Our 2nd and most successful iteration of Shadowplay was in Mists of Pandaria (MoP)
As you could see, Andrew and I had swapped roles. Towards the end of the Wrath of the Lich King (late 2009), both we were both busy with schoolwork. We couldn’t make full use of our own subscriptions, so we shared a single account. During that time, Andrew took a liking to my Shadow Priest (Atramentous). He played casually, doing daily quests and reputation grinds.
Around Cataclysm we had decided to reroll as Horde; along the way Andrew had created his own Undead Priest and Jeff made another Warlock as Undead. I eventually converted my Draenei Paladin into a Blood Elf Paladin.
By MoP (June 2013), we had decided to dive into 3 v 3 Arena again. We played around with various compositions, until we realized we could form our signature team again. We reformed Shadowplay, but with my Paladin as a healer (aka Shadowpally)
Forsaken
The Forsaken Undead were the most evil, edgiest race on the Horde. I always thought they best suited race for Shadowplay over Humans. The Undead owe their physical existence to Shadow magic; it’s what binds their souls to their rotten bodies. As polar opposites, any exposure to Holy magic damages this bond and causes immense pain. This made a Holy Paladin a poor pairing lore-wise, since healing from Holy magic would destroy them. Thankfully, gameplay doesn’t strictly follow lore.
From a gameplay aspect, the Undead have always been popular for PvP. Their racial Will of the Forsaken was an extra crowd control (CC) break. They also had the passive Touch of the Grave, which dealt a bit of Shadow damage and healing (which matched well thematically).
Strategy
The Shadowpally composition had the same strategy as the original: spread DoTs for continuous pressure and coordinate CC with damage burst to kill.
Neutral
When the all their DoTs are applied across the whole enemy team, the whole enemy team take constant damage. Vampiric Touch & Unstable Affliction both had punishing effects (4-second Silence & big damage) which give dispel protection. The DoTs would then be guaranteed damage; even if when the DPS were out of range, line of sight, or in CC. This put tremendous strain on the enemy healer, since they’d have to distribute healing across the whole team rather than focusing on just one. Any CC on the enemy healer had high value since it’d give be time spent not healing against the continuous rot their team was suffering.
Burst
The Warlock starts the match by investing all offensive cooldowns (Dark Souls, damage trinket, item procs) to apply the most powerful DoTs across the team. Any CC on the healer could then catalyze into kill, since each enemy target havd massive payload of damage incoming. This meant the kill target could be changed on a whim. It was especially effective to swap kill target to healers after they had exhausted their defensive CDs to save their allies and had left themselves vulnerable.
The kiss of death was the Priest’s Devouring Plague & Silence combination. The Devouring Plague was a powerful spike of damage, combined with a 5-second block on enemy healing to secure the kill. Both were instant cast spells, which allowed the Priest to independently coordinate this kill sequence
Warlock’s highest single-target burst was Haunt & Malefic Grasp spam with all DoTs active; but their contribution was already complete if the kill sequence started against a <70% health target. More priority went into peeling off the enemy team to prevent counter-defense. But the coolest moments were when everything lined up perfectly and they were both able to channel their highest damage into the target.
Defensives
Holy Paladins had less offensive CC abilities than other healers, but had more supportive options to enable their teammates. Holy Paladins had useful cooldowns for mitigating damage, like Hand of Sacrifice or Hand of Protection. However, the abundance of Purge abilities made their effectiveness much lower. If utilized properly, it would allow us survive the enemy’s burst (while our DoTs were still ticking away).
Holy Paladin healing was massive, but needed to be casted directly. This meant that they suffered the most from CC chains. Thankfully, both DPS also had a defensive dispel: Priests had Mass Dispel and Warlocks had Singe Magic (by sacrificing their Imp). This saved many games by interrupting the CC chains on the Paladin.
Match-Ups
Melee DPS were always tough as casters since they could constantly stun, interrupt, and delay casts. Warriors and Death Knights were good targets because pressure would force them into defensive stances, which reduced their damage output and kept momentum in our favor. Holy Paladins had useful tools to mitigate damage from melee DPS, such as Hand of Protection or Hand of Freedom. The DPS also provided useful utility skills that were pivotal to our survival. We needed to cycle through our mobility options properly to deny damage:
- Hand of Freedom + Angelic Feather = Guaranteed +80% movement speed
- Leap of Faith: Can pull allies line of sight or away from Freezing Traps
- Demonic Gateway : Free teleport across the map
Hunters were our favorite targets since their only defensive cooldown (Deterrence) would not clear any existing DoTs or channeled spells, so they could be killed through it. The DPS could also counter their main CC (Freezing Trap) through dispels or pulls.
Shamans were tough for our team. Like how Paladins were well-suited against melee DPS, Shamans had a strong toolkit against casters. They could spam Purge to remove defensive buffs. They had a ranged interrupt Wind Shear, and could deny offensive spells with Grounding Totem. Lastly they had a free trinket against Fear every 30 seconds with Tremor Totem (and for their entire team too).
Mages and Rogues have always been kings in PvP because of their ample amounts of CC and burst damage. Holy Paladins could use Hand of Sacrifice to break Blind and Polymorph, but it could be easily purged. They were very oppressive in neutral, which made gaining momentum difficult.
Retrospective
Despite how great our strategy seemed, we did not win every game. In fact, many weren’t even close. Andrew and Jeff had recorded many matches, so we could have objective evidence to critique our gameplay. The matches uploaded were mostly our victories, are effectively our highlight reel. But even from those matches, I could observe how my misplays had shaped the match:
- Missing CC dispels: There were times where teammates sat in full duration CCs, even while I was free to dispel. It was definitely an awareness issue, since I had different priorities and couldn’t keep track of the every incoming CC. Jeff and Andrew were very good at dispelling me from CC, but I believe I helped by making urgent calls.
- Poor positioning: When I was tunneled, I would aimlessly kite them around which lead to difficulties for damage or peeling. There have been many kills caused by an aggressive DPS lining their healer while fully loaded with DoTs. There was also room for better defensive positioning to avoid enemy CC (Paladins and pillars go hand-in-hand)
- Overlapping CC or wasting DRs Sometimes I would use Hand of Justice (HoJ) on a target that already had stun DR, resulting in halved value. Other times I would hold onto HoJ for too long, which was even worse. I saw games with no stun DR for 1.5 minutes, meaning I wasted three whole stuns which would sway momentum in our favor.
Andrew typically had the most difficult role. Shadow Priests’s were typically the focus target of the enemy team, but also responsible for coordinating kill sequences. All the positions and cooldowns for both ally and enemy needed to be considered for making each decision. It was difficult making all these executive decisions, never mind getting tunneled by two DPS. After reviewing his gameplay, I respect his skill in managing this all simultaneously.
During my review, I observed that the flood of information from the UI was actually quite detrimental. These extra addons were installed to theoretically optimize decision making, but in practice added excessive information that took longer to mentally process.
There were addons that made audio and visual cues for each enemy cooldown used. There were chunky healthbars for every teammate and enemy obscuring the center of the screen. At its peak, the UI also displayed every single GCD each player was making (which are great for reviewing matches), which was visual noise that couldn’t be used properly with a dozen other things happening. Combined with all of us spouting a variety of calls, it was very overwhelming and stressful for all of us.
It was too much clutter and could actually obscure the valuable data. From an engineering perspective, the UI would definitely use 5S analysis to sort out the unnecessary noise and set the important information. A 5S redesign would help make everything more readable, aesthetic, and functional.
Summary
We had a lot of good times playing Arena through MoP. But while I was re-watching the matches, I also remembered the stress involved. Towards the end, it seemed like didn’t even enjoy our victories, but bicker constantly over our losses.
At the end of the PvP Season 15 (October 2014), we got up over 2000 rating, which was the highest we’d ever gotten. It felt great getting into our stride and finding our own strategy with our unique off-meta composition. It was another memorable bonding experience for us, and a temporary escape from our real life burdens.
Thankfully, they recorded many of our matches for posterity:
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