I started the team as a way for a few of our raiders (and myself) to pick up some easy arena points – none of us were huge pvp'ers and we were initially aiming to just pick up some points with little focus on our rating. But 5v5's have proved a lot of fun, and I wouldn't mind trying to step up our lvl of play a little.

Most of the team contains pve spec'ed (and geared) players. I think average resilence is between 40(!) and 130. Our line-up is usually along the lines of:

Holy Pally
Resto Druid
MS Warrior
Affliction Lock
And either PvE Fire Mage/BM Hunter/Combat Dagger Rogue

Our tactics haven't really evolved much past the other two dps assisting me (the MS warrior) and trying to use our dps to zerg something down before we loose one of our team. We generally pick our assist target based on how much threat they pose, vs how easily we can kill them. To me it feels we generally lack control over the other team (or organised CC) and I'm not sure if we are really playing to our strengths as a team.

So past the obvious line-up/gear/spec changes, what can we do to start getting our rating up? In particular should we be focusing more on CC / Control / countering their dps by harassing all of the other teams dps – or is the assist train still our best bet?

Armory Link

*edit* Any advice on the general roles each person should play would also be useful. For example the roles we were play last night were something alone the lines of:

- Rogue burns cd's ensuring he can stay on the initial assist train target, throwing off a blind as needed. Focus is generally on dmg'ing MA target – should we use the rogue to lock down one of their dps/healers instead?
- Lock generally tries to stay alive while helping us zerg our main assist target – should he be working more on CoT'ing/CC'ing/Dotting up (with UA) their team?
- MS Warrior I am the Main assist and generally just try to stick to assist target primarily keeping MS up, then saving some rage to unload MS/WW/execute combo to try burst a target down. I generally focus on dps rather than trying to protect our squishier targets (with hamstring/disarm/intervene/intercept) as I don't find it does a huge amount of good.
- Druid will generally stay in stealth until his healing is needed – will usually open with a cyclone and tends to use cyclone to stay alive if under pressure and/or CC their healers when we are focusing down a target – otherwise focues on healing.
- Pally - Focuses on healing (obviously). Not sure what else there is to discuss about a holy pallys role :p

The best advice I can give is that everyone in your group for a serious PvP team should have at least 10k hp and 200 resilience, with less than that you are extremely susceptible to dying from burst on an assist train. If nobody else, your resto druid and affliction lock should be beefing up their defenses, since they will be the most likely targets.

While this may be anecdotal, I noticed a distrubring trend last night after 4.5 hours of 5v5. We ran 28-9, with losing 5 of our games to the same general makeup (not the same team) and still reaching top 20 for our Battlegroup. The other 4 we lost were by close margins, usually due to errors on my part (BoSac'd the wrong target, etc... I'm not psychic!) and I feel with a little more work we could defeat the teams that beat us before except for the makeup I was speaking of earlier.

Currently my team is made up of MS War, Frost Mage, Resto Shaman, Holy Paladin, Ass. Rogue, and we keep getting trounced (as in no one dead when we lose) by Warrior/Warrior/Elemental Shaman/Paladin/Paladin. No matter what we tried, we just couldn't kill a single person on their team, and we ran into 2 or 3 different teams with this makeup IIRC.

Our original intuition led to a futile effort to burn down the Shaman. While it seemed a good idea at the time - it just wasn't panning out in reality. The Mage or Rogue are constantly FF'd by the 2 warriors, and all the Shaman does while being focused is spam purge on the current 2 warrior target for BOP/BOF removal. And our Warrior + the Mage or Rogue just doesn't have the damage output to burn through 2 Paladins unabatedly healing.

We do have a Warlock (SL) who can sub in for the Rogue, but I don't think the Lock would make that much of a difference against that team. Any advice from those familiar with this makeup and how to deal with it?

One thing we didn't try was focusing on two people - maybe a Paladin and the Shaman, or fearing the Shaman a few seconds after killing Tremor, and polying the Shaman a bit far out while focusing on both Paladins to split their effective healing, then maybe Bloodlusting for a kill.

I really want to figure out the mechanics of playing and defeating a setup like this, as I think it will be very, VERY popular this season. Moreso because of the prevalence of easy to acquire T3 weapons making Warriors monstrosities with full Glads, while the support healing doesn't have to be decked out by any degree.

Any advice/previous experience? Last season I wasn't on a 5v5 in any real capacity, and thus haven't experienced these teams to any extent. Advice/Wisdom/Laughs?

Interesting, I've noticed more of a prevalence of 4-DPS teams (paladin/spriest/3 DPS), though really it's pretty anecdotal evidence at this point. I'd say elemental + 2x paladin is really more like a 2.5 healer team. That team composition gets raped by good warlocks, though. Curse of Tongues is horrible when you have no mage/druid.

My team (2150ish last season, but none of us respec for arena, so that's pretty good IMO) has been a 3-healer team for 2-3 months now. We've tinkered with our lineup over time, but have settled on war/war/sham/pal/druid. Three of us are pure healers. I'm 8/0/53, the druid is resto/balance, and the paladin is holy -- pretty much raid healer specs. One warrior is arms, the other is fury (again, raid spec, but fury is actually fine if you're assisting another warrior who has MS). Groups like yours, with two melee DPS, tend to very good matchups for us, because we're built to play that game better, and we really offer no squishy targets where melee is concerned. Teams tend to focus me, but I've got 10.5k hp and 11k armor completely unbuffed (and I usually at least have Commanding even if they purge everything else off), as well as decent resil (250ish -- I still need to run more BGs for the new healer items... before the patch I just gave up way too much swapping out Hyjal loot for PvP items that weren't even healer-oriented).

It's an effective combo, and has a bit of luck-based burst potential -- against a pretty good team yesterday we pretty much won a match outright when dual WF procs did like 8k damage to their priest in the opening exchange. Ranged and CC-heavy teams with hunter+mage and such are our Achilles' heel, pretty much. Since our only DPS is the two warriors, if you can manage to kite them or disrupt them enough, we're really not going to be able to kill anyone.

For a team like that, i recommend you sit your mage and shaman on the warriors and just sheep/nova/fbolt pretty much just kite him around and have him watch out for CSes, the shaman must try and kite the other one as good as he can too while purging both warriors's BoF's off, shaman's probably the one that's gonna be busiest in your team, with their 2 warriors kited as much as possible they lose their entire DPS, however they can still outlast you (since you don't have a priest for mana burns and they have 3 healers), so for this I'd also recommend swithing in the warlock, warlocks are imo the best class to completely lock down a pally, especially since they don't have a mage, CoT will destroy their healing output, because their longass heals will make shocks/CSes a cakewalk to interrupt at the right time and burst one of their warriors down.

I think people underestimate non-mage teams susceptibility to CoT, as a priest, i can safely say it's pretty damn bad, not just because it makes your healing slower, but makes interrupting you just too easy and even if you can fake it it's still a gamble, and for a team like yours with 2x CSes and shocks... that's 3x gambles , for a team with no decurser and 2x paladins, sticking a warlock in there and just have him rotate fears and CoT the living hell out of them will quickly lock down their biggest strength (which is their healing power).

I hope your warlock is SL with 11k+HP unbuffed and 300 resi minimum though because otherwise he's gonna be the one getting stomped.

Good call with the non-removal of CoT, didn't even register that fact.

Also kiting the Warriors - all of our games yesterday vs. this team was in Blade's Edge, and we stupidly sat on the Bridge. Maybe if we moved down to lower ground we'd fare much better, possibly even forcing the healers out of LOS of each other instead of trying to brute force kill someone.


Also - Gurg, yes i've seen a few of the 4 DPS 1 Healer matchups, but they're quite easy for the most part. We wait until shit hits the fan (Trinkets, etc go off + CDs) and lust + DI/DS and I just spam heal whomever they are trying to focus with a BOP to remove MS if necessary. After the opening exchange, they seem to just run out of gas, and usually 1 of their own is dead by this point.

So I have a recently knew team. The team is as described in the title: Warrior (MS), Rogue (Mutilate), Priest (28/33), Paladin (PvE Tank, but he heals), and Warlock (Felguard).

Basically, I'm looking to get some advice from the pros on how we can improve our game play.

I'll start out by saying our number one huge problem is gear. Most of our team is alts, so it's as if we're starting arena season #1, with little to no pvp gear on us. We know that's a crutch, but I think with proper tactics, we can improve our play.

Currently we only win around 40% of our games, 50%+ if we have a good night. I'm not happy with this, especially considering I think our team make up is a fairly strong one.



I'll start by telling you what each person does (or is supposed to do):

The rogue and myself (the MS warr) are the main DPS. I call out the assist target, and we hop on that.

The warlock is on utility duty. He puts his pet on the main target. He (tries) to keep CoT on the healers, and keep 1 healer feared at all times.

The priest and paladin are obviously main healers.


The main order I attack stuff is this (I have 3 tiers of importance):
Tier 1: Priests/Warlocks
Tier 2: Rogues/Mages/Hunters/Shaman/Druids
Tier 3: Paladins/Warriors



Our problems usually incur when our warlock or priest ends up dying in the first 10 seconds of the fight. Our paladin does use BoP, but sometimes it's just not enough. I dunno if there's any way we can improve this, or if it's just a gear thing.

If the priest dies, then we are short healing. If the warlock dies, its even worse, because no healers get controlled, no CoT, and the rogue and MS warr have a hard time burning a smart target if he is getting spam healed.




So... Aside from the obvious fact that we need better gear. Is there any other things we could be doing different? Special tips for our group makeup? Positioning that might help us? Maybe our target priorities are wrong? Am I wrong to think this is a pretty good group make-up?

Thanks for any advice.

If ANYONE is dying within 10 seconds, that's simply a gear issue, no way around it. I know that when we play (not the greatest 5v5 team ever but were around 2100 last season), if we see someone who is obviously not wearing gladiator gear we'll throw our warrior/rogue/mage nukes at them all at once and they will just DROP.

Then we laugh and have our mage/priest get OOC and equip their tentacle/meteor trinkets

Well, for one I'd say replace your rogue with a mage.. but I know helpful that is! You have 2 melee, but only 1 BoF, and no mass snare (shaman or hunter), you lack a lot of control in that setup in my opinion.

Second, I'd say respec to UA and get some higher resilience. Part of the strength of having a rogue and warrior is basically 2 MS's, having the rogue and warrior on the same target is redundant in utilizing your -healing effects. Try picking a main assist target at the start with the warrior, drop a UA on that target and have the rogue be on his own target, preferably a healer (non-paladin, shaman is a good choice). DPS a bit, causing double healer stress for the opposite team, then through good communication you can generally drop a fear bomb and swap to the Warrior's target or the rogue's (if they have pressed healing mostly on the target being hurt most).

Being Felguard is prolly hurting you the most, if you were all geared out it would be a bit different.

To be a bit more helpful (sorry), what sometimes works for us with war/rogue/mage/priest/pally is to have me (the rogue) on a separate target from the other DPS just to lock it down. For example, on teams with a druid I'll just be chasing them around spamming deadly throw at every cyclone or heal they cast. Shamans, elemental or resto, or Paladins (unless they bubble) can't do anything at all with a good rogue on them. Same goes for a mage or a warlock, or really any caster class. Don't think of your rogue as a DPS class, that's what your warrior is for. Press one of them with your warlock/warrior, have your rogue on something else, and then when the assist target gets to 40%ish without a BoP up your rogue can jump over with pretty much full energy and whack it a couple times for a kill.

Of course this doesn't work against every team, but since we've started splitting our DPS like that we've been winning more games than by just trying to single-target every team we go up against.

Not sure if this is directed at me or not, but I am the MS warrior in the team I described above. It's my alt.

Our warlock is even less geared than my profile. I actually have decent gear (12.6k life, 219 res) as a warlock on my main teams, so I'm not worried about that as much.

Our lock actually started out as UA. But guess how fast he died without Soul Link on him....?

Splitting the DPS is a decent idea, might be worth trying. It would take away our "burst" capabilities, but you're right in that it would over stress opposing healers.

About the tri healer thing. We went 17-4 last night with 2 losses comming against a guild team that ran warr/warr/pally/pally/shaman as well. While that lineup is strong it most certainly has limitations. For example, it has no real CC. Warlocks, frost mages (good luck cleansing everything when a he puts up winters chill and detect magic) and druids can really dent such a team. The team also has no mana burn, which can prove costly when the Bloodlust burst did not get the job done.

We have been running a tri healer team for a long time now, mainly due to neccessity. Without a paladin and with a resto druid, it really is the best setup. I feel that tri healer teams are the future due to increased resilience levels. If current trends continue, it will simply not be possible to burst down anyone anymore. I already can avoid being killed by a single caster by just standing there and HoTting myself.

As for general advice for a new team - have fun and don't be discouraged if you lose to people that are better specced and geared than you. If you eventually decide to be more serious some of you will have to respec though. Some classes can get away with a PvE spec, but your warrior (who already is MS so this is moot) and your mage will have to be PvP specced. A fire mage flat out does not cut it in arena. He will get gibbed by any decent team.

As for advice on the roles. Your druid does the right thing starting in stealth and opening with a cyclone. Since the other team is almost guaranteed to run a warrior, have the druid perma-CC the warrior with roots and cyclone. This might be a bit harder in a 2 healer lineup but it is really our strong point. Only CC healers when the burst is called - this obviously requires some practice. And he should not be afraid to pop bear early when he is pressured. And since you don't run a priest he will be pressured. If the druid can stay alive to the point where the opponents switch off him then you have pretty much won.

How to deal with warr/warr/pal/pal/shaman, assuming the shaman is ele since he usually is in this lineup:

-This team only brings 2 blessings, and then bloodlust to the table in terms of buffs. Meaning, you can very easily and consistently dispel blessing of freedom, blessing of protection, and bloodlust since they do not have any junk buffs amongst the good buffs. First order of business is to have anyone that can offensively dispel on your team wipe the warriors clean of BOF and bloodlust. They must also regularly dispel the warriors throughout the match to keep subsequent BOFs off.

-Kill order, in general, should be shaman, paladin, warrior. Every time you run into a team with this lineup, armory them afterwards and take a look at their warriors and paladins to make sure you are picking the right paladin and warrior to kill. We regularly ran into this lineup in season1, and one of their warriors was a standard 35/23/3 spec with a standard set of gear, the other warrior was 31/30 with low hp and resilence but ridiculous amounts of attack power, so obviously he was the warrior to target.

-Separate the warriors from their shaman. This prevents the shaman from purging whoever the warriors are training on. Use LOS, pillars, whatever you have to to make this happen. Preventing the shaman from being able to purge is KEY when fighting this team. If you prevent the purge, then blessing of protection will shut the 2 warriors down cold and buy you much needed time.

-Molp hit on this but it is such an important point, I'm going to emphasize it again. A deep frost mage works wonders against this team. If you are properly dispelling bof off the warriors, a deep frost mage can stick the warriors with rank 1 frostbolt, frost nova, detect magic, winter's chill, and polymorph. If your dps is doing its job on the shaman, these paladins can't just spam double cleanses on that person, they have to be healing. Meaning, all that stuff sticks on the warriors surprisingly well. Any other magic debuffs that your team has available to them should be used as well. Put judgement of justice on a warrior just to put another magic debuff up there that can eat a cleanse.

-Put both warriors in combat. This sounds obvious and elementary and might even seem insulting that I'm listing it here as a point. But in my arena experience(2400 rating in 5v5) I found I was able to get the charge off in most 5v5 games I played, which surprises even me. If you make them both have to blow intercept at the very start you have a big leg up.

I will say though that you need extremely good coordination and execution against this team, and just about every "luck factor" is something that could go horribly wrong for you, meanwhile things could go massively in their favor. Ie, your team gets unlucky resists on important CC effects, meanwhile 2 warriors with windfury if they get lucky can blow somebody up damn near instantly.

If you remember Limited Edition, we tried this against them and basically couldn't kill the Shaman before the Warriors ate me + the Rogue, if you only had a Warrior as melee you could probably pull this off, but I doubt it would work when you have 2 melee due to the AE damage 2 Bloodlusted/WFed Warriors put out along with MS.

One more extremely important point against any double warrior team, and especially against double warrior+shaman. For the love of your HP, do not clump up. If you do you will get ruined. Do not fight them on the bridge in Blade's Edge. Take the fight to a location that is advantageous to you. Warriors are melee and shamans have comperatively short range so they will have to come to you. Exploit that.

My 5v5 has reformed for s2.

Unfortunately I'm in a smaller guild so my choice of partners are limited to the people who can and will put the most into their PVP and arena gear and skills. That means that our matrix is extremely sub-optimal. Can anyone help me figure out what 'the best' last member would be?

Right now my team is mutilate rogue, affliction lock, resto druid, elemental shaman. There are no paladins in my guild interested in PVP nor any MS warriors. Everything else I could probably snag. What's the smartest addition? I was thinking that since I can't get a paladin I'd see if I could make a 4DPS matrix and try to gib something in the opening seconds of a match. Should I look for another physical DPS to compliment me, or another magical DPS to go along with the lock and elemental shaman?

Alternately I could probably get a resto shaman to run a 2.5 healer team, but I don't feel like two sets of totems are really that great (though double grounding / double tremor is nice) and really, a resto shaman != paladin.

Unless the other team has a druid. The last time we lost to a team without a warrior was when we lost to a lock/lock/lock/spriest/holy priest team over a month ago, and that was because they outskilled and outgeared us, and because we were simply not prepared for that setup.

Vile Poisons, if your Mutilate you can pick it up without much hassle.

We went about 18-10 yesterday on our first day. Partly due to some stupid mistakes (we have a guy fairly new to Paladining, though a good player- died with Bubble still available a few times - he needs to get out of the 'saving it' habit!), and partly, again due to the Double Warrior 'problem'

We run me (Muti rogue), SL Lock, MS War, Resto Shaman and Paladin. Our SL lock has about 12k unbuffed and 300 resi but still gets totally exploded by double warriors every time. We BoF him and he kites, but it's just not effective enough. Our Shaman and Paladin have to spam heals so there's not really any chance at all for cleanses or purges, even when we get Intim shouted (unless the Tremor has stuck). We did beat a few teams that we outgeared, most noticeably a Double Warrior/Enh Shaman/Resto Shaman/Paladin team, but it felt very hard.

A couple of times we faced a Double Warrior/Double Paladin team and they just ruined us. 4 guys in Plate vs a team with a Rogue/Warrior as main DPS? I don't really think it's winnable?

I find it really super frustrating that, oh, Pally/Warrior is the most consistent 2v2, so what's the best 5v5? Well, just double pally, double warrior and add whatever you like for flavour. Obviously a 0.5 healer type is best. I play a lot of AVs atm, grinding honour, and last night, a typical AV I was in had 11 warriors and 10 paladins! (On one side! Wish I'd checked the other now, but I bet it was just as ridiculous )

Note, I'm sure Double Warrior/Double Pally isn't the *best* 5v5, but it's just so easy to play, so incredibly micro-orientated to counter effectively... it's a free ride to a good 1900 rating IMO, before you even have to start trying. Not to mention the T2/3 BS weapons means more/better armour for most Warriors + Warriors got the biggest DPS upgrade on their S2 gear of any class (this makes sense though, they certainly don't need more survivability stats, and I don't believe in nerfing via itemisation).

I notice that a lot of you run warrior & rogue, which is probably the worst combo I can think of in 5v5. IMO, rogues & warriors are interchangeable and should never be played in the same lineup together. They're both a melee DPS that brings -healing to the team, but don't have a good synergy and work well with different classes (ie - shaman + warrior = rape, shaman + rogue = ? barely any buff).

Interesting, I didn't realize that Rogues were forced to use Wound Poison 24/7.

ATM I play a MS warrior in a 5v5 team, but we run a rogue who is on an off target interrupting casters and keeping mind numbing up on them.