ROAD TO GLADIATOR

ROAD TO GLADIATOR INTRO

Welcome to our Road to Gladiator course. A few years ago, we set off on a challenge to take three rival-rated players and see if we could coach them all the way up to Gladiator within a single season.

We assembled a dream team of coaches here, which included AWC competitors and BlizzCon champions, and once every week, we would meet to teach one of the five pillars of WoW PvP.

This course might be the biggest hidden gem on our entire website, as it includes hours worth of coaching sessions which were strong enough to elevate a random group of rival-rated players all the way up to Gladiator. We really hope you enjoy it.

EP.1 HOW QUICKLY CAN A RIVAL TEAM GET GLADIATOR?

It all started with one question. How far can three random players be pushed in Arena?

We all know that there are so many things that can hold you back from reaching your true potential, and we decided that needs to change. We asked you if you wanted to participate in a challenge to see if the average PvPer could be pushed all the way to Gladiator.

After sorting through almost a thousand applications, we have found three players who we think are ready for our challenge. They will be paired up with coaches and will receive weekly lessons to improve their gameplay.

The coaches will not be playing with our team, but instead they will be sharing their knowledge and expertise by reviewing gameplay and fixing key mistakes that our team might be making. This won't be a free ride, because it is up to each player to put in the work and dedication needed to push all the way to Gladiator.

Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing the progress of our team, and give you the same lessons that they are learning on their journey. Are you ready?

Welcome to the Skill Cap Road to Gladiator Challenge! Before we meet our team, let's get introduced to our coaches.

Hey, my name is Mauro. I've been playing WoW Arena competitively since 2017 pretty much.

The last two years I've been doing really well, and among other tournaments we managed to win the AWC Finals in 2020 and Season 1 Finals in 2021. Joining Mauro will be Chanimal and Chaz.

Two former BlizzCon champions who bring years of experience to our coaching team. Mystic and Big Moran will also be taking some mentoring duties, making sure that each player has the right foundation to build their skills.

Remember, our coaches won't be playing with our competitors. Instead, they will have to use their game knowledge to fix the key mistakes that prevent the average team from getting Gladiator.

Some difficulties will probably be just kind of making them understand the win condition of their comp. I think that's a big issue on lower rated gameplay.

People are lower rated. Because different comps and obviously also if you're facing different comps, you're going to have different win conditions.

And the most important thing is to kind of understand them and always have the best strat. Obviously I want them to improve and I want the people to actually feel like they're going to be doing better in the end compared to what they've been like, how they're doing in the start.

And yeah, generally I just want them to kind of have a grasp on how their comp works at the end of the challenge. I want them to kind of maybe understand the game a little bit better.

I want to teach them a little bit more about WoW Arena. Obviously WoW Arena is kind of similar to our expansion.

So if you're going to be good once and you kind of understand the script and you can understand how you become good and well, you can kind of copy that in the future and you can kind of do well in the future again. So it would be really cool if they can actually understand WoW Arena a little bit more.

With our coaches selected. It's time to go.

Let's go. Let's go.

Let's go. Let's go.

It's time to introduce the players. We sort it through nearly 1000 applications across both EU and NA and finally settled on our team.

We selected three players who are currently around 2K Rating in 3v3. Our Rogue named AOE and after a few seasons of hitting rival and duelist, he thinks he is finally ready to get Gladiator for the first time.

Despite playing over ten years and never getting past 2100 in 3v3, AOE is ready for this new challenge. Joining him will be IMARC. player on the team, who started playing WoW with Shadowlands.

He has found success in 2v2 this season, but without reliable partners, he hasn't been able to push past 1900 in 3v3. Finally, we have Rocky, who has queued his way to 2k with a friend in 2v2, but has been left shattered by the toxicity of LFG.

He got his highest rating in Warlords of Draenor at 2200, but after rerolling Priest, he has yet to see elite ratings. They will be playing RMP, which of course is one of the best lineups in the game, but still requires consistent execution to do well.

And with an average starting rating around 2k, our team will have a lot to learn. And so with our team selected and our coaches ready, it's time for our three players to show us their gameplay.

After our team's first queue session, our coaches sat down to discuss some key issues, which included building a lesson plan designed around the five pillars of WoW PvP. Offense, including damage and control, defense, with cooldown trading and kiting, positioning, communication, and finally, matchup strategies.

Each one of these pillars would need to be developed for our team to reach their true potential. And as our coaches quickly discovered, one thing that was immediately obvious is that our team's team is going to be playing a very different game.

The game wasn't doing their setups properly. This is something that every comp in the game needs to do well.

It doesn't matter if you're playing RMP, or a spell cleave, or even a melee cleave. Getting consistent CC setups is everything in Shadowlands.

From looking at all the games so far, I think that these guys need to be trained on, like, step by step, what's the most important thing to train them on? I think it's literally like how to do good goes.

How to use those CCs. Yeah, they need to restart and learn the basics.

Yeah, I think we're not at the point. Three to one.

Yeah, exactly. I think that's literally like last week's game.

I think that's the most important thing to train them on. I think it's literally like how to do good goes.

How to use those CCs. Speaking of how to do good goes.

How to use those CCs. I think that actually, like, lesson one is just it's just that.

And then everything else can get added on later- I was going to say, I think so, too. I think it's just 3 to 1.

And maybe they just need to understand strategy a bit, as well. Because if it's like this game, they don't even consider going priest.

Yeah. They go every single go and draw.

But I mean, like I said earlier, that's not really how you want to play as a RMP anymore. You do want to swap after a go, as well, sometimes.

That's why it's all so bad that he's stunning people. It's so bad that he's stunning everyone.

It's really bad. Including stunning the priest.

You can stun the mage, yeah, you can stun the mage whenever you want. I mean, the priest should just be cheaped out of DB.

I mean, or a chest size fiat or something. Our rogue was putting too many targets on stun DR, and our mage and priest weren't doing their CC together.

The solution to this problem would be quite simple. Our team will just need to pick one target each and use all of their instant CC at the same time.

This is crucial because if there is any gap in the setup, it will give the enemy team a chance to react, which could completely ruin the kill. Before correcting our team's gameplay, we needed to fix some fundamentals.

Ahem. And after making sure they had a firm understanding of their DPS rotation, it was almost time to play.

But first, we had to meet with our coaches. One thing we noticed in our rogue's gameplay is that he was trying to do too much by himself.

Remember, our goal was to give our team a simple 3-2-1 setup that they can execute over and over.

But our rogue was trying to do everything alone, stunning multiple targets on kill setups, preventing enemies from getting to the enemy team, and preventing them from getting to the enemy team. and preventing them from getting to the enemy team. and preventing them from getting to the enemy team. from playing their role in the CC chain.

And to make matters worse, by putting everyone on stun DR, it was making it impossible to swap. All you have to get into your mind is that you're playing with two guys that have instant CC.

All you need to do is stun one guy and send damage. And also, remember what you said when I asked you what should you do right now?

Your suggestion was to stun the priest and then stun the rogue. Because you said the priest is near you.

There's a problem with that. Yeah.

What happens if you do that? Then I can't do a go on the priest.

Exactly. Exactly.

You can't swap anymore, which is the first thing that I told you you're doing wrong. You're stunning everyone, and you're closing off your swapping opportunities.

The reason why I said it's fine to stun the mage from time to time is because you're not going mage, so the stun deals on him don't matter. This session taught our rogue that he needs to let his team help him.

It wasn't necessary to do everything alone. With everyone on the team, having instant CC, the goes just needed to be orchestrated.

Nice. Good job, good job, good job.

Yeah, bud. On the website dictionary.cambridge.org, they say to the best strategy, Yo, my Google is popping off.

Sorry about that. to the best strategy, This is something every melee player in the game should recognize. With each class having multiple defensive cooldowns and high mobility, you need to have really precise lockdown.

If you leave any player free during your setups, you can allow one player to completely disrupt your kills. That's why melee cleaves at the highest level will even coordinate their crowd control on multiple targets, since leaving any gaps makes the kill window infinitely smaller.

As far as our mage was concerned, he had to play an important role too. With tons of control, it's not always clear who needs to be CC'd with an abundance of options.

He also needs to play a role on his team's CC, but this also required an update on the meta. Yeah, just feels like you guys are using like all your CC like a little bit random.

The meta obviously, the meta changed a bit in how you play RMP, that each one of you guys is going to pick up, one target and CC that target. Like let's say into an RMP, you face an RMP.

What you can do basically as an example is you can DB sheep the Holy Priest if he has no Holy Wood and I see most people you face don't even play Holy Wood. So that's, I mean in a sense, good for you guys.

You can chastise the mage and stun the rogue. Like as an example, you know, that's like a perfect setup.

3v1 perfect setup, no stops. But what you guys are doing right at the same time.

Yeah, exactly. You just, that's basically how people play RMP these days as well.

They just count down 3, 2, 1. Blink, DB, chastise, stun.

And everyone is in CC and it's like no counterplay basically. Unless you guys faded where someone is slow or something.

In many matchups, it becomes the caster's responsibility to CC the healer. With countless stops and disruptions, this can be a difficult task to do on your own, which is why coordinating setups with your team is essential.

It makes your kills stronger while also making the game much easier for yourself. Mages might have Dragon's Breath to help set up their CC, but other casters like Shadow Priests and Balanced Druids have their own instant cast CC combos that make it easier to snowball momentum with extended control on enemy healers.

But even if your class doesn't have reliable instant cast CC, you should look to your partners for help with controlling enemy healers. And finally, for our Priest, he needed to learn what should be communicated with his team and how his control and damage would fit into his team setups.

Just watching the games that everyone is not on the same page. So you need to be like, you need to cover usually the off targets where your chastise.

And you need to communicate. As a team, to make sure that everyone is ready.

Because sometimes one guy is sheepshotting, one guy is DBing, and the other two is not ready, etc. So you need to like communicate, make sure that the other three is ready and know what to do.

What our Priest would learn is that his control matters too, and he would have to help his partners by taking one target out of the game during kill setups with chastise fear.

With every healer having one or more CC spells, they become a vital part of their team's win condition and are usually responsible for locking down an off target during goes. In order to push raiding, our Priest would have to play a part of his team's CC setup, even if that means playing aggressive while under pressure.

After the players met their coaches, it was time to see if they could put their lessons into action. Our team had two major offensive issues that needed to be fixed immediately.

The first issue was their CC setups, which could be solved by coordinating spells with 3-2-1. 3, 2, 1, go.

The second issue was that we needed our team to keep up momentum in the opener, going hard on one target but also leaving opportunities to instantly swap once cooldowns were used. Just swapping something to healer here.

Yeah, let's go. Go, go.

Okay, grounding, grounding is there. Okay.

Okay. Okay.

Okay. Good job.

Good job. Oh my god, that's just so disgusting.

After taking their coaching lessons into Arena, our team winded up climbing MMR. By focusing on getting consistent setups with coordinated 3-2-1 crowd control, they were able to push raiding instantly.

Before his coaching, our rogue, Arrow, was trying to do too much by himself, stunning multiple targets, making it more awkward for his team to use their buttons, and even worse, sometimes leaving gaps in his own CC.

This would give the enemy team small windows to react, while also putting every target on stun DR, making it impossible to swap effectively. But now, Arrow had simplified his gameplay by managing a single task on kill setups.

Instead of spamming cheap shots on multiple targets, he was simply using kidney shot on the go. And even better, he wasn't leaving gaps in his stuns.

And perhaps best of all, he learned to instantly swap to other targets off DR to keep momentum and even score kills. Go, go, priest now.

I kick Cyclone. Now.

I'm f***ed. Stunned?

No. Go wound me now then.

Okay. I bomb too.

Alright, guys. This could be game.

Yeah, it's nice. Owned.

I actually owned. This focus on simplicity could transfer to other comps and classes.

Even if Arrow was playing WPS as a warrior, his role would be almost identical, stunning kill targets with Storm Bolt at the same time as Shadow Priest's Silent WP. This was, in fact, a kind of a But now, with coordinated setups, he knew exactly who and when to DB, even doing setups of his own to end games.

Again, this would be an essential skill that could carry over to other comps and classes. By pressing CC on the healer, the moment a stun lands on the target, he could build enormous pressure. to learn how his CC matters too.

When he first started, fear and chastise were being used randomly, used on the kill target, or sometimes never even used at all. But now, he was starting to use chastise with his team to cross CC, even on targets right out of stealth.

Our team realized that by doing consistent setups with clearly coordinated CC, they could beat any team. What, guys?

And you're good down. Good job.

I didn't record, are you serious? I did, I did, I did.

Oh my God, yeah. And remember, it's not just RMP that needs 3-2-1.

Every comp in the game, even Melee Cleaves, need to coordinate control to win. But in a comp with as much CC as RMP, proper setups give you the exact same kill windows as pro players.

And after implementing the lessons from our coaches, our RMP hit a new benchmark, 2,300 MMR, and just a few games each from the entrance to Gladiator. With our team feeling confident, it was time to see if they could climb that final grind to 2,400.

At this point, they had started to master our first pillar of WoW PvP. With cross CC as their focus for week one, our team was moving towards their goal.

But as we would learn, there would be more mistakes holding them back. Offense is just one part of the equation, and there was more to learn, especially now since they would be playing better opponents who could crush them with damage, and suddenly, their ratings would go up.

After reaching their peak of 2,300, one thing became clear, that their defense desperately needed work. But with offensive fundamentals out of the way, it was time to go a bit deeper and learn the remaining pillars that would show our team how to play like the pros.

Whoa, now doesn't that sound dramatic? Hey, let us know what you think of this series in the comments below.

Do you have any predictions for our team? What do you think will hold them back?

As always though, thanks for watching. See you soon.

Bye.

EP.2 HOW TO AVOID LOSING ON THE WAY TO GLADIATOR!

We set out on a journey to see if three average players could be taught everything they need to achieve Gladiator for the first time. And now, after a week of queuing, our team peaked at 2300, only 100 points from the final push.

Over the next few weeks, our team will be learning the five pillars of WoW PvP. Last time, they focused on offense, learning how to coordinate CC just like the pros.

Our coaches pointed out key mistakes in their kill setups and showed our players the power of 3-2-1 cross CC. But as they started to face better opponents, one thing became clear, that defensive skills were clearly lacking.

Following their climb to 2.3, they tanked down to 2100, and at the start of week 2, our coaches sat down to plan the course for their team. Offense saw some immediate improvements, but there was one question on our minds.

Could our team fix their key defensive mistakes before week 3? Join us as we look at the next two videos.

We take you through one of the most unique learning experiences in WoW PvP history. You will join our three players and learn the same lessons being taught by our team of expert coaches.

Welcome back to the Skill-capped Road to Gladiator Challenge. Before meeting with our coaches, we wanted to learn more about our players.

So we sat down with our Rogue, Arrow, to learn more about his journey in Arena from grinding LFG to taking on the Road to Glad Challenge. Hi, I'm Arrow.

I've been playing WoW now for about 10 years on and off, with Rogue being my main for the last five years. I started playing Arena back in Warlords when they introduced those new vicious mounts, and I decided just to grind 100 wins for one of the saddles.

With this Road to Gladiator opportunity, I really want to get the most out of it and reach new heights as a player to the point where I can reach my goals. I can reach Gladiator consistently.

Most important thing I've learned. I think I realized very quickly how self-oriented I was in Arena, and I think that's the case for a lot of LFG players.

I tried to play the game on my own, whereas I would try to do, like I would try and cheap shot all three targets and like set up goes on my own. If I got into trouble, I would just like not hesitate to dump my defensives.

And these sessions we've had, they really taught me the importance of that. The importance of teamwork and just increasing my general awareness.

What makes like the icing on the cake is that both Mark and Fishe, they're really good guys with like perfect mentalities for this. They take the challenge just as serious as I do and the team, the coaches, they're willing to improve.

They're willing to like take the criticism and make something out of it. And that just solidifies my confidence in this.

With our team ready for week two, it was time to review their goals. Our coaches needed to find a way to fix three of the biggest mistakes our team was making.

The first was only reacting to HP. This is such a widespread problem because it is so counterintuitive.

Instead of reacting to game states, many players simply pay attention to their own health bar to know if they're in trouble. In Shadowlands, this doesn't quite work since any number of classes can take your HP from 100 to 0 in a fraction of a second.

Instead, our team needed to learn that there are other things more important than health. Things more important than health points that signal trouble is coming.

The first is enemy cooldowns, which can easily be tracked with add-ons like Omnibar and Weak Auras. If CDs are up, chances are a defensive response is needed.

The second is cross CC. If anyone gets stunned while our healer is taken out of the game, then it should signal to our team that trouble is brewing.

In which case, you might need to use a cooldown even if your HP is high. The third mistake we needed to fix is making sure our players weren't overlapping important defensives.

From week one, they learned just how easy it was to win. They learned how to deal with the enemy team once the enemy team burned most of their CDs.

So, they had to make sure that they weren't trading too little or too many defensive CDs to respond to enemy attacks. And with this, we had our goals for week two.

We would teach our team effective cooldown trading, which meant making sure they were looking at more than their HP alone. Once they realized they were in trouble, they needed to make sure they weren't dying without pressing cooldowns, while also being sure not to overlap.

And with our goals set for the second week, it was time to meet with the coaches. We went into our meeting with one goal.

To make sure everyone knew to avoid these common defensive problems. Our Rogue was guilty of making all of these mistakes.

One thing that immediately stood out is that Arrow was doing some really risky trinkets. Trying to force kills when they were already over.

This doesn't make sense to trinket here. I think also in general, you shouldn't really be trinketing offensively in the open like this anyway.

Like, no matter what, even if you think... You should only trinket offensive ever if it's like a kill goal.

A kill goal, yeah, exactly. And here, it's impossible for this to be the kill goal.

The Spurs is ready, the Druid has trinket. There's no universe in which this trinket equals win the game.

Either way, during this offensive setup, you get stunned by the rep. But your healer isn't CC'd.

He was able to dispel this. And remember, even if you trinket this Hodge, there is no way that you can win the game right now.

It's impossible. This trinket is not a game winning trinket.

But you trinket anyways. So you have to remember that you're not trinketing offensively ever.

Especially against this comp. If this comp sees a Rogue trinket offensively, my god, they're so happy.

You've given them a win condition that they didn't previously have. Our mage, Mark, was also having trinketing problems.

But more importantly, he wasn't recognizing the strength of alter time. In opener, you generally want to trinket and you want to alter as soon as possible.

Especially if your Priest ends up getting CC'd. If he's not CC'd, you can hold it a bit.

But in this scenario, he obviously gets stunned. So what you want to do as a mage here, you want to trinket, alter, instar, jump below the bridge, maybe rebuff or shield, try to use any buff you can to help yourself buff.

Maybe even blink 2 yards just to proc your Tempest Barrier conduit. Just to have another buff.

One point I want to make is, you can see here you're stunned for 0.8 seconds. Look at your HP when the stun ends.

You're 76%. Altering at this HP, is this fine, Mara?

This is still fine. But you could get restunned.

Usually they would restun you and then you would have to drink Dia's stun and it would be awkward. So you're better off just instarming.

So you're better off just instarming. Or maybe trinketing and pressing your alter.

Just trinket first stun or alter. Other caster DPS can make similar efficient trades by using low cooldown defensives to counter powerful offensive CDs.

Shadow Priest can do this with Greater Fade, but even smaller cooldowns like Frenzied Regeneration for balanced druids or Teleport for Warlocks can be used to survive through enemy offensives without investing other CDs.

But remember, it is often better to trade these early if your healer is in CC, even if you are high on HP. Just like the rest of our team, our priest, Rocky, was also wasting some of his cooldowns, giving a CD advantage to the enemy team for free.

Here's the Chaos Nova, and then you try to mind games and you get banished and then you trinket this. Now, this is just like what we were talking about with the Rogue.

You don't need to press, you shouldn't trinket offensively, especially not as the healer. There's no way that you can win the game here.

The druids still have to trinket. It's actually both trinket offensively.

Yeah, Rogue does it too. So like, this is not good.

By doing this, all you're doing is like getting a really good opener, forcing their trinket. Getting ahead, and then just giving them your queen.

To make matters worse, our priest was getting destroyed over and over by melee, having to exhaust multiple resources to survive cooldowns despite there being one easy solution. You drop pretty low, you trade greater fade.

I think you even Guardian yourself here. Actually, no, you didn't Guardian.

But the main point was that you basically... I would probably fly before they even connect.

Yeah, that's the main point. Like, as they're trying to get to you while you're still full HP and your Rogue is dead, you're like, I'm going to try to get to you while you're still full HP and your Rogue is dead.

I'm going to try to get to you while you're still full HP and your Rogue is dead. Yeah.

I'm going to try to get to you while you're still full HP and your Rogue is dead. I'm going to try to get to you while you're still full HP and your Rogue is dead.

You just press fly right now before they get to you. It's so obvious.

Like, you're the only one that they can hit. They're coming for you.

It's the easiest fly of your life. And you just, now you take no damage.

You waste the Wret's wings. You let stunned DRs and everything come back off.

You just delay the game. Remember that you don't need to be contributing to anything other than getting to the next setup as the Holy Priest.

In Arena, you are always looking for value trades. If the enemy team pops multiple offensives, your goal is to trade as close to 1 to 1 as possible, sometimes squeezing value out of low CD defensives.

In Arena, you are always looking for value trades. If the enemy team pops multiple offensives, your goal is to trade as close to 1 to 1 as possible, sometimes squeezing value out of low CD defensives.

In Arena, you are always looking for value trades. If the enemy team pops multiple offensives, your goal is to trade as close to 1 to 1 as possible, sometimes squeezing value out of low CD defensives.

In Arena, you are always looking for value trades. If the enemy team pops multiple offensives, your goal is to trade as close to 1 to 1 as possible, sometimes squeezing value out of low CD defensives.

In Arena, you are always looking for value trades. possible, sometimes squeezing value out of low CD defensives. Our team seemed to be committing all of the common defensive problems with just their trinket alone.

If they wanted to push gladiator, they would need to practice effective cooldown usage. Cooldown trading was just one part of our team's problems.

Perhaps a more complicated issue was peeling and kiting, which requires a lot of nuance as RMP. You see, some of the spells you can peel with are also needed to set up kills.

This creates a paradox. If you stun someone as a peel, how do you keep them locked down for damage and vice versa?

This was most apparent in RMP mirrors, where arrow was often stunning the enemy rogue immediately as a peel out of stealth. This meant he was putting the kill target on stun DR before his team was even ready to cross CC.

All of this could easily be avoided by just using disarm immediately on the rogue, which would be a really efficient peel, without needing to burn a stun DR on the kill target.

Any class with a disarm should prioritize using it as a peel, especially during enemy CDs since it doesn't interfere with the DRs of your normal setups. This is something our rogue needed to learn, as his team was starting to fight more melee cliques and they were starting to get more and more aggressive.

This was a big part of the reason he was able to get the kill target on the latter. While this was happening, it was clear that our team was becoming too fixated on getting the perfect offensive setup, to the point that they weren't seeing opportunities to cross CC as both a peel and an off-script setup.

We've obviously trained you guys to do the 3-2-1, but that's not something that you need to stick to every single time. There is context to consider.

In this particular scenario, as you go in, maybe a mage would have db'd here, you don't, they press banner. They've literally gifted you a triple db right now.

You can just set up the go yourself. If you land a triple db, you don't need to communicate that ahead of time with your team to make sure that they're ready.

You guys haven't done a go for ages. No, these guys are not on stun DR.

Kidney shot is ready. All that data is available to you as a mage.

You can see all of that. You could be off voice right now and go for the triple db into triple ring, confidently knowing that your rogue is most likely going to be able to follow up.

You're going to be able to follow up with a double db. You're going to be able to follow up.

We should mention that every caster will find themselves in a situation where they need to actively peel, and sometimes spam CC is needed on the kill target in between setups. This is especially true as balanced druid with cyclone.

Even if you don't have a go ready, you can still commit your clones on the kill target to buy you time for your next setup. But moving on, our priest wasn't immune to error either.

Even though his role isn't exactly to peel for his team, he needed to get better at recognizing when to push in for setups, and when he needed to use tools like greater fade and holy ward to avoid enemy goes. It's like okay as a healer your most important thing is your trinket.

Have trinket available because you can save people with your trinket. Yeah and when your trinket is down.

As holy priest your advantage is you have two things that can cover you know that prevent you from needing to use your trinket of greater fade and holy ward. And you have pillars.

So like those three things prevent you from using your most important cooldown if you use them well. And you can you know you you want to avoid using you hate to use your trinket as a healer.

It sucks right? Like you feel like oh the game's lost.

But you can avoid those situations by just preemptively holy warding, greater fading, and then playing careful with your positioning. You should also be aware when the game is over.

Like at this point when your guardian is down, your trinket is down, your rogue's trinket is down. Like you should know that you have a loose condition.

Like you can die now. Rocky needed to learn some general game awareness as he was getting cc'd for free by not paying close attention to enemy positioning and win conditions.

Paladin hasn't used his stun yet and is standing right next to you on this pillar. So you know you've got your greater fade which you can use to immune crowd control when the paladin runs in.

But watch what he does. He just runs in, presses the stun.

You don't even consider like you don't look at him you're not aware of it. This is a really easy greater fade.

And imagine if you faded this this stun. Now your mage is not in trouble whatsoever.

But you do let him get it for free. With our team freshly coached, it was time to see if they could put in some work and bounce back from their losses at the end of week one.

Our rogue was now using disarm on important cooldowns like warbreaker, allowing him to peel for his team without needing to use his stun. He was able to get a lot of damage from his team's damage, and he was able to get a lot of damage from his team's damage.

But he was also able to get a lot of damage from his team's damage, and he was able to get a lot of damage from his team's damage. He was able to get a lot of damage from his team's damage, and he was able to get a lot to put someone on stun dr.

If we look back at arrow before the coaching session, he was barely using dismantle at all. And even worse, he was using his stun dr as a peel, even when disarm was a much better option.

We even had arrow and rocky play 2v2 together to show them how to peel for each other without needing a mage. Arrow started disarming instantly against rogue mage in the opener, which allowed him to keep stun drs to force cds and set up kills later on.

This eventually would directly improve their win rate in the rmp mirror, which is something they struggled with in week 1. Dismantle was being used on the rogue instantly, while stuns were being used on the enemy priest to try and bait cds.

Again, this allowed arrow to peel for his team, while also setting up a massive swap on the rogue. And with this small adaptation, our team was able to get more reliable wins against their own comp, which of course is everywhere on the ladder.

Against melee cleaves, arrow started using disarm as a 1v1 trade with enemy offensive cooldowns, which was made easier by paying attention to addons like weak auras, allowing him to instantly use disarm to kill the enemy priest. This allowed arrow to peel for his team, while also setting up cds.

And all the meanwhile, our team was still able to work on their offensive setups, making sure to cross cc even while under pressure. Our mage, mark, was also beginning to fix key mistakes, specifically with alter time.

Now he was starting to press it instantly on high hp the moment he was under pressure. This would allow him to trade a low cd ability in response to enemy offensives, getting enormous value out of a single defensive cooldown.

This was a major contrast to his earlier queue sessions, where alter time was sometimes being used at low hp. Or even worse, sometimes it was never being used at all, meaning his healer had to do more work and burn his own defensive cooldowns just to keep his mage alive.

Remember that many classes can make value trades by using smaller cds to block bigger enemy offensives. Greater fade, frenzied regeneration, and teleport allow you to conserve other major important cooldowns at virtually no cost due to their low cd.

Mark was also becoming more effective at using his spammable cc to deny setups. Remember, the common issue with peeling is that you need to save DRs for your own win conditions.

One simple workaround was to simply use polymorph on the kill target in between setups. This would allow him to peel for his partners when they were under pressure, while keeping a target locked down enough for stunned DRs to reset, bringing his team closer to their win condition.

And once again, no matter what you are playing, it's okay to use your cc DRs outside of your setup to peel as an emergency. Especially if you can land a cc on the right side of your target, or if you're playing a cc on the left side of your target, you can use cc on the right side of your target to kill the enemy.

Our priest was also beginning to become more aware of the avoidance tools he had after our coaches encouraged him to use greater fade and holy ward more often.

In earlier games he was getting cc'd for free, which caused him to quickly fall behind on defensive cooldowns since he was essentially gifting cross cc to the enemy team. Virtually every healer in the game has some sort of avoidance tool to deny cross cc.

Shamans have grounding, resto druids have shapeshifting, and even monkport or fleshcraft can be used to avoid cc. He was starting to avoid cc by first increasing his awareness, which started with cleaning up his UI.

And with a cleaner interface he could pay more attention to the things that actually mattered, like important enemy cooldowns. He was also becoming better at recognizing when his team's goes were over, and he was starting to run to pillars in between setups to avoid cc without needing to use greater fade.

He was also becoming more proficient at using divine ascension, something that was missing entirely from earlier games. But now he was pressing fly more often against melee cleaves, allowing him to avoid cc and avoid cc.

He was also becoming more proficient at using divine ascension, something that was missing entirely from earlier games. But now he was starting to avoid cc while also burning time for his team's drs to reset.

All three of our players were starting to see enormous gains in their gameplay after a rocky ending to week 1. They started week 2 with an MMR right below 2100, focusing on fixing the key defensive mistakes we outlined earlier.

And by implementing the lessons from their coaching sessions, our RMP was able to reach new heights, achieving an MMR and current rating over 2300. With only 100 points to go, our team was feeling confident in reaching gladiator.

But we had only covered 2 out of the 5 pillars of WoW PvP. Offense was starting to see mastery, and defense was beginning to see progress.

The remaining pillars would be much harder to develop, and the next few weeks would truly push our team to their limits. And that's it for this video.

If you enjoyed it, please leave a like and subscribe to our channel. Woah!

Things are looking pretty good for our team, right? Let us know in the comments what you think of their progress so far.

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

EP.2 DEFENSE: ROGUE POV VS. GODCOMP

Here we're focusing on the defensive CD usage, trinketing, trinket timings and stuff like that. But we're going to also talk about everything else as we would with a normal review.

Okay, so anytime Maro, Chas want to jump in, feel free. And so let's just get going with this one.

Okay, so offensively, what do we think of this? So far this game, what you guys do is correct, I'd say.

I mean, I think it's kind of how you open. I think the other team reacts a bit weird, but I think that's fine.

You get dispersed, which is good. You trade combust, which is also fine.

You also land a Sheep on Mage, so you end up having to trinket. Everything that happened, you have to drink it.

So far, it's good. Then I guess you guys are spamming Incap or Chess Ties rather, or the Druid out of stealth to try and swap on them, which is also good.

I mean, we watched this game already, so I know you guys are going to try to swap on the Druid. You obviously shouldn't have trinketed here.

I don't know who the rogue of you guys is, but you shouldn't have trinketed here. Simply because I think the Chess Ties would have even lasted longer.

So you basically trinket for no reason. Because the Chess Ties are still up.

What? You don't have to trinket now.

Why would you trinket here? There's nothing that's going to happen to you after that that you won't be able to...

If you want to trinket offensive later, or maybe you can get Dispel or something, right? So it's like...

It just doesn't make sense to trinket here. I think also in general, you shouldn't really be trinketing offensively in the open like this anyway.

No matter what. You should only trinket offensive ever if it's a kill go.

The kill go. Yeah, exactly.

And here, it's impossible for this to be the kill go. Disperse is ready.

The Druid. There's trinket.

There's no universe in which this trinket equals win the game. Yeah.

That makes sense, yeah. Also, I think that...

Was this cheap shot for crowd control on the Druid? Like, what was this?

Yeah, so the thing was with my opener, like, he was stunned. So when the Druid came, that's why I trinket stunned him to...

Like, that was the thought process right there. But remember what that does if you've stunned the Druid.

Like, you've stunned the Druid like this here, and now you can't swap to him. Yeah, exactly.

I know. And you have the full kidney ready.

So you remember that against Druids, most of the time, I think your healer is spamming Arena 2 or whatever the Druid is in stealth, Chastise. So they're going to take care of the Druid most of the time.

So you don't need to make the snappy reaction to CC the Druid. And then you could have just gone with the kidney out of the Chastise without trinketing.

And yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you guys could have also technically just... If you had like a little bit better community, you could have just gone with the kidney out of the Chastise without trinketing.

Yeah. If you had a little bit better communication, I think the best thing you guys could have done offensively here is actually keep going on the Priest.

Because I mean, I watched the game from the Mage path and your Combust got spell stolen, which was a little bit unlucky. It was like the first spell steal of the game.

And then you're not really going to kill the Druid. Like maximum, if you swap on him here...

I mean, okay, if this Druid was playing like perfect, you wouldn't even trade skin. But the most you're going to get is going to be skin.

Like there's no like nothing else. You're only going to get skin.

So also something you guys could have done is like to Chastise the Druid. Yeah.

And then you could have just switched the Druid here into maybe cast the Deer Ring just to tank Seers, maybe try and land a Fiat out of the Chastise and just keep going SP. So CC through the Disperse basically.

Yeah. You would have to try and kick the MD maybe, but I mean, you could try and just, you guys probably still have interrupts at least one tick, so you can try and maybe kick it if you get it.

It's good. Otherwise it's whatever, but you can at least force fade late.

Also the swap onto the Druid with the Maledict at full HP is a bit questionable. You need to stop using Maledict like this in general.

Like I, my recommendation would be to only use a Maledict when you don't have Combust for a go and never otherwise. I just don't think it's really good to use it like on that also.

I mean, you need to do it on low HP. I think this swap Druid would have been fine if you had like been a bit more patient.

Cause you know, like when he leaves that Chastise, he's spamming Overgrowth or like something that's going to put them in human form. But the fact that he got stunned in bear form makes it really awkward.

Yeah. It also fucks the Dior here.

So I think, yeah, like that first cheap shot, if this just doesn't happen and you just let your priest Chastise and you just do the standard plan, like obviously when the Druid comes out of stealth, he's most likely going to be in bear form most of the time.

In this case, he's quite close, but you know, in other instances he'd probably be super far away. But ideally you just want to wait for a Chastise to happen.

And if the Druid is in bear form. During the Chastise, then you can just get your max combo points and just sit and wait for him to shift out to press something.

And the moment he presses something, that's just your, that's your science is just step kidney. Um, like imagine this was a seven second kidney.

That's that's, that's big trouble. Um, but I want to point out something that happens here.

So okay. You cloak actually, but your priest doesn't drink it, which is good.

I mean, this trade is fine. It was combust on you.

But the main thing actually is the priest getting, getting sheeped out of nothing. So this is what we're talking about, uh, with your positioning.

Obviously we're looking from the rogue path, but look, you just get sheeped from air. There's no DB.

There's no setup. And you're just getting pollied.

Look where the major standing and you're just look away where you're running. You're literally running into the open and you start costing a master spell.

And then you get shaped like this should never happen. You're facing a God.

Like who has, who can CC you? The mage can sheep you.

They can DB you. The Druid can push in.

They can bash or just, sorry. And you clone you the priest has horror and silence.

We can't see your, your CDs on the Omni CD, but yeah, one thing is you should definitely be playing Holywood into all these major comms, every single major company, you need Holywood into, um, and then, yeah, I mean, yeah, I pretty sure when we watched the game from your path, you also had fade, um, and you kind of see to start getting used to using fade to not get ceases and all these comps.

Um, I think that's like a big mistake people are doing when they're not so experienced. I'm like a priest is that they're holding onto fade for way too long.

Um, fate is like literally the best CD to use to just not get CC. Like you're just immune to CC.

You just use it whenever. Um, but even in this case, you could have just pillared, like you're standing next to it, like you should just be abusing the pillar.

You're not, you're not doing a chat, like your chastises on CD for a long time. So you're not participating in the, in the game offensively.

You have no need to be in the open. Yeah.

And the other thing too. So I think it, this is one of the situations where.

I think the cooldown trading happened a bit too lately. You don't get punished for it But I think your priest gets sheeped.

I think you should in the mage bust I think you just send cloak in this or maybe even just vanish. Mara should he vanish?

You mentioned that rogues want to vanish early. No because the vanish will probably break.

I mean cloak is fine. I would say.

Vanish is more like a thing to use on mirrors where you use it early But into this I mean cloak is like immunity into double casters.

So cloak is like fine to trade So one thing that happens here, I noticed that your mage is basically Really hungry for just doing damage into the druid even though The go on the druid is over. He's still on stun DR.

He's getting away I feel like you should already be preparing damage on the priest Remember the priest is the one that doesn't have disperse and the druid starts trinket Would you agree with that Mara?

Yeah, I mean the thing is this is kind of the concept that goes that we talked about defense flee right where this is where do you have like this concept of not looking at people's HP and more looking on at like If there's a go or like damage that can actually be used like on the druid right now I mean if you look at his HP, I mean he's 15k HP at one point, but he has full hots He's stunned here for like when he was 15k HP another eight seconds So like a res sured isn't really gonna die to like nothing right like no healer in the game right now Healers are healing way too much.

So hitting him doesn't really do anything and Like I said, he also has full hots like here if I was playing mid I would just start hitting the priest to first of all drop him low, generate pyroblast procs because everything is critting when people are above 90% and Potentially I mean even make him swap hots and like just make him do something because right now Yeah, well, it doesn't really do anything and then You guys do this go which is a little bit too early in my opinion because you don't have anything on druid and you don't Bomb to go anything.

So it's like Kind of a weird go I think you just put sheep on the mage and sheep shot the priest But you just forgot like I think your priest is going in for the CC on the druid He does get a fear but like this wasn't communicated well ahead of time There was no like the three two one the cross CC mid game just kind of you just went too quickly There's no cross on the druid like this doesn't work.

You should just you should just stay in stealth.

There's no need to open you do you're too hungry to get the game going on that unnecessarily and The thing with a smoke bomb and blind They're kind of like Buttons you can press when you don't have like the perfect setup, you know, like it there Really want to be having the three two one goes and everyone gets you seed But you can even do like a go with bomb and it kind of in a way does the cross CC for you Yeah, because it you know removes the interactions from that blind and bomb by like use when you don't have chest size Yeah, like into rest of it.

This would have been a good go. This is a good blind go right now.

Yeah You did that's why I mean generally You can kind of like if you want to remember something then Something that drove majors usually do is that they blind or bomb the second goal of the times That's like a general thing that happens a lot when you play on Peter to blind or bomb the second goal because you don't have CC maybe maybe the guys even on cheap.

They are still well that wasn't a case now the druid But generally might be the case and then you can blind them and you can just go and then if you guys did that here You would have probably forced trinket fade Maybe even treat what trinket from druid and would have probably been like really insane of him Like we're over a minute into the game And you haven't forced a trinket from either of your kill targets, which should be a very clear indication that You haven't been doing something correctly like that alone.

You don't even need to look at the details You can just look at that piece of data alone and know that something is not gone, right?

And I get here is another problem where we go on the druid, but there's no cross CC so the priestess grips him and Now your son is wasted You're going to get a lot of damage from that So you're going to get a lot of damage from that So you're going to get a lot of damage from that It's good that you're just going for restyles now, but you kind of just like walk back in the circle Your priest does a really good job here.

You should peak with faith here because it's obvious that it like yeah Yeah, so this is another really good example for the priests understand when Like who can see see you you're facing a shadow priest, right?

You're only body see obviously we're gonna see and later on when we look at your your pub But your omnibus shows a thousand cooldowns like you have no idea what's going on You should only track the important things and it should be obvious to you that when your rogue is stunned and They have horror ready or silence ready like instant Instant crowd control that they can use from range the moment that you peek into your rogues line of sight Which you've done now to grip him you're gonna get CCS at the same time So this could have been this is the easiest greater fate of your life Like they could never land this on you if you're just standing in the room you peek with greater fade grip You're rogue suddenly you're immune to CC and your rogue doesn't take any damage and then you're okay Yeah, also if you're playing Hollywood, maybe you would have holy water P at this point these things also when I had one small thing just For mark like when you peeve someone by the way in between the ghosts, I wouldn't really recommend keeping the druid Just for the simple reason that you take away on being able to like DB him into a goal or something or DB sheep And what do you bring him or anything?

Yeah So yeah, generally speaking you don't really want to peeve either drew it after go too much He would rather do it on any of the DPS even the mage doesn't really matter just anyone But just not the druid also Also during this moment where our rogue was dying You're just channeling you're spamming look your rogue gets bashed Remember what I told you when the CC happens, it's an indication that you need to start helping your team Look what you're doing your your rogue is sitting in a bash and you're costing fireballs There's a maledict being channeled there's a mind games being channeled from the from the priests You're costing another fireball you could have DB you have DB ready.

You could have DB this maledict CS this mind games and despite Them doing like and you would have just stopped the entire go your rogue would have been fine He would have gone behind the pillar and would have lived you single-handedly could have peeled this entire go by yourself and lived without them trading CDs Yeah, I think right DB will reset completely with shifting power as well So like, you know, you're not completely screwed for your go if you DB defensively, you know As long as you have shifting power, you know, there's way to get this way to get the CC Even if you have to peel with DB.

Yeah Okay, cool. I think that's it for this game

EP.2 DEFENSE: ROGUE POV VS. RMP

There's not too much to talk about but there is two things I want to mention quickly. One thing is that something that you guys are kind of doing wrong every RMP mirror and that is when they open on your priest which is very common you guys open with a stun on the rogue that's not really what you do.

What you do instead is that you generally speaking you want to disarm the rogue in the start. The easy or the reason for that is very obvious in a sense when you think about it a bit more.

The priest should have holy ward right now. I mean I know people on yoga sometimes don't play holy ward but right now the enemy priest can't really get CC'd.

There's nothing like that no one can CC him. I mean the only thing you could do is you could blind him out of stealth if you want but that's like I said when people have holy ward that's not really a thing.

So what you do is you just stun him but technically the priest should just be able to save him. The enemy priest should just press fade now, be immune to CC.

Top is rogue with Guardian. If you guys commit the blades and the bust then the goal should be over.

Also what you're doing by stunning the rogue is you're kind of giving him a chance to just trinket and maybe keep the goal going but if you disarm him you make it really awkward for him because he doesn't really want to trinket and disarm because then he's not on stun there so you can still kill him.

And also like I said you kind of need to give your team time to land CC on the priest if you want to open second in RMP mirrors. You can also open first if you want to just do the same that they do and just open priest but if you want to open second which is completely fine then you need to open with disarm.

You need to just disarm the rogue, try to land something on priest and before the disarm ends or something you can try to stun them or you can go priest yourself you can do whatever you want basically there's many things you can do. But yeah I wouldn't open with kidney like it shouldn't really work.

The main thing you need to understand is this frame right now where the rogue is kidneyed on low HP and the priest is db'd this should be impossible. Because the priest should have holy wood and fade so like this db is happening too easily.

What should have happened is the priest is like not CC'd and then yeah so like even though you win the game in the open like this this is a fluke and this shouldn't happen and you should also know on the opposite way like if and if you decide to open on a priest yourself like your priest needs to be abusing holy wood and fade to not get CC'd themselves.

Like yeah basically what you want to do is like this this team does it a bit wrong and the same thing would go if you guys do it if you guys would want to open the priest here what you would do you would open with mark for death kidney you would combust them as well you would like press offensive CDs but then what what should happen is that you get disarmed and your mage might get peeled a bit as well and then you want to try and swap the CC insta maybe you get a guardian or something then you want to swap the CC insta just because this priest gets CC'd for no reason that it doesn't happen.

But yeah just also one thing I want to mention quickly is when you face mages opening like this when they just hard cast the fireball without tanking CS first or something you can try and CS that and just completely stop the opener.

Like this frame right here he's got combust up and the fireball is about to finish if you CS this fireball the mage does nothing and wastes his combust.

Yeah the whole goal is kind of wasted and the next door is kind of shifting power to spam fire blast because it doesn't like then you could just DB him and the whole opener would be completely like they couldn't do anything.

It's yeah it's like a small thing and it doesn't happen all the time that they do it they do it with fireball when CS is ready but if it does you can just stop the goal by just pressing CS on the fireball like it's not that fast it should definitely be possible to CS it.

Also but also I think you should be looking out for mind games like the CS mind games too right like if against better priests who can avoid the CC with you know Fade and Holy Ward won't you want to be looking for the mind games at that point?

Yeah if you can CS the fireball then you want to stop mind games basically yeah then your drop is to CS mind games um your rogue's drop is to CC the rogue and you can like DB the mage if you want then just CS mind games that we casted that's kind of like the like the general opener um like I said this is a game you guys obviously win in like 10 seconds and they just don't trade and don't really do anything but um yeah I saw you guys like losing other MP mers as well where you just open with kidney and don't really force anything because that priest kind of plays properly even though not many people play Holy Ward for some reason um and yeah also like this opener wouldn't really happen as well if you Holy Warded yourself in the start.

That's my question because I don't see the mage I don't see the rogue and um my rogue and my my my mage are in stealth and if I stand behind there uh I cannot Holy Ward because the other rogue just will zap me and if I run open field I will just die and the other priest is way too far behind so I can get not got I couldn't get in combat yeah I mean yeah you should wait for combat but uh I mean usually how these MP mers go is that your mage gets combat for you like your mage should get combat from the enemy priest if the other team is in stealth and then you just the second you hit combat you Holy Ward yourself I mean it is a good point you're making if you're not in combat but um like your mage should get combat that's how I usually play on people do you invis and rush in and try and like tag the priest you either mount in depending on the map or if you don't want to get like in like CC'd on the way by zap or something it depends on the map like on Tol'vir you can't just run in because you're just going to get zapped yourself but on other maps you can on this can you do on this map on black on hook yeah yeah you can you can just well there's also isn't there also a finesse conduit that makes you insanely fast in invis too yeah but you can't play that okay it's too much you can't try you have too many good finesse conduits you get cs uh short ccs and short link um but you just invis you get combat I mean I don't know like also some other mages would also just run in like it depends a bit how people play but to go invis and I'm pymres is not really common it's more common to just run in and pve people uh at least on high mode maybe people go stealth on low mode but then like I said you can just invis and get combat yourself yeah because I'm remember that game when I was playing holy war but I was not sure if I can already press it and then they already opened on me and then I was like ah I did not do it it doesn't matter too much anyway like I said the opener should not force anything yeah the main thing is just peeling it in the right way they also open with cheap shot that's something you should also like realize when they open because that makes the opener a much much worse because the rogue should get disarmed or stunned I mean you guys stand them but even if he gets disarmed it's good enough like you don't have to trade anything like you don't also trade anything so technically everything went fine you didn't trade guardian didn't trade trinket um that's how it should kind of be but I'm just saying like it's just a weird opener because you guys open with stun and then the priest gets db'd which you shouldn't and like you shouldn't use this game as an example of how it should be played okay cool so I'm just gonna say that's it for this video I hope you guys enjoyed it and I'll see you guys in the next one bye bye

EP.2 DEFENSE: MAGE POV VS. DH BOOMKIN RSHAM

Okay, so we talked about this matchup before and how you want to just kind of PvE the Flashcraft before opening. Yeah, I was going to say, I think that you guys may be misunderstood a little bit.

Like, I think you guys should open and not play a 2v2 because you lose to 2v2 if the Boomy just sits down. Like, as a Mage and Priest, you would lose if they just 2v2 you.

But the best thing you can do is just PvE the Shaman, get his Flashcraft off. And once it's off, you can open.

But what you guys do this game is you guys just open into a Flashcraft and also the Brumkin comes out, same global, which is a bit unlucky. You could also consider already doing a swap to the Brumkin at this point and just sheeping the Shaman, for example, out of the cheap shot.

But that's a little bit advanced and a little bit, you know, you need to be kind of quick when doing it. But yeah, this whole opener is just a bit awkward.

Because also you guys stack in the start, which you shouldn't do. Like, the Priest and Mage should not be stacked.

Like, he should not land a double Chaos Nova in the start. Yeah, you trade your Trinket to get the DB, but your Priest is Chaos Nova at the same time.

So he can't cover the Druid who stops you. Yeah, but it's also, like I said, it's also just because you guys are stacked.

It's like a little bit, but don't just try not to be stacked into classes like Windwalker or DH too much because of double stun. And then, yeah, we'll just keep going with what happens.

But yeah, then you guys land the Chess Ties late, you Nova the DH. He does not get dispelled for two seconds and you land a random sheep.

This is obviously, you end up in the perfect situation because the DH is sitting a Nova and the Shaman is sitting a sheep. But he could have just sheared the sheep and he could have also just dispelled the Nova.

This is like really weird what happens here. You can see that you Nova the DH here, then you start casting a sheep.

And the Shaman could easily shear this or ground this. No problem.

And then the whole. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The whole goal would be really awkward because you would just ground your combust and the whole goal would just be like really awkward.

So how do you actually do the goal properly in this case? I mean, the goal should be.

Do you wait for this DB in eight seconds? Well, no, the goal is just weird because the game happened weird because you guys opened a Shaman the same second the boomkin comes out.

And if the boomkin comes out before you guys open Shaman, you want to kind of just open boomkin. And then you can just open with blind or you open with like a DB sheep on the Shaman while you just says fear the DH.

And then if the boomkin previous he previous, it doesn't matter too much anyway. But this open is just weird because yeah, like I think in a perfect game, what you guys would have made out of this is going with blind, just blinding the Shaman and going boomkin.

Like after this happens from this point right here. So like the goal in the Shaman is now wasted.

You can't really get much from this now. Because this sheep should not happen.

Like that's how you do it. How you guys should think this sheep is not something that should happen.

Like this is troll. This is really troll that this sheep happens like he has shear, he has ground, he cannot get sheep right now.

He even has flashcraft I think because he didn't flashcraft in the start, but maybe he did. Maybe you guys actually went to it.

I don't know. So it's like you mentioned before, typically using blind for the second go is common.

Yeah, well, like when you just when you can't get any like CC yourself. But like I said, this is just I mean, it just happens.

You guys. I really happened to land triple CC.

You end up killing the boomkin open a dice before you press anything. I don't know.

It doesn't show that it has trinket. So that's a bit weird.

So maybe it was playing without trinket, which is obviously troll. But yeah, this is like, I don't like to just the whole opener should really be like this.

Like you need to PV the Shaman drop him a little bit low because I think he has flashcraft. I can't see because you never targeted.

Yeah, you can see the. But he has the.

Shield around him. He definitely has it.

And you should just like I said, you shouldn't play the two to two, but you should chill 10 seconds. Like the major literally run in into this comp living bomb to DH so it doesn't get you broke out.

But yes, the spectra side up. Then you cast fireball on Shaman.

Pipe fireblast and pyroblast. Just hit the flashcraft down.

Maybe recast the fireball. Make him drop like two.

I don't 90% HP. No flashcraft.

Then you do the open. I then you do the opener with a Nova or DB on the DH.

Whatever you want to do. The Nova could technically get reversed, but I don't think you will do that.

So you can you can also open a DB. But also another important thing.

Thing is that when the Shaman is stunned, you need to be casting damage. You can't be casting a sheep when you when you open with a sheep shot.

Like even if you guys did the opener and you PV the Shaman. At this point, at this point, you need to cast a fireball or like you need to combust and hit the Shaman.

Like you can't be CCing because even if you get the sheep by the time you land the sheep. Yeah.

The Shaman is going to be out of stuns almost because you see like when you sheepcast ends, the first son almost ends. And then it's like it's an orc Shaman.

The restunts are going to be short. So you would never press the single damage button.

Like he's already 58% and you did zero damage. And I think I just sent the combo during this cheap shot without trying to sheep out of the DB.

The Shaman would be like here and you probably would have even triggered it, to be honest. Yeah, I think too.

And these in these matchups where there's a stealthed person. I think you can just open with Shadow Strike too, right?

You don't even have to commit your stun. You know, like you can also get the camera points.

Yeah. Yeah, it's another opener.

You could do you could just because you should be playing long kidney here. I assume you're doing it.

Yeah. So something you can also do is you can open on the DH or on the Shaman by just hitting him a couple of times.

Not stunning. Letting the stealth guy come out of stealth, try to peel and then you have full combo points.

And you can do anything. Then you can basically do anything.

Yeah. Because for the Shaman to die in cheap shots in the start, you can't do anything.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You can't do it, but he has to be like not low but flashcraft at least has to be gone.

It has to be like your mage needs to get your like basically needs to get fireball combust. Otherwise it's not going to happen.

So yeah, just try to keep that in mind in this matchup. Other than that, I mean you guys did the swap.

Like I said, shouldn't really happen. What happens here where you get the sheep, but it does happen.

And at least you guys react in a sense where you guys swap to the boomy, which is good. And yeah, I don't think there's too much other stuff to talk about in this game.

I think the biggest defensive thing is just avoid stacking too against any team that can get value out of AoE CC. So like the Demon Hunter, Windwalk Monk is another thing.

Mage is a debuff. Yeah, just avoid putting yourself in a position where you can get cross CC'd for free by one spell.

Because that's just kind of... you can snowball really quick. Yeah.

Okay, cool.

EP.2 DEFENSE: MAGE POV VS. RET WAR

So we see the sap on the paladin and you even I remember the run I listen to the voice you mentioned Yeah, we're doing this to get the blaze from the warrior.

So it's really good that we're seeing that now that implementation Obviously gives you a free opener Remember the opener in this game was really unfortunate because you DB the warrior and then you blink on top of the druid where he Happened to be in stealth That's really unlucky.

It's not really much you can do about that. But the warrior presses trinket.

Anyways, he trinkets air You get disarmed and We land a fear on the druid and the druid gets sank out of the fear now a Quick question for you guys. What what should happen right now?

For the physical team to the players Yeah Yeah, let's walk into the druid now. Where's your priest right now?

I can't tell He's somewhere down behind to me He's in line. He's in line But yeah right now like we want to see a swap to the druid.

Yeah, we've got the Red and a sheep and you got the full kidney for the druid. So it's great, right?

Is there something that needs to happen first though? Yeah, and neither and no one says anything no one talks about it nothing and then Kidney into the side.

He says to it. Yeah, like it's only two buffs as well or three boss basically episodes high chance You will get it if you just transposed you yeah fish fingers is costing a holy fire Our mage is not even aware of it and our rogue is the one that actually uses a stun So all three of you are at fault here.

Anyone could have carried row could have reacted major dispelled stolen priest could have dispelled So yeah, definitely need to be aware of sang against rats and not only be aware of it Actively trying to play around it being like understanding, you know rats are pretty common.

They're pretty good spec They're everywhere and so sank is a major cooldown it it counters one of your goals So when it's down it indicates whether or not you need to cross you see or to the extent to which you need to cross You see So yeah should be something that you're really paying attention to mostly as the rogue obviously when it comes to tracking it But also as the mage and the priest for dispelling it.

I think to burn this again We couldn't figure out what broke this you see on the pallet and I guess weird No one knew that happened another thing that Mara pointed out here when we watched it earlier is that you can see that the red as you see Sank has used bop and the druid is trinketed which now means They have no like you've actually got a win condition right now like who?

Who's the win condition?

Even two people because the warrior randomly Paris in the start I think as well even if he didn't Even if he didn't Yeah, the wreck can't peel for the warrior the rat doesn't have sank he doesn't have bop The drew doesn't have trinket the rest of us trinket which means you know, and he also has divine shield for himself So technically you don't have a win condition on the rep right now, but the warrior actually said hey guys You can kill me right now Even if you catch him in distance he can die Yeah, yeah, you could next go you could either just chest as you to do it kill warrior or you chest size MC the warrior and they keep the red to something and try and kill the druid.

Yeah You can even blind the druid Oh, right?

To cover the goal, but I guess many things you guys could do next go to just win the game The red can obviously trinket and bubble to try and save someone but he isn't really gonna do that much because all he can do is Just heal and you could just maybe see us it unless he actually bubbles would Let's go.

Let's go back really quick Brian to see because rogue is already trinketed and vanished. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, let's see Trading yeah, yeah, so obviously this blind by the way, we couldn't figure it out It breaks to nothing and we literally have no idea how it broke but either way During this offensive setup you get stunned by the rep, but your healer isn't CC'd he was able to dispel this And remember even if you trinket this Hodge, there is no way that you can win the game right now.

It's impossible This trinket is not a game-winning trinket, but you trinket anyways So you have to remember that you're not trinketing offensively ever especially against this comp if This comp sees a rogue trinket offensively. Oh my god.

They're so happy. You've given them a win condition that they didn't previously have So you know Yeah, maybe I thought it also tried to never trinket any magic effect on yourself when you pieces free Yeah, please be quick.

No matter what? Yeah, no matter what even if it's a Potential game-winning situation.

If this was a storm bolt, I would Understand it maybe like 1% more it would still be a really bad trinket, but because it's a hot it's even worse Yeah, it's like that the priest can dispel it There's nothing you would have to spell by now anyway, so it would never be seed.

He does nothing to dispel One really quick I was gonna say this is where you know, we should talk about fly You know, you've got DRS on everyone right and so remember like you can't sheep this guy You're not really doing a go right now So like chess, what's your opinion on the priest playing fly and like when he should be using it in this matchup?

Well Like the PVS I know The the fly, yeah, oh well, I mean so you should try to stay away like you are doing and Then if they're pushing towards you you want to be pressing fly like the rogue vanishes here And the only person that they can hit is the priests, right?

Yeah, so it's important to be far away before Like they get out of CC because if you're standing on top of them, you have no You drop pretty low you trade greater fade.

I think you even got in yourself here Actually, no, you didn't Guardian but the the main point was that you basically fly before they even connect Yeah That's the main point like as as they're trying to get to you while you're still full HP and your rogue vanishes You just press fly right now before they get to you.

It's it's so like you're the only one that they can hit They're coming for you It's the easiest fly of your life and you just now you take no damage you waste the Rett's wings You let stunned DRs and everything come back off You just delay the game remember that you don't need to be contributing to anything other than getting to the next setup as the holy priest and so Yeah, so this is like a really perfect time to press fly and that's why that's why it's so good to use into melee clues This sheep is obviously kind of bad as well because triple DR.

Yeah, like this sheep should not have done the sheep because Seven seconds until the sheep DR falls.

It's No real reason to do this And also when you use you need to pay attention to vortex like if you are I think the vortex will get rid of fly Right, it'll just suck them right back down Yeah, you can also get rooted on it. There's another thing that happens here.

We cheap shot the druid to stop the maledict It's a DR cheap shot Your priest has CDs to survive he has phase You can also add guardian.

Yes guardian as well So this is a this is a perfect like prime example of just sort of panic peeling in the wrong way Like you think you need to stop this but you really don't because you can just look at your raid frame See that your priest has CDs Know that he's not gonna die just because you see the maledict like you can just you can look at what's happening You can see okay the maledicts being caused the druids on stunning for three seconds does my priest die in these next three seconds?

If I cheap shot this maledict the answer to that question is no because he has some CDs to be able to live Also him playing fly would have not made him not be this low in the first place and that would have been completely fine But yeah, also, I'm glad that you're killing the wall banner instantly now that wasn't happening before so it's good to see that Yeah, I want to quickly jump in there believe it because of like offensive stuff If you just go back a bit I don't really know.

Why? you're moving away so much here like as a mate like i i don't know why you're jumping away in a second like this for example would be the perfect time to just do a go yourself then what's like you can get like a triple db into ring or even if you don't want to bring you can just cheap to druid go warrior or something no trinket so there's standias everything is good you can just do a go yourself yeah instead you like nova them and then you just jump away for some reason remember we we've obviously trained you guys to like do the three two one but that's not something that you need to stick to every single time like there is context to consider um in this particular scenario as you go in maybe a mage would have db'd here you don't they press banner they've literally gifted you a triple db right now you can just set up the go yourself if you land a triple db you don't need to you you don't need to communicate that ahead of time with your team to make sure that they're ready you guys haven't done a go for ages no like these guys are not on standia kidney shot is ready like all that data is available to you as a mage like you can see all of that you don't you could be off voice right now and go for the triple db into triple ring confidently knowing that your rogue is most likely going to be able to follow up with a stun and if he doesn't then you know you still did the right decision to to set up the kill for your entire team but you're just so much time you can just fear off as well yeah there's so much stuff you can exactly yeah um then yeah at this point i mean i don't at this point you guys are kind of out of cds already well not really you have trinket guardian but he's evasion though you guys kind of die randomly in a sec um this is where i think you should use guardian yeah um simply because you i mean you know guardian is supposed to be used it's not supposed to be used to like actually proc right you never actually wanted to proc you just wanted to do it yourself and trade for cds and at this point i mean you should just guardian the rogue to top him what i'm wondering about here is like what happened offensively so we like the the rats of stundia and we db i mean i guess the the rat trinket the kidney so maybe but this goes back to what we were saying earlier when you've already burned through the druid's trinket and the warrior's trinket and the druid's skin so you're not going to be able to do anything about it so you're not you opened up these two as a win condition the right still has trinket and the red still has bubble so even though you opened up two win conditions here you're prolonging the game by just not realizing that and continuing to chase the rep you're notarea very good uh i think we're sticking to our game plan like we always pre-plan but for the gates open and i think we stick to the plant door yeah which is fine yeah which is totally okay yeah i think it's okay to do that but but at this point it's good to be totally playing so that'll be the point here and i will see you guys next time if you don't want to kill like okay let's say you actually want to stick to killing threat i mean then your mate should start to feed to red at this point he's pre-barked he trinketed you're not gonna get anything you need to start peeling like you guys are actually dying yeah so when we talk about the indication the indication for like when it's time to peel the warrior's necro banner up right like the the you guys are lacking cds i know we mentioned looking at cross cc and looking at offensive cooldowns well here's an offensive cooldown for you right now there's a necro banner up and you're not doing a go there's no reason not to spam sheep the rat here but you're going for fireballs and you're moving away and then you're rogue that's a cheap shot on the warrior and then now you sheep the rat but like we've had to trade guardian out already your team had to grind through so many defensive cooldowns to survive evasion and guardian both of which i mean perhaps the evasion was needed because of the the way the damage came like you wrote like it was kind of during your go like i understand that you're not you're not doing a go but you're not doing a go and you're not doing a go and you're not doing a sheeping here maybe but there's the only reason why your priest had to guardian is that you're not like as the evasion is ending like you're not spamming sheeps right now you should just be spamming sheep and then your priest would have the time like these flash shields would be enough it would top your rogue but then in the end the guardian has to come because you just don't like and a trinket comes i feel like a lot of the times you need to learn when when you go is over like i see a lot of like you just continue the damage keeps coming the fireballs keep coming that it's doing something but the goal is at the moment the red trinketed and got ironbarked that's it you guys are no longer playing offensive on the red that is so technically you guys could have also started like seeing the water earlier with like sheeps or something because it's every cd like i know okay so i know that we like made this thing where we want to test the warrior but that's probably you guys game plan actually i don't know if it is maybe you guys want to chest also db the warrior on the goal i don't know how you guys want to play it um but you can't treat the warrior if it's every cd in the game it's not a bad trade like if he's pressing banner avatar wall breaker everything i mean then also direct to see is dia i mean then the sheep to the sheep the warrior just help your team a bit you know anything you like you can do you should just do it like it doesn't matter if like it doesn't matter you don't know you're pumping uh you're pumping fireballs when the warriors avatar warbreaker and necro banner up and you're rogue so i would even db defensively here like anything just make your team lift you can still shifting power maybe i mean you used it earlier now but you can still just wait for the db and then the cc drill with db next go or something like you can always find a way you have so many like tools to do go but yeah at this point it's like an obvious defensive play i feel like yeah and then unfortunately i have a general question as well um it's not happening in this game but if i chest size mind control the warrior and he just trinkets the mind control what can i do that's fine that our goal is not over no that's fine the warrior trinketed now you got his strength you go for the next yes it's time for the next go and you just chill you can't you can't cover the warrior anymore if maybe your teammates can have do something to him but you can't do anything to anyone the security trinkets is probably going to intervene rarely do something so it's better like yeah you did your job if you forced the warriors drinker like that's great like you you don't need more you need to understand that you guys can do setups like almost every 10 seconds if you're swapping around so yeah yeah that's a that's a victory like if you can force a warrior's trinket like it's huge for your comp or you can also like just keep in mind the warrior can always die in like a kidney stun when you have combust ready like with a bomb or something at any point to any comp so warrior trinketing is always a good thing for ump you can always just swap to him and get him in a bomb yeah um then you can see this which is randomly good because he landed double db into ring and i actually think it might die through as well yeah he does um yeah yeah i was gonna ask maro so like a kind of a reliable stride in this matchup too to look for opportunities to double db both melee and then ring and then go drew it right like that's can be yeah you can do you can do that a lot too you can just or maybe db sheep one guy a chest i started a guy go drew it um the thing is that you guys need to like yeah i i too much in direct way drew it because they should have cds to survive every single go if they just trade like good and everyone presses one trinket at a time but it's still going to be good to understand why because people are probably going to fail and overlap stuff um but yeah this is obviously a good swap in general uh also one one key point you made yesterday is that the reason why we were not harping on about the double db strat into double melee is because at higher mmr over the last year or so the meta sort of developed where melee is a good strategy for the db strats and the db cleaves and started to play better into fire majors to stop them from getting a double db whenever they want but if we go back to the beginning of shadowlands like fire majors were getting double dbs non-stop because like even the top players were not playing well um and so it is a strategy that you can definitely rely on at lower mmr the double db into the into the double ring swapping to the healer like you can use that as a staple uh strap for swapping to healers you did it here you can you can do it more often um it doesn't even need to be to the to swap to the healer it can just be to set up on anyone like it can be a chastised fear on the druid with uh or like a kid as cheap shot on the druid with a double db into a double ring swap the sheep onto the druid hit the guy with the kidney you know you can do stuff like that it does work because you're not going to be facing melee that are actively trying to avoid your db but just bear in mind if they're playing relentless i don't think it works um but that's a little bit of a like a sidebar thing and after such a double dragon breath double ring setup i can go in and fear or is it not worth i'm already in in the i mean if yeah well i mean in that scenario let's say you were doing something like that where the the warrior is ringed the druid is sheeped off of a stun i mean if you really wanted to go and like fear the druid out of the poly you could but yeah Let's say the druid wouldn't have died, let's say the druid would have lived this goal because he had something for himself.

Then something you guys could have done is field the druid and randomly rent Rettigan. That's something you could have done here.

Your druid obviously died so it didn't matter, but that's probably the better way to use field. But it's only if you get a double ring.

If you get a single ring, it would probably be good to just chest size that other guy into a Df or something. You want to avoid, as the holy priest, you want to avoid overcommitting to try and get a setup going when you're a kill target.

There's no point in trying to run on top of the two melee during a setup for a fear that's going to be a three second fear. It's not going to do anything.

Focus on keeping your distance and surviving and contributing to the kill when you can.

EP.2 DEFENSE: MAGE POV VS. JUNGLE

Yeah, quickly what you want to do into jungle offensively, generally speaking, the general opener people do is the mage goes in, pve's the priest a bit, not db of course, pve's, you pve the priest a bit, you drop him a bit low, you drop a frost snowball so you can proc your legendary and then you open on the priest and then when the hunter comes out you try and fear the priest, hop on the hunter.

That's the general idea on how to open. This frame right here, this is common, this is very common, this can happen every single game.

Well this should not happen opener because you guys should be opening first but... Is there a holy water or no?

Yeah I was going to ask. I don't think you...

One more re-update versus hunter always. Like yeah basically what happened, okay I'll just go through like...

I'll go back a little bit. Yeah I'll just go through two quick things.

First of all you should have holy water on yourself so this shouldn't really happen that you just get cc'd. And he shouldn't be running in and allowing himself to get dispelled right?

He should be like... Well you want to get the mind game so...

So you have to go in, it's fine. But like okay you should have holy water at this point and when you...

When they get it off with either sun or they dispel it off, they rot off, whatever, then you need to fade. So you delay the go.

While that happens your team obviously needs to open first which doesn't happen. So now you just...

Like an RMP. Yes.

So essentially what needs to happen here as we're running in and kind of PVing down the priest, our priest has to be super mindful of his holy water. The moment his holy water gets dispelled, press greater fade.

Don't let them do the go. Delay.

And then while that's happening, that's about four or five seconds, that's time for your rogue to open on the priest and pump. Is that correct?

Yeah I mean usually you open before the holy water even gets dispelled. Right.

Like it shouldn't really happen the holy water gets dispelled, it should get like rot off or something. But that's like kind of like a more general concept of how you want to do the opener.

It's not really the most important point I'm going to make in this video or in this game. Um.

I'm going to make it a sec if we just keep going. Like this, the opener obviously doesn't happen so they get an opener first.

They fear you, they stun you. At this point, okay first of all I want to say generally speaking when you play mage into jungle, you want to drink it opener.

A BM jungle will go on you as well. 90% of the time a survival jungle will go on the rogue.

It's kind of the general rule on how jungles play. Um.

In opener you generally want to drink it and you want to alter as soon as possible, especially if your priest ends up getting CC'd. If he's not CC'd you can hold it a bit.

But in this scenario he obviously gets stunned.

So what you want to do as a mage here, you want to drink it, alter, instar, jump below the bridge, try and maybe rebuff or like shield, try to use any buff you can to like help yourself buff like maybe even blink two yards just to proc your tempest barrier conduit just to have another buff.

One point I want to make is you can see here you're stunned for 0.8 seconds yeah. Look at your HP when the stun ends.

You're 76%. Altering at this HP is this fine Mara?

This would still be okay yes. This is still fine.

This is fine right? But you could get restunned.

Usually they would restun you and then you would have to drink like a dia stun and it would be awkward. So you're better off just instantly trinketing and pressing your alter.

Just trinket first stun alter. What happens here is that you guys don't use alter at all.

They land a stun, they restun, they had a trap, then your priest trinkets to guard in you which is, I mean it's okay I guess but you're still sitting on your trinket which is very useless by the way as a mage. Your trinket is very low.

Yeah. It has very low impact on the game like generally speaking because you still have an out with ice block if one of your teammates dies.

So your trinket is basically like a throwaway trinket like I would say 80% of the games I play I would press it in the first 20 seconds of the game. I think you're holding onto it a lot into many different comms but especially if you're the target you just have to use it.

But yeah what basically happens here is that your priest trinkets to guardian you, you overlap with block, they also proc the guardian so maybe you even had to block eventually. Yeah.

You did it a little bit early but it is what it is. At this point the game is already lost.

Yeah like we've lost the game before your first DB landed. Guardians used, trinkets used, blockers used.

All you have left is core. Really quick, Maro do you mirror images too in the opener after your trinket?

Is that part of it?

Yeah you can, I mean like this is basically this scenario your perfect globals would be trinket, altar, you can blink one yard or you can just risk it that your altar gets stolen because they have like one global tutor and you have three buffs so you can also just risk it but it would be trinket, altar, nova, maybe mirror images if you can if you want that's like the next door you would press and you just jump down so they can't purge you.

Then you maybe blink behind a pillar downstairs if the hunter is like chasing you you know you just blink to line him so he doesn't dispel you. The priest won't really jump down after you but the hunter might and that should be like the perfect like counter to what they're doing.

That's you living? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Staying 100% HP through everything that they just use without your priest having to trade anything. Instead, your priest has to trade trinket, guardian, and you block as an overlap.

Which should never happen. Like this is exactly what we're talking about when we explain knowing the damage is coming before it comes.

Like obviously the damage is coming. It's a jungle.

It's the opener. That's cross CC.

There's no way that you just sit there and don't die, right? Yeah.

Also, I want to add one thing. one thing you should also when you trinket alter you can also try spells to the hunter ones either for his pi or for his power fortitude um just to get another trash bus or even it's like power shield just anything just get one more trash buff um but yeah that's like also you see the feral frenzy is another when we talk about cooldowns feral frenzy is a huge indication that you're about to get blasted like they do a lot of damage yeah that's this icon basically like i said like that doesn't happen alter doesn't get traded and like i said as a mage into jungle you have to alter high hp all the time otherwise you just lose by default because you're going to be the target and you will die kind of quick even if you do correct all the times um then you guys do go on the hunter which gets you trinket and ross at this point right here i'm screaming for a swap onto the priest right with the full kidney the ross is used on the hunter you can even cheap out the hunter if you want so you can shift in power without getting kicked um it's like a perfect scenario you do a good job i think you do this keeping the hunter here would be insane right with the swap onto the but then instead we just see a maledict being channeled yeah i also don't know why you're running out of your rune of power um and even it would even increase the damage of maledict i'm pretty sure but you're just moving out of your rune of power for no reason but i would never maledict in this situation by the way i i think it's a really bad maledict because you still have combust up you never want to maledict when you have combust up like ever almost you always want to just press damage instead in this scenario you still have insane damage ready by the way if you like phoenix flames to priest once you should cast start casting shifting power you have pi up you have combust up he has no ros it's instantly gonna be yeah it has to trinket no matter what there's no way he can't drink or ps i mean can he die i don't know he can if he does it too late if he doesn't he trinket or pierces too late he will even die through like this is so good look it's a cheap shot as well though this should have been a kidney there should be a seven second kidney swap like as soon as you see ross with a combusco like you just know and the feral is even mc'd like you don't even need to sheep the hunter really you don't want to like if you just want to go just so you don't get kicked yeah i mean if you could keep the hunter it's insane like literally if you just started like right now if you just start casting a sheep right now this pyrobar good blast cause yeah you can if this is just like a polymorph cost then you've got the hunter in a full sheep full kidney on the priest and despite trading so much in the opener you would somehow still have been almost on par with them yeah i think what's the why i sheepshot here is because when the hunter got so low i tried to eviscerate him i was gonna say yeah i think that's probably why yeah you probably didn't have full combo points for the kidney because you like tried to kill the hunter i mean it is a bit under give you a full combo points at the time when he trinkets yeah that's fair that can happen but definitely the maldick being channeled there i mean it's probably not the best idea although it ends up being good because he gets silenced so actually it wasn't bad how much damage is a like a fire blast or something like that yeah i think it's probably not the best idea but i think it's probably not the best idea although it ends up being good because he gets silenced so actually wasn't with combust up it's like 7k right or 8k i mean with rock up and like three six of flame canada it's like eight nine k nine k maybe something like that anyways in the end we don't fall to trinket from the priest or a pain suppression which is not good yeah at this point you're also dropping too low already um i mean jungle is one of these comments where maybe you even have to alter like a little bit before the cc hits on your priest look when the altar is used now we use an altar when you're on the altar when you're on the altar when you're on the altar when you're on the altar when you're on the altar when you're on the altar when you're on the altar when you're on the altar 40 less than 40 percent what happened to the guardian by the way it got propped it was beginning instantly yeah okay and so this is an altar being used but even if it didn't get dropped it doesn't even matter the game would have not been long enough anyway like you wouldn't even get it back even if it didn't pro like the at this point the game is just over because of the opener unless you get like every cd and you make a play like the game is just yeah there's no glory you would you would just die to damage now like you like even if your priest wouldn't get cc to this point you would probably just die to the cc at this point you would probably just die to the cc try to damage like triangle just has too much damage but uh yeah i mean the whole point of talking about this game is like you guys open is obviously a bit weird because you guys give them the opener but then like i said the most important thing is you need to auto on high like especially your jungle but almost any comp like any company game uh alter is kind of like a throwaway cd as well in a sense for mage where um unless you're facing specific comms you can just use it whenever you want almost like when you think you're going you're gonna be hit, you just use it.

And if you end up not getting hit, then it's whatever, then it's gone. You reset it to like 30 seconds anyway, shifting power, like not 30, but like 10 seconds less than it is.

So basically it's up for 10 seconds, then 50 seconds CD when you alter back. And then you reset to like 30 seconds with your shifting power.

So it's very short CD. So you should just throw it away.

Like it's not a big deal. Like you can just chug it, like into any combat can potentially hit you, but especially jungle.

It ends up getting saved until like almost a minute into the game and just used on low HP. Like this is the opposite of how you wanna use it, especially cause you're, yeah, there's like no CC here as well.

So I wanna mention one small thing. This is very major specific, but I would recommend playing Netherwind into BM jungle instead of running flame cannon.

I don't know, it's just a small thing that I don't know. I think it helps a lot because the hunter cannot crit you when you play Netherwind armor, like kill shots and stuff cannot crit, it's impossible.

And it just helps a little bit with the damage at least.

And flame cannon doesn't really get you value in this matchup cause you're not really gonna stand still so much, at least if you're playing correct, you're gonna move the whole time anyway and just try and line them, avoid damage, lining with your alter time and stuff like that. Also, yeah, I wanna add one quick thing.

When you alter time, obviously, if you're facing anything that can purge you, try an LOS and when you alter time, blink behind a pillar, jump down on blade set, jump down on Dalaran, jump down on Bugamballa, like any map where you can jump down and just try and avoid getting dispelled by the people.

Like a good example would be if you're facing like this comp, when you alter time, you don't have to avoid the Feral. The Feral can be on you, like you can run on top of the Feral, but you need to line the Priest and the Hunter because they are the ones that can dispel it, right?

So always think about it as well when you alter time, like that you wanna avoid the people that can dispel it. Okay, cool.

All right, I think that's it for this one. For me, I should go on the left side and stand behind the pillar till we open.

No, you wanna run in and just, you Holy Ward yourself and you assist. You Holy Ward run in and the perfect opener would be your team opens first.

You guys just wait for, I mean, basically no reason. The guy that's gonna get your ward off is probably gonna be the Hunter, so.

Once you see the Holy Ward. You can chastise the Hunter to delay the go even more, meanwhile you're doing a mind game.

All right, cool.

EP.2 DEFENSE: PRIEST POV VS. DH BOOMKIN HOLY PRIEST

Okay, so get into this now remember as the priest the things that we're looking to see you focus on are It's I don't want to say positioning because that's kind of a future concept, but it's more so the crowd control, right? Look at this team DH boomkin.

Holy priest what crowd controls I'll ask you actually right now What car control do they have for you?

Yeah Yeah Okay, they also have chaos Nova from the DH a oe stun and a single target stun the priest can also fear you The boom can can also cause cyclones on you so there's a lot more crowd control available and Also, all three of them have instant crowd control for you Now if you're facing people that have instant crowd control for you That means that this thing right here is your best friend I don't if you can see my mouse, but the pillar is your best friend because If you're lining them They can't use that Instance EC so distance and should I play holy water as well?

Nah, I probably really hope a holy what one of them but probably ray Okay Yeah, so remember know what car control they have for you and don't let them do it. Don't make it easy What what are you playing actually right now?

Because I'm really confused you're not playing Hollywood, you're not playing fly you're not playing a prey You might not be?

Maybe I'm playing the hard nut Okay All right, so Obviously in the open now you guys hit DH they can't get your rogue out of stealth Okay, so we're doing the goal instantly DB on the DH into a sheep and you guys are opening on the priest This is fine, Neif was guardian. Yes,م I mean, this is okay.

I think I'm just now we can Yeah, I mean I don't know why the DH trinket is wasted but now you can look for Swap on Druid. I don't think this Chester is too good because he's not even in normal form.

But yeah, I mean it is what it is. I think like...

This is a good learning point of recognizing when the go is over. Yeah, like you see here, Guardian is forced and the DH trinkets and the Priest trinkets.

So like, seeing this, what's next? Like what more can you do?

Realistically. Right, so it's already go back.

Yeah, there's no point running in. Like what are you guys doing now?

Like you caught there, two DPS are both in a Disorient. So you should be aware and like be looking at your arena frames and like understand like what's just happened.

Because as far as I'm concerned, I don't think you're aware that you've just forced two huge defensives. So you're going in for a Chastise, you go for a fear.

You can literally just get the third one for free here as well. I don't know this fear is not too good.

I think this fear should have been on Priest. Yeah.

Even the whole go maybe, like the whole Chastise fear maybe should have been both on Priest here. Maybe not the Chastise, but you could just run on top of the Priest and fear him.

He has a kind of fade ready, but I mean, I don't know, maybe you at least get the fade or maybe you can bait it and then fear after or something. Maybe you can help get a sheep that way.

I think either way though, it just wasn't necessary to push him at all. And think right here.

Like, so you're pushed into the enemy team and all three of them have AoEs in the arena. So there's Chaos Nova still up.

There's AoE fear up from the Priest. Druid used Roar right here.

So there's one AoE CC down, but there's so much that can just affect you the moment you push into the team. Yeah.

So staying here, like going in now and staying here. I mean, I know you're trying to contribute offensively, but the fact that you're just running in on top of them to do this, like you didn't need to run in on top to do this.

Like you could just stay away and then you don't need to go for that mind games there. Like you're going by going in.

You're basically accepting the fact that you're going to get CC'd and look, here's the Chaos Nova. And then you try to mind games and you get banished and then you trinket this.

Now, this is just like what we're talking with the Rogue. You don't need to press.

You shouldn't trinket offensively, especially not as the healer. There's no way that you can win the game here.

The Druid still has trinket. He actually forced trinket offensively.

Yeah, Rogue does it too. Yeah.

So like this is not good. By doing this, all you're doing is like getting a really good Opera, forcing their trinkets, getting ahead and then just giving them your queen.

Like why? You just need to understand they have every CD ready.

I mean, if they wanted to, they could literally just chug a root beam now or wait for Rogue to be off stand. Yeah, I don't know if you got stunned in the opener, but I think you did trinket a stun.

So what they can do, they can just wait for root beam to be ready. Wait for Rogue.

Well, it is ready, but wait for Rogue to be off stand. They have stunned him, root beam healer and it's 100% over.

The Rogue will die. They have every CD ready.

The Rogue will literally die 100-0 in one stun. There's no counterplay.

Here's more AoE CC as well because you're just staying in. You've stayed in this entire game.

Yeah. You've stayed in this entire time.

Now your Rogue trait has vanished to survive. This could have also been a good time to fade, you know, because there's a fear available.

You could, if you want to run in like that, you should at least try and, you know, like, I don't even think the fear was that bad. I mean, I think Bryn and I think it's not that good.

I think it was okay. But at that point you should just fade and run away again.

Yep. You're just staying in.

You can just fade. Like I said, fade is so OP.

Like if you just fade, there's fear or like you fade, move away. I mean, you're not going to get CC'd.

You're immune to everything. Basically, like going back to this point is when you got the ability to just run in, to this point is when you got the fear.

Like I can agree with Maru. Going in for the chastised fear.

I mean, it does something. You could have, you know, you said it could have been double, but like doing this is fine.

You're giving your team a chance to maybe capitalize and figure out a way to keep the grind going. I was going to say, the other two people are still in CC now.

Maybe Rogue can get something. Priest, I think he blinds.

But this movement right now is bad. This, yeah.

Going down here and exposing yourself and just staying and you didn't need to be here. You could have gotten the fear then legged it.

Just go away. Leave.

Get away from them. And fade if you're scared of getting into CC and then you're fine.

Yeah. It's very in and out as the priest, you know, it's not in and stay in.

It's just in and out. And then, and like Maru said before, you guys by doing by making the decision that you made, you should understand like one thing that you should know, and this is not something that you're aware of whatsoever.

At this point in the game, it's very, very possible that you die in the next go. Like you are actually like Maru said, you guys are in danger of losing the game right now.

You need to be aware of that. What's the enemy's win condition?

Well, they're going to root beam you and, and stun and, and stun your rogue. You end up trading your guardian here.

So the last possible button that you had to press to stay alive, you've just pressed it now. And they still have every, everything.

Yeah. Also when I added the mage, like you should have authored here.

And not on 50%, you should have done it way earlier because he's running on top of you with big meta. It's like an easy author.

Remember the cross CC and the cooldowns. Look, your healer is stunned.

The DH has big nuts up. What does this indicate?

This means you're going to start taking some damage. This is the easiest alter of your life.

I keep using that phrase, but it really is because the damage is coming. Unless you know that you're going to blink away and, and barrier and avoid damage, but your barriers on CD, maybe you don't have any shimmers.

Like you're going to start taking some heavy damage here. Your healer can't heal you.

And then you react to your HP instead of the game state, you're reacting to your HP. Then we'd press alter and guardian at the same time.

It's too late. So now they're now wasted.

You've wasted massive cooldowns and the game is over now. Like there's, there's no way like you guys can't live anymore.

They can just get a root game for free. You guys basically have to win the game right now.

Or run away. And you can't win the game on anyone but the DH right now because you just stunned the priest.

So the priest is not kill target anymore. So the only one you can even win on is the DH potentially because the boomy can drink and save himself.

Yeah. So at this point, I mean, you guys just lose because also you get CC'd now on the go.

And I think the rogue just dies. Even if you have cloak evasion, but it doesn't really save you and you kind of need it to vanish.

You got to go on the druid now, but like the druid can't die. You do live through the root beam, but the thing is, I think he dies now, right?

Yeah. You get locked on holy and he dies on the lockout.

But this is also like, like I said, just look at the game. The entire time.

Yeah. The game is 1 minute 22 seconds.

Yeah. And you did not use fade once.

Like not even here at the end, for example. I mean, at the end you could have also, you couldn't avoid the kick.

Obviously you can get kicked while fading, but you could have avoided to make you got something else for the kick. Yeah.

Like you could avoid stuff. But even maybe you get thrown off by the druid.

But still like you didn't use fade once this game. And then you're staying in here as well.

You fear, but at this point you should move away. You're still standing in.

Why are you standing on top of them? You should have been gone.

You should have been gone at this point. Like you didn't even mind that you were standing in here.

You should have been gone. You should have been gone at this point.

Yeah. You should have been gone.

Like you didn't even mind games. You didn't even have mind games for a couple of seconds.

So you could just run away at least until you have it. Actually maybe you do have it.

No, no, he was. He starts channeling it now during the lockout.

Yeah. But I mean, there's nothing else you can do.

But yeah, the game basically played itself because you just stayed in the whole time. Like you just stayed in the whole time.

You just stayed near all the AOE CC. You didn't consider at any point moving away and not letting it, not making it so easy for them.

You made it so easy for the enemy team. It's like, okay, as a healer, your most important thing is your trinket.

Have trinket available because you can save people with your trinket. Yeah.

And when your trinket is down. All you priest, your advantage is you have two things that can cover, you know, that prevent you from needing to use your trinket of greater fade and holy ward.

And you have pillars. So like those three things prevent you from using your most important cooldown if you use them well.

And you can, you know, you want to avoid using, you hate to use your trinket as a healer. It sucks, right?

Like you feel like, oh shit, the game's lost, but you can avoid those situations by just preemptively holy warding greater fading and then playing careful with your positioning. You should also be aware when the game is over.

Like at this point, when your guardian is down, your trinket is down, your rogue's trinket is down. Like you should know.

Yeah. And you have a loose condition, like you got, you can die now.

And so you have to play around that. If you don't, if you just stay in the open and just keep trying to do set up after set up, you're going to lose the game.

You're going to lose really easily. Yeah.

Technically also you can basically never die into that comp unless you've run out of healing, by the way, which didn't really run out of healing yet. If you just stay in max range, because the only CC they can get on you from max range, like reliably is root beam and that's on CD.

So if you move away here, you can actually maybe lift and maybe prolong the game and maybe you can. Yeah.

You can just run away for a minute and just stay away from your team, but you stay here to let them disorient you to let you let them kick you on the Holy file. It also shouldn't really be costing Holy fire right in their face.

Like your rogue dies in this lockout and you're just costing a Holy fire offensively. You have no idea that this is trouble.

Remember your teammate is stunned. If your teammate is stunned, it's time to care and pay attention.

Can we die now? Well, in this particular instance, yes, you can.

Yeah. You can see he's left to press and then the drew just president car and just blows him up.

Yeah. Main takeaway is just not running in and stacking on top of people who can see you easily.

It's making it harder for them.

EP.2 DEFENSE: PRIEST POV VS. WAR MAGE HPALA

So in this game against a mage, a holy paladin and an arms warrior, once again instant crowd control. All three of them have instant crowd control at close range.

We have a hodge from the paladin, db from the mage and stormhole and fear from the warrior. So this is another situation where you want to avoid being in close proximity to them.

Go in for the chastise, then piece it, don't stay in. So you can see right here you're going to db the mage and he's going to trinket it and dbu.

This is fine. You guys got the mage's trinket.

You can't really control that. It is what it is.

Your rogue is going to disarm the warrior, I believe, on the warbreaker. And now you guys are doing a go on the paladin and you get the bop.

Now after this spear ends, what do you think you should be doing? Running to the other side of the tomb.

Chas, what should he do? Yeah, you should create some distance.

Yeah, I mean you're on C3. You're on CC DR now, so it's okay.

But the longer you stay, your DRs are going to fall off and you can get punished. Now you do start to position near the pillar.

But the key mistake is that... I'll just quiz you right now.

Who can crowd control you on the enemy team at this point from where you're standing? The mage?

Or the warrior? The mage can blink db.

The warrior probably won't. If I look at your spaceship UI, I don't even see stormhole actually.

There's no fear. I guess maybe he has stormhole.

But the paladin hasn't used his stun yet and is standing right next to you on this pillar. So you've got your greater fade, which you can use to immune crowd control when the paladin runs in.

But watch what he does. He just runs in, presses the stun.

You don't even consider... You don't look at him, you're not aware of it.

This is a really easy greater fade. And imagine if you faded the stun.

Now your mage is dead. You're dead.

He's not in trouble whatsoever. But you just let him get it for free.

And so you can tell the enemy team just did their 3-2-1. You know, they did their thing.

And so you could have messed up their 3-2-1 by just pressing, you know... Just watching the paladin.

Also having holy water would be good in this matchup as well. Yeah.

Just watch yourself as the paladin. Into every mage comp you need to...

You need to basically remember like this. Every mage comp you want to play holy water into.

Every melee team you want to play fly into when you think they can kill you. And then like you basically never play the counter mending thing by the way anymore.

Unless you face SP Affliction. It's like the only comp in the game where you can play it into.

Nothing else. You would always play like either holy water or fly.

Like you will never play that. Like there's always like a better...

Or ray of hope maybe. But never like, you know...

Ray of hope is into cleaves. Or like high burst that will not go on you.

Yeah. So I have a question right now for the viewers.

I have a question right now for the entire team. I've paused on this frame.

I'm going to go slightly further. Actually, no.

Let's just pause on that frame. So in this moment here, what's the correct play?

Like what should happen now? What if the priest trinkets on the spellster room?

Okay. So that's your idea.

Any other ideas? Any other answers?

Yeah. I'm going to go with trinket altar.

Okay. Mark, what about you?

Probably trinket altar, innit? Yeah.

Trinket altar. I'm always scared to get dispelled though.

That's the thing. It's fine though because once you trinket, you're no longer stunned.

You have DB defensive. You've got your barriers coming off CD in a couple seconds.

You can shimmer. There you can't get dispelled really because if you look at your buffs, you have like four buffs.

Altar would be the fifth. Maybe you have a barrier in four seconds.

You'd have to get really unlucky. The only way I can get it is even more.

The only way I can get it is even the mage when he has mana for one spell steal. Yeah.

So it's a one in four chance he's going to get it. And even if he does get it, you're still going to avoid damage somehow by trinketing because you're also going to blink, right?

You will also get another buff for blinking, but you probably have a shimmer at this point. So you're also going to shimmer.

Yeah. So the correct answer is to just trinket altar and you'll be completely fine.

Yeah. I should use my trinket a lot more now, I think.

Yeah. Yeah.

Don't be scared. Just trinket.

It doesn't matter. And again, remember the important thing is to communicate.

Try to at least communicate before the go happens who is going to press because you all said different answers as to who should trinket. Actually, so Ero and Rocky said priest should trinket.

Ero said priest should trinket to spell rogue. Mark said he should trinket.

So already there, there's kind of a problem where you're not on the same page of who needs to press, but that can just, again, be avoided with really good communication. Yeah.

I mean, one of the best like rules of thumb away to play is like you can always as the healer. You can always just let your DPS save themselves first.

Like looking at your mage here, can he save himself? The answer to that question is yes.

So you don't need to trinket. Let him save himself.

Just sit there and watch. And if it comes to the point where he's literally a frame from dying and you don't want to lose the game fine.

Overlap, if needed, just to stop yourself from losing.

Also, I also want to add one thing. even if all the time does get dispelled at this point your priest can still end up trinketing late trinket guardian serenity is gonna top you zero to 100 by the way yeah from any hp so it doesn't matter like even if the priest can drink it late he doesn't have to drink it early yeah like i understand maybe because of the discipline broke but the cc ends up breaking on rogue anyway but the the sheep on rogue doesn't even matter like who cares then you cc for eight seconds then you do to go after like you're not in a in a hurry in a sense you know you don't have to finish the game in the next 10 seconds yeah as the as the healer like you can be patient because your oh shit button will literally save anyone from the brink of death so you can hold and watch and wait and this would have been perfect you can sit there and watch and wait the sheep lands okay you're sheeped but the stun on the mage is over now which means that he can do stuff to live so you you're quick to trinket the sheep and you end up trinketing and and pressing guardian but if you look at what's happening at the exact same time the mage is in a db the power is in the db is in a kidney so by you trinketing here to guardian and save your mage there's a fairly good chance that he actually would have been completely fine despite being 50 because of the game state the enemy team is being cc'd the warrior was also in a db by the way the warrior but the warrior and the mage got double ringed so your trinket here did nothing because you were just too quick to think that you're in trouble when you're actually not and the thing is like alter time has amazing value like so it's a what minute cooldown so you could trade a minute cooldown to avoid this death but instead a two minute and a three minute cooldown were traded to avoid the death so like that's another good way to think about defensive cooldowns is how you can get maximum value out of them like you know one if you can trade one thing instead of trading two like that's insane but even in this in this particular scenario alter time wasn't even needed honestly like i mean obviously it would have been the right play just to alter high and be perfectly safe but if you just look at what ends up happening the moment the moment time is only not needed because yeah no exactly yeah yeah because the sheep on the road breaks and they get to do the go so it is a bit random but that's what i mean about being patient you could just sit there and watch if you had just sat there and watched this you would have seen what happened and your team would have done the go without you needing to use anything um but even going oh yeah go ahead uh really quick so your go as rmp is kind of your defensive too like you can think of your offense as a way to you know usually you have lockdown and so you don't need to trade as aggressively when you have a go ready um obviously you want to survive to your go but if you know you can kind of use your offense as as defensive cooldowns and in a reverse way if that makes sense uh you can remember what we talked about with the with the positioning and who can crowd control you so you know the mage can db you against this comp like if you're if you're far away from all three players on the enemy team you can't get cc'd they don't have any long range instant cc the mage has to blink db you but you're just standing on top you let the mage walk over to you and db you should have run over here to the bottom left of the screen like you could have just run there and just been far away but you just let him get it for free um in the end it doesn't really matter because you don't get db sheeped um because i think you're deep wounds but the point still stands with your positioning and you're like you're just standing here look this mage is literally just spamming sheeps you're not even you're not even trying to death them and you do end up winning the game because you guys are killing him but yeah the point still does stand about your positioning and just understanding who can cc you because against warrior mage you know if you're near a pillar you're immune to cc may just blink db you but yeah obviously you guys do a really good job of killing the paladin here in the mind games is great

EP.2 DEFENSE: PRIEST POV VS. WAR DH RDRUID

And I think this game is like a good culmination of like the progress you've made offensively between when we first started And where we're at now Obviously facing a druid is in stealth so you understand that you want to get the game going straight away And you want your priest to chastise the druid as soon as he comes out.

It's exactly what we see happening here And you end up forcing the trinket from the demon hunter, which is great and then you instantly swap onto the druid like immediately It's not with a kidney, but doesn't matter.

It's still good And you almost kill him But it's just the fact that I mean if we look to the first session this would have never happened in a million years, right? It's like night and day difference So you instantly force trinket from both the dh and the druid?

And after the mind games, I should already feather myself and run to the pillar. Yeah, there's no need to be To be in there.

You're in good position right now. You have good positioning.

Yeah, you're not you're away from them Look, you're moving away.

Look at what you guys are doing Like this is hello Yeah Watch Okay And then uh good coil here with the smoke bomb over this kidney And then the druid trinkets the db and you see it and you go in and you you chastise the cyclone So that was great And then you get a half fear out.

That was also great And then you see the swap on the druid there's no intervene There's nothing and look how easily you get insane mind games here I mean this is this is this is a really good rmp.

This is this is like It's like you never give the enemy team a chance to do anything, you know, you're always just like Taking one person out of the game and scaring them the entire like this is almost a perfect game like offensively.

Yep But Against the comp that you typically would have struggled against in the past Like you would have been crushed by a team like this um on your first session, but now like you beat them literally with your eyes closed in just one minute

EP.3 THE THREE POSITIONING RULES FOR GLADIATOR!

A few weeks ago, we selected three random players for the challenge of a lifetime to see if the average PvPer has what it takes to get Gladiator. Are you ready to find out?

We took the average Arena team and paired them up with coaches to see just how far they can be pushed in Arena. Our coaches aren't playing with the team, but instead they're using years of experience to teach the same skills used at the professional level.

So join us as we take you through this revolutionary learning experience. Welcome to the Skill Capped Road to Glad Challenge.

As positioning is incredibly complicated, and very few players have truly mastered it. For any comp, not just RMP, having good positioning is valuable on defense and on offense.

Defensively, it can allow you to avoid damage in CC, while offensively it can make dealing damage and landing CC much easier. With this in mind, our coaches set off to diagnose the key mistakes our players were making with their positioning, and established a lesson plan with some basic goals in mind.

Our team should focus on being in a position to do their goes when they are ready, then avoid unnecessary damage in CC in between setups until stun DRs reset, which would include an advanced positioning concept called pre-kiting.

And with our goals set for week 3, it was time to meet with the players and see what they were doing wrong. One of the things we immediately noticed in our Rogue's gameplay is that he was kiting too far away in between setups.

Of course, this meant he was avoiding damage, but it also meant he was putting himself in a position where he couldn't easily shadow step back into the fight. This made it hard to set up a go on offense, or stop important casts on defense.

The bigger issue here is how far away you are from the enemy team and from your team, because you have a go ready. Like, you have, you pretty much have a go ready, DB is up, again, Chastise isn't up, but perhaps it could be reset with Apotheosis.

And this is generally something I've seen in other games where you kind of spend a lot of time away from the team, and again, the goal is to do as many goes as possible. And so there's kind of like this huge period of time where you're just running away and DRs are resetting.

Ideally, you would want to be in a position to start a second go, like right here, right? DRs are completely gone.

For setup heavy comps like RMP, your offense is also your defense. If you aren't in range to do your go, you risk getting run over by enemy attacks without being able to counter with your own.

Sometimes the best way to stop damage is not by peeling, but instead by doing a coordinated offensive setup. Against better RET warrior droid teams, they're going to be really good at shutting down your kills.

And so the workaround to that is to try to get as many offensive goes as you possibly can. And if you're far away, it's going to be harder for you to get that go.

In a way, your goes are sort of your defense at the same time. So if you can get a go, it kind of works both aggressively and defensively.

You know, of course it forces trinkets from the enemy team, but if you're doing your go, that means the enemy team is CC'd. And so it's kind of like, it performs this dual function.

So you want to try to maximize how often you're doing that. This concept could be carried over to virtually every comp in the game.

If you're constantly running back and kiting, that means you aren't doing enough offensive work. You might not be dying, but you might not be winning either.

But enough of that for now, let's get back to some gameplay and see what our mage was doing wrong. Mark was having positioning problems related to CC, and was finding it impossible to land polymorph casts on healers in matchups against double melee.

This is a common problem. with caster DPS. Sometimes healers will just never leave the pillar.

And when you add two disruptive melee DPS, it is almost impossible to land CC, even with the help of your team. Fortunately, there's one easy solution.

Okay, so what happens is like, if you're going to go like this, the shaman might just line your rogue. And then what you should do is you should try and kite away, like if you're playing defensive, right, you should try and always kite away from the shaman's pillar to the other side.

So right now the shaman is at the pillar in front of you. So you should, by default, run backwards, because the shaman wants to purge you, he wants to do something.

So he's going to come out, he's going to cross, he's going to pre-heal his teammates, and then you can CC him while he's crossing, or while he's swapping pillars and stuff, and then you just keep doing that the whole time. The enemy DPS are like a magnet for their healer.

So if you want to reposition the enemy healer, you do that by repositioning the enemy melee. If you want to pull a healer off the pillar, you have to first reposition yourself.

And by doing so, you will drag the melee DPS out of range, forcing their healer to follow, sometimes, putting them in the center of the arena, where they don't have a pillar to LOS your CC. Which is related to the problem our priest was having.

He was eating way too much CC against other mages, mostly due to poor positioning in the center of the map. Into a comp like this, maybe you didn't have many games to do this yet, but your main job as a priest, to a comp like this, would be to not get CC'd.

And what you're doing in a lot of the games, you're putting yourself into positions where you can get easily CC'd. Like this is a position right now.

Right now, you're putting yourself in a position to get CC'd, very easily, for basically no reason. Rocky wasn't just eating too much CC against mages, but he was frequently wasting his holy ward, using it during moments where he was already on poly DR.

This would give the enemy team plenty of time to dispel it, when it wasn't even needed. You have to be in their line for them to take the holy ward off, dispel it, right?

So if you go, like, peek at the pillar, and just do instant spells, while you have holy ward up, it kind of delays the go. And, and, and if they do get it at some point, then you can be ready with greater faith.

I mean, you have the weak card now, so whenever you see holy ward phase, you can just be ready to fade. As any healer, it is your responsibility to avoid CC on your own.

Classes like mages have a threat zone you need to respect. You should only push in for CC when it matters, making sure to use your other avoidance tools to prevent important casts when you're in the open.

Rocky was eating way too much CC, and wasn't using his avoidance tools properly. Two problems that could be fixed, and you can't do much about it with better positioning.

And when their work was finally done, it was time to see if our team had what it takes to push 100 more points to 2400. After their coaching session, our team was ready to push the final 100 rating to 2400 to start their 50-win journey to Gladiator.

If you remember from before, Arrow was spending way too long out of the fight, which meant he was constantly out of range to shadow step the enemy team when a go was ready. And this meant his goes were happening much slower than they could be, causing his team to fall behind.

But now, Arrow was staying much closer to the action when kiting, which meant being in shadow step range to important targets at all times, allowing his team to do setups on demand, and giving them more opportunities to burn through CDs and even score kills. This concept easily carries over to other melee DPS.

There are definitely times where you will need to kite away and pillar, like when the enemy team is popping cooldowns or when your healer is CC'd.

But you have to think about reversing pressure at some point, which means being in range to push and do your own setup, giving your team an opportunity to burn through enemy CDs. And speaking of kiting, our mage was able to see improvements using map movement to bait healers into positions where they could be CC'd.

Before our coaching session, Mark was finding it difficult to land CC on healers who were pillaring all game. But now, he was starting to cross the map and kite away from the enemy pillar.

This would force the opposing healer to cross the arena, putting themselves in a position where they could easily be CC'd. And with this small adjustment, Mark was able to land setups against teams that had multiple disruptions, and even get a kill.

This is another concept that carries over to virtually every class in the game. If you want to reposition the enemy healer, it starts by repositioning the enemy DPS.

Because they are like magnets for their healers. So by kiting away from the enemy pillar, you force DPS out of range of their healer, causing them to move into the center of the map, making them vulnerable to CC or swaps.

And on the topic of healers, our priest was starting to become more aware of his positioning and how he can avoid CC with LOS. In his earlier games, Rocky was standing in the center of the map, giving the enemy team a CC chain for free.

To fix this, we first had him change his UI so he was only showing enemy nameplates. You can see here that he had all nameplates enabled, which made it hard to track enemy positioning.

He changed to display enemy plates only, which would give him more focus for avoiding CC. And by doing so, he was able to actually see where the enemy casters were located, which in turn would allow him to avoid CC by pillaring with Holy Ward in between setups.

By having more awareness in the game and simplifying his positioning, Rocky was able to start using his avoidance tool more consistently, even Holy Warding traps against some players you might recognize. Rocky was also starting to understand his role as a healer.

Even though he had important offensive spells to help his team win the game, it didn't mean he had to be playing offense forever.

As any healer, you need to prioritize keeping your team as active as possible, which sometimes means pushing in when your CC or damage is needed, and then immediately pulling away and avoiding CC to keep your team alive until the next time you can play offensive.

Our players took week three of coaching seriously, and with their final Q session of the week, they saw the biggest gains yet, climbing to a final rating just over 2400. After climbing to a peak MMR over 2600, our team began to see some losses, but for all of our players, this was their first time ever over 2.4K in 3v3.

For many players, this was a milestone, but for our team who were queuing at rival rating three weeks prior, this was an incredible achievement. With the third pillar lit for the week, our team still had more work to be done.

If they wanted to get their 50 wins for the Gladiator achievement, they needed to clear up their communication, which was by far their biggest pain point at this point in time. Gladiator was in range, and we would have to wait until next week to see our team's final push.

As always though, thanks for watching. See you soon.

EP.3 POSITIONING: ROGUE POV VS. DH BOOMKIN RSHAM

So one thing that we're going to illustrate in this matchup is just, well, first, let me, let me go back and say that rogue positioning in RMP is significantly less important than your priest and mage positioning. Rogue, you're kind of limited as to what you can do.

What we'll talk about eventually is something called pre-kiting. Pre-kiting is going to be really important and in matchups specifically where you're the kill target, but that's pretty, it's a very nuanced situation that we'll just get to later.

The one thing we wanted to highlight in this game is just your, a tendency you sometimes have to run too far away on re-stealths. So first of all, this go, you need to do a go in the opener.

One thing that we were talking about in the coaching sessions is your use of blind. We're happy that you're using blinds, but we're also happy that you're using blinds.

So we're happy that you're using blinds, but we're also happy that you're using blind now more often, because I think that was like a huge problem in the earlier sessions. It's just, this blind was kind of unnecessary because your priest is already here to fear.

I mean, in one games you blind a warrior and it winds up forcing trinket and that's a good, that's perfectly fine. As long as you're getting value out of your blind.

This is kind of a weird blind, but it's kind of, you know, it doesn't matter too much because, you know, you're doing your go anyway. One thing I think, I don't know if healing tide is down during this go, but that's one thing you guys would just generally, but yeah, it is.

So you have the weak ore up here. That's just one thing you should generally be aware of.

I would almost, almost treat healing tide like war banner, you know, like if you see healing tide, because it's very difficult to kill through. So anyway, this first go, you get triple trinkets, which is amazing, right?

This is what you want to see as a rogue mage. Specifically in the opener.

This vanish was overlapped with guardian, which is just, you know, we're not, we're not onto communication yet, but that's just one thing to be aware of is maybe really communicate who is going to press.

I know that's kind of what our focus was on last week is rotating CDs, but it's, you know, it should be obvious why that's an overlap. I think further into our session, then we decided that like, this is, this is kind of early in the sessions, I think.

And later on, we decided that me and Mark, like the roommates, we should use our CDs first as the healer is kind of his trinkets and stuff is the most important for survival. Yeah.

Yeah. And this is a very nuanced situation, but it's good to trade evasion almost aggressively sometimes into boomkin teams and feral teams because you can evasion the incapacitated.

Roar. That's just something to think, think about it.

We're going to look at a jungle game later, but it doesn't matter too much in this matchup, but you guys obviously know this is a bit of an overlap. So here's the critical situation that we kind of discussed in our coaches meeting.

So this would be a situation where it'd be useful to have blind ready for this go, because chastise is still on CD. Dragon's breath is up and no one's on DR.

So, right. This is the, the generally the place where blind would fit into the setup since, you know, you don't have the perfect setup.

Alternatively, what we'll be talking about in a different matchup is right. So we've, you guys have gotten really good at doing your scripted goes, you know, the chastise, kidney, DB.

And this is one thing you guys talked, you specifically mentioned last time we met is, or you typed it in the discord. Chat that you guys are becoming too fixated sometimes on the goes, which is where you can kind of help cover the gaps that your C that your team has with CC with your stuns, right?

So for instance, because your priest doesn't have chastise up, this might be a situation where it'd be okay to cheap shot on a go, the target that you're not planning to kill. But in any case, this would be a perfect situation to blind.

But the bigger issue here is how far away you are from the enemy team and from your team, because you have a go ready. Like you have, you pretty much have a go ready.

DB is up again, chastise isn't up, but perhaps it could be reset with apotheosis. And this is just generally something I've seen in other games where you've kind of spent a lot of time away from the team.

And again, the goal is to do as many goes as, possible. And so there's kind of like this huge period of time where you're just running away and DRs are resetting.

Ideally, you would want to be in a position to start a second go like right here, right? DRs are completely gone.

And I think specifically in this matchup, that's kind of important because these are, the DH is really tanky. The boom can, can be really tanky too.

So you want to have really consistent goes. The end of this game is just kind of unfortunate.

You kind of get triple CC. I think what we were talking about in the coaching session is this, this last go probably should have been on the shaman because shaman didn't have trinket, didn't have, I guess he does have fleshcraft.

Maybe it could have been on the boom can instead of the DH. Cause the DH has meta up.

So you pretty much have to kill him in the stun or else he's just going to heal with his meta, like out of this. So perhaps this would have been a better go on the boom can just this, this last exchange, cause boom can pre skins, shaman has fleshcraft.

I still think it's probably better to go boom can here just because the shaman did fleshcraft cause this DH is going to, and the DH blurs. Okay.

That's so they all kind of triple use. It's kind of a weird, you're in a weird position where boom can ask skin DH has blur and shaman has fleshcraft.

I think in this case, you want to go boom can just because, um, I think he's easier to kill through skin than a DH is then killing a DH through, through blur. But in any case, I think the bigger issue here is that there's this kind of some time wasted in between the setups.

And again, your position as a. Yeah.

Rogue isn't too important, but I, what I want you to remember is to always be kind of in range, uh, in step range of both the enemy team and your team, or at least be able to get to your team really fast, like with sprint. Um, just because you know, like shadowlands is really fast, right?

And so, you know, you might need to stop an important mind games cast for instance, against priest teams. And so you want to always be in a position to stop something or do your go.

And, uh, so that was kind of the main takeaway from this. Game is just try to always be in range, uh, to, to either do your go or quickly interrupt something and try to minimize the amount of time you spend just like away from the fight.

Um, because you always go, you want to, you want to continue that pressure as often as possible. Um, so do you have any questions about this, this first, this first matchup?

Hmm. Not really.

No, I, but, uh, you said you, the thing we wrote on the discord, getting. To fixate with three to one is kind of like a lot we have, but that, that also comes into communication is where like, we want to do like, if I want to stun someone, uh, it's not like we want to wait.

Like, I think. Like, it's so unsure because if I just stun here, kidney shot and they're not ready for it.

Like if, even if I say stone, maybe they like, they want. To wait for chastise or something.

And then it's like, it just feels so trolled to just send a kidney shot. Yeah.

Uh, but what I mean, what I, what I, what I meant to say is, you know, your, your mage is wanting to land the poly right. And on the enemy healer, the thing you were doing in the first Q session where you're triple stunning the enemy team that actually can be good.

If it's needed, you know, you shouldn't be doing that every single go for reasons we talked about in week one. Exactly.

But in situations where your mage can't really land CC in the next game, we're going to be looking at is going to be a perfect example of that, where it's like impossible for your mage to land the DB sheep. And that's where, you know, you can kind of carry for your mage.

Um, you and Fisher, you can carry for your mage in those specific situations. Um, again, at the end of this game, it was kind of ambiguous of who you should go on because boomkins like pre skins, the DH pre blurs and the shaman had the flesh craft.

I mean, this is kind of a. Ideally.

This go should have happened before this DH pop blur. You know, that it was just kind of slow and then you guys get triple stunned.

It's kind of unfortunate the way this, this game played out because you had the win condition. It's just, you know, one of those, the enemy team pre-press their cooldowns essentially.

And, uh, it was hard to really find a response to that. Um, one thing too, though, is I think maybe did you treat you drink of this done?

Okay. You drink of this done.

Um, do you kick this? I beam.

I mean, you already know this, but I always just try to kick IBM as soon as possible. Um, do you know why you should, do you know why you should kick IBM?

That's a good question. I know that it there's a PVP talent, which makes it take a lot more damage from him.

If you, yeah, when he, if he successfully casts a full IBM, he gets a damage buff. So actually that's a good question.

Um, actually this is from killing some buff. He has, I don't know what it is.

I don't remember what it looks like, but he gets, he gets increased damage if you, if he lands a full IBM. So it's important to try to interrupt it as quickly as possible.

But in any case, this last go is just slightly too slow. Like, you know, if, if you had done this, go fast, if you'd been in a position to do this, go faster.

And if you had blind ready, um, I think you guys could just want the game right here because again, it's triple trinkets are down. Um, could have done a go on boomkin and killed with mind games through, uh, his friends, his frenzy proc.

But yeah, the main takeaway from this game is being in a position, trying to be in a position to do the next go as quickly as possible. Especially when DRs are coming back up, you shouldn't be really out, out of the fight for too long.

If DRs are completely off the enemy team.

EP.3 POSITIONING: ROGUE POV VS. DH DK

Okay, so this game is a game where your mage is going to have the hardest time in the world landing a poly on the shaman. Yeah.

Right. So this is where you kind of need to carry like you and fishy fingers need to, you can do one of two things, either fishy can become responsible for CCing the shaman with chastise fear, or you guys can go on shaman too, right?

Because it's going to be hard, really hard to CC him, but at least you can maybe swap to him. So, and one thing we talked about kind of in discord is when a DK pops Lichborn, I mean, you can shackle it.

There's kind of ways to play around that. One thing we talked about in the coaches meeting is, which is going to require it require a bit more game experience.

And we'll kind of talk about this when we discuss strategies at some point. But ideally, right, you should be doing your triple CC because bright certain classes can peel you certain classes can like employers, right?

You want to triple CC warriors because they have so many things that can stop your kill. Some classes, you don't have to care too much about cross CCing them.

And DK is one of those classes. Pretty much their only tool that can ruin your go is anti magic zone.

And they'll generally try to use that. But if you're not, you're not going to be able to do that.

And you're going to have to use that into combustion. But if they don't have AMZ ready, you don't have to really focus too much on CCing the DK because they don't really have that many tools to stop the kill from happening.

But in any case, we'll just watch this game. Okay, there's a blind on the DK, which is going to break to the Nova.

So again, this is so you need to think about when the gates are when you're when you're in the starting room, and you see a team like this. Have you ever played mage by the way?

Uh, no, not really. I wouldn't say I've played it.

No. But you can imagine that if you're a mage, and you're getting trained by these two classes with a resa shaman, it's going to be really hard for you to ever land CC on the shaman.

Like the shaman if he's just pillaring, and these two things are just, you know, terminator walking grip. Yes, there's so many things that can just rip.

Yes, there's so many things that can just rip. You can ruin your setup.

So this is where blind on the shaman probably would have been better, or even going the Shaman. So what you'll find throughout this game is you're made I don't think Mark is ever able to land CC on the shaman.

And some is just able to just heal through this damage consistently. It looks like you guys have a go.

Okay, we'll talk about this with mark, too. One thing that mark tends to fail on.

Mark tends to do is he tends to blink away defensively sometimes and in this particular scenario this blink doesn't really do much because he's just getting pummeled by these two things that are like able to connect on him anyway and you're trying to go shaman also there's a healing tide like back here too so this go is going to naturally be kind of scuffed um this is the right idea to go shaman it's just like it there is clearly kind of a maybe not necessarily a lack of communication but there is a lack of coordination to go this shaman in this particular case um yeah but this is going to be one matchup versus these really really disruptive melee cleaves where you and fishy really have to become the ones to cc the healer because or you have to go healer yeah okay yeah that makes sense yeah because the thing is um as we've been playing we have this like general rule of thumb and we're like we're gonna go heal this shaman and then we're gonna go heal this healer and then we're gonna go heal this healer and then we're gonna go heal this healer and then we're gonna go heal this healer and then we're gonna go heal this healer and we're gonna go heal this healer of prio for cc so yeah i would always be like we would always pick a dps to be kill target and then swap to healers yes and then um mark would pick to cc the one like further away because he could blink and then fishy would pick the one like where he could still like go back pillory yeah um so that's like kind of what we've been like going for yeah which yeah like shows here in certain scenarios is just completely terrible.

So there's this one basic strategy that Maro doesn't like this strategy because, we talked about this in one coaching question, Maro doesn't like it because really good players are able to counter this strategy really well, but I think it's something you guys should use often in these particular matchups, and the strategy is simply go healer, like against melee cleaves, to go healer with Dragon's Breath Ring on the DPS.

Like that should be one of your, it's a very convenient way to to burn cooldowns or even force the kill, because both melee are always going to be, you know, attacking either your mage or priest, and they're going to be stacked up.

So if you can step Kinny the Shaman while your mage DB rings both melee, that's like a go for free, you know, and that would be really good in this matchup where it's going to be really hard. For your mage to CC the Shaman.

So that's one thing I think you guys should really consider against these super annoying melee cleaves, and even into like Rett Warrior, like Rett Warrior Rester Druid, that's a really good strat sometimes. If both melee are stacked, to just DB ring them at the same time you, like Kinny the healer.

So I think that would have been really good in this situation, or in this matchup specifically, because yeah it's, like the game has gone on for nearly a minute and Mark's done like 8, 9k damage, like he's just like overwhelmed by the fact that there's two things hitting him, that and preventing him from really moving or casting.

Yeah, that makes sense. Get his bomb, you get trinket and zone, that's good.

And he hasn't used combust yet, so that's, you should be really happy, like if a DK uses their zone before combust, that's really good for you guys. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Again though, like look at the way the shaman is playing, like he's just, he's going to be sitting at these pillars, both melee are going to be trucking like you and Mark the entire game, so it's going to be really hard for you guys to CC the shaman.

Let's see what you guys try to do. Again, this is a game that's just really difficult for your mage.

Did you have any CC for the shaman? Shaman here?

Shadowstab, cheap shot. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Or do you have chas- oh, chasite is not up yet.

Yeah, this is one of those games where you can play a bit off script if you want, like from the rope. If you can tell, if you get a feel in the middle of the game that your mage is not landing CC, and I think that's a situation where you need to be able to play off script.

And this is a really good example of that, because the script is not going to work against this team. There's two of them.

Yeah, and you're going to have too many things that can ruin it. Your mage is going to be under pressure way too much.

So, unfortunately, this is an example of how there's not really anything you're doing wrong with positioning, per se, in this matchup. Let's see, you guys get a kind of a go on this shaman?

Okay, that was combust. He trinkets the combust.

So, at least now you're forcing stuff, but it's two minutes in the game. That the enemy shaman has finally trinketed, so that's generally not a good sign.

I think you guys wind up winning this game, actually. Let me, we'll see.

I don't remember. Anyway, oh, shaman also popped the wall.

So, no trinket, no wall from the shaman. I think you guys are going to kill the DH, but we'll see.

I don't know if the enemy shaman is going to flush grab the DH versus flush grab. Okay, good, you kick that.

That's good. Okay, so I don't think Mark has landed a sheep on the shaman.

He just tried to db, but he got kicked. Or he got windsheared on, something happened.

So, that's what I mean. It's like I think you guys just killed here.

Okay, you guys it's a very troll win, but- Yeah, I remember this actually. But yes, but look, like you should, onto the win, you should be- Yeah, I remember this, actually.

But yes, but look, like you should, onto the win, you should, onto the win, you should, onto the win, you should, onto the win, you should, onto the win, you should, onto the win, you should, On paper you guys probably should have not won this game. Look at the damage, right?

The DH and the DK nearly did 1 million, you guys did 300. They tripled your damage, which is kind of expected.

Your mage isn't going to be doing much damage in this matchup, probably. And that's kind of something...

Sometimes wins can be deceiving, right? Just because you won the game didn't mean you're supposed to win the game, which is a thing.

Yeah, I know. Yeah.

I finally land the sheep after DH dies.

So what I want you to remember from this matchup is that when your mage is finding it difficult or even impossible to land CC on the healer, I think that presents you with an opportunity to either help your mage get to cross CC and sort of go off script or pressure that healer and start attacking them more consistently and with more coordination.

And using that strategy. We talked about DBing both melee DPS into a ring into a...

At the same time, you kidney shot the enemy healer. I think that it's going to help a lot because, yeah, it's just it's an impossible task to tell your mage to consistently land CC.

Yeah. Against a shaman in this matchup.

Of course. It's a cost, right?

So that's why it's to be expected that they want to stop it. Because it's so expensive.

Yeah. And they want to stop it because it's so powerful too.

EP.3 POSITIONING: ROGUE POV VS. RET WAR

So this game is an example of kind of pre- there's kind of some aggressive positioning in the beginning of this matchup which isn't necessarily needed so we'll explain that in a second.

But anyway shadowy duel can be good in this matchup if the enemy team goes your priest like say and a lot of these melee keeps for whatever reason are not going fishy fingers and they really should but like that would be a a good oper- that's kind of a time maybe you should use shadowy duel as if they both melee pop their cooldowns into your priest you can just maybe shadowy duel one of the melee and just try to kite away like you could shadowy duel the red or something and just sprint away and you might need a trade of cloak or evasion but at least your priest is safe because your priest is most vulnerable in these matchups.

Okay you guys are gonna get a go here. You guys get bubble for free which is very convenient but what happens next I think is where we kind of had some concerns.

Okay so the go here is kind of over like you guys are peeled the red has bubbled I guess you can maybe go druid I think maybe you guys probably should go druid out of this. Druid gets sanked let's see if you try to go druid he perhaps- oh yeah you do a good you guys do a good job at waiting out the sink.

Or spellsting it I don't know what happened. And so that's amazing this war banner and the war banner bugs out on the kidney but this warrior tried to you know be the hero unfortunately like it was slightly too late.

This is a good this is a good swap to druid but see what happens you get skin, kill banner, hit trinkets. Okay so this is when the go is like really really over over like you can't really do much in this situation this is where you kind of got to play defense.

So okay they're going you you trinket up let's see what did you trinket exactly. Okay so this is something we talked about last week you trinket a hodge which oh wait fishy fingers gets- Yeah he throws wings sometimes that's why I- Oh okay.

Oh fishy fingers trinketed the okay the the reason why this was bad is kind of a chain reaction. Yeah he trinkets fear here.

He trinkets fear yeah okay we'll talk we'll talk to him about that like he was trying to like win the game like but it was kind of- He was kind of scuffed like you were you weren't in a position to win the game we talked about this in a previous session like you should never really trinket offensively unless you're like guaranteed to get the kill like which is not the case here like druid still has skin has a flesh craft shield you're gonna go druid but you still have a lot to a lot of work to do so this is like a bad trinket and it just kind of snowballs you can see this is like a good example of how one defensive mistake can really snowball so ah because he doesn't have trinket here for the hodge or for the storm bolt you get hodged and ideally he should be able to like maybe human ratio out of this and dispel you but he can't so you just get absolutely crushed and now you need to trade your trinket um so this is just kind of a unfortunate case of maybe like he made one defensive mistake and it really snowballed really quick um then you're gonna take a lot of damage from this voyeur here and you're gonna vanish off like quite late so you you disarm him let's see does he trinket this disarm he doesn't trinket this disarm should probably evasion there after disarmance yeah okay so one thing i i kind of i wish i wish you we had a rank one rogue to describe the situation because like you have to you pretty much have like of two win conditions at this point you can go druid now pretty consistently and cc the you know the paladin but the paladin also doesn't have bubble so you're pretty close to your win condition so you're gonna trade your vanish here instead of evasion but i think maybe evasion was the better play because you just it sucks to have to burn your vanish right it vanish is kind of your biggest defensive um so i think in general maybe what you can do is play more aggressive with your evasion if that makes sense we're gonna look at a jungle game where you have a really good evasion um but i think you probably should have just sent the evasion yeah i feel like i should have evasion like as soon as this arm ends because yeah it's gonna go over i'm gonna take a lot of damage and i feel like if i evasion then like he can overpower one shot me so that's why i vanished or the other thing you could have possibly done in the situation is maybe step shadowy duel the druid or something um yeah to to buy you you guys a bit of time um because again you're just waiting for drs to reset either on the druid or uh on the the pal basically you needed to either go probably pally here or have a really good go on druid let me see what happens but yeah you have to burn vanish here which kind of sucks yeah we also were loved with garden spirits yes yes so that's just again basic kind of communication things and i think this all could have been avoided yeah if you just pressed evasion maybe way earlier more aggressively yeah but here's here's what i'm talking about again from the first game is now you're kind of too scared like again you're low hp so i understand why you're scared but your reaction is to go to the box and now you're far away from the enemy team um sorry if it's getting blurry but now you're just far away from the enemy team and it's going to be more difficult for you to do your go from this position um i again i understand why you're back here like you're scared you're at low hp you want to drink up because you're worried you're going to die but you always need to think be thinking about we need to maximize how many goes we can do so playing that passive for that long is kind of bad in this particular case because specifically against warriors you need to do really consistent goes because they have so many things to stop you they have a million tools to stop you so you really want to maximize how many setups you're doing and running away and you know being far away a lot isn't going to really help with that um good blind druid um let's see i think the paladin yeah trinket and then you bops the druid i think you guys wind up winning this game by the way um but this is just another game where it was a win but it's kind of scuffed um let's see if you evasion here at all okay evasion here with crimson vile a little slight overlap doesn't matter too much but you stepped at the same time yeah i stepped the same as three groups that that just happened you know but that was also to the homes yeah that's just i didn't say i was stepping and he didn't say it was gripping yeah yeah but let's see what happens um i don't remember who you guys kill in this matchup okay the the oh this is really smart and i like this adaptation i think you guys recognize that he's thanks yeah i think i think you go drew it i asked them i think i asked to i think we either waited or asked approach yeah well that's good that's really good adaptation i think you guys just went right here yeah yeah you guys just went right here anyway so that was that was good but again maybe one thing to consider is don't be so far away for so long because against better red warrior druid teams they're going to be really good at shutting down your kills and so the workaround of that is to try to get as many offensive goals as you possibly can and if you're far away it's going to be harder for you to get that go again i understand you know you're scared and you're low hp and it it makes sense to be behind those box drinking One thing I mentioned before is, in a way, your goes are sort of your defense at the same time.

So if you can get a go, it kind of works both aggressively and defensively. Of course, it forces trinkets from the enemy team, but if you're doing your go, that means the enemy team is CC'd.

And so it's kind of like it performs this dual function. So you want to try to maximize how often you're doing that.

But you guys, again, are doing way better than your first few sessions, for sure. So I'm really happy for you guys in general.

And then, yeah, shadowy duel. We'll have to really think, you know, I think it could have been used in the rest of this matchup.

But in general, I think you should use it maybe as a peel for your team or as a way to get a restuff. I think you could have.

Probably used it here earlier on the druid to try to get the warrior off you. But anyway, this last go was good.

You know, you get the cross you see, and that's what you're designed to do. So good ending to that game.

EP.3 POSITIONING: ROGUE POV VS. JUNGLE

This jungle game is where it's clear that you do something that we talked about. Oh, by the way, let me rewind.

I think we want you guys to start opening Priest against Jungle. Okay.

Just because it's going to be hard to CC the Priest at the beginning of the game because the Druid is invisible, and he can either roar your opener or stun your mage.

The Druid can always disrupt the opener, and that's the situation where if there's a lot of disruption available for your mage, that's where just going Healer is generally good. At the beginning of this game, I think we want you guys to start going Priest.

Also, Fishy needs to stop dotting. The DB on the Priest breaks to this dot, and then your mage gets stunned on his ring.

As you can see, the opener is kind of scuffed, and if it had just been on Priest, you could have had a real go and maybe forced something. Do you guys force Trinket here?

Looks like no. Yeah, you force Ross, but Hunter kind of made a mistake by Rossing here because he used it before Combustion.

Ideally, you want to be using Ross on Combust, but in any case, let's see. Let's see what happens here.

Get rooted. No, so now you have a go on Priest.

Let's see if it forces PS, which is good. Okay, so this is what I was going to say.

I'm really happy that this adaptation was made. This is what we talked about last week.

Your Healer gets CC'd, and you trade Evasion. That's perfect.

So that's a really good way to, you know, that's something we talked about last week. Both your teammates, our crossy seed, that means that's like an instant signal to pop one of your major defensive cooldowns.

So that was really good, recognizing that. Trading the Evasion here.

And yeah, there it is. I mean, maybe it could have been traded slightly earlier, but it doesn't matter too much.

At least it was traded. That's really good.

Let's see what happens now. Again, a big problem though is you haven't forced it.

Okay, so this is another blind. So this is a good, I don't mind this blind so much.

People would say this is like a weird blind, right? Generally speaking, people don't, like anytime you blind a DPS, people are like, what?

But I actually think it's quite smart because it's kind of hard to cross CC the Pharaoh. So if you can use your blind to cross CC, that's perfect.

I really don't think it's a mistake. So that's good.

And he winds up trinketing. The thing with blind, right?

It's kind of like a psychological CC. Like people love to trinket blind.

Especially healers. Healers love to trinket blind.

It could be at a really bad time. You could blind at a really bad time.

If it's not a really smart healer, they'll probably just throw their trinket into the blind, you know, even without considering if there's going to be any follow-up. But I think, I don't mind this blind on the Pharaoh actually.

I think it's quite smart because it helps you get the cross CC. So I think that's good.

I think as long as you're using your blind to get the cross CC or force a trinket, I think it's a successful blind. Let's see.

Force trinket, turtle. So now you're in a really good position to win the game.

I don't remember if you guys win this. Trinket vanish.

And here's, okay, you go eat. Could he have restuffed here?

Oh no, he could flare. Yeah, flare kind of ruined it.

It might have been better to just stay in stealth. I don't know how much, you had dots on yourself though.

I don't know. Hard to say.

But the iron, again, kind of the ironic part of this session is that this week we're focusing on positioning and positioning isn't too critical as Rogue and as this comp. So, okay, now you have triple trinkets forced.

Again, I don't remember if you guys win this game. One thing, by the way, I want you to, I want to quiz you really quick.

You have a bunch of debuffs right now on you. Which debuff do you, which debuffs do you really care for?

Like which ones should you really be paying attention to against Jungle Cleave? You know which ones?

So, the far right one is the five second that's the previous wounds from the pet, right? Yeah, but you can kind of assume that's always going to be up.

Yeah, exactly. Because the pet just keeps renewing that.

And then you have the barbed shot, which gives him, or not barbed shot. I think it might be flayed shot.

Yeah, the one that gives him, well, that should be barbed shot. Okay, yeah, yeah.

But then there's the stun thingy. But then there's infected wounds.

Rake, I don't think matters. But Feral Frenzy for left probably.

Yes. Okay, so this is basically like the win condition for Jungle actually.

It's kind of built around this cooldown. Okay.

I don't know if you have anything to really trade into, but let's see. Oh, you have Guardian.

So that's good. You get Guardian on the Feral Frenzy.

So that's a good sign. Because this is when you're going to take the most damage.

And you're cutting away, which is good. Trying to drink again.

Drink. Drink.

And remember, by the way, even if you can't get a perfect go, you can always use Smoke Bomb to try to get, to try to force a perfect go. So if you're trying to kill Hunter here, like, let's see.

Your mage has combust. Hunter is far away from his priest.

His priest is rooted. The priest doesn't have dome.

So the reason you, the main sort of interaction you need to care about with disc priests, with Smoke Bomb, Bomb is whether they have dome or not. If they don't have dome, then I think this is easy, easily just a stun on this Hunter right now and just Bomb.

Just like send the Bomb. Let's see.

Because the DB, let's see if Mark lands this Sheep. I think you wind up winning right here.

But, okay, you Bomb right now. Okay.

But you caught, you could have like sent this Bomb earlier. Again, it's not that big a deal.

You wind up winning the game anyway, but just for the future, if you can't get like perfect cross CC, and that's all, that's kind of where we talked about blind and Bomb come into play.

And again, this is another matchup where you didn't use Shadowy Duel, where you probably had some opportunities to send it on the priest, like to Shadowy Duel the priest. Like maybe here after this go is over, like, so your Mage is, let's see.

So the priest has PS still entering it. So the priest is not going to die.

And this is where you trade evasion actually. So you could have traded Shadowy Duel here, maybe too, but evasion is probably better because there's Berserk and cooldowns.

But let's see if you had another opportunity to trade. Let's see what happens this go.

This might've been a good, okay, so he pops turtle. So he's going to be invincible for seven seconds.

Maybe this is where you Shadowy Duel the priest. I know that the annoying thing right about Shadowy Duel is it costs a lot of energy, but you really probably shouldn't be spending much energy into something like aspect of the turtle.

So maybe this is where you could have Shadowy Duel the priest and not needed to trade your trinket here. Maybe that's one way you should think about using Shadowy Duel is as a way to get to the next go.

Without taking any damage. Like you can just use a Shadowy Duel on the healer, even when he's in poly like this.

Yeah. That's a really good point actually.

Yeah. And I think that's, yeah, that's just a, maybe a general thing too, that kind of fits into this week's theme of positioning is maybe think about how you can position to use Shadowy Duel after a go too.

Or just be aware that you have that option to keep your other important things. Your other important cooldowns.

Cause I think you get stun here, you trinket vanish. This probably could just have been avoided with Shadowy Dueling the priest, even if he's still in the poly.

But I would, I would highly recommend watching like Waz's VODs if you can, because he's really good at using Shadowy Duel and he uses it like, yeah, to conserve his own cooldowns while also sort of working towards the next setup.

Um, rarely do you ever use Shadowy Duel to kill someone in, in a 3v3, you know, you're not really using it as like an offensive tool per se.

I know you can in 2v2, like it kind of comes into play, especially if you're playing one dance, but because you're not really playing one dance, it's probably better just to send it as a defensive tool in these situations where, you know, the go is over. Turtle has been used.

Healer is CC'd. We're not going to have any CC left for this healer.

They're on DRs. Just probably send the Shadowy Duel on the, the healer, um, instead of running away here.

But, uh, that's, you know, just kind of a side note. It's not really related to positioning too much, but it's just something to remember.

Um, so anyway, that was that game. And by the way, I know we kind of harp on like playing optimally and like using these optimal blocks, but I think that's, I think that's a good thing.

I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.

I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.

Like using these optimal builds. Like we told you, I told you in one previous session, you know, you should probably use Smoke Bomb and Shadowy Duel every game and swap out the other talent.

But if you find yourself not using Shadowy Duel often, I mean, ideally you should be using it often, but you can maybe even play Thief's Bargain if you want. Um, that's not a bad talent.

And I think it's kind of underused. So that might, if you're really finding it difficult to use Shadowy Duel, just maybe consider swapping to Thief's Bargain.

That's your, one of your default picks. Cause I think it's actually quite good, right?

It gives you lower vanish cooldown. I mean, you, and I think it does give you lower faint cooldown too.

Let me look it up. It's, it's two defense.

And Blades. I think it's, it reduces the cooldown of vanish.

Yeah, but you deal less damage. Blades.

But you get those like big CDs shortened. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's just one thing.

If again, I'm telling you to use Shadowy Duel and, you know, trying to use it defensively, but if you're really struggling with that for the meantime, just swap over to Thief's Bargain. Um, I think that, you know, that's also, it's a passive talent, so you don't really have to think about using it.

Um, but yeah, I think what you, what you mentioned with using it to just get to the next goal without taking unnecessary damage is a good way.

Because sometimes I'm like, oh shit, maybe I need to save this to feed or, maybe I need to save this to reset or like, but just to have this way to like, okay, I'm going to use this now to just get away. Yes.

For a while and not take damage. I like, that's a good point.

Cause it makes it easier to find uses for it because now there's so many options you're looking for. Like, should I peel?

Should I reset? Should I like set a go or?

Cause, cause you, you have the right mindset. You have like the perfect mindset for Rogue in this comp.

Like you recognize your backstab damage is basically zero. So you can't do anything outside of your goes.

So a lot of times you're running away, which is perfect. Like that's kind of what you should be doing.

Um, if, especially if you're the kill target, like this team has just been pummeling you all game. So in between your goes, like it's probably best to just try to run away and avoid damage.

And so you're already doing, and the next step is to really do it even better with shadowy duel. Um, so I think that's just the kind of the next step.

And it, again, it doesn't really fit into positioning cause I know this week's theme is positioning, but I think it is an inherently tied to positioning since you're using it to reposition. And again, it's fine.

It's completely fine. If you use it into a target that CC like this priest is polymorphed, who cares?

You know, you're using it to avoid damage. It, it's even better that the priest is CC because now the priest can't even hit you.

If, uh, if you shadowy duel and you don't have feral friends here, the bleed damage is going to be okay. It's whatever, but you know, you could shadowy duel, meld just to get the shield or whatever from the conduit and you're, you're fine.

Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm glad we, we saw this game because I think it really, um, I think you're doing the right thing by kiting and running away in between your setups. Like, especially against jungle cleave.

Uh, the ideally this team should be going your mage probably, but because they're going you, you know, you're cutting away, doing the right thing. And I think just could be even better with shadowy duel.

EP.3 POSITIONING: ROGUE POV VS. JUNGLE 2

Okay, so yeah, one of the things I really wanted to say, you kind of understand this concept, is you're already starting to pre-kite, which is really good, and it's something that's kind of more advanced, and I think you do it sometimes in this matchup.

So you know what your win condition is as Rogue, like RMP, it's all based around like this setup, right? And essentially every team has some version of the setup.

So Jungle Cleave has it with trap, right? The whole game is really built around getting as much momentum during the trap as possible.

Like you trap healer, and you just destroy a DPS during that trap, and you just gradually do this over and over until the healer can't really do anything about it.

So one thing that's kind of important, that's going to really help at, I think, in your final push to Gladiator, is really recognizing enemy win conditions, and then positioning around it. So the enemy team, we know, can only win pretty much when the healer is trapped.

Of course, Jungle does a lot of damage throughout the game, but really they're trying to win the game during those traps. And if you're playing a Rogue Mage Mirror, it's the same basic concept.

They're trying to win the game in the... very short windows. So let's look at the trap cooldown.

Okay, so now you're doing your go. You're doing your go on this hunter here, and trap is coming back off in five seconds.

So what that means is five seconds from now, the enemy team has their win condition ready. Okay, so now... you know, we talked about pressing Shadowy Duel here.

This would have been a good time to press Shadowy Duel. In general, this is the time where you want to pre-kite.

You want to be in a position where the enemy team cannot attack you in order to delay or ruin their go. So you kind of already start... you kind of have this concept down just in general to pre-kite the go, where... okay, pretend for a second your priest did not get trapped here.

Just imagine the... the... the... the... he didn't get trapped. What you're doing right now is perfect.

You're preventing the... the enemy team from attacking you in a moment where they really want to attack you. Because they have their go ready, and you're the kill target.

All they want to do is trap your healer and go you. And what you've already started doing is really smart.

This is kind of a more advanced thing, is you're running away before the cc happens. and so remember how last week we talked about using uh we told mark that he should be using alter at high hp it's kind of the same concept yeah but on the reverse end of end of things it's like you're this is your alter time your alter time is running away before they can do their sound and this is a very shadowlands meta concept i mean of course this kind of existed in but i think players are doing this in bfa but really good players do this consistently in shadowlands where they recognize how the enemy team can win and then they run away to prevent the enemy team from doing their win condition from executing their win condition and this is perfect as rmp because everything you do is built around getting to the next setup getting to the next go and so this is really good i want to just compliment you you that you kind of have already have the right idea that when the enemy team has a go ready and you're the kill target try to just prevent them from getting their setup one thing that is going to be kind of more advanced we'll talk about pre-vanishing is that's another thing you can do to deny the enemy setup so say you're playing an rmp mirror and you know the you know the enemy team has a setup ready and you're the kill target and you have vanish ready if you don't have trinket you can pre-vanish their go to prevent them from doing their their setup yeah so that's kind of a more advanced thing but you're you're already starting to do it and i want to see you do it even like better because i think you can you you already know that the enemy team wants to win here i'm going to run away you can do the same the same thing works with vanish and it's going to be really helpful in these rmp mirrors against like these better teams that you know because you you know how to win as rmp and so you know the conditions where you're you know you can land a kill and you need to be thinking about that for the enemy team and maybe treating your vanish as a cooldown you preemptively use to deny the setup um but that's just kind of again a more advanced thing you're already starting to do it and after this i'll link you a video where we kind of talk about it in a bit more detail but i really like this adaptation and i think if you guys can start doing this as a team and this is one lesson we're going to teach fishy fingers and mark uh during this this this week is the more you can recognize enemy win conditions and preemptively position around it the better your the better your team is going to perform um but it required that and you can kind of see why we've been teaching you things in these particular orders right so first week we started with offense and then we started we talked about defense positioning is kind of its own defensive so to speak and and and offensive at the same time like positioning helps you do your offensive things better and helps you do your defensive things better and you can't really understand the value of positioning until you truly understand the value of your offense and defensive tools um that makes sense yeah yeah so i just want to say that was really good really really smart that you're already starting to do this but you know again think of other ways you can do this in other matchups like against rogue mage right you can pre-kite ago or you can pre-vanish ago and i think that'll get you really really far in these matchups where you just get absolutely crushed by by damage you know um because you're squishy rogues are the one of the squishiest classes right you know you know from experience how quickly you guys kill other rogues yeah and how quickly i can die yeah yeah so really like pre-kite kiting pre-vanishing that's gonna it's gonna go really far i think in your guys's queue sessions

EP.3 POSITIONING: MAGE POV VS. DH DK

Okay, so in this matchup it's going to be very difficult for you to ever land a DB Sheep on the rest of Shaman. Especially at the start of the game when the DK pops his Necrolord thing which continuously grips you.

So, Mario, what did we talk about as far as the workarounds for this situation? Do you remember?

Yeah, okay, so the game kind of starts. Okay, first of all, I think the first goal you guys are doing is a bit weird.

Because you guys just go with a stun on a DH and nothing on the healer. I don't know what the comments were.

You guys thought you could DB him or do something. I don't know.

But I mean, you even DB defensively here which is okay, I guess. But yeah, before this all happened, you should have altered here, obviously.

It's kind of obvious. It's like an easy alter, right?

I mean, you're kind of high HP and they're pressing CD so you should just straight alter. You don't really use it.

And then you just get dropped low and it's already too late. And yeah, it's just a little bit awkward.

Because also you see the Shaman isn't really purging you. But he doesn't really do much.

So, I mean, you would actually keep the alter up. Like what I would do in this exact situation is I would just alter and I would just blink to the opposite pillar of the Shaman.

Like you can use either Shema or your Fox. I mean, your Soul Shade would probably be better.

But like I would just alter and blink away. Then if the Shaman wants to purge you, he has to come out of the pillar to purge you.

The DH most likely won't get your alter because you have two buffs already. You will proc one more buff from like blinking and all these things.

And it's like it's kind of unlikely he will get the alter. He can.

But it's like so unlikely. And I mean, you guys could just kind of like not die in the opener.

Because I mean, like you're going to see in a sec. You're going to force like block and proc in a sec.

Which is obviously not so good. Also, when you use your Night Fae ability, you should try and not cancel it like you did here.

Because that was a little bit awkward. Because you would like 0.1 seconds away from getting another blink.

And then you just cancel it. Yeah.

Yeah, and I know it's a bit stressful to face these cards. But it's very hard.

And also something you could do when you use this Necro thing, DEK. You can use one Night Fae blink and then just spam one Shimmer after that.

Then you won't get soaked back in because you're going to be too far away. But yeah, then you guys do like I think your Rogue try to go on Shaman.

Doesn't really work. It's a bit random.

But yeah, generally also the way you guys should play this matchup, you guys should play a bit different. I think your Rogue should just if you really want to go DH, I think you can also go Shaman.

But if you want to go Shaman, you can go Shaman. If you want to go DH, which is fine.

Then I think your Rogue just has to stun the Shaman for you. Because I don't think it should be you like blink DBing him all the time.

If you want to do it, you need to be a bit closer to him though. But I don't think you should.

And also like, okay, so what happens is like if you're going to go like this, the Shaman might just line your Rogue. And then what you should do is you should try and kite away like if you're playing defensive, right?

Try and always kite away from the Shaman's pillar to the other side. So right now the Shaman is at the pillar in front of you.

So you should like by default run backwards because the Shaman wants to purge you. He wants to do something.

So he's going to come out, he's going to cross, he's going to pre-heal his teammates. And then you can CC him while he's crossing or while he's swapping pillars and stuff.

And then you just keep doing that the whole time. I want to add something like against these melee cleaves, you got to think that the enemy healer is kind of like a magnet.

Or the enemy DPS are like a magnet for their healers. Yeah.

So if you want to reposition the enemy healer, you do that by repositioning the enemy melee. Like if the Shaman is sticking on the pillar and is able to stay there, it's probably because you're in the center of the map.

And a lot of this game, you'll find that you spend it, the majority of this game in the center of the arena. And one of the advantages of Tol'Varon is it's so it's big enough that the enemy healer can't really stay at the pillar if you drag the DPS far enough away.

So that's one kind of workaround.

To either swapping the healer or someone else on your team landing CC on the healer and doing an effective go is you can just drag any healer, not just Arrester Shaman, off the pillar by pulling the melee far enough away that they leave, that the Shaman is forced to leave LOS and pop out to heal their DPS.

And yeah, you can see like from this position. He's never really going to land CC on the Shaman.

Like he's just behind this pillar on the other side of the map. And it's going to be impossible for you, at least by yourself, to really get a CC chain going.

He pops out momentarily here. It's also better if you're like behind on CDs like you guys are now to just, you know, have your Rogue stun the healer for you in a situation like this into midi cleaves because you already have zero CDs, so you don't really want to push in and try and you know.

Yeah, didn't we discuss that? Yeah.

I think we discussed that like kind of as a workaround too, you can just go Shaman like you can if you're finding impossible to land CC on the Shaman like with polys and like DV polys, maybe you can start just going healers more like the healer in this situation. Is that?

You guys could also play different like there's many ways to play RPA something else you can do instead of the Rogue stunning the Shaman for you, which I think he should be able to do. But if he doesn't like if you guys rather want to like make it easier for your Rogue, then your Priest can also just in-cap challenge.

Yeah. Like you can just play Chester Sphere every time.

Like he's not being hit once this whole game, so he can literally be on the pillar of the Shaman the whole game and you just count down three to one, three to one Chester Sphere and then at the same time you just TP to DH so he doesn't pre-blur and like I explained in chat or at some point already, you don't need to CC the DK necessarily because like I said, he will just trade zone on a two minute CD every anyway and like it doesn't matter.

Like if he's free, there's not much he can do. Like you can, you're tracking his blind CD, it's the only ability he can even press.

There's nothing else he can do on the go and your Rogue can trinket it because and you can maybe trinket it as well. I mean, you're not playing trinket this game, I guess, but I mean, you should probably be playing trinket, but it's whatever.

You guys wind up winning the game right here. It was kind of a troll win.

But I think like, Mark, is there in this position where it's like impossible? Yeah.

Like if you're like, land CC on the healer. Like if you're finding it really impossible, the adaptation is to, you know, change who you're going to be CCing.

I think that's kind of like the next step for you guys is you guys know the script really well.

You know how to do the 3-2-1 setups, but if you become too focused on doing the same setup over and over, it's going to be difficult to play matchups like this where the team makes it impossible to do the one setup over and over, so you need to be like willing to kind of change the strategy a little bit and maybe think of different ways to land CC on the shaman like you, like Mara said, using chastise fear for your go on the rest of shaman while you DB the melee DPS.

Otherwise, this is, yeah, this is kind of something that I mentioned a bit as well in the first part of the whole, like in the first week we met, is that your goal is obviously going to be DB one guy, chastise one guy, stun the other guy. Generally speaking.

But if we recomp your phase, it can always change who's going to do what depending on who they go on. Like this is a good example of a matchup.

Like let's say they go on your mage, then your priest can just chastise fear the healer, you can DB double DPS, go DH. Let's say they go on your priest, then you can do the whole goal very different because what you can do then is that the mage can just DB the shaman every time because he's going to be free.

The rogue can maybe off-stun the DK or you just chastise the DK and you stun the DH. And these kind of things.

So you can map to how the game goes. I mean, you guys end up winning this game, but you have to think about it a bit like this.

You guys end up winning this game without landing a single CC outside of like a DB and like a stun on the shaman. You don't land a single fear on him.

You don't land a single sheep on him. You don't blind him.

And you guys still win the game, which is, I mean, it happens sometimes you win a bit fluke it happens, but it's not supposed to be like that. Obviously, obviously you're supposed to actually land CC and do something.

And like I said, I mean, you just change it. It's like how you do to go.

And I think, I think as you guys become more comfortable playing the comp and playing with each other, you'll start to recognize that. Yeah, it's okay to change your roles and change who is doing what.

I mean, of course you always want to figure out what you're doing in the starting room. Right?

I mean, we talked, we talked about that before. Just having some sort of general plan game plan going into the game is really important, especially on your first go.

But if something is going wrong, like it is in this game where it's impossible to CC the shaman. You'll.

You'll literally have to change what your roles are for, you know, who is CCing who again, this is kind of more advanced. And so you guys are at that level where I think you guys can start doing this.

You guys obviously know how to do the goes, but you need to be kind of willing to change how the goes work throughout the game.

But I think the main takeaway from this too, that I want, I want you to remember Mark is just if you're having difficulty CCing the healer, think about if the healer is CCing, if the healer is staying on a pillar, try to drag them off the pillar by kiting in a direction that pulls the melee far away from the healer.

So he's forced to pop out because from this position, standing in the center of the map, that shaman's never, he never has to leave the pillar ever. And you know, you want to just be thinking of where you can sort of pull them away.

You want to kite in a way that pulls them off the pillar as often as possible. And that even applies to you, Rocky.

Like if you're getting trained by like two melee. Yeah.

If you, you know, one of the best things you can do is actually pull the melee like into a corner or like to, to force the enemy healer off their own pillar to continue like healing their partners. But we'll go, we'll go to the next game.

Just a little question. So I can, I can, I should try to chest the spear also a shaman because I have a trauma running.

I can do a shaman as a priest because I get always fucked if I do it. So in tooth, especially, I played a lot of it with a hunter.

What can the shaman do to you? He roots me, then he slows me, then he kicks me, then he hexes me, then he stuns me.

Hex is irrelevant. Hex is irrelevant.

He shouldn't, he won't really fear you because I mean, what are you going to cast while you're running in for a goal? The whole point is, I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know.

The whole point was when you're not the target, you can just stay at this pillar. And how is he going to do anything to you?

You're just going to feather, move around the pillar, peek, chest size and fear. There's like no, like there's no fail potential.

Like you can every second go, you can also every second or third go, you're going to have two of shadows. So what you can do is you're going to store somewhere, spam chest size, get it to you to go.

Like you don't, I'm just saying, I'm just giving you guys an option. You don't have to go like this.

Your rogue can also stun him. But also, like I said, this kind of thing.

But also, like I said, this kind of depends on how your mage moves, because if your mage drags them away, the shaman is going to have to cross eventually. And when he has to cross, it's going to be very easy for you to land something on him because he's going to have to move across.

So it's kind of obvious where he's going to be. And he's not going to have a pillar to line.

And then you can just run in with feather, chest size. And while they like, if you max range chest size, by the time you reach him, you know, the chest size is not going to be out, not going to be over it.

Then you can just land a fear. So I should kind of stand there.

Where I'm standing now from the beginning. I mean, where you're standing right now.

Well, right now, no, this is right now. Well, I mean, it depends on this, like, how you got there.

But no, I meant more like you're going to play basically on the pillar of the shaman. So you're going to stand basically where he stands just on the other side of that pillar.

What they have to do then is they have to go you if you do that. And then you're going to make sure the new rogue image can take the role back of crowd controlling the shaman.

Yeah, I think I think about I think about it like this, like the shaman doesn't want to be close to the mage and he doesn't want to be close to the priest. Like either one of you guys can see the shaman like with either DB sheep or chest ice fear.

So one of you needs to, like, step up and pressure the shaman like in this situation with your own CC. And right now it's impossible for the mage to do.

To do that because he's just getting destroyed.

So Rocky, that's where you can really help your team is by pushing in and doing the work of the CC for your your mage, because right now, like, yeah, in a perfect world, you would just test us here to shaman at least every time you have it, because your chest size fear doesn't really do anything on anyone else.

If you want to go to it like it doesn't do anything on a DK because he is lichborn for every second fear. And like I said, DK is kind of irrelevant anyway.

And it doesn't do anything on a DH either because I mean, you're obviously you don't even chest as the DH because you're going to go on him unless you want to chest as him into the goal.

So it would probably like, okay, I'm going to tell you the best two ways to go into this comp would be either your chest as the DH, your rogue stuns the shaman, you go on the DH or your chest as fear the shaman, you just stun the DH.

That's the two ways and you can DB the DH before maybe, but there's no like, like it shouldn't be the mage when he's the one being trained, generally speaking. So it's kind of up to you.

Yeah, because there's nothing to chest, you did because it's on CD right now, but it's like nothing to chest as I mean, like I said, a DK is irrelevant, and you can't really CC him anyway. And yeah, this is nothing really to do.

But like I said, yeah, you can squad. And the main takeaway is like, okay, when you see resto shaman, you don't have like, that doesn't mean now you should chest ice fear every resto shaman.

What it means is, if your mage is unable to land the CC himself. It's one of the adaptation you guys can make, like in Yeah, in this case, adaptation.

Yeah, yeah. I'm sure if I should push in into the rest of the shaman as well.

Because I think against Paladin, I understand it, please as well. But with Paladin, I always had a hard time, but it will.

I mean, he has to heal the DPS anyway. So at one point, he has to come out, then I can just chest him.

Yeah, like this. I just said so point of the kiting thing, right?

Like I said, if your mage drags them out and like drags basically runs away from the shaman's pillar, he's gonna have to come out if he's gonna stay behind this pillar. The whole time, of course, it's gonna be hard for you to land something because he could just run around the whole pillar the whole time, right?

You're just gonna run after him and it's gonna be awkward. Like both of you guys are not gonna heal, but your team is gonna die while you're not healing while the enemy team is gonna live because I mean, you guys have to do a go to kill someone while they spam PV damage.

But that's what I mean. That's why your mage has to obviously carry the performance.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that's the thing about positioning a bit in a way where he just runs away from the enemy healer.

It's kind of the same principle. When you play double caster, it's even more important there, where the guy that gets hit always runs away from the enemy healer to drag him out.

And the guy that doesn't get hit, basically stands in between. You can't exactly copy that because the rogue is not gonna stand in between, right?

But that's kind of like the principle on how to play like the guy that gets hit should run away. Then you obviously have to put into consideration with positioning a bit.

If you're about to. to do a go and your team base maybe wants you to db the heater at one time then obviously you shouldn't use your blink to get away but that's like a situational thing like here go back a bit will like this is an example of in my opinion a really bad blink um because even though like i said just stop for a sec let's go back and stop for a sec um even though you're not like like i said you're not supposed to always db the healer but you could technically just turn around right now if you move your cat if you drag your camera 180 you could look another side the shaman is one blink away from you you could just blink db him the dks also know what maybe you can stun him or something or like you can chest test him i don't think you have it right now but generally speaking that's how you what you could do and you could just blink db the healer and you could cheap him but instead you blink backwards when you could do you could just do a go now and you actually have nothing on the healer you even if you rogue would stun the healer for you you can't blink away here this is not the right time to blink away you're also high hp so there's no reason to necessarily like there's no reason to you have to blink right now i i think um i think uh it's very tempting always to blink defensively away because it you know that you it makes sense like you're taking damage i want to blink away and avoid that damage but you got to realize like you're playing rmt you still need to do a go why not use that blink not only to avoid damage but to help you set up cc and you can actually do your go you know like and this this is something i've seen in a few of your games is you like to do these defensive blinks and again it kind of makes sense like oh i want to avoid damage but now you can't really do anything like now you're in a position where you can't cc the shaman at all you get gripped back anyway if you just blinked and peeked ducked behind this this like this pillar and db the shaman if you had blinked here db the shaman you'd be out of line of sight and you could actually land cc on the rest of shaman um does that make sense mark no yeah that looks right yeah yeah nice i think i was just panicking because i had nothing yeah yeah it's it's it's very tempting right in in these situations i know are really stressful but you got to think about struggling against the decay it will yeah we will look at another game later where you guys face jungle where it's going to be kind of the same thing where i feel like you guys are just a little bit lost because you don't really know how to do like one solution is tell your rogue just on the healer for you say yo yo i need help i can't land cc on my own i can't db it's like too much like i'm getting i'm dying too hard and i can't really make it there or the adaptation would be like i said earlier i mean this is what you guys do here technically you just swap on the healer which is not bad you can also just like i think in a like if i face this comp playing myself i think i would probably go shaman maybe i don't know maybe dh can just die though because he doesn't have a so he doesn't get the versa but like i said going shaman is definitely very like possible here like it's not bad at all yeah and remember like your nova is really good in this matchup too like so going shaman even something as simple as your nova is like kind of cross cc for your team um is that kind of accurate to say maro like yeah demon hunter is gonna get ruined like messed up by nova and i think so to dks so that's just one thing to consider for example yeah if you would go shaman here you could just know where the dh want to go and then maybe he could reverse himself but i mean he kind of wants to reverse the mind games or whatever so it's kind of a little awkward

EP.3 POSITIONING: MAGE POV VS. JUNGLE

okay one adaptation two let's talk about going priest and opener yeah i was gonna ask what do you guys like what is your thought process behind the opener you guys do in the jungle because i'm actually just like you guys actually do good goals into most comms i just don't understand what your whole thought process is in the jungle because the way you guys open right now okay i'm just gonna explain quickly how you open and you tell you what you think the way you guys open right now is that you guys open on the hunter basically without any cc on the priest you sometimes d beam into sheep which gets stopped because the fellow is free of course um and then you open on the hunter and then you swap priest after but you don't combust the hunter so you i mean you you guys get to ross most of the time but in theory you shouldn't but what's like the idea behind that because it's like i said i mean you will see here it kind of confused me for sure yeah because the way the way into a good jungle you have to open you could open hunter and go priest after but the main thing is that you have to combust someone to force ross and then you have to swap like you guys get called to get frost here because that team is like not reacting calling but you shouldn't you obviously shouldn't get the sheep as well because yes the the definitely sorry can't talk and like then the swap is good just like a good swap i actually like to swap but i don't know i don't understand the whole like the way the game is going because you guys i watched a few during games and you guys always do the same opener where you just stand the hunter and you just spam damage on him but you don't bust like it's just rogue damage and then they most of the time ross but they like i said in theory he should not ross it's not a good trade from him so i think like i said like i said the best opener you guys should do and that's what most armpits do into jungle is this you run on top of the priest as a mage you pv him a bit they will not open you the fellow will not open you because it would be four then you just pv the priest you try spells they once or twice hopefully you get his power at 42 just so he's like a little bit less health you pv him like one to one fireball then you open on the priest um you combust him they will most likely trade ross um and then you do the swap and then what you do is that he will probably ross and maybe he's gonna have to drink it anyway maybe he's gonna get away with just ross but it depends a bit how the opener is um and then you try and seize him off either with blind with a sheep with a fear maybe most likely it's going to be fear um and then you swap out of the fear you swap on the hunter that's what most teams do like you guys don't have to do the exact same but that's basically the standard opener every like three two plus or three k plus amp he does into jungle okay so here's where you start you're forced to kite so this is where the game gets really dodgy because you get thoughts stolen um in just a second here and so here's the thought still so hey can you go back like 15 seconds quickly before yeah one quick thing um okay so you but like just to add on like how this game went you guys do kind of get the cds you should get because you get trinket and i think the pc even pierces and you do get ross so you guys are in a good spot by the way even though the opener is a bit sketchy you guys still are in a good spot um this ring also you did a really good alter i want to say one thing quickly you did a really good alter everything you did so far aside from like the way you guys do the opener it's really good like individually you don't do any mistakes um i wouldn't recommend doing this ring um i know you're doing it defensively but the problem is if you're facing a good priest what he would do now is you would just run into the ring and death it or even tank it because he's deer and it would make it impossible for you guys to cc the priest at least with sheep for the next 30 seconds or something because the ds would run off and then i would just get be awkward um i would only do this ring if the priest is fully d art just like you can think about it it's not like a big thing but it's kind of a small thing yes it's kind of it's kind of more advanced like the priest doesn't the priest could have outplayed you here like super hard by running into this ring dr himself and then thought stealing you then you'd be unable to cc the priest at all for like 30 seconds 40 seconds yeah i mean even 40 almost yeah um but at the main point of this game i'm going to show you guys in a second what do you guys do when you guys are thought stone now you guys see your thoughts on okay all you do right now so far the kiting and everything everything you do is fine you can't really do much more as a mate right now um but this is like a scenario where you guys have to communicate better you guys have to talk about what you're gonna do because your thoughts on and feels like the last 15 seconds or 10 seconds your team is running around waiting for something to happen but you can't make anything happen as a major because like i said your thoughts stolen so you can't do anything and you guys are just a little bit confused of it and what you want to do then you end up doing this preschool which is like okay but it's a bit bad you guys could have just gone priest in stuff you wanted to go priest and have to go hunter first um and yeah then you guys just end up dying but the reason why you guys lose this game is just because you guys had too long like the time was too long where you guys didn't do anything because of the thought still so like something you guys should do like positioning wise the game was okay i would say um something you guys should do is you guys should talk in the situation and try and find a way to do a goal without you know you having to cast the sheep so like a good example would be you chastise fear the priest and then you go on the hunter or you chastise fear the pharaoh then you go on the priest because the hunter doesn't need to be covered right the hunter doesn't do anything when you go it's like an example of like hunter is a bit like dk you know hunter doesn't do anything like it doesn't matter if the hunter is free hunter is even less important all he has is a kick is most important on things that can shut down your kill like warriors warriors can shut down your kill with a billion different things um and like so you need to cross cc really well against warriors but hunters what are they gonna do like trap you you know and then they don't trap your healer yeah just yeah exactly but just look if you like look at this game just look at what happens from this point on your priest is in a trap for another six seconds you get sheep to this whatever they're all off the Technically you guys could have done a goal by now.

Like you could have been something. I mean, you guys, the best thing here would have probably been to trade block a bit earlier as well.

Because obviously it's going to be proc and block and everything. Like the play would have been to this block here and tell your rogue to stop the MD.

Does block get rid of thought steal too? No, no it doesn't.

But yeah, you guys just end up doing nothing for too long. Like even here, you're still like now is the first time you're doing something.

Then you're doing a goal while you're in the block. And then it's just awkward.

Then the hunter obviously doesn't take any damage. You don't have combust ready yet either.

And like I said, then you guys try and go on the priest, but it's already kind of too late. But like the whole time where, you know, your thoughts sort of like your team, like you guys just don't really react to it and just don't do anything kind of.

Yeah, and it's just a lot of it comes down to communication. Again.

As in communicating when these things happen and then just adapting around it. I guess the biggest thing is not being too focused on the scripts because so many things can go wrong.

Like thoughts, deals and perfect example of things that something that can completely ruin your scripted setups. The other thing, too, is Mara mentioned this earlier, but I think it's not that big a deal.

But I think you cancel your soul shape in order to blank here. Let's see.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's just kind of a.

Min max type thing that you should consider. Try to save your blanks when you're fighting defensively and prioritize using soul shape.

Let's see. So I think you saw your soul shape here and then I mean, you're taking a lot of damage.

I mean, this thing is OK. I mean, technically, if you want to, if you want to like to quick thing about positioning, what you should have done here as well is I mean, technically shouldn't even have went this way.

Like when you do this blink, like go back a bit after like the first blink, like here when you trinkets like just keep playing, you drink it here, then you blink right now where you should be running, by the way, is behind the wooden thing, you know, in the back, if you see that because two reasons, first of all, your priest is going to get trapped off this.

So there's nothing like he's going to sit CC for a while unless you please communicate. OK, I'm going to trinket save you.

There's no reason for you technically to run back to him. Like I would just use my soul shape here, run behind the small wooden thing, just sit there for a second, wait for the trap to fade up, be like three, four seconds left.

Then I would try it. Then I would try and move backwards.

But what you're doing is like a small thing. Like I said, it's also stressful to face jungle as a mage.

But you're just going to blink in the open, run like one circle, but you're not avoiding anyone while you're running the circle because they're all on top of you. They're all hitting you like the fellows on top of you.

You're going to be in the hunter's line in one second anyway. And you're kind of tanking them.

You could have maybe avoided more damage here. But it's like a smaller thing.

Probably end up being a CD anyway. Yeah, this is just kind of an unfortunate change.

Yeah, it's just a hard situation. Like I said, it's also just a bad kind of trade situation where you guys should have traded something earlier.

Now I would have altered. But yeah, you guys kind of just.

Yeah, but I think it's enough. It's like we I think we talked about this game enough.

EP.3 POSITIONING: MAGE POV VS. RET WAR

So okay, good adaptation here, like not opening into Sank obviously. And you guys are starting to recognize like buffs like this which is really good.

Um, so that was really helpful. Let's see how this opener goes.

Oh, I mean this this gets war bandered. Again this kind of demonstrates that how insane warriors are.

Like if you don't, and how important it is to just be like really precise with your cross CC against warriors, which is unfortunate. That just gets broken up by the openers, kind of gets ruined a bit by this.

Banner. Yeah, this was kind of good.

Like everything you guys said was fine, it's just unlucky because the warrior banner said, you still end up forcing shaman to shrink it here I think. And this is a really good altar, we talked about this altar.

Yeah this altar is good. When you get hit also it covers your combustible so it doesn't get dispelled.

Something you guys should look for is the tide. You don't kill a shaman here because of the healing tide.

Yeah, yeah. It's the main reason.

I mean he also gets sacked. The main reason here is that the healing tide is up, you should just use one pyro on it, your rogue should off kill it.

It's very high priority to kill tides. I think that was a kind of a good adaptation by your fishery going up here.

I like this grip a lot actually. So that's really nice.

But yeah, healing tide too. You've got to treat it like war banner.

Like try to just kill it instantly because it's so much healing. Yeah, you'll never kill through healing tide because it also heals more when people are low.

Then you guys do a good go I think. I think you guys actually forced trinket and ant bubble here.

They overlap a bit because the guy drops a bit low. Now you're gonna be a bit stuck because you used a blink to get there which was obviously fine.

At this point for example, if we look at this exact point, I don't like that you're moving back to the shaman soil. I don't like that you're moving back to the shaman soil.

I don't like that you're moving back to the shaman soil.

I don't like that you're moving back to the shaman soil. like I don't like I would just keep trying to drag him out to like make him come loose to come we go away from the pit I think you're gonna end up killing him here anyway because he landed db sheep and like the whole goal was to get away to go when this was good but I would probably run a bit further away just to drag him out a bit more and just try go back to this concept of like making someone be off the pillar because the good shaman would not just get db tier like he probably has flashcraft ready as well maybe doesn't the well-hanging preflash has it and he probably could have avoided to go a bit hmm the shaman just got really greedy like came out and tried to hex but you think so you get the CC for free I'm also like fishy fingers MC's the warrior and then the shamans totem roots the warrior after at the end of the MC really cool yeah just like a really cool way to end the game yeah just like a really cool way to end the game just like a really cool way to end the game just like a really cool way to end the game just like a really cool way to end the game really randomly good thing that really randomly good thing that really randomly good thing that happens you would have intervened yeah happens you would have intervened yeah happens you would have intervened yeah it's pretty funny but like I think this it's pretty funny but like I think this it's pretty funny but like I think this game is overall like a massive game is overall like a massive game is overall like a massive improvement from like the first you know improvement from like the first you know improvement from like the first you know week you played and especially this week you played and especially this week you played and especially this alter time was like really insane like alter time was like really insane like alter time was like really insane like using this altar both like offensively using this altar both like offensively using this altar both like offensively to cover your combustion and to cover your combustion and defensively to avoid damage because they're popping all their cooldowns right and so it's good to alter high like this, it's really perfect actually.

But anyway Mark do you have any questions maybe for Maro or for us as far as maybe more mage specific positioning things are concerned? Not really no, I just don't know what to do against the DKs at all.

It just feels like everything that I do they just either grit me or...

Yeah like I said earlier one adaptation is to when they use the soak back thing like the next ability it's same CD as Nightfair ability so what you can do is you can just trade them and you always like blink once when you get gripped you just wait for the grip you blink you just keep doing that a couple of times you're going to get away a bit but not really.

Another thing you can do is use the Nightfair blink into a shimmer to be out of range but you need to make sure he doesn't have death grip because the next you're going to be out of range from the necro gripper not from the... Like actual death grip.

Well yeah maybe going to be for like two seconds but he can probably cat drop. And I don't know that you guys just have to do like the best way to beat like a comp where you're struggling to like live into is to do good goals yourself.

It's kind of the same principle into the DHTK as it is into or like DKs in general as it is into jungle if you're forcing good goals you're doing good goals yourself they have to play defensive you're gonna live longer by default. If that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah.

Your offense is your defense a lot of times as RMP. Like for example yeah like a good example is let's say you face a TS3 and you're doing such a good goal that you're forcing a warrior string in an opener that means he can't just mindlessly follow you because he could die in a bomb right later on.

Like these kind of things matter a lot and they change the way the other team has to play and then you're gonna you know live longer by doing a good goal yourself in opener like this like an example maybe of like something that could happen. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah well alright. Yeah I have two questions for me. yeah this one I think there's kind of a after I had seen this before.

Good idea. I could have a couple different versions.

You're right with that? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah OK. Then the important thing would be to take the right player and just get him to be the right player when they are playing as a go allpoints yeah.

Yeah, good point. That means they're just now having to push back lower than want to stay up allykasek but

EP.3 POSITIONING: PRIEST POV VS. SHATTER

So one of the things that we're going to try to teach you in this matchup is how you can use Pillars, Greater Fade, and Holy Ward to really prevent the enemy team from ever doing anything. And so Chaz, can you maybe just tell Rocky how he should be using Pillars combined with Holy Ward?

Yeah, so now you see the mages in Invis right now. So what you want to do is you want to put up Holy Ward like now, instantly, so that he cannot run up and DB you out of Invis and start to go already.

So right now, as you see, well, the DB breaks, but it lands a fear, but in another world, you would have been DB sheep there. You could have...

You could have Holy Warded and then Faded even, so you may have like completely avoided all of his CC. I believe you actually instantly dispelled the Rogue there.

So you dispelled the Go anyway, which is good. So we're going to quit.

So quiz question for Rocky. Why is this a bad Holy Ward?

Like, why is this the wrong time to Holy Ward, do you think? Um, I guess because the mage can't spell steal it.

That's one reason it's bad, but there's kind of a bigger reason why this Holy Ward is a problem. Because, um, because their Go is just over and they want to unneed it for the next Go?

Yeah. So you're on DR, like you're on PolyDR.

You're basically immune to CC from everything on their team besides Hodge for them. They don't have Hodge's eye, they don't have stun, they don't have anything.

There's no reason to like Holy Ward now. You should have saved it a bit because you're also facing a comp that has two spell steals, like Priest, well two dispells.

Priest has dispelled the mage's spell steal. Um, and yeah, it's just kind of like, but can you go back 10 seconds?

I wanted to see something. Like around 10 seconds.

Okay. Like this whole Go, the enemy's team, the enemy team's Go here is like, it's really sketchy because you have so many ways to avoid CC still at this point.

You know? I think that they even forced Cloak in the first place.

It's not really normal. You had Holy Ward, you had Death, you had Fate.

And I think, I think something that's really important is that you try and get used to using Fate a bit to avoid CC. I mean, you did end up using it late on this Go, but just in general, um, Fate is really OP because like I said, you can't just use a defense.

You can also use it like offensively in a sense to not get CC'd and do a Go yourself or like just avoid CC. Um, and yeah, you think you just have to get used to that a bit.

And yeah, since this week's topic is like positioning and we want to talk a bit about that, um, into a comp like this, maybe you didn't have many games to do this yet, but your main job as a priest to comp like this would be to not get CC'd.

And what you're doing in a lot of the games is you're putting yourself into positions where you can get easily CC'd. Like this is a position right now.

Right now you're putting yourself in a position to get CC'd very easily for basically no reason. Like, like what are you trying to accomplish right now?

You're trying to DR fear a mage and you end up getting sheeped yourself because of it. And that's like not a good trade.

Even if you get this DR fear, which he can blink as well, by the way, like you could have tested him into, but he could have just blinked the DR fear as well.

But it's just not really worth like you, like, yeah, like I said, your main, your main goal is to not get CC'd and you're trying to putting yourself into positions to get CC'd the entire game. Now you do the thing again where you Holywood when, you know, you're just being put on DR.

There's nothing ready. Like silence already, stun is already, nothing's ready.

And even if they go, you have every CD ready. Um, so, so yeah.

And so you want to use your, so ideally you're using Holyward before like you're on DR. You want to use it so they can't CC you.

And so Chaz, can, can you tell them how like you should use pillars to. Yeah.

So they, you have to be in the line for you for them to take the Holywood off. The spell, right?

So if you, if you go like a peek at the pillar and just do instant spells while you have Holyward up, it kind of delays the go. And if they do get it at some point, then you can be ready with greater failure and you have the weak or now.

So, so whenever you see Holyward phase, you can just be ready to fade. So just to give you, yeah, you just go ahead Will.

Basically your main interactions. And the only time you should really be pushing.

In and pushing into your enemy team is when you have like a really like good go, like ready. Uh, outside of that, from the Holy priest perspective in, in matchups like this, you want to avoid CC and you're not going to avoid any CC.

If you're standing in the open. It is a little bit like facing on the side of the pillar right now, right?

Now you should be on the left pillar to be like on this screen frozen. Like you should be on the left pillar.

That's where you should be standing. Cause you would be able to reach all of your teammates and you would be able to avoid everything.

Um, just to give you like a kind of like understanding on how it works. Like as a Holy priest to get CC by a major loan is physically impossible because what you can do is basically what has explained already is you just probably what yourself, you only peak, you don't run out.

And then what's going to happen, even if he gets the Holy, what, what you can do is you can just line the mage spam shadow at death on him. So if he blinks and tries to DB, you're going to shadow with death to DB.

And then you can, then he's going to start casting sheep. Then you still have death and fade ready though.

And he's going to, he's already had to use one blink by that time. So like to get CC as a Holy priest, you can basically make yourself to see immune to every mage by like alone.

He can never CC you. So that already makes the ghost for them a lot more like awkward to do because they're going to have to either go on you or they're going to have to just go a silence or something.

But like a mage can never CC you if you play good. It's like impossible for mage to CC you.

You got to think of like how you can annoy the mage as much as possible. Like in this matchup, like the mage is going to be really frustrated trying to CC you alone because you have all these things.

And so if you just line of sight a lot and peek out with Holy ward and you know, greater fade if, if needed, as Mara said, the mage is never going to be able to CC you by himself. And so as long as you're, you know, using line of sight correctly.

Um, you just got to think of how. Like really focus on avoiding mage in this matchup.

It's kind of an unfortunate like loss, but I think a lot of this, a lot of this game was just snowballed from the fact that majority of this game you spend kind of in the center of the map. Like very rarely are you ever pretty much never throughout this game.

Like here you kind of go to a pillar. But here you're full DR this whole when you go to the pillar.

Yes. You know, My problem is I, I'm not a mage.

I'm, I'm not used to greater fade using like preemptively because when I normally played freeze till this point, I always had the mindset. It does not really matter if I get this with D because I will get it anyways, sooner or later.

And because I don't know, he will sweep me at one point. So I just get it.

And then we trade cooldowns. And then I'm on DR and then we can do our go again.

I mean, yeah, I mean, I can promise you into this comp if he gets a sheep on DR on you, you will lose 100% of 100 games. If the mage can just freely sheep you every go, you will never win a single game into this.

Like it's not possible. Like they will just kill you if you land a sheep every DR.

I mean, you will 100% lose. But that's a kind of, I mean, I don't know.

It's kind of a weird mindset to be honest. Because like I said, Holy Priest is literally the 100% of the game.

Holy Priest is literally the hardest healer in the entire game by far to CC. CCing a Holy Priest, like I said, even like if I face a good Holy Priest, like just to give you an example of like me playing, like let's say I face Meh.

I promise you, I cannot CC him alone. It's impossible.

It's completely impossible to CC a Holy Priest because it's just too many things they have. And also the whole mechanic change they did to Shadow at Death where it's not a, you know, not a spell anymore that you can just press.

It's a spell you have to like cast on someone that made it so much more OP. Because now you can just do this thing where you line behind a pillar, you just spam Shadow at Death, Arena 3.

Or you just target the mage because you probably don't have that. You just target the mage, spam Shadow at Death on him.

He can't do anything. Because he has to blink for it.

Then you're going to Death to DB and there's like, you know, then it's like you already Death to DB. By that time you can fade, you can Fee him, you can Chastise him, you can do so many things, you know.

It's like Holy Ward. It's like so many things.

And Chaz, what did you say for using Holy Ward in RMP Mirrors? What did you say?

In RMP Mirrors you want to use it right out of the gate. Because...

Well, okay, so you have the Weakle, right? You Holy Ward yourself.

The Rogue will try to CC you. So he will stun the Holy Ward off and then stun you again.

But in Dead or Global you can use it. You can use Fade to delay the go.

But then what about... My problem is to get in combat quickly enough.

But your mage should run in and you should put your Holy Ward on yourself. Your mage should run in and get combat.

And then you should just like press Renew or something on your mage and you should be combat. So on Mount he runs in and just tries to get combat or...

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think we already always played with Stealth, Double Stealth.

And that's why I wanted to know... Yeah, I do that too.

And then I want to Holy Ward. Yeah, if you do that, you don't have to wait until someone gets combat to Holy Ward yourself.

You can also do that. If your team does that, which is...

I think it's a bit worse, but it's okay. Then what you should do, if you both go Stealth, the mage should still try and get combat from the priest.

But he usually just does it in Stealth and he Living Bombs him when he reaches him. And then you should just trade combat.

You just field him or do something on him to get combat. And then you Holy Ward yourself from that point on.

That's the second option. In the middle of the game, outside of the opener, you want to protect your Holy Ward with pillars and with even greater fade.

Well, buffs. You can do buffs as well.

If you feel like you're getting purged by someone, if a mage is trying to spell steal, like dispel your Holy Ward, what you can do is you can just look at what buff he's dispelling and just reapply that buff. A good example is you can rebuff Powered Fortitude.

You can be rebuffed. Renew.

And I mean, you can spam shield, but you can shield once and then you can cover your buff a lot. It's very un-intriguing, very hard for a mage to actually get the Holy Ward off.

It's completely... It's just lucky if he gets it.

If you cover well, it's literally luck because you will just rebuff the same buff he got every time. And he has a one to five chance every time he spells steals.

And after four spells, it's his UUUM. So, I mean, he probably won't have full mile height.

I mean, he won't have full mile height anymore at this point. So, like I said, it's very hard for a mage to do anything against a good Holy Priest.

Yeah. I think...

But in general, I want a Holy Ward if I'm running off DR again. Because I mean, I get everything.

But if I'm in this situation and then they pop cooldowns and everyone drops and I'm like a little bit panicking. And then I'm not used to doing that.

And then I'm always... Then my Boomer reaction kicks in as well.

And then I'm always too late to create a Fate or to Holy Ward in time. And then if this should happen, I have to wait till my DRs are off and then I just try again.

Would that be the correct play then? Well, okay.

So, what's kind of more important is that you kind of keep track in your head of when you... Like, what's the best way to do it.

Yeah. As a healer, ideally, you want to kind of keep track in your head of when's the last time you've been CC'd.

Like, so for instance, you just got poly'd. I think you're going to get poly'd again.

You should kind of, at this point, be thinking of the next time you can get poly'd. You have a DR tracker up here.

That's one thing you can stare at. But like, ideally, you should be at the point where you can kind of, in your head, without even looking at this, kind of feel when you can get poly'd again.

And... You can also dictate when you're going to get poly'd again.

You can also dictate when you're going to get CC'd by your own positioning. If you're staying max 40 yards away at a pillar, you're going to see very early on that the enemy team wants to CC you.

That the mage wants to CC you, because he's going to have to move into your direction, right? He's going to have to move.

He can't just... Like, a mage can't magically blink twice 40 yards.

Even if he double blinks, it's still a mini global in between. So, you're still going to have time to react after the first blink.

So, he can't just cross the entire map in zero seconds. Right.

He can't just cross the entire map in 0.1 seconds, be on top of you. So, you can also kind of pre-see when a mage or any other class is moving into you.

Yeah. Like, it's very obvious.

Like, if you have... Like I said, it's all up to positioning.

If you put yourself in a good position, very far away at a pillar as a priest, or any healer. I mean, it would be the same for a Raster Shaman or anything.

It's very obvious and easy to see when they're going to do something. And if they pop cooldowns and my teammates drop low.

And I just spend... And I just spam instants and go out in, out in.

Instant out in. And it's not enough.

Shall I tell them to pop death cooldowns? Or what shall I do?

No, you can... If there's no CS, you can cast.

But as long as you're making it a little bit harder for them to CC you. Yeah, you can't always play perfect.

You won't always, like... Just because we had, like...

We talked about this now. You're not always going to avoid every CC that hits you.

And it's not possible to every comp. But like, this is a comp.

Like, let's say you have Holy Ward up still. Then you can even peek out.

Like, what is going to happen? Worst case, the mage will DB off the Holy Ward.

And then you can still react with a fade. You know, like, there's so many...

You have fade. Like, that's what I meant at the start.

You can use fade. Fade is so OP because it makes you completely immune to everything.

You don't have to be scared about anything when you fade. Like, even, like, can you go back 10 seconds?

Well, maybe we could have even faded some here. I didn't even...

I'm not even sure. But you probably could have faded some here.

Like, no. Go from this point.

Like, now, for example. I mean, let's see.

I mean, you have Holy Ward in 4. I mean, do you see the priest running to you?

If you actually paid close attention to the priest running to you, you could have just faded this field. It was kind of obvious.

By the way, the mage just ringed his own healer and not me. Yeah, shit.

The point... The main point here that we're trying to say is if you play, like, near a pillar.

If you're playing kind of defensively with your positioning, it makes it very obvious to see when the enemy team wants to CC you. Because, like, remember that one game on Runes of Lordaeron that we talked about last week?

Where you're on one side of the tomb and the paladin is on the other side of the tomb and they mount up on their horse and run towards you? It's very clear what they want to do.

And so, like, the same concept applies to fire mages. If you're playing on a pillar kind of far away from the mage...

And they blink towards you, it's very clear that they're trying to CC you. So, you know, that gives you more opportunities to press Holy Ward or to press Greater Fade.

Anything that prevents you from needing to use your PvP trinket and avoid the CC. Like, so, the main takeaway is if you have careful positioning near a pillar in between these goes, you basically make it impossible for the enemy team to CC you.

Especially, like, a comp like this. Because the mage...

The mage... It's going to be almost impossible, as Mara said, for the mage to CC you alone.

And if you're near a pillar, it makes it really obvious when the mage wants to CC you because he's going to blink towards you and try to DB, you know, whatever.

And so, if you kind of play careful with your positioning and, you know, peek out with your Holy Ward up and maybe peek out with Greater Fade if needed, like, you can avoid a lot of CC from the mage because during this whole game, you basically get CC'd for free.

So, like, this mage is probably thinking, like, oh, wow, this is an easy game. Like, I don't have to do...

This mage barely has to, like, put effort into CCing you because you're in the open. But if you're just behind the pillar, now the mage actually has to, like, put a lot of effort into landing any CC on you.

And it's not just mages that this is good against. It's also, like, kind of good against jungle cleave, too.

Like, similar concept. Like, if you avoid the hunter or if you are playing far away from the hunter and priest while they're trying to do their goes, like, you can prevent yourself from getting CC'd.

I don't know exactly how the jungle matchup works, but it's kind of a similar concept. I mean, it's a bit...

Yeah, I mean, it's jungle. It's a little bit harder to do that because you kind of have to heal, otherwise you just die.

But, I mean, the general idea is still that, you know, the concept where your Holy Ward is still there, you can't do it yourself. You see it being, you know, dispelled or draw it off or stunned off, then you fade.

So you delay the goal. You try to not get CC'd as long as possible.

You know, that's kind of the idea. The idea cannot be, I'll just tank the CC and, like, let's see what happens.

My team has to trade. I mean, because if you just trade, trade, trade, trade, trade, then basically what happens in this game where you guys lose to a shatter in, like, two minutes, but they don't even do anything.

They just do damage. And you guys just react to it.

Because you just get CC'd on Dia. One thing that I think, actually, I just thought of this.

One thing that I think will help you tremendously, Rocky, is if you stop tracking friendly nameplates. Only track enemy nameplates.

I just realized you're doing this. It's too confusing.

At least I think it's way too confusing as a healer. Chaz, do you track friendly nameplates or just enemy?

No, I only track opponents. Too messy, otherwise.

Yes. Rocky, I think that's immediately one of the best things you can do to increase your damage.

Some people also use, like, very small friendly nameplates, like mini nameplates where you only see, like, one small dot, basically. Maybe that's also something if you don't want to completely get rid of it.

But, yeah, I mean, you don't have to track friendly nameplates, to be honest. They have a mark, you know.

It's not hard to see them. And I think you can increase the size of the nameplates, too.

I think there's a setting that just makes it. Or maybe it's default.

I don't know. I use a nameplate add-on.

And maybe we should just give you a nameplate add-on that makes the enemy nameplates really big. Because, like, right now, like, it's hard to tell where anyone is.

Who the enemy is sent to, your teammates. I think that'll help you a lot, actually, now that I think about it.

And it's, like, because, yeah, I don't, like, this is a little goblin priest. Like, you can't even, like, see who this, like, nameplate is.

Just this tiny little goblin. But if this was a huge, like, white bar, you'd know that that's the priest.

And he's next to you for fear. So, we'll do that.

I think that'll help you a lot with the general... Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's really hard to see stuff in UI, generally speaking.

EP.3 POSITIONING: PRIEST POV VS. TURBO

I don't know if they're gonna go on you, but if they do you need to be ready to fly before you get stunned. But you also have to make sure you don't press fly when you get charge rooted, because then you will actually put fly on cooldown and not fly at all.

That killed me once, yeah. Yeah, let's see, I'm not sure who they're going on right now though.

I think they're going with mage. I think they're going with mage, to be honest.

Yeah, so I don't know if you're playing fly in this game either. I'm not sure.

Probably ray of hope is good here. I wish I had it, I wish I had it.

With that talent I don't really get to be honest, because if I don't heal people they still die. And I wanna use it before I get seceded.

No, I don't wanna use it. So I wanna use it if I'm not seceded?

Yes, you want to use it if you're not seceded, yes. It's almost like a...

It's almost like a... It's almost like a secondary guardian spirit.

It buffs your healing. Yeah.

It's just when there's a lot of damage on a guy and you're struggling to heal, like, basically if you're struggling to out-heal damage. That's when you wanna use it.

Because it buffs your healing. Yeah, you see it as a 50% damage healing increase.

Yeah, you... You raise someone that gets pumped, you put one serenity into it, you press some heals into it and he's not gonna die, you know, he's gonna be positive.

95% of the time, so it's not gonna be... It's not gonna be an issue.

Okay. But yeah, it's basically like guardian.

I have to... I only...

Sorry, Chaz, I don't have any... I know I have Mare...

I have a clip of Mare using flood. So maybe we'll just watch that.

No, go. And let's see if he uses it in this matchups.

I mean, it's better anyway for ChazMare. It's a bit more high-skill, you know, it's like high-skill gameplay.

Ugh. Okay.

See? He immediately...

He gets gripped in, he immediately just flies. And like...

So let's see. Okay.

Pay attention to the way Mare is like playing. Like he knows this DK wants to grip him.

Like he knows this team just wants to do the biggest, like scariest go on him. So let's see.

Once he gets his mind games off, he's just gonna go near the pillar. He shackles the DH.

Okay. See?

He's kind of already... This is one thing that...

One concept I wanted to discuss with kind of both of you. Is this is an example of like pre-kiting.

Like this team wants to go meh really bad. They want to attack him.

But he's now in a position where that's impossible. Let's see.

I think he might peek out again. But you see how he's just playing really scared?

Because he knows the DK just wants to grip him and just do a huge, massive go. It's kind of comparable to when like a mage tries to CC you.

This is what you would do as well. You would try and just stay close to people.

Avoid them getting the holy water off. And this is kind of the same principle.

Here you're trying to avoid getting gripped. But it's the same idea, you know?

It's the same principle behind it. So...

I mean, he goes for the fear. That's why I think he gets gripped.

But, you know, you can make it very hard for the enemy team to grip people in. So, look.

He's near this pillar and the DK is pressing Wraith Walk. And it's going to start running towards our priest.

So it's very... And this kind of reiterates what we talked earlier.

If you stand near a pillar, and you're trying to get the holy water off, and you're trying to get the holy water off, and you're trying to get the holy water off, and you're trying to get the holy water off, and you're trying to get the holy water off, and you're trying to get the holy water off, and you're trying to get the holy water off, so...

Look. Though, he's near this pillar, and the DK is pressing Wraith Walk.

And it's going to start running towards our priest. So, it's very...

And this kind of reiterates what we talked earlier. If you stand near a pillar, and you're out of line of sight, it makes it very obvious what the enemy team wants to do.

So, this DK is Wraith Walking. Let's see, maybe, okay.

He presses Wraith Walk, grips, and now, instantly, now, grip is down. He can't grip505050.

Okay. Because you can grip the fly, right?

Yeah, but you have to be really fast. Okay.

You can't do it once he's in the air. In any case, the moment he's threatened, he just flies.

And that does two things. For one, it prevents the enemy team from attacking him, so it's good defensively.

And two, this entire time when he's in the air, DRs are resetting. And so you're getting closer to your go by pressing fly.

Like now, he's in the air for I don't know how many seconds, but that means that stunned DRs are ticking down and they can do the go quicker. So you should be very almost aggressive in a way with using your fly against his main.

Like, look, look at what they do when they touch him, right? This is scary, right?

And if he had not flown at that time, it would have been even scarier probably. So, yeah, that's... kind of one game from a different point of view, I guess.

Let's see. It's not that big a deal, but look at where he's kind of positioned to.

Like, this shaman, if he plays in the center of the map, if he just stays in the center of the map, the shaman is going to be kind of like impossible to CC, really, because the shaman is going to be near a pillar, and it's up to the mage to really CC it. So, yeah, that's...

I don't know if we're going to get to the second go. I think we're just going to win here.

Oh, the other thing, too, is I noticed, Rocky, you don't use door of shadows that often. Mm-hmm.

No, I don't. But it's something...

You play double door? I mean, I hope you play that, because it's very OP.

I mean, door of shadows is, generally speaking, very OP. No, I played the first door blind.

No, I played the first door blind. Not the second one.

Not the Theofar. Theostar is his name.

I played the... I don't know the name.

Yeah, I'm not so sure. Maybe Chaz can say something about it, but I don't think it's good to play the second guy.

Chaz, do you like double door against these melee cleaves? Double door or the third guy, mostly.

I would say double door is best, though. So I should swap it between arena games?

Yeah. Yeah, like...

You could swap with the starting room, of course. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, like, the starting room. Yeah, the starting room.

Okay. Yeah, you could swap.

I was never doing that. It's fine.

But it's something you should consider. Also, like, the advantage of door is it's a shadow spell.

So like, you get kicked. Say you're getting trained like this.

You probably don't really want to be casting anyway.

But if you need to cast a spell, if you get kicked, you can instantly door. you know you just put the cursor away in doorway too but also like dooring is going to help you land cc like okay so one of the problems right is if you're pillaring a lot it's hard to land cc it's because you need to be pushing out but that's where door comes in handy like you can use your door to help you get cc uh when you're forced to pillar does that make sense so it's kind of like having a blink it's your mage is blink db'ing you and sometimes need a pressing door to chastise like door chastise fear

EP.4 HOW TO CARRY YOUR TEAM TO GLADIATOR WITH COMMUNCATION!

Four weeks ago, we set out to do the impossible and take a rival raided team and teach them everything they need to know to get gladiator for the first time.

Our three players started their journey at just under 2k raiding, but within three weeks they had reached 2400, an achievement that had been evading them from multiple expansions. Now they needed their 50 wins for gladiator, which would require consistent wins at elite raiding.

After spending the last four weeks developing offense, defense and positioning, it was time to move on to communication, which was their biggest challenge yet. Would our team be able to break through that final barrier?

It was time to find out. Welcome back to the skill capped Road to Glad Challenge.

Let's get one thing straight. Communication is hard and in Shadowlands it is sometimes impossible.

Oh my god, I'm dead. You kidding me?

Oh my god. I'm dead.

Every skill we covered up to this point is something you can actively work on. If you want to become better at offense you can practice damage, which can be done on a target dummy, or even during your weekly chorefest.

Defense and positioning can be practiced too, but really require a true arena experience. Focusing on these three skills alone can get you pretty far, and our team's progress from 1900 to 2.4 was proof that improving an arena could happen with these skills alone.

But communication was still an issue, and many of the mistakes they had been making up to this point were caused by poor communication. I'm locked on shadow.

I'm trying to drink it in for it. I'm trapped.

Ahhhhhh. I've gone.

I'm absolutely so sad. Oh my god.

I'm coming back. I'm coming back.

This is one of the biggest reasons LFG is so difficult. Without clear comms, the chance of making meta mistakes skyrockets.

If you aren't communicating properly, you're probably going to fail in the next round. I'm going to fail.

I'm going to fail. I'm going to fail.

I'm going to fail. I'm going to fail.

I'm going to fail. I'm going to fail.

I'm going to fail. I'm going to fail.

I'm going to fail. I'm going to fail.

I'm going to fail. Without clear comms, the chance of making meta mistakes skyrockets.

If you aren't communicating properly, it can cause you to make any of the issues we have here which can easily snowball into a loss. The goals for this week will be teaching communication by focusing on its function on offense and defense.

For both things, the goal of communication is to answer 3 questions.

What happened, what's happening and what is going to happen specifically, this means coordinating and communicating your win conditions on offense by calling out cc, important death, offensive cooldowns for your team and defensive CDEs for the enemy team.

On the other hand, defensive communication is centered around calling out the win conditions of the enemy team by tracking their offensive cooldowns and CCs while developing a plan to trade your own defensives to counter their attacks.

And with that in mind, it was time for our players to meet with their coaches to see what was going wrong. During our VOD review, our coaches noticed one thing immediately, that our RMP really didn't have proper shotcalling.

They knew how to 3-2-1 setups, but were lacking a general leader to make important offensive calls. As any comp, not just RMP, you need to have someone keeping track of win conditions.

This is something that the best players in the world routinely do, and it all starts with communication. I have blind sap and we win on shadow priest, game over, okay?

Yeah? Just live a little bit more.

Punto, you trinket link next go, okay? I promise you we win go after.

I'm gonna pop now? All my CDs?

Yeah? Yeah?

Yeah? Yeah?

Fill me, fill me, fill me, fill me? I'm blind, I'm blind, blind, blind, we win here.

Yeah? We win, we win.

I clocked the void voleys. Can he?

Tapping? Keep going, keep going, keep going.

He should die through. I tricked you?

Yeah, it's fine, I can kill alone, just pump. I kick, I kick, I kick.

In this clip, Waz calls his team's win almost 30 seconds before it actually happens.

He recognizes that the Shadow Priest doesn't have Disperse, while the Healer doesn't have a trinket, and with blind and vanish available, he doesn't have a trinket. he just needs to wait out DRs before he can do an extended CC chain by himself into a kill target that doesn't have defensive CDs.

All of these things together form the actual win condition. The kill target doesn't have defensives, and the healer doesn't have trinket.

And when DRs finally reset, he is able to blind sap the healer while pumping damage into a target that doesn't have any defensives left. This win condition was recognized nearly 30 seconds prior, and it was orchestrated entirely by proper offensive communication.

One immediate mistake our team was making was failing to call out important defensives from their kill target. This would sometimes mean that they were wasting their own damage into a target with defensives instead of immediately swapping to create more pressure.

By now you might be asking, wait, aren't addons supposed to help tell you this information? The answer is yes, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't communicate important cooldowns.

Addons tell you available information on your screen, but you never know for sure if your partners are seeing the same information. That is where communication comes into play.

It helps fill any information gaps in Arena, making sure everyone on your team is on the same page. If you guys have just been a bit patient and waited out this dome, let's see what happens.

I guess you kind of, you kind of wait out the dome a little bit, but it would have been a useful thing to really discuss because you, you know, could have got more value out of your go and not rushed it into a cooldown that you're not going to kill through anyway.

By communicating what cooldowns the enemy has available, you can make sure everyone on your team knows who is actually vulnerable for a kill setup. Nice, beautiful.

Feral or Trinket Barrier, just keep that in mind. We can kill Feral through mindgames.

I have no mindgame, but I have Malheur. Our players weren't just having communication mistakes on offense, and defense is where they truly struggled.

In Arena, you need to constantly track the enemy team's win condition, and just like before, some of this is possible through addons like Omnibar and Weak Auras, but it's not enough to rely on these addons alone, and as a team, you need to plan who will be using defensive CDEs to instantly respond to enemy attacks.

This is crucial at the start of each game to survive the opening set of cooldowns from the enemy team. Classes like Windwalker Monks and Ret Paladins do so much front-loaded damage that you can't wait and see if a cooldown trade is needed.

And if you don't trade instantly, it can mean an instant loss. The solution to this problem is easier than you might think.

Just like you would pre-communicate your first offensive push in the game, you should also pre-communicate your defensive plan for the first set of enemy cooldowns. Defensive communication comes into play the moment you're in the game.

You're going to be able to play your first set of enemy cooldowns. You're going to be able to play your first set of enemy cooldowns.

You're going to be able to play your first set of enemy cooldowns. And that's when the enemy team is going to be doing theirs.

And so that's when you should be talking about who's going to be pressing before the go even happens. Ideally, you should be pre-communicating the response because in Shadowlands, right, if you try to tell someone to press the moment the cooldowns are popped it, it can be already too late.

You know, like Windwalker Monks can just blast people, right, and Ret Paladins can just blast people. So you should kind of already be pre-discussing the defensive cooldown. usage before the cooldowns are already popped.

That way, you know, you can instantly respond if needed. Pre-communicating defensives is one of the main reasons tournament players are able to have incredibly long dampening games, even in a meta where burst damage is insane.

They are constantly keeping track of enemy CDs and planning their response, sometimes minutes before the enemy go. He ventured as well.

Listen, in one and a half minute, in one and a half minute, he will one-shot me. He will try to one-shot me.

I'm going Battle Chess, please save me. Ah, maybe I'm too YOLO.

When do you have Trinket Chess? When you have 30 sec left of your Trinket, they're gonna run-shot Chess with Venture, okay?

We have to save him. You need to somehow Trinket swap, and I know you can't, so I don't know.

Yeah, so it's gonna be really disgusting. I need to save Chess.

But sometimes pre-planning defensives isn't always possible in the chaos of Arena, and you will have to make a quick decision on who will press defensives to block an enemy attack.

Like, let's say you're the target as a rogue, or your Mage is the target, your Priest or yourself, like your Priest will, like, you can also do yourself, but it doesn't really matter. One of you guys just has to call, like, you or me, basically.

Like, you don't even have to say much. Like, you don't have to say, press this.

All you have to say is, like, you use, like, I use, you or me. And like, let's say your Priest in this situation will just say, you, you, you.

That means you're gonna have to press. And if he says me, then your Priest is gonna press, and you're not gonna use anything.

And it's maybe like an easy kind of concept to maybe use that. Maybe you guys can just kind of copy that and do that when you play yourself, because it's like a very easy thing.

Like, it's then, at least it's always gonna be clear who's gonna use what. Because, I mean, obviously the worst thing that can happen is that you guys overlap CDs in general.

Part of communicating you or me involves knowing who on your team has a cooldown to block enemy kill attempts. Just like you should pre-communicate what cooldowns you're going to use, you should also communicate if you're unable to use specific CDs, especially PvP Trinket for a future setup.

This is very scary. I Trinketed offensively there.

I've Trinketed in 15, I've Trinketed in 15, okay? I have my Trinket, but...

I don't know how he's going up in mana. In Arena, it's important to communicate both what cooldowns you have and don't have so that your team is able to plan a different route for shutting down a kill setup.

This is especially true for utility-heavy specs, like Arms Warriors or Ret Paladins, since a single defensive cooldown, like Intervene or Blessing of Sanctuary, can completely shut down a kill. And finally, for any class with peeling tools, your defensive CC is also worth communicating.

Spammable CC, like Polymorph and Cyclone, or even cooldown-based peels, like Disarm and Incapacitating Roar, are able to shut down enemy kills. So announcing what peels you have available lets your team know how they should trade CDs into incoming attacks.

You're fine. Oh, no, maybe not, maybe not.

I'm cheap shot. No, she mage, she mage.

Turtle when you can, spam it. It's time to turtle mage again.

She mage again? I'm done.

Okay. I'm just doing this.

I bashed Ogier. Uh, Preece is running in.

I'll blink your mage, I'll blink your mage. I'll be fine, they can't kill me.

Watch game, Stevie. They can't kill me, can't kill me.

They can't kill me right now. Call any mage?

They can't kill me either, so. So to recap our lesson from this week, our team needed to focus on communicating win conditions both on offense and on defense.

Offensively, this meant coordinating setups with CC and cooldowns, while also being aware of enemy defensives. On defense, our team would need to monitor enemy cooldowns and pre-plan who would respond to the next go.

With our team done with their coaching for the week, it was time to see if they could take their lessons into Arena and grind out some of their gladiator wins. When our team started this week, offensive communication was already pretty good.

And from our lesson in week one, they already knew how to communicate across CC. But now, they were starting to call out important enemy defensives, allowing them to get quicker swaps to close out games.

Been locked, I'm just going for it, anyway. We got PS.

Hunter. We swap Hunter now, okay?

Okay. Oh, there's the ground.

I'm peering. Nice, boys.

By focusing on calling out their win conditions, they were able to pre-plan their goes well in advance, making sure everyone was ready to contribute to the kill. I can blind lock next go.

Okay, I'll CC Mage. I'll put a boost next go.

I'm just banning. I've banished this.

We're ready to go. I'm ready to go.

I kicked Shadow Fury. Yeah.

I will blind lock. We hit through now.

He's dead. Nice.

So by calling out their offensive cooldowns, our team was able to get more efficient swaps, which would be required to beat opponents who were better at rotating defensives. Maybe I've got an issue.

I've got a boost. Can you CC Warrior and we win?

Yeah, I can. Let's go.

Go, go, go. I've missed my DB.

I'm so bad at this game, man. I'm standing for you.

I've got him, anyway. Ooh.

See what I mean? It's so easy when we just actually like.

On top of our team's ability to call out cooldowns, Mark was finding unique win conditions and communicating them to his team. He's not used his trinket, but he's used his will.

So he's on trinket. He's plant trinket.

He's got trinket. The next go.

Yeah. Who do I do it on?

On me? On me.

Feral. Tell me when to go.

I can TC Priest. I've got nothing.

Go, go, go. Win.

Damage. I've vanished.

Their defensive communication was improving, and our team started to call out who would be using CDs. Run, run, run.

I stay myself. I stay myself.

OK. I'm not.

I'm hexed. Just leave.

I'm locked. I'm locked.

OK. OK.

It's fine. I saw him warrior.

And with a better understanding of the enemy team's win conditions, our Priest was even starting to call cooldowns for his partners. I get this.

I'm ulta, ulta early. Nice.

Really good ulta. They still had some work to do with their defensive communication, but improvements were still happening, and our players were starting to call out who would be trading defensives on enemy goes.

I'm low down. I'm low down.

It's you. It's you.

It's you. This would help him avoid overlapping CDs, which had been a huge problem up to this point.

This type of communication was happening both ways, as our Priest was starting to dictate defensive CDs for his team, something that rank 1 healers are really good at. Don't use anything.

OK. Are you ready to go?

Yeah, I'm ready. Go, go, go, go.

I bombed this. He trinket vanish.

I have the bomb here. And in the same way they would call offensive strats in the starting room, they were starting to do the same for the defensive CD rotation.

I'll trinket, evasion, and pot if they go me, and you're in the trap, OK? They still have vanish for the next call.

By calling win conditions both offensively and defensively, our team was making progress on their 50-win journey to Gladiator. Over the past few weeks, our team had learned key concepts in offense, defense, and positioning, three things that would be elevated by proper communication.

Although our team didn't get their 50 wins this week, they were getting closer, but more importantly, they were seeing improvement. With just one pillar left, our team just needed to put in the final work required for Gladiator.

Before we send it off, we just want to thank you all for the support we've had for the series so far. Let us know in the comments below what comp we should choose for our next Road to Gladiator challenge, and whether or not you would like to participate.

But as always, thanks for watching. See you next week. .

EP.4 COMMUNICATION: ROGUE POV VS. DEMO LSD2

One of the things we discussed in the coaching session this morning is that one player really needs to be the shot caller for the team. It doesn't have to just be one player, but there needs to always be a director.

Ideally, it should probably be Arrow, since he's the rogue and his mobility is a bit more limited. Are you here now, by the way, Maro?

Yeah, I'm here. I've been listening.

Okay, sweet. Do you mind expanding on that a little bit as far as shot calling is concerned?

Yeah, so when you guys face these comms you always face, it feels like you guys do fine and you guys kind of know the script and you guys kind of know what you're supposed to do.

But especially when you guys face stuff that you don't really face a lot, it feels like you guys are a little bit lost with what strat you want to do. And basically...

Sorry. Basically what you guys should do or what would be the best thing is if you guys had someone on the team, like either a mage or rogue, doesn't really matter, obviously not the healer, to just kind of call stuff.

Even though it doesn't work out, but sometimes it feels like you guys don't really know who to hit and don't really know what to do because it's like a comm you guys haven't seen. And the best advice I could give you guys is to just have someone call something, like call a go on anyone.

It doesn't matter. And if it doesn't work out, I mean, you guys go in, try again, try a different target, try a different strat.

But for example, like the game Willis is going to show you guys in a sec, it's a game into like this boomkin demo stuff. It's like a very uncommon comp.

You don't really face that much. And then it feels like you guys are kind of just running around, not really knowing what to do.

And the bad part about that is not only you're losing the game, that's whatever, you're losing a game. It's good to learn, but you don't really learn much from that because you don't actually do anything.

Like you guys need to do something in order to, you know, like kind of understand who you can kill, who you can't kill. And yeah.

I feel like that just didn't really happen that game. Like just an example, this is one of the games, but there's many games.

And like I said, it would definitely help if you guys had someone who would just kind of call and like lead the game a little bit more. So there's going to be this point in this game specifically.

So you do like your opener is okay. You know, you accomplished one gold, you know, force trinket from the enemy healer.

But now is like the part where the game gets really awkward because it's like you did your go and now it's the enemy team's time to do something. It's like you did your go and now it's the enemy team's time to do something.

It's like you did your go and now it's the enemy team's time to do something. And there's kind of a lot of time spent wondering what you should do.

And it just is eventually going to snowball into this unrecoverable phase. One thing I message you about Arrow is like you're shadowy dueling more, which is really great.

And, you know, in a lot of matchups, it's going to be really helpful. But this is.

Okay, so this is kind of what we're discussing. Like you're at a point in the game where you're supposed to be doing your second go.

But it's just very like it's almost like you don't know exactly what you should be doing. And then obviously there's some stuff that can go wrong, like getting AOE feared.

There's a lot that can go wrong. But then what happens is you guys just don't really do your go.

Like there's a lot of this wasted time. And you overlap fear and blind.

And so it's just it becomes really messy. And obviously this is a very this is a very unusual situation.

Probably shouldn't be stacked here behind these boxes. When you're this low on HP, maybe, you know, need to pull back and recover.

But in any case, one thing we discussed last week is you can be using your offensive goes kind of as your defense. So you spend all this time, you know, kind of waddling around and not knowing exactly what you guys should be doing.

And in doing so, you're letting the enemy team just kind of tee off on you. Right.

And if you're not doing your goes, that means the enemy team is just going crazy. And they're just going to be like, oh, I'm going to go.

Yeah. And they're doing, you know, right now the boom can has cooldowns popped.

I'm assuming the demon warlock has some sort of damage popped or popped somewhere in here. It looks like he summoned a tyrant or something.

I don't I think that's what this buff is. I'm not sure.

I have an idea. In any case, it's almost like you should view the enemy team kind of as three blank players sometimes.

Like in these unusual matchups where you don't know exactly what to do. This is where you should.

You would basically revert just to basic. You know, you just really need to focus on the execution.

Because it, as Mario said, it doesn't really matter who you do the go on. It's better to do a bad go on somebody than to, you know, have a non-go and have this kind of confusion that happened in this game.

So in these situations, it's going to be really important for I think, Mark or Aero to really. focus on doing the 3-2-1, focus on doing the setup in these situations where you have no clue like what to do. Like it's better to again just to do something than to do nothing in these situations.

Does that kind of make sense? Yes.

Also, try and you know when you see like comms you don't face, try to like like dump it down a bit in the sense what I mean by that is like try to, don't try and like overcomplicate things like I mean you guys go shaman here which is probably the right call but just think about like this if you guys face like a broomkin DH you would go on the shaman most of the game that's like usually the target maybe the broomkin sometimes but like mainly shaman.

Shaman and broomkin basically.

The comp you're facing has a demolock instead but the demolock doesn't do like more bad things than a DH would do like it doesn't have more CDs even as less so if you just stick to the same game plan you will by default I don't want to say you will win but you will like you will have to ride strat by default you don't have to like overcomplicate things because there's no class that changes the goal dramatically here.

Like everything is going to be the same and it's the same when you face anything that's unusual you just think about it like what can you compare that comp to what's like the combo archetype basically what's like the way the comp works I mean like just look at the class itself don't think so much about the synergy and then you will kind of instantly find out like the best and the target because it's not really it's not really going to change much unless there's like a really disruptive class in there that makes changes something a lot.

Yeah, so like when you see a comp like this as Mara said it's like you almost in your mind should be thinking of this matchup sort of like the boomy DH matchup like again categorize comps sort of by their archetype and app strategies you know revert to a strategy of a comp that you're already kind of familiar with like, you know, if you're playing against a melee cleave you're unfamiliar with maybe you should just play similar to how you play against other melee cleaves that you are, you know more aware of or have more information on but like because this is just a weird matchup, right?

You're probably never I mean this you're probably gonna play this team Maybe one other time in your queue session, but you might encounter other comps that are like this I like I know you played against some windwalker boomies and like a warrior boomy the other day And those are teams that aren't necessarily as common anymore.

I know boomy DH is kind of like the bigger Boombl4 comp but still you should maybe treat them in the same way So if you don't know what the strategy is sort of revert to a similar matchup where you kind of do know the strategy

EP.4 COMMUNICATION: ROGUE POV VS. MM HUNTER AFFLI LOCK HOLY PRIEST

One thing I tend to notice with you guys, and a lot of players make this mistake, is you don't really call out what's happening as it happens. Like, this opener kind of gets a bit scuffed, and this is maybe something that you should really be communicating to your team, Ero.

Like, you get coiled, Priest has Holy Ward. These are useful pieces of information that you might see on your screen, but you don't know if your partners see this information on their screen.

So before you do any go, you really need to make sure that, oh, it's important to communicate that the Priest has Holy Ward in this situation, or you got coiled on your opener, so that you're kind of all on the same page.

It's like the communication is a way to, again, make sure everyone's on the same page, everyone knows what to do, so you can do your 3-2-1s cleaner and more consistently. Because yeah, just a lot of things just go wrong, and I think a lot of this is just basic.

Communication breakdown early on, like the Priest gets Holy Ward, no one really calls it. I know you're trying to spell steal it, but if, you know, if Mark, you call this out to your Priest, he could help you maybe try to dispel the Holy Ward off the Priest, you know?

Like, this is useful stuff that you just kind of need to be really discussing, while also, you know, being able to do your your goes at the same time. But yeah, this is such an unusual matchup.

Why did you PI the Rogue here that way? Is there like a specific reason why you PI the Rogue, as a misclick or something?

Well, I'm not really good at PI-ing anyways, and so I just try to throw it off as much as possible. You can, but you just always give it to your Mage, never give it to Rogue.

It's very insane for Mage. Maybe you should PI Mages a lot, not so much on Rogue, so Rogue doesn't do much with haste, doesn't get anything from it.

EP.4 COMMUNICATION: ROGUE POV VS. RET WAR DISC

You guys are already pretty good at scripting your offenses. You know exactly who to go on, you guys have the opener down pretty much against every comp.

For the most part, you know exactly what you're doing. And if not, you communicate it in the starting room or when the gates open, which is good.

But you should also be able to do that defensively as well. So the communication goes both ways.

Obviously, it's useful offensively, but it's also useful defensively. And this matchup is a perfect example of a very basic communication breakdown where no one really knows who should be pressing cooldowns.

So let's just see what happens in this opener. I remember this, yeah.

I see all the damage and I didn't drink, it vanished. I should just vanish there, but I don't.

Well, you shouldn't just vanish. You should vanish the second you press.

You should just vanish the second you press. You should just vanish the second you press.

You should just vanish the second you press. That's kind of the call.

And I mean, that's something we... Because I mean, this week's topic, we already said, it's going to be communication.

And I think something that could help you guys is that... I mean, Wien will talk to me and we'll talk about it earlier today.

Something where... I mean, a lot of top players do that as well.

So every time someone is being hit, like especially on a DPS, like let's say you're the target as a rogue or your mage is the target, your priest or yourself, like your priest or yourself, like you can also do yourself, but it doesn't really matter. One of you guys has to call like you or me, basically.

Like you don't even have to say much. Like you don't have to say, press this.

All you have to say is like you use or like I use, you or me. And like, let's say your priest in this situation will just say you, you, you.

That means you're going to have to press. And if he says me, then your priest is going to press and you're not going to use anything.

And it's maybe like an easy kind of concept to maybe use that. Maybe you guys can just kind of...

Copy that and do that when you play yourself, because it's like a very easy thing. Like it's then at least it's always going to be clear who's going to use what.

Because I mean, obviously the worst thing that can happen is that you guys overlap CDs in general. It doesn't really matter.

Like, I mean, we're also going to touch a little bit on like kind of our scripts and what you want to use first. But I want to emphasize a bit that it's not really too important who like what CDs are being used necessarily.

It's more important that you don't overlap CDs. So let's say like it doesn't matter.

It technically doesn't matter too much. The best trait in this situation when they go on you here, the priest of stun is probably that you vanish.

But you could you could also cloak evasion. That's also okay.

Like it's a little bit worse because vanish has a better CD in Shadowlands because of the thing you get a shield when you vanish. But it wouldn't be horrible either.

You know, then at least you guys live and it's not no overlap. You will still have your vanish later.

You still have your trinket later and so on. But yeah, just generally speaking, I think that's maybe like a good concept for you.

You guys to understand. Like just like I said, even when I play like high rated arenas, you want to play tournaments, there's some there's a situation where like it's not really clear who's going to press because it's a weird situation.

And then I would always say like you or me, like I would just say like you save me or I save myself. And at least that way you won't overlap.

I have a quick question about that. Like if we get into this situation and then Rocky says like, me, so he's going to save me, but I also say like me, like should we have one specific person or like how?

How should you go on about that as well? I mean, to be honest, that doesn't really happen to be honest.

I mean, let's just do whoever says something first, you know? And also, so it's one thing just to circle back is this is something you should discuss in the starting room because, you know, like you kind of already know, like you're familiar with Red Warrior.

You know that their win condition is usually based around their stuns. It's just kind of like RMP in a way.

Here the team kind of gives you the opportunity for free because if this team was better, they would have hodged you here at the same time they storm bolted Priest. So let's pretend that that's what this team did.

If they storm bolted your Priest and hodged you like the kill target, this is something you should already kind of predicted in the starting room. And so one of the things you can discuss in the starting room or before the gates open is who is going to respond first to this.

Mm-hmm. So you kind of already know that they're going to respond first to this setup because you know they're going to do this setup on either your Priest or on you, the Rogue.

They're probably not going to attack Mage. So you kind of already, you should be thinking about the enemy team's win conditions before the gates even open.

And against these really bursty setup-based comps like Red Warrior, maybe it's a good idea to discuss who is going to press first so that when you're in a situation like this, you instantly know that, you know, you're the one who needs to vanish.

So basically what you should, you should be doing is like in the starting room, you're like, okay, when they pop their cooldowns, Arrow will pop hits.

So what you're waiting for is like you're waiting for them to, you know, pop their offensives, which, you know, that you should kind of already see that that's what they're trying to do because of the avatar, PI. So you know damage is coming.

You see the CC on your healer. You know, you see, I don't know if they've popped Necro Banner yet.

Now everything is coming. Yeah.

So now you've already, discussed the plan with your team. This is an instant easy vanish, you know?

And if they had hodged you here, like they should have, it would have been your trinket vanish. That way Rocky can save his cooldowns and you know, you can just avoid dying instantly.

So it's, it's useful just like you would script your first setup against the enemy team to also against these really bursty cleaves to script who's going to be using defensives. I'm stunned.

Because the worst. Yeah.

I mean, there's always a, there's always a better thing. They notice always like, but that's kind of what I wanted to touch on.

There's always a better trade. Like there's always one of the trades, like whoever's going to press, there's always going to be one that's makes more sense at the end of the day to press.

Like in this situation, it makes much more sense for you to use, even if they stunned you, it still makes more sense for you to trinket vanish. Um, but that doesn't matter.

Because there's enough damage to Guardian for example, right? So, um, yeah, not, not only, but I mean, yeah.

You're still going to have a cloak evasion later on. Um, while your healer can still, the healer can still trinket the spell you, maybe if they hot-shell later on, he can still do something.

Um, but also if the priest trinkets for you here, he can potentially die later on because he's not going to have anything. Um, so generally speaking, it's better for him to press, for you to press versus it would be the same in like an RMP mirror.

You would also, um, kind of use first as a rogue because if you priest uses first, your priest can just die. Like your priest can always 100% save you while you can't really 100% save him.

Like, let's say your priest would trinket here and save you. Then maybe later on they could like bubble or something offensive and just all in on your priest.

Maybe you would die. Um, but it, it probably wouldn't happen, but it could.

Um, so yeah, just, uh, like there's, like I said, there's always a better trade, but the most important thing is that you guys communicate and talk about who's going to press on overlap, uh, and make sure of course that someone presses.

I don't think you guys have that many games where you guys die without CDs that happens sometimes. It definitely doesn't happen ultra much.

Um, but it does happen that you guys overlap quite a lot, um, which is common. It even happens on like high rating, but that's where like, you know, good communication will kind of fix it by default.

Um, and yeah, like I said, there's always scripts in every combat, like what's better to press, but the most important is that you just don't press together. Um, and it's like, it's really good.

Yeah. It's, it's really good, obviously to just survive the first go, because you usually get a lot out of your first go offensively as you know, rogue mage.

So as long as you can just have an effective trade for the enemy, go on the first go, you'll usually be ahead on cool downs at that point in time. Like the goal is to stay ahead of on cool downs is complex RMP, um, to get more trinkets out of your goes than they get out of yours.

And so that's where it's like important to kind of. Script again, defensively, who's going to be popping for the first enemy go that way, you know, you can maintain the cool down advantage that you should have gotten with a good opener.

Um, and so imagine for a second though, we were playing against jungle cleave and they're opening on your mage. You know, you, we saw this last week where, uh, the jungles were going on mark.

And one of the things we said is that Mark should just trinket, uh, alter time. This is something that you can kind of communicate to each other.

In the starting room, like Mark can say like, Oh, if they go on me, I'm just going to trinket alter first trap. Like, don't worry.

And that way by communicating that you kind of already know what your response is going to be to the first go. And that way you won't overlap or you won't under use cool downs.

Um, so that's just how, just how communication works offensively. It also works defensively, especially for these first goes, it's going to be really important.

Um, but that's just kind of the opener. So a lot of what we just talked about.

Discussed is how it's built around the opener of the game. What we're going to be discussing with Rocky later with Chad is that it's kind of then in, in some ways, a responsibility of the Healer to kind of figure out who should be pressing cooldowns and subsequent goes.

But that's something again, we'll discuss with Rocky, but at least in the opener of the game, you should already know who's going to be pressing their defensive cooldowns to respond to the enemy setup, because pretty much every setup is a setup. Pretty much every setup is a setup.

Pretty much every setup is a setup.

Pretty much every setup is a setup. setup based comp for the more or less it's always going to be some sort of CC combined with some sort of damage and you need to be you need to know who's going to respond appropriately to that and you kind of by now probably already know who the kill target is going to be on your team like you should have kind of gotten a feel for that I mean I know sometimes comps sometimes bounce between two targets but you should at least know that there's going to be two players on your team who are really vulnerable and usually it's not going to be a mage right?

Mages don't get targeted too much Shmorrow?

No not in RMP like this comp we're facing right now like Red Warrior is like a good example Red Warrior will pretty much never go mage the only thing that they will maybe do if they still have CDs up and everyone is completely gone far away they can't hit anyone then they will maybe hit the mage but like a Red Warrior will never do like setups on mage like all the time at least they shouldn't I mean at least maybe they will do it but it shouldn't work because mage just has too many CDs and just too annoying I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know and takes too long for them to go through them also Rogue just peels too much so it's always going to be Priest and Rogue and there's almost like every comp like most comps are always going to like let's say like just to give you guys a couple of examples let's say you face a Mirror a Mirror is most likely going to go on the Rogue or on the Priest that's kind of the strat what people do Rogue Priest not so much mage then let's say you face a Jungle Cleaver Jungle Cleaver is most likely going to go on your Mage or on your Rogue they're never going to go on your Healer that's kind of how most comps are they have like a kind of strict kill target and it doesn't change but like let's say you guys face dh boom you did each one will also go on your major on your rogue not so much on your healer um and that's kind of like predetermined um obviously teams can do sketchy stuff and hit other people but yeah more more or less like more often than not it's probably not going to work because it doesn't make sense and it's probably even worse for them to do so yeah you guys you should kind of have a plan on who is going to be the target most of the time when you guys play

EP.4 COMMUNICATION: MAGE POV VS. SV JUNGLE

And I really want you to remember that add-ons and communication are basically the same thing. So anything an add-on tells you is probably a useful thing to communicate as well.

It's kind of like communication is a supplement for the fact that the Wow UI sucks. Wow UI is terrible, so you need to communicate and you need add-ons.

So what is something that you guys should... Oh, sorry, let me go a little bit further.

In this particular... On this frame right here...

Oops, it's really blurry. Sorry.

On this frame right here, I want to kind of quiz you. You opened Priest, and the Priest did a lot of things.

And I want you to think about what should maybe be communicated on this particular frame offensively. So what do you...

What's that? Go Hunter.

So yeah, so why should you go Hunter? Because he's obviously been sacked and paint-suped.

Yes. He's failing.

Yeah, so... Basically, this Priest just popped every single cooldown he has.

He popped PS, there's Roar Sacrifice, the... I don't even remember what it's called.

Divine whatever. The Priest has popped every single cooldown he has, plus phase, and he gets the Conduit damage reduction.

So this is just useful information you should just be talking about. Like, he popped everything, let's go Hunter.

Like, that's useful information to just say. Like, he popped everything, go Hunter.

But instead, I think... I think you guys wind up going...

I think you guys wind up going Hunter anyway. Anyway, but...

It's kind of... In a way, it's psychological.

Because if you say... If you communicate, Priest popped everything, go Hunter.

It's like, you really want to go that Hunter now. It's like, oh, the Priest fucked up.

Let's punish this Hunter for that, right? Like, the Priest popped everything, he didn't really need to.

And now we have a perfect go to go Hunter. But I think that's one just basic thing that maybe you should...

I don't want to overwhelm you with too many things to communicate. But this is one, you know, useful thing to talk about.

Is what cooldowns... The enemy team used defensively.

Like, oh, he paints up here. Like, let's swap.

Or he got sacked, let's swap. You know?

Because you guys don't really talk about it. I mean, you wind up going Hunter anyway, so the outcome is the same.

But it should be kind of communicated too. Stun me, stun me.

Fear me. And then you get a cheap on this Priest for free.

I don't think he deaths it, does he? I'm fearing that.

We can go Hunter. I don't want to do anything like that at this rate.

Yeah. But...

See, it's like, you landed this Sheep, you should be, like, yelling at your Rogue to, like, you know... Let's go, like...

I think in the room we said, we'll do this. This is our normal swap on there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But...

Yeah, but I'm fearing. Yeah, in any case, you need to somehow, like, either kind of really communicate what's stopping you from doing the go.

Like, Arrow, like, you should maybe say, like, I'm fearing I can't swap yet. Yeah, I did say that.

Okay. Fear me.

Let's see. I'm fearing that...

We can go Hunter. Yeah, I guess...

Mark, you kind of jumped the gun a little bit here. Like, it was good.

It's good that you landed the Sheep, but it's like your team wasn't on the same page for this. Like, in any other expansion, this would have been, like, a game-winning play, but not in Shadowlands.

Like, you have to just do everything as a team no matter what, or else it's just bad. We can go Hunter.

Ready? Yeah, go.

But then something else is about to happen that's going to be really bad. Yeah, fine.

Maybe. Maybe.

So... Okay, so you get Thought Stolen.

So, you know that you're Thought Stolen because there's a giant Weak or a talent, like, screaming at you. But you can't...

I think you tell them normally, yeah? Yeah.

Well, you tell them towards the... I think I'm less than a button, no Sheep.

I'm not sure. Yeah, you tell them at the end.

So, I think because they remember... Oh, play.

Let's listen. Can you guys hear the stream?

Yes. I don't know.

Tricks like home? Yeah.

Like, the slot feel's been up for over 10 seconds and you haven't really mentioned it to your team. Like, that's useful information that kind of communicate because then it...

Then your team kind of knows that... Well, maybe Arrow knows that he needs to blind the Priest for the go.

So, like, it's just... Yeah, I've just been bothered because obviously it's 5 second DR and I've only got 7 second no Sheep, I'm guessing.

Normally I would say something. Yeah, but it's just useful.

Like, it's useful to communicate the things that could potentially ruin your setup. Like, if you're in CC when your team wants to go, you need to call that out.

Or if your thought's stolen, that's useful information because your team now needs to play around that. And you could go with a blind.

Like, in this case, you know, you're waiting for DRs to reset. But this is a bad thought steal from the Priest.

So, it kind of wound up not mattering. So, I see what you mean.

Like, it doesn't matter too much. But say this was a thought steal at a better time, that would have been very useful information to communicate to your team.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sorry, I got a bit pixelated. I can blind Feral.

We have a go here. Blind Feral, I guess.

And then, yeah, you try to go for another sort of greedy Sheep, it gets deathed. But again, I think you guys wind up winning this game.

I'm curious why we even went to the Dome. I just noticed that.

We still. But, okay.

So, that's. Yeah, that reiterates.

Like, okay, it's the same thing as the Priest in the opener. Where the Priest pops all of his defensive cooldowns.

You guys don't really say anything about that. Like, here the Priest pops Dome, right?

Let's see if you guys go. Okay.

Priest pops Dome. There's no reason to go in this situation.

You just wait it out, you know? So, you guys should kind of, again, you all know as individuals that the Priest press Domed.

But you don't know if your partners know that the Priest pressed Dome. So, it's like your add-ons can communicate some of the things for you.

But it's just useful to talk about what the enemy team has done too. So you can play around it.

If you guys have just been a bit patient and waited out this Dome. Let's see what happens.

I guess you kind of wait out the Dome a little bit. But it would have been a useful thing to really discuss.

Because you could have gotten more value out of your go and not rushed it into a cooldown. That you're not going to kill too much.

And you're going to be able to get through anyway. So yeah, again, try to think of your communication like your add-ons.

They just give you useful information that you communicate to your team. So, let me think if there's anything else to discuss.

Let me look at the lesson plan really quick. Overall, though, I think you guys are doing your offensive things fairly well.

And your offensive communication for the most part is pretty good. But it's more the defensive side where we're seeing issues.

And part of the solution to that is communicating in the opener who's going to be pressing cooldowns. And kind of knowing the win conditions of the enemy team.

To know how you're going to have to respond. But do you guys have any questions at this point about communication?

I know again it's kind of a difficult topic. But anyway.

Do you guys have any specific questions? Maybe if...

No, go ahead, Rokka. Maybe if they pop cooldowns.

And for example, it's a red warrior. And they go on arrow.

And he pops evasion. And it should be fine maybe on paper.

But there's still coming so much damage that I'm not sure what to do. If I'm not sure what to do.

If I can heal it or if it just randomly dies. Shall I say something?

Or shall I just pop Guardian as well? Maybe it's more cooldown usage.

Not communication. But I'm never sure if he can live it.

If two minutes are on him. Even with evasion.

Yeah, I mean part of that is just like sometimes Shadowlands is Shadowlands. Like even the best players in the world can do everything right.

But then just get a crit to the head, right? Like sometimes, I mean the honest answer is sometimes you just can't do anything about certain damage.

But like, you know, if you're struggling to heal him through his cooldowns. I mean that's obviously not good.

But it's something that probably should be communicated. And it's always better to use a CD and live than not use a CD and die, right?

I mean that should be obvious. But ideally you're not overlapping.

But that's, again, that's a hard question to answer. Because it's a very specific situation.

But I think in general if you're careful with how you're using CDs. And you really focus on coordinating who's going to be using CDs.

You won't encounter that problem so often. You know?

I mean one thing we overlap a lot is Vanish and my Guardian. But it's kind of my thing.

Yeah. I think it's both.

It's both, I think. Because it's your job to press.

It's better for you to Vanish and I should just be patient and wait it out. Yeah.

And Guardians are difficult cooldown to use because you kind of want to use it on someone who's high HP. You know, you don't want it to proc.

Yeah. But yeah, that should just kind of be communicated.

I mean I play Arrested Druid so I don't have really a big healing cooldown. I just have a bunch of small healing cooldowns.

So it's hard for me. I wonder if Chaz is here.

Let's see. I just want to quickly mention that I know this hunter that we're facing.

Copsarap. Yeah, that's Snoopy.

Oh, the Feral Druid. Yeah.

Oh, nice. So in any case, I think like you're going to encounter, of course you're going to overlap at times.

You're going to overlap. You're not going to use cooldowns.

That is just natural. Every player in the world makes those mistakes.

But you can minimize how often those mistakes happen by just talking about defensive cooldowns in the same way you talk about offensive cooldowns. Like we said this before and I'll say it again.

Like WoW Arena, and you should know by now, kind of follows a pattern. You do your go.

The enemy team does theirs. You do yours.

They do theirs. It's a back and forth between your setup and their setup.

And defensive communication comes into play the moment your setup is over because that's when the enemy team is going to be doing theirs. And so that's when you should be talking about who's going to be pressing before the go even happens.

Ideally, you should be pre-communicating the response because in Shadowlands, right, if you try to tell someone to press the moment the cooldowns are popped, it can be already too late. too late. You know, like Windwalker Monks can just blast people, right?

And Red Paladins can just blast people. So you should kind of already be pre-discussing the defensive cooldown usage before the cooldowns are already popped.

And that way, you know, you can instantly respond if needed.

EP.4 COMMUNICATION: ROGUE POV VS. RET WAR DISC 2

this is the game where you guys die like in the opener um this is poor gameplay please don't watch so one thing we discussed uh chas while you were uh while you're gone is that we think that our team should focus on talking about who should be trading cooldowns on the first go like in the starting room maybe like against a comp like this right like you know they're gonna blow up on someone so you need to know who's gonna press defensively and you have to understand as a team when a comp does uh when they do their their their their how do you say the biggest damage burst or when it's a little bit of a smaller go but still a bit deadly so you you know like for example red warrior you see pause here you can see uh dark arc uh for sure big but all red warriors are going to be a little bit more defensive so you need to know who's going to red warriors don't play with discipline piece but every red warrior has necro banner and pollen has wings right and when these two are popped together you need to like press a cooldown like immediately it's almost better to overpress than be slow like that that's how dangerous it is and this sort of stuff should maybe be communicated before the go happens right like you know ideally this this red warrior team should stun a rogue but they just don't for some reason i don't know who they stun but they just don't and i think that's the thing that's the thing that's the problem that they've done they stunned priests with stormbolt but they didn't hodge rogue yeah so like chas if you're in this situation and your rogue is hogged um it's probably better for the rogue to trade trinket vanish right yes um i would can you go back before this go happens like 10 seconds let's see how does the ghost start okay so you get feared here Okay, you forced bubble.

You can pause when it pops bubble. So you get feared here.

I don't know what the communication is like exactly, but they're obviously gonna go on the counter attack now. They're CC...

A wrath warrior usually lands a storm bolt on healer and hodges the main target. So you actually got feared here.

So here you should be... All of you should be ready.

Let's say they go mage, you can trinket altar. And if they go rogue...

You should... As the rogue, you should probably look at the priest to see if your healer is CC'd.

And as soon as you, Rocky, get CC'd and you can't do anything, you need to tell your teammate to press his cooldown trinket vanish or trinket cloak, whatever is available. Like here you got storm bolt.

I... You need to...

Tell him... Tell your rogue to use a defensive now.

Or ideally just tell him in the starting room that, you know, when... On their first go, rogue should press.

Cause... Yeah.

Like when you see... Again, when you see this situation, like a light should pop up in your head that something needs to happen.

And that can be pre-communicated. Is there any...

Any situation when they don't go me, where it is better for me to trinket CD? No.

No. No.

No. No.

It's always the guy they go on, isn't it? Yeah.

So you want the guy who they go on should press their cooldown. But let's say they...

Let's say they pop all cooldowns on your rogue and they don't CC you. Then you can just call that you're using guardian.

Maybe you're gripping him or something. But the moment that you're CC'd, you need to like...

All of you need to be ready to go. You need to be ready for that.

That you please get CC'd. And then you call that you can't press.

Then they have to press very fast. But it has to be like a predetermined decision that when they pop wings and banner, that you need to be on your toes and like ready to react with something.

Yeah. Cause you can't really call it in the moment here.

It should be pre-communicated up to this point. Because, alright, red paladins are broken.

And they just, you know, can hit you in the head once. And you just drop like this.

So you don't have time to react in the moment most of the time. And a lot of it is pre-communication.

Playing Holy Ward is not an option. Because I might get ganked then.

You should die. If you have Holy Ward, the red warriors should be able to just run on top of you and kill you.

I die to red warriors with Fly and Resylinder sometimes. That's how dangerous it is when they play well.

Okay. And one question that Fishy had is like, so say the red warrior pops on the rogue and the rogue trades Trinket Evasion.

So say the rogue tries to evasion the damage. The rogue has already pressed his cooldowns and he's still dying.

At that point, you probably might need to press yours as the healer, right? Yeah, it depends how early in the go the rogue presses.

Let's say your rogue Trinket vanishes or evasions on 20% of the time. Then it's random and you're very scared.

Then you have to be ready to maybe Trinket Serenity or something. But if your rogue Trinkets early enough and uses the defensive, it should be fine.

If you for some reason have to press anyway, that means something. I don't believe that you pressed early enough as a rogue.

Yeah, what I kind of said is like, if you're pressing early and consistent, you're probably not going to find yourself in many situations where your partners are dying. Also, when you know how the comps you're facing dust damage, you will also be able to react faster and then you will be safer.

And then, Chaz, when you play RMP, do you go Boomkin in this matchup or do you go DH? Between Boomkin and Shaman or do you go DH and Shaman?

You can kill all three. I think I would kill the Shaman a lot.

But since you have mind games, the Druid is also a target as long as you have mind games ready. I should save it always for the Druid.

I would send my mind games on the Shaman too, honestly, if that's a target. But since the Druid can't be sheeped, you can easily chastise fear him.

D be sheeped Shaman. And you can go DH.

Or you can just db sheep the Demon Hunter, chastise fear the Druid and go Shaman. I think Shaman is definitely a very good target to go on as any mage comp right now.

Because they're hard to CC. The rest of the Shamans are kind of harder to CC for mages.

Yeah, but they definitely die though. Yeah, but they die.

Rocky, do you have any specific questions for Chad as far as communication is concerned? Let me think.

I think something you can do, by the way, is if you're struggling to comp, you can just rewatch your own VOD to see when the damage is coming so that you learn. So for example, the Rett warrior situation when he pops his... banner, wings.

See in what ways you can react better. Because it's hard to learn if you play into Rett warrior once every 10 games maybe, and then... they pop every cooldown and you're dead in one sec.

You know? Goes too fast.

And should he be like in this situation where he gets opened on like this? Like by an RMP?

Because it's a very common situation that you're gonna encounter probably all the time. What should he be communicating in these situations right here?

Like you see this, what do you say as a healer? I would say stop mindgames.

My rogue... You're probably going to disarm the rogue here, I'm assuming.

We talked about that before. Depending on the stuff, I would stop mindgames.

Because if they, you know, get their damage off somehow, and you're mindgamed, then your guardian would probably just kill you. So I don't know exactly what's gonna happen.

I would also ask the mage, I would be a bit closer, because it's hard for you to DB or anything. I'm not sure how the go started, but...

He gets double blinks and then DBs. Right, yeah.

You can be... Yeah?

I was gonna say, yeah. It's important as a healer too, I forgot to mention this, to talk about certain spellcasts, and mindgames is a really important one as a priest that you want your partners to stop, right?

Yes. So yeah, there's...

Can you think of any other spells, Chaz, that maybe Rocky should call out to stop from his team? Yeah, so one thing that is very helpful might be...

But like, let's say you CC'd as a healer into... I don't know what...

Let's take... What did we take?

Some mage... Mage Resolute comp, right?

You get sheeped as the priest. While you're in sheep, you can try to guide your DPS, tell them what Cryo Control to stop next.

Let's say your rogue... Let's say your rogue is hitting the mage, and he calls, he's gonna stop the follow-up, then you can tell the mage to stop Cyclone or whatever, to help them up, you know?

To what to stop. Mhm.

So here I would tell my mage, stop mindgames, stop mindgames, like that, and my rogue is... It's like a script.

He will disarm the rogue. It's already been scripted, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Let me see... Against these RMP openers, I always felt really safe.

Because, I don't know, I just... I'm pressing Greater Fate, and as soon as I'm out of stun, I'm fading.

But I haven't died yet in the opener. Mhm.

So it was always super safe. Another thing in the jungle, for example, you could...

It might not be that common, but when you're trapped, and you see the feral is like kinda free, then you can just tell your DPS, stop the clone, even though he's not going for it. Could be helpful.

Mhm.

EP.4 COMMUNICATION: PRIEST POV VS. WW BOOMKIN HOLY PRIEST

The way I use Guardian is you want to use it to buff your heals, right? So, let's say you're CC'd, you're stunned, and they pop cooldowns on your teammate.

You should only Guardian if they can't press, because if Guardian procs, that's not a good thing. You need Guardian to be able to do enough healing.

For example, let's take a jungle and they go on Mage. And he ult the time at 100%.

Sometimes it is still a struggle to keep him alive, because they just delete his health bar three times in two seconds. Shall I just Guardian there as well, or shall I try to heal it and wait till all the time is up, uh, down, or...

I'm coming. Over, and then pop Guardian, or...

I would... I'm never sure how to do it.

If you... If you...

Are you... Like, let's say you get CC'd, and then they go on your Mage, he alters, and they manage to go through it, then I would use Guardian and start to spam heal him, yeah.

Because... Yeah, I think we lose a lot of Cauterize and stuff like that, because I'm doing it too late, or it also procs often, where it should not proc.

Yeah. Yeah, you wanna...

You wanna try to... Uh...

Have Serenity's for Guardian. Um...

I'm not sure exactly how the games look, but, uh... Uh...

If you get trapped into a jungle, it's very... It's very, very scary if your Mage is not fast enough with Alter.

And also it's very scary if he can't, like, run NOS and try to avoid getting purged. Let's say they purge the Alter time, then that's...

That's... That's...

That's... That's...

That's... That's...

That's... That's...

That's... That's...

That's... That's...

That's... That's...

That's... That's...

That's... That's...

That's... Also, if you get blocked Alter time, then it's...

Then it's very likely to be a block instantly. Mhmm.

Cause you're trapped. Either you have to shrink at Guardian Serenity, or he has a block.

And if he runs around the Pillar, um... To...

To avoid damage there, and I'm standing in trap. How...

How do I get there in the best way with... Is it with Мash, or should I just wait for him to come back?

Because I feel like I'm running a lot of the games. Uh...

Come out of the city and I'm just running from one pillar to the next to get in line of sight Yeah, if he has altered time up he will portal back anyway, so you can just wait for Yeah, so make sure you kind of know where where he started his altar I guess and You should just tell him to come back or whatever When you're free from CC Especially as every second that goes on there there's a chance of them dispelling all the time and that's very scary Alter in general is just insane though race hunters like it should be part of your cooldown rotation and it's You should prioritize allowing your mage to alter your traps instead of getting to trinket guardian at all I know you just talked about sometimes if I did they truck through the damage and that's just kind of jungle cleave sometimes But as often as possible That should just be a one-to-one trade you guys make that's another thing too is like communication ties in with defensive cooldown usage a lot and You're just trying to as Mara said try to you're looking for the most efficient trade possible Like we talked about rogue vanishing pressing trinket vanish is more efficient than Reese pressing trinket guardian in many cases and like alter time is one of those cooldowns that just insanely efficient and so like Mark's When you have an altar ready for a go you should just pre communicate that you're gonna alter the next trap I Think that I'll kind of go far and Against jungle.

I think that's gonna be one big adjustment. I can struggle even I know you're already starting to use altar And that's good, but it's like in the middle of the game.

It's important to communicate it, too But you any any more questions guys or any final thoughts It's a lot to take in at the moment Questions will come in the future, but it's also like very straightforward versus telling are you struggling into jungle a lot by the way? Not anymore.

I'm struggling So yes, I'm quite good So one thing I would one thing with jungle is that they they do obviously have offensive coolance, but Usually it's just high high DPS combined So It's good to know kinda how TC happens versus jungle for example You guys know what the BM hunter or the hunter stun is like intimidation stun.

Yeah so if you guys are Like on the same page a little bit or maybe you're not talking about about it too much But you're aware that it's ready then in that way you can As a mate for example, you can be faster with your pre alt or You're a trinket alter Since you know that it's gonna come can talk about that Yeah, it's like you see the Intim, you know exactly what's gonna follow it.

There's no question But when in when Intim is not up it kind of becomes more of the priest responsibility to try to like Greater fade or holy war the CC So then if they purge that altar you just then do Guardian and spamming Yeah, that that's when it becomes a really dangerous honestly like then then you have to either trinket trap Guardian Guardian Serenity and or block It has to be a little bit your decision Look, you have to be in charge of that like, you know Also, you actually call block for mark.

So when you have to block And when you become really good at that and you start calling blocks You can just block and you can save him then Mark, which is the mage he can he can just he You calling block basically means that you can't save him but mage has a lot of ways of cutting they have barriers They have ways of avoiding you damage.

So When you're comfortable with the with that and when he says block then you can make a quick I Guess assessment or whatever the word is Whether or not you can avoid the damage for another second or two or if you can't then you just have to block right?

Yeah And then if you do block right the one thing you should maybe communicate is If there's a priest on the end of enemy team like stopping the MD or stopping the shatter like those sort of things Yeah Will be important to communicate Maybe one thing against warriors.

I just does MC them if they if they Triggered it it's all fine. I got that but I cannot I cannot help to kill Is it still good for me to do it? but We go on the shaman.

I Have no mind games for him for the for the ghost So I'm never sure if it's if it's good for me to start with him just doesn't see yeah Sometimes it's good to know it is good. It is sometimes it is also nice like Let's say you're going a shaman into shadow priest shaman warrior.

Maybe that's the comp you're talking about or something you can let's say you go shaman you sheep the priest and you chastise warrior or something like that you Can follow up?

You can just drop a ring or frost on top of the mind controlled warrior And then the priest can drop the MC and then start Casting and mind games You've been doing that for so long That's something you can do.

But even if you can't get the mind games off, it's not the biggest deal because chances are the shaman didn't proc nature. If he trinkets in the opener and you haven't mind games yet, that's really good.

It's not the worst case scenario to not be able to mind games in the opener, as long as you can force something else.

EP.4 COMMUNICATION: YOU OR ME

Okay, so we'll watch this really quick. So he kind of at the beginning of the game, right, called his cooldowns for the Demon Hunter.

Like. Right.

He's like screaming you. Maybe it's not best for the DPS to like to do this.

I mean, it'd probably be better for Riku to communicate this to Chaz. You got bumped.

You got bumped. You pressed.

You pressed. You pressed.

So it's like in any case, he's telling like it's important to kind of know who is going to press. And then like in this end clip, he kind of called like the me slightly too late.

Like, I mean, he could have called this earlier. Right.

Definitely could have called this when he says like me. Me.

I don't healer. I pre-clone.

I pre-clone. So this is the time where you ideally should be saying like you or me.

Right. Everyone is cross CC.

And ideally, he should be calling it like right here. Right.

Because this is kind of where the decision needs to happen. Skin late anyway.

And he says he skins. Me.

Me. But I mean, luckily, he has like renewal.

I think that's the reason. He survived.

So let's see. He presses renewal.

Me. Me.

Me. Me.

Me. Me.

Me. Me.

Me. Me.

Me. I'm not even going to renewal.

I'm not even going to. Oh, he doesn't even press renewal.

He just presses frenzied region like frenzied regions and saying Jesus. But you see, like the moment his healer got CC, he was like slightly after his healer got CC.

I pre-clone. I pre-clone.

He's calling that he was going to use defensives. Wait.

Me. Me.

Me. Me.

Me. Me.

Me. Me.

Me. Me.

Me. Me.

Me. Me.

Me. Me.

And so again, like in these moments, you're looking for one to one trades. And so we've talked about this before, but like alter, like trinket alter is like a part.

Say you're playing a mage in this matchup and your healer gets trapped by, you know, thug leave. Like that's an easy like trinket alter if you have that available, you know, because alter is just such an efficient short cooldown and it can save like your healer from panic trinketing.

So the reason you're just, the reason you want to be vocal about like you or me is to avoid overlapping. Like that's generally one of the worst things you can do.

Obviously it's better to press defensives and live than not press any defensives and die. But in these situations where you're calling you or me, it's just to prevent this overlap.

And if you're very vocal about who needs to press, then you minimize the chance of overlapping. So that's just like one example, like from actual like rank one gameplay, like they actually do.

They just say you or me. And again, it doesn't really matter what the cooldown is.

You don't have to announce like what cooldown you're pressing. Alter would be, alter is kind of the exception.

You kind of do want to communicate like I'm pressing alter. So your healer knows they don't need to like dump heals into you, like in the middle of your alter.

That's kind of like a good, good cooldown to announce you're using. But like arrow, if you say like me, me, me, me, you don't really have to say what cooldown you're using in most cases.

I mean, you could, you could say you're vanishing like me and you say I vanished, but you don't have to say I'm going to vanish. You just say me and you do whatever your defensive, you press whatever defensive you want to press and you're good.

EP.4 COMMUNICATION: DEFENSIVES IN ADVANCE

This clip is an example of pre-communicating defensives and sort of again as I just mentioned the bulk of your communication in arena is talking about win conditions and defensively that means talking about what you're going to be doing to not die the next go. So let me hear what Waz says.

So that was like an important part. So he says he's going to blind us.

So he sees the healer like mounting in you know this is clear clearly the healer wants to cc Chaz this holy paladin and so he and now he sees this and announces it and you know this is something that you can do to help your your priest right because your priest has greater fate and holy ward to avoid cc.

So if you know and now if you can help rocky and you because it's kind of chaotic to it's hard it's hard to pay attention in arena and hard to positioning enemy positioning as a healer sometimes.

So if you see this sort of situation where the enemy team wants to do their win condition the holy paladin is pressing up that's like worth mentioning so that rocky can fade or something. So Chaz doesn't you know ground this hodge that would have been ideally the play he does pre-communicate.

What's it called earth and wall totem it so that's that's good. Hodge?

I'm kidding it's it's blades it's blades it's blades no no I fear I fear wait wait wait I intervene you I should have been three and seven instead listen it's gonna be really long to see it's gonna be really long to see he's dead you're dead you're dead.

So this kind of combines what we just talked about like he talks about you know fearing he announces that he's fearing and he announces what I mean obviously he's a warrior he has so many defensive tools he can use on his team but he announces every single one to allow his partners to make better decisions as to what they actually need to be pressing in that moment.

Yeah yeah it's every city. Oh wait you're a trop.

I'm stunned. It's fine I can peel I can peel wait I'm waiting for you.

Yeah I'm waiting. I'm not gonna stop sap I don't think he's going for it.

I don't know if we're supposed to kill the rogue. I think we just need to do better ghost and wrath we just need to do better ghost and wrath.

Sharpen? Just kill him right now.

Holy fuck in the night. Kidney me defensively.

Bad kidney. Just play really aggro play really aggro they they can't go like when they have no venter they can't go that's the only way they win.

Cass when do you have when do you have trinket chess? When you have 30 seconds left of your trinket they're gonna run short chess with venter okay?

We have to save him. You need to you need to somehow trinket swap and I know you can't I don't know.

Who can's a chess trinket? I don't know it's not showing up on omni cd so I don't know I mean I'm assuming he's playing he might be playing relentless not sure um but what waz just said is like when you have 30 seconds what does he say?

Venter okay? Okay so I guess he is playing trinket but what he announced is yeah he's so there's two minutes on trinket right and he knows it's one and a half minutes on their kill cd yeah flagellation right so basically to give them a heads up of when the damage is coming right?

Exactly yeah it's like the they know at this point in the game like this is a very weird comp and so it's a it's a ventir sub rogue playing with crit legendary so they have one huge go every time flagellation is available and so flagellation was used in a kill I think to set up like right before this um he's not tracking the cooldown which would be a good thing.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Probably be a good cooldown to track but it's very rare um let's see see when he presses flagellation um I can't tell oh there so he pressed it presses it somewhere in here there I think that that's flagellation yeah so um in any case I'm going to go ahead and play this game maybe he doesn't like the so and he's basically saying like we need to have resources available for their really big setup and that's kind of the case against any of these really bursty melee cleaves is that a lot of them like dump most of their damage into like really big goes right? so like rettwar a lot of their really big goes involve like seraphim or like a necro banner and so if you kind of plan around those cooldowns before they're used then you kind of get a head start head start on how you should react defensively um trying to think if there's any other classes with like really long cooldowns i guess uh i mean metamorphosis is a long cooldown but you're it's i think four minute cooldowns you're probably not going to have it more than once per game um a good one would be uh the enhancement shaman windfury totem i forget what it's called uh the legendary they use uh doom winds doom winds yes thank you yeah so like that's an important cooldown to play around because the only time you need to worry about a cooldown like doom winds is like once per minute like it's a one minute cooldown so you only have like the only time you have to worry about the shaman i'm sorry is when doom winds is available so if you see that doom winds is falling off with 20 seconds left you know that you need to do something in approximately 20 seconds so you're calling the enemy team's win condition before it happens to let your team know that okay we need to figure out how we're going to trade into this um in this case he's saying like oh they have this venthyr rogue has a really big go and uh minute or so all we need to do is plan a way to respond to that really big go so yeah so right this is sort of the advanced communication that's really important is recognizing the enemy team's win condition and calling it out so your team has a way to plan around it so you know who's going to be pressing next and because as rmp you're kind of limited like you don't have the luxury of having like high utility like playing with a with a high utility like playing with a high utility like playing with a high utility like playing with a red paladin like red paladins and warriors they have all these like buttons that can save your team you don't have as many defensive cooldowns that can save your team you pretty much have things that can save yourself um yeah so you need to be vocal about who's going to be pressing on the next set of cooldowns or the next setup from the enemy team um again because you don't want to be overlapping and you don't want to be in a situation where no one knows what they're going to press especially against a comp like this where they're just like entirely trying to do one big setup with you know flag elation because if you're if you're late responding to a comp like this like you just get blown up right um so that kind of makes sense for for both of you yeah yeah and i think i think this is kind of again the one part that's more advanced and but i think you guys both have you you, like really good game knowledge and so you kind of already know how the enemy team wins right i mean every comp in shadowlands pretty much wins the same way they cc your healer and they like they you know they cross cc with the cc on healer and a stun on the dps blow cooldowns into the dps and rinse and repeat cross cc and nuke yeah cross cc and nuke that's that's basically i hope the enemy team doesn't respond in time yeah so the the work around to that problem is to just always know who's going to be pressing their defensive cooldowns next um and again that it's going to require you to pay more attention to omni cd it's like in this in these down times where there's not as much damage you know when so the enemy team like right here they're just kind of running around doing nothing and so these are the moments where you kind of should be paying more attention to uh omnibar is in these moments you're going to be facing in these moments where there's not much going on and you need to have a plan for the next next go so it's basically like during year go you're paying attention to maybe gladius and you're paying attention to trinkets paying attention to cooldowns paying more attention to uniframes during year go but then when yeargo is over that's when you start paying attention to things like omnibar and weak auras because those two things you know we koreas lets you know when you're immediately in danger and omnibar lets you know when you're going to be in danger so if you might useию and omnibar lets you know when you're going to be in danger are you doing you're doing What's in there that that allows you a chance going to be in danger so those you know you don't have to pay attention to those things until like your go is over and then you can plan your defensive response like accordingly

EP.5 HOW TO GET GLADIATOR EVERY SEASON!

Thanks for watching! Thanks for watching!

Thanks for watching! Looks like our team will have to scramble once Rocky gets back from his ski trip.

Rocky would get back on the 13th of February, which would give our team over a week to grind their remaining wins. As long as they could stay above 2400 and dodge a few death bolts, this should be easy, right?

Should I have a jump down? Dark Souls, death bolt, dead.

I don't know. I'm always great at fading it, and it always hits me through.

Today, we will see just how much progress our team has made since week one. This episode, our team will have one final coaching session and see if they can manage to get Gladiator with only 10 days left of season two.

Welcome to the finale of the Skillcapped Road to Gladiator Challenge. Let's rewind back to the start of this series, where our goal was to take three random players who had never played together and pair them up with coaches for weekly VOD reviews and see if they could get Gladiator for the first time.

We designed this challenge to teach our team and you, the audience, the five pillars of WoW PvP. And over the past five weeks, we've all learned something about offense, defense, positioning, and communication.

Our team started their journey around 1900 rating in 3v3. And week after week, their rating started to climb, all the way until the end of week four, where they finished their queue session in the mid-2500s and only a handful of wins away from reaching Gladiator.

In just four weeks, a team of players who had never played, had climbed over 600 rating in 3v3.

By mastering each pillar, they were slowly building the foundation to truly understand how to play WoW Arena, which would eventually build toward a deeper understanding of the game and the ability to develop strategies to overcome any situation.

This game knowledge could be carried over to other comps and even other classes. There's a reason why the best players in the world can play so many specs at a high level.

Because the knowledge required to play one class or one comp can easily be carried over to other classes. By making small adjustments to their gameplay every week after each VOD review, our team had developed a better understanding of WoW Arena.

And now, they were only a few wins away from the achievement they had been chasing for years. You know what?

We don't have to waste any more time. Let's just show you their final games.

This is the main reason we made this video. This is the main reason we made this video.

Thank you for watching. Next time.

Please subscribe! There we go, boys.

We're glad you're here. Oh, God.

Five weeks ago, our team was struggling to win games at rival ratings. But now they were able to consistently win above 2,500 MMR.

Their offense went from janky, uncoordinated setups to perfectly synchronized goes, allowing them to play off the true strength of their comp, which is its control. On defense, our team started out completely blind, not having a single idea about proper cooldown trading.

But now they were starting to make more efficient one-to-one trades, allowing them to outpace the melee cleave gatekeepers that previously stood in their way. Both offense and defense were elevated by positioning and communication, which are the first two advanced concepts needed to really gain mastery over Arena.

All of these pillars would unlock a more technical understanding of game strategies, which is what allows pro players to dominate across multiple classes and even multiple expansions. Once you gain this understanding, it never really goes away, and it allows you to navigate new matchups for the first time.

When I fight new comps in WoW, I usually try and think about the comp in like what similarities it has to other comps that I face more regularly.

And if it's a comp I've never faced before, I just try to think of the individual classes and not so much of the actual comp, and just try and think of what could be a good target to that comp, what could be a loose condition, a win condition, all these kind of things.

Because in the current game, and I mean it's been the same for many years, not every comp can kill every single class in the game. Like a good example would be, not many comps can kill mages in the game because mages are really tanky.

If you're playing like a spell cleave, you're not really going to be able to kill hunters. So these are just like random examples.

And whenever you face a new comp which has any class in the game or any spec, you always have to think about it, that about that a bit and try and figure out a card like a target that you can actually kill and also figure out a way you can actually lose the game.

What I mean by that is that when you fight a comp, there's obviously different kind of archetypes of comps. One would be a setup comp like rogue mage, or like a dot comp like anything with affliction docks, or maybe like a dampening comp that just kills you in dampening, melee cleaves.

And all these kind of comps obviously have different win and lose conditions, and then you just try and like compare new comp to something you already know. That's how you usually figure out win and lose strategies.

Over the past five weeks, our coaches had been showing our team the correct strategies for beating all of the popular meta comps. But since the challenge was now over, we wanted to make sure they were able to learn strategies on their own.

With this in mind, our players sat down with Marrow one more time so they could have the knowledge and confidence to get gladiator every season. The first step to truly mastering strategies is to be able to recognize win conditions that weren't originally on the script.

Of course, every comp needs to select a kill target and have some sort of win condition. So we had to sort of plan on how to take their HP to zero.

And while each comp arrives to its win condition in some unique way, the general concept is largely the same. Attack whoever is the most vulnerable.

Your offensive attacks might force multiple cooldowns from your original kill target, but you need to be able to recognize when other players become more vulnerable to your attacks and when you should swap.

One area our team could improve on is paying closer attention to enemy trinkets and defensive cooldowns to know who is most vulnerable. Like the game is too long already.

Like a hunter is like, I'm the hunter. I will not die.

He has turtle. He has trinket.

He has accelerate. He has every button.

Like the hunter will not die. You guys, at this point, you guys should just look at trinkets a bit more and see like who has no trinket.

I mean, now you guys probably just die. But like the first one and a half minutes or something of the game, you guys actually played really, really sick.

You guys didn't do much bad, like much bad stuff. Then the one go on where you guys just go hunter and just get his roster, I think it's a bit troll where you don't swap around.

And now this last go is also a bit troll because, yeah, I mean, either or even go feral, but you guys just have to be careful. You don't have to hit someone else.

You can't hit the one guy that still has trinket. He can just save himself too easy.

And yeah, jungle is like you kind of play against the timer. You kind of just have to like improvise and see who doesn't have trinket and play off that because the game will end eventually.

Like after two, three minutes, you either just going to die to ghost or you're going to be oom or something. It's always going to be something that you're just going to lose to.

Part of seeing new win conditions also involves assuming your opponents will be actively trying to block your attack and then knowing who to swap to in order to get full value out of your crosshair. And that's where the cooldowns.

It's like a general wow thing for like wow arena. It's not just for MP, but any comp, you know, you always try to play around trinkets a lot.

Like if you have two people who are like just as good targets and one guy doesn't have trinket, the other guy has trinket, you obviously want to go on the guy with no trinket. And I think building on that a little bit, you should always assume that the enemy team is going to press like CDs.

I think too. I think that's a good assumption that if you do your go, like for instance, into Hunters, if they have sac up, if you go into someone, they'll probably, you know, sac that whoever you go on like really quick.

Like I think that's just an assumption you should make. You should always be ready to swap is what I'm trying to get at.

You should assume that you might need to swap and you'll need to do it like really quick. Like it's the same concept with the opener.

Like you basically select two targets. You assume one of them is going to press instantly and you go to the next person.

And I think doing that mid game is like really smart. This might seem like an obvious concept at first, but you should always plan for the enemy team to actually use their defensives.

So when they do, you will immediately know what you should be doing next to keep up momentum. One way they could play around enemy CDs is by pre CCing the kill target before goes, which is an advanced offensive tactic in arena.

By using micro CCs on kill targets before you stun, you prevent them from reacting to your 3-2-1 setup. With so many classes having high utility in Shadowlands, you need to make sure everyone is CCed at the same time, which also means making sure the kill target can't be used.

You can't pre-use a CD before your 3-2-1 setup, because leaving any sort of gap can allow the enemy team to respond and can shut down your kill. I think the sort of advanced RMP thing to do right now is to really focus on pre-ing targets.

Especially I think in the mirror, is it important to kind of pre the rogue as often as possible? Is that correct, Mauro?

Not making pre-Vanish or something. I mean, it depends what he has.

If he doesn't have Vanish and he's playing Horde, then it's relevant. But if he does, then yeah, you can't let him.

Then you try and chastise him into something into the go. You don't want to basically, what you want to try and avoid is him vanishing a go without having to trinket for it, right?

You want him to trinket vanish a go. Then he doesn't have Vanish anymore and he doesn't trinket anymore.

Pre-emptive gameplay also works on defense, and every pro player will tell you that pre-using defensives is a meta-defining part of Shadowlands Arena. If you can use CDs right before the enemy team does their setup, you can delay their go and prevent your healer from having to commit their trinket.

Like when he gets stunned, you should vanish here or melt. Like this is already like a small misplay, you know, that you don't react to this.

Because it can't happen that they go like this. I also don't know how you get stunned, Rocky, to be honest.

It's really awkward because you have Holy Ward. You know, he gets the Holy Ward and you just fade.

Like you cannot even get stunned here. If we start like Mark and Arrow are in stealth, then I don't want to Holy Ward myself because then he can just tap me.

Yeah, but they're found already. Like if you go back another 5 seconds, they're found.

The second they're found, they're in combat, you need to Holy Ward yourself. Okay, yeah.

So this opener is like literally completely scuffed because of like small misplays, but it's still misplays, you know. And then you get stunned.

I mean, even at this point, it's still fine. You can just vanish, they go over, they can't do anything.

If you go on your mage, he will just trade trinket if it's combust. And you're gonna be fine, and then you're not really gonna be that far behind.

And now they just get a free goal, which they probably shouldn't. My biggest challenge as a player was probably getting the confidence in knowing that you are doing the right thing.

I think I like to have a script before I go into an arena and follow it. But then sometimes you don't have that.

And just knowing that the next move I make will be correct. Getting that confidence, I think, was the biggest problem.

After reaching Gladiator now, I just want to keep pushing and improving. I want to push Gladiator in more seasons to come and also keep pushing beyond that.

And also that even the best players make mistakes, I think. Because once you realize that, it feels so much more reachable to push even further.

What's the hardest thing for you to do? One of the hardest things for me, probably, is to be able to play.

One of the hardest things for me, personally, was learning about communication. Because if you've come from LFG, you don't really use any communication.

One of the biggest challenges for me as a player is having enough game knowledge to keep up with the pace of the game. Because in Shadowlands, you need to know a lot of things, and it's hard if you're just starting out.

I think the most important thing that I learned is that it's a team game. You can't just solo it.

My best advice to players trying to get Gladiator would be just to find a good group of people, a good team, and stick with them. When we started, I thought we could potentially do it, but I was really not sure about my own skill, if it's good enough, or if it's out of reach for me forever.

So I was kind of curious if I could even do it if I get help. I think the biggest obstacles for players trying to get Gladiator are all about knowledge, and then about improving your own game.

You do not have to tilt or get upset or be toxic to your teammates if something bad happens. Because there's always something you could have done better yourself.

And then just shake it off and queue the next game, and then you will get there eventually. We had interviewed Rocky after week one, when he originally described his goals for this challenge.

For him, the rating wasn't that important. What mattered more was seeing improvement, which is something that the best players can recognize.

You can't just go and play the game. You don't have to get Gladiator, rank one, or win BlizzCon to be a great player.

You just need one thing. A commitment every day to be better than you were the day before.

I think we can get above 2.2, and even maybe hold 2.2. But in the end, I don't think it's about the rating, because if we get better, the rating will come anyways.

Whoa. I was just cutting onions over here.

I don't know what's going on. All right, guys.

That wraps up season one of the Road to Glad series. Hey, we want to know from you.

Let us know in the comments below what you thought of the series, and let us know what you think we should do next time. And as always, we want to thank you for sticking around, and we hope to see you soon.

EP.5 STRATEGY: MAGE POV VS. JUNGLE

What do you guys do in this matchup usually? Open this Swap Hunter, and then if the Hunter still doesn't come out stealth, we swap Pharah.

At this point I already don't like this, but who do they usually go on? Your Rogue or your Mage?

Mostly me I think. Yeah.

I've tried once or twice, come Rogue I think. Yeah, so something I said already some time ago is people started playing normal blink a lot these days.

And if you play normal blink you basically cannot die as a Mage, you cannot die to any comp in the entire game, you're mortal. Like until your healer is completely oom.

So something you can do is you can just play normal blink into that and you will never die. Because every time you normal blink you spawn a barrier and it's just too much.

No comp. If you play kite good with that you can never die.

So that's something you guys could do just before we even look at the game. If you're struggling to live, so like the good jungle cleaves on ladder are like 3-5, 3-6+, they just train Rogues.

These days because it's pointless to hit Mages when they play it. But I don't like this opener anyway.

I think what you guys should do in the opener insta is you should start PvEing the Priest before you go. Cast a fireball, use your mirror images insta to slow him a bit.

Try Spellseed, the power at 42, it's 5% stamina. It's like a small thing, but I mean 5% is 5%.

And then you guys would also have a better opener. And then you should also Nova before the goes, you're gonna proc your legendary.

And then the best thing to do is to just... Open on your fireball cast, if that makes sense.

The Rogue looks at your fireball... Well, not really the air while he's casting it basically.

Towards the end of the cast you just focus him for a sec or something. Or you look at his model, you see fireball is like 0.3-0.4 seconds left of the cast.

You stun him. You combust him with fireball, you will drop him to like 50-40%.

And that usually gives you the best chance to force Ross plus another CD. Because the goal is to force Ross plus something else.

Yeah. Because if you only force Ross or you only force trinket from him or something, then you can't do anything.

Because if you trinket domes here, you cannot swap to anyone if Ross is still up. You will swap to the fairy when you get Ross and he will be fine.

If you priest to Ross and he gets away, then it's also kinda bad. Because they will straight trinket and the game is like already very bad.

The opener is super important to the jungle. It's like the most important thing.

Rogue shouldn't open though. Like you should... so priest and mage should be PvEing the other ones.

Yeah, you just PvE him, you cast some fireballs. You don't have to do it long.

I don't want fireball that's almost on eye open. Okay.

Like basically what I do is I press fireball, fireblast. I press two spellsteals, I press a nova.

Probably even a nova on him so he can't move out of line or something. And then you can open.

Then you can either open on fireball cast or you just open with the pyro proc. You have one of them.

Either one is fine. And I think sometimes too you can even...

If you manage to lock the priest like on penance. Like if they try to like penance early, I think that's really strong, isn't it?

Like... Yeah.

But I mean people... yeah. I guess people don't really do it on high rating.

But maybe on 240 they would draw 2526, yeah. It's not too bad.

And then playing... I mean if you get to click on penance, the penance is insane.

Because then you can maybe just kill him and open after he rolls too late. So if you play normal blink, you want to be blinking the first stun and probably like altering really high?

Like you know instead of trying to trinket alter, you can just blink alter? No, no.

You just... Yeah, exactly.

You just hold. You just blink the first stun.

You alter. And just in general you cannot really die when you play it.

But let's see what you guys get. You guys get PS.

You don't get rolls. So then you guys try and feed.

This is good. Hunter pre-rosses himself it looks like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is what usually happens.

Then they just end up rossing only. And yeah.

This is usually what happens. You know, you guys...

If you didn't have rossi, you would have 100% forced trinket from hunter. But now you just get like a ross.

It's not too terrible, but yeah. I mean it's okay.

It's like not the worst opener. But it's not too good.

So now he starts stolen. So you know, we've encountered this problem before.

Yeah. So is this go probably going to be like a blind go then?

In this situation? Yeah.

I mean next go is probably going to be blind go. And...

I mean in this situation what you guys should probably be doing is you should just go priest next go. I think generally speaking priest is the best target anyway.

I think you should try and go priest as much as possible. Okay, let's see what you guys do.

I mean you guys do like go on hunter. You actually end up blinding trinket, double trinket.

Yeah. I mean this was okay.

I don't know. I don't think the priest trinket hit it for us hunter.

But it's good for you guys. No, you guys could actually win on the priest.

I mean so far you've been kiting good as well. Now you would probably trinket all.

So you do it good. Just try, every time you alter you just run away from priest of course.

You don't, so he doesn't purge you. That was really close.

Okay, you actually get it back. Yeah, you actually get it back.

Good. He pre domes.

Yeah, you actually get it back. Good.

You pre domes. Yeah, you actually get it back.

Good. You pre domes.

Yeah, you actually get it back. Yeah, you actually get it back.

Good. He pre domes.

Let's see. Trust has to fail you if you have it off this.

This game is not going too bad. I mean his combust is not so good.

I mean his combust is fine, but you know, I don't know. I don't hear the comms.

Is there any? are they on actually yeah but yeah i had a music but uh what you guys should be doing here is you guys should try and like bait the ross on hunter you know then maybe kill the priest because he actually has nothing to press so if you guys bait the ross on anyone with like a combust and you can swap to the priest here you will actually win the game maybe because he has no like he has nothing to press he has no ross no peers no trinket so he could actually die let me see if you do you see us oh you see us the clone that's good yeah i think this go on priesthood a bit insane especially since you see us the clone here um yeah but yeah i mean this was not too bad either i mean you it's like i mean let's see how the game progresses but i mean this is like so far i feel like you guys been playing kind of fine i think this goal like i could have been like a bit different i guess you guys are trying to appreciate late i'm starting to get capital i'm not drinking it i kick my spell this seemed like a really safe block like do you think this is an appropriate block at this point i mean i mean you should you probably have to block here but i think you should wait maybe until you press maybe press this travel frenzy or something on you then it's insane block now it's like you just block to like because you know you can stop the dmd even i don't know if it was communicated but you can even block on like 30 that's fine if you stopped md um but yeah you guys see like i'm just like i'm just like i'm just like i'm just like kind of a win condition on priest or something i don't like now at this point of the game i don't like that you guys are like keep going hunter i think it's really troll because like the game is too long already like hunter is like i don't know hunter will not die yes certainly yes trinket he has to accelerate he has every button like the hunter will not die you guys at this point you guys should just look at trinkets a bit more and see like who has no trinket i mean now you guys probably just die but um like the first one and a half minutes i'm gonna go with the first one and a half minutes or something of the game you guys actually played really really sick you guys didn't do much bad like much bad stuff then the one going where you guys just go hunter just get his roster i think it's a bit troll where you don't swap around yeah and now this last goal is also a bit troll because yeah i mean either or even go feral but you guys just have to hit someone else you can't hit the one guy that still has trinket he he can just save himself too easy and yeah jungle is like you kind of play against the timer you kind of just have to like improvise and see who doesn't have trinket and the game will end eventually like after two three minutes you either just gonna die to go so you're gonna be um or something it's always gonna be something that you're just gonna lose to so um yeah the most important is to yeah yeah would you also go on priest if it's a holy priest or just because it's disc because i feel holy it's way more tanky um i mean you can go holy too i don't think holy is more tanky it just depends if he's playing rest lego i mean he has like one more cd but into holy you could also hit someone else yeah you don't have to go holy so much but holy also has a lot worse cds for steam you know it's like you know when a holy priest trinkets he doesn't just press a dome and makes this whole team be fine so you can you can do better swaps into holy you can swap around but you you still need to hit the priest even into holy sometimes because like i said this jungle they have a rocks fiber combust so at least whenever combust go you're gonna have to swap to someone to get pressure and the target makes more sense is like priest to someone else it's like that's what people do in high rating i think yeah this uh this though was like the pivotal moment of the game where like there was a win um but it like if you would have gone priest with this go instead of hunter i think the hunter sacks himself like if you would have immediately swapped off a sack uh with the rest of this bus i think that should have been enough to kill priest i mean you don't have fire blast stacks but i mean is that how it's used all name of hunter you can just bait it a bit you know you can fireball combust the hunter use one fire blast stack and he's gonna press rose because he's gonna have to process because that's already like 20k damage plus the power blast and that point he's gonna have to press for us and then you can swap to uh priest and you're still gonna have a lot of damage it's gonna make sense yeah yeah it's like so you don't have to necessarily commit all of your fire blasts yeah yeah exactly yeah like assume like it yeah if the hunter was really insane he would actually not trust himself if he was like insane he would not trust himself he would at the game he would just drink it turtle or something or just drink it and press something and because he wouldn't want to because he knows his priest can die right if you guys swap to the priest but it's like super advanced i don't think like this hunter would ever do it but like a really good hunter would have actually done that and he would have just let you guys combust him but like i said i think something yeah you should just had like a bit a bit better comms i even think going feral at this point wouldn't have been that bad instead of going you know hunter the hunter is the only guy that still has drink it it's like i mean you could also just go feral sometimes with like ghosts it's not that bad i mean hunter is like i don't know jungler's rough it's to be honest it's the only company game that rmp should not beat i think in this game we wanted to swap freezer i i think we said in the comments but if you play i think i hesitated and then he faded can you just check let's see nobody says he can't fade yeah fate does nothing fate is we had can you just check what happens because i think we're here and something happened maybe it's the yeah after this i'm drinking as well after this yeah it's when we go on the hunter and then he rossed himself and then we yeah somewhere i guess okay i go now go go go in caps class three we got error ross we can we can we can go on the healer in small town maybe okay yeah okay i think yeah no yeah of course you need to do it when the combust is still up basically it's when you have to do the swap because that is it's tricky i mean like i said jungle is really tricky jungle is the only comp you should not beat as rmp um and it's basically up to them to like fail a bit for you to win but the way this game goes i think you guys could have definitely won um but yeah just seemed like a bit better composed also go back one sec too i just want to tell the major something quick mark one thing by the way when you use that shifting power go back even more uh when you use the shifting power you should just spend two fire blasts while you're preserving this because the auto reset from the shifting power as well so you're just wasting damage while doing this you just press it twice and you get them back it's a small thing but i mean it would be another like six seven k damage now you're just like resetting them when they are yeah now you just reset them while they're ready anyway it's like a little bit it's like a small thing but i mean why not yeah might as well it's free damage in it yeah but i like i said i don't think you guys played too bad this game i think defensively your position everything was fine also the way you traded also i think your block was a little bit too early but it's not that big of a deal um you guys could try the normal blink thing like i said if you guys want to i would probably also mention it later like when you guys face wps and stuff because you also play that into that um but it would probably help if they go you because you guys would literally not lose until you um your team will also help to help you a bit more on the goals because you can't just trim a db but i feel like that's not really an issue because you you can just stand for you like they can just stand for you and you can go just go priest anyway like you don't have to like when you go priest it doesn't matter if you normally blink anyway um but yeah the first one and a half minutes are really good wait yeah you guys could exactly but i feel like you guys did it the first one and a half minutes you just didn't do it now like on this last go and i think this goes to one where you guys should have done it again with combust um and just generally try to always try to swap on any yeah yeah exactly on combust you should always try to and also just generally try and um it's like a general wow thing for like wow arena um it's not just for rmp but any comp you know you always try to play around trinket and you know you always try to play around trinket and you know you always try to play around trinkets a lot like if you have two people who are like just as good targets and one guy doesn't have trinket i guess trinket you obviously want to go on the guy with no trinket um and i think building on that a little bit you should always assume that the enemy team is going to press like cds i think too i think that's a good assumption that if you do your go like for instance into hunters if they have sack up if you do your go into someone they'll probably you know sack that whoever you go on like really quick um like i think that's just an assumption you should make is if maybe the enemy team is going to press like cds i think that's a good assumption that if you do it's not the most intelligent thing to to say that but i think like when you you should always be ready to swap is what i'm trying to trying to get at um you should assume that you might need a swap and you'll need to do it like really quick like uh it's the same concept with the opener like you basically select two targets you assume one of them is going to press instantly and you go to the next person and i think doing that mid game is like really smart like i still feel like you guys improved a lot in this matchup compared to the start though i remember when we won we won we won we won we won we won we won we won we won we won we won we won we won we won we won like we did like the very first episode and i watched you guys play into jungle it was like such a fiesta it was like you guys were hitting anyone it was like no there was like no thought into doing anything and now it's like um i don't know this is like no this is like this was fine like this game wasn't terrible you know but it wasn't like terrible yeah

EP.5 STRATEGY: MAGE POV VS. WPS

So what we do into this is kind of easy. We play normal blink, we play maybe even netherwind armor if you want to be safe for the spear and you don't want to randomly die or something.

The rogue actually plays short vanish, the uspagen or whatever it's called. It's the only matchup you ever play it into.

That way you will always have cloak or vanish for spear, the mage will not die because he's playing normal blink and you will basically not lose until you oom. You cannot die unless you fail defensively or something and you drink it nothing or something or you press really bad but usually you will not die until you oom.

And you do every go on shaman. That's what we usually do.

You never swap anyone, you just do every single go on shaman. Maybe on combust if you see a really insane opportunity to swap to the warrior or something you can do it but it's honestly not too worth it into that comp.

I think the best thing is to just do every go on shaman. The priest takes the warrior.

The mage tries to take the sp but if you don't take him it's not the end of the world either. You're not going to get peeled so much by him.

And that's kind of like the strategy we do into this. And it usually works.

This matchup turned from like a... ...to a warrior so when you combine games I think that's what we usually do. Yeah.

I mean usually every rest of shaman comp these days people just go rest of shaman when they play RMP because it's such an easy kill target. Like every go in mind games is like drink it or that pretty much.

And so are you mainly looking to try to kill the shaman? Yeah.

Yeah. And you just trade into spear?

Is that kind of the main win condition for WPS? Yeah.

And you just... Exactly I was going to say and you just try disarm every spear.

That's also something you play. I think you play Thief's Fog and disarm and...

What else do you play? Duel I guess.

And then you just try and disarm like spears when you can. And you don't really need bump here.

And bump is pointless. I don't know if you're playing it.

Tricks is not too bad but it's not needed either really. And then you just play like...

I mean like I said you just do every go on shaman. And you just try and CC the warrior on the go because he's the one really peeling.

But if I MC the warrior I cannot mind games the shaman. Yeah but you don't need to MC him every go.

You can just cover with stuns as well sometimes. You just chest size him and if he's close you just stun off.

Or you chest size him into like... I mean fear doesn't really make much sense but you...

Like do you see the HP right? You see if the shaman is already 60% when you chest size or he's like 70% then you just mind games it's going to be enough to kill him or force him back.

If he's going to intervene the shaman on 20% HP it's not going to be enough right? So you just look at HP and if you see the shaman is 100% then maybe you MC the warrior.

But generally speaking it's really important to get it off. Also your mage can maybe recc the warrior.

He can maybe ring him or sleep him or something. And like I said the priest is not so important.

So you would open shaman? I would open shaman but you have to let them do the first go because otherwise the warrior is going to peel.

Like my usual opener is into this one. So you just go out of self.

You start hitting the shaman. Hit his flashcraft off.

You wait to see if he's going to try to pre-do something. Your warrior rogue can even stack combo points maybe.

Or you open with cheap shot. Both are fine.

And then you just take the warrior and maybe the mage can like DB the SP just to give you guys an extra global. And if he's going to cast sheep or not depends on if you open with cheap shot or kidney.

Because if you open with cheap shot you're not going to have time to like DB sheep and then do damage. It's going to be too late.

If that makes sense. So do you want to...

Do you want to like PvE the flashcraft off the shaman? Yeah.

You can. You can.

It's not that hard but you would because there's nothing else to do anyway. Your rogue should be in stealth and the mage should play normal blinks so you cannot die.

So you're like chilling. You just wait a bit.

You don't have to do anything. You're not under like pressure or anything.

Let's see what you guys do. You guys open warrior.

Just going to drink a thing. Turn the volume up.

Yeah. What happened to us?

Did you try to go shaman? Let's see.

Oh. Yeah you just really did.

But you guys just got feared. It's whatever.

I mean it's... It wouldn't do much anyway.

I don't think you kill him in a cheap shot here. It's not necessarily possible.

You need to do like an actual insane quantum. This is a good alter though.

Yeah this is really good adaptation from your first like you know. This is really good use of alter.

I think. I don't think you should jump down here by the rogue here.

I think it's really bad that you jumped down. Just me.

I think it's really bad that you jumped down. I mean it's not a big that big deal but it's like it is kind of bad.

Because you could just sit there and reset your thing you know. Something smite or something right now.

Then you guys do go here on the shaman. Priest trinkets to save.

Yeah. I mean this is not too bad if you get priest trinket.

But I also don't like to go too much. Try to get a fairy.

So one thing. Yeah.

Something I also want to mention is that the first minute into this comp is the hardest. When he has earthquake out.

Earth legendary. Once that is over you are kind of chilling defensively.

You're not going to take so much damage. And you can kind of just relax.

You're not going to die much. So in the first minute you should just like.

Okay so basically what we do when we do these shaman goals in the first minute. We just do bait goals.

We basically just try and do good goals. But it's not like like I don't know.

It's not important that you actually do insane goals. If that makes sense.

All you have to do is you have to do like. How do you say like you just have to like you just do goals.

So they play defensive. Like the first minute is like.

Yeah you probably just need to scare them right. Yeah you just do.

You just play the game for one minute. Yeah exactly.

Because the first minute you won't really kill the shaman. Unless you do like randomly insane goals with like mind games.

Or you have combust. You can't really kill them through the earth legendary.

So you just try and live you know. And then after the first minute you play the game.

And that's when you kind of win. If you're not like already behind.

But I think you guys are at a good point. You guys are kind of.

This game is not so bad so far yeah. I don't like what you guys are doing strat wise.

But the game has not been going that bad. I think you guys are at a good point.

You guys are kind of. This game is not so bad so far yeah.

I don't like what you guys are doing strat wise. What legendary should I use?

I actually never play Triune anymore. I stopped playing it completely.

I never play it. You're always damage now.

Even in Mage or. Yeah always damage.

It's not worth it anymore to be honest. You don't really need it.

I like that. So this.

So now you have basically the. Like you have what you want.

For the win. Yeah this game is completely over by the way.

I don't know why the shaman trinket is here. It's obviously completely horrible trinket.

There's no mind games. I don't know why he presses.

But you guys won the game at this point. I mean, you just, next go you just have to make sure you both CC one guy, but you should be able to do it.

And then you just win. Like you chest size warrior, and then you just, you try to reset your chest size now.

You have combust ready. You make sure you chest size the warrior.

Maybe you can stun the SP on the go or something. So he can't feel he might be playing swap, but he has no trinket to swap.

So if you cross the sea, you just win the game and you just go shaman. Actually you guys got mind games here, but this was a bit late mind games, probably shouldn't have done it, but it doesn't matter because you guys have busts.

You can kill him without. And what is the improvement from me, not chest size fearing the priest and Mark trying breath-sheeping the warrior because the warrior is on him mostly, and I can just, and then I can mind games to shaman.

Or is it just the person? Nah, but the thing is, the thing is, the reason why I'm saying this is why I wanted to do it with like this because there's way more fail potential if the mage sees his way.

If the mage gets stopped by anything, like if you don't kill the shaman, same global and he gets to fear you, gets to pre-ground the sheep, he gets to do something, your entire goal is over and you don't need to CC the priest. The priest is irrelevant.

The priest can't do much. The priest can do like nothing to the go.

He can stun silence. That's all he has.

And maybe he has a panda every time. But I mean, he has to even move in for the panda.

So it's like troll the priest. Like you, you try and CC the priest, but the priest is not really relevant.

The warrior is the one that's going to completely kill you go. So it's safer to do with chest test on warrior.

Okay. Okay.

But you can do it that way around as well. I just, I just don't think you need triple CC every go and you can't get it anyway because you don't always have everything ready.

This was another situation where you could have, you know, fire blasted during the shifting power. Yeah.

It's not, it's not that big a deal, but it's. I just tend to save him so I'm bursting.

Yeah. It's all good.

I think that's a bit of a max. I think that, yeah.

So let's see if you can, you even have like a DB double ring here. And maybe on the shadow priest and the warrior.

Actually priest is on fear DR. So nevermind.

Yeah. You get kicked though, but this is good that you get kicked.

This blocks a bit early, but it's whatever. I think this warrior hasn't pressed the spear.

Does he even playing spear? Ah, see this, this is what like, right.

This is what I'm saying. This is what I mean.

This is what I mean. You, you try to do something on the warrior, you just get peeved and then like the ghost over.

The warrior will peel the go probably now and you guys won't kill on a go that you guys should have killed on. This is one of those situations where like having really precise three, two, one really matters.

Cause you just, this, this was the win, but this is the, the outplay. The one button right.

That could have lost the game was pressed here. So this is kind of unfortunate.

Yeah, damn. But you still have bust.

I mean, potentially you can, you have one more go. I mean, where your trinket is coming up, which kind of sucks, but yeah, maybe you can kill through where you're trinket sometimes.

I mean, it depends how you do it. You can kill through sometimes.

Depends what he has as well. If he doesn't have like everything you can maybe kill through, let's see.

But I like the threat that you guys have to squish armor. No, I mean, this is much better.

Like what do you guys have to do? What you guys are doing now is like, good.

He has no worth allowed. He should just go and jump.

I don't like the, I mean, do you guys win this game? Oh, nice.

You do actually, okay. Also, I'm not so like, okay.

It's a small thing, but this DB ring thing, like it's a bit short by the way. Like you should not get this ring.

The priest usually has a global to death in theory. I don't know why he doesn't, maybe he doesn't, maybe he doesn't actually, but I feel like if the warrior, like usually warriors also play staff, but I feel like, yeah, I think they can play staff into this.

And then it's like kind of hard because they play staff and then they can also press something pre sometimes, but I mean, it's fine. It worked out.

It's okay. But I don't think you guys played this matchup too bad to be honest in the end.

Like I said, I think it's better if you just just test the warrior because it's more safe, but yeah, I don't think it's too bad. In an RMP mirror, we should get the healer to trash times they have a healer then.

So that's, In an RMP mirror, you either trash test the healer, or you trash test the rogue into the goal usually. You don't trash test the healer if he's undead, and you do if he's alliance.

If he's horde, you don't trash test the healer much because it's pointless, he has a will, it's too much to go through then. But if he's alliance, you trash test the healer into fear.

And you just DB the rogue maybe into goal or something.

So just to recap though, for this matchup, one, some things I can just help before the gates even open is playing normal blink for mage, and then playing thief spartan, and then playing thieve spartan for rogue, that way you have more efficient trades into spear of bastion.

And of course, like you're mostly playing around spear bastion defensively. And then- They ain't play anything though, this team.

Oh yeah, this team. They were necro lord.

They're not played necro or something, but no, people don't use it. And then, yeah.

I should play thief spartan, disarm, and still duel or? I think so, yeah.

I think duel is good to destroy yourself if they go to you, you know, just to get a re sometimes, to get away. Because if he plays normal blink, they should probably train you.

And then duel is good to just get away and get a re. Because like I said, a mage can't really die with it.

I also linked, just check this quick, Mark. This is usually what I put in my commentary these days.

And then you just swap in the first row between short CS and diverted energy. And if you play normal blink, you can play diverted energy.

Because it has kind of good synergy. And if you don't, then you just play in the short CS.

Yeah, I've been playing diverted energy, not the short CS. Yeah, I don't think diverted energy is that good if you don't play normal blink.

I don't think it's a need. It doesn't heal much.

It's very low healing. And short CS is actually really good.

If I play normal blink, I should play diverted. And if I'm normal, I have to play short CS.

Yeah. Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Exactly. And then always play DC.

Yeah, I think you always play it. Yeah, I think I usually.

Because the match-ups where you would want the thing, maybe that's usually the match-ups where you're not going to be able to do it. I play normal blink outside of facing mage v. mage.

But even in mage v. mage these days, I don't know. The damage is just too good to have, if that makes sense.

I don't know. Just too good.

You don't really play anymore. Temporal?

Or you don't play a? Treant.

Treant, yeah. You never play it, really.

Right, so you can stack your legendary mark and make a new one. Yeah, you could actually.

All right, we'll go to the next game.

EP.5 STRATEGY: ROGUE POV RMP MIRROR

Alright, so RMP me and I think you guys have gotten much better at this matchup in general. What's your rating by right now?

What rating do you guys get to? Like high seer?

2555. Okay.

Too much. But we are at 2500 right?

Yeah. 2490 something like that.

Yeah, you guys peaked at like 2550 rating and like 2650ish MMR I think. Yeah.

Yeah, I played this game troll. I remember this game actually.

It's a bad game. It's a bit unlucky.

I don't like to stab but let's see. Yeah, this is scary.

Okay, yeah. I think a... like a flaglation rogue makes it kind of a different matchup.

It's pretty scary right? Like the flag damage is really good.

Yeah, it's a bit sketch. Do you actually die here though?

No. I blind him even with this panic.

It's not too bad. Not too good but not too bad.

Doesn't matter. You can use your blind to start up.

Let's see. You guys get a CC but the CC is not good because the guys are DR.

Yeah. Like the CC is so bad.

The CC is bad. doesn't do much you know like the sleep is not good you guys should have waited here the rook is the sun there maybe you couldn't see because of the duel yeah yeah because of the duel but that should have been like communicated i stand up and do we got a string kit and then your team should kind of know because the way this game has went so far by the way it's not that bad for you guys even though they forced everything to be rogue but i mean i don't they don't have much you know the rope doesn't have trinket as well unless you just die in this kidney now maybe you die in this kidney in a bump in this situation where you don't have like a really good go but the enemy team has their go ready do you think we just send dance here just to like buy time or or maybe air should just be pre-kiting like crazy right right now like what is the play do you attack the rogue here even though you don't have cc on priest or does i mean i mean the play is to do everything we just did and just delay it by like five seconds to be honest i think this would have been the best you you kind of did this panic blind which was not too good but if you go back go back to the blind when you're just blind okay you guys if you guys play this game perfect when you do this blind you guys should just say yo let me step out of this blind because then what happens is you step the rogue eight seconds and then you can just sleep to priest late you you have like another eight seconds into maybe even reset depending on how you get the sap to uh you know get to cc late on the healer and then you can open when you're done and then you can just sleep to priest late and then when the standee has over now you guys kind of just fucked yourself over by like sleeping them early when the rogue is the standee and your rogue doesn't really get a sap because you just get cc'd um and then i don't know you guys are in such stuck in such a weird position where you guys can't go anyone i think the best thing you guys can do is like go mage here that's the best thing you can do but it's still bad you don't want to go mage that late into the game anymore i think the the sort of advanced rmp thing to do right now is to really focus on preying targets especially i think in the mirror is it is it important to kind of pre the rogue as often as possible is is that correct maro and not making pre-vanish or something it depends what he has if he doesn't have vanish and he's playing horde then it's relevant but if he does then yeah you can't let him like then you're trying to just as him and something into the goal you don't want to basically what you want to try and avoid is him vanishing a goal without having to drink it for a try do you want him to like drink advantage ago then he doesn't have vanished anymore and he doesn't think anymore um i think this but yeah this fear though rocky was like kind of bad because you've now you've put the rogue in combat um so like yeah the sap off the blind was the play here to reset stun drs sap or ring one of them maybe even a ring cast would have been fine but something like the fear i mean the fear is okay in a sense because you would get a re otherwise because you're okay sheep you can't stop him or do anything but it's just the whole goal is just not like jack said it's just i mean it's just because the duel i guess because people don't see stun the other way around but it's just bad communication like you can't go because he stunned the art from the duel and your team maybe doesn't know and then the whole group just gets screwed over because of that like at this point like i said you guys should just wait and delay it um would have been the easiest um or try to go for free that's the two things that's like the two options here but i think you guys should actually stay in and try to do another goal because you guys have still have cds i don't think there's a point in running an ampersand unless you're insanely far behind or you have like no cds as long as you have cds you just stay in a trade okay but yeah i mean this this is just unfortunate timing it seems like this yeah you know ideally it should have been a zap i don't like the pi on rogue by the way i don't know if you do it on purpose but i don't like the pi and rogue yeah i still did not put it out of my chest as macro i don't have to do it yeah but you just give it to the mage let's give it to the mage yeah the mage can do much more with the pi than the rogue the rook doesn't get anything from pi yeah haste is the worst start for rogue yeah mage actually gets a lot even outside of combusted it's not bad because now look now like now you guys have such a weird situation if you like pause the game at this point now you guys have to stand the understroke but there's nothing for priest so now i mean now what do you do i mean now the best thing you can do is like go mage or go priest maybe when we probably go priest because we made i mean any priest not gonna be easy either but you can't even do a bomb go or anything because the guy is like too close yeah it's awkward now yeah that was like completely awkward and now they're probably going to go soon i mean the priest is fine i think uh one arrow i think we talked about this i don't know if you're like screaming for the spells but this is like where you kind of want to be more vocal as a melee dps like you've you've basically had to go multiple times but you're sitting cc and these are really the times where you have to be really vocal like you need to be doing something in the situation which is to stop the rogue but you're cc'd and presumably i don't know if rocky had dispelled before this um i don't know if there really was much for him to dispel but these are just one of those one of those situations specifically as a melee dps where you just need to be really vocal about calling the spell and like you know because you have a play right here and your priest might not notice that you're sheeped and so you just have to but maybe you guys don't even i mean you get the spell so he just gets the spell to reach people okay yeah or maybe they break it i don't think they break it too but like i said i just think it's bad communication and like it's also something you guys could have done here at this point is maybe you could just go with like kidney on priest cheap road rogue or something maybe get something you know just to not do nothing i mean you have bust maybe you get priest drink it because he chokes or something wouldn't be too bad either you know if you're just killing priest here and then thunder rogue with cheap shots i mean you don't have anything off on priest but i mean kidney could be enough to just get something um you're just dying this right i'm a meteor let me not maybe not i haven't seen that as well uh how in this video low bomb probably should have clipped that but it's fine i mean it's a good tool if you get over here but you probably will uh flame shake think i'll die here now yeah this one you guys can i just have to get a re if you guys want to win the game but you should probably just really death to sleep i mean now it's completely awkward because you guys are like on top of each other as well so it's very easy for the other team to just do a goal here yeah i mean you can just see the stun into stun is like it's very brutal you probably had at some point in here an opportunity to disarm um like maybe instead of committing this go like this do you think it would have been better to disarm here and let's see i think hmm what do you think mark do you think yeah i should have turned around and ship sheltered him for you yeah like this whole game i remember it vividly like i was thrown off the whole game just playing terrible so this is a very bad game as well i don't think i even did any much communications and i also didn't think about the dr from the duel that they can't see it because we set up a down like normal because they can't see the stun dr so like yeah it's an awkward game the whole game i know it's video awkward i know that's what i said in the start this is like a really weird game but i'm females are very sketchy these days they're really very like how to say this but ampus are not over just because you have no cds i'm peemers are like completely weird like you can win ampumus with like zero cds ready they have everything ready by just running and getting everything back because everything is so short cd broke cds two minutes everything is two minutes and priest everything is two minutes so it's like you can actually get everything back if you just get like a good rio or something at some point and then they're like screwed because they can't kill anyone the mage is blocked the priest has rest lego still and um i assume you guys play rest lego in mirrors we don't you should um but yeah and uh i don't think uh i don't think rocky has it i don't have the money i think yeah that's sketch one thing i want to add to this game too is i think because you're playing bm trinket i think right here is probably where you want to try to pre-bm their go or something um the thing with that brinket is i always forget that i have it because i never really use it i started using it very recently so i always forget to press it you should put it somewhere else as well by the way you should put it because you have so many free spots you know on your boss and like the bottom left part it would be good to just have like a maybe not the binder but a binder but a binder and then you can just put it in the bottom left part and then you can just put it in the bottom left part and then you can just put it in the bottom left part and then you can just put like a show tool today or something just put like a show tool today or something just put like a show tool today or something just put like a show tool today or something just so you see bm will be kind of nice to see so you see bm will be kind of nice to see so you see bm will be kind of nice to see honestly too you could probably make find honestly too you could probably make find honestly too you could probably make find some sort of weak aura to put like your some sort of weak aura to put like your some sort of weak aura to put like your trinket like right here maybe below your trinket like right here maybe below your trinket like right here maybe below your target frame or something just target frame or something just target frame or something just i don't know if you're not used to i don't know if you're not used to But yeah, this is a situation where pre-BMing is probably the only thing that could potentially save you.

And like, it's 20 seconds, right? I think the effect.

It's either 20 or 15, I don't remember. 15.

15? Okay.

Like that's an entire stun DR, you know? So like, if you would have had, what is it?

Almost 20k more HP for this go. I mean, it's not guaranteed that you would have lived, but I mean, it's the only thing you can do, really.

That was a good disarm, but I'm just going to die to mage, it looks like. Oh, maybe not.

Oh yeah, this is... Yeah, that blind.

I was going to say, this is a nice situation. Where you just got to scream for the spells.

Because, like, you're wanting to slam kidney here, but you're just never... But I can't, because it's...

Here, I also should have communicated that, you see, I don't have kidney or dance. Oh, you don't have kidney or dance.

I'm nothing, I'm no way to stun. You reset it though, if you...

With the eviscerate, right? Don't you reset it kind of quick now?

Yeah, you do, you do, you do, yeah. But, I mean, really, this game is actually good.

Like, that's what I mean with MP rules, you know? Now you have trinket in like 10 seconds.

I mean, you guys... Let's see...

Let's see what happens. Maybe you guys get CC'd and you just die before you get it back.

But, I actually think... See?

Yeah, I was saying about it when I should have coked. Yeah.

No, but it wasn't that bad. I mean, this is, like, just a bit unlucky.

I mean, you could have pre-guardianed here as well, maybe. It's like something as well that you guys could have done here.

Like, pre-guardianed the sheep. But, randomly, this game could have been, like, a win for you guys, you know?

I mean, randomly, it would have been good. Because...

I mean, a mage could even die. No, anyone could.

I mean, rogue is not trinket for 8, but mage is. No trinket is first, so you could even kill the mage.

Oh, yeah. And you're blind in a sec.

That's an... I saw this happen in another game, where a mage blocks aggressively.

I think this mage is playing triune, though. Ah, it doesn't matter.

He will die in a stun. Yeah, I think...

It doesn't matter. That's kind of like a random win condition that people often forget about, is, you know, killing mage when they have no block and no trinket.

Like, you know, it's something you should just keep in the back. Keep in mind.

In these mirrors, this mage is a kill target once they... If they decide to block CC.

You know, it's just something to remember. I know it's easy...

It's really convenient. It's really easy to get fixated on, like, you know, your two kill targets.

But always pay attention to conditions like this, where the mage doesn't have block. Because, you know, they'll die through if you mind games into cauterize, right?

They'll just instantly die. So that's just one thing.

But yeah, I agree, though. These RMP mirrors tend to be pretty chaotic from what I've seen these days.

But do you guys have any questions about this matchup? It just feels so chaotic.

It's so hard to have a strategy. And I kind of feel like I play better with a strategy.

That's why I think RMP is tough to face. Because it's usually like, what the fuck do you do here?

Like, it's so many... No game or RMP mirror is ever the same.

Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean.

But you can kind of make, like, a good open and stuff like this. I mean, like, I don't know.

For example, when I play RMP these days, I kind of have a script. Like, what happens when they do this?

What happens when they do this? And RMP mirrors are actually...

I don't know. I actually think they're really easy once you get the hang of it.

Because people are... I don't know.

I think people are really bad at RMPs. RMP mirrors.

People don't really understand what it's about. Because RMP is, like, weird.

Because you're forced to go on the rogue. Because the rogue will just peel everything and go on everyone else.

And it kind of just makes it easy. Because the team is always, like, locked to go on your rogue.

Because the other rogue will just get disarmed and it goes bad. And it's just, like, scuffed.

And, like, even in the opener, you can also... Some of you can do an opener, by the way.

I don't know what the other teams do. But, for example, in high rating, some teams do it.

I mean, this is a game where you guys get found. So it's whatever.

I don't know if people open mage a lot into you guys. That's what people do on high MMR.

And what we started doing is that I just shrink at the opener. And I just tell my team to just sit everything.

Do nothing. I will save myself.

And then we, like, do a go after. Because they get, like, baited to, like...

You know, they think the rogue is going to get out of stealth. But he doesn't.

And then there's just ways to go. And, like, these kind of things happen a lot.

Where people don't really know what to do. Like, here...

I mean, this opener is just awkward. But also go back a bit.

Go back, like, five seconds. Just to tell you guys.

I mean, quick. Okay, go from here at this point.

Go from this point. Like, when he gets stunned, you should vanish here.

Or melt. Like, this is already, like, a small misplay.

You know, that you don't react to this. Because they can't...

Like, it can't happen that they go like this. I also don't know how you get stunned, Rocky, to be honest.

That's really awkward. Because you have Holy Ward.

You just... You know, he gets the Holy Ward.

Then you just fade. Like, you cannot even get stunned here.

If we start, like, Mark and Arrow are in stealth. And then I don't want to Holy Ward myself.

Because then he can just tap me. Yeah, but they're found already.

Like, if you go back another five seconds, they're found. The second they're found, they're in combat.

You need to Holy Ward yourself. Okay, yeah.

So, this opener is, like, literally completely scuffed. Because of, like, small misplays.

But it's still misplays, you know. Yeah.

And then you get stunned. I mean, even at this point, it's still fine.

You can just vanish. They go over.

They can't do anything. If they go on your mage, he will just trade Trinket.

If it's combust. And you're going to be fine.

And then you're not really going to be that far behind. But now, they just get a free goal.

Which they probably shouldn't. But, yeah.

That's, like, a small thing. Like, always try to look for pre-vanishes if they do goals like this.

I mean, I also think... I guess you don't play Trinket and Mirror's Mark, I assume.

But if you did, I think you guys should have probably played Trinket to stop the ring. I think it's...

Yeah. I don't think Red is too good, by the way, in general.

I don't think I would... Like, just in general.

Don't play. I don't play Rella much.

I think it's really bad to play Rella. Like, just in general.

In this meta, playing Rella is really bad, in general. I think you need to play Trinket against almost every comp.

Because you need an out. You can't just have another out.

Well, he's human. Even if he's human.

Yeah. Even if he's human.

I play human as well in my Alliance mage. Always play Trinket as human.

No point playing Rella. It's too bad in this meta, I think.

Don't have Trinkets for, like, goals. It's too bad.

You need to, like, save your team sometimes with, like, a Trinket. I don't think Rella is too good.

This was your duel, Harrow? No.

Oh, it's his duel. Okay.

No, it's his because he flagged. With me, it's your spell.

Yeah, I think what you did is good. I think the best thing here is also, I mean, when you Trinket, you just blind him insta.

Like, you know, if you just blind him... Yeah, I wait.

Yeah, if you just blind him insta and Trinket, you don't have to press all these random things and you achieve that on proc as well. And then it would have also been really insane.

It also, I mean, maybe, too, maybe the actual optimal thing would be to blind here, maybe. Like, this is his blades.

It's a flag rogue. Like, I mean, the opener is already kind of stuck.

Yeah, but I think Killing first is better, actually. I think Killing first is better because he has to Trinket the kidney, maybe, if he wants to because you can even hit him in the duel a bit.

And if he doesn't Trinket the kidney, you know. And then if you blind him off, you can just set him three times and you can do another goal.

You get two free goals. That way, it's way better to just kidney first and then blind and Trinket.

Yeah. Also, I think you press Vanish in the duel, right?

It's also better. I don't know if you do, but maybe you do.

Play it for one second. I think maybe you randomly press Vanish in the duel.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's bad.

It does be bad. Vanish doesn't do anything in the duel.

It's a small misplay though, or something. Yeah, no, that's bad.

Yeah. And problem?

It's so dumb because I just clicked, like, half my spell. Like, this game is one of the worst games.

Yeah, it's so good. I'm just saying, there's like small things you guys can do better.

EP.5 STRATEGY: MAGE POV VS. WW MONK COMPS

You know I don't even think it's that bad I think it just loses to some other cleaves Ummm I think actually I don't know what you guys do but I think you guys should go DPS here I think you guys should go Windwalker maybe Let's see what you guys do though Okay you guys do a good opener you get storm bolted on it Umm you guys got trinket but it was a bit scuffed because the war actually pre storm bolted Fuck me man it was like good storm bolt 10 years with auto back good Alright we have a go on the again I can blind warrior Let's see Oh my god That was a proc Yeah I swear I think in this situation I swear just DB them don't hold it for the go Dude just DB them and then you reset it it's too much like you know like into Windwalkers I just press DB as well to like peel those Oh my god Like if you see spinning craze you just go DPS and then you reset it it's too much like you know like into Windwalkers I just press DB as well to like peel those If you see a lane kick you just DB it you know with the images you just DB them then you know where the image is and so on also did you press Nova on opener maybe you did It's also something that like you can't really do into Windwalkers you need to have Nova for the images you probably did it in opener or something Yeah it looks like to proc the legendary yeah here's the Nova Yeah it's not so good I think the best thing to do in Windwalker is to just have it for the images if because they're gonna pop kinda early anyway Also I think with the auto you should jump down but I don't think that's a good thing I think yeah you should this is would be probably It's also really annoying for his images if you jump down they can't really follow if they follow then maybe they follow maybe they can get Nova to something downstairs and it's just like annoying for him it's really annoying for him he can't really do anything But this I think this is a decent fly like when it's a fly in alter you should in theory be kind of immortal here but I think he just gets a proc And this would have been a really good time to have Nova like right now when you have all the mirror images on you and all the pets and everything Yeah Nova would have been insane I would also use mirror images here just to soak up some damage because you take some a little bit less damage here but just whatever Like I said I think you just DB on the thing and then you just go out of that or something and then it would be better but it's fine So that's yeah this is this is the big damn though this is the Necro banner Warbreaker Here I would just DB here I would just DB even if you hit the shaman doesn't matter you just go with chest test on shaman or something but like it's good to just DB goes it's good in the wind walkers And here's the proc Good for the DB here I think you know Yeah I mean jeez Luis look at that damage like 70% to 3% in like on global it's pretty insane It's rising sun kick as well so you can really you know you can really DB the spring crank here but yeah But they're doing insanely much damage I don't know Do you have grip?

No Why did you trinket arrow let's see Maybe What did you first stun an opener? Yeah I stunned vanished or I trinket vanished when he rising sun kick and summoned everything What did you do first?

I don't know I don't know No I think it's fine I think you trinket Lexi with bone dust See if he props images if he doesn't prop images he should have waited If he props images that's good he pressed it so it's fine I think it's good to trinket I think you trinket there I'm just so used to them like blowing up in less than a millisecond No no it's fine just a good trinket I mean if it's images bone dust and Lexi I think it's fine Also you can't trinket you can't trinket vanished right?

You can't trinket vanish too late because you can die and vanish to spinning crane kick So it's good Yeah that happened I think you should have just like here like I said the best thing would either be to just try and jump down but you could maybe get purged while you try and jump down or to just use your nightfair as well and just fox behind the pillar so you get full value and all of you in the jf all the time and you just try and get more value from it Like it's just you guys just fall too far behind from this your guardian also procs and then Yeah I mean But they are doing insanely much damage No no the blind is okay the void is trinkets The game is technically still okay at this point but Um yeah you just die to damage I guess It's just this might have been a bad game to look at I mean there's Yeah I mean there's like small I even died with evasion up I think Yeah Go back a bit How do you actually die with evasion up?

Starboard okay Yeah okay This is like a rogue killing Kotlin Yeah Like this looks like it would just be annoying for rogues Um I saw a windwalker what do you follow I got a assa rogue First go windwalker yeah Okay let's get 3db Okay Yeah if it's something like that maybe I should just double db and cheat the Pala Pala isn't it?

I mean you just broke the set per db that's why it was awkward Yeah we wanted the pre-cc on the monk as well that was a little I think that was Well a second lie Yeah I mean it's just bad comms for my team Pala was fine too with me alone Yeah Fine was bad Was it because your mage says db he should have spilled a go if anything Why was he here why were you worried was this like a fat finger blind or were you worried about something here?

I know I didn't want to from what I remember I didn't want to blind the monk so it was either fat finger or I wanted to I don't remember but I know I didn't want to blind this monk Yeah I mean obviously I mean anyone looking at this would be like oh Your mage has ult I mean he's killing you himself I think I also I gripped mark not arrow and then I think I should have gripped arrow What happens in the start by the way why don't we grip the bomb?

Can we look at the start please quick I would just like to know because I mean it should be grip and bomb every time they kill you like this Unless they in-cap which but I don't think they did See blind you blind it's Oh okay yeah but I mean it it was a good I mean to to compliment you guys but like it was good fishy like this is a good adaptation telling your rogue to press because I think you are screaming at arrow to The issue is also like okay I don't want to be that guy but also something that is a bit like okay so the rotation these days is a bit different because the priest usually plays wrestler who onto comms like this And what you do is that the priest always presses first these days the rogue never presses first on like into these kind of comms you know like these cleaves or wind walker comms or something usually it's just a priest that saves the rogue an opener if you can Um unless if the monk like wrings the grip or something like that Um unless if the monk like wrings the grip or something like that Or whatever the priest usually just concocts the rogue to open up the combo if you can unless the monk like wrings the grip or something like that something, which this monk doesn't do and they just go like hit the bomb into bomb but you're obviously blinded.

But if you played rest legos you would just trinket for him and then you would trinket the blind, you would heal him a bit, then he would get stunned and when he gets stunned you grip and then the whole go would be over right and all it would force is you trinket and if they go you're still at rest so you're still fine.

If they can even kill you I think this comp actually is kind of, this comp actually would struggle to kill a holy priest because you guys have two easy peels like the mage can just peel the entire go without any struggle.

But yeah this makes it a bit awkward because now you've rogued head to trinket opener when it was like kind of nothing. But yeah let's just see how the game goes.

This is also really awkward what you guys do here. That you do like re-cc drcc on the pyrrha into like a dr fear like I don't like this is not so good.

You don't even have combust up it's like it's no reason to do all of this. I don't know what the pyrrha bubbles here it's also kind of mind blowing but I mean it is what it is.

You take it you know you take the blood you take the trinket it's good. Uh, can I just keep going?

He gets stunned, cloaks, pop, he die. No.

I think uh. Nah I don't know it's just so awkward.

I mean now I don't but also now I feel like you should have healing for him kind of. It is blendetta flag though and wonk pop I don't know.

Maybe you shouldn't I don't know. It's like a big pop but if you have like serenity stacks here you figure you should be able to heal him maybe you don't though but if you don't you should just reset them here with uh apotheosis.

This is a scary situation though like like this paladin like bopped I'm sorry bubbled like to end the game but the rogue wasn't even like out yet so this is a very bad bubble but then they just like bop on top of the ass of rogue like you know I mean you'll encounter these types of teams.

This is a certain mindset in arena like this team played very very aggro and some teams are just like this and it's obviously difficult to play around play around that like when weird stuff.

I also don't yeah I also don't like how far you are away from like the whole go mark I don't know I don't like it I think you should be there to like db the mong at least or something like I mean he's t actually so maybe you can't but I think you should be able to peel into comps like this.

I think windwalker comps in general it's a lot the mage who just carries the game because the mage can peel windwalker so good. Yeah.

It's really good you can always like I can insta tell my team if they have to trinket a go or not like one second before the head go happens because I can tell them if I can db him if I can do something if I can cheat people if they don't have kicks from me and all these things and then you can just kind of carry the go in a sense if they go someone else by just telling your team okay don't trinket trinket I'm fine you're not fine whatever um like mage is really good into windwalker still because you can just db the go and it's like it's it's rough for the monk to kill someone if you db um at the right time like because the go is usually bone dust into something and then you have like time to db him on that global and by that time the stun is almost over and then it's like you know it's really rough for monk because even if he trinkets the images are still db'd and even if he gets dispelled if he trinkets they're not but if he gets dispelled the images are still db'd you know so the monk damage isn't really that high but yeah here also you guys kind of get fucked by the deer giant because now the images can't even get cc'd but they're also not even going to you.

So yeah I think it's a good thing that the mage is not the kill target but maybe just rogue damage anyway.

Yeah I think I think this get to what to kind of piggyback off what the mario just said like from mage point of view you definitely know you're probably not the kill target in this matchup and it's like a it's you're not you're probably never going to play this comp again but there's one situation where you should recognize that the rogue on your team is definitely the kill target because it's you know vendetta it's assassination rogue and they're probably just going to be hunting down your rogue's trinket.

Don't you have a grip here rocky? Yeah that's the thing I gripped mark.

No but that's so troll. Yeah I thought it was a troll.

Like that's the issue like even though all of these bad things happen it's like too many you know weird things you just need to have kill like you just grip the guy who gets stunned you don't random grip especially not if your rogue has no trinket like it's troll to press a grip on someone else you know you it's just like a rotation um you can just grip him every second kit.

Yeah.

You can grip him every second go and then he's kind of fine your mage cannot die into this comp it's like a comp without purge for altar like how can he die unless they commit like everything and then it's still gonna be really awkward for the other team to um kill him like there's no way your mage can die like you should just care for your rogue and it's kind of the same into all these windwalker comps like it's true this comp is maybe a bit sketchy because it's like windwalker assa but.

If you face like uh you know that's what that was like a good example of a comp I mean windwalker mage is like the same thing even though it's not really like a cleave but it's still the same thing they usually kill your rogue and you need to have grips for him um or you need to have grip for the guy that the monk pops on that's usually the guy you grip when you see bone dust that's a grip but on the guy that gets stunned not on the guy that's free like you you know during the time when you grip your mage now you see he's upstairs he still has altar timer by the way.

And this is a very. How is he gonna die?

This is might be a very minor thing too but I don't know when you kite here you might be line of sighting uh rocky and mark anyway um. No he gets guardian off so I think it's fine.

Oh he gets guardian off okay. Yeah he gets he presses it.

Oh god. Okay he just dies through guardian okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So.

I mean it's kind of brutal death to be honest it's a really sketchy comp but it's yeah it's. It's a really sketchy comp.

It's like like I said like the grip on my mage is kind of useless. I could have just shadow stepped and just stayed in stealth but they like his spinning crank it got me out so.

But before that I could just shadow stepped up to rocky. And even it probably is so if you would have lived here too I think paladin would have been a win too like without well can you kill through pali trinket as rmp into this?

No I don't think it is probably not because this um but uh yeah probably not into this maybe. I don't think so.

It's too much like the monk will just have to go with so much effort. He would drink it as well and save them.

But yeah, I could have definitely done a lot of things here, to be honest.