Hi Emogn,

from my perspective as a druid, i would say that you will most likely only win the mana war. In my opinion you simply can´t kill a good pala with support from a warrior before he goes oom.

What we do is CC spam the warrior, force dispells and/or bof. With trash debuffs etc. it will take him quite a lot of mana to get his warrior free. If he uses freedom on the warrior he will eat DPS because my war will hit him freely without any pillar kiting possible. If he gets himself bof the warriors DMG is nerfed alot.

At some point the warrior eventually thinks he has to go on me (i offer myself with apparent bad positioning) to make progress on my manabar. At this point i hot my warrior to give him full HP and kite the enemy warrior behind a pillar. There i can freely CC him and run on the other side of the arena and drink to full (nelf ftw?). Most warriors don´t run after me but go on my war to force me to heal him. At this point my war already nukes the pala with shield on so the pala can´t get any drink ticks in and i have enough time to drink alot. I pop out, hot him and we repeat the procedure.

This is our way to handle those teams. Works at least good for us. What do you think could counter that strat?

I'm a warlock looking for some advice on 2v2 strategy. I run with a holy pally, both of us are a little over 300 resilience. We started out going SL/SL and him holy, but the idea of outlasting druid teams with them being able to CC my pet wasn't working out very well. This week we tried felguard spec for me and he staying holy as healer/dps. I focused more on CC and didn't do much mana draining and it seemed to work out better.

To get to my main point, we've been doing 2s for a good 5 weeks now and we've been slowly gaining maybe 10 rating a week, usually going 5-5 or 6-4. I feel like a 300 res team should be going up more quickly toward the 1700s rating where people say locks can get to easily.

We really only have trouble with a few teams, most notably warrior/caster, spriest/rogue, and double rogue teams. Most of the time if he can heal through the burst damage, we can down the teams. How do you avoid the spam CC of the double rogue team? We have yet to win a single match against them.

Personally I found that the single biggest improvement was simply playing more - expecting to see significant improvements in play at only 10 games a week can be a pretty big ask, particular if it's a combo/partner you're not very familiar with. Had the same sort of situation (different combo though) and by simply putting in a decent number of games in a couple of solid blocks managed to get a better feel for things and go from stuck sub 1600 each week after the usual 10 games to 1750ish consistently.

I realise this isn't anything impressive by the standards of most posters here but having not done any PVP of note in TBC until Season 3 I found that exposure necessary to get a better feel for the flow of arenas and how to work within the context of a particular partnership/combo.

I'd also add that playing regularly is important. When my 5v5 set aside only one session a week to play and that was the only arena I was doing, I felt very rusty. Picking new targets, communication, teamwork and all those muscle memory responses that you get from playing alot can decrease as well as increase in a very short time.

Well the s4 drinking changes are going to hurt a lot I think. They'll just watch which pillar you run behind, wait for the stun to wear off, run to the same spot and pop blood rage and thunderclap or demo shout before you can get any drink ticks.

The only counter I can think of is just letting you drink and focusing the warrior, then when you come back to heal time a intercept + hoj + int shout on you while they finish the warrior. Well that or the warrior avoiding the CC to begin with. With justice on you and good use of cooldowns (int shout, pummel, intercept) you might have some trouble getting the warrior CC'd if it's well played.

Well I guess I kind of have a hard time understanding your situation. It seems like your telling me that the warrior on the paladin team trys to damage your warrior instead of focusing almost entirely on you, which is completely different then what we run into.

Our main issue is the warrior attacsk my druid and then my druid gets JOJ on him and he is unable to get the warrior off him, and with me attacking the warrior if the warrior sticks to my druid with freedom he unleashes a ton of damage.

We also for some reason only really ever play good paladin/warrior teams on Ruins of Lordaeron which is probably the worst map for us against this combo as my druid cant LOS the warrior's pally for heals very well.

Recently we've been doing better against this combo. I strictly stick to the warrior and we try to LOS the pally as much as possible so hes forced to throw big Holy lights instead of spamming flash. The warrior also some times has to break off my druid otherwise get killed due to lack of heals, in which case my druid is usually good enough to run and get a bit of drinking in.

Its still a hard matchup for us though, the good thing is we don't see more then a few teams with this combo just because paladin/warrior suffers against so many other matchups.

We´ve experienced that this offensive strat from a pala/war team leads us to a quick mana battle win. Usually you can get at least 1 hot up before you eat that HOJ or intercept. With bear form, demoralizing roar and on cooldown use of disarm, a druid survives really long. At some point i can get away and drink whilst my war can tank those 2 with shield and def stance long enough to survive till I´m back on stage.

Our hardest Matchups were those with extreme pala pillar kiting.

Since this thread is currently on the topic of holy pallies in 2v2 i thought i'd better chip in and ask some advice. I play a rogue (shs) with my bro playing pally (holy) and we a decently geared and probably play 20 games a week in 2s and have done for quite some time. The highest we've gotten is 1750 and we've just been absolutely sodomised back down to near 1600 and we're freaking angry and confused.

Has anyone made the holy pally/rogue combo work recently at ratings over even 1850?! In my humble opinion we are decent players and we should be doing better than we are - we are very confident against double DPS teams - 2 rogues all day any day yes please but anything with a druid or a priest in it generally destroys us. We most commonly come up against full vengeful war/druid or rogue/druid or priest/rogue teams and it goes something like this:

- war/druid: warrior charges the pally and i have to choose between leaving them to it, opening on the war as well and actually finding the druid (not easy). If i leave them to it my pally bro holds his own pretty well against a war for a while but lets face it...s3 2 handed weapons and bleeds are gonna do my bro over. If i attack the druid pops out and hots the war then cyclones my bro and the warrior charges me and hamstrings me/hammers me. Chasing the druid becomes hard as hell with a warrior on you even with JoJ. If you dont chase the druid you have him on the loose healing, cycloning more than is honestly reasonable (i really think this ability is OTT) and drinking at will. We win a few of these when i manage a blind > sap on the druid and we drop the warrior but taking down the druid is practically impossible if his war is good. can't count the number of times i have had a druid on 2% then been charged/cycloned etc to watch the bastage heal on up and bail.
- druid/rogue: with an offensive build on the druid these guys have the druid open up and blast the pally. If i attack the druid the rogue opens on me > cyclone on pally > switch DPS to me and i die. cant really leave the pally on his own to trade blast with a boomkin so kinda have to open the druid some time.
- rogue/priest: not so bad this one but we still lose 3/4 of these - seems to me if we get on the rogue and force heals from the priest that might work but at some point the rogue generally vanishes out and the priest more often than not burns my bros mana into the ground. If i go on the priest the rogue sits on me and brings on a world of pain.

Gotta know what to do about these combos - without a word of a lie i think we played 24 or so games yesterday starting at 1650 rating and we faced (and lost) in 13 games against one of the above combos - won the other 11 or so v other combos.

Finally - and i realise this has gone on a bit long but hey i am venting here - we live in the UK and NZ respectively and play on US servers with 300-400ms which is a disadvantage and we play at around 1pm Wednesday server time when we suspect the hard core only are playing.......has anyone noticed if, like poker, it is better to do arenas at peak times when more players are on and therefore looser (worse) players to take advantage of?

Druss, this is what I would suggest in those situations:

Druid/warrior: Don't let the warrior charge. Seriously, this is important. It will give him enough rage to springboard his attacks. If you can get him in combat and stop his charge, you'll also interrupt his starting plan. Also, ShS-sap is a great way to buy some time as long as the warrior isn't in berserker stance. If he is in berserker stance and he blows berserker rage to clear the sap, then you can gouge him later since rage will be on cooldown. Make sure your pally is mounted, and have him always running around and jumping. If the warrior charges and he's mid-air, he will keep flying through the air and land a few steps away from the warrior. This will prevent the warrior from getting a hamstring on, and he can stay mounted. The warrior will either wait to charge again, or he will go berserker and intercept. The key is delaying the real fight as long as possible to try to lure out the druid. If you can lure the druid out, let the paladin out-heal/bubble/bop his way out of the warrior, and stick to the druid. Shiv the druid up to a 5/5 wound stack and make sure the pally JoJ's the druid. Make sure your pally saves hammer of justice for when you need to nuke the druid. As soon as the warrior intercepts you or intervenes the druid, have your pally HoJ the warrior and DPS the druid. If the warrior trinkets the HoJ, focus blind him asap. This should give you more than enough time to nuke the druid down, and then it's an easy evasion tank win against the warrior.

Also, if the druid is stubborn and won't show himself, go beat on the warrior while watching your surroundings. The druid will most likely start to cyclone one of you - you need to be prepared and ShS->kick instantly. Then you switch DPS to the druid and play it out as described earlier.

My friend and I are having troubles in our 2v2.. We run a warlock/druid combo (sounds good right?) He is a moonkin though. I was just wondering if there are any moonkin's with high ratings out there that could give us some advice. Should we be more offensive both while i cc the healer, or should i be dotting everything and have him be cc(cyclone) We mainly have trouble with other dmg healer teams. We tried him as resto, but he doesn't enjoy it so I want to see if any moonkin could give us some advice! =D

Good stuff - thanks for the tips. I still think it's going to be messy if the warrior knows his onions because unless your timing is legendary odds are as soon as i get ont he druid he will get on me and i'll be hamstrung ASAP whilst the druid jogs off at normal pace even under JoJ.........but we can try as you suggest and in particular the initial charge prevention. Also - i generally offhand crip poison and main hand wound - i can weapon sawp my OH to shiv mind numbing if required as well - but i would almost never have wound on the OH to shiv.........though i guess i could go MH mind numb OH1 crip OH2 wound - id be interested to hear poison choices rogue make in arena if it varies from this.

I have been wondering what would happen if me and the pally just opened straight up and strong on the warrior with a consecrate down and just stood our ground. Between us + consecrate the warrior is going to be in a world of pain.........if we can HoJ and blind sap the druid to force panic heals then just run him OOM with damage on the war that might be a viable option. Will try as you suggest + the stand our ground option and see how it goes.

Is there any decent MELEE counterparts to a resto druid in 2v2 that would provide a formidable team....excluding the warrior.

Would a Ret Pally or a Rogue + Resto Druid be anywhere near as effective as war/dru. Is ANYTHING comparable to warrior/druid in 2v2 that involves the resto druid?

........ at the last 2 posters.

ShS rogue/disc priest is okay for 2v2. Mutilate or combat rogue/disc priest is better tho.

Combat or mutilate rogue/resto druid is perfectly viable. ShS rogue is okay with resto druid but a restokin would be better I think for shs.

My holy paladin friend and I just got completely pwnt this week. I don't know what happened but I just couldn't catch the druids this time around. We went from the 1630 rating to 1570 because we lost almost every game. I'm going to post a video and my armory spec link because I really need some advice. I had the druid totally OOM and he managed to pop travel form, run across the arena, shadowmeld and drink to 2k mana before I could get there.

Where was his partner when this happened. Would it have been possible for you to start burning the partner and kill him before the druid could return?

It's not always best practice to chase a druid when he goes to drink. Put enough pressure on his partner that when he comes back he will have to position himself less than ideally which opens up the opportunity to fear. If he can even get back at all to heal his partner before he dies.

As mentioned, often when this happens it's better to NOT chase the druid, but instead start killing his partner, while both you and your paladin get ready to interfere with the druid when he comes back to heal. Don't forget that holy paladins can contribute a substantial amount of burst damage to help finish somebody off, by judging righteousness+holy shock+hammer of wrath. Divine favor also works with holy shock offensively for that extra punch. Your paladin can position himself between the druid and his partner so that when the druid comes back to heal, he gets a HOJ, and then you fear the druid while you both kill his partner. It does depend on his partner though, and your paladin needs to be careful about that positioning because if he has to heal you he is opening himself up for a feral charge lockout, so it depends on your health as well.

I play as a Resto Druid (11/11/39) with a Warrior Partner in the 2200+ bracket, and we find DPS/Paladin teams to go down fairly easy by sticking to the same basic formula: If their DPS is a Warrior, kill the Paladin. If anything else, kill the DPS. Doing either of these requires a good deal of communication and timing to lock out the Paladin, but as a Warrior/Druid, you have plenty of options.

First, against a Warrior/Paladin, we've found through a lot of trial and error, that attacking the Warrior (I.E. Enemy Warrior on Druid, Friendly Warrior on Enemy Warrior, Paladin on Druid to prevent Feral Charge) is a mess as it increases the Enemy Warrior's damage output a great deal via rage and lets the Paladin nearly freely heal, meaning huge efficiency. Instead, we ignore the Warrior so he's lower on Rage and kill the Paladin.

Defense: The most important thing to remember here is that even though the Druid is limited to normal speed usually, he still has a number of options to create distance between himself and the Warrior and should do so at every opportunity. Use Bear Form > Bash > Cyclone to force a trinket (if it's not been used), otherwise use Cyclone frequently on the Warrior. If the Druid hasn't already, practice the fake cast to get a pummel between casts. However, DO NOT freak out if a cast gets caught in interrupt. Most Druids panic, but remember the lockout time from Pummel is much less than the cooldown time, so wait it out. If the Druid get interrupted, immediately Bearform and wait (Demo Roar him while waiting if it's not up already). Once the Pummel lockout is over, pop out and Cyclone him. It's important to keep track of cooldowns during this for the Warrior's trinket (and HoJ if you can), but if the Druid knows the Warrior's trinket is down, the Druid now has 6 seconds of freedom to get distance. If necessary, have your Warrior partner intercept the Warrior just as cyclone breaks then immediately go back to the Paladin (avoiding any swings on the Warrior and thus giving him rage).

It looks like you're Alliance which means Druid Night Elf, so you should be able to take advantage of shadow meld. If the Druid is good at timing, he can also follow up the 6-sec Cyclone with another 3-sec Cyclone to land just as the last one fades. Most Warriors (due to lag or what not) won't get an Intercept off in time between casts.

With your Warrior on the Paladin, most cases BoF will be off the Warrior by now and the Paladin won't be in range of you, so the Druid can frequently get Seal of Justice to fade during one of these escape moments. It's also very helpful against these teams to cat and restealth when possible. It's hard to give an accurate number, but I'd estimate I can get an average of 1-2 restealths off during any given healer/dps matchup. Against Warriors, anticipate their path and Dash so you're that much faster at escaping where they'll Piercing Howl. Sometimes they catch you, but usually they're not fast enough at realizing it and you can immediately Cyclone or Root them. If BoF isn't up on a Warrior and the Druid lands a Root, throw a Rank 1 Faerie Fire up on him.

Another very useful thing I've found against Warrior/Healer is to frequently use Barkskin. The cooldown is quite short, so if it's up, I almost always use it immediately following an Intercept Stun, which really cuts down on my damage intake during that particular attack sequence.

Also, very important: Make sure the Druid DOES NOT use his trinket until he gets Hammer of Justiced, as he'll almost always die during a full 6 sec stun (or be too injured to recover). Obviously he can't Trinket every time HoJ is up, but if the Warrior is near him and HoJ lands, trinket early to prevent the burst. Also, remember trinket removes Seal of Justice as well so it's a great way to escape with a well timed piercing howl from your Warrior if needed or a Bear > Bash > Cyclone or just Cyclone on the Warrior.

Offense: As mentioned, we attack the Paladin against War/Pal combos and while it seems strange, it works well with good communication. We basically start the fight without doing anything special. My Warrior is HoTed from pre-battle casts while I'm stealthed. Usually Warriors will engage each other. While it can be useful to Pounce > Claw the Paladin for a quick couple of combo points at the start and to prevent the first heal, it also means you're in range of both Intercept and Seal of Justice, which is usually a bad way to start, so I position max range of my Warrior (so the Warrior's are between myself and the Paladin) and Regrowth my Warrior out of stealth > Rejuv > Lifebloom (x2 if your Warrior isn't full or near it) while I'm side stepping away from the fight towards a pillar. Spam drink until you drop combat. Usually the Warrior will start coming toward you by now with the Paladin close behind, so if you can manage, restealth and run away.

During this time, your Warrior was on the other Warrior to build up Rage, but not spending much of it. Now he immediately Intercepts the Paladin to prevent the Paladin from getting Seal of Justice off on you and starts beating on him. Since intercept was just used, let the Paladin's first few casts (usually Flash of Lights) go off just making sure to keep MS up. The Warrior wants to be sure Intercept is up within 4 seconds before starting a rotation.

Once Intercept is up soon, the Warrior reapplies MS, then Pummels the next heal. He'll then backout and Intercept the next heal. This should be enough time to Pummel the third heal. By now, Warrior has mentioned to your Druid or otherwise that he's starting the combo, and the Druid should make his way toward the Paladin just within Feral Charge range. The Druid interrupts the next heal and calls that he'll get the following cast as well. Feral Bash the next cast (this is number 5 in the sequence). From here you have a few options. If it hasn't happened by now, the Paladin will bubble soon but that's expected. Your Warrior should piercing howl their Warrior who likely intercepted your Druid and has been beating on him in Bear Form during this cycle. Again, avoid the temptation to attack their Warrior and instead play defensively while Bubble is up. Your Druid should be trying to get distance again on both players, and since Paladin is Bubbled, Cyclone the Warrior if needed. Once distance is met, your Warrior starts building rage again on the Paladin without interrupting.

From there, once ready, repeat the cycle again. Pummel > Intercept > Pummel > Feral Charge > Feral Bash (sometimes not up again by now, depending how quickly you restarted the sequence) > Cyclone, to prevent heals.

Expect the Paladin to trinket it, so be ready to cast again immediately for a second interrupt. If he doesn't trinket it, all the same to you with a 6 sec to 3 sec lockout. In cases where your Druid is too low to risk popping into Caster for Cyclones, your Warrior should use Fear as the next interrupt (be sure to turn off auto-attack to not break it early). Most Paladins will Trinket this if they didn't the Cyclone earlier. Warrior should Bloodrage and Deathwish by now. Your Warrior Pummels next heal and back out for an Intercept on next heal. Follow with another Pummel if needed, but by now most Paladins will be down or in panic mode and unable to keep up. Since your Druid spent most of the time in Bear Form while near the Paladin when the Warrior is on him, he shouldn't be taking much damage.

One final trick that works well against Pal/War (Shaman teams also) is this: If you want another interrupt during your combo on their healer, land a full Cyclone on their Warrior (be sure you know their trinket is down so it's full 6-sec) then immediately go Cat Form and start Clawing the Paladin. You should be able to get 2-3 combo points before you have to shift due to Cyclone breaking, but that's all you need, and even 1 combo point is sufficient. Now during your combo, you can use Cat Form > Maim as an interrupt if your Druid is ballsy/confident/has the Warrior locked down in some way.

Good luck, hope this helps in some way.

Well, I can't offer much in the way of class-specific advice as I've never played either a Warlock or Hunter in arenas, but one thing that will really help is to be more aware of your own positioning in relation to line of sight. As a Warlock-based damage team, your team's strength comes from virtually endless fire-and-forget damage. Take advantage of that by loading up DoTs on the other team and/or pets then getting out of LoS of their damage dealer. Multiple times in the fight, but especially around 1:10, you are in the wide open space of the map against a Hunter, who will easily out damage you (and does, also killing your pet) for these moments in a head-to-head situation. Ideally, you can DoT him up then run behind the center pillar to LoS and let the DoTs do their work. Your team will have to win the mana war in most cases as your burst is low.

Additionally, as others mentioned, most successful Pal/Lock teams I come across go for a kill in almost completely set intervals, based on my trinket cooldown (I'm a Resto Druid with a Warrior partner) and the diminishing returns on their fear. If I attempt to drink, they both switch to my partner. If they know my trinket is down, the Warlock positions himself to fear as soon as I'm in range, followed by another fear, while the Paladin is moving in range to Justice stun me, followed by a final Death Coil from the Warlock. It doesn't always work, but at the very least, it forces a great deal of mana consumption to keep the other team's DPS alive, but this may not work as well against other set ups (Healer/Rogue comes to mind).

In any event, try to take advantage of LoS to get "free" damage on your targets while you're safe and your partner will have more time to heal you and the pet up as well.

Thanks, I didn't realize that positioning was that vital... I've been trying to focus more on mana draining but I believe that against a druid, CC and positioning is much more important as you guys have stressed. Hopefully I can put this to good use and put up a better fight next week. I apologize for the boring video, but I felt it would be much easier for someone to critique if they could actually see from my view, rather than depending on my description of the battle.

Just DoTing everything ends up being just about as effective at running the other team OOM as actually using Drain Mana, and it has the secondary bonus of killing someone if their healer falls asleep. Drain Mana is still good, but prioritize full DoTs on everything.

Jarf, you need to Fear a lot more. I think I counted the number of Fears you cast in that match on one hand.

Hug up to the tomb in the middle. There was never really a reason at any point in that match for you to be more than a few steps away from that tomb. Get right next to it and run circles around it constantly, throwing out dots on the druid, the hunter, and the hunter pet. Keep the dots on all three, don't let them fall off. If the hunter starts teeing up on you, then hide behind the tomb. You want to make the hunter have to spend as much time possible chasing rather than actually shooting. Fear needs to be used much, much more liberally - a huge chunk of that time you spent casting immolate should have been spent casting fear.

There was also a good chunk of the time your felguard was standing idle by your side not doing anything, and often getting shot up in the process. Put the pet on the druid, turn off auto-intercept, and bind intercept to a hotkey so that you can use it on demand on the druid for an extra interrupt, and to stun him in caster form so you can get a fear on him in caster, which allows for a mana drain. But make sure all the dots are up, too. Also, whenever you go for a pet resummon, never ever do it out in the open. Get right up next to the tomb, out of LOS of both of them if possible, and then try the cast. If it gets interrupted, don't stand still, move around to a different side of the tomb and then try it again. For that matter, any time your tree gets locked out, don't stand still, move to a better location while you wait.

We played some more games today and got back to 1604. We're going to try to play probably 50 games a weekIsh to get better at arena. Since season 4 should be out soon I want to get as much practice in as possible before the big reset.

Yes, definitely. In fact Rogues in general are probably the best 2v2 partner for Disc Priests.

According to SK-gaming Priest/Rogue is the 2nd most popular high-rated 2v2 combo (after Druid/War). A good ~10% of all 2k+ teams are Priest/Rogue combos. The majority of the Priests in these combos appears to be Disc and the Majority of Rogues ShS. There are some Shadow and Combat specs. At the very top ratings Mutilate appears to be rather rare.

I personally went from 1500 to 1700 in two weeks, going 9-3 this week, so I see no reason why we wouldn't go up a fair bit further. I'm wearing S1 Arena and S3 Honor stuff, so my gear is lacking. My Rogue is very nicely geared though. He's ShS spec. The one thing missing perhaps is Vile Poisons. A ShS Rogue can take it, but mine didn't. I'd recommend it to you, because it makes beating War/Dru teams easier and they will eventually be your main opposition.

Against double DPS the combo works via Pain Suppression, instant heals and a bit of limited CC. Against double Undead without getting a sap in can be pretty challenging. But usually my Rogue can disrupt one enemy Mage/Lock/other Caster well enough for me to survive the other dps until one of them drops.

Against Healer/DPS it works via Mana Burn/Wound Poison. Bursting is pretty hard to execute because off cooldowns on all CC but Mind Control. The idea is that the Rogue stays on the dps (exception: Priest Healers) and the Priest fights a mana battle against the healer. Usually with Fear to get a few Mana Burns in, dispelling whatever is around, instant healing the Rogue.

For the Priest positioning is of utmost importance. I stay near a LoS-breaking object all game essentially. When fighting Warriors/Rogues I also stay more than 30 yards away from them. Healing range is longer than Intercept/ShS so I see no reason to expose myself, except for the occasional dispel.

Care must be taken not to let the enemy healer drink, so while staying by the LoS-breaker the Priest also has to be near the other healer. Palas/Shamans are easy to catch, Druids aren't.

Summed up:
Disc/ShS is a viable 2v2 combo that, on the face of it, has no hard counter, but a few slightly more difficult matchups.