Hunter/Priest/Lock is probably your best option. I imagine Hunter + Double Healer would lose to other drain teams who'd just run the hunter dry, allowing their own healers/hunters to drink at will.

Hunter/Enh Shaman/Resto Druid might work in theory. If you can drag them in the open and use roots/frost trap offensively to lock a dps target in place (e.g. warlock), and use your druid to lock out heals or disruptive DPS, you could probably gib a good number of caster-based teams. I haven't seen this team played so it's pure theory of/c...

We did some rogue/dpriest/druid games a while back. The main problem is that you are absolutely dominated by warrior/double healer semi-mirrors. Especially if it is warrior/druid/priest. The warrior can always force the rogue to trade (BoF won't stick, ever) while being able to intercept and do damage to the healers while the rogue is cycloned. The rogue then has to spend a lot of time catching up to someone while the warrior gets free hits in. Then when the rogue finally does, the warrior intercepts him and the cycle repeats.

That was before the buffs to shadow step though. I could imagine that helping a lot with the mobility issues your lineup has. But when we played, good warrior lineups were extremely tough to beat.

I'm seeking comments on a disc priest/holy pal/rogue setup. We got it to 1600 on first night, of course it is nothing special still within the noob domain. But I find it working out ok. CC except cyclone does not work on us, we have two to dispel. Priest is on drain duty while I heal. We take turns drinking (on average 3 drinks each, me and priest). BoF keeps the rogue in dps mode most of the time. We have a little trouble against drain team, but I feel that we can work it out.

What are your opinion on this setup?

I think in general that setup will do better with a warrior, who has more consistent, sustained, long-term damage over the course of a long, drain-style match. Rogues seem more suited to 2 or 3 DPS teams, where their burst capability is a more valuable asset to teams looking to pop someone early.

I'm looking for advice on tactics for a rogue/warrior/druid (resto) team. So far we're doing okay, hit 1760, but our games sometimes seem sloppy. Has anyone run this setup past 2k that can shed some light? Do we need to split the dps and if yes, against which team? What class do you go for versus popular setups like PMR, lock/war/druid, warr/2healers etc.

We play such a team, been hovering around 1950. I think we tend to do correct decisions, but have been stopped mainly by undergeared or underskilled druids. I think we could improve some in assisting the druid when hes under pressure aswell.

Against PMR, we tend to have me open up on the mage and try to just stop his dps/polymorphs in the beginning, while the warrior tries to slow down the rogue with hamstrings, the warrior also intercepts on the mage if hes either used his iceblock and is low, or i can't get to him and hes casting frostbolts/polymorphs. We then switch to either of the mage or the rogue if we get an opportunity, if the rogue is getting low i can shadowstep to him and assist in getting him down, same on the mage. The druid focuses on not getting manaburned and keeping us alive.

Against warr/druid/warlock we tend to just bunch up on the warlock and kill him, the warrior cannot kill anyone of us faster then we can kill the warlock, if the warrior and warlock goes for the druid, one of us needs to assist the druid in slowing the warrior so he can escape and heal up. If it's a rogue instead of warrior, basically the same thing, except we need to be more vary of blind and bursts from the rogue.

2x healer we tend to gank the weakest one of them and run the other one oom, priests are usually first target, then druids, then shamans and lastly paladins, you can also quickly switch to the warrior and kill him or put him into defensive so your druid can manage to squeeze in some drinks.

I just started playing the same lock/hunter/druid comp. It seems a lot of the comp's power comes from near perfect CC. We tend to drain DPS(SP, Mage, hunter) first if possible to lessen the need of CC(since we have 2 pets we can keep drinking to a minimum). It seems absolutely necessary for us to keep melee off our teammates because a melee getting a good burn on one us can throw our CC off and cost me a lot of mana to get back into control so it might throw the game.

How well should a balance druid / rogue / affliction lock 3's team work?

It's my teams make up, and honestly we're sucking. I think we hover week to week from 1450-1500. I don't really know what we're doing wrong, or if it is just the group make up. I hate to point fingers but it might be that the lock gets killed usually within 30sec of the fight starting. Then it's usually the rogue and I 2v3'ing (and surprisingly winning half of the games, but this is against 1400 teams..)

What should our general strategy be? We've been trying to focus on cc and burning one person down, but usually that fails when I try to keep the lock alive and we only have the rogue trying to kill someone by himself.

Tell the lock to get soul link? He will be the tank a lot of the time in that setup, so you might as well make him go that way. It's probably going to play similar ways to lock/war/druid. Although you being balance will change things to a more offensive setup. Still you'll probably spend more time cc'ing and healing then burning. Lock will need support to keep himself getting trained. Lock also needs to shut down casters with CoT and line up dots while kiting. Fear if he gets the chance. Rogue will be your main dps and probably will sit on someone like a priest or a mage to prevent them from killing you with mana burns or shatter combos.

Try to use CC (roots / cyclone) to keep melee off your lock, and focus on burning down a squishy. As balance really you shouldn't have enough time for more than insect swarm and moonfire on the focus target and then more CC on their rogue / warrior. When a target gets low, fear or blind (if no dots) the healer, pop a trinket if you have one, and wrath spam if you're confident you'll get the kill.

Warlock being Affliction means he'll die pretty fast though, there's very little you can do about it apart from respec or focus on balls to the wall burst (which is sorta hard with a moonkin).

If you can keep melee off the warlock, then he'll be free to fear healers / casters, which combined with the rogue locking down the focus target, should put the other team on the backfoot.

I play Warr/HPal/RSham and we are stuck around 1900. The three main teams that seem to be able to have an edge up on us is Warr/Lock/Druid, Druid/Priest/Hunter, and mirror match.

The first combination is obviously pretty popular and they are very close games. We sort of just need an edge to beat them, but between the constant pressure from warrior and the lock draining mana it just seems that we'll eventually die. Our best attempts have to keep the druid from drinking, but he is still able to avoid kill shots for some reason.

With DPH, to me, this is an impossible match to win. Normally priests do not hurt us too much because easy LoSing of mana burns, but with the combination of frost trap and our warrior not being able to pressure the priest because of cyclone, he is free to mana burn at will. Add to that the scorpid pet and viper sting and our team is oom. I assume this is because of our class makeup being weak to drain teams but was wondering if there was any secret to defeating this team.

Against a mirror team, it just seems like the other team is so much better at doing what they do then we are. We've only played this combo for a few weeks only playing a few games a week but the difference is amazing. They are usually able to keep my shaman locked down and out and if he does manage to escape and LoS the shaman, they just turn on the warrior and blow him up. Any advice would be helpful.

I run as a lock with a druid/lock/warr team and a druid/lock team. I started out felguard, but found it vastly inferior to the felhunter in the higher ratings, where you are more likely to find a healer. The lock out on a healer is longer (6 sec vs. a 2 sec stun) as well as the puppy having a dispel. The damage is lower for a felpuppy, but spell lock makes the entire difference in arena.

First time poster, long time troll/noob who has who has prospered from the advice given here.

I run a 3v3 with rogue/war/dpriest. The reason for the makeup is friendship so I can't really sub classes.

Our first night we shot up to 1650 only to mire back down to 1500 quickly due to, we thought, sub par gear. However, we are all over the 200 resil 10k mark and are still seeing vast problems.

Hunters paired with any form of CC dominate us, due to us not being able to down the pet fast enough. Druids also take our warrior out of the equation for the early burst game, rendering our makeup useless. What our strat has been is going hard and heavy (early cooldowns) on the squishiest class they have hoping to down him quick enough to make it a 3v2 and just lean on them. We've found that our priest never has breathing room and if we don't get the early gib we lose consistently.

My question being, are we totally boned by our makeup? We have a dispel, but if he's CC'ed we turn into a weak team. I've been rolling a mage for substitution, but I'd rather one of you fine gentlemen give me a beam from heaven that enlightens me to what an idiot I've been.

We're currently playing Disc Priest / Resto Shaman / Warrior in 3s, and I don't want to say our rating is "stuck" (since I do not believe we are), but in the 2000-2100 range we do not seem capable of taking down Warrior / Hunter / Druid teams. We have tried our Warrior on the Druid and on the Hunter, but the amount of CC and kiting ability that a Druid has wrecks us and our ability to outlast them. I (playing the Disc Priest) try to get Mana Burns in on the Druid, but any competent Druid is capable of avoiding a good proportion of them, not to mention that doing so generally requires me to be within line of sight of the Hunter.

Is there a different way we should be approaching this match-up? Should our Warrior be on one specific class over another, or should we just continuously switch and keep their Druid off guard?

So tonight I played with a new team (druid/lock/rogue) and we did pretty well (playing in the 1800 range), but one team we went 0-6 against and I'm just not sure what to do -- a priest/lock/rogue team.

Basically the rogue would go hardcore on my lock and put a ton of pressure on him -- the priest would dispel most of my hots so I wouldn't end up healing for a ton, and I simply wouldn't have enough time to CC, theal, and keep wound poison off my lock. If I tried to control the rogue he had enough CC-breakers to not really be very affected, and then I was behind on my APing and healing and my lock would die. I'd get CCed enough (with hots being dispelled) via fears and blinds so that simply APing and healing through the rogue wasn't really an option (I'd fall behind and after swiftmend and NS were burnt the lock would die). Every time we lost our lock went down first.

Our first thought was that we needed to put more pressure on the priest to prevent dispels, but that didn't seem to make much difference -- still a lot of dispels and lots of pressure from the rogue. We tried to focus more on the rogue but that didn't seem to keep him off our warlock all that much, and then their priest was pretty free to negate most of my healing and the warlock could dot everyone up.

So, is this just a bad combo for us? Given how well we were doing against all the other teams (~75% wins) this team really felt like they just had our number :-/

I play the same 3v3 on my pvp shaman alt and we are in the 2000-2100 range atm. Agaisnt Druid/Lock/Warrior you should have upper hand and win most of the time. Basically what we do is have 3 targets: felhunter, warlock, and druid. We start on the lock/felhunter, once the druid shows up you have to learn how to pressure him quickly and hard to make him run away. Do not chase if he gets away and get back on the lock/fel hunter, your warrior has to keep the DPS flowing to keep the pressure up. Cleanse the DoTs and Drains off and have the shammie use water shield and mana wont be an issue. The druid will eventually try to get back and cyclone the warrior to free up the lock for draining etc, have your shammie be on the ball with cyclone interrupts/grounds and have the warrior immediately intercept over to the druid and chase him away every time he tried to enter the game. If the druid makes the mistake of feral charging into you and your shaman, blow him up with heroism/WF/shocks. If not then eventually the druid will fall behind on healing on the lock and lock will go down. Just keep the DoTs and drains cleansed, keep tremor totem down, interrupt some cyclones to keep DPS flowing and always be on the lookout to blow the druid or the felhunter up.

Hunter/priest/pal can be tough depending on how competent the hunter is, but treat it like any other drain team. Try to get rid of the pet every chance you get, once the pet is gone you and your shaman are free to take turns drinking. Good hunter/druid teams can be absolute nightmare for your warrior though. We fought a 2x hunter/resto druid team and I really dont know how to counter this at all. Even being diligent about cleansing poisons, a tick of viper here and there will eventually run is dry and the warrior is completely shut down almost the entire game with frost traps/wing clips/cyclones/roots.

Stay in the middle so the druid can't despawn the hunters scorpid (He should have a scorpid, I assume since your 2100 he does.). Put the scorpid on the druid and make sure the hunter tags him with viper every time he comes out to CC.

Tell your warrior to stay on their hunter and harass him, force that druid to be in LoS to heal/CC, you will get more opportunities to mana burn him that way. If your warrior is on the druid he is going to get to pull your warrior out of the fight through kiting (and so, get himself out of burn range.). You want the druid in the fight, so pressure one of his team mates, being that he is the only healer, it will give you the chance to burn his mana and the pet should prevent him from drinking as long as you are on top of roots. However, really, if your warrior is good with pressure, on a hunter, he won't have a lot of time to drink, being the sole healer.

Your warrior will get CCd a lot, but this game is all about keeping the druid vulnerable, a warrior can more effectively do that by requiring him to CC more/heal then by going on him. Oh, also, if he isn't, your warrior should be taunting the pet every chance he gets so he can proc his enrage, it puts a ton more pressure on the druid to heal.

A friend and I are looking to start a 3v3 team after grinding out some points in 2v2 for gear. He has both a druid and a hunter, and I play a rogue. Just looking for suggestions on viable group makeups so we can start looking for our third. He doesn't have a preference on which he plays so more than likely whichever will make the best group.

druid/hunter/rogue, druid/war/rogue, druid/war/lock, pally/rogue/hunter. You've got pretty endless possibilities, Rogue/druid and rogue/hunter have pretty good synergy so you just need to figure out your favored playstyle and find someone who is GOOD at their class to join you.

I'm trying to find a good fit for my Elemental Shaman in 3s. I've heard some decent things about W/S/Pa but I was wondering how you go about playing with this setup.

Also, should I be gemming/enchanting for burst or survivability in this bracket? I'm decently geared but I feel like if I'm not blowing major cooldowns I'm not providing very much DPS.

Just remember that playing against solo druid healer teams as 2 healer/war if you leave the druid alone he will CC your warrior to hell. It's very important to put pressure on him whenever you can. If you have a paladin, get judgement of justice on him. Just practice training him whenever he pops out, even your healers can drop some burst when you get him low. Even if you don't kill him, you force him to waste mana and cooldowns escaping, and keep him behind on healing, which in turn leaves him without time to CC or drink.

Hey I just started a team with a war/dpriest/ele shaman (me) and we haven't done too many games yet, but we're hovering in the 1700s.

Basically, our strategy has just been picking a main target for me to purge while the warrior pressures the "fake" target, then we switch to the main and try to blow em up. Aside from basic fuck-ups, often on my part...god shaman have a lot of shit to keep track of -- we're having trouble with any team with a resto druid and double healer teams. I guess the trick to dealing with druids is just finesse and keeping track of what they're doing (i.e. grounding/ESing cyclones and such).

Anyway, does anyone have any experience/tips on running this setup? And how to deal with druids and double healer teams?