both myself, priest, and rogue just respecced a little more PvP friendly since all three of us are Raid PVEers so hopefully that'll help some. We just started doing arenas as a team 2 weeks ago and I'm looking for some general advice on the best way to approach 3v3 considering our team makeup. Sometimes we do great others not so well, so any advice is appreciated.

Who do you guys try to kill?

What is your mind set going into each game?

What are each of ur classes doing?

Theres probably some things your doing wrong but your post wasnt very specific, many different group comps work wonders just depends on how you go about doing it.

Just judging by your lineup ill go ahead and say your #1 problem is playing a rogue with out a pally, and go as far to assume that you lose every matchup that has a warrior in it. Seeing as rogues are extremly suceptible to being kited and dispel only gets rid of about 1/3rd of possible kites, the rogue is probably rendered useless versus a good team. Your lineup would work with a warrior instead of a rogue or a pally in stead of a priest with the rogue.

The first thing that my mind with ur lineup was a pally killer team, with the rogue stunning him, priest mass dispelling his bubble instantly and mage CS his heals seems like a pretty deadly combo, but requires a lot of things to go right and a lot of things to go wrong for that pally, something that doesnt always happen.

generally the mage and I stick together so she can help CC things off me while the rogue generally gets the action started. If there is a pally on the other team the rogue usually saps the pally to make him burn a bubble which I then dispell. We try to either target the other teams healer first and either burn that one down while keeping the others CCed (fear/sheep/blind), or we'll CC the healer while trying to burn one of their DPS down.

Warriors and Pally's havne't been much of a problem so far, its primarily Locks/Rogues that really give us fits, specifically Prep Rogues and Felhunter locks. most often our Rogue is left alone while they target either me or the mage first. In the games we lose it seems like we almost get that first kill and then lose it by a hair, we're close to being a pretty good team just need to do a couple of things different, but I dont know what.

Mage/Rogue/Priest is one of the best 3v3 teams, and probably THE best make-up without a warlock.

You have a lot of flexibility with specs and that will greatly determine your playstyle.
Consider the following:

Is your Rogue Combat Mace/Sword/Fist or Mutilate? If he is playing Combat your team will be best served by having him lock down opposing dagger rogues, making them useless. Combat also has great sustained damage (as we all know) and decent "burst" with AR. If he is mutilate you will need to make sure you time your giant "team-nuke" well, as a CB Mut combo is killer alongside FB/FL or PoM-Pyro, etc.

Is your Mage Ice or Fire? Fire specs (usually arcane/fire) can be fun for some cheap wins, but Ice is probably better in the long run. Ice offers better control, survivability, and still maintains the opportunity for burst when needed. I, along with many others, would certainly suggest that your mage is some variation of frost, either APFrost or Water Elemental. The mage's job is to maintain polymorphs and watch for CS opportunities while timing burst or pressure with the rogue. Oh yeah and kiting warriors. Whew!

Is your Priest Holy or Shadow? This is the greatest determining factor. If you run with a shadowpriest in this composition then you'll mostly be focusing on swatting one of their players out of the air as quickly as possible. The combined weight of rogue, mage, and spriest can bring a warrior down even with a paladin spamming heals on him (although this shouldn't happen considering you've got silence, blind, and counterspell). If your priest is Holy you'll have much more room for error, and you can even play the outlast game if you'd like. Mass dispel + rogue = useless paladin, so any team that relies on a solo paladin healer is in for a tough time.


The astounding amount of CCs and staying power of these 3 classes makes this comp awful fun to play and very successful to boot. Good luck and have fun!

I play in Priest/Rogue/Mage (although we swap the mage out for hunter/rogue depending on which player is online/needs their 30%)

I'm the main assist and I usually prioritize targets in the order:

UA/felhunter locks > fire/ap pyro mage > rogues > spriest > priest > felguard lock > hunter > shaman > paladin > druid > warriors = frost mage

I don't always hold to that order depending on the rest of their group or if I remember their gear/ability from previous games.

If i'm going after a DPS the mage will be ccing the healer, and vice versa. Killing the paladin is a very viable tactic in some setups, so long as the priest is able to MD the bubble. I will usually starting calling for MD if I get the paladin under 20% and several times we've had the paladin bubbled for ~.1s, a kick/cs into his heal and he's dead.

Your real anti-team is pal/sham/war in which your hope of success is in getting the shaman or paladin down before your priest dies. I typically go for the shaman in these, but have been thinking about going for the paladin if I see the shaman isn't resto, the only problem with that is your priest/rogue have to survive a lot more burst.

Spamstring is a rogues worst nightmare especially when facing a team with a paladin so it has to be dispelled/spell stolen asap if the rogue is getting kited.

Being combat mutilate I typically don't bother with sap, not because of any difficulty applying, or because it gets trinketed/bubbled, but due to its energy cost. The 65e hurts my initial burst a LOT, and I rely on that to scare the target/healer into making a mistake or blow cooldowns early on.

You mention problems with prep rogues, make sure your rogue is on them, rogues are usually really good vs other rogues and make sure he has rupture on him as much as possible so that he can't vanish for long.

Locks.. UA locks a rogue should be able to burst down and kick/ks/gouge every UA they try to cast, if they get a UA off, someone failed. Locks with a felhunter are #1 target pretty much as they can lock down your two casters easily. A Felguard lock usually depends on its partners. If there is another cloth target (lock/priest/mage) or a rogue I'll leave the lock till second (although your priest will have to have decent gear to tank the felguard) otherwise, they come under "warlock dies first".

But thats just me (back to 1803 this week), other people may have different ideas

Our Rogue is Mut with some subt talents
Our Mage is PVE Raid Fire spec
Me, the Priest, Was full raid Holy spec, but 2 nights ago I swapped out some crit and emp healing to pick up Blessed Resilliance, Marty and Blessed Recovery to make myself a little harder to take down

If the priest is holy, would they focus only on healing or would they throw in a few nukes to help the burst? Or should the priest conserve mana for healing?

WotF #1 3vs3 Arena [2500 rating]

WOTF team movie - exactly priest/mage/rogue 2500+ raiting.

The priest should play extremely offensive until a heal is absolutely necessary: mana burns/dispels/fears. I'd suggest an arcane frost build for the mage for burst and survivability. Against any team with a warrior, go for the weakest target while the mage CC's the warrior with the rogue as the primary source of damage. Against teams without a warrior, or all casters, have the rogue CC a caster or healer and have the mage nuke a target. If the priest mana burns/fears/dispels aggressively, other teams should be more defensive against you. The most important thing for your team is to mitigate damage from warriors as they will do too much damage to any target on your team.

What about counters to said team makeup (Rogue/[Frost]Mage/[Disc/Holy]Priest)? Our team runs with a Frost Mage (Me), UA Lock and Disc Priest. Just last week we breached 2000 rating. Our absolute WORST nightmare is running into these teams. It seems, no matter what we do or try differently, that we almost have to get lucky (that is, play absolutely perfect while the other team makes some mistake) to win.

We've tried going for the mage (MD the iceblock, CC priest), the rogue (CC priest, but CoS/vanish + priest instants usually doesn't end well) or the priest (generally leading to the quickest failure, the priests tend to be the most beefed up in HP/resilience). PoM/PW:S/Renew are just real killers to us, as the priest only needs to break sheep/fear for a very short amount of time to throw out those spells, and our priest is generally under enough pressure that reliable dispells on these isn't an option. I would say that we have probably lost 75% of the games we've played (given equal gear, our gear certainly isn't lacking) against this makeup.

Paladin/[Resto]Shaman/Warrior come close to this difficulty for us as well, but those teams are much rarer in our BG it seems, and we tend to excel in interrupting classes that must cast to heal. Oh and Hafu. If you play in the Ruin BG, you hate Hafu.

My personal opinion on UA is that it only works with a shadow priest or heavy burst / 3 DPS teams where he has a lot of support for mitigation. Felguard/shadowburn locks have great survivability and decent burst, while (like every warlock) has a great arsenal of caster CC. A felguard/shadowburn spec puts a lot more pressure on teams than UA because soul link warlocks are not ideal targets for damage taken yet they can still perform their tasks with instants or 1.5 sec casts if they are targetted. Against rogue/mage/priest, you could easily go for the priest with the lock CC'ing the mage and you CC'ing the rogue where applicable. Priests are the best "hybrid" class imo because of all the utility they bring: instant cast heals/mitgation*3, mana burn, fears, etc. So your priest should play aggressively and offensively, mana burns on the mage would be ideal with dispels on the priest to get rid of blessed resilience/hots/shields. The rogue's only option would be to control the mage against your combo because a free-casting mage is going to do a lot vs. anything, but you will also take the least amount of damage out of all three with kiting. A priest that is being dispelled has no defense besides resilience and are very easy targets to kill. If your priest is being pressured, help with sheeps, fears, and CoT. As long as enough damage is mitigated, the priest should rarely need to cast a gheal or flash and just use instants and his casts for mana burn.

Against resto sham/pala/warrior, you'll have to CC the warrior as the mage, and the paladin will be the best target for that combo. With one dispel, a warrior is easily controlled, mages with only one dispel are my greatest bane. Your warlock will have to CC the shaman fulltime. The key here is to mitigate damage from the warrior as he will completely dominate any member of your team and moreso if the shaman is not in heal-lock (purges). Also, with the warrior properly CC'ed, their will be little to no damage outgoing and the priest should be able to get a few mana burns off.

And whats the highest rating you have gotten on your 3v3? Not being judgemental, just asking here. It just seems contradictory to what many other people are doing out there who are successful.

Also... if anyone has any helpful ideas on my post a couple posts up about tips as a rogue/mage/paladin team, please =)

Bacon Lettace Tomato 1521

Maybe if the priest started healing you could get that rating up a little higher?

A Shadow Priest is perfectly viable in that setup, but you can't heal until someone has died, or you'll lose.

The number one thing that makes this team useful is that it has a counter for everything.

The priests main purpose is to mass dispel, dispel, mana burn.

So, if you can do that just fine as shadow, fair enough. But a 28/33 priest will get the job done much more effectively with cheaper dispells and faster MD, and in most cases, sans warriors, have better survivability with blessed resilience.

My 3v3 team has been fairly successful as
28/33 Priest
Mace-Specced MS warrior
Feral druid

we're currently 1910, and ended last season right around 2000. There's been a trend of mace-specced Rogue, frost mage, and priest teams in our battlegroup and we've been having lots of trouble countering it.

Our typical strategy is for myself and the warrior to just FF down target while the priest dispels, MD, mana burns, etc. Against this team we just get out CC'd. We can't kill a frost mage, period. Without BoF, we can't get enough DPS time on him to kill him. We have lots of trouble with rogues, though, as Evasion significantly lowers our dps, and it's duration is usually long enough for them to kill our warrior while our priest is sheeped.

We've tried starting on all 3 of them, we've tried splitting up with me on the mage, and him on the rogue, we've tried excessive use of cyclones and pillar humping. They have 1 more CC than we can handle.

I'd prefer not to give up and call that a paper to our rock, does anyone have any suggestions?

(if this is not a proper place to post this question, please let me know or just delete this post)

Eh, I would say its the rock to your scissors though. You're going to have to cancel cast the mage or he'll just CS your cyclone; or as a priest, I would fear you. But a good frost mage will be 17/0/44 and have imp CS so the cancel doesn't work. Once imp CS goes off, warrior is polymorphed, and you're blinded, Water element comes out....etc etc.

That's the jist of it. Once, I was able to draw out the CS with a starfire, and we were able to make the fight last about 3 minutes, a record against them. In the end though, Polymorph is the greater CC, and if I'm interrupting those, then heals are going off.

Have you guys tried killing the WE when it comes out? It's one way of significantly lowering the Mage's burst. Your warrior should be able to put enough pressure on the rogue to buy your priest a lot of time, while the feral takes out the WE, and then begins putting pressure on the mage.

Your team has a small advantage, in that it shuts down their DPS a lot more effectively than they can shut down yours. If you can limit the mage's dps by killing his WE, and having the druid harass him, it becomes a manawar between the priests.

You havent said what race your priest and warrior are. If your priest is dwarf and your warrior is gnome this would be alot easier for you. Killing the water elemental is a good idea, if you have time. Getting on the rogue is a bad idea, I think. A good rogue has about 95 percent immunity to physical for at least 15 seconds.

There are a couple of ways you can play this. Defensively by baiting evasion then cycloning/fearing the rogue or offensively, cyclone the priest and try and burn someone down. I personally think playing it defensively is the best way since I doubt you can kill either in 10 seconds and if you control him with AR up he just blew his most powerful weapon in killing your priest or your warrior. Once you have the rogues timers blown, he is pretty easy to kill and his damage output wont be that great.

The reason I say dwarf priest is far superior is that as a rogue I feel I have to be on him because he can trinket the sheep and stoneform the blind. Leaving a priest alone while trying to burn down a warrior or a druid is a recipe for disaster. Yeah, you might get the warrior, but if you fail, you are looking at a full rage warrior jibbing your priest or rogue.

It is definately an uphill matchup, but without knowing the races involved in the matchup its hard to give explicit advice.

I apologize for leaving that out. The priest is NE, and the Warrior is Human.

We have several advantages racially in that setup. We only have 1 visible player, so most teams are required to start on the warrior, and we have perception, which usually allows us to pressure rogues early.

Killing the WE is a good idea, in one match he used CS and summoned another immediately, but...I'm ok with him having only 1 ice block.

I like the idea of CCing the rogue after he uses his cooldowns, but are you suggesting that we split DPS? Druid on the Mage and warrior on the Rogue?

I apologize for the lack of clarity in my post. It was a drunken 3am response. Let me try and clarify.

The key to beating the mage/rogue/priest team(I play on one with my alt as a rogue) is to control the action. This can be said for all arena matches, really. You need to dictate what happens when or you will lose. Get the warrior on the rogue to blow timers then cyclone him. Put the druid on the mage to get poly out of play because nova wont be a problem for a feral. Have the warrior swap to mage via intercept when the druid is cycloning. The key here is to save your trinket for blind or must use moments and to keep their cc to a minimum. A mage with a druid on him is going to be more focused on getting away then chaincasting poly and frost bolts. A rogue that is spamstrung is going to be trying to get to his target and have to blow his cooldowns when you want him to, not when he wants to.

The priest will have to work overtime dispelling and using instants to avoid CS. There is nothing wrong with splitting DPS if it lowers their DPS considerably.

Cyclone the rogue right after he blows AR and evasion and now he is vulnerable when he comes down. You arent killing him with a melee team when he has evasion up.