How do you approach ret paladins? I tried to kill one in revenge he attacked me when I was fighting a rare. When I start fight later on, his bubble just turned on, so I tried to kite him for some time but he stunned me and then slowed. He closed gap with that temporal mount. I used Bash but I guess he used trinket. What followed next was I tried to do some damage and use instant roots but it was just a matter of seconds while healing is reduced in PvP and I was dead. I tried one more time as I thought CD would be still on. HE killed me again.
So first question is how to deal with them and then what I should be aware. I know rogues and Mages, and possibly Warlocks can kite paladins but can Ferals?
Feral without pillars is trash, period. From what I’ve heard ferals struggle both pvp and pve so it’s rather pointless to play it right now unless you are hard time feral lover. World PvP can never be balanced (not like instanced pvp is KEK).
To understand how you’d want to play around your opponent you’d have to examine what are their strengths and weaknesses and what tools does your spec have to deal with it. It’s important to note that Ret have extreme burst damage and as Feral you’ll never survive a rotation that crits without Survival Instincts. However, as Feral you have an incredible mobility advantage. With this in mind you’ll have to kite them a lot and let your bleeds do most of the job.
In order to kite them you have to repeatidly shift form as the act of shapeshifting removes any non-daze slows in the game (basically all of them) and wait out Avenging Wrath. I’ll also assume you play Sabertooth.
If you get the opening do Rake>Rip>5 CP’s>FB. If Rake didn’t crit you may need to do one Shred before Rip to prevent it from falling off too quickly but it shouldn’t be necessary. If the Ret uses AW you’ll have to kite him out. Immediatly bash him, enter Travel Form and Wild Charge away. If he tries to slow you simply shift back and fourth between Cat- and Travel Form. If he trinkets your stun to HoJ you trinket it yourself to stay away. If he tries to Repentance you Skull Bash him and use Maim, continue disengaging until AW times out.
Alternatively you can choose to stick around after your opening. You can preemptively use a charge of SI to eat the stun and the initial burst, then disengage as SI times out. Keep a distance and once WA times out you can re-enter with a FB to reset Rip and a new Rake and apply some counter pressure.
What you want to do is trade offensive for defensive CD’s and during the downtime bleed them out. Let your dots do the job, stay at a distance. Drop combat frequently to enter stealth so your Rake will do more damage+stun him. There’s no hurry - you do not win the burst fight even with Incarnation. If you do it right you can beat a Ret without hardly taking damage. Even if he uses Bubble just kite away - also take advantage of Forebearance which lasts for 30 seconds.
However if you drop focus and give them an inch they’ll have no problems RNGing you from full HP with enough procs.
Patience is key here as there’s nothing you can do except running whenever BoF is up so take your time to re enter stealth and apply new dots. It’s very important to understand that as a Feral you have significantly more tools in your kit than a Paladin does. They may have more powerful ones for short periods of time but they are very telegraphed and whenever they’re down they are sitting ducks so play around them.
Just remember to never find yourself sitting in Bear Form just eating damage. Bear Form is only useful for predicting stun setups otherwise it’s useless as you’ll want to run Resto Affinity for the most part in PvP. Bear Form also deals less than no damage so you’d just give him more time to do damage/offheal himself. Remember to always heal yourself when kiting as Paladins have no gap closers and their steed have an incredibly long CD. I can strongly recommend that you run at least one Switch Hitter trait as that makes Swiftmend incredibly powerful and can allow you to apply counterpressure a bit more aggressively.
Apologies for the wall but this is what I’ve learned whenever I’ve played Feral vs Ret in BfA. If someone more experienced wants to add something more feel free to but I tried to keep it in a positive light and point out how you as the Feral can find yourself in winning situations despite our poor perception currently.
It’s easy to find yourself feeling like it’s impossible when you’re trying to deal with the more powerful specs as the percieved underperforming ones.
You made a really interesting post. Thank you! I have one question though. As long as you’re in any form you’ll be immune to Repentance. Wouldn’t it be better to let it through and save the kick for an eventual healing attempt?
Oh damn, you’re totally correct!
Although I’m usually good at remembering polymorph effects I had completely forgotten that Repentance does not work on beasts.
Good catch, that can be ignored. I suppose it’s good to know in case you do BG’s/team PvP of any kind and a Paladin tries to Repentance a teammate but otherwise you’re correct that it’d be much better to save for a heal.
For some reason, i can’t post on my Druid toon it say it’s on hold to 02/06/3019 ! So it will be my Rogue.
Thank you very much for this. I did not feel exhausted when I was reading it. There is plenty of useful information about feral and PvP in general I guess and I read everything with repetition. I can’ remember all you explained when I met another paladin but at least I can start with something. This is more than I asked for. Thanks.
Apart from how to approach Rets, though, you gave me idea to get back and study my class and see how Skills can be used against classes. Do you have installed any addon that helps you in PvP?
Thanks
For me a lot about PvP is knowing what the enemy can do and trying your best to track it. It’s easier said than done since PvP now has so many different setups.
You can imagine my surprise the first time I met a Sub Rogue with Shadowy Duel.
But it’s very useful to go over things like each spec’s normal and PvP talents - especially if it’s a spec you find yourself struggling against.
As a Druid, though, you’ll find that you have so many versatile and creative ways to use your abilities to counter and maneouver your opponents. I pretty much learn something new each time and/or improve my reactions.
As for Addons - I’ve only got Gladius for Arena but I’m not the best at utilizing it to it’s fullest, just tracking basics like their trinkets and big CD usage. Other than that just a basic UI that fits me personally.
You just have to play like a feral. That is, bobbing in and out, kiting 90% of the time until they are all out of cooldowns. Only trinket the hoj he pops big wings on (the 30sec avenging crusader) and wall high. He has like the horse once or twice but with correct use of travel form wild charge and the environment he should have 0 percent uptime on you unless you want it.
When to kite:
-When he has wings up
-When he has the explosion shield up
-When you are below 60% hp and he has hoj coming within the next 5 sec
-When he bubbles or bops
When to go in
-After wings when you are topped
-During your berserk/incarn
-When you have thorns off cd and up
-When the pala is off stun dr
Also you can cyclone his bop to stop the damage on you or his healing.
I just realised to do all this you give paladins time to recover. Maybe I need to get better stats. I think crit and mastery is what feral should gear for.
Last paladin I faced had engineering glider and void stone trinket with extra bubble. Paladins should be forbidden to wear them: p joking. It was really hard to do any damage and I eventually died. When I tried to attack he was already full HP and he caught me healing myself when he used glider even though I managed to get far from him. But that was better than last time
The only problem is that if he have his wings honor talent and you already used your trinket, he will kill you in 5 seconds. One way or another, the Paladin will beat you every time with the right talents and traits. But hey, at least you can beat ranges compared to him.
This is true… and imho purely a returded thing really.
Have WoW really come to the point where you have to know every single strengt and weakness of all the other classes, so you at least have a chance?
For my part, im way out when it comes to that knowledge. I cba spending time on that even, i just want to enjoy the game, no friggin becomming a WoW student fulltime just to be able to compete…
But ppl do this… study hardcore for pvp. And when some1 does it, more follow. And in the end, its becomming the new norm and is “required” just to do pvp…
We who refuse, get farmed in any bg not containing bots…
That’s a very defeatist mentality to have surrounding something which is the norm for plenty of other competitive games and have been present in WoW since it’s early years.
If you played in the beginning and had only seen a Priest played as a healer you might assume someone who specced Shadow was a bad player until you get your behind handed to you through their incredible damage potential. The same would go for the RNG gods that is Seal of Command and Windfury procs in PvP. In similar fashion if you played a fast auto-attacking class such as a Rogue or Feral (Cat Form) Druid you might wonder why this Protection Paladin is slowly killing you while taking zero damage and the answer would be Holy Shield and Improved Retribution Aura.
If you compare this to other games such as League of Legends it’s basic stuff to know the match-ups for your main role and even more so to know what every characters basic toolkit can do in order to counter and play around it.
Now you could make an argument that older versions of WoW was easier to understand despite it’s plethora of oneshot possibilities and that’s something I would agree on but it still doesn’t change that if you didn’t know what Windfury did in Vanilla/TBC you’d get just as hard punished by Lightning Lasso today. Knowledge is key and always has been in games involving strategy. Can you respond and counter what your opponent presents to you?
The issue of all of this comes back to you - the player. If you do not have an interest in getting good at PvP that’s perfectly fine. However, you cannot blame other people who has the passion and invests the time to get good at it and receive the fruits of that labor. The same way you wouldn’t curse someone for putting in the work to become an excellent athlete or achieve a desired diploma.
To quote you the following:
You’d always have a chance because the likelihood of people on mass being proficient at their class to take full advantage of them is undeniable small. If your aim would be a high rating this wouldn’t be an issue to you - you’d be good enough and more importantly invested to work around it.
If your aim is casual PvP/warmode this point is entirely moot. Sometimes you’ll run into a CE/Gladiator doing their emissaries. Sometimes you’ll run into 360 ilvl Bob. That’s just the way it is. Just as much as you may be on the weaker side will you undoubtly be on the winning one. Our minds have a habit to fixate on the negatives.
This is the key difference that players enjoy the game for different reasons. You may not find it worthwhile to spend time learning about each individual class/spec and what they can bring to the table, but someone else does. This gives them a fair advantage by pursuing said knowledge.
I’d be very much interested to know what games/sports you’ve been able to “compete” in without putting in the effort to understand the rulebook. If those would be interests you viewed as worthwhile where as your opponent didn’t you’re having the same situation mirrored in WoW for yourself.
Finally:
This is factually incorrect. You’d not call someone that who spent the past week(s)/month studying for a difficult exam or putting in the effort to get their job. You’d not call someone that who spent years from early life practising soccer because it was their passion. Some people will find incredible joy from putting in that kind of effort into a hobby such as a videogame.
You may say I’m exaggerating but this happens everyday. All of us have different passions and goals we want to achieve. To look down on the ones who pursue something you don’t view as worthwhile of your time is one of the most hostile mindsets you can have towards other people.
Its a game…something you (should) do every now and then in you sparetime.
Its not a job, its not your education…
Its the same with this as with any other competitive activity. Once some ppl take it a step further, ppl will do the same.
When swifty f.ex, made this 1shot macros, every1 else copied it.
Why you ask? To be competitive!!!
Sure if i put down the time and effort some ppl do in this game, i would be at the same spot as them…but i dont.
So i cant compete with them, neither in pvp nor pve…
No in all seriousness if it’s out in the open good luck. I play pala/Druid and even I either struggle like all heck or get completely mopped out in the open.
In arena with good teamwork it’s definitely doable, but also heavily depends on the palas skill level.
It’s a lot of work and honestly half the time even if I kill one I’m not glad. Just exhausted.
it say it’s on hold to 02/06/3019 ! So it will be my Rogue.![:slight_smile:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
than last time
![:rofl:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/rofl.png?v=6" ":rofl:")