I'm a Disc priest, and I 2v2 with a UA warlock.

The golden rule is...if we face a team with a resto druid, we lose. The end.

How are people's experience with running or fighting against a sword warrior + resto shaman in arenas? Both are geared in full gladiators with 360 and 400 resilience respectively.

So far after playing a few games we have had some success and have topped off at 1740 rating (without the use of voice communication just yet). Our strategy is simple, try to stay on a target that is either A) squishy or B) poses the most threat and nullify it. We alternate interrupts on the secondary class (if it's a healer). When I start getting some streaky SS procs and WF procs is when we start to lay the damage/ interrupts on (aoe fears, warstomps).

Do people feel it is a combo that can reach 1900 or even 2000ish? I've reached about 1950 rating during season 2 with a paladin partner but I've not been playing since 2.3 came out so I am unsure about the new scene of 2v2 teams.

There was a post 2 pages ago about the same question (2v2 Arena Thread) that didnt really get asnwered but that id be interested to hear opinions on as we run an identical setup and pretty much have the same problems.

Altho we usualy do win against the druid-lock teams : As a rogue i usualy go dps the warlock with a focus on stuns/kicks/constant dmg while our priest mana burn the warlock (or the druid if possible). Forcing the warlock to lifetap for mana in-between stuns, kicks and gouges means hes really not going to cast anything, and with wound poison, he usualy eventualy dies.

But when we go against all the other combos, it really feels like even if we play perfectly, we lose most of the time. Druid-warriors especially, since they're so common, seem like an impossible matchup unless they're dumb.
That is if the warrior tries to kill me and their druid is bad, sometimes i can just keep the warrior busy and my priest can mana burn the druid, but most of the time they know better and either CC me while their warrior own my priest or cyclone+bash his heals while i get pounded on. Warrior-paladin usualy end bad for us as well... Our only wins against thoses 2 setups seems to be blade's edge bridge for mind control but even there we still mostly lose...

I'm sure theres plenty of similar setups that are facing the same trouble, any tips ?

Chastise --> Fear --> blind --> vanish+sap --> fear-->chastise CC chain on the druid is very strong. If you can pull this off, then you're in great shape to burn the warrior down (both of you).

Chastise heh, sadly thats only for alliance.

For any Druid/Warlock combos, what is your strat versus Priest/Rogue? Me and my partner are both in good gear (he could use upgrades but I don't think that is the problem). What happens is the rogue locks me down and their priest plays aggressive and chases my druid when he comes out to heal/cc and fear->mana burns him. Sometime during the fight they coordinate bringing my pet to the rogue and popping blade flurry and possibly other cool downs too. My druid can't heal my pet and me through this damage, and the priest is just waiting to unload mana burns. Once my pet dies I eat a KS and take massive damage without soul link.

To shorten it up, whenever my druid tries to CC/Heal he eats mana burns and there is so much pressure on me he can't drink. How do you position yourselves on each map at the start? And how do you avoid mana burns while healing/CC?

If you're not already doing this, try speccing CoX and using that on the priest instead of CoT. Makes it very difficult for the priest to get close enough to fear or burn the druid.

(edit: said CoE, meant CoX)

Myself and my brother recently decided to roll a warrior/druid to pvp together myself being the warrior. ( we ended up on different factions originally)

so to get a bit of a break from the leveling grind and for some experience, we hoped on the test realm with our premades and started an arena team.

we are having some trouble with a few combos and i looking for some tips

Rogue/Mage between sheep and various frost effects i end up not being able to to do much, intercept is either blinked out of or used to hamstring the rogue to give the druid some breathing room. Druid trys to keep the rogue under control with roots and cyclone, hamstrings come in during sprints and cloak of shadows but i seem unable to do any real damage to either team member

druid/lock

i am completely lost

between druid CC and heals, i am pretty much unable to kill the pet period or stay on the druid

Priest/Rogue isn't an easy matchup for Warlock/Druid, at least in my experience, but it has a lot to do with the skill of the Priest. If the Priest is, in the words of my partner, "a dispel spamming asshole," it will make your life a lot harder because dispelling Abolish Poison means Wound Poison will stack to full, which in turn causes you Druid to need Regrowth to keep you up, which in turn makes it easier for the Priest to PS > Mana Burn your Druid because he's standing still to cast.

CoX on the Priest is good if he's playing aggressively, and make sure you DoT both the Priest and the Rogue. You need to be applying pressure via damage to both of them to keep the Priest honest so he can't solely focus on trying to Mana Burn your Druid.

It's easy for me to pull my pet away from the priest, but the problem is the priest would be on me, so either way the pet is in range of blade flurry although putting the pet on the rogue during blade flurry would put it behind him so he wouldn't be hit by blade flurry if that's what you meant.

On the druid's trinket, shouldn't he save it for a blind? If the priest lands a fear my pet should be close enough to the druid to devour fear. Or should my druid never get blinded in the first place by keeping 15 yards?

So basically our strategy should be to survive the initial cool downs (sprint breaking roots x2, trinket, CloS) then get into a cycle of CCing the rogue while I pressure the priest then my druid keeps me up until another CC cycle?

Put 5 sunders on the pet and build rage in zerker stance on the warlock taking time to pummel fears or mana drains if your partner cannot LOS the fear (communicate!)(druid/lock teams have no burst capability at all if your gear is decent). When you have >70 rage and before your sunder stack dissipates on the pet have your partner LOS the pet from the other team and intercept/heroic strike/MS (use deathwish if necessary, pet dying equals win) should take the pet out. You will now have to either do this again or kill a void walker. once you manage those it's smooth sailing. Warlock/druid has never given me any troubles with warrior/druid at all.

Double dps is tougher. You have to split time between peeling and dpsing. Key to winning is keeping hamstring on both players at all times and having a druid partner that knows his class inside and out. Other then that i cant really give tips because a lot of teams approach the game in a lot of different ways from both offense and defense. The thing is, double dps teams means you have to be defensive at all times. Usually a double dps team will involve a mana class, if they've expelled their mana and not done substantial damage to you guys then you win. Same goes for rogues, if you outlast their cooldowns you generally win. So defense wins games. I can say however from warrior perspective, be careful with your rage. Use intervene to get to your druid, use intercept to get to mage pets to kill or to fear them. Do not use intercept on mages before they blink, if that means taking an extra shot from them as you walk towards them so be it, you have a healer and he doesn't. Lastly, do fight these fights near pillars if at all possible.

I've been playing since S2 with a Holy Paladin/MS Warrior setup in 2v2. I know that a druid or priest may be a better choice for achieving high ratings, but I play this team since we are friends, have a lot of practice together and have consistent time to fit in 2v2 games between stretches when I am specced protection.

In S3, I've been having a lot of trouble against rogue teams and druid teams, specifically warrior/druid. I know that priest/rogue and warrior/druid are uphill battles, but there are high ranked warrior/paladin teams, so there must be a way to beat these guys in the "scrubbish" range that we are stuck in (1700-1800 on BG1). I'm looking for tips against 2 combos that are overpoweringly popular in our rating range.

Warrior/Druid
Rogue/Disc Priest

1) Against warrior druid, we try to get justice on the druid once I put enough pressure on the warrior to unstealth the druid. Then I try to setup an intercept or intervene/intercept to get to the druid. It's 50/50 to get justice up at best from what I've seen in 10 recent matches.

Even with justice up, I'll usually get disarmed and stunned by the opposing warrior to allow the druid to peel and go drink. If they don't get a long chain of CC on my paladin that leads to my death, the match usually revolves around occasional bursts of dps I can get on the druid, and he escapes and drinks for a few ticks to stay just ahead of my paladin's mana. I try to trap the opposing warrior when the druid runs far away, but with disarm, sword/board, intervening away it's not too easy for me to burst down the warrior before the lifebloom train is back online. Should we just queue dodge after meeting these teams (seems so common)?

2) Rogue/Disc. Priest. Since the start of S3, we've been having a lot of trouble against this setup. My paladin is trying to be careful about staying away from the priest (avoiding fear and mana burn), but when the rogue is CS->KS and my trinket is down, he's got to heal and usually hamstring or PH falls off the priest, so the priest can close on him to fear and burn. I can usually survive for a while through the CD, but whenever I put some decent dps on the priest, rogue usually shows up and stuns me. If I get some damage on the rogue, he'll stun and run, or trinket the hamstring/sprint, vanish and reset, or blind. Usually, some combination of CC gets on my paladin and I'll drop even with sword/board up.

Recently, played a few games against what I believe was a SF/Hemo rogue with improved expose armor. He was putting out enormous DPS on me even with my shield up. I suppose I can try to be fast on the swap, throw up demo shout and clap and look for a chance to intervene out, but it doesn't seem very easy to get offensive against that style of rogue.

Anyway, I'm looking for tips to get close to beating some of these teams. I guess we might just have some bad luck running into well-geared 2v2 teams in mid-1700s (S3 shoulders and weapons), but I want to make sure we're doing all we can to make a game of it. Hope there are a few people around here still clinging to warrior/paladin.

Putting dots on both will just make PoM bounce and heal for insane amounts without MS debuff. Priests are predictable in their behavior, if they start running to the druid they will fear the druid. He can just go bear and eat the fear. If the priest is a happy dispeller, then do Abolish, Cyclone, Healing Touch, Lifebloom (if the lock can cast fel armor just before heal lands, that's a lot of healing recovered) and run out of range. The warlock should play very offensively with Mana Drain. Mana is too precious for the priest and with him not being able to drink, he will have to use it wisely. CoT and Mana Drain the priest, while dotting the rogue. Lock should be able to pull out a fear on the priest to dislocate him. It's also smart to root the priest to make him lose 300 mana for dispel when druid only wasted 50 to root. Druids have better regeneration, too. Rogue/Priest is tough vs Druid/Lock, but it's far from unbeatable. Just keep your eyes on the priest and his mana. Cyclone + Travel to the other side. Alternatively, the druid can spec some balance/resto spec and help out on the pressure with more damage. Insect Swarm + Wrath spam is quite a damage that priest needs to heal.

Having played both the warrior and the druid in War/Dru, as well as the Warrior end of War/Pal, I an safely say the best play against War/Dru is to burst the Druid. If your Paladin has learned what it means to go on the offensive, you should have little trouble. Their Warrior can't really CC, so what's needed is a well executed chain on the Druid that looks something like Intercept -> HoJ -> JoJ -> Hamstring -> Holy Shock -> Hammer of Wrath. If you can Arcane Torrent/pummel a Cyclone, even better. Even with zero heals your warrior should be able to last 20 secs or so with the opposing warrior beating on him, which is more than enough time to slip in a Holy Light.

The key to this matchup is using intercept on cooldown on the priest, then getting back on the rogue, making sure Hamstring is up on both. This should be enough to allow your paladin to outrange psychic scream and blind, as long as you are aware enough to not drag the team next to your pally. The more pressure you can put on the rogue, the better, as it will force the priest to stop mana burning/fearing and start healing.

I started playing warrior/pally seriously against last week and we went from 1500-1853, locked it up at 1853 so the warrior can save some points from our 5s and make sure he still has an 1850 team to buy the weapon next week, then we'll start pushing it again. Interesting that you had so much trouble with priest/rogue and warrior/druid. Our problem matches were mage/rogue, lock/pally, lock/druid, and hunter/priest (we won all but one of our hunter/priest matches but every one above 1700 or so was so close I thought for sure it was a lost cause).

On warrior/druid, as others have said, the druid has to die first. The key is to get justice on the druid as soon as you can. I usually stay mounted running in circles to try and get to the druid with a stun before he can cyclone, letting the warrior intercept to him and get hamstring up as I judge justice. Stay close enough that you can help with HoJ/silence/hammer of wrath/holy shock/JoR when the time's right to seal the match. If the warrior ends up on you, even better, you just have to stay close enough to the druid to renew justice every once in awhile while keeping yourself alive. The final two wins that got us above 1850 were against a glad/glad war/druid with the war in full s3 from a 2k 3v3, and I still stayed alive with him on me longer than their druid could stay alive with our warrior on him.

On rogue/priest, what we found to work for us is heavily pressuring the rogue at the start. I drop a stun on the rogue right as his first stun on the war is dropping off, making his mitigation drop to zero for a few seconds so the priest has to go nuts healing and start out on the defensive. If the rogue gets on you, your warrior should get on the priest. Other than that, try to keep both hamstrung, but don't dps both or you make it too easy for them with PoM. I haven't played enough good rogue/priests to know much more than that.

I am looking for advice on how warrior/resto shaman can deal with hunter/healer teams. We've been playing more and more teams like this lately, and I had virtually no arena experience against hunters in seasons 1 and 2, so help would be much appreciated. My main problem against the hunter is that my mana gets drained very quickly.

I generally start the match mounted and try to LoS the hunter, with our warrior trying to take down the pet. Unfortunately, by devoting my full attention to avoiding the mana drain, I haven't been able to really do anything else, such as interrupting cc's on the warrior or heals on the pet. Once I do expose myself (whether from needing to heal my teammate, or from eating a form of cc from the hunter's teammate), then the mana drain starts and the game spirals quickly out of control. What should we be doing?

Set your pet to "stay" in a position where you are not going to be fighting beforehand (but carefull that this position isn't totally oor of your position so you don't despawn it). If the priest then comes to you with the pet and the rogue throws on bladeflurry/ the warrior sweeping strikes just press passiv on the petbar and the pet will go to the position you marked beforehand. Thus countering their AE dmg on both you and your pet.

You must keep the pets poison off you at all costs, it's your number one priority (keep totem down and then use depoison), and keep water shield up every time it's dispelled or wears off. When viper sting hits you need to depoison it immediately. Try to get off 2-3 purges on the priest and have your warrior get on the priest. You then have to LOS the hunter and priest (mana burn) as much as you can. When their priest is needing to get off some crucial heals, the hunter will often times scatter shot the warrior and then trap him. It's important that your communication with the warrior is good as you need to save grounding totem so it eats the trap. If you can manage to eat 1-2 traps (with either a grounding or the shaman hitting the trap instead of the warrior), then it's usually a win. When the priest gets to around 30-40%, blow bloodlust and hopefully the warrior can finish him off. Save bloodlust for when the priest needs to heal and can't consume a GCD on a dispell of lust off the warrior. We've tried killing the scorpid pet, but I'd rather have it on me to proc water shield as this fight is usually mana intensive.

If you can kill the scorpid pet, you pretty much win. Water shield is nice, but not being viper stung and being able to drink is much nicer. An oom hunter (which he will be if the fight drags on) does basically no damage at all to a warrior or to a shaman and you can just make sure he never drinks and you win. I've had games where I was at 500 mana when the pet finally died, both me and my partner were at 50% health, and the priest had >50% mana, and winning was trivial once the pet was dead.

That said, definitely don't just try to pile onto the pet outright. Mend and heals and hunter CC will keep it alive and they're going to destroy your mana in the meantime. Melee it when you're out of LoS though and try to wear it down a bit, and then once it gets to half health, have your warrior rush over and try to burst it down.

When my pet dies in arena it will end up in a loss probably 80 percent of the time especially on the Blades Edge. I know most hunters are respecing to 11/41/9 to help thier pet since it is so crucial. This spec allows our pet to travel at 30 faster speed, imp pet rez only req 1k mana and is only a 4 sec cast. The speed is a tremendous help against droods. Shaman it would seem no way to escape unless you mounted pillar humped.

Rogue/Druid vs Hunter/Druid. I've deemed this impossible for the Rogue team. Impossible. If anyone can tell me how to beat that overpowered team, please do, because I cannot find ANY weakness.

Warlock/Druid has a small advantage versus Hunter/Druid, once the Warlock/Druid figures out what to do they should have around 55/45 advantage.