My Paladin friend and I have a real tough time against some combinations of double dps/caster teams. Most notably, Warlock and Shadow priest. We went up against a team last night that we lost 50 points to (in two games). Obviously, we stopped after that.

We also lost to a Elemental Shaman, Prep Rogue(?) team that was rated about the same as us (2150+). We shouldn't have lost, because I had the Shaman down to 24%, but died right before the heal.

Another team we have a problem with is a Mage and non healer team.

Usually, I go for a priest if there is one, a cloth-class with a rogue, or the more squishy of the two dps classes.

Does anyone have any strategy for these types of matchups? We lost nearly 100 points from our rating last night and are probably going to try and get it back today, to get us back in the magic number for netherdrakes.

There aren't really that many Warlock/Mage teams in the 2100+ range that I have seen so far. The typical match that we have with a Shadow Priest/Warlock goes like this:

- Charge/Intercept the Shadow Priest,
- Dotted up by both
- Paladin gets feared by either Shadow Priest/Warlock, breaks with trinket
- Sometimes first heal is spell locked
- I stay on priest, to avoid mana burn (maybe this is what I should change, most of the time they do not switch out of shadow form to heal)
- I get deathcoiled
- Paladin gets dotted
- Fear again on paladin
- I get low
- Paladin shields
- Mass dispel
- Silence
- I die, Paladin dies right after

Usually I have the priest to 20% by this time, so if we could find a way to stay alive for something like 30 more seconds, we would be able to win.

Wear shadow resist.

Or bubble very early. 12 seconds of warrior beatdown is a lot of pressure on a team without a true healer.

We tried that strategy, but it is pretty hard for me to dps down a priest in 12 seconds. They usually come out with shields on, we wait for them to wear off then go in, but he just puts another one up. By the time I get the one down, he can put another one up (lack of rage), but then I do not have any problems after those initial two shields.

I am starting to think that if the Shadow Priest is in shadow form, go for the warlock and pray he doesnt start to mana burn. If I can get him out of shadow form to heal the warlock, its basically over.

Kill the Felhunter first, too.

My Pally (2x 2 piece bonus glad) and a Warrior (4 piece glad / deep thunder) friend of mine started a 2v2 last night and shot up to nearly 1900 in ~3 hours. However we then ran into a slew of caster /caster mixes that were giving us a heck of a time. Maybe you guys can provide some insight on these combos.

Here are 2 examples.

Deep Frost / Deep Frost
- Start off the fightw. BoS on warrior to avoid sheep. Blow bubble to avoid CS, top the warrior off. Bubble fades. 2 CS'es to deal with. After 1 either myself or warrior is dead and warrior barely hit even 1 of them due to nova rotation.

Shadow Priest / Mage
Burst + Fear + CS + Dots + Mass Dispel

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I roll with a demonology warlock in 2v2's. My gameplay improved *drastically* once I stopped thinking of divine shield as a defensive tool. This was especially pronounced in mage fights, as they know just how devastating a counterspell is to a paladin. Even better, I've found that mages will check their dps while waiting for you to start casting the big spells (they don't want to miss it). So be sure to use a lot of holy shocks, cleanses and try to bait the counterspells with interrupted casting.

If you're fighting a team with no healers, all you need to do is survive. To that end, 12 seconds of uninterruptable casting on the only person that can be affected by spells and abilities is incredibly powerful.

Ok, at risk to my rating Ill give away the secret. Pummel the Mass Dispell, or have the pally stun the priest (forcing him to trinket), then Int Shout as soon as your pally friend bubbles.

Which to target first depends on the Warlocks spec. Demo = go for priest, Affliction = kill warlock.

Don't worry about mana burn. Don't swap into green shadow resist gear. (We will just kill the pally) Read more about SR gear in the "Nights End" thread.

And if all else fails, hamstring and kite.

That said. Its still a bit of a case of rock paper scissors. SP/Lock beats Warrior/Pally. Rogue/Druid beats SP/Lock. Warrior/Pally beats Rogue/Druid. Thats kinda the life of Two's.

Skill and luck obviously play a bit of a factor, but those matchups are just geared to take advantage of the other's weaknesses.

Once the shields on the priest go down, try charging the lock for rage, hamstringing if you need to, and then moving to the priest after switching to zerker. This allows two possibilities:

1. Breaking or going immune to the first fear with DW or zerker rage
2. A hit or two on the unshielded lock to gain rage.

Also the priest may hit the lock with a shield, which you can ignore since you are switching.

I'm in a holy priest + destro lock 2v2 pair. Our rating isn't astronomical (1500s) but we definitely find MS warrior + holy pally as an easy fight. The only time we lose to that matchup is if the warrior has some really damn good gear (we're still in the 1-2 piece gladiator area), which we do run into now and then and basically when that happens I can't survive more than 4-5 seconds. I suppose though that can be marked up to just being outgeared.

Anyway, let me first show fight as we see it:

-I always stay way the hell back because of charge. Usually the lock will engage you with his felhound to put you in combat, then move it to the pally as we start blasting you. Warriors who mount up and rush as soon as the doors open will usually get the charge off, but usually the pally's a long way off and i'll just gimp kite him away so he barely gets any healing while the warlock burns him down. Not a good scenario for him.

-Don't worry about mana burn, pallies have huge mana bars and it's going to take at least 18-20 seconds of undelayed casting for a priest to clear that out, which is way too long. Pally and druid? You bet i'll probably be mana burning, but not against MS warriors; it's too large a window for you to kill one of us.

-I (priest) am always getting focused. EVERYONE loves going after priests, so we get pretty good at trying to defend against it (and depending on race/etc, often have a handful of semi-useful oh shit buttons), and we plan much of our strat around the assumption that i'll be getting focused. The lock gets targetted i'd say <5% of all matches, and those can throw off our game a bit, since it's kinda unexpected and he's our source of getting health bars down to bursting range. When he's getting attacked it slows that way down, and I'm doing my same stay-alive routine except casting it on him. The end result is we don't get as much DPS on our target, we usually have to blow our fears defensively and if the other team is quick to recover, we're right back to square one and often are completley hosed. Half the fight is doing something that the other team isn't anticipating (but is still somewhat effective of course). If you have two clothies, decide on which target you'd go for first and then rush the other one, it will probably mess up their routine while you're still hacking up a caster like normal.

-Our whole goal is to drop you, the MS warrior. One of us at half health/mana against a holy pally with full bars can still probably be a win, so we're doing everything we can to drop you and get to that point. The pally should be on dot cleanse duty, it's harder to prevent and if the pally's on top of things then the dots will hardly tick. If UA is up then you have a squishy warlock, so consider casting axe on him instead of the priest. I'd also consider letting the pally play russian roulette on dispelling UA, since he's probably not taking much damage and those dots are going to hurt more than normal since it's an aff lock. Bubble-cleansing will negate UA's nastiness alltogether, though that of course blows the bubble for later, so that's a judgement call.

-More on the whole drop the warrior idea, we're going to try and get you to about 50% and then CC the hell out of you and the pally, followed by trinkets and a large payload of burst. Casters, depending somewhat on spec, can have insanely strong bursts and me and my lock buddy can usually finish off a warrior at 50% or 5-6k health if we get about 2 or so seconds of uninterrupted casting (and little or no healing on the warr). Anticipate the CC and have the pally bubble early and top you off, or at the least throw a stun when you think our CC is coming (or trinket+stun as soon as we start CC), anything to throw some speedbumps in our fairly coordinated and precise little tactic.

-Even more on the warrior's role. You're the DPS but you're also the tank, and even if a little undergeared DPS-wise I'm sure you'll agree it doesn't take much to cut down a clothie. The problem is whether can you cut down the clothie before his buddy brings your healthbar into burst range. I'd say the spec + the weapon will give you good tooling for killing, and it's a hitpoint race between you and said clothie after that (on top of foiling their CC+burst combo). I'm going to be working on getting some tanking pieces (trinkets, amulets, cloaks, rings, etc) and while it takes some bite out of my casting, it'll buy time for my warlock to bury the warrior. Having more hitpoints gives you a similar advantage, as you'll take longer to get into burst range and your rage bar will only be going up in that time.

I see those fights as me surviving long enough for the warrior to get within bursting range, then piling on CC and bursting. If the CC rush gets effectively countered, or if it takes too long to get you into bursting range before I'm dead, then we're in trouble.

Wear shadow resist gear.