So this season I 2v2'd with a rogue RL friend pretty effectively, we stayed 2200+ for most of the season. However, with the CC nerf, we're only going to get worse and I wanted to try something new. So, I was wondering what you guys have 2v2'd effectively with. I was thinking Feral Druid, but after reading the topic about them, I'm a little discouraged What have people had success with?

I run with an elemental sham, he's got great resto gear (use to be the main healer for our 3v3) that he can swap into before a fight if needed. Bloodlust+our burst is pretty much gibbed within 5 seconds even on a 250 resil tank with a pally.

Plus the totems are especially nice buffs. Grounding is amazing if you're smart about it and stomp it at the last second. A grounding totem+flare is a pretty solid defense against stealth gimmick teams.

I'd say holy priest or resto druid.

I play with a hunter and we've been hovering around 2400 for the past couple of months. The only teams we've really run into problems with are warrior/paladin and rogue/resto druid. We're prolly 50/50 against the good warrior/pally teams and we've only played one rogue/resto druid team.

Edit: It depends on the style of play you prefer. We usually drag our games out for a few minutes and burn mana (scorpid pet, viper sting, mana burn) rather than go for a quick nuke on someone.

I have a really good Hunter friend that I'd like to 2v2 with next season.

Anyone think Paladin/Hunter has 2200+ viability? Both players have played at that level before or are currently playing at that level with current teams.

Seems like pally/hunter would just be too plain vulnerable to any team that could get rid of BoF on the hunter, or dispel his poisons/traps. Especially so with the trinket change, and the resulting easier time people will have simply sitting in the hunter's dead zone. Odds are the hunter would end up trying to kite for the most part until his pally ran oom.

Well let's assume a 2v2. Pally/hunter vs any other 2. Let's assume pally/war. Well if the warrior goes on the hunter then the hunter can drain the pally's mana. Imp stings, scorpid, the pally will lose 400+ mana every 2 seconds while viper is on. The warrior shouldn't get the charge off, maybe on the pet but not on the hunter. If the pally BoFreedom's the warrior you can scatter trap the pally (or chain this immediately after the viper ends) The hunter (MM) has many counter's to a warrior/pally team. Intercept stun, hamstrung, get a freedom, scatter shot warrior and get away. 4 seconds gets you out of melee range and the warrior doesn't touch you for 25 seconds until intercept is back up. Using this time your pet is on the pally and your viper is draining their mana.

If the warrior goes for the pally first it depends alot on gear. Well geared pallies who won't die to burst or a single pummeled heal, the hunter has the edge in that he will be draining more mana with viper + damage then the warrior. Still have scatter to buy your pally 4 seconds time, get off a free heal, get outa melee range etc.

The biggest problem i see with hunter/pally is shaman/warrior, since WF and Sword Spec can be alot of burst, however with no BoF you and your pally can abuse Frost Trap.

It comes down either to the hunter/pally can outlast the other healer's due to mana drain, or the other team can't help the warrior stay in melee range and you can kite the warrior around.

Should the melee team be a rogue it's much the same, except personally i have stoneform for snares as well and JoJ keeps the rogue from sprinting.

I 2v2 with a Rogue, made it to nearly 2200 last season. My Rogue partner is Mut/Sub specced, 41/0/20, and I'm MM/SV, 0/43/18. Unfortunately, the trinket "buff" will likely eat us alive, so we're looking for a good 3v3 healer to give us a chance.

Edit: What would everyone think of a boomkin partner? Not that I know any quality ones, but seems to me with cyclone/magic ranged DPS/healing if needed it could work.

I used to play a hunter before re-rolling as shaman , so I'm understandably skeptical about this sort of team.

What exactly do you do as the hunter with a BoF'ed warrior in your face? You would have to play with a priest or shaman to keep BoF off the other team, but then you give up BoF on yourself, which is probably the most important buff you can get as a hunter (Or warrior, or rogue, for that matter.)

With a snake trap, scorpid pet, and improved stings it would be possible to keep a viper up, but it's doubtful that you can drain the other team's paladin + put enough dps on the warrior to make him need heals before the warrior with BoF (And 15 second intercept for when BoF drops) can put you down. And the dps you can do to the paladin in the meantime is not great, since he can just play LoS games with you. It just comes back to not having a real way to do any dps if you have a warrior or rogue on you supported by BoF or cleanse/dispel.

It comes down to not being able to gain distance. You can use frost traps, but if you both have paladins, what does it matter? If the Warr is playing with a shaman, he will not have BoF, but neither will you- Purge spam. Grounding totem eats traps as well, and with the trinket change anyone can break one. The shaman matchup would be even worse than the war/pal, since the warrior would get to work on you with WF + Heroism/Bloodlust, and any BoP or BoF you get will get purged straight off. Getting poisons on a shaman is much harder as well, since they get poison cleanse totem in addition to their spammable self cleanse. Earth shield just means that your pet's hits are also healing any damage you can dish out.

Druid/priest healers would be considerably more vulnerable I think, (Non dwarf priests, that is), but it really seems that your only viable option is to play double DPS, and use your traps/scatter/or even a wyvern to control the match. Hunter + another CC class should work out reasonably well, so long as you can burst down one of the other team while your CC is in effect (Iffy considering anyone can tinket any CC now, but still potentially possible.)

Caster teams might make for a better matchup, since you will have much more freedom to act without a warrior or rogue right on top of you, but I just think it would be an extreme uphill battle against melee teams that know their stuff.

Which is why Hunters are the least played class in the top 2v2 teams. We simply don't cut it in arenas with the issues the map design presents us with. However, I do feel that with a healer myself and my rogue partner would both do better, as rogue/hunter has significant problems with ice mages and warrior/paladin teams, moreso since the global CC nerf.

Back on topic, boomkin/Hunter seems to resolve some of the issues presented. Cyclone goes through BoF; would keep the warrior off the Hunter for awhile, assuming the warrior went on the hunter. And, to be honest, with boomkin + hunter burst damage we could likely keep the paladin cycloned/silenced/scattered long enough to force him into a losing war with keeping the warrior up. Thoughts?

That actually might work pretty decently, it just comes down to how well you can control the fight I think. Druids can kite warriors nearly endlessly if they don't get slapped with a JoJ, and you would be able to help him out with scatters if needed. If the warrior goes on the druid, druid kites while you dps. He goes on you, the druid can cyclone and root him (And or nuke him and make the pally stay in LoS to heal). I think it would come down to needing to win decisively before the druid is out of options to keep the warrior off you/keep you up, because once the cyclones and roots run out you just can't last that long against a warrior with any sort of T2+ weapon.

Seems like it would be preeetty funny really to juggle the warrior between two solid kiting classes though.

Spec BM, I play with a Felguard Warlock and we have an amount of burst that is just insane. We don't lose any match versus Pala War, but feel some pain against double feral, because their opening burst is so harmful. With just a warlock stone for heal, we need to bash the opposite team while the bestial wrath cooldown is running, otherwise we're plain dead.

In addition to its effectiveness, this combo is just pure fun to play, if you like the "nuke nuke nuke until they're dead dead dead" style.

If someone has 4 stacks of poison already on him then it takes 2 or three cleanses to dispel viper instead of one.

But I guess to get that amount of poisen stacks you need snake trap which is almost killed instantly by most paladins, but yes it will cost alot of their GC if they want to remove it which should give you alot of time to damage his allies.

Uh, that's why you get the scorpid, it stacks poison up to 5. Snake trap is a good bonus as well though since it can do mind numbing

Ok. Thought 5 stacks still only counted as one poisen (one dispell) but this is really good news against holy palas with immense amount of mana.

Holy Priest & Hunter works really well.

Don't try to burst DPS, it's a great mana burn set-up.

A really good BM Hunter + UA Warlock is really, really nasty.

It requires some very good CC but the burst potential is pretty amazing.

Could you elaborate on this a little?

I would suggest paladin or resto druid. I (resto druid) played 2on2 with a MM hunter last season and I was more than surprised how well the combination seemed to work. We ended up at 2475 rating at the end of season 1.

The best part is that you are playing with a healer extremely hard to lock down, considering all the escape abilities a druid has, while you still get the crowd control to keep a melee off you. Scorpion pet and viper sting does sooner or later put the enemy healer out of mana, and as long as you can keep yourselves up during that time, you win in the long run. The common setup warrior/paladin turned out to be one of the easier combinations for us. Rogue teams have a hard time versus traps and double druid CC too, and teams relying on a mage's polymorph and CS will have a hard time versus a resto druids shapeshifts and HoT's.

What we struggle against is mainly warlocks. We're both vulnerable to fears and mana burns/drains and the felhunter is extremely efficient versus druid HoT's. And they dont go out of mana like a mage och shadow priest. Luckily, the common warlock setup is with a priest, which is ironically probably is the best healer for us in that case. While double mana burns can be problematic, priests are also the only healer without poison cleanse, making them by far easiest healer to put out of mana. This usually makes it even fights with roughly 50/50 outcome versus the best opponents we played. I would personally fear warlock/druid, warlock/pally or even warlock/shaman more, but luckily these combinations seem to be lacking versus other setups.

Double dps teams can also be a problem, but usually only when its warlock/x, due to the same reasons as mentioned above.

That said, I do think a paladin could be an option as team mate. You will need something to keep melee off you, and paladins are the only ones except druids which can provide you with that. While some may disagree with me, I don't see hunter/priest or hunter/shaman working among the absolute top teams. Though my guess would be that the biggest difference is to be seen versus enemies with lots of CC and heal interrupts. While I think a paladin can match a druid versus melee enemies, I think a constantly moving druid who is healing 90% with instant heals will clearly outperform a paladin who has to be standing still using cast time heals when the enemy team have warlocks, mages or shadowpriests in the setup.

Last note. I have doubts about moonkin druids. While the extra damage added could be nice and you still get the same utility as from a resto druid, your strong side is still outlasting and winning by draining enemy mana. And if you fail at killing someone in the opening part of the game, you might be losing the mana war too. If you find a good moonkin it could definitely be worth a shot though.

Good Luck.

I (Warrior/Pally)went up against a Hunter (Survival) and Shaman (Resto) team. They had a good setup going, kiting me through his traps (lol entrapment) while the Shaman purged off my BOF.

I'd think Druid would be a good matchup since the hunter could stay at 30-35 yards of the Druid, and the opposing force has to make a choice : Chase around the Druid, or watch the Hunter get healed and someone else get trapped. Seems to me like a fairly good synergy could be developed from this strat. But who knows i'm just an ezmode paladin

Deris, what type of druid do you recommend?