I like caster/caster groups most these days. Warrior/healer groups are nice but are actually quite fragile. Warrior/paladin groups are much stronger but at high enough gear levels there's nothing a warrior can do that'll stop an interrupt pali + burn warrior move. Warriors just don't have enough options when their partner is CCd whereas casters can stall with CCs or heals. I like warlock/priest the most I think. It has really good survivability if both are specced/geared right and is pretty resistant to magic CC. It's just plain unfair without an opposing dispeller too.

EDIT: A lot of people say "this fight kills X class" etc etc, but that's only really true of very few classes. Amongst healers I don't think any of them can claim to master any of the others. Shaman vs Priest for instance is actually pretty close, and I'd probably give the priest the advantage if any of them. Mage vs SL Lock and Warrior/Rogue vs Frost Mage are probably the only unfair fights IMO. Shaman are very annoying to fight as a priest though.

war/pal, mage/mage, and lock/mage seem to be what would work best currently. war/pal is almost impossible to CC and very hard to kill. The mage/lock combo's are both stacked on CC and capable of very high burst DPS.

I'm wondering how combat works. Rogues could be really good if you get a sap off since so little counters it.

mage/priest isn't bad, especially with PI spec, and shadow priest/lock is pretty good, but yeah, priests don't really do so well in 2v2s. They're pretty solid in 5v5s, but I hope the expansion gives them some abilities to put their support on a level that makes up for their fragility.

Or paladin/ Paladin.
Also the seduce lock wont work against any decent pairing with a paladin, bursting down the succubis steals your main trick and the paladin can do that alone, under his shield if required. Fellhunter will be the better choice if you expect to see a paladin, or a mage IMO.

A big question here is wether soulstones and self res would work. If they do it is shaman/ warlock all the way.

I'd go with Mage/Warlock. The Warlock also has good crowd control, and doesn't overlap with the Mage's.

Paladin/Shaman or Paladin/Druid matches up pretty well against everything as well. Being unkillable has a lot going for it.

A long time ago out of boredom we set up some teams for 5v5 in the Dire Maul Arena.

Unforunately, we had enough people for three teams but only one paladin. The team with the paladin won all the time, simply due to the CC factor.

i think a mage+paladin would have a good chance against a mage+mage team, a good silence on the polymorph, as the paladin could bubble out of sheep, dispell silence on the mage and stun/repentance a mage busting cooldowns

would definitly be an interesting fight

Mind Control is actually a pretty excellent tool when duoing with a Rogue or someone else who can lock down the enemies' remaining member. For Horde, anyway >)

Pally + Warrior is just incredible. A pally removes all of the warriors weaknesses by casting blessing of freedom. He has guaranteed heals for a substantial time and can cleanse any of the things that would control the warrior. The combo has almost perfect synergy.

commenting on some of the others in this thread.
Hunter + shaman would be great burst but overly vulnerable to cc. Once the shaman gets feared/sheeped/seduced the hunter is going to get obliterated. I still hold a candle of hope that full resto shaman will get some form of meaningful CC in the expansion but I am not holding my breath.

30/0/21 Shaman + Warlock is indeed a nasty gank group. They can remain very mobile while still dealing good dps and having a good deal of counters and strategies available to them. I think this group is one of the few that can really give pally/warrior trouble. However this group suffers against mage groups that can silence the shaman into oblivion and remove the lock dots.

I think hunter + druid has good synergy. Root + feral stuns will work well for maintaining minimum range for the hunter and dot heals/druid snare breaking allow the druid to heal well while remaining very mobile with the hunter.

CC using what ?
The only CC you have that will work is deathcoil, the paladin flat our removes any thing the warrior doesnt break with deathwish or bezerker rage. The real danger in this matchup to the paladin/warrior isnt the warlock, its the shaman who has earthshock.

Maybe the Rogue/Priest outgeared/outskilled everyone, b/c that grouping is not ideal.

The skill/gear factor will be partly covered by the ranking system, so that concern will not be much of an issue.


For another good group, a Shaman/Pally. Lots of hybridness to be able to counter most matchups.

never played a mage but yeah I guess that wouldn't make much sense :rolleyes: I was thinking of the fact you normally want to get rid of the healer first and then nail the other guy at your leisure. But I guess a pally with shield is the exception to that rule.

Two locks would certainly be an interesting pairing. Specced for PvP and especially if they have any knowledge about their opponants and can have appropriate pets out, it is definitely a touch pairing to deal with. Multiple CC, self-healing, good to great ranged damage, significant HP and such all work rather well. Two mages are also obviously quite good and any pairing that works together for a while should be able to co-ordinate to great effect but I would favor lock/mage over two mages personally.

At higher gear levels though the Warrior + Paladin/Druid/Priest/Shaman combonation seems most likely to be effective in the long-term. Warrior hitpoint levels are rising to the point where bursting them down regardless of healing still takes a little bit. Combined with fear, stun, top armor and snares, they are just plain dangerous in anything other than 1v1 PvP. War + healer also just has fewer potential 'bad' matchups and if you can stick that healer in plate and give him BoP, HoJ and so on... all the better.

It's a fun theorycrafting game but it certainly is going to show up some min-max solutions. The gap between teams that practice and work well together and casual teams will be massive. I'm ok with that personally. I will be annoyed by the two Rogue teams though... that's going to get old fast.

2:2 at the moment is imho not really balanced. There are some combos mentioned which are real no brainers (twin mages for CC, pally/warrior) whereas I fear some classes will be severely handicapped at current level. MS will be insane for those matches for there is no way one healer can counterheal against this debuff and the damage done by a decently geared warrior. Furthermore CC skills will be VERY important. If you can CC one of your opponents, you are able to create very strong mismatches.

If I were to take part in the arena games as a rogue I would rather chose the larger groups. Though even 5:5 will have pretty strong and pretty underperforming combos. At least there are more options how to play the game imho.

A sidenote: i hope they will exclude consumables and eng stuff, else these matches will be won by those willing to use more consumables.

i'm still favouring a paladin/druid combo, especially if both have +stam/health gems socketed to all possible locatins and a meta gem on thier head slot that offers stam/health bonuses.

It would be interesting with a rogue team if you could actually get a sap off. Other than using Blessing of Protection on the sap'd target, I don't know of any other way to dispel it. I'd assume it would be incredibly difficult to actually achieve this however (totems, AoE etc.)

I'd be partial to Paladin / Warrior - since placing a blessing of freedom on a warrior pretty much makes them an unstoppable killing machine. It would however be weak against strong CC classes, would could simply sheep / seduce the Paladin making him useless.

BoSacrifice if the other team can't remove it via Felhunter/Purge/Dispel (Shield Slam!). You know, if the MS debuff wasn't so good, I could see a case for a full tank gear Warrior. Shield Slam can actually hit fairly hard, it removes all enemy buffs, and he certainly has the capability to be a major nuisance with low maintenance.

I believe a pairing of a Holy/Disc priest and a Disc/Shadow priest can prove to be a formidable matchup. Holy/Disc offers staying power and damage boost while Disc/Shadow offers dps and silence. Both are capable of AoE fears. The logical counter, of course, are fury warriors. However, even the best geared fury warriors will have to punch through PW:S's all the while suffering a stream of shadow damage.

For a couple of reason I think they will allow any and all item use.

First is the technilogical/programming implications of disabling certain items/abilities in a zone. I'm not saying it can't be done, but you'd have to introduce specific coding to disable a pre-determined list of items. What if an item (say the Tidal Charm) gets left of the list? What if there is an exploit availible to allow you to potion? You'll have people running to the realm/general forums complaining about the latest pvp arena abuse.

Second is the legacy issue. A free-for-all method of item use has always been encourged in PVP. In fact, even PVP rewards consist of special PVP potions, bandages, rations and even battle standards.

You mentioned engineering items, what items would you ban? A battle chicken? A gnomish-death ray? Bombs? A number of engineering items use trinket slots, so would you then ban the use of trinkets? I think a lot of casters would be fairly upset if you told them they couldn't use their ZHC. A free-for-all approach is much easier stand to take than an elaborate rule-set.

Sap is weak, which is why I don't see a 2 Rogue team doing that great in the highest arena levels. However, in the lower brackets 2 Rogues will be quite powerful, especially if they can get a sap off and then stunlock the other person.

Chainblinding would be fun, assuming the Rogues wanted to farm loads of fadeleaf.

I think a Disc/Shadow priest + fire mage won our 2v2 tournament a long while ago. Right now, as others have said, paladin+high dps is a very tough to kill combo. I can remember when I played my paladin back in the day, myself and Brahman, and ms axe warrior, would rip up teams of 4 with ease. Recently I was in a protracted fight with Rendhammer (bonereaver's edge paladin) and myself (utb ms warrior) and we ripped up a small team of 4 or 5 without much trouble. With blessing of sacrifice, CC is very difficult.

That being said, the most devestating combo I have ever seen was back in Exordium: Lysander (31 demonology 20 affliction high stamina warlock) and Loevon (GM paladin). They were basically untouchable.

A priest doesn't really have a place in a 2v2 right now. It's all about durability.

Priests had the kind of durability that allowed them to excel in a 2v2 for a very short time after release when players were just hitting 60.

Tier 0 gear was just coming into play and a Priest in the best "Eagle" gear available with some +dmg gear and a Shadow/Disc spec had enough HP/Mana/Armor to survive bursts, toggle shadowform and wear opponents down in prolonged fights.

The introduction of PvP trinkets, talent changes (non-activatable focused casting), gear diversification and the the way in which priests are likely to be geared has changed all of that.

Unless a priest can gear him/herself to a similar balance where they simultaneously enjoy relatively high HP, passable armor, good dps and good utility/healing, they won't see much use in 2v2.

That's only half of what makes a paladin/x combo nasty. Our blessing of sacrifice means that we can't be crowd controlled, and our bubble means that we've gotta be stupid or really unlucky to die fast. A smart paladin will keep himself from being cc'ed without using bubble, so the only way you'll get him to bubble is to focus fire him.

I'd take paladin + anything, though I'd honestly prefer paladin + hunter over anything else because the crowd control abilities of hunter combined with their burst dps and survivability are pretty nice. A mage or warlock would be my fallback from a hunter.

But again, that's using the arena at level 60, with 31 point talent trees. God only knows what dumbshit abilities they'll foist on paladins in the expansion.