I'd kill the Paladin or the Disc Priest (if he's deep Disc). They both have 1 time use abilities to help save themselves (DS and PS) and after that they are quite squishy (The Pally moreso than the Priest though).

You should cast UA on the kill target followed by corruption then maybe curse of agony. You then want to tongues their healers and put your felhunter on one of them (most likely the Paladin). Once the target is at ~40-60% you want to spell lock the next heal of the paladin and cast Shadowbolt- if the target has <30% health you follow up with Shadowburn if it's still about 1/2 you want to shadowbolt again followed by your shadowburn here. If the target is not down you need to then fear the Paladin and reapply your tonuges to their healers. You may also need to reapply your dots. There is also the possibility that the Paladin bubbled before you spell locked. If this is the case don't blow your shadowburn unless you're sure the target will go down.
With a shadowpriest you can do 1 of 2 things I guess. You can either try to burn down one target using the method I just said or you can try to spread your dots amongst 2-3 targets making it difficult for the opposing healer to get to everyone. This would involve putting UA on 2-3 targets followed again by corruption and siphon life. Put up the appropriate curse and have the Shadow Priest also dot up these targets. I don't know first hand how effective this is because I usually run with mages and try to not go around dotting everything so we have more options for polymorph.

Hi EJ. My first and hopefully not the last post on these forums.

ATM i play a mediocre equiped resto druid in all brackets. Our Setup in the 5v5 bracket usually looks something like this:

Frostmage
Warlock
MS Warrior
Holy Pala and
Resto Druid or Disc Priest

We play this setup @ 1750 Rating. It was fun and we had a good progression curve.

But in the last weeks many of my teammates had no time to play our arenateam. So i came up with the idea of something like a special setup that none of us had any experience with. I thought that could work out very well if played correctly. So today we tried this roster:

MS Warrior
Warlock
Holy Pala
Disc Priest
Resto Druid

First of all: Do you think that setup is worth the effort to get comfortable with it? On our first 3 matches we ran into a team that just owned us to hell. We had absolutely no chance of winning. Their two MS Warriors and Frost Mage made such an incredible DPS pressure that, combined with CS ES and Sheep, we couldn't keep our Warlock (on the first game) and our Warrior (in the second and third game) up. My basic thoughts about the strategy that has to be played with that team got destroyed. There was no time to mana burn or mana drain anyone. I couldn´t cyclone or root DPS because it all got trinketed ( ) and after that i usually was the only healer without any CC on me. We tried to mana burn their shaman. His mana got down to 40% in a few seconds but after that their CC completly ruined all our attempts to turn the game.

Then... we stopped queing. My crazy ideas are probably not worth a rating loss caused by missing experience. I´m pretty sure that this setup could make it as good as our #1 setup but i think they do not want to waste their points on that any time soon. That´s why I´m asking here.

What do you think? Are there any teams like that with 2.2k+ Rating or something like that? Give your input. I appreciate everything.

Hi all,

First of all sorry for my english, is not my native language.

I have been reading these forums for a long time, but is the first time i post. I hope this is the correct place to do it.

We are trying to make a solid 5v5 group. Our group core at moment are Resto Druid, MS Warrior and Combar Rogue(me). We want to keep these classes (all RL friends) and make a group with enough potential to climb up the leader.

What do you think about 3 Healers + 2 Dps set up whit Resto_Druid, Resto_Sham, Paladin + Warrior, Rogue? We want to play the outlasting game. Rogue shuting down an enemy healer, warrior with shamy and paladin support trying to kill the main target, druid CCing with cyclone and healing and shamy and palading in healing and support duties.

Is a viable set up? Could be a priest a better choice instead of paladin for mana burns and mass dispel? Can someone who plays similar setup explain basic tatics and kill order?

Thanx in advance.

PD: once again sorry for my english, i hope you are all able to understand what i wrote.

I play on an approximately 2300 rated 5v5 team that uses 5 different lineups so I have a pretty wide range of experience using different lineups. Our lineups are

1. MS Warrior, frost mage, elemental shaman, demo or destruction lock, paladin

2. Rogue, frost mage, elemental shaman, demo or destruction lock, paladin

3. MS Warrior, frost mage, warlock, priest, paladin

4. MS Warrior, rogue, elemental shaman, resto shaman, paladin

5. MS warrior, warlock, priest, paladin, resto shaman

I play the paladin

My advice to the 4 dps (ms warrior, sp, aff lock, ele shaman, pally) team is this:

1. Charge. You should have a pretty good idea of where the other team is gonna be by the time you arrive and it allows you to set up your positioning to be about the same every time especially important is the pallies position. He needs to find a spot to be in LoS of everyone but able to duck around corners to avoid counterspell/fear/manaburn/MD

2. Targeting. Primary warriors, secondary paladins. Your strategy will be about the same. Warrior build rage, warlock cot the healer(s), sp dot up primary, warlock dot up primary, shaman bloodlust then purge primary, pally bof warrior, sacrifice their likely primary. Dont MS until you are ready to burn him. Build rage if you can then MS when everyone is set to burn him down and dump your rage.

3. Fear the pally with CoT up. Be ready to use pet to spell lock. If the pally goes for a heal and you catch him with a spell lock your target is dead and there isnt anything he can do assuming people are dumping the DPS into your target. If he bubbles priest mass dispel and silence him then warlock DC or fear him. Your SP has 0.5 second MD right?

4. Once pally bubbles your pally should have BoP on their target and probably bubbled as well to counter silence or interrupt depending on how much pressure they are putting on their target.

5. If you are going to kill the pally process is the same except you dot the pally and hope he goes for a heal. If he does you spell lock and burn him down in time. If he bubbles you MD it and re-apply.

The above strategy should get you to 2000 pretty easy with some practice. After that you are going to have to be more precise with things. The strategy works against double healer teams and 4 dps teams. If its double healer you probably have to time things a little more precisely. I dont have exact knowledge of how my team times things as I am usually busy ducking counterspells and LoSing Mass Dispel at our level of play in addition to keeping their target up. Have your pally use BoS on their target after BoP. BoP is to be used offensively to keep their target from being interrupted not as a life saving tactic. Use sacrifice to mitigate the damage.


To the 3 healer lineup. I cant image running a 3 healer lineup without a shaman. Tremor, grounding and bloodlusted manaburns are too nice. But I would suggest manaburning their DPS with bop on if you can. The most important thing is controlling their warriors and BoFing their target. Use dispell to keep your warrior free if you can. Spam dispells on the warriors to get BoF off them as soon as it goes on and get the warrior to spamstring them or root them Double warrior teams are a bitch without a mage or hunter, honestly.

Sorry if this rambles a bit. Its 4am

Priests are pretty reliant on paladins to function in arena, just like warriors and hunters are. For that particular setup, a priest might be a better choice than a druid for the option of mana burns.

Also, I played with a War/Rog 2 healer team all last season, and we could never really get past 20xx consistently with it. Rogues have a nice niche in 4 DPS caster teams, but in general really struggle in other setups. If you have the ability to sub in something else there, it may help you more. You could grab a hunter for Viper + mana burn, or a warlock for mana drain, if you want to go for the longevity/drain route.

speaking for myself, being a warlock, killing felhunters takes almost no time in 5v5 and is still a huge advantage for the team killing it. as a warlock i lose counterspell, dispel and soullink/master demonologist/demonic knowledge as selfbuffs. this is an immense advantage and a reason why soullink warlocks mostly started playing with either felguard (which is way harder to kill and not worth it) or respeccing to destruction for dps and shadowfury. anyways i think i wont change anything, i am at least a very defensive player looking for teammates security and cc first. it's up to your mind(s) at last .

Taking out Affliction Warlocks is in my eyes even easier than dealing with shadowpriests, interrupting unstable affliction makes dots dispellable and takes away some major advantages this setup brings along.

Aditionally, cc is for healers in my eyes.

Alright well 1st of all I would like some advice against common teams like 4 dps or 2 healer 3 dps team or going against 3 healers, I started a 5 v 5 a week ago and we r at 1678 its resto shammy pally 2 ms warriors and a discpline/holy priest we do pretty good but i think that something could go better, like i call out purges and dispels and on bofs and mass dispell and purges off bops and heroism but idk i we had trouble with this team that wat a pally hunter lock resto shammy and warrior we played them like 4 team we won once and we lost 3 times but I just think that for been 3 healers we should be doing better if you guys have any suggestions i am all ears i would rlly like if u guys could tell me diff examples of teams because you never know when we might go against them.

Hi, I play in a team with Priest, Pally, Warlock, Hunter, Rogue and Warrior.
The Armory
Our rating is about 1950->2050. The warrior just joined us, althought his gear isn't as good as ours, he's a pretty good warrior. With new setup (Priest Pally Warlock Hunter Warrior) we got up to 2050 rating last week, and we hoped we could get up to 21xx this week, but we got back to 1960 instead.
Yesterday we lost about 100 rating to a 4 dps team and it was the first time we got beaten up so bad. Their team make up was Shadow Priest, Warlocks x2, Warrior and Pally. First time we got taken by suprise (the warrior charged in and died so fast that he could only deal 2k3 dmg whole fight). I think when we fight that team we should reduce their damage as much as possible so after that we let the pally heal and put only fel hunter on him, our warlock CC their warlock while other dps try to focus the shadow priest (to prevent him from MF MB SWD). That strategy failed. Next time we tried to focus on locks, failed as well. The problem is that their dmg seem to be more than I and the pally can handle. With around 2-3 rows of debuff on the warrior (DoTs + MS), all I can do is Dispel / FH him (I tried to do mana burn, hoped I can try to burn all mana 1 of them before the warrior die but it seemed that's impossible). We could keep the warrior up, but when pally DS went off they put DoTs on both warrior and pally and 1 of them will die eventually. In the end, the best result we got is SP down...

So what did we do wrong? What should we do if we meet that team again?

Try having the warrior play defensively with shield and spell reflect, while ms'ing the focus target. Mana drain and viper sting the shadow priest, and mana burn if possible (such as after a fear bomb), and your focus target should be an affliction lock.

You have the right idea with regards to using your interrupts defensively as opposed to offensively, but to be more specific, you want to stop mainly UA as well as their means of control. Spread out to avoid a fear bomb, scatter shot, silencing shot, and fear to stop UA from being cast, and make sure your dps uses focus macros and appropriate unit frames to interrupt on time.

Have your warrior with his shield out intercept one of the UA locks, mortal strike, then intervene your paladin to pull back and make it easier to LoS the shadow priest until he is OOM (which he should be pretty fast with a hunter/lock/priest group). If they keep going after the warrior, this should fluster them enough to allow your team a few seconds of freedom to mana burn and counter their CC.

Great advice from Leto.

4 dps teams are popular primarily because of their ability to kill warriors, and thus to tear the heart out of traditional 2345-esque set ups. Because of this, you can predict that your warrior will often be the initial target.

Shifting to D stance alone will mean that your warrior is taking 18.2% less damage than in berserker (.9/1.1), which is quite dramatic. This of course limits your warrior's ability to deal damage himself, but by losing 5% of your team's damage output (admittedly, a very low estimate), you can cut their dps by quadruple that.

Also, it hurts to BoP a physical damage class, but it does remove mortal strike, and can as a result lower this team's ability to burst down your warrior. You might consider it next game. It will quickly be dispelled (or even clicked off), but the benefit of 5 seconds of MS-free heals is immense.

Also consider having your hunter be in charge of calling targets/target switches against these teams, as the warrior will be busy playing defensive and MS is less important with only 1 healer to DPS through.

Final word of advice: don't give up. By the time you lose a member, the opposing priest can easily be oom and the paladin's divine shield on cooldown. It is entirely possible to catch one of their warlock's during a lifetap and burst him down with just your hunter/warlock and a well timed spell lock.

Entrapement is a very strong option against any 4 DPS setup. Make them come to you and sit on a trap near a good LoS point. Drain the shadow priest very quickly (make sure your hunter has a scorpid) and take advantage of the fact that the enemy pally won't have much time to cleanse, just heal (ie DoT multiple targets). Your warlock will have to be very busy.
Essentially don't let them focus their DPS if at all possible. CC DPS not their healer, just make sure you have tongues up on the enemy healer. Once you get past the first 30 seconds you can start to outlast and then it's on like Donkey Kong.

Funnily enough we have the most trouble (running 4 DPS) against your setup, ie a drain team. We do run an elemental shaman instead of a 2nd warlock though.
I wouldn't mind any advice against them. We can easily drop any warrior we find, but we had a SL/SL lock, resto druid, hunter and paladin beat us 4v5 4 times last time as myself (Spriest and our elemental shaman) were OOM.
Other than that, any other good tips for 4 DPS teams? Our controlled burst is getting quite excellent, as are our quick switches. Just little tips to bring us from 2000 to above that would be appreciated.

Well, not 2200 but we play your lineup at 2000 except instead of a pally we use a resto shaman (yes, non-gib, non-pally team at 2000, alert the media). We only recently started playing this lineup and I think we can probably hit 2100, more if we actually played more than one day a week. So this lineup is definitely viable, and the pally variant is stronger than ours.

The key to this lineup is to turn your weaknesses into your strength. What is the biggest downside of a druid? He does little when pressured. What is the biggest downside of an affliction lock? Same. What is the biggest downside of a priest? He is usually too busy staying alive to use his best weapons. Notice a trend there? If you play one of those classes, the downside plays. But if you play all three, they can't pressure all of you. So either the priest burns, the lock drains or the druid chain cyclones. All three of those are devastating.

You will rarely win quickly, so play for attrition. The druid must CC like crazy and the priest and lock must mana drain whenever they can. As I said most of the time 2 of them will be able to do their job relatively undisrupted (the druid should be able to shake a single guy on him). Good 2345s will probably give you problems if they split DPS on the priest and lock and can protect their priest well enough so he can burn, but you should beat most gib teams.

Beating 4dps gib has kind of been our trademark, running Ele Shm/Holy Priest/Pal/Mace Rogue/Frost Mage and just kind of outlasting them with giving them no easy target. Our biggest problem is 3 healer/2 warrior teams really, and we recently acquired a very excellent warrior, so we run 2345 I guess at times as well. But I really prefer playing with our rogue to be honest, even if smart teams can completely negate him.

I was wondering if anyone had any advise for my team. We are normally around 1700 and only once broke 1800+ .


The Armory

Normally this is our line
MS warrior
MS warrior
holy pally
resto shaman
ice mage / s.priest

Other line up
MS warrior
MS warrior
holy priest
resto shaman
ice mage


We have a hard time against 4 dps teams, and CC heavy teams. Is the double ms warriors viable anymore? Also has anyone had success with resto shaman & holy priest 1900+ ? Thanks for the help.

I would mix your lineup and try war/war/pally/priest/shaman for an outlast/drain team. Also, I definitely wouldn't recommend your second lineup... switch the shaman for the paladin in that one, as freedom is critical with warriors as your main dps, and the defensive dispel from the priest will help as well.

How bout 1 ms warrior 1 hunter and 1 pally priest and shammy? shammy been resto.

Hey guys...

I"m looking for a player experienced with 4 dps teams and possibly a link to a video of a dps team similar to mine.

We are playing Mut Rogue, Lock, Shadow Priest, (Mage/ lock / or ele sham), and myself (Resto druid). I'm looking for advice as to what our primary targets should be? Should i be focusing on CC'n or healing? And does anyone have a link to a video of a team similar to ours?

Thanks in advance!

Just started a 5v5 team this week. We seem to have a pretty good setup with 2 ms warriors/2 holy pallys/1 ele shaman. We do well against most teams except for teams with hunters, who simply lay down frost trap. We have 2 blessing of freedoms but it makes things less effective, because if the warriors have blessing of freedom the ele shaman can be slowed/rooted and if you give it to the shaman, then they kite the warriors. We try to get one of their team members down (usually a priest, which can be a real pain to kill if the priest kites us around the frost trap) but by then they have fully mana drained all our mana-users and then they just kill us. All of us have fairly decent gear and outside of hunters we have very few problems. Any advice?

We've been thinking about modifying the setup and maybe adding a frost mage instead of one warrior, and getting a disc priest as well as a hunter to see how things go.

I just wanted to share what I found while trolling forums:

The World of Warcraft Armory

This is the 5v5 version of sl/sl lock and paladin 2v2 setup.

It consists of:
Holy Paladin
Holy/Disc Priest
Resto Druid
Demo Lock
MM Hunter

My guess is with the success of this team we will be seeing in season 3 alot of 2345, 4dps, and w/e these guys call their setup. For now lets call it a "30m" setup since it seems like a game with that setup would take 30 minutes each.

I am very interested in trying this setup as my current 5v5 already has these classes and specs in it already. We just never tried this actual comp before.

By the looks of it all consists of mana drains, slow dps, constant heals, and healers trading off drinking and healing time. Discuss.

Bunnyz,

I run the exact setup you described in 5v5 (Priest Pally Warlock Hunter Warrior). I just came back from a month long hiatus. We are currently around 1900 to 2000 due to a lack of practice and me being undergeared from being gone so long. Just tonight alone, we ran into a couple of 4 DPS teams multiple times(warlock, shadow priest, healer, rogue/warrior, mage/shaman).

It was a match in Blade's Edge Arena where our warrior dropped dead within 15 seconds of entering combat. When we did run into them again, what we had was having our warrior mounted and out of sight, forcing their DPS to fight through the warlock and the hunter to even reach the warlock while mana drained the shadow priest. The reason behind this is that the shadow priest was least mana efficient and provided a massive amount of shadow burst damage.

Your goal is to out last their healer's mana. Our team was able to drain the shadow priest completely very quickly, which is when our warrior will start his DPS. The pets should be on a caster to minimize their DPS. Our warrior did have to jump in multiple times to bait their DPS, allowing the current target of focus fire to recover. Your main DPS burst should reserved for after the shadow priest is OOM. This would involve everyone coordinating interrupts, fear bombs.

Mystique1,

Your priest will normally be the focus fire unless there's a rogue, which the DPS will be split until someone on your team gets low. Your hunter will be the main source of interrupts and drains. I've found better success to have the warlock pet on the paladin and hunter pet on clothie healer/caster (not a mage). Your main burst will be the warrior. Your main dots will be the warlock. Hunter is more a supporting character.

The inherent flaw will be the lack of any spammable CC. Also, you will notice how much more often you lose in Blade's Edge as your hunter will rarely get any good LoS against experienced players. The hunter needs to have a good connection. Instead of starting by draining the paladin, I've found it's more vital to drain a DPS and keep an eye on the paladin with interrupts ready at the last moment to stretch your scatter and silence.

The highest rated teams we've fought are around 2.2k. The matches do get hard, and more people will hug the hunter to make them useless. Your paladin will have to BoF and babysit the hunter a bit. Always keep an eye out for the warrior or rogue on your healer. Reserve a CC/disrupt for your healer and you'll live longer than when you don't.

The one advantage of having a hunter of another draining class is how the hunter can sting and go on another target instantly with a burst. Other than that, I'd recommend another warlock or a priest.

I'm the MS Warrior in a War/Holy Pal/Holy Priest/Aff Lock/BM Hunter team. We've previously been bursting down a person and then working them more slowly, but that completely failed us this week. We tried to burst, BoP came up when the enemy target hit 20% and we never finished them since the hunter and I became useless. I've advocated that we move to a slower mana burn game and everyone is willing to try. To that end the lock went affliction instead of demonology/demo.

Should the lock get UA or soul link? He's in tier 5 and season 2 gear.
Should the hunter spec something else? Should he get a scorpion and not a big red kitty?

What order should we prioritize mana burns? I believe we should hit the opposing priest first or the paladin if there is no priest, but what are the trade offs between hitting opposing shamans or druids or even hunters?

Who should I (the warrior) focus on? I'm assuming I need to pressure the primary dps on the other team to buy our priest and lock more time. I'm also assuming that the lock will be kiting at least one melee and our priest will need to dispell BoF from that person when he gets it.