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I can understand quite well where you're coming from. The thing is, in the 1400-1700 ratings double DPS will dominate; people generally are bad at using Crowd Control well, and it's usually quite possible to take down the DPS while CC'ing the healer, killing him afterwards (or the other way around). If you play with your mage buddy, this is the way to go. Don't expect to rise above 1700 (or even 1600), but below that you should obliterate everything (with the right gear and some skill). From that point on CC becomes really important, and with it healing. 1700+ rating teams will simply outlast you because they CC you at exactly the right moments, even if they deal less damage than your team.

If you play with your mage buddy, the original PvE playstyle (medium to high constant stream of damage) becomes more important than the 'classic' PvP playstyle (huge sudden bursts). The thing is that resilience and healing will outheal burst damage, after which you become useless until you can do another burst, which will be outhealed again. That's why 'high rating PvP' is more of a (PvE themed, one could say) damage race. The main idea is to keep pressure on your enemies. You don't want to kill them fast, you want to make sure that druid has to keep healing himself and his partner. If he goes bear, you want to make sure he has to leave it and heal unless he'd like to lose his partner.

As for using PvE gear... To an extend, it can be used. Things like set bonusses that enhance S&D are useless in the arenas, but anything that improves your (white) damage will do. The only thing you lack badly in full PvE gear is resilience and stamina, that's why FULL PvE gear might be a bad idea. Try and find a balance... Hope it helps!

Edited, Jul 12th 2008 6:24pm by Mozared

1500-1900 is about skill only. I can run nearly any comp to 1900 during the normal arena season given my partner has skill.

Speaking from a higher arena bracket standpoint, restokin build is better for rogue/druid comp than pure resto. Your druid will lose out on swiftmend, but that's not important as a rogue as long as he's preloading hots.

PoM Pyro mages are really very poor unless they're played by a skilled mage. It can work at high ratings, but the rogue has to be very skilled at control as your mage is incredibly easy to burst. Frost mage is a much better partner for rogues in general, since then we're just throwing out blinds on healers to get a shatter/burst on their partner.

If you're having problems putting up damage with 1970 AP, there's something wrong. I ran last week with ~1990 AP and I was burst down resto druids solo.

Thank you all for your inputs. I know I seriously lack skill so maybe I'm trying to compensate with the gears but I think skill is what's really important here.

As for damage, not sure what I'm doing wrong. I don't think using S2 weapons is that bad compared to using S3 weapons? Anyhow, I'll try few more matches and see how it goes.