chaoticsoul

Hi,

I’m going to try to finish the strategy guide for Hunter/Druid today since I have a lot of people requesting for it…

2v2 — Shadow Priest/Rogue vs. Hunter/Resto Druid

Difficulty

Shadow Priest Gear Level: High — 5/10 (Can go either way)
Shadow Priest Gear Level: Medium — 9/10 (Very difficult)
Shadow Priest Gear Level: Low — 10/10 (Very difficult)

Gear
Shadow Priest: Yeah.  You need to have lots of mana, +dmg, and survivability to be able to beat any hunter/druid team.  If you don’t, the other team won’t be pressured at all.  Sometimes I’m low on mana against hunter/druid teams, and my gear is top notch.

Rogue: Needs great gear as well.  If he can’t put up a lot of pressure on a hunter, you’re going to lose.

Hunter: Only thing that really matters here is his spec… BM or MM?  Never fought a BM Hunter / Resto Druid team before, so I imagine there’s something that prevents that team from getting high rated.  But it seems like it would also give SP/Rogue huge problems (at least with this strat anyway).

Druid: If his gear matches yours, it will be fine. If he outgears you two, it’s doubtful you’re going to win.

Strategy
This is literally the exact same strategy that we use for Lock/Druid and Rogue/Druid. It’s just a bit more difficult to get an opener.

The rogue has to stealth around and try to Sap the hunter off the bat. Then the shadow priest runs in, dispel spams, then opens with a trinketted VT -> SW:P -> Mind Blast -> SW:D. Maybe a couple of seconds after that, the druid should shift out to heal. Immediately, have your rogue blind him. Blow Sprint, Vanish, whatever he can to get a blind off. Depending on the situation, you might have him go back to the hunter or not — because if the druid trinkets, you’re going to be switching targets.

So if the hunter is low, you know the druid is going to trinket or he’s going to die to you (the shadow priest). If this is the case, have your rogue ready to reopen on the druid right after the trinket with a Cheap Shot -> Kidney Shot -> mashkeyboardfordps. Make sure you dispel Barkskin off him; if you’re both well-geared, Barkskin is off, and he gets a full duration Kidney Shot after the Cheap Shot. The druid can die in or near the end of that Kidney Shot. Even if he doesn’t, you have a Silence lined up right after it. Then even a Vanish Cheap Shot, or Vanish Garrote, or Imp Kick. You get the idea.

If he doesn’t trinket… your rogue needs to go back to the hunter. A huge problem that can potentially occur here is having the hunter run away with a Frost Trap in between him and you/your rogue. If this DOES happen, you can potentially switch to the druid even without him trinketting, it’s just a lot messier. Get ready to Silence during a stun you know he’ll trinket (will be a Kidney Shot 99% of the time, so you can generally safely overlap it).

The ideal situation, if the druid doesn’t trinket the blind, is to have the hunter near your rogue to be DPS’ed while the blind runs down. Because at the end of the blind, your rogue should get ready to Vanish Sap. This is not always possible, which is why, in some situations, you need to just open on the druid and deal with the trinket. Shadowstep is helpful for skipping across traps to Vanish Sap or Vanish Cheap Shot either the hunter/druid… and probably the one and only fight I’d suggest the rogue being Shadowstep over AR/Prep for Shadow Priest/Rogue.

 So (continuing explanation of the strat in the above paragraph), after the Vanish Sap, you want to get on the hunter again, and stick on him now, because the druid will have to trinket the Sap, leaving him open to a full duration fear -> Silence.

This strategy can be pretty gear dependant, but it’s very doable if you two can deal with a hunter on both of you while you’re killing a druid. It’s also not extremely easy to pull off, but once you get it down, I promise it works well.

Editted in: My rogue partner (Conradical/Hypnobot… SPAM HIM WITH TELLS jk dont) says “It’s important that, if a hunter trinkets a stun, that the SP fears / redots him so the rogue can easily get back onto him.”

I’ve heard about 10 different strategies for how SP/Rogue teams deal with Hunter/Druid teams, so feel free to post them in comments below and I’ll edit them in later!

Positioning
Nagrand Arena: Attempt to take the fight away from poles. The reasoning behind this is because it’s easy for hunters and druids to avoid damage if they can pillar hump, particularly because there would always be a frost trap near it. It’s a lot better to have the Frost Trap in the middle, where even if he’s out of it, and you’re in, you don’t have to worry about being pillar kited.

Blade’s Edge Arena: On top of the bridge. There are a few reasons for this, the first one being… if your burst fails on both the hunter and druid, you can bug the pet out by jumping off the bridge and maybe getting a few ticks off of your water (if the hunter is being CC’ed/snared/stunned by your rogue anyway). The next one being, by opening on the druid, he’s much more inclined to jump off the bridge/platforms and start kiting below, meaning by following him you effectively LOS the hunter and take the Frost Trap out of the equation until he redrops one and one of you triggers it again.

Ruins of Lordaeron: Positioning won’t matter much here. It’s probably better to fight away from the middle tomb but that’s very hard to achieve sometimes. Either way, positioning generally won’t be a win/loss factor for this map.

Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What happens if we can’t kill the hunter or druid early, and I go oom and can’t get drinks off?
A: You’ll lose. The only exception would be on Blade’s Edge, where you can bug out the pet by jumping off the top and getting off drinks. They would usually switch to DPS’ing your rogue though, and just re-drain you when you’re forced to heal him.

Q: Why not kill the pet?
A: It’s always an option, but I find it extremely unreliable, since it gives both the hunter and druid time to CC you. Good hunters will bring the pet back anyway, and force you to trigger a trap to get back on it, which just wasted a lot of time. If you can sap the hunter and kill the pet fast, then that could also be a viable strategy, but we’ve never done it.

Other Strategies - All strategies in this section are copy/pasted from the comments posted below. There are multiple strategies to beat Hunter/Druid, and some work for some teams, and some don’t. So try them out until you find one that works for yours.

1. Kill Hunter, CC Druid

Our tactics is generally:
Rogue is ShS, shadowsteps in and CS Hunter and starts the DPS.
During this time the S.Priest has started his DPS, and we try to put as much pressure as possible on the Hunter, this will force Druid out early and we often can tell where he’s about to pop up, and the S.Priest is moving in that direction.

Druid pops up and S.Priest does Silence right away and keps moving against Druid, the pressure rises alot as we get a few more secounds on the Hunter befor heals starts coming. As Priest is moving torwards Druid pushing him back eventully and ‘hopefully’ the Priest fears causing a instant trinket if we have enough pressure on the Hunter, S.Priest announces trinket used and Rogue sprints over to blind, if he’s not dead by then Vanish+Sap and Priest being ready to go fear if needed.

Problem with this tactic is:
Hunter is extremly good and keeps a flare down all the time.
(You cant vanish to sap)
Hunter slows down your Priest so he wont get the fear off.
If you cant put enough pressure during the fear for unknown reasons he doesnt trinket(Druid).
(Feign death/Silencing shot/Scatter shot to prevent your burst during Fear duration)