Once in an Arathi Basin I faced an equally skilled, better geared force. I decided to cede the Blacksmith but ordered the two rogues and a hunter to go there and delay the tap there as long as possible. Battle had just been joined at the Mill when I hear the alarm signalling that we had tapped the Blacksmith. When I get a breather, I ask what had happened. In anticipation of our standard Warrior-Paladin five man, the enemy had sent only mages and priests.

Unlike PvE, you'll never know in advance what you're getting. The only controllable factor is what you'll bring to the field. So in the spirit of thinking out of the box, careful analysis and avoiding anything resembling productivity at work, I thought I’d start this thread.

Putting aside the fact that most of us will end up PvPing with our friends and whatever their mains are, what would the composition of your 5-man Arena team be? List the five classes, their level 70 talent builds (if possible) and the strengths and synergies they bring to the table.

The idea of this thread is to introduce new ideas to each other since detailed knowledge of other classes – and often even our own – is limited. Since the people who frequent this forum are more thoughtful than most, I’m hopeful about learning how to play and combat other classes.


Here's one five man I came up with:

Three Shadow Priests, an Affliction Warlock and a Holy Protection Paladin:

Vampiric Embrace’s (VE) constant heals:

Obviously, the three Shadow Priests are going to be the main damage dealers. One benefit you receive from this that you don’t see with other dps is the constant healing you receive from VE. When improved with talents, everyone in the party receives 30% of the priest’s damage done in the form of health. A lot of the time this will be lost to overhealing, but a few classes can take advantage of this in other ways. Normally, any magic user could use Demonic Runes to convert health to mana. Since our use of consumables will be limited in Arenas, you have to turn to innate abilities. As many of us know, Warlocks can convert life to mana. What some may have missed is that the expansion will provide Paladins the ability to convert life to mana via Spritual Attunement.


Stacking Shadow Vulnerability:

A tier 4 shadow priest talent, Shadow Weaving, allows for the creation of a 15% increased Shadow Damage debuff. Curse of Shadows from the Warlock will cause a 10% increased Shadow Damage. So you’ll have an increase of 25% to the type of damage that can be inflicted by four of the five party members.

On a less predictable basis is the Warlock’s Improved Shadow Bolt. When it crits, this spell will boost the damage of the next four non-periodic sources of Shadow Damage by 20%. While it would be difficult for a Warlock alone to deal four non-DoTs in the 12 seconds in which it lasts, it would be quite achievable for a party of four Shadow Damage dealers.


Silence and Mana Drain:

Currently, it is far easier to kill people than to drain all their mana. When the expansion comes out with its emphasis on larger amounts of stamina, this may no longer be the case. Taking someone out of the fight by draining their mana becomes a very real option. After all, no consumables prevents the use of potions. Again, both Warlocks – through Drain Mana – and Priests – through Mana Burn – can do this. This tactic should prove especially effective against hybrid classes, like Paladins, Shamans and Hunters who have naturally smaller mana pools and are unattractive targets for Innervate should the enemy be fortunate enough to have a Druid among them.


Mana Regeneration:

The Achilles foot of this group is the mana intensive nature of the Shadow Priests. It would be quite easy for Priests to burn through their entire mana pool within the first minute. To address this, I’ll place an emphasis on mp5 gear, gems and enchants. Plus damage gear does nothing if you don’t have the mana to power the spells. The other major source of mana will be from the Paladin’s Greater Blessing of Wisdom (BoW) which will provide something north of 35mp5 when the expansion comes out. The Stoicism Paladin Protection talent should will make this solution more robust by giving BoW a 30% resist to being dispelled. Also the Priest Discipline talent Inner Focus on its 3 minute cool down will provide a bit of help with mana, especially if three SW:D or three mind blasts are focus fired on the same target.


Opening move:

I imagine a healer would probably be the first target, assuming they're not using their party members as a screen. A warlock's curse of shadows to open, followed by the range of dots, capped with Unstable Affliction so any dispellers will have to take the damage hit before they can get to the other debuffs. One priest will open with a Inner Focus Mind Blast, another can throw a Dispel Magic to remove any buffs and the third can throw a SW:P and then a Silence to stop any attempts to heal themselves. Mind flays will be useful for their ability to slow any retreats. Silences by any priest who doesn't have it on cooldown can be used on any other healers the group might have. And the Paladin can work on keeping the four dps'ers on their feet.



Talent Builds:

Priest

Warlock

Paladin


Anyone else have any ideas for 5-man teams?

Whenever this topic is put out I always end up thinking which people I'd like on my team rather than a specific class or build make up.

I think my paladin w/ shadow prot aura + dwarf priest fear warding + 3 warriors assist training with deathwish would hurt your clothies ^^

I acknowledge that in the second or third paragraph of my original post; I agree we'll end up PvPing with our friends and the most skilled. Still, I'm hoping to learn about other classes and what they can do and how some combination of them might achieve better effects. It probably isn't a coincidence that the five man team I came up with just happens to have shadow priests - the class of my main - at the center and a Warlock and Paladin in support roles - the classes of my two sixties.

So I'd love to see the world from the eyes of a Arms Warrior or an Ice Mage and was hoping to have a chance at that with this thread.

No doubt. But going into the fight, you'll have no idea who you'll be fighting. Is that the combination you want to bring into every fight?

My money would still be on the shadowpriests/warlock/pally. Pally = plate, shadowpriests = physical mitigation, warlocks = seduce/bubble/big HP/etc. All that along with pally/priest shields and maybe a healing spell.

Pally can be ignored because his healing isn't going to be phat enough on MS debuff.
Shadow priest extra mitigation is countered by death wish, so it will be like a MS warrior hitting a non shadow priest today.
Warlock stuff will be dispelled by our priest / paladin whereas warrior stuff isn't dispellable. You can basically ignore the warlock until the shadow priests are dead anyways.

As for general setup, yes I'd always have a MS / Death Wish warrior with a paladin in my setup. Unless stuff terribly changes beyond extra HP, warrior with Freedom and cleanse will wtfpwn everything, top tier 2h required of course.

I think it would be interesting to take a very heavy, endurance-oriented team into this. This is probably a stupid idea, but wouldn't like 3 heavy protection warriors with shields and 2 highly-armored shamans be able to outlast pretty much any other combination? Then you can just pick at them slowly until they can't fight back anymore.

As I said, it's probably a dumb idea, but I'm curious how something like that would pan out.

-Mortal Strike Warrior
-Holy/Prot Paladin
-Affliction Warlock
-Mage(anything, really)
-Discipline Priest

Can dispel everything. Priest keeps the Mage and himself alive, Warlock/Mage cc the cloth, Warrior destroys everything with dispels/healing/BoF from the Paladin. Well-rounded and solid.

Having the trinity would be quite useful, i.e. a MS/Deathwish Warrior, Disc/Holy Priest, and any flavor of Mage. For the other two I would pick a Holy/Prot Pally and an Affliction Lock.

Edit: interesting, the poster above me picked the same stuff as me


Of course, we haven't seen the confirmed Hunter changes yet, they may prove to be a powerful force with scaled pets. If the Druid changes are true, a Balance/Resto Druid with Swiftmend with have even more lasting power and decent damage (a 6 sec CC at level 70 with Cyclone to boot!).


That said, I agree with the other posters, in reality you would pick people you have PvPed with a lot rather than just pick from classes.

You'd lose to magic based CC easily.

This is a good thing. It means people can't play flavor of the month teams, and the competitive game can evolve as a whole.

doesn't sound like it could work imo, anything with manaburn will eat your shaman mana.

What we've faced yesterday in AB was an extremly endurance oriented team. ONLY warriors(3), Warlocks(4), priests(4) and shamans(3). No mages or rogues, they just die too fast. No druids for some reason and just 1 hunter. They lasted forever, it was unbearable :P

.. this reply was meant to the prot warrior suggestion.




Sounds like a solid idea to me as long as you can replace someone? I thought the requirement for being counted as part of a "team" was participation in 30% of total matches?

Yes, I believe the team sizes are twice the game sizes (so a 2v2 team can have 4, 3v3 has 6 and 5v5 has 10) and each person must compete in 30% of your weekly games or get no points for the week. Each team has a minimum of 10 games, and because of the ELO Rankings (what a smart guy that Jeff Lynn) playing more than 10 games might not be an advantages, especially if you get lucky and fluke out a victory or two against higher ranked opponents.

From what was written on the old forums by a Blue, there is a team management screen, much like guild management, so I can assume you can swap around team mates if needed.

We don't know yet if arena teams got locked in for the three months. Blizzard hasn't been clear on it yet, and are probably still deciding.

Hopping to a new team doesn't gurantee free loot, anyways. A new team member will have to compete in multiple games with their team at their current ELO level to be eligible for points.

Not at all. I'm levelling a rogue now and the thing that I'm impressed by is her ability to keep going. No breaks for mana, just pot and go. Warriors are even better because the more damage they do and the more damage they take, the more energy they have.

Would a protection heavy warrior be able to dps enough?

Just curious what makes you say that. Points are awarded on a weekly basis. At the end of the quarter, the highest rated team gets the special title, but theoretically that team could have just formed a month prior. The week prior even if they manage to get matched up against all the best teams and beat them all. I haven't read anything indicating that you build your teams at the beginning and then have to play them out to the end.

Also, would anyone like to inform the clothie the dynamics of a Deathwish/MS warrior, their strengths and how you'd kill them?

Blessing of Protection, definitely. Power Word: Shield, no; it couldn't stop a strong breeze.

Something I really wonder is: will you be able to learn who you're up against slightly before the battle? That would allow for the strategic choice of a group from your available team. If you're up against somebody you know plays a lot of strategy X, you take people off of your bench to help defeat strategy X.

In that kind of scenario, I imagine things will be very fluid. On the one hand, there will clearly be strategies and mixes that work better than others. On the other hand, having a team with a variety of classes in it provides the ability to have more counters available, assuming no single strategic mix is "perfect".

Observing the world championship matches in GW was very interesting in this way. At the end, the teams really hadn't played each other much, since they were from different regions. However, each match was best of three--and teams could spectate their opponents' older matches to see how they set up. The Asian teams had *very* different mixes of classes from the American teams, and the European teams tended to have the same sort of mix as the Americans, but with slightly different tactics. (This is as I recall, anyway.) The Asian teams tended to one very specific mix, while there was more variety elsewhere. And I recall one American team after being beaten rather badly in the first of three matches completely changing their line-up for the second, and winning handily.


Anyway, I hope we see some of this meta-game going on. The ability to do research about opponents really makes strategy an interesting excercise in this kind of competition, and makes it a lot easier to avoid monocultures of "well, everybody runs with three shadow priests, a druid, and a warlock" (or whatever turns out to be 'best'.)

A Deathwish/MS Warrior is like a current MS warrior with another Fear break, and a reduced intercept cooldown. You handle them a lot like you handle Warriors now - spam CCs in their general direction while you get on their support.

I'm curious to see whether the arena metagame will tend strongly towards stacked teams (a billion magic debuffs, pure physical damage, etc) or balanced teams like you'd aim for in a PvE 5-man. Right now it seems like Disc Priest + Holydin is the healing backbone of choice for any 5-man team; raw HPS through the Priest and supplementary dispelling while the Paladin handles CC removal and backup healing. I have a prediction that a Druid/Hunter heavy kiting-based team could do well in the smaller arenas, and potentially in 5v5.

We won't be able to.

Kinda weak. Have they said how the actual battle start will work? It is like, 321, you're now in combat with the other team coming at you? Or do you have a wait time like current BGs to take a look at your opponent and use your class buffs?

I'm okay with them removing preparatory knowledge, but I'd like at least some time to strategize and ready yourself. I remember similar pep talks in Gulch and such when we'd notice we're up against an infamous turtle team or some 6 mage 4 paladin cheese group.

3 druids, 40 feral/21 resto

2 holy/prot paladins. It would take us 15 minutes to kill anything, but we'd never die.