RANGED DPS SOLO SHUFFLE COURSE

RANGED DPS SOLO SHUFFLE COURSE INTRO

Welcome to our ranged DPS solo shuffle course! We've had the privilege to work with some of the best PVPers of all time and some of the highest rated shuffle players on the ladder.

Using their combined knowledge, we then put together a series of tips, custom designed to teach you all of the latest and greatest tech for climbing as a caster, including tips you need to know for positioning and managing interrupts. Trust us, there is something to learn for every skill level here.

We guarantee you that if you watch each video one by one, then you will see rating gains!

HOW TO KITE MELEE (SERIOUSLY)

So everyone knows that melee have infinite mobility these days. It honestly sucks, but trust us, we really get it.

It seems like there is absolutely nothing you can do to ever get away, but that doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't try. So in this video, we're going to be teaching you three simple mobility steps that you can follow to at least give you a fighting chance against those annoying melee.

So step number one, get distance early. Winning the mobility war starts by being proactive, making it as hard as possible for melee to connect to begin with.

At the start of every single game, when you see that warrior or that ret paladin mounted up, crossing the map, you should try and use any tool you have to stop them. This could be an earth grab totem to get them rooted, or even just a simple snare to slow them down.

Our goal with this is to just... be annoying enough to force them to burn a gap closer super early on. Step number two, proactively utilize space.

Spacing is a powerful tool for many specs. We're going to use warlock as an example here, but even if you don't play lock, you should still be able to follow along.

Now as a warlock, your main mobility tool is obviously going to be your port, which you need to use to proactively create space. Now what this means is that you should, avoid playing on top of your port whenever you're trained, since this minimizes the space that you can create.

Instead, when you lay your port down, you should already be moving away from it, even while under pressure, aiming to move a significant distance in order to maximize spacing whenever it's used. So if you play mage, the same concept applies to your altar time.

Whenever you press altar to snapshot your positioning, you should then move as far away from the original position as possible, creating the biggest gap in the map, and the biggest possible space before porting back. The same rule applies to any root effect.

Don't just press your root and sit still. Use your root to proactively create distance, moving as far away as possible before it breaks.

You can also create proactive space passively with simple movement, assuming you aren't already getting trained. Now what you're often going to see high rated players do, is stand very far from enemy melee, constantly moving away, in order to maintain as much space as possible.

You need to make it annoying for people to connect in the first place. Our final step is to trade mobility cooldowns one to one.

It's useful to think of mobility in the same way you think about trading defensive cooldowns. 90% of the time you're going to want to be the person who acts second, not first.

You don't want to port and then have the warrior charge you. You want the warrior to charge you and then you port, forcing them to burn a number of cooldowns.

You want the warrior to charge you and then you port, forcing them to burn a number of cooldowns. Doing this gives you the best chance at actually getting away.

If you can constantly rotate all your mobility options in response to gap closers, you can find yourself in a situation where the enemy can't reconnect, allowing you to freely cast.

HOW TO LAND MORE INTERRUPTS

There is a brand new way to interrupt that is actually super broken. It's called late kicking.

And once you learn how to abuse it, we can guarantee you will land more interrupts. Lower rated players will only spam fake early into their cast.

They're going to press their spell, stop, cast again, and then stop again, over and over and over. Better players, they'll mix it up and will fake cast towards the middle of their cast too, getting that cast bar to 50% or higher, and then juking.

The best players though, they're going to mix it up too, and even play the additional mind game of not juking at all. In all three of these cases, late kicking is the key to guaranteeing your kick lands.

To late kick, all you need to do is wait until the cast bar is 90% or even higher before using. You want to be as late into the cast as possible, but obviously not too late.

That player who spam jukes, well, they're just going to waste their time juking over and over while you hold onto your kick, allowing you to save it for later. And against those players who mix it up, you're going to have an easier time beating their mind games.

Now they might try to fake you mid-cast, but if you're patient, they're going to give up and try to send it, but you will be ready with a late kick to stop them in their tracks.

DELIBERATELY TANK KICKS ON A WEAK SCHOOL

Did you know that you don't have to fake every cast, even if there are multiple interrupts available? The best players are deliberately getting interrupted all of the time.

That's right, they're not juking 100% of their spells. Now that's old school tech, but why would anyone wanna get kicked on purpose though?

Let's use a Frost Mage as an example here, who has three different schools. Frost, which is where most of their damage comes from, Arcane, which is where their polymorph encounter spell come from, and then Fire, which is really only used for one spell.

Can you guess which one of these is probably never worth faking? Now, if the answer wasn't obvious, it's Ring of Fire.

Since the value of the Frost School and Arcane School are so incredibly high, we don't really care if we get locked on fire. In fact, getting locked on fire would actually be what we do want.

Some specs have spells that belong to multiple schools. Take Demo Warlock as an example, who has Fear on the Shadow School, and then Hand of Gul'dan, which includes Shadow and Fire.

This means there is less reason to fake cast Fear, since getting kicked will still allow you to press one of your main rotational spells.

WEAVE INSTANT GLOBALS TO MAXIMIZE DAMAGE

You could be making a huge mistake when spam-juking your spells. Look, we all want to fish for that juicy pre-con, but you could be wasting your time if you aren't weaving in instant cast while you fake.

So let's explain here. There is a tendency for players to spam fake cast over and over and over, just like a robot, man.

They might be thinking to themselves, I'm being a mechanical god here. But this is super, super inefficient.

If you spend three seconds fake casting, that means losing out on the ability to press two or three globals in that process. Now compile this over a long game, and you could be missing out on a ton of damage.

Instead, what you should be doing is weaving in instant cast spells in between your jukes. Watch here as Chanimal is going to fake cast, then before faking again, he's going to weave in at least one instant cast before faking again, doing this as many times as he needs to.

HOW TO GET GUARANTEED PRECOGS

There are two situations where players are very likely to use their interrupt, and once you can spot them, you're going to have a much easier time getting precog. The first is when playing against melee who are far away, but running towards you.

Except for Enhancement Shamans, Feral Druids, DKs, and Demon Hunters, most melee have melee range kicks. And there's a simple mind game you can use to almost guarantee a juke, especially against melee with short range kicks.

If you have distance from any melee, but especially ones with short range kicks, and you start your cast while they're running towards you, there is a very, very high chance that they are spamming their kick, trying to use it immediately once they get in range.

So if you simply wait until they're close to you, and then cancel your cast, there's a high chance that they're going to use their kick, giving you a free precog. Trust us, this works all the time, even in higher ratings.

There is another way you can almost guarantee, a fake cast too, and it works against everyone. This first involves looking at your Omnibar to see when kicks are ready.

If the enemy you care about is about to have their interrupt ready, then there's something you can do to proc a precog.

If you start your cast right before their kick is ready, and then cancel it immediately once their kick is back, there's a very high chance you're going to juke, since once again, they're probably trying to sneak an interrupt in.

It's a weird mind game, where the enemy player thinks they're catching you off guard, by using their kick instantly, but you have a counter mind game ready to give you a precog.

ABUSE POSITIONING WHILE UNDER PRESSURE

Flat tires, breakups, taxes, some things in life just kind of suck. But do you know what the absolute worst is?

Getting trained all game by two melee as a caster. There's truly no worse feeling in the world.

Now we're only kind of joking here, but anyway, it really doesn't matter if you're a 1k rated or a 3k rated. Playing under pressure never feels good.

But what truly separates the best players is what they decide to do while under pressure, which even includes how you position. The mistake many players make is getting attacked and then waddling around in the center of the map while the enemy healer stays comfortably at a pillar.

This is a lose-lose situation because you are going to struggle to generate any pressure while getting trained and the enemy healer is completely left free. So let's fix this.

We have two goals when getting trained. Number one is to drag the enemy melee into a bad position to try and force them back.

And number two is to force the enemy healer into a bad position themselves, which we can conveniently do with one basic movement.

So to accomplish both of these goals, all we need to do is run as far away from the enemy healer as possible, sometimes in a perpendicular path, ideally drawing the enemy DPS behind a pillar and out of LOA.

By doing so, we then force the enemy healer to leave their pillar and cross the map, potentially allowing your partners to land free CC. So let's watch this in action with real gameplay.

Notice how Chanimal is being attacked while the enemy healer is on the same side of the pillar in the distance, giving them a ton of space to work with.

So to prevent the healer from having all this freedom, Chanimal simply runs away behind the pillar, which draws the priest into an, awkward position as they try and chase the warrior, which opens up the ability for our rogue to CC, eventually causing the warrior to leap away and leave us free to cast.

So whenever you're under pressure from melee, don't panic. Instead, look for ways to draw the enemy DPS far away from their healer, which can give you a hidden opportunity to actually reverse pressure.

DO NOT RUN ON TOP OF YOUR HEALER

The number one positioning mistake all DPS make, regardless of rating, is running directly on top of their healer. As a caster, there is a high chance you will be the target, and there is a huge temptation to run back to safety whenever you have two melee chasing you down.

We totally understand why people do this. Intuitively running towards your healer means running to safety, right?

Well, not exactly. Because by doing so, you expose them to CC, to interrupts, and AoE damage.

This third part is extra important these days, because as you know, PvP is basically just Mythic Plus at this point, and tons of specs can funnel damage by cleaving multiple targets. So instead of kiting directly on top of your healer, simply kite somewhere else, while making sure to stay in LoS.

Trust us, this matters way more than most people think, and is an easy mistake to make. And avoid once you're aware of it.

ZONING HEALERS FOR HUGE PRESSURE

We just discussed what to do when you are getting trained, but what should you be doing if you're left free? Big damage, obviously.

But wait, you can do a lot better than that. Because by being free, you can completely take over the game if you take that additional step of zoning out the enemy healer.

There is nothing any healer hates more than being on one side of the map while their team is on the other, with a caster standing in the middle, of course. It's a death trap situation.

Stay back and your team will die. Push in and tank a CC or even get poked by a swap.

This situation is awful as a healer. Your mindset whenever you're free should not just be maximizing damage, but instead maximizing pressure.

Acting as a goalie to stop the enemy healer from playing the game. This is twice as effective whenever you're playing any class with spam CC, like a mage, warlock, or a boomkin.

With poly, fear, and cyclone taking the healer out of the game for six seconds, that means denying a significant amount of healing. Your one and a half second cast to CC the healer is gonna generate a ton of value.

But don't just stop with one CC though. Once you land your first DR, pump some damage and then refresh your CC again and repeat the process.

Pushing towards that enemy healer will even put you in a position to land an interrupt, which you otherwise wouldn't get by staying back. So, the moment you're left free, ask yourself, how can I make the healer's day as annoying as possible?

And then, push in to play goalie.

ABUSE SNARES

There is one button you probably have on your bars that is more important than most people think. It's your snare.

If you play Mage, this could be slow. If you play Ellie, this is frost shock.

Warlock, curse of exhaustion. You know what we're talking about here.

Snares are any instant cast ability that reduce movement speed. But why are they so important?

Now we're going to be repeating this over and over and over. But the war within PvP is all about tempo.

And this is especially true in solo shuffle. Anything you can do to slow down tempo is going to be good full stop.

This starts by using your snare before damage even starts. Instead of waiting around at the pillar, let an enemy melee just cross the map.

You should apply a snare or even a root before they connect. Again, this seems minor.

But it might allow you to squeeze in a little bit of time. And squeeze out just one cast that you weren't able to get otherwise.

When enemy targets are training you or even when they're kiting away, you should still make an effort to keep up your snares. The slower your opponents move, the higher the chance they're going to remain in the open to get blasted by damage and the lower the chance that they stay connected.

There's an age old saying we used to say in our videos. That a buff to mobility is a buff to an entire toolkit.

And the reverse holds true too. If you nerf your opponent's mobility, you're going to nerf everything.

Most importantly, their damage while buffing your own.

DON’T HOLD ON TO OFFENSIVE CDS

There is one thing that you need to do at the beginning of every solo shuffle round, no matter what. Now this might sound simple at first, but pay attention carefully because we promise that this actually matters.

What we want you to do at the start of every single game is pop offensive CDs. Yeah, we told you it seems simple, but it really, really matters.

You don't have to wait for a perfect 3-2-1 setup here. The goal is to simply send damage as quickly as you can.

Solo shuffles a game of tempo from start to finish, and controlling that tempo means maximizing damage done while minimizing damage taken at all times.

So without even thinking, you should be instantly ready to use your biggest offensive cooldown within a few seconds of combat starting, which is exactly what we see Vinruki do here. He simply sends out his combustion even without any CC, and then he just goes for the CC on the enemy healer.

If you're in a position to land CC and pop off with an offensive, then that's even better, which is always the case if you play Hunter or Boomkin for instance. Landing that root beam or stun trap should instantly be combined with your major offensive cooldowns, no matter what.

The best offensives in solo shuffle are 2-minute CDs because most games last 3 minutes or less. Now what this means is that if you pop your 2-minute offensive at the start of the game to build early pressure, it's going to be back around the 2-minute cooldown.

So you can just go ahead and do that. There's a 2-minute mark where dampening is really starting to ramp quickly, allowing you to use the second press of your CD as a finisher, closing out the game with unhealable damage.

TRADE DEFENSIVES HIGH

There is one simple defensive cooldown rule that you can safely follow in every solo shuffle which will absolutely carry in the war within. Now it might seem boring, but it's so simple and enormously effective, and it's trading defensives high on HP.

But let's be a little bit more specific here. The cooldowns you need to be trading high include any damage reduction CD.

This could be a shield like Dark Pack, minor damage reductions like Astral Shift, or even snapshotting heals like Renewing Blaze or Alter Time. All of these cooldowns get more value by trading high on HP, especially in the war within where damage is incredibly bursty.

Let's focus in on damage reduction cooldowns first since most classes have them. Notice how our Ellie Shaman here doesn't wait to use Astral Shift low on HP when the enemy team pops CDs.

Instead, he trades very easily. Very high on HP, which basically inflates his total health bar by a significant amount.

There's absolutely no reason to be super greedy here. As another simple rule of thumb though, the less damage reduction a defensive provides, the higher it should be used on HP.

Since Barkskin gives little DR, it really needs to be used high. But with the high DR of an ability like Dispersion, you can afford to be slightly more greedy.

The same concept absolutely applies to any melee. So, let's get into it.

The first thing we're going to look at is the cooldown reduction. The cooldown reduction is a very common rule in the game.

It's a rule that's used by players who are playing with a lot of major shields, like Dark Pact. In Solo Shuffle, there's absolutely no reason to be greedy with this cooldown, especially in the early game as it's going to lose value in dampening.

If the enemy team is popping CDs and you are the target, then trading Dark Pact 1-1 is going to be safe 90% of the time. The only cooldowns which you can get away with trading low includes any instant self-heals like Hellstone or Renewal or last resort CDs like Ice Block and Life Swap.

These are really the only cases where you can get away with trading low. I just want to give one quick example of how to use the cooldown reduction for this game, and that's a very common rule.

It's the only time when you can get more value trading low. But in some cases, you may want to log in and play a few times with your teammates.

So, I think this is just a cool option to get away with trading low. If you're playing a lot of games on the gameplay or more of a high end and you're just playing one lane or two lanes, you might want to get away with it.

It's because you don't want to be too aggressive while hitting it. It's always important to dive in and get the perfect opportunity to do the right things like getting comfortable in a lane and getting even more value.

If you're playing your opponent and you're not playing against a very strong team, you might want to analyze their playstyle and keep a close eye on them.

WHY APM ACTUALLY MATTERS

Have you ever wondered why high-rated players do so much damage even while under pressure? It's because they are maximizing APM at all times, which you can do too.

APM stands for actions per minute and is a really, really big deal in most games. Most people don't associate APM with WoW PvP though, which is a huge mistake on their part.

They'll say things like there's a global cooldown so APM doesn't really matter, but having a GCD is even more of a reason why high APM is so, so important. The base GCD for most classes is 1.5 seconds, which means in a perfect world you could use around 40 abilities every minute of the game.

So every second you spend not pressing an ability is going to quickly add up over time. The goal is to avoid what we call dead globals, which include any period of time where you're not pressing a damage or healing ability.

You can use them to get a high APM, but you can't use them to get a high APM. So if you're not pressing an ability, you're not pressing an ability, you're not pressing an ability, you're not pressing an ability, you're not pressing an ability, you're not pressing an ability.

In order to minimize dead globals though, try pressing at least one instant cast ability every global while you're moving. It doesn't matter what it is, it could be refreshing a dot, reapplying a buff, using a slow, anything is better than nothing.

Now if you've watched high rated gameplay, you're going to notice that players are constantly pressing abilities while on the move. Now at first it might not seem like a big deal, but remember that it's something that quickly adds up over time.