DW From Shuttle***** Discusses Priests and top BG9 competition

With the newly announced BG9 tournament in development, the opportunity to become the official "best" 5v5 team of the most competitive BG in America is now only a couple of wins away. So far, Capslockcrew and Shuttle***** are the only two teams that have accepted their invitations into the tournament. With the recent departure of Clicker from CLC it's difficult to not question whether or not they will remain as strong and solid as a team. While I know that CLC has picked up another Paladin, the question that the majority of people will be asking, is whether or not CLC will have enough time to build teamwork with a new player that is at a competition level. I guess we'll have to wait and see, but I personally hope that they do as it would be unfortunate to not see them play at their best.

On the otherhand, a couple of new teams (Shuttle***** and Slackers) have fought their way up to the top, while at the same time causing quite a bit of drama in the process. While the roster of Slackers is well known, they have only recently broken to the very top.The one thing I noticed though, is that besides the drama, most people know nothing about the players on Shuttle*****, so I took the opportunity to talk to a couple of their players to dive into their world and learn everything there is to know about their team. I'm going to be dividing these up into multiple articles most likely (for example, this will most likely be a 2 part article), so that I can cover some background info per player, and then really dive into the Arena oriented stuff after. Today amongst my relentless joy at the Giants taking down the Pats, I took the time to talk to DW of Shuttle***** to learn a little bit more about him and his team. DW is the Priest for Shuttle*****, and you can find his armory here.

Jasi: Thanks for doing the interview DW, why dont you start by telling us about yourself.

DW: I am 22 years old and live with some friends outside of University of Maryland where I am a student. I was as competitive as you can be in ut99 5v5 ctf, however you couldn't be "pro" in that game. I also got a trip and won 9-12th place at a cpl for ut2k3 dueling but that was more just to have a fun trip and went back to ut99 fulltime shortly after, I always mainly focused on 5v5 ctf. Eventually the ut community got smaller and smaller and my roommate at the time got me to play wow after a year of me bashing him for playing it.

When I started playing WoW I originally was all over the place for about a year or so. I had an account from a friend that went into the army. I Started warrior on shadowmoon with roomate -> warrior on wildhammer with ut99 friends (where i met glorin/glaise/globals/rorix) -> priest on blackrock to play with nurfed towards the end of aq40(invited by friend onyxx from ut99). I have been with nurfed ever sense and leveled a warrior alt and a second priest to have on my own account.
For fun I still play all three characters. I play my warrior in 2v2/3v3 with other friends/their alts. And I just recently started playing my shadow priest again in 2v2 with nicduim as UA. all teams are ~2100, nothing amazing but solid for "alts"/for fun games.

As for Shuttle*****, we have been playing for ~6 weeks, and 3/5 players from different battlegroup. However our playstyle is general to that of bg9. Two people are native to blackrock (me and nicduim. nicduim's main is the shaman fuzze, this is his first time playing competative 5's on lock, we used to play spriest/ua lock on alts together though)1 paladin is from chromaggus 2 people,the warrior and shaman, are from wildhammer.

Jasi: Seeing as you play both a healing type and Shadow Priest, what are your current concerns(if any) with the class? Shadow has been on the decline(imo) for quite some time now, how have you managed with it?

DW: The biggest shadow priest issue is mana efficiency. Nothing new, but it is a huge problem in pvp where I find myself oom fairly quickly with complete crap regen. Fiend can help, but it is also easily kited by druid(and almost any other class really)/gets mitigated by warlocks and pws.

Jasi: Besides mana efficieny, do you think the there are any other issues with the current state of Spriests?

DW: As you said, shadow priests have been on the decline. I think it to be less with the spec itself but more shadow resist gear through /ignore which was not removed until a week ago. While shadow resist was active you really couldn't play with a ua lock anymore taking away almost all of your comps except spriest/rogue in 2v2.

After saying this it also brings up the fact that a shadow priest has to be very choosy in their partners. They either need partners with enough pressure to prevent their dots from being dispelled OR a ua lock. However most classes/specs have some similar restriction. I would expect some shadow priests to come back now with the removal of /ignore and addition of spell pen on s3 misc items.

Jasi: The ability to use SR gear has definitely been an issue in all 3 brackets, hopefully they do mroe than just remove the /ignore cheat. With that being said, what about the other two trees and specs of Priests, any issues with them?

DW: Disc priests have a handful of problems. The number one concern of mine is the effect of armor penetration on cloth. This is currently only a huge problem in 2's/3's however as armor penetration becomes increasingly prevalent on gear, but it has the possibility to show in 5's also. Basically it is possible to achieve -4000 armor through sunder/s3 gear/executioner which gives a 28% damage increase on priests. The same armor reduction provides about half the percent damage increase on warriors and even less on pallies. Priests are currently very fragile when being dispelled which is fine, as every class needs a weakness, but this can be a huge issue. I think that armor penetration should be percentage based in pvp making it more useful against already durable classes and less devastating against already fragile classes.

Jasi: Any other adjustments in terms of talents/talent trees?What would you say about the commonly debated issues of Mana Burn and PI?

DW: The spell in most need of adjustment is dispel. Defensive dispel did not get the 40yd buff that other cleansing classes received. 274 mana defensive dispel also has a 30% chance to fail against a 50 mana rank 1 entangling roots, in addition I believe dispel gives rank 1 corruption/shadow embrace the same priority as fear. I think that dispel should be 40yds defensive,30yds offensive and should have a 100% chance to hit against non full rank spells and should give priority to cc's over down ranked junk. Basically, regular dispel should ignore rank 1 things and have a priority system in place to hit higher ranked more critical debuffs etc. Even against max rank spells failing a dispel multiple times is also a huge problem.

Disc priests have less healing power than any other healer, however we bring a lot of utility in its place. Changing from blessed resilience to disc I feel that 2's with a warrior got much more difficult however with PI 2's with a warlock has become a lot of fun.

Jasi: So think that there needs to be a priority system established within dispel as well, and resistances should be based off of rank and type of spell as well, so the question is, are you in favor of removing dispel resistances entirely while replacing the current system with something entirely new, or would you feel a change in dispel resistance based on rank/spell, and 1 fail is all that needs to be done?

DW: I think that every time you fail to dispel something that buff should receive -25% in resistance to dispel, this way you will get it in a timely manner. I also have a problem with mass dispel choosing 5 random friendly and 5 random enemy targets rather than giving priority to players with things to dispel. For example, you might get 1 of the 5 dispels from MD taking away a rank 1 corruption or a dot, allowing the mage that just Iceblocked to stay within he block. It should pick the most important targets as well as debuffs.

As for PI and Burn, Mana burn is very strong however it is also a 2 second cast, only 30 yards, and requires los at time of cast and completion of cast. I think that between tongues/pet attack/pet intercept-spell_lock/fea ,shock,grounding, intercept/pummel, counterspell, and line of sight/range,mana burn is easily stoppable.

lust burn is almost no different. Getting the first interrupt is usually much more difficult (although seeing a priest come within 30 yd's of you should give you a decent warning) the bloodlust factor should not last long. It should not be a problem to interrupt at least the second burn, and you should be able to get bloodlust off by then since priests are almost always fully purged early in the fight. mana burn is easily stoppable/predictable, you just have to take the time to stop it (which god forbid may require you to deviate from your norm).

When you aren't ready for PI, bursts especially with lust/pi, can be impossible to deal with. However I think that if a team is really polished (not claiming mine is) that they should be able to see the PI/bloodlust/icy veins and interrupt/los casts until purging has taken place. Just like mana burns, I think PI has counters and ways to stop it.

Jasi: Having noted all of the recent drama associated with your matches vs CLC, and in specific the use of PVE gear, I noticed that you seem to be the mediator for the team. What are your personal thoguhts on the use of PVE gear in the arena? I notice that you use Archimonde legs, Momento, and the Hyjal reputation reward. All in all, you gain about an extra 50-60 mp5 over a regular pvp only priest, as well as 100-160~ healing.

DW: I personally do not use any pve gear in 5's. Only in 2's and in 3's when I play rmp. However this is because I choose to use 4stats to rings and 2peice satin for 5's which causes a need for more +healing as a solo healer in the lower brackets. Had I enchanted 20healing to rings and purchased full mooncloth I would use those over the pve I currently use in small brackets. Yes, I still use 2pc satin and yes I enchant my rings with 4 all stats. It is personal preference for my play style in 5v5. I find that how much I heal for rarely makes a difference in 5v5, more that I am able to land heals when needed.

Jasi: It seemed like most of the Drama came from not acknowledging the advantage gains from using PVE gear, and then trying to defend it as not being one to begin with. It seems like with everyone on your team wearing a small amount of PVE gear, that small amount turns into a huge amount when added together.

Yes, my paladin and shaman do wear partial pve gear in 5's. No one on our team that participates in pve does it for the purpose of obtaining pvp gear, we do it because we enjoy it. The gear we get is an added bonus(if we only got joy out of competition we probably wouldn't be playing wow).

For us to say the pve gear has no affect in arena would be ignorant. It has probably caused us to win a few games that we would have otherwise lost, and will continue to do so on occasion. However I highly doubt that any more than 3/4 of our current wins were decided by pve gear (in all games played, not just the recent series).

However anyone complaining about pve gear should consider a few points. Have you ever played with a warrior using stormherald? Guess where stormherald comes from? What about people who leveled enchanting/jewlcrafting post BC? All of these are instances of people spending extra time outside of competing in top end pvp/honor gear to gain an edge(point selling is NOT top end pvp). Yes our pve gear has more of an effect than stormherald/40healing/etc, however in the end it is an amplified instance of the same thing. There is one differnce though, we do not pve to get the gear for pvp, it is just a bonus. You however are spending the extra time for the sole purpose of an advantage in pvp(or in some cases equality, but then you should also be posting "you only won cause of ring enchants"). If your argument is that you only have those items to even the field against others, then our pally is just evening against zilea.

So to directly answer your question, if you are actually to complain about pve gear I hope very much that you do not have bt-gems/stormherald/badge items/ring enchants, and even then if you care that much then wow is probably not the game for you.

We would not be opposed to a tournament where we are not allowed to use pve gear(however you might need to give us pvp gear in those slots so we are not naked).

Jasi: When playing against CLC, What is your general playstyle in 5v5 and what about the team do you find is at a different level than other teams? Also, what are your biggest goals and priorities when facing them?

DW: We have only played against CLC's main lineup on one occasion so all of this response is very rough(played against teams with 3/4 of them many times).
CLC made very few mistakes that we were able to capitalize on. Usually you see someone in a bad position and drop damage/burns on them however this did not happen often against clc. Instead, we had to really work to get opportunities.
As a priest my playstyle is to heal if necessary, however my heals are much less efficient than my paladin, so if I don't need to heal I avoid it. Other than that I try to use fear/mana burn/dispel to either mess up the other teams positioning, or just for the sake of winning the mana war. Against stronger teams you really have to watch your positioning when you go to burn, if you move up to far you might get counter burned. However at the same time if you draw attention to yourself when you team is having trouble doing damage or wants to burst that can be good as well.

Jasi: Anything else in particular come to mnd when playing top teams?

DW: When we played CLC they were running hunter/lock which we were fairly unfamiliar with. I had to make sure and drink anytime combat would break from pets and do my best to keep the other team from focusing too much on my teammates by pressuring with burns even if i didn't intend on landing them. We also ended up on their warlock during most of the later games and offensively dispelling against locks can be brutal since priests usually end up helping with purgable heals if you split on the pet(which also opens up drinks). Keeping clear los anytime you see a viper sting coming is also crucial.

Jasi: Any thoughts on Slackers so far?

DW: slackers were also running the comp that we were unfamiliar with, however it did feel easier to execute bursts against their team. This of course could have been luck. At the same team I find myself losing mana faster against slackers than clc who played more passive. We had good games against both teams and the games all felt like they could go either way.

Part 2 coming soon

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