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.

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

Sorry, not trying to hijack this thread, but noticed that its very similar to the team I am part of.

We run a 3v3 rogue (combat mace, me) paladin (holy/protection) and mage (frost).

We typically have trouble with MS warriors and warlocks. =(

The warrior generally just owns me so bad if he keeps following me around the whole match, and the warlock of course tries for the spell lock etc.

If anyone has any tips for this makeup, it would be awesome as well. Thanks

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.

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.

Honestly you are better off with out a healer in 3v3. My team is mage, shadow priest and Rogue(Me). The priest never heals and never has time to. Healers and mages are always first targets for us.

Bacon Lettace Tomato 1521

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