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DEFENSIVE COMMUNICATION

DEFENSIVE COMMUNICATION INTRO

Welcome to our next course on communication, this time focusing on the defensive side of things. We're going to be learning directly from some of the best teams of all time, featuring Seedoo's legendary communication skills.

Together with Mez, Trill, and Samayam, this group of players has mastered the art of defensive gameplay. Our goal in this course is going to be to teach you how to bulk up your team, simply by knowing how and when to make defensive calls.

We hope you enjoy it.

DEFENSIVE COMMUNICATION GOALS

Communication in Arena is focused entirely on win conditions. On offense, this means coordinating your cooldowns, control, and burst damage with your teammates in order to have the strongest setup possible.

Defensive communication includes all of these concepts too, just in reverse. Effective defensive communication is all about denying the enemy team's win condition by coordinating how you will respond to cooldowns, control, and burst damage from the enemy team.

This might seem difficult, but it can be done by focusing on three key areas. Active cooldown rotation, preventing enemy damage through peels and interrupts, and finally, positioning.

All of these core defensive concepts are made more effective with good communication, so let's break it down step by step.

DEFENSIVE CD ROTATION

First up is cooldown rotation. This is arguably the most important part of defensive communication.

You probably know how this works already. If the enemy team pops an offensive cooldown, that usually means using an equally strong defensive CD in order to respond.

But there is one key issue. Your team probably has multiple defensives that can be traded, and you need to ensure that at least one of you responds while not overlapping, so that you have enough defensives left over for the next round of cooldowns.

There is one cooldown that everyone needs to be aware of, making sure to trade it when needed while not overlapping with their team. Can you guess what it is?

It's your PvP trinket, of course. Now, unless you play Major Warlock, you probably have one of these equipped, and it is arguably the most important defensive cooldown, since it allows you to save yourself and even save your partners.

The goal of communication when it comes to your trinket is to make sure you won't overlap it with your teammates, so let's see how that might be done in an actual rank 1 game. Here, our team is up against Jungle Cleave, so what should we be looking at to see if a trinket might be needed soon?

For one, it's a good idea to have a trinket that can be used to save your teammates, and it's a good idea to have a trinket that can be used to save your teammates. For two, if we look at the Hunter's cooldowns, they have both stun and freezing trap ready.

Chances are the Feral has one of his stuns ready too, meaning our team can be cross CC'd if the Feral stuns our Rogue when our Priest is trapped. On top of that, the enemy Priest has fear ready, so a CC chain is possible.

So, now there is one key question that needs to be asked. Who should trinket if we get cross CC'd?

This question is complicated to answer in the middle of a chaotic game, but one benefit of our Priest trinketing is that he has two charges of serenity, meaning he should be able to save his Rogue through the setup. But enough talking, let's see what our team does and how they communicate.

Because our team coordinated their trinket usage, our Rogue now has his trinket left to save him on a future setup if needed.

Every comp in the game will reach his win condition by gradually removing cooldowns from the enemy team, and when multiple trinkets get forced in a single setup, that means significantly less blocks to future attacks.

The reason why RMP is so strong is that it is so good at punishing defensive overlaps, but it's not just RMP that can get a checkmate from overlapping trinkets.

Since damage is so high across the board, virtually every comp will be licking their lips the moment trinkets are overlapped, because it makes the next setup much stronger. And once again, this puts teams on their checkmate earlier than necessary, and the best way to avoid this is with communication.

Obviously though, your trinket is just one of your defensive cooldowns, but just so happens to be the strongest in many cases. But next up, let's look at more rank 1 teams and how they handle their other cooldowns.

Here, our team is up against Jungle Cleave, and as we mentioned earlier, this comp will setup kills with stuns into freezing trap. Every stun or trap will be scary, so it's important that our team is able to trade cooldowns to prevent the jungle cleave from overwhelming them with raw pressure.

In order to do this, our rank 1 healer will preemptively call out his defensives while letting his teammates know if more trades are needed. atmos Ok so let's pause for a moment and break this down again.

If we rewind back to the start of this interaction, our priest immediately uses fae guardians the moment the feral druid opens. This will give our DK 40% damage reduction thanks to the legendary bonus.

He will communicate this to his dps ensuring that it is clear they will be safe from goingPERTILES for the opening exchange.

With this communication in place, our team has accomplished the goal of making sure cooldown trade happened, while being careful not to needlessly overlap other major defensive cooldowns, especially PvP trinket.

CONDENSING INFORMATION AND PRE-PLANNING

But by now some of you might be saying, but Shadowlands is too fast! I can't precisely call out cooldowns with my teammates.

While you should still try and coordinate specific defensives, there is a workaround to this problem, and it's easier than you might think. Rank 1 players can often be heard saying, you you you you, or me me me me, as a way to coordinate with their team as to who needs to trade defensives.

By simply communicating in key moments, you can make sure a cooldown trade happens without wasting any precious time. I precloned, I precloned.

Skin late anyway. Wait, me me me me me me me me me me me me me me.

I'm not even gonna renewal, I'm not even gonna renewal. I root beam?

Go, win win win, he's locked he's locked he's locked. He's locked he's locked he's locked he's locked.

Big damn. Another way to deal with the fast pace of Shadowlands is to plan a defensive strategy before the gates even open.

This will ensure that a cooldown trade happens, even in the most chaotic of situations. I think I want to trinket for Sammez.

I think I want to trinket for Sam, so we can use my, my rez legendary. In the opener.

In the open. Wait, you're trinketing for me?

Yeah I'm trinketing for you in the opener and me in the opener. Wait, uh, yeah I'll trinket for you in the opener.

They might go me. Because.

I think for one special. It's fine if they go you.

I feel like I should just go mid-math and get comm. Trust me, just trust me.

I'm a doctor. They missed the- Go me.

Okay, I'll trinket here, we're fine. No, don't go me.

I'm gonna trinket. I'm gonna trinket.

If you preplan your defensive cooldown trading, it means you can get ahead on defensive CDs early on, as long as you are able to swing pressure back onto the enemy team, putting yourself in a better position to score a kill later.

Discussing cooldown trading before the enemy setup is enormously helpful, but it requires you to know when a setup is actually happening. Here is a key moment in which our team should anticipate a cooldown trade is needed.

Notice that our healer has been stunned, and this can be chained with more CC. Luckily our mage is there to interrupt the ring of frost.

But does this mean? don't need to trade anything else. Not exactly, because if we look at the current situation, there are some clues that indicate we still might be in trouble.

Notice the rogue has shadow blades popped, the mage has combustion, there is a resonator trinket about to explode, and the priest is casting mind games. All of this together demands some cooldown trading, so our warrior and druid trade some of their CDs in order to block this attack.

Even though this might seem like an overlap, the amount of cooldown pressed by the enemy team warranted a strong defensive response. Instead of blowing his trinket instantly to get out of stuns, our warrior and healer communicated together that they would instead trade defensive CDs to survive this attack.

DEFENSIVE TRADING RECAP

Keep in mind that multiple things can warrant a cooldown trade. Sometimes it isn't just offensive cooldowns that signal CDs are needed, other times it's just control.

Take this moment here, where our paladin has just been put into a full blind. His team is currently off stun DR, which means the enemy team is able to do a powerful setup on one of our party members.

If we check out his team's CDs, they still have multiple defensives available. And taking a look at our own cooldowns, we have multiple CC breaks.

With so many tools available to block this attack, a decision needs to be quickly made, and more importantly, it needs to be communicated with our team. Now once again, let's rewind to the moment where this interaction started.

Remember, we were blinded, with multiple breaks available, and defensives ready for our entire team. There are a spectrum of decisions that can be made in this situation, and some are better than others.

Our paladin decides to bop in order to respond to this attack. Whether or not this was the best decision doesn't really matter.

What matters most is that this was communicated with his team, ensuring that at least one CD was traded and that overlapping was minimized.

So just to recap this section, the most important part of defensive communication is all about cooldown trading and making sure your team knows how they are going to respond to enemy setups. Remember, there are two key problems you want to avoid.

Not using any CDs at all, or using too many. If you're not using any CDs at all, you're going to have to use too many.

You're going to have to use too many CDs all at once when the enemy team pops off. It doesn't matter if you're playing 2v2 or 3v3, coordinating defensives with communication is the most important part of surviving enemy setups.