourself whether the Warlock is able to Freecast.

If they can just get Unstable back up instantly, the Warlock will be more than happy that you just took that massive hit and blanket silence for free. Okay, so when it comes to surviving, Affliction Warlocks rely on two main things, their mobility and their absorbs.

So, first things first, Warlocks are not the most mobile class in the game. They have access to Gateway, every single time you use it, and they're able to get to the Gateways, every two minutes, and Demonic Circle, every 30 seconds, which does get reduced by the Impish Instinct's talent into Melees.

However, in the grand scheme of things, these tools really aren't that impressive when you consider how much mobility most physical damage deals in the game have.

Because of this, when you see a Warlock Port away, you should generally always chase them, as once that Port is down, all their mobility is out the window for at least 20 seconds, allowing you to have full uptime, and you can easily get to the Gateways, but you can't get to the Gateways without a Warlock Port.

So, if you're a caster, you can also abuse a Warlock's Port by positioning in a way where even if they do teleport, you're still in line of sight of it. You can see Casu doing this here, which allows them to literally never have downtime when hitting the enemy Warlock.

If you don't do this, the Warlock's Port gets far more value, and it's going to enable the enemy Affliction Warlock to free cast in the back, not only reducing your pressure, but also increasing theirs.

Finally, it can also be a great idea to utilize knockbacks when facing Warlocks to prevent them from pressing teleport at all, as they'll be stuck out of range, leaving them to slowly waddle back to safety as they take huge damage in the middle. In the AWC, this strat actually won an entire series.

Now, as far as locks defensives go, it's pretty hard to counter them, as both Dark Pact and Unending Resolve can be used while stunned. This leaves us in a situation where the Warlock can generally always get a Dark Pact, but it's not always a good idea to use them.

So, if you're going to be a good defender, you should always get a Dark Pact off when we're bursting, as they simply react to us pressing our cooldowns. The only caveat to this is that Warlocks can't use Unending Resolve when kicked or silenced.

Therefore, a great strategy can be to kick them and then pop our burst, denying them from getting that huge damage reduction off, possibly allowing us to score a kill or force additional defensives from their healer.

It's also worth noting that Warlock's defensives have a fairly long cooldown, and they're usually a little bit longer than the Unending Resolve, with most of them playing with a 45 second Dark Pact.

This means that once you force it, make sure to stick on them for at least the next stun diminishing return, as they won't be able to counter with anything.

COUNTERING SHADOW PRIESTS

Here are five tips that you need to know for countering Shadow Priest. Tip number one is to kick the right damage spells.

Shadow Priest cast a lot of spells, and it can be a bit jarring to figure out what exactly to interrupt. Their most continuous source of pressure and the way they gain momentum is through Vampiric Touch, which as a general rule of thumb is a safe spell to interrupt, since it's going to stop a lot of downstream damage.

Void Torrent and Mind Flay Insanity are also really high value interrupts, and since both are channeled spells, you're going to get the most value stopping the beginning of these casts, rather than kicking towards the end of them.

The last high value kick is Void Blast, which is exclusive to the Void Weaver hero spec, and it's going to replace Mind Blast to deal a lot of upfront damage. Now with that in mind, there are a few spells that are a little bit less valuable to interrupt.

Including fillers like Mind Blast and regular Mind Flay. Overall, these really don't do that much damage, so you suffer an opportunity cost by not kicking something else.

Finally, while it might seem counterintuitive, you should avoid interrupting Void Eruption and Dark Ascension. Even though both of these spells initiate the Shadow Priest burst sequence, burning your kick to stop these casts simply means the Shadow Priest can freely cast after the lockout.

But now, with tons of extra damage added onto it. Now because of this, aim to stop cast once Shadow Priest enter their burst window, rather than stopping it from happening in the first place.

So tip number two is avoid stacking. Shadow Crash is the most efficient way that Shadow Priest can multi-dot, gaining exponential value for every single target hit within its radius.

No matter what role you play, you should avoid stacking. So if you're going to be doing a lot of work, you should avoid stacking.

So if you're going to be doing a lot of work, you should avoid stacking. So if you're going to be doing a lot of work, you should avoid stacking.

So if you're going to be doing a lot of work, you should avoid stacking. So if you're going to be doing a lot of work, you should avoid stacking. against Shadow Priest as doing so is really only going to increase their damage output.

Now on top of this, Shadow Priest have a 30 second cooldown on Psychic Scream, which can easily turn a game around if it lands on 3 targets. So do be sure to spread out if possible.

Our next tip is to kill Psy Fiend as quickly as possible. Psy Fiend is a minion that's summoned directly at the feet of the Shadow Priest, applying a 50% healing reduction effect to that target.

This is such a massively important minion to snipe down. With less than 300,000 HP, it can be killed quickly, which is going to enormously help your healer.

You can use a combination of weak auras and nameplate add-ons to make Syphine more visible too. So if you aren't using our better Blizzplate profile already, consider it for the future.

Our next piece of advice is to be selective when choosing a Shadow Priest as your main target.

Now while the spec can get shut down when trained, Shadow Priests are actually incredibly tanky, taking 15% reduced damage with Focused Will after being hit by melee attacks, and having great self-healing when playing Voidweaver thanks to the passive Void Leech talent.

Shadow Priests can still put out decent damage even when attacked though too, as Shadow Crash allows them to spread dots with ease, and they're going to even store damage taken in order to burst that with Conqueror.

Now we get it, it might seem like we're getting paid off by the Shadow Priest Mafia here saying you shouldn't attack a Shadow Priest, but depending on your comp, there might be a better target that you have to think about.

Finally, for all the healers out there, and even some of you hybrids out there too, make sure to abuse your Dispel. Once again, Shadow Priest can gain so much momentum by landing Vampiric Touchcast and spinning Insanity on Devouring Plague.

If you're a healer with both a Magic and Disease Dispel, you should actively remove these debuffs quickly since Shadow Priest mastery increases their damage done to targets with dots.

COUNTERING FROST MAGES

In this guide, we're gonna be giving you a crash course on how to beat Frost Mages by countering their mechanics. So let's get into it.

Our first rule to beating Mages is to avoid their projectiles. Now Mages have a ton of abilities that deal damage from ground effects, and we can actually reduce their output a ton by just moving our character.

The first of these is Ring of Fire, which applies an 8 second dot to anyone that walks into it, burning them for strong, percentage-based damage when it lands. And although you can't see the Ring of Fire when it's being casted, you can bet the Mage is trying to place it on top of you.

So simply move around a bit when the Mage is casting, and you can reduce their DPS with a simple strafe. Other than this, needless to say, if you see it on the ground, just don't walk through it unless you want your healers to absolutely hate you.

So moving on, you should also look to dodge or move out of Frozen Orb. As all the other Mages have a lot of damage, you can also move around a bit and reduce their DPS by just moving your DPS.

So moving on, you should also look to dodge or move out of Frozen Orb. As all the other Mages have a lot of damage, you can also move out of Frozen Orb.

Although the damage from this spell isn't the highest, it's going to allow the Mage to constantly chill you, therefore giving them more chances at those hard-hitting Ice Lances from Fingers of Frost. So if you see that Orb, make sure you're using a movement ability to escape it.

Finally, you can also look to use a movement ability when the Mage uses Comet Storm, as not only will you dodge those hard-hitting Comets falling from the sky, which the Mage will shatter with Ice Nova, but you can also get away from the follow-up Meteor that props, and you can also get away from the follow-up Meteor that props, from their Hero talent.

Escaping this easily prevents over 1 million damage each and every time. Are you sick of getting stunned by Mages?

Well, there's actually a few counters to Snowdrift that you might not be using. Now Snowdrift is pretty dang powerful, as the debuff it puts on you is undispellable, and when stacked for 2 seconds, it's going to apply an AoE stun on everyone that's in its range.

However, this doesn't mean it's unpreventable. So to stop it, we simply need to be able to give ourselves a freedom effect or move out of its radius.

A great example of this is a Priest using Fade, as this is going to cancel the Snowdrift stacks, allowing the Priest to run away after. Then there's the very obvious Paladin who can simply just freedom it to prevent it stacking at all.

But the most hidden ones are Druids, who can actually just keep shapeshifting to avoid the stun, as each time they shift, they effectively freedom themselves, meaning the buff is going to never stack.

Now although Icewall is powerful, setting one up can be very difficult for the Mage, as they have to get the perfect angle at the perfect time to separate your team to get any value at all.

A lot of the time, if the Icewall comes up a second too late, the kill condition is gone and the Mage's MLG montage is completely in ruins. So the first line of defense for Icewall is obviously just kick it, as it's probably going to be the end of the game if you don't.

So, let's get into the game. Apart from the obvious though, Icewall doesn't actually have that much health either.

So if your partner is trapped, just kill the wall as soon as possible and it's going to come crumbling down within seconds, saving your partner. Positioning really also matters here when facing a Mage that's playing Icewall.

So standing somewhere you can get separated from your team with, like the room on Ruins of Lordaeron, is not the greatest idea, as you can easily just get stuck. And finally, Icewall can also be mass dispelled.

It's a pretty common thing. It's a great way to get the Mage to completely disappear.

So make sure that if you get trapped out of line of sight as a Priest, you're using mass dispel as soon as possible. Now all this is really great in an ideal world, but we don't always have these tools available to trade.

However, this doesn't really mean that we're out of luck, as we can still counter Icewall with movement abilities too. Just think about it.

The Mage is splitting your team on wall, right? So if you grip your partner before the wall lands, chances are you'll pull them back to safety.

Which can actually apply to a bunch of classes, as Rogues can Shadowstep to partners, Warriors can leap, Evokers can fly, and on and on and on and on. You just have to pay attention to when that wall is coming.

Lastly, and yes this one is a bit niche, but AoE ground effects are also going to work through the wall. So if you're a Priest with Dome, or a Shaman with Spirit Link, make sure to drop it as it's going to go through.

Just do be aware that this doesn't work with Evoker's Emerald Communion. Let's face it, WoW is very centered around Mythic Plus these days, and therefore, half the spells in your kit end up cleaving no matter what class you're on.

Well sadly for Frost Mages, this also rings true, as almost all of their abilities deal some sort of cleave, whether it be Ice Lance with the splitting Ice talent, Frozen Orb, Comet Storm, or random Frostfire Bolt procs.

Now because of all this, when a Mage casts Polymorph, there's a very high chance that if you stack with your team, it's going to be a good chance to get a good deal of damage. So if you're a Priest, you're going to have to do a lot of damage, and you're going to be able to get even more damage if you're a Mage.

While it's going to break, releasing the crowd control instantly. Or even worse for the Mage, they just won't be able to press any damage Globals at all while you stand on your partner, making their crowd control far less effective.

Now this isn't to say to always stack versus Mages though, as this will get you killed as your entire team gets cleaved down like a pack of mobs. But if that Polymorph lands, make sure to get to the safety of your partner.

So Mages are known to be pretty unhypn. be dang slippery, but how come high rated players are able to stick to their targets more than you are?

So mages have a ton of mobility tools with two shimmers, blast wave knockback, an ultra time that resets shimmer, and even displacement which allows them to go back in time and cross the map. Needless to say their kit is a bit overloaded.

High rated mages are going to use their mobility by trading 1 to 1 on each of your mobility tools. One blink equals one charge, one leap equals one blast wave, and so on and so forth.

Now while there's no perfect way to counter this, we can make it more difficult for the mage to effortlessly trade mobility in this way by pooling our mobility tools together so we can use them all at the same time and then crush them in a stun.

Which is far better than just snaking at the mage trading mobility as it comes up, as realistically you're never going to be able to get uptime in this way. When I ask you what the biggest defensive in the mage's kit is, where does your mind go?

Is it perhaps Ice Block, the 10 second damage immunity? Or maybe it's greater invisibility, giving them a 60% damage reduction allowing them to live through even the biggest of one shots.

Or maybe, just maybe, the answer is Alter Time. Now Alter Time doesn't just allow the mage to snapshot their health to heal them without dampening taking effect every 50 seconds.

But it also allows them to get another Shimmer Charge, which makes good mages incredibly difficult to connect to if they use their kit right. Fortunately for us though, we can fight against this by keeping the mage clean with Purge.

As if we remove this Alter Time, they won't only miss a massive defensive, making them have to resort to Ice Blocks instead, but they're also going to lack mobility, making it far easier to connect to them. As they're going to have to resort to Ice Blocks instead.

And they're going to be missing a charge of their Shimmer.

COUNTERING BEAST MASTERY HUNTERS

Here are 5 quick tips you need to know for countering Beastmastery Hunter. 1.

Play around Frenzy Stacks Hunter damage as you probably already know mainly comes from their pets, and one of the main contributors to this is a buff called Frenzy.

Every barbed shot the hunter uses provides the pet with 30% increased attack speed, stacking up to 3 and lasting for 12 seconds, providing the pet with a whopping 90% increased attack speed, making it something that they need to maintain in order to do damage.

A great way to counter this is to actually pay attention to this buff here on the hunter, Thrill of the Hunt.

While it's not the same as Frenzy, paying attention to this allows you to quickly see when the hunter did their last barbed shot, meaning if you're able to either crowd control or line aside them during this time, you're going to cause all their stacks to fall off.

Most hunters in this situation will immediately trinket, but if you're able to counter this, they're going to lose a massive amount of their ramping damage and their pressure. Next up, we have tip number two, Respect Call of the Wild.

Many players focus on Bestial Wrath as the key cooldown, and while that's obviously still important, Call of the Wild is actually the Beastmastery Hunter's biggest offensive cooldown, and where the majority of their high pressure really comes from.

The main reason for this is that once activated, Call of the Wild grants the hunter a 50% cooldown reduction on their two main abilities, barbed shot and kill command. While there is no immediate explosive burst, this cooldown allows the hunter to dish out insanely high sustained damage for a full 20 seconds.

This is why it is absolutely essential to play proactively when facing a Beastmastery Hunter during Call of the Wild. You want to either try to line aside the hunter, trade defensives early, use throughput cooldowns, or even trinket the trap early.

At the same time, shutting down the hunter, with crowd control, as much as possible during this time, is key to minimizing the damage they can deal during this burst window.

This is also important to keep in mind because with the 50% cooldown reduction on barbed shot, the hunter can quickly get Bestial Wrath back up in just a few seconds, thanks to Barbed Wrath, if you allow them to maintain full uptime.

And speaking of which, that leads us nicely to tip number three, CC Pets on Bestial Wrath. During Bestial Wrath, the hunter and, more importantly, their pet, gain 25% increased damage.

And as we just mentioned, the cooldown on Bestial Wrath can be incredibly short, thanks to the cooldown reduction from barbed shot, making it difficult to trade into, and a major reason why Beastmastery's sustained damage is really so high.

The key here, though, is that when it's used, Bestial Wrath removes all crowd control effects from the pet, but it doesn't make them immune. This is why once Bestial Wrath is popped, you should aim to CC the pets as much as possible.

Not only does this reduce their sustained damage, but it also prevents the hunter from using Kill Command, which heavily benefits from this cooldown. The best tools for this are AoE crowd control abilities, such as Mass Entanglement, Ring of Frost, Frost Nova, Shadow Fury, and even Howl of Terror or Psychic Scream.

Basically, if you have an AoE CC, save it for Bestial Wrath. And you're going to reduce their damage greatly.

Even if you don't have AoE crowd control available or certain Z-axis maps, simply jumping down can significantly disrupt their damage. Which leads us to our fourth tip.

Number four, preventing freezing trap. This probably isn't news to anybody out there, but every time freezing trap is ready, Beastmastery hunters will want to use it on your healer.

This is how they get pressure and ultimately how they win games. But as it's on a static timer, it makes it very easy for you to predict and for you to play around.

There's obviously the basic stuff like trying to eat your healer's trap, mass dispelling it, grounding to redirect the trap, that type of stuff. We've all heard it.

And for healers, you should always be looking to preemptively use your toolkit to either delay, avoid, or just generally make it harder for them to trap you, or at least looking to pre-top or use defensives on their target. But that's all standard stuff.

The key here is rather than playing around freezing trap itself, you should instead focus on the leading CC. Nine times out of ten, hunters will always try to trap out of something.

Be that a binding shot, intimidation, scatter shot, or even stun from their teammate. So once the hunter has freezing trap available, pay attention to when your healer gets put into a leading CC, as this is where you're going to want to be looking to stop the hunter.

And if you can't, at least make sure you're already out of their line of sight. Lastly, but definitely not least, we have tip number five, limit their momentum.

Beast Mastery, comparatively to most classes, has rather low burst damage. They're not a spec that's going to one shot you in a single stun.

Instead, how they win games is by whittling you down with their consistent sustained pressure, combined alongside their CC to inevitably score a kill. Playing around their cooldowns and preventing traps are obviously great ways to limit their momentum.

But there is a few other tips here. First is disrupt the opener.

Beast Mastery hunters have two goals every single game. Land a trap and pop all their offensives.

The faster they can do this, the faster they start building momentum and the quicker they get their cooldowns back to maintain it. The more you can prevent this, the better.

Second is trade early. Again, despite there being limited burst, the bottom line is that healers need to be able to spam heal you just to keep up with the consistent pressure while simultaneously dealing with the constant threat of CC.

We've covered how you can deal with the latter, but for the former, a great piece of advice is to avoid waiting until you're low to use things. Instead, trade early.

And if your healer can't recover, maybe consider line of sighting and avoiding damage until they can. This is even more important due to abilities like Dark Arrow and Killer Instinct, meaning the lower you get, the more their sustained pressure will start to ramp.

So stay ahead and limit their momentum as much as you can.

COUNTERING ELE SHAMANS

Here are 5 tips you need to know for countering Elemental Shamans. Tip number 1 is to play around Primordial Wave and Ascendance.

It's crucial to understand how Elemental Shaman actually works and where the damage really comes from.

Every 30 seconds, Ellie Shamans can use their Primordial Wave Ancestral Swiftness combo, which causes their next Lava Burst to shoot out on every target with Flameshock and be instant cast, all while summoning two of their ancestors, which duplicate damage.

We're getting a bit technical here, but what this simply means is that every 30 seconds you can expect tons of AoE damage and a huge hit of damage on the kill target, and you should really consider tracking Prim Wave to anticipate when this damage will happen.

But the real scary damage is Ascendance, which does the exact same thing as Prim Wave, sending Lava Burst on every target with Flameshock, while also granting even more damage multipliers. But here's the thing, Ellie Shamans will first use Primordial Wave before Ascendance to amplify its damage.

This means that if both of these abilities are ready, you simply need to watch out for Primordial Wave, and you'll know exactly when big damage is inbound. Alright, so now we know when big damage is coming, what can we do about it?

That brings us to our next tip, which is to abuse Line of Sight. Lava Burst from Primordial Wave and Ascendance, can only hit targets that are in LOS.

Knowing this, you should try to actively line the Shaman whenever possible, especially around their burst windows, which even includes all ya healers out there as well.

For an Ellie Shaman, the dream positioning is to be in the center of the map with every possible enemy target in range and in line, since this maximizes AoE damage potential while making it easier to swap around.

Shamans love to poke healers who step into the open, even if just to get a little bit of a chance to get a kill. Don't give them damage for free, abuse LOS and make it annoying for them to reach you.

Alright, but what if you absolutely can't avoid their burst? What should you do then?

Tip number three is to trade Defensives high and shut down Ascendance. Ellie Shaman burst is scary because of how front-loaded it is.

It sneaks up on ya insanely fast, and before you know it, you've already lost half your HP.

Now because of this, your goal should be to trade Defensives high on HP as Primordial Wave is pressed, and right before Ascendance, as doing so is going to dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the hundreds of lava bursts that are going to be flying in.

Every 30 seconds, you should expect a moderate chunk of damage inbound with Primordial Wave, and every two minutes, you should expect a huge chunk of damage with Ascendance.

And then when Ascendance is active, you should keep in mind that big damage is going to continue to happen for around six seconds, as Ellie Shamans are getting fed tons of procs during that time. What this means is that you should attempt to shut down their burst with any CC you have.

It could be a Scattershot, a stun, a fear, a polymorph, anything is going to be beneficial to make sure the damage slows down. So if you play Healer, you should definitely take the additional step of dispelling Flameshock.

But here, you really need to be careful. Healers think that they need to be dispelling every Flameshock on cooldown.

And they're really thinking they're doing something productive here. And while this may help minimize damage in the short term, your real goal should be dispelling Primordial Wave, since if you manage to remove it quickly, it's going to cause all of the incoming lava bursts to not crit on their target.

So instead of Tunnel Vision dispelling Flameshock, be a bit selective and prioritize Primordial Wave instead. Finally, a tip for actually killing Ellie Shamans here, abuse their mobility in Dampening.

Here's the thing, training the blue isn't as good as it used to be. These days, Ellie Shamans are not only more tanky than before, but on top of this, they can still do an absurd amount of damage without needing to hardcast.

But the place where Ellie really suffers the most is in the mobility department. They're not like a Mage who can just blink away or a Warlock who can port to safety.

Ellie Shamans are damage sponges, and in Deep Dampening, they become fantastic targets for melee. If you can manage to train an Ellie Shaman in the late game, you're going to gain massive momentum, because they can't avoid damage as easily compared to other casters.

COUNTERING MARKSMANSHIP HUNTERS

Okay, so here is four tips you need to know for countering Marksmanship Hunter. Tip number one, react to true shot.

True shot is by far the most important thing you are ever going to have to look out for against any MM hunter, especially at lower ratings.

Almost every single hunter you're going to encounter will look to use this either straight away from camo in conjunction with an aimed shot for some ridiculously high burst damage straight from the get-go.

Good hunters, however, are going to be a little bit more considerate with how they use it, but they definitely are still going to want to get it on cooldown ASAP to benefit from the CDR they gain. Either way, true shot, it's an incredibly powerful cooldown.

It basically turns the hunter into a turret that demands respect. They want to stand on the spot and shoot whoever is in their crosshair, taking advantage of their short cooldowns and fast cast times on rapid fire and aimed shot.

No matter what is going on, the hunter will still be able to react to the CC. The second you see this, you need to react.

Saving your CC and using it on the hunter as quickly as possible, things like disarms, stuns, fears, any crowd control you have available. Best of all, 9 times out of 10, they're immediately going to trinket this.

So if you can, try to have 2 CCs available to lock them down on their trinket. But if you can't, this is where our second tip comes into play.

Tip number two, hug the pillow. If you've ever played Starcraft, marksmanship hunters are basically siege tanks.

They want to plant themselves in a spot and tee off on whoever is brave enough to be in their line of sight. This is because practically all of their damage comes from aimed shot, which requires the hunter to stand still and cast in order to use it.

If you stand in their line of sight as a caster and allow them to tee off on you, especially during their cooldowns, you're always going to lose the trade. But if you start to abuse pillars, you can practically eliminate all of their damage aside from rapid fire.

So be smart and don't stand in the open. Now I know what you're thinking here.

Good advice, skill capped, I'm just going to hug the pillar as a melee. That'll sure help me win.

Not. Yeah, yeah.

For you melee players, we have tip number three, train the hunter. Like we know, marksmanship wants to sit in one spot, spam casting into a target.

The best way to stop this if you can't hug a pillar, well, go on them. Tip number three, train the hunter.

By doing this, you're going to get a lot of damage.

If you're doing this, you not only drastically reduce their damage output, but also put them in a position where they have to choose between standing still and dealing damage with aim shot, subsequently tanking all of your damage in the process, or survive and limit your pressure by kiting, greatly hindering their damage in the process.

They can't do both effectively. This situation also makes it significantly harder for them to land crowd control, as marksmanship hunters typically prefer to position offensively near your healer to make landing CC easy.

But as you can imagine, this becomes much more challenging when they're forced to kite defensively.

Not only that, but by going on the marksmanship hunter, you're also going to force them to have to use their mobility to kite, meaning they're not going to have it available for when they want to make offensive pushes with their crowd control, which leads us nicely to our fourth and final tip.

Number four, play around freezing trap. This probably isn't news to anybody, but every time we talk about this, we're going to get a lot of people saying, oh, this is a good, freezing trap is ready.

Marksmanship hunters are going to want to use it on your healer. This is how they get pressure and ultimately how they win games.

But as it's on a static timer, it makes it very easy for you to predict and for you to play around. There's the obviously basic stuff like trying to eat your healer's trap, mass dispelling it, grounding to redirect the trap, that type of stuff.

And for healers, you should always be looking to preemptively use your toolkit to either delay, avoid, or just generally make it harder for them to do so.

So if you're a healer and you're a scout, you should always be looking to preemptively use your toolkit to trap you, or at least looking to pre-top or use defensives on their target. But that's all pretty standard stuff.

The key difference between other hunter specs and marksmanship is that MM will only ever to look to trap out of what's called a leading crowd control. Beast mastery can afford to run around on top of your healer just waiting around.

Survival can often trap out of their harpoon and still do a ton of damage from range if they have to wait around on top of your healer. But marksmanship needs to be standing still.

They cannot waste time running around on top of your healer waiting for abilities to be used so they can trap out of a slow. They need a leading CC.

Something like intimidation, binding shot, scatter shot, or even their partner's stuns. The biggest piece of advice here that we're getting at is rather than playing around freezing trap itself, play around that leading CC that we just mentioned instead.

So once the hunter has freezing trap available, pay attention to when your healer gets trapped. If you're a scout, you should always be looking to when your healer gets stunned or when your healer gets scattered.

This is where you want to be looking to stop the marksmanship hunter. And if you can't, make sure you're already out of their line of sight.

COUNTERING DEVASTATION EVOKERS

Having trouble taking down those Devastation Dragons? Then let's go through some tips to help you get an edge over those Spyro enthusiasts.

So, first things first, Devastation Evokers have a very short range on their abilities for a caster, coming in at a measly 25 yards.

Now what this means is that they are constantly going to have to chase their targets down if they want to have any uptime, meaning that if we're playing a ranged class ourselves, we can simply outrange the dragon and force them into a bad position. Making them a prime target to hit.

Now because of this, Devastation Evokers are also incredibly susceptible to roots. So if you get the chance, toss them in a root and they won't be able to connect.

Especially because their hover won't remove them, it only removes snares. Now as far as kicking is concerned, Disintegrate is the obvious choice when facing Evokers, as it's going to cost either their Essence Burst proc to cast or use up 3 of their 6 Essence.

Kicking them on this early means that they use up all their Essence, while getting no damage out in return. Other than Disintegrate, we can also kick them on Eternity Surge.

Not only will this do a truckload of damage, but by locking it, we prevent them from using their talent Iridescence, meaning that the next Disintegrates they do will deal less damage.

Whatever you do though, don't kick Living Flame, as this is nothing but bait, as it does pretty low damage and isn't on a relevant school as it's on fire, which nothing the dragon really cares about is on. So, that's it.

Thanks for watching. See you next time.

Bye.

COUNTERING BALANCE DRUIDS

Up first at number one is to interrupt or stop Cyclone. Now this might seem obvious.

I mean, come on, Cyclone is the most annoying spell in the whole game, right? Well, on top of being a major annoyance, Cyclone is precisely what allows Boomkins to work.

Balanced Druid is a spec that feeds off momentum. If one person gets cloned, it's usually going to lead to another person getting cloned after and after and so on and so forth.

Ignoring Cyclone just one singular time is a mistake that can quickly snowball out of control. Be aware that the cast time of Cyclone can be dramatically reduced by Alkan Frenzy procs, which along with high haste values can turn Cyclone into a sub one second cast.

Cyclone is one of those casts that better players will constantly try and juke, vading out a kick in order to get pre-cocked. Now in order to prevent yourself from getting juke, you need to be able to cast Cyclone.

So if you're a good player, you can cast Cyclone as well. If you're not a good player, you can cast Cyclone as well.

But if you're a good player, you can cast Cyclone as well. If you're a good player, you can cast Cyclone as well.

We do highly recommend doing what we call late kicking. What late kicking means is kicking towards the end of the cast rather than the beginning of the cast.

Since with high haste values, Boomies are going to typically juke the start of their cast only. And that brings us nicely to our next tip, which is to kill the Boomkin.

Ah, nice. There you have it, skill cap.

What a great tip. But seriously now, Balanced Druid has one of the highest death rates in the game for a reason.

Not only is it important to stop the Boomy from casting Cyclone, but the spec is conveniently super, super squishy. By exerting enough pressure, you can even force them to camp in bear form, which just absolutely tanks their damage output.

Despite being a Druid, which you would think means having infinite mobility, Boomkins are actually quite immobile, only having wild charge as a relatively weak gap creator. Now, as a melee, you should have absolutely no problem sticking to Boomkins.

But if you're a good player, you should have absolutely no problem sticking to Boomkins like absolute glue. And once you do, be sure to stop those clones through whatever means necessary.

All right, next up at number three, respect their burst windows. What's crucial to understand is that Boomkins are not very threatening outside of a very small few windows.

They can microburst every minute or so with trance, which when playing their primary hero spec will allow them to do enormous damage with dream surge and cause their next few damage cast to explode on the target, which can't hit for over half a million damage each time.

Whenever you see trance out, just be ready to buckle up. Now, if the Druid has incarnation ready when they pop their trees.

Well, you're about to be in a world of hurt here, as the combination of damage multipliers just allows them to do some insane front loaded burst with multiple star surgeons back to back. Now, notice how we said that the burst is front loaded.

What front loaded means is that if you are the kill target, when in the top team, you are the one to take out this When Incarnation is pressed, you or your teammates need to immediately find some form of counterplay.

If you can't immediately avoid the damage or instantly CC the Boomkin, you're going to need to trade a defensive cooldown high. Most of their damage will come during the first 10 seconds of Incarn.

Respect this window. You will survive.

Our next two tips are more for the healers out there than anything else, but they are worth knowing even as a DPS, so listen up. First up, Dispelling Dots.

Moonfire and Sunfire might seem relatively unimportant to you, but they're vital to Boomkin damage. Not only will Moonfire typically be near the top of details, but having both dots up during Eclipse or Incarn gives a huge Star Surge damage multiplier thanks to their mastery.

Again, Boomkin is a spec that only does damage during small windows, and you can cut down this damage dramatically by clearing the kill target of dots. Finally, as our last tip, be sure to play around.

Root Beam. This iconic combo of Mass Entanglement into Solar Beam is one of the most convenient ways for Boomkins to establish and snowball pressure, but luckily, there's a ton of counterplay these days.

If you see that Beam is about to come off CD, there is a few things you can do. If you play Resto Druid, well, you're in luck since you can simply shift out of Roots.

Obviously, so just focus on juking the Beam instead. As a preservation evoker, you have a few options here.

You can immune the Root with Deep Breath. You can use your Obsidian Scale's Aura Mastery proactively to deny the silence, or even immune the Root entirely with Verdant Embrace, which does require some timing.

If you play Mistweaver Monk, you can preemptively use your Thunder Focus T, as the Aura Mastery effect from Zen Focus T will prevent the silence. Additionally, you can also use your Invoke Chi-G, the Red Crane, to make you immune to Roots while it darts around the map.

Now, for all you Paladins out there playing Dwarf, you can Stone Form the Root Beam, or pre-Freedom Mass Entanglement, entirely. Priests playing Gnome can use their Escape Artist during Root Beam, or if you can even fade the combo proactively with Phase Shift, or even Shadow Word Death to Mass Entanglement.

Finally, Resto Shamans can Spirit Walk during the Root Silence, or if that's unavailable, they can proactively Spirit Walker's Grace to immune the silence before it lands.

COUNTERING DEMONOLOGY WARLOCKS

Are you struggling to beat Demonology Warlocks? Well then keep on watching as we're going to give you three tips to absolutely ruin their day.

Now, our first tip is going to help you survive their sustained damage far, far easier and reduce their output an absolute dump truck ton. We're going to be doing this by locking down their pets when they summon Char or Gloomhound.

Now, this is because while both of these demons do deal a ton of damage in their own right, they're also going to be buffing all the other pets that the Warlock has out, which happens through the Wicked Maw and Shadow-Touched talents, as well as also buffing each individual Dreadstalker through the Houndmaster's Gambit talent, which is going to make them do pretty solid damage as well.

Needless to say, when you see Charhound being summoned, you're going to want to stop everything that you're doing to root that big clump of pets if it's possible, no matter if you're playing Healer or DPS.

Now, other than rooting pets, there's also a bunch of classes that can cleave them down, which eliminates the Lock's damage while increasing our own in the process.

Now, this really makes more sense when you think of the Warlock's pets kind of like damage over time effects, and by killing them, you essentially are dispelling a dot which cuts their damage in literal half.

And since the game is, well, let's just face it, basically designed for Mythic+, by changing our playstyle or build to account for those extra targets, we can get a truck ton more damage than just killing them.

Now, a great example of this is Frostmage, whereby constantly throwing Blizzard on the Warlock, you not only gain Frozen Ore back faster, but also stop the enemy Warlock's pets from doing any damage as they all die to cleave.

Feral's also benefit from this as they can play with Primal Wrath, allowing them to get a rip on a bunch of targets, which results in a load more of those free bites from Apex Predator. And let's not even get started on other classes like Elemental Shamans, who can spread flames, but also give you a lot of extra damage.

And as a final tip here, make sure you're shutting down their Tyrant Cast and the pet itself. You see, when a Warlock goes to press Tyrant, he's most likely doing it in a window where they have a bunch of strong pets up, which they want to extend.

However, by constantly kicking their Tyrant Cast, we not only delay the Tyrant's summon, but we also make it so that the next one they get off is significantly weaker, as they won't be able to get away with it. So, if you're not sure what to do, you can just go ahead and do it.

And that's it. Because they won't have all the ideal pets out, as they won't have faded away in the lockout.

Now, as for the Tyrant itself, depending on the hero tree the Warlock is playing, it can actually deal some pretty deadly damage.

The easiest way to know if the Warlock is going to have big damage from the Tyrant, is if they play Howl of Terror, meaning that they're likely going to be playing the Diabolist tree, which makes their Tyrant incredibly strong.

Now, when you see this happen, make sure that you crowd control the Tyrant as soon as possible, or risk taking up to a million of their power. And that's when you can get up to a million crits from the pet itself.

COUNTERING DESTRUCTION WARLOCKS

Destruction Warlocks can be an absolute pain to take down, so here's some tips to guide you on your way to beating them. Coming in at tip number one, which, although obvious to some, is that you need to be saving your kick for Chaos Bolt.

Now that Chaos Bolt has received several buffs in The War Within, it's at the point where it can do a ridiculous amount of single-target damage. Now because of this, it is vital that we lock it as frequently as possible to avoid being one-shot by the enemy team.

Now it's also important to note that Chaos Bolt is on the Chaos School, so locking the Warlock on anything else is going to allow them to Chaos Bolt regardless. So don't fall into the trap of kicking random spells, as this is exactly what the Warlock wants.

And although kicking fear can be good in some situations, you should only do so if you have Micro CC or enough damage to prevent the Warlock from just bolting you down afterwards. Moving on to tip number two, we should be looking to counter their Havoc ability.

Havoc is a curse that will duplicate all damage spells onto the Havoc target as long as they're in line of sight of the Warlock. So by dispelling it, we reduce a ton of the Warlock's damage and shard regeneration, meaning they can't Chaos Bolt as often.

Havoc is also one of the most potent win conditions for Destruction Warlocks, as it also copies Mortal Coil. So when you see Havoc being applied, you should either try to line of sight the Warlock, dispel the Havoc, or use a defensive, as to avoid the force of the Havoc.

Or you can just follow up Coil and deny that easy setup. And if you're really on the ball here, you can actually meld this Coil pretty consistently since it has a travel time.

Coming in at the third position, you need to counter Wither and Immolate. Immolate, or Wither for the Warlocks that choose to play the Hellcaller Hero Tree, is the main shard generator for Destro Warlocks.

This means that if they can't keep this ability up, be it through interrupts or dispels, the Warlock won't be able to get enough shards to deal meaningful damage.

Outside of this shard regeneration, Wither also has a stacking component tied to it, which is tied to how many shards the lock has spent while the Wither is up. And naturally, the higher the stacks are, the more damage the Wither will deal.

By dispelling this spell at high stacks, you negate a ton of the Destruction's passive damage as well. Moving on to our final tip, you need to be aware of Infernals.

Now, Infernals, while not doing the most damage in the world on their own, will allow the Warlock to deal massive damage. They will allow the Warlock to get a ton of shards, meaning they can Chaos Bolt a ton more in this window.

And thanks to the talent, Crashing Chaos, which about half the Warlocks on the ladder play, this is also going to buff their Chaos Bolts by another 25%.

Now, because of all of this, you really need to make sure you're either line of sighting the lock while these Infernals are up, or be extra vigilant when locking them down, or they can end up one-shotting you if they get lucky enough.

COUNTERING ARCANE MAGES

Unsure how to beat Arcane Mages? Well, here's some quick tips to help you counter them effectively.

Coming in at tip number one, you should be shutting down their Arcane Surge and Evocation Casts. Arcane Surge is where the brunt of Arcane Mage damage comes from, as it buffs their spell power significantly, while also giving them a clear casting proc which allows them to press Arcane Missiles.

However, due to the very long cast time, if you're on the ball, you can shut this Surge cast down over and over again.

And we're not just talking about kicks here, but more so line of sight and crowd control too, as the cast is just so long that you can waste a ton of their time, allowing you to overwhelm their team in the process.

Similarly, it's also very good to kick them on Evocation, as this gives the Mage a massive intellect buff the longer it's channeled, so by locking them on this as soon as possible, we can deny one of their biggest cooldowns.

Other than these two more obvious abilities, a ton of Arcane damage, also comes from their Touch of the Magi ability, which accumulates all the damage they use into the debuff and then explodes. So make sure that you're popping a defensive, or locking the Mage on these smaller setups, so that the explosion isn't as big.

Coming in at tip number two, you need to avoid stacking on your partners or your pets. Arcane Mages have some ridiculous cleave damage currently, due to their talent or barrage, constantly firing out Arcane Orbs when their Arcane Barrage cleaves.

This can lead to situations where the Mage just doesn't have to cast anything to melt your entire team, since they're getting back-to-back Orbs and back-to-back fully charged Arcane Barrages, which are also buffed through their other talents of Arcane Cleave and Resonance.

For all these reasons, you need to make sure you spread out when facing an Arcane Mage, as this will force them to hard cast far more often, allowing you to shut them down a whole lot easier. And speaking of shutting them down, this leads us into our next and final tip.

You should actually be focusing the Arcane Barrage, which is the Arcane Mage. Yes, we know, Arcane Mages are notoriously slippery because of their permanent chrono-shift sprint, but if you actually manage to catch them, they can die pretty fast.

This is because unlike other Mage specs, they only have one school of magic to cast from, which also shares the same school that almost all their defensives, apart from Ice Block, are on.

This means that if we tunnel the Arcane Mage and consistently interrupt them, they can have a really difficult time picking between surviving and dealing damage. My final advice would be to just shut them down.

Have a good day, and I'll see you next time!

COUNTERING FIRE MAGES

Here are three tips to help you beat Fire Mages. Coming in at tip number one, you're going to want to be shutting down their Combustion.

Fire Mages really haven't changed much over the years, and once again, they're completely reliant on Combustion to deal damage through chaining critical strikes.

To counter this, all we need to do is use a crowd control on the Mage when they look to Combustion, and all those instant casts they're going to use will be completely shut down.

Alternatively, we can easily just pop a defensive to counteract, be it a damage reduction, grounding, or just a plain ol' Roar Sacrifice, as this is going to deny the Mage being able to crit their target at all when it's up. Moving on to tip number two, we need to be moving out of Meteor.

Currently, Meteor is dealing a ton of damage for Fire Mages, while also sending out a pretty deadly Comet Storm with it when used. Fortunately for us, though, we can simply walk out of this to avoid all the incoming damage before it falls forever.

This is because the damage is projectile-based, giving us ample time to move away. Now, although we did literally just say to avoid Meteor, there's actually pretty good reasonings to stack up on your team afterwards, however.

This is because Mages are constantly breaking their own crowd control, whether they can help it or not, through their Ignite Flaring Up, Phoenix Flames, and Frostfire Bolts cleaving. Or even just that massive 9-second ground effect Meteor leaves behind once it's used, which damage isn't really noticeable.

Unless you're in a Sheep. So, if you want to really ruin the Mage's day, stack up on your healer when they get crowd controlled, and that Polymorph won't be sitting for very long.