PRE-USING DEFENSIVE CDS

WHY PRE-USE DEFENSIVES

Welcome to skillcapped's breaking news. In today's headline, we've received multiple reports of so-called top World of Warcraft players cheating inside of arena.

Early reports say this new cheat has allowed players to use defensive cooldowns INSIDE of crowd control. We received this footage just yesterday of a well-known shaman somehow using his astral shift while inside of a cheap shot.

This coincides with another report a few days ago of a druid somehow using ironbark while inside of a freezing trap. It's too early to say exactly what they're doing, but there is definitely foul play at hand.

Alright, just kidding, that's enough of the cheesy intro. Today we're exploring the concept of pre-using defensive cooldowns, taking a look at why it's so good to do, and showing you exactly how you can replicate these plays you so often see performed by top streamers.

First, let's quickly explain what pre-using a defensive actually is. So much as the name suggests, it's the process of using a defensive, or even a healing cooldown, before the so-called pre-using.

So, pre-using is a method of using a defensive before a huge amount of damage hits you, or something like we saw in the intro, using a defensive like astral shift, one you can't use inside of stuns, before a stun happens. Essentially you're predicting what the enemy is going to do, and using a defensive to counter that.

So, what makes pre-using defensive so good that we're even memeing it's cheating? Well… There are numerous benefits to pre-using defensive cooldowns.

First of which is, there is a very high chance that you can hold onto other major defensive cooldowns. For instance, you astral shift before a stun, you can then potentially hold onto your gladiator's medallion, or even other important defensives like spirit link and ascendance.

If you're a healer, using a defensive or healing cooldown before crowd control will also potentially save your own and your partner's defensive cooldowns. Instead of a trinket, ironbark, or a trinket, nature, swiftness, and ironbark, your ability to preemptively use defensives saves you a lot of other cooldowns.

Then on the flip side, if you don't even have other major defensives or a gladiator's medallion available to you, having to pre-use a defensive cooldown may be the only way you have at surviving.

Essentially if you successfully time your preemptive use of defensive cooldowns well, you're going to ruin your opponents offensive pushes, inevitably delaying the go and buying you and your team time to get back any cooldowns you may be missing.

At the end of the day, world of warcraft is a game about trading, and the more positive trades you make in terms of your team's cooldowns, the more you're going to be able to hold onto defensive cooldowns, the higher win chance you're going to have.

WHEN TO PRE-USE DEFENSIVES

So, how do we know when to pre-use a defensive if the telltale signs we usually look for are not there yet? Well, a lot of this comes down to game knowledge and understanding the win condition of the composition or class we're up against.

To best understand this, it can be condensed down to two questions. What crowd control do my opponents use to set up kills?

And, what offensives do they rely on to score a kill? Knowing the answer to these two very easy questions allows you to predict what the enemy is going to do.

But, before they do it. Let's take a hunter for example.

And, this is something you should all know. What crowd control is it a hunter uses to set up kills?

Yes, freezing trap. And, here in this clip, the hunter doesn't have his intimidation stun.

So, in order to secure a trap, we'll need to come in melee range. As soon as he uses his harpoon, our druid responds by instantly pressing ironbark on the hunter's target.

Simply knowing that hunter requires freezing trap to secure a kill makes this play almost kindergarten levels of easy. Okay, another one.

This time, it's a quite obscure. A very obscure composition.

Frost death knight. Enhancement shaman.

Again, how do you think this composition sets up its kills? Well, it's got two classes who heavily rely on a one minute timer.

Death knights have pillar of frost and enhancement shamans have doom winds. More importantly though, frost death knights heavily rely on stacking multiple targets to initiate a setup.

To do so, they use death grip. Which is the key here.

So here in this clip, our player sees his druid gets death gripped in and instantly presses his blade storm. Immuning out of the blinding.

Slash. And then he's able to pop die by the sword.

And even intervene his shaman. Saving his gladiator's medallion and more than likely his team's life.

This whole concept is just so easy to do once you approach the game thinking about your enemy's win conditions. Here's another one.

This isn't quite as common, but we've got a warlock in 2v2 trying to kill our restoration shaman. What's the warlock's win condition?

The answer? Deathbolt.

And do you know how deathbolt works? Well, in order to deal impactful damage, a warlock has to have dodge.

And that's when you have to have dots up. Including soul rot and phantom singularity.

The deathbolt itself is a cast so quick, unless you've been taking above the recommended dose of G fuel, you're probably not going to be able to react. So it's knowing and understanding the signs that it's coming.

And in this clip, our warlock casts his soul rot and immediately follows it up with a phantom singularity. After seeing this, our shaman instantly astral shifts.

Pre walling the deathbolt, which would otherwise more than likely have sealed his fate. So like we said.

You can do this at a basic level. You should understand the basics of how pretty much every popular composition looks to win.

You know rogues have to kill in stuns. You know hunters or jungle cleave needs to win games around freezing trap.

So use this to your advantage and consider preusing defensives. Aside from just general game knowledge, there are two addons which can greatly aid in your ability to predict your opponents.

Omnibar is the obvious one. This allows you to track these important abilities.

So tracking stuns like kidney shot, hammer of justice, intimidation, mighty bash, and storm bolt. While also tracking important crowd control like freezing trap, dragon's breath, and blind to name a few.

Diminish, our second addon on the other hand, makes knowing when you're about to be cc'd a lot more reliable. As this addon allows you to see your own and your partner's diminishing returns.

Like this clip here, our shaman is able to see his own stun diminishing returns. Once he's off DR, it's more apparent the rogue is ready to do a go.

The enemy rogue stuns his warrior for crowd control and then steps to our shaman. Knowing he's off stun DR though, he's able to use that information to react and to get earthen wall totem down preemptively.

WHAT DEFENSIVES TO PRE-USE

Okay, so with a better understanding on how to pre-use a defensive and predicting your opponents, let's take a look at which defensive cooldowns you should consider using, as not every single one of your defensives should be used preemptively.

First of all, we want to exclude any cooldown you can use while inside of crowd control or stuns already. Preemptively using a divine shield, unending resolve, or dispersion, for example, are not going to be very effective, as you can already use these when you would normally want to.

What we're looking for is cooldowns that are unable to be used inside of stuns or crowd control. On screen now, you'll see a compiled list of the abilities you should be looking to potentially use preemptively in your games.

One word of warning, the longer the cooldown, the higher the risk versus reward. Let's take rogue as an example.

Evasion and cloak of shadows are two very important major defensives. In order to use these preemptively, you need to have a very high chance of getting value, or it being incredibly dire situations where you don't use it preemptively, you will lose.

Whereas crimson vial and faint are much shorter cooldowns. You can attempt to use these preemptively in your games, but you'll have to be very careful.

In fact, that's what they're designed for, and you should aim to have faint active for every stun. It's always going to be up to you, though.

We can't tell you in black and white where or when you shouldn't attempt to preemptively use a defensive. It's entirely based on risk versus reward, and the lower cooldown defensives obviously pose less of a risk than some of the more important larger cooldown ones.

For example, on shaman, you're probably not going to preemptively spirit link unless it's an incredibly dire situation. However, on the other hand, trying to pre-earth and wall every setup is something very risk adverse.

So always weigh up your risk versus reward. It's just as important to understand when not to use something preemptive, though, as when making any risky play, things can still go wrong.

The biggest mistake we see players make when trying to make these plays is by preemptively using their cooldowns too early. It's definitely tough.

One second too early, and the enemy notices and reacts. One second too late, and you're already in CC.

Overall, the worst thing that can happen is that enemies just end up waiting for you to wait out your defensives and then kill you anyway. A good example of this would be with greater fade.

If a shadow priest tries to fade a kidney shot to immune it, but does so at the wrong time, the enemies can just hold their damage and kill afterwards. Whereas if they just held onto the greater fade and used it after the kidney shot, they may have survived.

These are the situations you want to avoid. Alternatively, using defensives too early means enemies can just swap targets, but even then in some circumstances this can be to your advantage, and simply delaying the setup or diverting it to somebody else on your team could just be a bad thing.

Potentially buy you enough time for your other defensives to come back, or your team to be out of crowd control. It just totally depends on the circumstances and scenario in your game.