CHAPTER 5: PEELING

HOW TO KEEP YOUR TEAM ALIVE

Hopefully by now you've seen our video on how to use your CC to set up kills, but you might be wondering, wait when should I be using it to peel for my team? We have answers to all of your questions because today's video is all about peeling.

We will be breaking down the two most effective forms of peeling in arena, starting with the basics and moving into intermediate and advanced strategies. You're probably familiar with one of these, but the others you might not know about.

And if you are waiting to learn how to peel like a pro, stick around as we show you how to keep your team alive in arena.

BEGINNER: PEEL WITH CC

If you wanted to control how much damage your team is taking, you would press your CC right? I mean control is right there in the name, but peeling with control requires a bit of nuance.

One of the things we stress in our guide on CCing to kill is that you should try to cross CC on your setups while also carefully monitoring DRs. This seems to create a paradox, how are you expected to bolt CC enemy players for damage while also saving DRs to peel?

In the majority of cases, healers will not be the kill target in arena, most of the time it is a DPS player that will be attacked. That means that most of the setup based CC will be put on healers while trying to kill DPS targets.

This is where classes with spammable CC have a bit of an advantage. Mages, warlocks and druids can be a bit more flexible with their DRs on DPS since they aren't restricted by long cooldowns on CC spells.

Spells like polymorph, fear and cyclone can be freely cast on DPS as a way to survive in between kill setups.

Keep in mind that most healers have an 8 second cooldown on their magic dispel, disc priests can get 2 charges on their purify with a pvp talent, and paladins and mistweaver mons can have their own unique dispelling effects that are separate from their normal 8 second CD dispel.

What this means is that throwing spammable CC into off targets and sometimes even the kill target is often really effective at reducing damage taken on your team, especially in the downtime between setups.

Remember that arena is like a series of waves, you have moments where you peak on offense, but these are followed by downtimes where you go into recovery mode. This is where you should be more defensive and use your peeling options.

Ideally you should be peeling as a way to deflect enemy attacks. This usually happens when one or more of the following conditions are met.

1. The enemy team is using cooldowns.

2. Your healer is controlled.

3. Your team is out of defensive cooldowns.

4. Your team is out of mana.

If one or more of these conditions are met it's usually a good time to deflect damage on your team. In any case, peeling with CC is usually just a way to delay the enemy team's pressure long enough for your offensive cooldowns and kill setup to be ready again.

Spammable CC is insanely good for peeling, and it will make sense here in just a moment. As you can see.

Cooldowns have been committed by both the ret paladin and the warrior, meaning we will need to stop damage as soon as possible. Our priest wastes no time and immediately casts mind control on the paladin while our mage frost novas the warrior and runs off the bridge.

This will force the enemy melee to be in a really bad position if they decide to chase. Our druid will shut down more of the warriors avatar with a cyclone while our mage baits the ret paladin downstairs.

Once again this will force the enemy druid to be in the center of the map and more vulnerable to CC if he wants to dispel or heal his partners. This is a good time to get out of the way and get out of the way.

After our mage gets gripped up, he immediately resumes control over the paladin, shutting down even more of the avenging wrath with a polymorph. Even though this will all be dispelled, the ret paladin has to now walk all the way up the bridge only to be CC'd even more with another half duration polymorph.

And at this point the majority of the melee cleave's offensive cooldowns have been mitigated entirely, forcing them to now face the pressure of our god comp while they wait for cds to rotate back. Ok, but what if your team doesn't have spammable CC?

Do you want to deal with your control since you need it for kill setups? No, not at all.

Even classes without spammable CC will sometimes need to use their control defensively. This is especially true in really volatile matchups against bursty comps like RMP and any team with a ret paladin or windwalker monk.

In these matchups you will likely need to trade some CC into their kill setups even if this means using the spells that you would normally use to set up your own kills. Peeling rogue mage openers is insanely important since this is the moment where they build most of their momentum.

Our warrior immediately uses disarm on the rogue while both of our partners are stuck in CC. This isn't enough though since the mage has combustion up meaning we will need to peel both.

Our warrior immediately charges the mage using intimidating shout to deny damage while stunning the druid to prevent any follow up. Even though we could have saved this for a later setup it is important that our warrior peeled early to deny momentum from the RMD.

There is one target many low rated pvpers forget to CC in arena since it's not even an actual player. It's pets.

Hunters, warlocks and windwalker monks all have pets that can be crowd controlled to reduce damage. Many hunters play with an undead pet meaning it will be immune to fear, polymorph and hibernate but it can be CC'd by other spells including shackle undead from priests.

Warlock pets can be CC'd by any spell and the same thing is true for monk images when they use storm earth and fire. The monks tiger is considered a beast which means it can be controlled with most CC spells including hibernate from druids.

Make sure you control the pets from BM hunters, demo warlocks and the mage. If you have a mage that is not a mage you can use the mage to control the mage and the mage to control the mage.

If you have a mage that is not a mage you can use the mage to lead the mage, and windwalker monks since their pet damage during CDs is often the majority of their pressure. If you think CC is the only way to peel think again because there is one peeling method that many lower rated players don't use.

INTERMEDIATE: PEEL WITH DAMAGE

It involves peeling with pressure. That's right your own damage can be used to peel enemy damage.

You know those nature documentaries where they show two massive animals fighting? Arena is kinda like that sometimes, but bears don't win mirror matches with polymorph, they win with damage.

The same concept applies in arena. If you want to force the enemy team off of you, sometimes the quickest way to do that is with your own offense.

In some cases just attacking a target is enough to peel them. This works really well against casters if you are a melee dps.

If you wanted to shut down a mage from freely cc'ing your entire team, simply pressuring them with damage is the best way to lock them down. Although there are some casters that don't really need to cast in order to put out pressure, others need to cast a lot.

Shadow priests for instance only have one spell school for damage, meaning attacking them and threatening their casts with kicks can really shut down the majority of their pressure.

Other classes like fire mages and elemental shamans don't really deal much damage outside of cooldowns with their damaging spells, but attacking them can help reduce their ability to freely cast. Even against melee, peeling with damage is still effective.

This is especially true against squishier melee dps like demon hunters, monks and rogues. Hitting a windwalker or a dh can force them to kite away since they are really fragile outside of defensive cooldowns.

This can give your team some really important recovery time in between your own kill setups. Rogues also need to kite when trained, and attacking them forces them to use feint, which has an energy cost and can interfere with their damage rotation.

This is a really good way to kill your team. Also, the most popular melee classes like warriors aren't that punished by getting attacked since they have a lot of damage mitigation anyway with passive defenses, but that doesn't mean that they can't be peeled with damage.

You should also look at melee positioning as a way to see if target swapping might be beneficial defensively. Even a tanky melee like warrior can be forced off of your team if they are far away from their healer.

In cases where they are in a bad position and out of range of heals, swapping them quickly can be enough to force them back. In some cases, pressuring the enemy healer is also an effective way to peel dps from the enemy.

This might seem a bit confusing, but think of all the times you've been in an arena while your healer is being attacked. Usually they are frantically calling for help, causing you to abandon whatever you were doing to try and help them.

This same concept applies in reverse. By going on the healer, it is enough to sometimes force the enemy team to give up some of their pressure so their healer doesn't die.

We're not saying this is always a good idea, and in many cases healers will be too far away to actually attack, but in some situations, like when a disc priest is pushed in aggressively, quickly targeting them can be enough to swing momentum back.

This is a really good way to get your team to be able to pull off a good fight. There are quite a few things going on at the start of this clip.

The enemy mage has combustion up with power infusion, and our priest is about to take some massive pressure. On top of that, polymorph is being casted by the mage, and if it lands our team will be in trouble.

A rogue stepkicks the mage, stopping the polymorph cast, but now that kick has been used, he really can't peel any more damage with interops. Instead, our rogue commits vendetta on the priest with a kidney shot.

This will force pain suppression. As an added bonus, it will force the enemy dps off our priest.

Since now, their partner is in big trouble.

ADVANCED: PEEL WITH DAMAGE & CONTROL

So by now it should be clear that there are two really unique ways to peel damage off your team, and pro players often combine both methods at the same time. Remember, arena is like waves, you always want to recover quickly so you can regain momentum again.

This is where combining your CC and damage is highly effective. If you were able to first shut down a kill with control, and then use that control to reverse with damage, that is often the best form of peeling possible.

Not only will you force the enemy team back, but you can force their cooldowns and even score kills in the process. Let's see how this looks in a high rated game.

As you can see, our healer is under a lot of pressure. Storm, earth, and fire has just been used by the enemy monk, and the demon hunter is casting the hunt.

We will need to peel immediately. Our mage immediately uses dragon's breath to halt damage, and then follows us up with a frost nova.

This will prevent all of the damage from the monk's pets. This will allow our paladin to escape, but now our team needs to keep up the control in order to swing momentum back in our favor.

Our shadow priest denies even more of the monk's cooldowns, with some of the damage that he's been dealing with. And then covers this with a silence on the paladin.

Now that we have recovered, our team reverses pressure on the enemy team off the back of this control. Our mage pops combust, and this will be lights out for the demon hunter.

And there you have it. If you didn't watch our guide on using CC offensively, we highly suggest checking it out since it will cover the other side of control.

As always though, thanks for watching. Hope to see you soon.