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Zephis guide to
Feral/Disc
For 3.3.5a

A comprehensive and in-depth guide on how to play a feral druid, more specifically its role in the 2v2
setup Feral Druid / Discipline Priest

Content
Introduction............................................................................................................................................. 3
Spells........................................................................................................................................................ 4
No cooldown spells ............................................................................................................................. 4
Feral ................................................................................................................................................. 4
Resto ................................................................................................................................................ 4
Balance ............................................................................................................................................ 4
Short cooldown spells (max 1 minute) ................................................................................................ 5
Feral ................................................................................................................................................. 5
Resto ................................................................................................................................................ 5
Balance ............................................................................................................................................ 5
Long cooldown spells (minimum 1 minute) ........................................................................................ 5
Feral ................................................................................................................................................. 5
Resto ................................................................................................................................................ 5
Balance ............................................................................................................................................ 5
Talents, glyphs and gear .......................................................................................................................... 6
Crizps setup (high resi with disc priest) .............................................................................................. 6
Choes high arp low resi setup (with resto shaman) ........................................................................... 7
Variations in resilience ........................................................................................................................ 8
But I like Deathbringers Will ............................................................................................................... 8
What about mangle spec?................................................................................................................... 8
What it all comes down to .................................................................................................................. 9
How to deal damage ............................................................................................................................. 10
How to use crowd control effectively ................................................................................................... 11
Example 1: Holy paladin/warrior....................................................................................................... 11
Example 2: Shadow Priest / Sub Rogue ............................................................................................. 12
Feral / Disc ............................................................................................................................................. 13
The general game plan of feral / disc ................................................................................................ 13
Holy Paladin / Warrior ....................................................................................................................... 14
Other healer/warrior comps ............................................................................................................. 16
Disc / warrior ................................................................................................................................. 16
Resto shaman / warrior ................................................................................................................. 16
Resto druid / warrior ..................................................................................................................... 16
Holy paladin / DK ............................................................................................................................... 17
Other DK / healer comps ................................................................................................................... 18

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Disc / DK ........................................................................................................................................ 18
Resto shaman / DK ........................................................................................................................ 18
Resto druid / DK ............................................................................................................................ 18
Disc / Rogue ....................................................................................................................................... 18
Disc / Mutilate Rogue .................................................................................................................... 18
Disc / sub rogue ............................................................................................................................. 19
Disc / mage ........................................................................................................................................ 19
Disc / hunter ...................................................................................................................................... 20
Disc / Feral ......................................................................................................................................... 20
Healer / UA lock................................................................................................................................. 20
Healer / destro lock ........................................................................................................................... 21
Resto shaman / ret paladin ............................................................................................................... 21
Resto shaman / prot paladin ............................................................................................................. 21
Disc / ret paladin ............................................................................................................................... 21
Disc / ele ............................................................................................................................................ 22
Shadow Priest / Mutilate Rogue........................................................................................................ 22
Shadow priest / sub rogue ................................................................................................................ 23
Shadow priest / Mage ....................................................................................................................... 23
Shadow Priest / DK ............................................................................................................................ 24
Ret / MM Hunter ............................................................................................................................... 24
Feral / MM hunter ............................................................................................................................. 25
Enha / BM hunter .............................................................................................................................. 25
Enha / Combat rogue ........................................................................................................................ 25
Lock / Rogue ...................................................................................................................................... 25
Ele / destro ........................................................................................................................................ 25
Ele / Mage.......................................................................................................................................... 26
Destro / Mage.................................................................................................................................... 26
Ret / Rogue ........................................................................................................................................ 26
Priest gear, talents and glyphs .............................................................................................................. 27
Useful macros ........................................................................................................................................ 28
Focus macros ..................................................................................................................................... 28
Stealth / NoStealth Macros ............................................................................................................... 28
Abolishing / Decursing Partner.......................................................................................................... 29
Attitude in the arena ............................................................................................................................. 29

Zephis Guide to Feral / Disc

Introduction
This guide will be an extensive and in depth guide on how to play a feral druid. It includes the use of
every spell, when to use it and how to use it. It will include different interesting talent builds and gear
setups. I will talk about different compositions and how to play them. I will show you how to beat
certain counters. Basically I will try to share with you everything I know about playing a feral druid in
arena.
Who am I?
My name is Zephi (Zephii is my main feral). I have played the feral druid for several years, both on AT
and on retail. I played to 2300 in 3v3 during season 8 on retail (cyclone EU) and peaked at 2600 (glad
range) during season 10. I quit retail during the beginning of MoP and played AT more actively. I have
played feral/rogue and feral/shaman to about 2300 rating and feral/disc to 2500 rating. Im less
experienced as feral/hunter as I dont personally like this comp in wrath of the lich king. I played it
during cata retail to about 2500 rating, also on cyclone EU.
Even though I achieved quite decent ratings as a feral druid, you shouldnt take this guide as an
absolute truth. The game is still evolving and its important that you think critically at all time.
Before we begin the actual guide I would like to thank Chrille, Sonny, Choe, Crizp and Freeral for
being an inspiration to the feral community and for motivating me to get better at it every day.
If you want to contact me, you can whisper me ingame (zephii or zephl) or contact me on the forums
(Zephi or Zephii) on www.arena-tournament.com
Lastly I want to thank the Arena-Tournament staff and community for creating this wonderful server.
I hope you enjoy this guide
Sincerely
Zephi

Spells
Lets take a look at what spells are available to us:
Note: Only relevant spells are included, starfall will not be mentioned for example.
Direct Damage Bleed Finishing move Healing Special- CROWD CONTROL

No cooldown spells
Feral
Mangle: Increases bleed damage and shred damage
Shred: Only useable while behind the target, increased damage on bleeding targets
Rake
Rip
POUNCE: Stuns the target for 4 seconds, only useable in stealth
Ravage: Only useable in stealth, must be behind the target
Ferocious Bite: 25% increased critical strike chance on bleeding targets
Savage Roar: Increases physical damage done by 30%
Swipe: AoE in front of you
Faerie Fire (Feral): Reduces armor and makes it impossible to stealth or go invisible. (Magic)
Demoralizing Roar: AoE around you that breaks stealth and reduces attack power of anyone hit.
Lacerate: Also direct damage
Maul
Resto
Rejuvenation
Regrowth
Lifebloom
Healing Touch
Abolish Poison
Remove Curse
Mark/Gift of the Wild: Buff, adds 750 armor, 37 of all attributes and 54 of all resistances
Balance
CYCLONE
Moonfire: Also leaves a magic DoT.
HIBERNATE: Only useable on beasts (Any druid form except for Tree Of Life, ghost wolf (shamans)
and hunter pets.
Faerie Fire
ENTANGLING ROOTS
Hurricane
Wrath
Thorns: Magic Buff that damages opponents who attack you with melee (low damage)

Short cooldown spells (max 1 minute)

Feral
Tigers Fury: Restores 60 energy and increases your damage for 6 seconds (30s cd)
BASH: Stuns the target for 5 seconds (30s cd)
Enrage: Generates 20 rage instantly and an additional 10 over 10 seconds, reduces your base armor
by 16% for the duration. (1 minute cd)
FERAL CHARGE BEAR: Also physically snares the target for 4 seconds and interrupts any cast for 4
seconds. (15s cd, shared with Feral Charge Cat)
Feral Charge Cat (30s cd, shared with Feral Charge Bear)
MAIM: Stuns the target for 1/2/3/4/5 seconds (depending on combo points). (10s cd)
Mangle (Bear) (6s cd)
Prowl: Stealth, 10 seconds cooldown
Resto
N/A
Balance
Barkskin: Dispellable magic buff that reduces melee damage taken by 20% and stops pushback while
casting. Useable while CCd. (1 min cd)
NATURES GRASP: Any melee striking you will get rooted by entangling roots. 3 charges (1 min cd)

Long cooldown spells (minimum 1 minute)

Feral
Berserk: Reduces energy cost of all abilities by 50%. Tigers fury cannot be used during berserk. (3
min cd)
Dash: Increases moving speed in cat form by 70% for 15 seconds (2.4 min cd with glyph)
Frenzied Regeneration: Usable in bear form, converts 10 rage per second into 3% health for 10
seconds. Healing you for 30% in total (without MS effect). (3 min cd)
Survival Instincts: Increases your maximum and current hp by 30% for 20 seconds. Afterwards the
health is lost, returning you to 1hp in case your hp is lower than 30%. (3 min cd)
Resto
Tranquility: AoE channeled healing spell that heals everyone around the druid for 3035hp every 2
seconds for 8 seconds. (8 min cd)
Balance
Innervate: Magic buff that regenerates the targets mana equal to 225% of the druids base mana
pool over 10 seconds. (3 min cd)

Talents, glyphs and gear

Over the years many different talent builds have been created along with fitting gear setups. Lets
take a look at a few of them.

Crizps setup (high resi with disc priest)

This talent build is a well-balanced shred build that focuses on doing high damage in the long run. It
takes 3/3 in natural shapeshifter in order to not oom while spam shifting.
Glyphs: Berserk, rip, shred, the wild, dash, thorns
Lets take a look at his gear: Enchant - Gem
Wrathful helmet 50 AP 20 resi 18 stam 15% stun red 20 agi
Wrathful shoulders 40 AP 15 resi 10 agi 10 resi
Wrathful chest 10 stats 20 agi 10 agi 10 resi
Wrathful gloves 20 agi 25 spell pen
Wrathful legs 75 AP 22 crit 20 agi 10 hit 13 spell pen
Victory necklace
Victory cloak 35 spell pen

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Triumph bracers 50 AP
Wrathful Mace Mongoose 20 agi 10 stats
Idol of the crying moon
Triumph belt 10 hit 13 spell pen 20 agi
Triumph boots 16 agility 10 agi 10 resi
Triumph ring
Band of the bone colossus 10 agi 10 resi
HC Deaths verdict
Pvp trinket

Choes high arp low resi setup (with resto shaman)

This build focuses more on burst damage (ferocious bite talent) and less on longevity. Choe uses an
extremely low amount of resilience with this (892) with a rather surprising trinket use. This build is
entirely based on maximizing armor penetration.
Wrathful helmet 50 AP 20 resi 42 AP 10% stun red 20 ArP
Sundering necklace
Wrathfhul shoulders 40 AP 15 Resi 20 ArP
Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape 35 spell pen 20 ArP

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Sanctified Lasherweave Raiment 20 resi 20 arp 20 resi
Toskks Maximized Wristguards 50 AP 20 ArP
Wrathful Mace Berserking 20 agi 10 stats
Idol of the crying moon
Wrathful gloves 20 hit 20 arp
Astrylians Sutured Cinch 10 crit 13 spell pen 20 arp 20 arp
Wrathful pants 75 AP 22 crit 20 arp 10 hit 13 spell pen
Taldarams Soft Slippers 15 stam and minor speed increase 20 Arp 20 arp
Saurfangs cold forged band 20 arp
Frostbrood sapphire ring 20 arp
Mark of supremacy
Pvp trinket

Variations in resilience
If you feel more comfortable with less or more resilience when using crizps or choes gear setup,
consider the following options:
Replacing the chestpiece on choes gear setup by the wrathful chest with 20 resilience enchant, 20
arp and 20 resi gems will bring your resilience up to about 1k. Replacing the belt, boots and bracers
by wrathful ones will lift you even higher to above 1200 resilience. Of course this means you will lose
ArP. The higher your resilience is, the lower the effectiveness of your ArP is going to be. Thats why
its better to switch to agility when you reach a certain level of resilience. Above 1250 resilience I
would not recommend playing ArP, as agility will net you better results.

But I like Deathbringers Will

Then by all means, play with it!
If you switch out your mark of supremacy you will lose a lot of hit. Make up for it by using the victory
necklace and the band of the bone colossus instead of saurfangs cold forged band.

What about mangle spec?

Mangle spec can be an interesting choice if you are having problems shredding. This can be due to
latency or a general disliking to getting onto peoples backs.
The advantage of mangle spec is that you are generating combo points faster (energy cost of mangle
is lower than shred) and thus getting more finishers and more predatory instincts procs. The
downside is that you will be less bursty and that you will get parried, blocked and dodged all the
fucking time.
If you still want to play mangle spec, here it is:

This spec obviously specs into improved mangle and drops shredding attacks.
Replace the shred glyph by the mangle glyph and youre all set!
You can choose whether youre going to use the ArP setup or the Agi setup, but Id go with agility
with 1.2+ resilience and HCDV as the entirely point of ArP is to burst and you have already made the
choice not to play a bursty game style by choosing mangle over shred.

What it all comes down to

Preference. Nothing else.
There is no right or wrong way to gear. Adjust your gear to your playstyle and youll do just fine.
You like to play extremely offensive and bursty? Play with a lot of armor penetration. You like the
faster run speed by using the boot enchant? Use it! Dont care so much about that? Enchant agility
then! Getting sapped off kidney all the time? Use the 15% stun meta! Does it never happen to you?
By all means use the 21 agi 3% crit damage meta! Find yourself getting destroyed by double dps all
the time? Play with lots of resilience!
If your playstyle is in line with your gear and your talents, youre doing it right.

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How to deal damage

Now we have a clear list on what spells there are available to us, lets take a look at how we can
combine them to maximize our damage. Lets describe the ideal situation:
Active buffs:
Mark of the wild, Thorns
Savage Roar
Active debuffs on your target:
Mangle
Rake
Rip
At this point you want to do damage by using shred to 5 combo points, and using maim or ferocious
bite depending on the situation.
At all times: Make sure savage roar is up (priority!)
Make sure rake is up
Make sure rip is up
Dont spam shred but pool energy to be able to burst.
Tigers fury right before rip increases rip damage by quite a lot.

Example given:
Prowl Pounce Mangle Rake Shred to 5 CP Pool energy to 100 Savage roar Shred to 5 CPs
(reapply rake if necessary) Tigers Fury Rip Pool Energy to 100 Shred to 5 CPs (reapply rake)
Pool energy to 100 Berserk Maim Shred to 5 CPs Pool to energy to 65 Ferocious Bite
This example is good for an early berserk.
The feral way of doing damage requires practice!

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How to use crowd control effectively

There are many reasons to use CC on your enemies.
1. To stop healing/buffs going on your kill target
2. To stop damage coming in on your partner/yourself
3. To stop your partner or yourself from being CCd
4. To force opponents in a bad position (out of LoS or in range of your partners CC)
5. To stop mana burns going out
Feral druids have a wide range of abilities to use to CC opponents.
Cyclone is our most powerful crowd control. You cannot get out of cyclone in any way except for
using your pvp trinket. It cannot be dispelled nor can it be BoPd or even bubbled out of! This means
that its entirely possible to kill a holy paladins partner without forcing bubble.
Cyclone is a 1.5 second cast, unless you have just used a finishing move. The talent Predatory Strikes
will give you a 20% chance to gain a buff that will make your next nature spell (healing touch,
entangling roots, regrowth, cyclone, hibernate) instant after using a finishing move (savage roar, rip,
maim and ferocious bite). This chance is increased per combo point used up by your finishing move.
At 5 combo points you are guaranteed a proc.
Entangling roots can be used to root people up to 10 seconds. Dispellable (magic).
Hibernate can be used to put opponents to sleep for up to 10 seconds if they are in beast form.
Dispellable (magic)
Feral charge bear physically snares opponents for 4 seconds. (Can be freedomd)
Pounce/maim/bash are stuns that stun for respectively 4/5/5 seconds, shares DR.
The important thing to remember about all these CCs, is that you have to make sure you use them
on the right targets, for the right reasons. Ill illustrate this with a few examples:

Example 1: Holy paladin/warrior

This team tends to go for your priest, although good warriors will sit on you if you use a low
resilience gear setup. The main strategy we use is to kill the warrior while dispelling his buffs and
CCing the paladin. So I have all my debuffs on the warrior and he is fully dispelled. I have a proc up
and use it to focus cyclone the paladin. My priest wants to fear after the cyclone, but he is not in
range. Cyclone ends and the holy paladin starts casting a flash of light. I switch to bear to focus
charge him (interrupting the cast and snaring him for 4 seconds). I then focus bash him for 5 seconds.
I switch back to cat to dps the warrior. In the mean time my priest is in range of fear and successfully
fears the paladin. This drops the warrior so low that we force trinkets/shield wall/bubble. We repeat
this until they are out of cooldowns and the warrior dies.
But wait
After our first cc chain the warrior goes offensive and is hacking into my priest. We need to peel the
warrior so we can let mortal strike fall off and my priest can heal up. I have a proc up, but the warrior
Im playing against is predicting my cyclone and reflects. I moonfire the reflect down and cyclone him
full. He trinkets. There is no freedom up so I bear charge the warrior, snaring him for 4 seconds. My
priest is able to run around the pillar and get a penance off. However, the paladin freedoms the
warrior and my priest is again in trouble. I switch to cat and start dpsing the warrior until I reach 5
combo points. I now stun him for 5 seconds and then cyclone him for 3 seconds (DR). These 8
seconds are enough for my priest to get back to safety. I restart my rotation on the warrior while my
priest drags him LoS of the paladin. The paladin runs closer to the pillar to get in LoS of his warrior. I

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get a proc and cyclone the warrior for 6 seconds. My priest has no problems getting in range of the
paladin and lands the fear. Eventually we get the kill on the warrior.
This example illustrates how we should use CC to both go offensive and to go defensive. Try to be
creative with your CC and be smart. If you bash the paladin you can use your proc to root the warrior
without him getting dispelled. Hard cast a cyclone into the paladin to follow up the bash and you
effectively CCd the entire enemy team for 10 seconds!

Example 2: Shadow Priest / Sub Rogue

This team is tricky to play against. Most shadow priest rogues tunnel the feral and try to CC the
priest. Good shadow priest rogues will cheap shot kidney shot the feral into a sap and kill the priest. I
will go into more detail about how to play against spriest rogue in a later section of the guide. Now I
want to illustrate how to stop CC on your priest by using your own CC. My priest was sapped, and to
avoid him getting fully dispelled and opened on, I pounce the shadow priest as far away from my
priest as possible after the sap happened. I am being cheap shot and kidney shot while the spriest is
dispelling me and making his way to my priest to fear him. After the kidney shot the priest isnt quite
in range yet to fear but my priest is still sapped! I switch to bear form and feral charge him, rooting
him into place for 4 seconds. Now the sap has ended and my priest can start shielding and buffing
me, while moving away from the priest. I then bash the priest to ensure my priest gets a safe
distance.
If I hadnt charged the spriest, my priest would have gotten a full fear and they would have forced
our cooldowns.
As I said, there are many ways to use your CC effectively. Its one of your main assets as a feral druid!
Another example would be hibernating a resto druid who wants to avoid a mana burn or who
switched to travel form to avoid a fear!

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Feral / Disc
This is by far my favorite 2v2 comp. It is a very, very strong comp you can go very high with if played
right.
Currently I play Feral / Disc with Crizps gear setup. I absolutely love being able to casually take out
shadow priest / rogue and ret / mm teams without too much hassle. If you face these teams in 900
resilience you are about to experience absolute nightmare. The advantage of playing with high
resilience is that you are able to stay in cat much longer than if you play with low resilience. Being in
cat means pressure, staying in bear makes you a target dummy. Staying in cat means youll get
instant cyclone procs that can be used to CC the incoming damage, sitting in bear means no cyclones,
unless you go for an extremely risky hard-casted cyclone.

The general game plan of feral / disc

This comp has no MS, which means keeping pressure without CC is very hard to do. This comp relies
on its excellent CC to create long-lasting 2v1 situations to force cooldowns. Healer/dps teams are
usually defeated by putting long CC chain on the healer while dispelling and dpsing the dps. Here is a
list of comps I usually beat in this way:
Holy / warrior
Holy / death knight
Disc / hunter
Disc / muti
Disc / mage
Disc / warrior
Disc / Death Knight
Resto druid / warrior
Resto druid / death knight
Other healer/dps comps are more easily beaten by killing the healer. Here is a list:
Holy / lock
Resto shaman / lock
Resto shaman / prot or ret paladin
Resto shaman / feral
Disc / feral
Disc / sub rogue
When you face a double dps team, the key to win is to use your excellent CC chain to make the
incoming damage healable while killing the other dps. Dont be afraid to CC your kill target when you
have DRs on your focus target. If your kill target runs away and you think you will die if you chase
him, dont get seduced into chasing him! You can make some very surprising switches and global the
focus target while his partner is trying to reset. Remember that surviving is the most important part
of playing arena: you are worth nothing when dead. Dont LoS your partner unless you have good
reasons to and have the defensive cooldowns to back it up. Dont outrange your partner. Dont make
him leave his pillar because you are being greedy for a kill. This is especially true against comps like
shadow priest / mage who will always try to drag you away from your healer so they can get easy
polies on your priest. Take your time! Your priest will love you for allowing him to stay at his pillar.
There are two categories of double dps teams, based on their strategy.
The first category will try to kill your priest. The second category will try to kill you.
Examples of comps who kill your priest (note that some comps can do both, kill your priest or kill
you!):

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Feral/rogue
Enha/ (combat) rogue
Good shadow priest / rogues
Feral/mm hunter
Enha/bm hunter
Ret/rogue
Warrior/ret
Sometimes ret/hunter (usually in a series when they have gone on me as the feral and lost 5 times in
a row they try to change strategy).
The following comps tend to target the feral:
Shadow priest / mage
Shadow priest / rogue
Ret / hunter
Lock / rogue
Mage / Rogue
Shadow priest / DK
As a rule of thumb to defeat double dps:
If it contains a ret paladin; kill his partner and cc the paladin. Why? Because we can fear the ret. If we
fear his partner he will just get dispelled.
If it contains a shadow priest: kill the shadow priest. Only switch when you know you cannot get on
him without exposing your partner (like an SP/Mage dragging you out).
Against hunter teams: always kill the hunter, bleeds absolutely destroy hunters.
A note about innervate: Innervate is an incredible tool you have at your disposal. Obviously you use it
on your priest in 99% of the cases. Use it as early as possible! Meaning that you use it when your
priest is at about 50% mana. Its important to protect the innervate from being dispelled or cycloned.
It can be very tricky to innervate against teams like disc/ele or disc/mage because of the double
purge. It can be worth it to CC the entire enemy team before innervating. In desperate cases (my
priest is completely oom and we have no way to stop the purges from coming in) my priest will PS
himself to avoid getting innervate dispelled.
Lets now take a look at specific strategies.

Holy Paladin / Warrior

Pounce the warrior while your priest tries to get as close to the paladin as possible while mounted.
Try to land an early fear on the paladin. Your priest will probably get HoJd which is excellent as HoJ is
extremely dangerous when the warrior gets pressure on your priest. Take your time to get a full SR
going and pool as much energy as you can. The position we are aiming for is to be near a pillar and as
close to the paladin as possible. The hardest part about beating hpala/warrior is getting the fear
after cyclone. Most holy paladins will try to max range the priest. Thats why its a good idea to tell
your priest to LoS the paladin. The warrior (who is on your priest) has 2 choices: stay on the priest
without getting heals, or stop damaging the priest to get in LoS of the paladin. If you maim the
warrior for 5 seconds behind LoS you can force a lot of pressure. The paladin will probably move very
close to your team to get in LoS of his warrior, making him vulnerable for fears.

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Try to avoid cycloning the paladin when hes really far away from your priest. The 6 seconds wont be
enough to force cooldowns and your priest will never get to the paladin in time to fear. If your priest
is almost at the paladin but not quite yet, it is often a good idea to follow up cyclone with feral
charge (bear) and bash. Try to feral charge on cast to lock him out for 4 seconds. Most warriors will
try to stop the priest fear by taking distance from your priest and charging or intercepting him when
he wants to fear. This can be avoided by maiming the warrior before he can charge.
If you can see that your priest wont get a fear in time no matter what you do, its critical that he
returns to the pillar. If not, the warrior will be able to pressure your priest as he can just tank your
damage while the paladin healbots him from max range. As I said before, dragging the warrior LoS
will either create pressure on them, or reduce pressure on you.
Dont necessarily use your cyclone immediately when you get your instant cast proc. Its pointless
to cyclone the paladin when his warrior is still out of LoS. Sometimes you will be able to get in
another 6-8k damage without the warrior getting any kind of healing before the paladin gets in line
of sight. Cyclone the paladin when he is able to heal. If at all possible, try to have max energy when
you get back on the warrior after cycloning the paladin. Make sure your priest keeps the warrior
dispelled during CC. Getting Sacred Shield dispelled is critical to killing the warrior.
If you cycloned correctly, your priest should be able to get in range of the paladin to fear him. As I
said before, try to stop the warrior from charging/intercepting onto your priest to avoid the fear.
Chaining cyclone and fear is the best way to force their cooldowns. Lets take a look at the cooldowns
we want to force:
Paladin trinket
Warrior trinket
Bubble
Shield wall
Shield block
BoP
If you are able to create a lot of pressure you can often force many cooldowns at the same time. If
you manage to stun the warrior out of LoS he will trinket 9 out of 10 times. Often warriors will shield
wall at the same time as their paladin bubbles. Shield block is a rather annoying little ability as it is
usually coupled with the warrior spamming piercing howl while turning his back away from you,
making it impossible to shred. I often just wait for shield block to be over to continue dps-ing him.
Just return to the pillar until shield block is over.
Keep rotating crowd controls on the paladin while dispelling and nuking the warrior until all
cooldowns are used. Now is a good time to berserk and finish off the warrior. You can also use an
early berserk to force many cooldowns quickly. By the time all cooldowns are used you will have
berserk again.
Note: Cyclone the warrior when you cannot control the paladin any further to stop heals on the
warrior. Be alert when cycloning warriors, as many of them look out for your proc to spell reflect.
Just moonfire the reflect down before cycloning.
Dont forget to take really good care of your priest. Warriors can create a lot of pressure on priests
very easily. Use your cc to help your priest manage the damage on him. Always cc the warrior if your
priest gets pummeled and always cc the warrior straight after bladestorm. A feral charge -> bash ->
cyclone is cheaper than having to use PS or desperate prayer.

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Other healer/warrior comps

Disc / warrior
This comp has become increasingly popular ever since despondency and serenity reached rank 1 with
it. This comp can be a bit tricky as warrior damage combined with offensive dispels is very rough on
your priest. Double fear and mana burn only add to the potential threat this comp forms. The
strategy is pretty much the same as versus hpala/warrior. Dont be tempted to go on the priest, you
cannot leave a warrior on your priest for a long time before hell have to use cooldowns or die. Priest
heals are weaker than holy paladin heals and once you have cleaned the buffs off the warrior and
cycloned the priest, you can drop the warrior very quickly. Mana burn the priest whenever hes in
LoS to force him to move away from your priest. Try to avoid getting double feared by running out of
the fear range when the priest comes in to fear. Getting double feared against disc priest teams is
the first step to losing. Remember that. Control the shadowfiend as soon as possible. You will either
win by just killing the warrior (your priest needs to land good fears for this) or by winning on mana. If
you go for burns you can use feral charge and bash to keep the priest in LoS. Dont forget to protect
your innervate.
Resto shaman / warrior
This comp can also be very dangerous because of offensive dispels. The advantage is that there are
no defensive dispels, which means you can root the warrior. Going on the resto shaman is a viable
strategy (and might be the best strategy) for this reason. If you go warrior you might run into
problems CCing the shaman. Good shamans will spam purge you to instantly get your proc and/or
will ground your cyclones. Good tremor placement can make it a nightmare to get reliable fears.
Thats why its a good idea to go on the shaman with burns/damage from the priest. Keep an eye out
for your priest at all times. He can drop very randomly to warrior damage. Rotate cyclone, root, feral
charge and bash on the warrior to reduce his damage. If you can, try to cc him right before he
refreshes mortal strike to allow your priest to heal up fast and without using a lot of mana.
How to kill a resto shaman: Take your time. Get a full SR and a full (tiger furied) rip up. Now shred
slowly. This means staying at high energy at all time. Shamans get a lot of heals by actually casting
(unlike holy paladins). Often shamans will drop to ~50% hp before starting to cast heals. If you stay at
high energy and dont immediately finish your 5 combo points you can maim right before a cast ends.
At this point you can spam shred to drop the shaman very very low. At this point you are low on
energy and the shaman will freecast. Cyclone him. Kill the tremor and fear him after cyclone. He will
still be at very low hp and youll have full energy. Your maim will come off cd again and even though
stun DRs will still be in effect you can probably stun his next cast as well. If you cc the warrior while
doing this your priest is free to assist you by burning or dpsing. Its not always an easy to choice
whether to go for burns or damage. Usually we go for damage if the shaman is using water shield and
for burns if he uses earth shield on himself. Kill the mana tide asap when he uses it. Eventually the
shaman will not have trinket or NS and he will die in the stun. Ooming him is also a good way to kill
him.
Resto druid / warrior
This comp can be hard to beat when you (as the feral) get stuck in 3x cyclone while your priest gets
hammered down. There are two ways to beat this comp. The first is a straightforward killing the
warrior while ccing the druid (works on bad and average WDs), the second is harder to execute but
works better against good warrior druids. The first strategy is very useable when the druid starts in
stealth and you can just dispel the warrior. Druid healing requires some ramp-up time. If the druid
starts you can let the warrior charge your priest behind a pillar, open on him, load him up with bleeds
(after SR) and let your priest aid you with nuking. Usually the priest will pounce you and hardcast a

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clone on you. Your priest has to fear the druid to stop the clone. If the druid chooses to not pounce
you but hardcast a clone from a distance straight out of stealth you have to react quickly by switching
to bear and charging the clone. Shadowmeld also works. Bash the druid out of it and let your priest
fear him (or hardcast a clone if your priest is out of range). Look out for opportunities to hibernate
the resto druid, getting a hibernate forces a fuckton of cooldowns. Letting your priest chase the
druid for fears can lead him to go into travel form, being vulnerable to a hibernate. Dont forget that
hibernate is instant when used with your predatory instincts proc. Another great way to get a
hibernate on the resto druid is by burning the druid, forcing him to switch into bear. (Credit to sonny,
sonny 5). If you get a hibernate you can essentially CC the druid for 10 seconds (hibernate) + 8
seconds (fear) + 6 seconds cyclone + 5 seconds bash for a wopping 29 seconds of CC. Needless to say
you will force at least a trinket by doing this massive chain.
Eventually you should be able to kill the warrior.
The second strategy is harder to do. The end goal is to kill the resto druid here by switching onto him
when he has no hots. There are two obstacles that you will need to get out of the way before doing
this: trinket and barkskin. The problem with barkskin is that its cd is only one minute. I often start on
warrior and try strategy one, as it is easier and more straightforward. If we force the trinket on the
druid and I find that I cannot get pressure on the warrior anymore, and the druid is managing to kite
my priest really well, its a good idea to try strategy 2. So first of all you force the trinket by going
warrior and ccing druid. Now listen carefully: dont switch on the druid without having full energy
AND tigers fury. Without sufficient energy you wont force anything. Get full energy and a full SR on
the warrior. Root him. Quickly switch on the druid, dont get rip up, just rake, shred to 5 CPs (with
mangle ofc) and stun him. Use tigers fury to nuke him in the maim. He will barkskin the maim. Great.
Switch back on warrior. Wait for your tigers fury to go back up, barkskin will still be on cooldown.
When you have tigers fury again you switch on the druid again. This time he has trinket nor barkskin.
Use tigers fury then berserk to maim him and nuke him down with shred and ferocious bite. Your
priest can fiend here and PI nuke the druid. He will not get out of that alive. Obviously this strategy
works better when playing ArP than when playing agility, although its still a viable strategy as agility.
End note about playing against warrior / healer: Keep an eye out for your priest at all times. Priests
WILL die to warriors if you dont peel.

Holy paladin / DK
This comp is fairly easy to beat. The most important part is not to not allow your priest to get gibbed
by the DK. If you face an unholy DK it is very important to cc the gargoyle. Most DKs will AMS when
nuking to avoid getting cycloned. Use your instant cyclone on the gargoyle and use feral charge to
stop the DK. If he gets freedomd out of it use bash. Dont forget to look out for Icebound Fortitude
(IBF) before stunning. IBF makes DKs immune to bash. If you cannot stop the DK in any way (freedom
+ AMS + IBF) I often pop berserk, cyclone the paladin and try to blow up the DK while the priest runs
LoS of the paladin. This will cause the DK to either get off your priest or forced to use runes to heal
himself instead of doing damage. Outside gargoyle duration UHDKs arent that scary to feral / disc.
Make sure to peel the DK in case your priest gets strangulated / mind frozen. In general the strategy
is quite similar to hpala / warrior. Kill the DK while ccing the holy paladin. In stead of charging your
priest to stop him from fearing DKs will try to grip him before he can fear. Similar to holy paladin /
warrior you should try to maim him before he grips. Use maim to go for a kill as he cannot death
strike or pet sac while stunned.
Frost DKs are usually easier to kill than UHDKs but are burstier than UHDKs. Make sure to
communicate peels well with your priest and make him call out how the healing is going. Make sure
you dont both trinket hungering cold at the same time.

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Other DK / healer comps

Disc / DK
Quite an uncommon comp. Going priest is an option but very risky. DKs can easily solo a priest. This
plays very similarly to Disc / warrior. Just go on the DK while burning / CCing the priest. Avoid double
fears at all cost and peel hard during gargoyle. Use bash to be able to get fears on the priest without
getting feared back.
Resto shaman / DK
This comp can be quite scary because of offensive dispels and bloodlust. Luckily this comp isnt
played very oftenly. Make sure to keep your priest safe during gargoyle / BL. Keep peeling until
gargoyles gone and bloodlust has been dispelled. Again, going on the shaman is a viable strategy. If
you are playing against a shaman who is slow on grounding / dispelling your proc its easier to kill the
DK while ccing the shaman. Nuke or burn the shaman according to his shield. (Nuke on water and
burn on earth).
Resto druid / DK
Very unusual comp on AT at the moment. Again, protect your priest when they go offensive. It can be
quite tricky to beat this comp because getting fears on the druid is near impossible if they play right.
Assess the skill level of your opponents by trying to kill the DK while ccing the druid. If they arent
good enough to avoid fears you can kill the DK quite easily while dispelling his hots. If they play very
well you can attempt the second strategy described in the resto druid / warrior section involving
switches on the druid to kill him in a maim. If the druid plays very offensive (he probably will) you can
fear him more easily and burn him to either 1) oom him or 2) hibernate him when he switches to
bear. I wish I could give a more detailed explanation on how to reliably beat this comp but I cant say
I have faced this comp a single time in the past few months.

Disc / Rogue
Keep faerie fire (feral) up on the rogue at all times.
Disc / Mutilate Rogue
Open on the priest as early as possible. Try to keep a maximum range between your priest and the
enemy priest. Your priest will get sapped, thats unavoidable. The key is to avoid getting him sapped
and dispelled. If your priest gets opened on without any buffs, it will take a tremendous effort to
save his life. If you open on the priest and the rogue opens on you, just use barkskin. Your priest
should be too far away to get feared straight after sap and he will be able to top you off quite easily.
If you get feared by the priest and the rogue opens on your priest, use berserk. You cannot leave
your priest alone when the priest and the rogue connect on him. If the rogue is going on your priest,
go on the rogue. Mutilate rogues die easily as they run with little resilience, their evasion is useless
against shred, and they have no cheat death to save their asses. Make your priest LoS the other
priest to make the rogue stop pressuring your priest. Try to cyclone the rogue during kidney shot. It
reduces pressure on your priest tremendously. If the rogue decides to go on you, just switch priest.
Trying to hit a rogue who is on you with evasion is unproductive and very frustrating. Just go priest
while your priest burns and dispels him.
Try to avoid double fears on you. Getting double feared will lead to you getting sapped and them
getting another deadly opener on your priest. 9 out of 10 losses against disc / rogue are because
you got double feared. Dont use your trinket for anything but blind. The only exception is when you
are 100% sure you will get the kill and you get kidney shot with deadly poison on you (making you

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immune to blind long enough to get the kill without getting blinded). Trinketing kidney can easily
lead to a loss by getting blinded and sapped later in the game.
Depending on the opposing rogues target, you can either kill the rogue, kill the priest or oom the
priest (leading to a kill on either target).
Disc / sub rogue
Sub rogues have lower sustained damage but can burst extremely hard during dance. They are
harder to kill because they can gouge kidney very often as they dont have deadly poison breaking
their gouges. It can be extremely frustrating to kill a sub rogue for this reason. Usually they will peel
all game and only burst during dance (usually after a double fear on you). The same rule as against
the mutilate version applies. Go priest when the rogue goes on you and go rogue when the rogue
goes on your priest. Cyclone kidney shot (on your priest). Avoid double fears at all cost. If you can,
cyclone every dance. If he cloaks it, feral charge and bash him. Dont trinket anything but blind, even
when close to the kill. As there are no dots on you (no deadly poison), sub rogues can blind you
instantly after you trinket, usually into a full sap. Be patient, try to play the mana game with burns
and a well-timed innervate and fiend. Eventually you should be able to burst either the rogue or the
disc down, depending on the rogues target. If they go on you and your priest gets feared, do
anything you can to stop the follow-up sap on your priest. CC the rogue or try to demoralizing roar
him out after vanish. The hardest part of playing against this is not getting seduced into trinketing a
kidney. Most of my losses against this comp were because I got impatient and trinketed a kidney
leading to me getting blinded and then sapped while my priest gets destroyed in a dance or burned
to 0 mana.

Disc / mage
Feral / disc has the advantage in this match-up. However, you can still lose quite easily if the mage /
priest plays well and you fuck up. You have to stop their cc-chain on your priest at all cost. Your
priest needs to avoid getting polied. If he is deeped or csd while novad its your responsibility to
stop the poly. You can do this by cycloning the mage (if you have a proc), charging the cast or
bashing the mage. If you do not have access to any of these, it is still worthwile to hardcast a clone
on the mage, as you will stop a lot of potential damage on you. Likewise, if your priest gets feared,
clone the mage near the end of the fear to stop the polymorph from going out.
How to win: Tunnel the mage. Make sure your priest dispels the mage clean and keeps you out of
deep. You can sometimes one-shot a mage with ferocious bite before he can even block. Kill water
elementals and mirror images (with swipe if necessary). Water elementals are deadly. They allow
easy deeps on your priest which lead to polymorphs and fears. Killing a water elemental quickly
increases your chance to win by a large margin. Mirror images make it impossible to get on the mage
as they slow you faster than you can remove slows by spam shifting. 2 or 3 swipes are enough to kill
them. After both pets are dead it becomes a lot easier to avoid polymorph and to do damage to the
mage. You can burn either the priest or the mage. Try to stop evocation. If you manage to oom the
mage after evocation its pretty much over.

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Disc / hunter
This comp kind of counters us the same way we counter them. It is very well possible to beat them
but its an uphill battle. Go on the hunter. They will go on you. They will scatter trap fear your
priest and nuke you down. Good hunters can kite extremely well and it can be very challenging to get
on them. Try to stop traps at all cost. This can be achieved in a few ways: You can eat the trap (this
means standing on top of the trap to take it from your priest after he gets scattered). You can also cc
the hunter after the scatter has gone out but before the trap has been launched. If you have a
cyclone proc up this is easy to do. Just cyclone the hunter right when he scatters to stop the trap
from going out. You can also bash him if you are near him, or maim him if you have the chance. If
you cannot eat the trap, feral charge and bash the hunter into a hardcasted cyclone to avoid taking
damage during trap. In the meantime, try to stop the priest from following the trap up with a fear by
cycloning him.
How to win: Kill the hunter. If you get the chance, gib his pet while ccing the priest (have your priest
assist in damage). You can burn the priest to win on mana. After the pet dies its quite easy to stay on
the hunter, after that its just a matter of getting him down while ccing the priest. Dont forget that
you can shred through deterrence. Lastly, use your maim often to inflict a huge amount of burst
damage to the hunter.

Disc / Feral
In a mirror match the goal is usually to kill the other priest as fast as you can. Try to outplay them by
dispelling the other ferals proc and get ahead in mana. Burn the priest as much as you can. Use your
procs (if they dont get dispelled) to cyclone the other feral and cc him during berserk. You can use
hibernate together with maim on the priest or when the feral is out of LoS of his priest. Try to avoid
double fears while trying to land them on them. In the end the winner is sometimes decided on
whoever geared better. If you have just faced a lot of double dps teams and your priest went full resi,
while your opponent stacked mp5, you may lose on mana rather quickly. Protect your innervates and
time your fiend so it doesnt get feared or cycloned. If you see an opportunity to switch on the feral,
use it. You can drop ArP geared ferals in a maim (dispel barkskin) if you cyclone fear their priest.

Healer / UA lock
Personally I struggle a lot with healer / lock teams (both UA and destro). It is very hard to pressure a
warlock and the constant fears force your entire team in awful positions. Bad healer / lock teams are
easy to beat. Good healer / lock teams are incredibly hard to beat.
Because UA locks are very hard to kill I often go on the healer. Disc priests, resto shamans and holy
paladins are definitely killable if you pool energy and time your maims well. Try to LoS as many fears
as possible and cc the warlock when your priest gets feared out. Holy paladin / UA lock is probably
the easiest variant to beat because they lack offensive dispels. You can train a paladin pretty easily
and if you time fear and maim well you can force him to trinket or bubble rather easily. Disc / UA lock
is hard to beat. I played 2 games versus Marm playing this comp and lost both. I was unable to
pressure the priest enough to kill him as I had to leave him to get in LoS of my priest. They were
spam burning my priest until he was completely oom and we succumbed to the pressure of the dots.
Bad healer / lock teams can be defeated quite easily by killing the pet twice and then killing the lock
with berserk. Locks take a tremendous amount of damage without soul link and can be zerged down

21
quite easily. Felhunters are harder to kill than succubusses (which should be killed as soon as
possible).
Overall its an extremely frustrating match-up. You will get spam feared, covered by UA, youll have
to switch away from the healer youre trying to kill to get into LoS, and if you position yourself badly
youll get into double howls. Against resto shaman / lock you have to try to dispel hex asap.
Unfortunately good teams will fear / coil / cs you during hex so you are unable to dispel it. Stop drain
soul ASAP when it gets cast on anyone or you will lose.
To summarize you have two options: Either kill the healer or kill pets. As soon as I have a better
strat to beat this setup I will update the guide!

Healer / destro lock

I find this a little easier to defeat than the UA variant. The only exception is when facing resto druid /
destro lock. This comp is extremely hard to beat because of the spam CC thats going out all game
long. If the lock is playing with a succubus you have to kill the succubus twice and then kill the lock.
However, most locks will play with a felhunter. Because of the delay of resto druid healing it can be
possible to kill the felhunter twice but youll need good coordination. Try to CC the druid and the lock
at the same time (fear on lock and clone druid for example). Cover the fears with Faerie Fire and
shadow word pain to reduce the chance of the fear getting devoured by the felhunter. If you manage
to kill the pet twice youll have a chance to kill the lock. If your priest gets feared out and nuked you
have to try to interrupt either fear or chaos bolt. CC the lock until your priest gets to the pillar
safely. Usually I find that I cannot kill the felhunter because we cannot get the double CC out without
something going wrong. To make it easier I usually go on the healer in case of holy paladin or resto
shaman. LoSing a destro lock is quite easy to do and if you pool energy well, you can kill the paladin
or shaman quite easily. I havent faced disc / destro lock yet so I cannot really comment on it. I would
assume killing the priest is a viable strategy.
Again: If I come up with a more viable strategy to beat this comp I will update the guide with it.

Resto shaman / ret paladin

The easiest way to win is to go on the ret paladin while burning him to 0 mana. At this point he
cannot dispel his shaman anymore and you can simply fear him fully after a clone. The ret will die
pretty easily. Make sure to CC the paladin during wings or to dispel the wings. This comp doesnt
pose that much threat as they have very little CC. If you cannot burn the ret paladin oom you can
also time your maim with fear (beware of freedom). If you feel that your priest is quite capable of
tanking the ret, then going on the shaman is also an option. Burn the shaman if he uses earth shield
and let your priest dps him if he uses water shield.

Resto shaman / prot paladin

Prot paladins can burst quite hard and silence often. It is pointless to burn them as their plea is
permanently up. Versus this comp I just train the shaman while having my priest burn/nuke
according to the shamans shield. This comp is very easy to beat as long as you cc the paladin during
HoJ. Your priest needs to stay alert and not get randomly gibbed. Kill mana tide quickly and within a
few minutes the shaman will either be dead or oom.

Disc / ret paladin

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This comp is also very easy to beat. You can either burn and kill the paladin while ccing the priest, or
you can simply tunnel the priest with burns and dispels until he dies. The paladin has no real way of
peeling you off his priest which means youre free to do whatever you want. The only thing you have
to be mindful off is getting double feared without trinket while the paladin uses wings, the priests
uses fear and PI to nuke your priest while hes in a hoj. Situations like that you have to try to avoid at
all cost. Still, this comp is very easy to defeat, I have only lost to it once or twice because me or my
priest got distracted or made a big mistake. As long as you cyclone the paladin during HoJ your priest
will never die.

Disc / ele
This comp is quite easy to beat. It usually turns into a mana-fight as they dont have the necessary cc
to kill you. Just tunnel the priest and cyclone the shaman. Your priest has to burn the priest.
Eventually youll land a kill on the priest. Remember that you can root the shaman if the priest runs
out of his LoS. Just LoS or bear charge the lava burst if your priest gets feared and dont forget to
instantly dispel hex if your priest gets caught in it.

Shadow Priest / Mutilate Rogue

The burst of this comp is quite scary. If you are running with Choes gear setup you are in for a very
hard match-up. Low resilience ferals get destroyed by spriest rogue. This comp along with ret/mm is
the sole reason I personally run with a high resilience. Both these comps are incredibly popular and
being able to win against them reliably is huge. The mutilate variant of this comp is easier to beat
than the subtlety variant (which I will cover next) because their switching options are limited (due to
step and deadly poisons).
Wait for the rogue to sap your priest and then open on the shadow priest as soon as possible. You
want to avoid the shadow priest getting a fear straight after sap at all cost. You can achieve this by
pouncing the shadow priest as far from your priest as possible. The timing of this can be quite tricky
as preferably youd wait for the sap to land on your priest. If the rogue doesnt sap and the priest
rushes, open at once! Stopping the shadow priest from fearing your priest is a fundamental element
in beating this setup. After you pounce the priest you will get opened on by the rogue. Use barkskin
during cheap shot and kidney shot. Keep faerie fire feral on the rogue at all times. This means its
the first global you spend out of kidney shot. Use feral charge bear or cat on the priest, depending on
his position. If hes near your priest it would be wise to use the bear charge in order to allow your
priest to back away from the priest. If hes far away from your priest still you can choose to use the
cat charge. Dont berserk straight away. Start getting SR and rip up and try to do as much damage to
the priest as you can. Use your first cyclone proc on the rogue given that he doesnt cloak. Your
priest doesnt need to get an early fear on the enemy team if he doesnt have fear ward, the risk of
getting feared is too great. Most shadow priest rogue teams will try to reset when being pressured,
the priest will run away (or disperse) and try to flash heal up. Versus mutilate rogues I always trinket
the second kidney shot and finish off the spriest with berserk. Your priest should use bauble during
silence and save trinket for blind. If you play with high resilience you should be able to stay in cat
during the entire game and finish the priest rather quickly.
If the priest is able to get away and reset, it might be a good idea to switch rogue. Mutilate rogues
can die quite easily if you manage to stun them. Use your survival instincts only when you are on low
health and make sure your priest pays attention to its duration. Remember that you lose the hp
gained from SI after its over, which can be very hard on your healer. A good time to use natures
grasp is after cloak and during disperse, as the priest cannot dispel his rogue. If the rogue has no
evasion up you can easily focus bash him.

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Most teams wont do this but if they happen to go on your priest you can just go all out on the priest
and destroy him within 10 seconds.

Shadow priest / sub rogue

I find this much harder to beat than the mutilate variant because of how much control the rogue can
provide and how hard dance can hit. Bad and average teams will simply try to rush the feral down.
The opener is the same: Try to open on the priest as far away from your priest as possible, but after
the sap has landed. Use barkskin during cheap shot and kidney shot only when being danced on.
Then proceed to kill the SP in much the same way as described in the section about SP/Muti. Dont
trinket kidney if you dont have dots on you as they may want to blind-sap you while killing your
priest. (If they dont dance in the opener thats often what they intend to do).
If they ride you all game it is not that hard to win, just use the steps described in the mutilate section
and youll be fine. Switching on the rogue is often not a good idea because of the survivability of sub
rogues (especially cheat death).
Good SP/rogue teams will do the following. Cheap shot and kidney shot on the feral, dont touch the
feral (SP dispels the priest). The rogue will either dance sap or vanish sap the feral out of kidney.
They will then dance on your priest while the feral sits a full sap and then often a half sap. If the sp
rogue are playing good they can kill your priest in those 15 seconds. Obviously you will get fully
blinded if you trinket. For this reason I use the 15% stun meta, it allows you to not drop combat after
KS ends and if you are quick you can faerie fire something to stay in combat and not get sapped. If
they play well and LoS you may well get sapped anyway. At this point you rely on your priest
completely to survive the SP rogue damage. After the cc on you is over you have to peel for your
priest and then kill the shadow priest.

Shadow priest / Mage

This comp is definitely tricky. The key to beating it is to not get tempted into going into the open too
much. Definitely avoid getting dragged out of range of the pillar.
If the shadow priest rushes towards your priest to fear him out, open on him near the pillar and start
dpsing him. Use your focus cyclone to cyclone the mage. If the priest kites out to outrange your
priest, dont follow him unless you are a 100% sure you can kill him before they kill you. The most
important part is keeping your priest out of CC. The enemy mage will try to poly him very early by
deeping or stacking CS with a nova. Try to cyclone/charge/bash the cyclone. Your priest needs to try
to fear ward the fear or position himself in such a way that he cannot get feared. Since you are
dpsing the spriest you can effectively maim him at the right time to avoid double fears.
If the shadow priest stays in the open and the mage comes in to try to poly, pounce the mage. You
can win this match-up by killing the mage as well. Going mage stops a lot of their polies. The
downside is that the priest is free to fear your priest. One cc-chain on your priest can finish you.
Thats why its absolutely critical that you stop the fear and/or the poly. If you get kited out return to
the pillar asap or you will lose. If your priest is forced to leave his pillar you cannot win as a poly is
unavoidable. Any decent mage will fake the shadow word death and then poly your priest full. Even
in 1350 resilience youre a sitting duck in the open versus this comp. If they are good at kiting and
resetting I switch to whatever is within pillar range. Eventually they will run out of cooldowns and
you can force them defensive. (If a shadow priest has to start healing you know you are about to

24
win.) Dont get greedy. Dont chase a shadow priest across the map only to get stuck in a deep while
your priest sits helplessly in the open getting spam polied while you eat 5k frostbolts back to back
with a full row of dots on you. Barkskin is absolutely useless against this double purge comp and
survival instincts is a poisoned gift as it destroys your hp after it has ended.
Be patient, play smart and youll land a kill eventually.
Dont forget to babysit your priest and keep him out of trouble.
Greedy SP/Mages can often be blown up.

Shadow Priest / DK
You pretty much cannot lose to this comp. It used to be more common than it is now but every now
and then I still queue into one. Its very easy to beat as they have almost no control over you. Just
open on the priest (dont charge on him in stealth because youll need charge for grip) and berserk
after disperse to finish him off quickly. Use focus cyclones and roots on the DK (watch out for AMS).
Usually this game is won within 30 seconds.

Ret / MM Hunter
This is the second comp that is very hard to beat in low resilience, but quite acceptable with high
resilience. The key to winning this is fear. Most ret/hunter teams will go on the feral while
trapping/HoJing and repentencing your priest. Try to eat every trap. We will go on the hunter and cc
the ret. Use barkskin during wings and try to get rip up on the hunter as quickly as possible. Your
priest needs to fear the ret on cooldown. If your priest runs with you as much as possible, it is quite
easy to fears on the paladin. A good fear-cyclone chain on the paladin can force the hunter defensive
easily. Be aware that the hunter might trap on HoJ. Use your SI as late as possible. Dont stack
barkskin with PS. If you are having problems getting on the hunter, and their offensive cds are down,
it might be a good idea to LoS the hunter and quickly kill his pet. A hunter without pet is much easier
to kill. Eventually they will run out of offensive cooldowns and youll be able to kill the hunter. My
priest usually fiends quite early to maximize our pressure on the hunter. If the pressure on you
becomes too much and the paladin is DR on cyclone, use it on the hunter. It will stop his damage and
give you a chance to get to his position without using feral charge. Bear charge can be more useful
than cat charge vs hunters because of the 4 second snare. I use focus bash on the ret paladin very
often because he will freedom himself, making it easier to get on the hunter as he cannot freedom
him.
The bottom line is: Rotate your defensive cds cleverly and fear the ret paladin on cooldown. The
hunter will die eventually and the damage on you should be healable.
It can be tricky if they go on your priest. However, you should be able to do a lot of damage on the
hunter as he cannot kite you while going on the priest. Your priest needs to play well and time his
cooldowns well. Most paladins will trinket the fear to get on the priest at which point you can fully
clone him.

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Feral / MM hunter
This comp does a lot of damage. I often find that its much easier to win if they go on me than on my
priest. I usually kill the hunter and cyclone/fear/hibernate the feral. After berserk is over its quite
easy to win. The problem is when they go on your priest. A priest under pressure often doesnt have
the global to dispel you so if you get scattered, trapped, hibernated and cycloned it can be very hard
to do any damage or to peel for your priest at all. Good feral/hunter teams can finish your priest off
in seconds after PS is gone. Your priest needs to stay in LoS of you and dispel the trap immediately to
have a chance to win. At that point you can safely trinket cyclone and bash the feral into a clone.
Then you can dps the hunter and hibernate the feral for 10 seconds. If your priest manages to stay
alive until this point, the game is won. After berserk you can also fear the feral and then clone him
full again. It all comes down to getting dispelled quickly and generating combo points fast.

Enha / BM hunter
This setup is similar to feral/hunter in that its quite easy to beat if they go on the feral, and pretty
challenging when they go on your priest. I always try to rush down the hunter fast with berserk. The
advantage is that they have only on deterrence and that the cc on you is pretty much non-existant.
The problem is that they can destroy your priest even quicker than feral/mm can. Use roots/feral
charge/bash/cyclone to stop the shaman from zerging your priest and quickly finish off the BM
hunter. This setup isnt terribly hard to beat but if you are a bit unlucky with dodges and purges it can
be a quick loss.

Enha / Combat rogue

This comp is a nightmare to face. They finish your priest incredibly fast. I usually pounce -> root the
shaman and go on the rogue. Keep abolish poison on your priest and try to global the rogue.
Unfortunately I have lost every single game to this setup so far, so I cannot give a solid strategy
against it. If I do, I will update the guide! Feel free to pm me suggestions!

Lock / Rogue
This comp isnt very hard to beat. Treat it like shadow priest / rogue but without disperse and
without healing. Use your barkskin on the dance (in case its a sub rogue) and trinket the second
kidney if you are sure you wont get blinded. Fear DRs with blind so the cc they have for your priest
is quite limited. When you trinket kidney and berserk theres not much that stops you from gibbing
the lock except for coil.

Ele / destro
I pretty much hate to play against this comp. You have to play extremely defensive and stay close to
your pillar at all times. If they have a succubus I try to kill it twice and then kill the lock. At all times
make sure to interrupt seduce. During lust you have to LoS and wait for your priest to get it off.
Dispel hex asap. Dont go chasing the lock or the shaman across the map as you will get zerged down
very quickly. Lava burst and chaos bolt hit extremely hard and your barkskin gets dispelled instantly.
This is a comp I regurarly lose to, and the tiniest fuck up can lead to a loss. Save your charge for
seduction. Trinket coil if you have to do stop the seduce. Every second counts against this comp.

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Another viable strategy is to zerg the shaman. Use charge on seduce and then dash back on the
shaman with berserk. Trinket coil and kill the shaman quickly with fiend and priest nukes. It is a risky
all-in method that can go wrong quite easily. If the shaman starts spamming lusted lesser healing
waves he can often outheal the damage you do in berserk. I havent yet decided on the best strategy
against this comp. The most important thing to remember is to not over-extend and to keep your
priest out of cc.

Ele / Mage
I found the easiest way to beat this was to go on the mage. Its far easier to do damage on an ele
shaman, but leaving a mage alone will cause problems. Hell get a free poly on your priest and the
shaman will kite you away from your priest. If you go mage he cannot easily do damage to you. If the
mage kites away from your priest you can just run back to your priest and reset. Your priest needs to
keep you out of deeps and try to get the ice barriers off. If you get the upper hand in pressure
(basically forcing the mage to run for his life) you will win rather quickly. The key is to not let them
get cc on your priest, because you can get zerged by this comp really quickly. LoS them during lust
while your priest dispels the lust. A lusted poly is almost impossible to avoid. Since their only cc
shares dr (except for deep) they arent that scary and you shouldnt really lose to them.
Just dont get baited into going after them in the open and get zerged down.

Destro / Mage
This comp can be very challenging to beat. Fear and poly not sharing DR means they can cc your
priest for an extremely long amount of time while bursting you down very quickly. Most destro/mage
teams play with a felhunter. If the mage stays in back in the open I would go on the lock. If however,
the mage comes in to the pillar of your priest to poly, open on him at once. A mage who is close to
your priest can be killed incredibly easily as your priest is free to dispel. This team has almost no
healing so any damage you can do on the mage is permanent. Dont be afraid to switch away if your
kill target runs out of range of your priests pillar. Both the lock and the mage can be killed quite
easily. Use your defensive cooldowns cleverly (i.e. dont use SI while your priest trinkets as well). The
key is to stop polymorphs going out. Get the upper hand early and keep it and you can win very
quickly. Luckily this comp isnt very popular right now.

Ret / Rogue
If the ret rogue decides to go on you its fairly easy to win. Just kill the ret while using cyclones on the
rogue. Your priest has to stand max range in order to death repentance and blind. Keep faerie fire on
the rogue and use natures grasp after cloak while stunning the ret to root the rogue. If you get the
bubble off quickly you can finish off the ret.
If the ret rogue goes on your priest its a lot more tricky. In this case I kill the rogue as dealing
damage to a rogue who isnt going on you is easy to do using shred. You have to peel early and use
PS during wings. Pounce the rogue when he opens and hardcast a cyclone on the ret. If he trinkets
you can fear him full. If you load up the rogue with bleeds early he can die within seconds. Get BoP
off as fast as you can and you can win quickly. Dont trinket anything but blind. Its not a very
common comp at the moment so I dont have a lot of experience against it. If you are getting hojd or
repentenced and your trinket is in KS in the mean time, he has to trinket KS to get you out of cc. Use
feral charge (bear) for peels and keep abolish poison on your priest. If youre out of cc on the ret,

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cyclone the rogue instead. Try to avoid having them connect on your priest as ret/rogue does a lot of
damage.

Priest gear, talents and glyphs

Credit to Dogtaco

Glyphs: Penance, Pain Suppression, Fear Ward

Levitate, Fortitude, Shadowfiend
Gear:
Wrathful Mooncloth Helmet 29sp 20 resi 21 int mana restore 12 sp 10 resi
Ascendancy Necklace
Wrathful Mooncloth Shoulders 23 sp 15 resi 20 resi
Salvation cloak 35 spell pen
Wrathful Mooncloth Chest 20 resi 12 sp 10 resi 20 resi
Salvation Bracers 30 sp
Wrathful haste dagger 63 sp 10 hit 13 spell pen
Wrathful Mooncloth Gloves 28 sp 10 resi 5 mp5
Salvation belt 10 resi 5 mp5 10 resi 5 mp5

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Wrathful Mooncloth Pants 50 sp 30 stam 12 sp 10 resi 10 resi 5 mp5
Salvation Boots 15 stam run speed 10 resi 5 mp5
Valanars Other Signet Ring 10 hit 13 spell pen
Marrowgars Frigid Eye 20 resi
Bauble of True Blood
Heroic Solace of the defeated

Useful macros
Focus macros
#showtooltip Cyclone
/cast [target=focus] Cyclone
#showtooltip Entangling Roots
/cast [target=focus] Entangling Roots
#showtooltip Hibernate
/cast [target=focus] Hibernate
#showtooltip Faerie Fire (Feral)
/cast [target=focus] Faerie Fire (Feral)
#showtooltip Feral Charge (Bear)
/cast [target=focus] Feral Charge (Bear)
#showtooltip Bash
/cast [target=focus] Bash

Stealth / NoStealth Macros

This macro will cast Pounce when stealthed, and Rake while not stealthed. This saves a keybind.
#showtooltip
/cast [stealth] Pounce; [Nostealth] Rake
This macro will cast Ravage when stealthed, and Shred while not stealthed. This saves a keybind.
#showtooltip
/cast [stealth] Ravage; [Nostealth] Shred

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Abolishing / Decursing Partner

This macro will cast Abolish Poison on your priest.
#showtooltip
/cast [target=party1] Abolish Poison
This macro will decurse your priest (very useful for hex)
#showtooltip
/cast [target=Party1] Remove Curse

Attitude in the arena

This section is pretty much applicable to any part of your life, feel free to skip it if you dont believe in
this sort of mumbo-jumbo. I find the way our attitudes affect our life quite interesting.
Here are a couple of rules to increase your success in the arena:
1) Dont blame it on the game. Its pointless. Whether or not some comp counters you or some
ability is dumb is irrelevant. The game is the way the game is. You complaining about it or attributing
the loss entirely on that kills your chance to learn from it. The moment you tell yourself that there is
no way to beat this comp is the moment you destroy any chance for you to ever beat it. If you
choose to believe that it is beatable but you just havent found the way to do it yet, you will
unconsciously keep trying to come up with ways to win.
2) Think outside the box. The strategy to burn ret paladins oom so they couldnt dispel their partners
anymore is an ingenious strategy that required out-of-the-box thinking. Try to come up with unusual
and surprising ways to gain an advantage in the arena.
3) Dont blame your partners. A negative atmosphere while playing not only makes both of you play
worse, it also kills the point of the game, which is to enjoy it.
4) Try to learn from every mistake. After every game you should reflect on what you did well and
what you did wrong. What could be improved? At what point did we start losing? Which event
initiated the balance of pressure to tip over to our opponents side? Even when winning, you made
mistakes, or you could have won easier or faster. Try to constantly improve.
5) Set specific goals. Dont just say I want to become better. Say that you want to get weapons
within two weeks. Say that you want to get 2k to get the s2 transmog. Say that you want whatever
rating you havent achieved just yet. During the last week of last season I was a 2350 feral. I told my
disc buddy that I was convinced we could get 2500 before the end of the season. We queued up and
kept queueing until we found ourselves at 2366 personal rating, having endured many losses
(including that damned enha/combat rogue team that kept farming us). We started queueing again
and had 12 straight wins, ending up at 2510 rating, granting us the awesome season 4 transmog.
6) Stay postitive. After 5 straight losses against a certain team, and you face them a 6th time: say We
got this now. Instead of Fuck this shit, might as well leave. The little things make a difference.