Mage vs. DK duel humiliationFollow

I'm an arcane mage specced and geared for PvP. I have almost 1300 spell dmg and about 21% crit if I recall correctly. I have 2 pieces of deadly and 7 hateful. My resil is at 750.

A friend of mine with very similar gear (I think he has 3 deadly) is a DK and dueled me just now to test out his new build and his new resil trinket which procs 3 times giving him resil of 910 or something. During the duel he didn't use his ghoul and didn't attack me at all other than that frost attack that slows me. I popped my mirror image to buy some time and blasted away with arcane blast a couple times, hitting arcane missles whenever it proced for rapid fire. I used Arcane Barrage and my gnomish lightning generator and beat him down to about 25% whereupon he started healing himself. I kept blasting realizing he wasn't really fighting back and he just kept on healing. I ran out of mana, went invisible and evocated behind a tree. Did the whole thing again. I burned three bars of mana blasting him and he didn't bother attacking at all until the end.

People have told me DKs were overpowered, but I refuse to believe the situation is this bad. I just had to be doing something wrong. I've never played a DK so I don't know how the heal works exactly. Should I have counterspelled when they're low to prevent healing? Does that work? Is their healing based on something? Can I spell steal anything that might help? The whole situation was rather humiliating (the guys' kind of an *** anyway...this doesn't help his inflated ego).

Okay, now I'm getting somewhere. Should I drop some of my resilience gems and put in spell power ones instead? Also, intellect worth anything these days? I have a racial and talent that increase INT, and another that increases spell power based on it. Should I put in INT gems or direct Spell Power ones?

My armory is: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Twisting+Nether&n=Dobzahnsky
- ignore the blue ring, that's out of date. it's been replaced.

I have 750 resil, maybe that's too much for now.

Having a DK myself, I have a tip from the other side. When he is low, he will probaly use a two talent combo that make you heal him when you hit, much more than you are doing. You have two options: you can (hopefully, im not sure on how the spell decides what to affect) steal the buff thats healing him, or stop attacking until it goes away.

I don't think I had that buff on me. I've seen it before, but I don't remember it during the fight. He had some kind of spell that healed him in increments of 10% of his health I think.

Rune Tap converts a Blood Rune into 10% of the DK's health, and can be used once every minute to return 10% (20% fully talented) health to the DK (and his group, if glyphed).

I think the above poster's point about MoB was that, if you use MoB and VB at the same time, that is quite a bit of healing over time. With 20K health, it is 1080 per hit, plus the fact that the DK will get a free (but temporary) 15% health until the effect is over. Plus, he probably popped IBF, so he was taking 20% less damage than normal.

So, if he popped all his CDs (with 20K health), it would look like this:

He uses VB, +15% health, +35% healing.
He uses IBF, 20% reduced damage.
He puts MoB on you.
He uses Rune Tap, 10% of max health. So, he gets 2K. But, VB means he actually gets 2700. (Double this if further talented).
So, that is about 6K of healing in seconds (though the healing from VB will disappear in 20 seconds).
Now, every time you damage him, he will gain 5.4% of his maximum health, or about 1080. So, if your hits (reduced by 20%, remember) are doing less than this, MoB alone will heal right through that until the siege is up.

And, if he Pots in this, it's healing will be boosted. Same with a bandage or food.

And, with Death Strike and Blood Aura, he is getting a lot more health with damage, if he attacks.

The thing is, there is no way for a DK to just stand around healing. Either he put MoB on you, and you were healing him with hits, or he used Rune Tap. If you weren't in melee range, he wasn't getting healed otherwise (or had minimal healing in the form of 4% of IT damage).

So, there is no way (short of having trinkets and using potions/bandages) for a DK to heal themselves after that short burst, unless you DID have MoB on you and it DID heal him. Well, there are other ways, but you said he didn't attack you. There is no spell that he could use that would heal him in increments of 10, unless you were attacking him and it was healing him (increments of 5~).

I play as frost personally, arcane seems too squishy to handle DKs but maybe the better ones can do it. Your spellpower definately sounds pretty low for PVP, especially arcane. Ice barrier helps alot.

Use frost ward, save blink for death grip. If you're in melee range and they pop anti-magic shield use ice block here. You want to kite the whole time, keep slow up, stay out of melee range and absorb icy touches with your frost ward. If they use a ghoul which most will try to keep it nova'd as often as possible, or sheep the DK and kill it fast.

I think as arcane it's a hard fight, as frost it's hard too but manageable.

Frost does have it's advantages in PvP over arcane, the extra survivability is a big one. It does have a bigger learning curve though in that it there is more CD management. I enjoy frost more then arcane but in my battle group it doesn't pair that well with the teams I face. Arcane's biggest advantage over frost is that it has burst on command where as frost you have to create a window for your burst then use CDs to get it off. If it fails then you have to kite and survive until you can create the window again.

Fighting a DK (as either spec) is very similar to fighting a rogue. You want to make them use all their CDs while taking as little damage and using as little resources (mana, CDs) as possible. Then you strike while they are weak. He'll want to get in range ASAP and will frost you and grip you from the start. Use blink on grip and trinket on his trap then start to kite and insta cast him. What your going for is making him use his anti-magic shield while you have range so you don't need to use IB to counter it. Once that's up you can sheep and start your burst.

Here's a few more tips as a arcane mage.

Don't use invis if you have any DoTs on you.

PoM-sheep is very useful

Mirror Image + Insta-invis is just awesome. You can use it to LoS and evo/bandage or (my fav) as your running away from him pop MI then invis and turn around and run behind him the pop out and open up.

If you don't have arcane power up for your burst then you can use a PoM/arcane blast for a quick arcane blast stack. For quick burst if I have a missile barrage proc I will AB->PoM/AB->Missile Barrage.

PoM/FB,pyro,FFB is not a opener, it's a finisher. Pallys don't care that you take them from 100% to 70% because they can bubble... but they really really hate you when you take them from 30% to dead.

I don't care if I'm 2 seconds away from finishing my ultra-pyro-*** kicking-face melting-lazerbeam from hell cast.... If they are running at me and closing distance, I will stop the cast and regain the distance before I start the 10 min cast again.

Stupid Computer... Delete too plz

Edited, Apr 13th 2009 10:28am by DarkHybridX

Excellent, I'm doing much better now. I got my spell power up to 1750 and will soon be up to 1800 when I get the gnome sword from the tournament. I have 75,000 honor saved up so when the new deadly gear becomes accessible I'll grab that too. My resil is down to 520 or so, but I don't notice much difference in survivability. I'm good at kiting, blinking, novaing, invis, etc. Though I hadn't done the mirror image -> invis -> pop up behind them yet. I'll try that.

Should I get a battle token? I've been using the gnomish lighting device but it got nerfed in damage. It now increases crit which is good.

Also, I respecced so I'm still arcane but now I have icy veins as well. I use that and my engineering haste glove ability to get AB down to 1.85 when I need it. I can burst through a few if I have a couple free seconds. I'm not sure I can take that damn DK yet...he got better gear in the meantime and has almost full deadly. But I can feel the difference so far anyway.

Regarding the question, he didn't use his ghoul at all during our fight. It might have been that buff that heals when I hit. I now watch for it and wait it out.