An Ode to Treants

(PvP story below warlock discussion)
After losing to an ugly owl beast chickeny looking thing, the least a good moonkin can do is wish warlocks a happy Valentines Day.

In truth I just wanted to make a post regarding how easy warlocks have been so far.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that warlocks are one of the strongest PvP/arena classes out there.  A good warlock is the strongest 1v1 class.  They may lose a bit to rogues, but all other classes likely fall at their feet in a duel.  A GOOD warlock can solo any class.  Luckily, just like huntards, there are few good warlocks.  Easy ones give moonkins a chance.

Getting the jump on any class is key.  If a warlock ganks you outside of arena/BG’s, where you’re not expecting it, then you have little chance of survival.  They will DoT you up, chain fear, drain life, or kill you a number of different ways.  If you’re able to get the jump on a lock, like you should in arena, then the tables may have turned.

Warlocks have paranoia so how can we get the jump on them?  Well, unlike our other stealth friends who have to worry about it, namely rogues and feral druids, moonkins do not need to be in melee range (big surprise, eh?).

The fight with warlocks will always be a close one, but our main advantage lies in treants and HoTs.  Treants interrupt their spells very well.  I have yet to see a lock cast howl of terror with three treants beating on him.  A regular fear takes 3-4 times longer and should be ample time to either HOT yourself up, break LOS, or feral charge.

I use all my mana in these fights.  Either through the lock getting a mana drain off or just constant shapeshifting, healing, and DPS.  Moonkins will have trouble killing a lock without healing themselves.  However, a lock will run out of mana fairly quickly too if they try to outpace your own HOTS.

My typical fight:  stealth - pop treants on lock - moonfire - IS - HoTs - feral charge if spell incoming - bash - MF - IS - HoTs - etc…

The initial treants are key.  Until PvPers get used to fighting moonkins, the treants are always going to be a shock & awe tactic.

69.3… less than a level to go until the beatdown begins!

——————–
My fun duel with a 70 mage:

I was grinding yesterday evening.  The never ending level 60-70 is almost to an end and I’m still surprised how brutal the last 10 levels are.  Loooong.

A 70 mage flies up and, without saying a word, challenges me to a duel.  I decline and start walking to the next mob.  He follows me and challenges me again.  So, I eat my tasty mana biscuit (I had about 10% mana) and eventually accept the duel.

Immediately I go into cat form and stealth.  I could tell the mage wasn’t expecting this.  He starts running around trying to break my stealth by AoEing everything, but I’m safely far away.

I don’t have a good strategy against a frost mage.  I really haven’t dueled a lot at all, and I’m not exactly sure how to beat them.  So, I resort to my favorite buddies, my treants.

From stealth I summon the treants and root the mage.  I expected a few things.  I expected the treants to be rather worthless since the mage can just frost nova and blink away.  I expected the mage to say screw that, throw out a couple AoE’s and be done with the pesky bugger.  Instead, the mage attempted to frost bolt me.  My three friends made sure that the mage took a good long time to get that frost bolt while beating him to a pulp at the same time.

I put my DoTs on the mage, did a bit of wrath spamming, expecting a counterspell at anytime.  It never came.

The mage was getting pretty low while I was at 50% health.  My treants were wearing down and about ready to become mulch.  The mage pulled out a pet of his own: the damn elemental.

Now this is a 70 mage.  He should have better gear than me (I know when I hit 70 I’m immediately getting three upgrades: 1 instance gear that I’ve been waiting on and 2 PvP items).  He should be able to beat me easily, in my opinion, but this guy was obviously not the brightest iceman.

With the elemental out he pulls the noob move of iceblocking.  This is not a noob move because it’s stupid, it’s a noob move because it’s really overpowered in a duel.  Iceblock while the elemental beats the crap out of your opponent is often an instant win.  However, I was able to heal through the elemental and actually gain health in the end.

I’m running low on mana, though… time for an innervate.  I’m barely staying alive with this elemental on me and it’s using most of my mana just to fend it off.  The iceblock is about to expire, though, and I’ll be able to finish off that last 8% quickly.

Until the damn frost shield.  I spammed the crap out of moonfire thinking that 2 of them would be more than enough for that 8% to become “Simoncowell has defeated xxxx”.  Nope, they were just absorbed.  I was in real trouble.  I see him queuing up a spell and there’s not much I can do.

So, in true druid fashion, I run.  I don’t run far enough to abandon the duel, I just run far enough to get out of range of his spell.  I pop into cat form, hit dash, and am off to the races.

His spell fails.  My manuever worked.  It’s time to go back and finish the job.  I sprint back, use the rest of my mana on the 2x moonfire, and defeat the mage for good.

“let’s try again”
“nah, once is enough for me”

gg