Dreams
fastest shadowstep in the west
"How do I beat ferals?" is a question I get a lot from newer rogues in the bracket.
Myself and the priest I play with when playing rogue/priest, Fx, have been using the same strategy against feral/priest teams for a long time and we pretty much never lose.
Let me prefix this by saying that every single feral druid sucks. There are simply no good players in the bracket playing a feral druid. There is no reason not to take advantage of this - for example if you see a feral doing a highly exploitable misplay like wasting his walls for no reason, trinketing stuns for no reason, etc. you should take advantage of it. Fundamental misplays like that from the ferals is how the majority of the feral games end.
With that out of the way, let's get on to the main strategy against feral/priest teams playing as a rogue/priest team.
The gates open and the two priests enter the arena with their stealthed partners. The absolute ideal scenario for you is to get a direct opener on the feral, but that opportunity won't be there every game because finding stealthers is rng based and unreliable.
You could let the priests duel and force the feral to open on your priest assuming your priest is winning the duel, but that requires your priest to actually win the duel and also puts your priest in the risk of being already low hp when the feral opens, which puts you at a disadvantage. Also, priest duels can take a very long time and we don't play 70 for 20 minutes games.
So the only option left is to open on the enemy priest - and that's what we do 9/10 games.
You want to force the feral to open asap so it's important you pressure the priest hard in the opener. Sap, dispel and then open garrote so you have the option to kidney full out of it if the feral doesn't open fast enough. Your priest should mindbender here too.
It's important that you feint at least every 2nd global here. If the feral manages to open on you without feint up you can either trinket or lose the game instantly. If your feint is 1 second from fading when the rake hits, the same applies. Consider walling here too, but don't neglect feinting even if you do.
The main goal here is to force some kind of response from the enemy team with your high pressure opener, like priest trinket, auramastery or even ps/barrier/guardian.
After the feral opens and you come out of the rake stun (hopefully alive) the game begins. Assuming you're not super close to forcing a major cd or even killing the priest, this is where you get off him and go feral instead. Going feral is the safest way to play the matchup because not pressuring him and giving him absolute freedom is the fastest way to lose the game aside from not using feint in the opener.
At this point your priest should be ranging you and the feral pretty hard, forcing feral to always have to use wild charge in order to swap, which he will try to do pretty often.
When the feral is hitting you, you need to have 100% feint uptime. If you just saw him use ferocious bite and your priest topped you again, you can stop feinting for a couple of seconds, but you should start again as soon as you think the feral could be back to 4 combo points. This is only worth it if the damage you gain from not feinting is actually pressuring the enemy team - for example if the feral just used a wall or cen ward, or if your priests fear and your shadowstep still is on cooldown, it's not worth it.
When the feral swaps to your priest, with or without incarn, you need to forget about pressuring the enemy team and go full peel mode. Kidney the feral on dr. Use your gouge on their mindbender if they're using it, or on the feral to extend the cc from the kidneys by a little bit (it will break to dots). Try to stepkick smites and offensive penances too. The enemy priest will likely try to fear you here, which is always super predictable, so feel free to try to cloak it in order to save your priest the dispel global. The goal here is to land a kidney that will allow your priest to gain good distance from the feral, ideally los him too and then top himself up. At this point the feral usually goes back on you, and you can continue the game as before.
Incarnation and berserk are both 3 minute cd abilities that every feral always uses at the same time. When this happens it's the most scary part of the game. If you're in melee range of the feral, regardless of whether or not he is currently hitting you, you always pop evasion when he pops incarn+berserk. If the ferals trinket is already on cooldown, you can simply blind and tripple sap into cheap shot the incarn off. If he hasn't trinketed yet, your goal here is to make him trinket so you can blind the incarn off.
But couldn't the feral just not trinket kidney shots and you'd never be able to blind him? Yes, but let me introduce you to something called "the ferals greed", which is 100% reliable even against some of the more "brained" ferals in the bracket...
Imagine yourself playing a class whose win-condition is literally "get 5 combo points and ferocious bite someone that isn't using a defensive cooldown and is at 80% health or lower". Now, obviously since you somehow find this class enjoyable you're not the sharpest tool in the shed. Now imagine a priest who just sat your tripple rake stun and is now at 60% health. You have 5 combo points, you pop your tiger's fury, you- *kidneyed*. You are literally one global away from winning the game, and now you just got stunned for 6 seconds! What is this bullshit? Frustrated, you look down at your actionbars. And that's when you see it. The one button that isn't greyed out - your salvation! The pvp trinket! All you have to do is trinket and then ferocious b- *blinded*.
Obviously depending on your priests health you need to be completely ready for that trinket and blind instantly, otherwise you will lose the game right there.
So now that we know how not to die, it's time to learn what the win-condition for us as the rogue/priest team is.
Since you need to save blind for the feral in order to play the matchup as safely as possible, your main cross cc on the priest is going to be fear. Every time fear is ready and stuns are off dr on the feral, you should be trying to set up cross cc. If you're playing against some of the smarter feral/priest teams out there, they might try to stop you from doing so. For example the enemy priest could try to fear ward, or the feral could go into bearform and wild charge your priest as he goes in for the fear (4s undispelable root). It's important to recognize and differentiate between the completely braindead and the less braindead feral/priest teams so you can adjust appropriately. If the feral has been wild charge rooting your priest on his way to get the fear, it's ok to stun him a little earlier to prevent it from happening. Likewise, if the priest has been using his feathers, spectral guise, fear ward, etc. to prevent the fear you should set up a gouge on him so your priest can run in freely.
If the feral is out of walls (they have 2) it's often worth it to chain your kidney with the fear on the priest instead of using it on the feral. This can even be worth it if the feral is already low on hp as you start your setup.
I'll remind you that you should never stick to the strategy for the sake of sticking to the strategy. If an opportunity to close the game earlier presents itself you should never hesitate to grab it. For example if you're 100% sure that your dr'd blind on the priest would kill the feral, just do it! But make sure you actually kill him, because you'll lose if you don't.
Lastly, I'll leave you with a short video of a few games against a feral/priest team. All played in one session vs Fotmbleedx and Foudreterre - two perfect examples of shit players being able to achieve high ratings through their comp.
Notice that their horrible lack of reaction to the situation allows us to simply kill the priest in the opener pretty often.
If you want to watch how this matchup looks against better players, there's going to be quite a few examples of that in another upcoming video.
I know not many 70s read these forums but I hope this little strategy guide helped someone anyway! Good day.
Myself and the priest I play with when playing rogue/priest, Fx, have been using the same strategy against feral/priest teams for a long time and we pretty much never lose.
Let me prefix this by saying that every single feral druid sucks. There are simply no good players in the bracket playing a feral druid. There is no reason not to take advantage of this - for example if you see a feral doing a highly exploitable misplay like wasting his walls for no reason, trinketing stuns for no reason, etc. you should take advantage of it. Fundamental misplays like that from the ferals is how the majority of the feral games end.
With that out of the way, let's get on to the main strategy against feral/priest teams playing as a rogue/priest team.
The gates open and the two priests enter the arena with their stealthed partners. The absolute ideal scenario for you is to get a direct opener on the feral, but that opportunity won't be there every game because finding stealthers is rng based and unreliable.
You could let the priests duel and force the feral to open on your priest assuming your priest is winning the duel, but that requires your priest to actually win the duel and also puts your priest in the risk of being already low hp when the feral opens, which puts you at a disadvantage. Also, priest duels can take a very long time and we don't play 70 for 20 minutes games.
So the only option left is to open on the enemy priest - and that's what we do 9/10 games.
You want to force the feral to open asap so it's important you pressure the priest hard in the opener. Sap, dispel and then open garrote so you have the option to kidney full out of it if the feral doesn't open fast enough. Your priest should mindbender here too.
It's important that you feint at least every 2nd global here. If the feral manages to open on you without feint up you can either trinket or lose the game instantly. If your feint is 1 second from fading when the rake hits, the same applies. Consider walling here too, but don't neglect feinting even if you do.
The main goal here is to force some kind of response from the enemy team with your high pressure opener, like priest trinket, auramastery or even ps/barrier/guardian.
After the feral opens and you come out of the rake stun (hopefully alive) the game begins. Assuming you're not super close to forcing a major cd or even killing the priest, this is where you get off him and go feral instead. Going feral is the safest way to play the matchup because not pressuring him and giving him absolute freedom is the fastest way to lose the game aside from not using feint in the opener.
At this point your priest should be ranging you and the feral pretty hard, forcing feral to always have to use wild charge in order to swap, which he will try to do pretty often.
When the feral is hitting you, you need to have 100% feint uptime. If you just saw him use ferocious bite and your priest topped you again, you can stop feinting for a couple of seconds, but you should start again as soon as you think the feral could be back to 4 combo points. This is only worth it if the damage you gain from not feinting is actually pressuring the enemy team - for example if the feral just used a wall or cen ward, or if your priests fear and your shadowstep still is on cooldown, it's not worth it.
When the feral swaps to your priest, with or without incarn, you need to forget about pressuring the enemy team and go full peel mode. Kidney the feral on dr. Use your gouge on their mindbender if they're using it, or on the feral to extend the cc from the kidneys by a little bit (it will break to dots). Try to stepkick smites and offensive penances too. The enemy priest will likely try to fear you here, which is always super predictable, so feel free to try to cloak it in order to save your priest the dispel global. The goal here is to land a kidney that will allow your priest to gain good distance from the feral, ideally los him too and then top himself up. At this point the feral usually goes back on you, and you can continue the game as before.
Incarnation and berserk are both 3 minute cd abilities that every feral always uses at the same time. When this happens it's the most scary part of the game. If you're in melee range of the feral, regardless of whether or not he is currently hitting you, you always pop evasion when he pops incarn+berserk. If the ferals trinket is already on cooldown, you can simply blind and tripple sap into cheap shot the incarn off. If he hasn't trinketed yet, your goal here is to make him trinket so you can blind the incarn off.
But couldn't the feral just not trinket kidney shots and you'd never be able to blind him? Yes, but let me introduce you to something called "the ferals greed", which is 100% reliable even against some of the more "brained" ferals in the bracket...
Imagine yourself playing a class whose win-condition is literally "get 5 combo points and ferocious bite someone that isn't using a defensive cooldown and is at 80% health or lower". Now, obviously since you somehow find this class enjoyable you're not the sharpest tool in the shed. Now imagine a priest who just sat your tripple rake stun and is now at 60% health. You have 5 combo points, you pop your tiger's fury, you- *kidneyed*. You are literally one global away from winning the game, and now you just got stunned for 6 seconds! What is this bullshit? Frustrated, you look down at your actionbars. And that's when you see it. The one button that isn't greyed out - your salvation! The pvp trinket! All you have to do is trinket and then ferocious b- *blinded*.
Obviously depending on your priests health you need to be completely ready for that trinket and blind instantly, otherwise you will lose the game right there.
So now that we know how not to die, it's time to learn what the win-condition for us as the rogue/priest team is.
Since you need to save blind for the feral in order to play the matchup as safely as possible, your main cross cc on the priest is going to be fear. Every time fear is ready and stuns are off dr on the feral, you should be trying to set up cross cc. If you're playing against some of the smarter feral/priest teams out there, they might try to stop you from doing so. For example the enemy priest could try to fear ward, or the feral could go into bearform and wild charge your priest as he goes in for the fear (4s undispelable root). It's important to recognize and differentiate between the completely braindead and the less braindead feral/priest teams so you can adjust appropriately. If the feral has been wild charge rooting your priest on his way to get the fear, it's ok to stun him a little earlier to prevent it from happening. Likewise, if the priest has been using his feathers, spectral guise, fear ward, etc. to prevent the fear you should set up a gouge on him so your priest can run in freely.
If the feral is out of walls (they have 2) it's often worth it to chain your kidney with the fear on the priest instead of using it on the feral. This can even be worth it if the feral is already low on hp as you start your setup.
I'll remind you that you should never stick to the strategy for the sake of sticking to the strategy. If an opportunity to close the game earlier presents itself you should never hesitate to grab it. For example if you're 100% sure that your dr'd blind on the priest would kill the feral, just do it! But make sure you actually kill him, because you'll lose if you don't.
Lastly, I'll leave you with a short video of a few games against a feral/priest team. All played in one session vs Fotmbleedx and Foudreterre - two perfect examples of shit players being able to achieve high ratings through their comp.
Notice that their horrible lack of reaction to the situation allows us to simply kill the priest in the opener pretty often.
If you want to watch how this matchup looks against better players, there's going to be quite a few examples of that in another upcoming video.
I know not many 70s read these forums but I hope this little strategy guide helped someone anyway! Good day.
