I'd put a pair of Shamans up against a Warrior/Paladin; you can virtually nullify paladin healing with two earth shocks and/or the burst damage they can put out will surpass the rate at which the paladin can heal. (Chain lightning + NS Lightning Bolt + Earth Shock + Fire Nova Totem) x 2 is hard to counter.

lolFelhunter. If I were SL spec, my Felhunter would have over 300 resistances to all schools of magic. No poly going on there. It can Spell Lock instantly silencing you for 2 seconds and preventing you from using that school of magic for 8 seconds. If you sheep me, it can eat the debuff off of me and actually gain health from doing so. Not to mention death coil, 2 brands of fear, and instant cast dots to do almost 250 dps just from that. Plus with SL I have around 7,000 effective HP unbuffed and 75 frost and arcane resitances and 125 FR in my normal gear.

My guess is SL Lock / Paladin or SL Lock / Shaman.

I guess id have to go with paladin/warrior. Blessing of sacrifice + shields makes them unccable add in ms and a 6 second stun and they should have a healer dead right off the bat.

Which patch? Pre 1.11 makes a rather large difference. :/


Edit:

I remember that. Goddamn I hated pvping against Lysander so much because it seemed like he always escaped or killed me at 5% health.

Doesn't CoT pretty much ruin paladins? I know I get focus fired when I use it on priests in BG's - seeing as how I'm alliance, I don't get to face pallies much.

I know people are pooh pooh'ing it, but one of the better duo's I know are UD priest+ UD rogue. Skill has a lot to do w/ it in that particular case, but rogues really do have pretty good CC, and if they rogue is good at target switching/multi-tasking they really can put a hurting on.

Regardless, this thread is just one big circular reference. Every time one person comes up w/ an ideal group (2 mages, etc), you just counter it with two warlocks or something else just as silly. T'is fun though :)

Answer: 2 guys with MC caps. It seems like a 2v2 arena would have to do something about crowd control, perhaps limit the first use to 8 rather than 15 seconds. Otherwise, it's all about using and breaking CC.

Hmmmmm.

SL lock, if the felpuppy can eat silence/cc, + shaman. Extremely hard to CC once they get totems down, and shaman are just problematic if someone's watching thier back.

Shaman + Paladin would be interesting as well. Shaman probably have the single best caster defense (grounding + ES), and paladins have the best anti-CC as well as probably the best melee durability. Both having absurd amounts of AC can't hurt, and a paladin's 6 secound stun -might- be enough to burn someone when combining JoC + HS + shaman's bag of tricks. This also seems like the only combo which can survive the AP + PoM + Pyro double shot- paladin bubble, shaman grounding. The only weakness would be the CS and I frankly have no memory if it's dispellable. If they manage the double sheep you're toast unless that pally is -fast- on bubble/dispell. Any strong combo which can destroy this?

Counterspell is dispellable by the Pally. Double sheep, pally will shield then dispell, then shaman will drop Grounding or Earth Shock. The Pally can always put BoSacifice on the Shaman to prevent the Pally from being Sheeped too long.

The only issue with the two is their damage is a little lower compared to SL Lock or Warrior with a Pally or Shaman combo.

I'm actually interested to see how Blizzard balances the 2v2 Arena. Ideally each reasonable class combination will be able to counter another combo, and all classes will be desired in some pairing somehow. Looking at this thread it's obvious that some classes are currently on the short end of the stick as far as desirability goes while some are extremely powerful. Will Blizzard try to balance things for 2v2 or will they mostly balance for 5v5 with 2v2 giving lesser rewards?

I'd be interested to see how double paladin teams, shadow priest/paladin, or shadowpriest/soul link warlock perform. I'm also interested to see how Paladin/Warrior really stacks up against certain combos.

The school locking portion of counterspell wrecks a paladin. They can't do anything if you lock their one school down.

BoSac on the shaman is definately required. Grounding is not just there for the shaman's defense, but actually more for the paladin- Since the pally being 'removed' in some fashion is definately the danger.

True- but it's really hard to match a 30/0/21 shaman for burst damage. You have to CC him in some fashion, and that's usually breakable by the paladin. The shaman's entire job is to burst the heck out of one of them, while the paladin contributes/dispells/ect. When one of them goes down, the shaman steps back and keeps the paladin alive while the pally's slow and steady dps wears down.

This is true, so for all wierd things I'm thinking of- paladin doesn't, actually, heal, or do anything iwth a casting time. Dispell, bless, hoJ, Judge, Seal, ect. Basicly keep up thier mana pool, help the shaman with thier weaknesses- bubbling to heal if there's that true FF going on where they -need- to heal through.

Dunno, maybe it just can't work, but it might.

Man... this was months ago, I'm thinking 1.09, it was when we were all bored working on the AQ gates (so post TF-nerf).

I'm pretty surprised at the lack of value some of you are finding in priests and rogues actually, with the correct gear setup and players they can become deadly on any team. Priests with high AC/Stam are amazing in 5v5, Rogues not so much, but they certainly can CC more than almost anyone else left unchecked (gouge, sap, blind, stun, kick). The problem is rogues are basically the squishiest "Arena Duel" type class unless you have an amazing setup. Yes, squishier than mages even, because most mages will have Iceblock for this type of thing.

If you are going to stack stam and armor on a priest then what does he provide over a paladin?

What you would want out of a priest is damage and secondary healing.

AOE Fear, the best CC in the game, along with Power Word: Shield, Fort, and HOTs?

I also write from a Horde perspective, so priests aren't exactly replaceable!

Stunlock roge + priest vcould be a fun gimmick team.
Stunlock 1 guy (or sap) MC the other guy.

... i hate warlocks and paladins. They are just too damn hard to kill :(

Priests are pretty much wrecked by the presence of an offensive Dispeller. I think we'll be all right on teams where we can eliminate/cc the opposing team's offensive dispel capability early on.

The term "arena" implies a fairly small area as far as 40-yd combat goes. A team with heavy AE fears does quite well in a close-quarter environment. 2x Priest, 2x Warrior, Shaman?

If they do allow full consumable use, picking up herbalism recently will be one of the best choices I've ever made. FAPs and Limited Invuls all day long, baby. Maybe some Invisibility too. Anyone feeling the power of Shadowmeld now to throw off assist/cc pretargeting? I guess it depends on whether we have a scoreboard listing class/race as in standard bgs.

Play a priest on alliance side and you would see how frustratingly worthless all those abilities are.

Don't worry, come xpac, alliance can purge too :)

Psssh I complain about undead much much more then Shaman.

Well given only current abilities and adding in the racial abilities that we know off in the expansion, I would probably put a Paladin/Paladin team pretty high up there. Especially if they are Blood Elves. The plate and healing would mess it up big time for melee classes, and with all the stuns and the Arcane Torrent ability of the Blood Elves, I believe they could win out against caster combo's aswell. If they then specc one for Holy "DPS" and healing aswell as a splash of Protection for greater survivability and concentration aura, they could specc the other for Retribution and melee "DPS" aswell as Holy thrown in. This pair would be impossible to CC and posses the bubbles and Blessings to completly outlast almost any opponents. Cleanse is probably the most powerful tool currently in game for that.

The only problem I could see them running into with that setup is dual locks. Curses > Paladins since they cant be cleansed.

Rogue Warlock is a pretty formiddable team, mostly the high amount of control over a fight the both classes can have, assuming you get to use all/most of your 5minute cooldowns in a fight, especially if they're both Undead, beacuse that would be their seemingly largest weakness (fear). Warlocks can merely CC any healer/decursers besides a Paladin, and then the little amount of control the other opponent would have and the large amount of sustained damage would drop him in seconds flat. The only team that would really give them trouble is Paladin/Warrior, simply because they have pretty much every counter up their sleeve (Poison dispel, Cleanse, Divine Shield, Blessing of Protection, Fear Interruption on both sides, Gouge interruption). If a Warlock is under pressure, a Rogue can Gouge and say, Blind or CS then Gouge, which will allow the Warlock to get in a Fear, the power of the two is really falling into their multi-CC capabilities and extreme damage.

I really have to say that most good teams will in fact have a Warlock or Paladin, they are pretty much the cut-and-dry best offensive and defensive classes with the most counters (Paladin) or lack of counters (Warlock).