I've been doing a bit of warlock / druid / rogue, and it seems to me like sort of a conflicting setup. If you want to go for outlast, then warrior + demonology (SL/SL or FG) warlock is a much better choice, since rogues are somewhat limited by their cooldowns. On the other hand if you wanna play offensively, you really need a caster with more burst than a warlock.

Generally, I've found the best thing to do is abuse the high amount of CC available -- stunlocks, fear, deathcoil, blind, cyclone. Avoid getting an immune blind with good communications from the druid on cyclone targets, and try to kill someone quickly. You won't have the same raw burst + control of PMR, but if the game does get drawn out you'll be in a slightly better position. Still, vs teams that are built to outlast, you won't really have the juice to keep going once the rogue's cooldowns are blown.

It's not an ideal team but with good CC co-ordination I think it does have a lot of potential.

edit -- generally we try to root / cyclone any warriors, since if they're left to run loose they can put a lot of pressure on the rogue, forcing me to heal instead of CC. We have toyed with the idea of trying to gib them though, does anyone have any experience with this?

Anyone have any good videos of h paladin/resto shaman/warrior at high ratings in 3s? From the shaman or paladin perspective preferably, but I'd take the wars.

MoB plays horribly here (I know they're a great team, etc., but the priest is putting himself in harm's way with no good reason and Xecks apparently falls off the bridge midway through).... still, this is Gclol's perspective vs. MoB's PMR: mob1.avi - FileFront.com

Any chance you could look over our shaman's armory and check his gear/talents out? The World of Warcraft Armory

I'm not at all experienced with this combo in 3s but it seems to me that he goes down quite fast when focused and I tend to burn a lot of of mana keeping him up.

I'll watch the video as soon as I get off of work.

War can do all that and more (we did indeed hit gladiator in 2s), which means that whatever problems we have are likely on my shoulders or our shamans, playstyle wise, though I'd like him to switch back to maces. How do you recommend I use my buffs? Do I freedom the shaman so he can LoS better while being focused, or do I freedom the warrior so he can stay on targets easier? Is it more acceptable to eat fears because of tremor, assuming it's up? Is there anything I need to do besides heal and JoJ druids?

3s is just so different from 2s, and 5s and I feel like my knowledge is extremely limited.

He's not that frail. He really needs to upgrade his weapon/shield, though. He should stop buying s3 armor pieces and save his arena points for shield+weapon as soon as you guys hit 1850.

He should re-enchant his chestpiece. +15resil is the clear best PvP enchant there.

His spec has issues. I assume that's a PvE spec? 3/3 Healing Grace is pretty worthless even in PvE once you get past doing heroics you're undergeared for (where it is, admittedly, a life-saver, because heal aggro on the pull is a major cause of wipes). Crucially, he needs 3/3 Nature's Guidance. That gives you just the base 1% resist chance in PvP, and earth shock is his most important spell. Shock resists on stuff like mana burn and poly can easily cost you a game outright.

He needs 2 more points in Guardian Totems (take two out of Improved Reincarnation, and stop dying so much in PvE) for the shortened cooldown on Grounding. Grounding is another of a shaman's best abilities.

Beyond that, honestly, I'd say that having a Glad-caliber war/pal as the core of this team is a wonderful start. Until higher levels, I'd advise you not really overthink things. Just play it kind of like you would a 2v2, except with some backup healing and utility, and then analyze afterwards.

Your shaman should be spamming purge a lot at the start. The paladin should handle most of the healing throughout, with the shaman healing when the paladin is CC'd or school-locked, going out to drink, or when there is heavy burst going on. Your shaman should get the mod Shaman Friend (best goddamn mod ever -- Shaman Friend | World of Warcraft @ Curse.com), should be good with his focus shocking, and should make an effort to be using a rank 1 shock pretty much on cooldown throughout the fight. There's almost always something you can be interrupting, or you can be frost shocking someone to snare them.

I'm really looking forward to the video that Gc has mentioned he's working on, as it should be a wonderful resource for high-level shaman play.

Regarding snares: BoF is totally situational, I'd save it for your warrior if you're about to go for a killshot, but if your shaman is getting focused really heavily, don't be afraid to give him freedom, especially in nagrand/ROL as pillar/tomb humping with freedom can win you the game there. Otherwise I'd say that your warrior has too many ways to stay close up with *most* classes (druids/mages excepted) for him to need BoF when your shaman is (as you say) more often the target. Regarding fears: Tremor is unreliable, though it has no cooldown, and if it gets killed before it pulses (5 seconds between pulses if I recall), that means you are likely eating 8-12 seconds of fear. That being said, I've pretty much demanded that my healer(s) save their trinket for the blind that comes right after a full duration sheep/fear since it's usually the seconds 15-20 that guarantee a dead teammate.

*edit* Gurg addressed Shaman issues.

For the final question: Having played with really excellent paladins in 3v3 as a warlock and as a warrior, I can say without question that I prefer aggressive paladins in 3v3. I don't mean a guy who's going to go OOM holy-shocking some CLOSed rogue in the first 15 seconds of the match, but if the only thing you're bringing to the table is BoF, JoJ and an endless plate-encased mana supply (yeah that's a lot), you're not doing enough. You need to coordinate drinks with your partner (this will happen vs. outlast/drain teams), HoJ healers after your warrior gets an Int-shout off to create distance between healer/target(definitely use this if they trinket the fear), and don't be afraid to go all sort's of ferocious and take a killing blow with shock/HoW.

I'd say things to look for in the video that gurg linked is how the sham/pal basically weave heals part of the time to minimize lockouts/double CCs/mana burn, how they use the ramp/pole for LOS and totem placement and clutch burst from pally/shaman at the end on the priest.

This is exactly my problem in 3v3 Arena. When playing against caster teams I get destroyed. Can you elaborate more on defensive play as a warrior? When I hear the term defensive, I associate it with not being modest about reflecting spells and always checking the nearby casters for interrupt opportunities. I play with a Disc-Priest and Holy-Paladin, we've been playing together for quite some time, and usually hover at about 1800 rating (Season 2).

In general we are having a lot of issues with Rogue/Mage/X Teams. X being any class where you could put a priest, shaman, druid or warlock in. The problem I have is we don't know which target to DPS since this setup comes with a wide assortment of CC and interrupts. Perhaps in this setup a more defensive play style is required. Usually I try and focus on the rogue first, but we haven't had much success with it. Is the problem my tunnel vision DPS? How should I play this match up?

You can use Intervene to get yourself farther away from people as well, if you have a healer thats nearby a pillar in Nagrand being able to Intervene them to get behind it faster is always going to be handy.

With 2 healers against PMR I'd say go after the priest. As the only dps you won't be able to pressure the highly mobile rogue or mage and you'll get mana burned by the priest. Have your priest mana burn the mage to force him out of los while you keep the priest healing himself. You should easily be able to heal through the rogues solo dps with PS and BoP available. I'd also recommend killing the elemental when they spawn it. Just as for freedom when it comes up and get it down. If they don't have double shatter they lose there ability to burst.

We ranked up an alt team war/pal/restoshm yesterday to 1850 and against PMR we had good success focusing water elementals, then the mage. With an archimonde sword/ROS mace/season3 or even season2 weapon your warrior can pretty much 1round a water elemental.

If you don't focus the mage, you're setting yourself up for a blind+counterspell+fear+chastise+gouge+kick on your paladin while they blow up your shaman or your warrior with an unmolested shatter combo. Just purge as many PW:S and ice barriers as you can to help rage generation, purge ice armor, and dispel roots off your warrior. Do not spam freedom on your warrior unless he is getting burned. It is much more useful on the focus target to stop the mage's damage; you should only swap it to the warrior if it's cementing a kill or if the mage can't get to the dps target to do a shatter combo (due to LOS/out of mana/whatever). JoJ on the rogue + freedom on the burn target + HOJ on the rogue if available is a great way to get some distance, even with sprint up. Blessing of sacrifice is also great, but try to put it on the focus target when the priest can't dispel it - it really kills rogue damage output. LOS mana burns, and shock/HOJ the ones that you can't.

You might get lucky and be able to burst the mage down, but some matches will just last until the mage runs out of mana, and then he will die regardless of whether the priest has any mana left.