Tips (Infinite CC combo possibility) – 2v2 Disc or Holy/Feral

So I was doing some 2s on the PTR with a Feral druid last night. It wasn’t going too good at start because I haven’t really been in a 2s arena with a Feral, but eventually things got better …. a lot better. It got to the point where we were beating 2k MMR teams, but considering this is PTR our opponents MMR could be misleading.

Anyways, I thought about writing a few tips and pointers regarding what combos are available for discipline priests and feral druids, in a 2s environment. The buffs obtained are pretty decent, those being stamina, stats and critical strike (critical strike being super effective as always for discipline priests).

I have written this in a very lazy manner so I do apologise if I am not clear. Email me for any clarifications. Cheers.

Crowd Control Combo

Cyclone healer > Feral Stun > Psychic Scream > Cyclone on the killing target > Cyclone healer

6 seconds + 4 seconds + 8 seconds + 6 seconds + 6 seconds = 30 seconds

This is how we did it ….

1. I lay low lining behind pillars healing my partner (Feral) while the feral builds up combo points for an instant cyclone.

2. Feral cyclones the opponents healer. It is vital that the feral is at full health here.

3. My partner and myself begin damaging the target for 4 to 5 seconds, until my partner stuns the healer for 4 seconds immediately after cyclone comes off.

4. The stun gives me the opportunity to throw the healer into a fear, locking him out for 8 seconds.

5. Immediately when fear is about to break, cast a cyclone on the target to be killed to prevent any healing on him for 6 seconds. Important: you as a priest must cyclone through symbiosis, as the feral needs to use his instant cyclone on the healer.

6. The feral’s instant cyclone should be up by now, which should be cast on the healer. Keep rotating this …. or you can follow up with a psyfiend/another cyclone (priest)/dominate mind, if you are on the verge of getting a kill and you know the enemy has no defences.

Chances are, that you will force the opponent teams to use their trinkets, and defensive cool downs and eventually kill them. Try mixing things up so that the enemy doesn’t expect it and this will work out to be even more effective. If you keep rotating this too much and the game is prolonged the enemy will predict your moves and will be able to counter (I think). Your team may get countered as you or the druid may get cced by the kill target. You can work around this:

1. When going for a fear, use spectral guise to avoid being cced by the kill target.

2. When the feral is going for a stun (I think its bash or pounce), dominate mind the kill target to avoid your feral being cced by him.

This does take some time and practice to perfect. Ideally you can lock out healing for atleast 25 seconds in a single go. I am not sure what how often Ferals can stun, but to me it seemed like we were allowing a healer about 5 – 6 seconds to heal (during which they have to negotiate their positioning).

I believe ferals can also interrupt and silence as well, so I haven’t considered this out here, but my partner was using these as well. And I haven’t even considered using Dominate mind on the healer. So this can be expanded much more. Perhaps towards and infinite cc chain.

How to CC chain as a Holy Priest in 5.2

I would consider discipline and holy priests to be the worst classes to help out in cc chains by themselves. All we have is our Psychic Scream, and a choice between a root, another fear and dominate mind. Normally in patch 5.1, I would run comps in 2s with a hunter, wait for his scatter trap, spectral guise in and fear the opponent, and try to get a good position for Dominate Mind. But there were many flaws to this approach: warriors, druids and even rogues would eat the traps if we were trying to cc their healer, or even a shaman would use grounding totem on the freezing trap. Dominate mind could easily be lined using the pillars or interrupted, due to its long 2.5 seconds casting time. We could counter by stunning or snaring the DPS and then scatter trapping, but this was still hard to accomplish.

So what is the scenario for 5.2?

Apparently, casting a CC chain as a disc priest may be much easier since the casting time for dominate mind is lower. Just cast fear into a Dominate Mind, but be sure to keep your partner healed up before casting dominate mind. Another fact is, that glyph of Pain Suppression and Inner Focus are all base line. So this would free up some glyph space to allow for other glyphs. I have my sights set on Glyph of Psychic Scream, which plants your feared opponents in place. This would assist us for some easy positioning. Simply fear, line the opponent DPS behind a pillar and cast fear. The uncertainty of where your feared target will run will be eliminated, allowing us to pre-plan our Dominate Mind with much more precision.

So that was Discipline Priest. What about Holy Priest?

Apparently it seems Holy priests can be even better at locking someone down than Disc. The rotation involves a spell called Holy Word: Chastise, which is a 3 second disorient. The 3 second disorient would allow for enough time to land in another Dominate Mind locking out your opponent for another 4 seconds (diminishing returns with the first Dominate mind).

So the chain for Holy Priests would go something like this:

Fear > Dominate Mind > Holy Word: Chastise > Dominate Mind

8 seconds + 8 seconds + 3 seconds + 4 seconds = 23 seconds

Off course you cannot possibly get a full 23 seconds chain, and the chances are that you will be interrupted by another opponent while casting or channelling Dominate mind. But this falls to our advantage as well. If interrupted, we are locked out of our shadow spells, leaving us one form of interrupt, less to worry about. Positioning will be very important as we would want to Dominate Mind just behind a pillar. A full rotation along with your partners cc will be frustrating for your opponents.

The best part about 5.2 is that Chakra stances for Holy priests have a 5 second cool down now, thanks to the pvp set bonuses. So it is possible to switch to Chastise and change back to Serenity within 5 seconds, allowing for this chain in CC. Just make sure you make full use of macros as changing stances does not trigger GCD.

Therefore, this may actually put us on par with other healers of locking an opponent out. However, when we use Dominate Mind, we are in a way, locked out as well. So that’s the only drawback of using this strategy.

So come next patch give this a shot. It is even possible to try it out in 5.1. However, you will probably not survive as a Holy priest since you will have mana issues, no survivability, 30 seconds Chakra CD and 2.5 seconds casting time for Dominate Mind.

Hope this article has given some helpful insight into improving your gameplay in the next patch.