Mearis

Unfortunately your comp doesn't have a lot of subtlety. Try to apply pressure very early on, and pile damage onto the priest. You can often zerg down a priest in a hammer of justice with some good procs. The longer the game goes, the worst it will go.

The advice about momentum is excellent too - basically, put a lot of pressure early on, try to trinket the early crowd control to allow you to stay on target. If you force the rogue/mage to play defensively you are already nearly there.

Take solace in the fact that you will win without thinking against every single team with a druid with joj though!

Sorry but I really can't take this kind of shit seriously when it's coming from the guild that thinks drawing swastikas with chain heal and relentlessly abusing someone whose only 'crime' is that he takes himself a bit too seriously is the height of humour.

 

• Tangles

I played this comp in s3 and got gladiator with it, not saying much considering how low the rating cutoff was, but yes both the PMR and hunter/dpriest/druid drain team are going to be your biggest troubles.

Like everyone has already said, vs the drain team you cannot afford to have the match drag on as you are going to lose due to mana issues. You can either pressure the priest or the druid early on, stack sunders then start a CC chain on the druid with cyclones followed up by a rep, hoj or warrior fear. Your pally should be popping wings as a bubble in this match isn't going to help much. One thing to note is that if you go for the druid option your own druid must be stopping the priest from dispelling joj with cyclones, feral charge or bash, otherwise the druid is going to get away. I prefer to get on the priest because doing so will prevent mana burns on your pally as well as fears on you druid which can wreck you. If you choose the druid option I like to have the ret pally save hoj for when the druid gets low, one hoj while in caster with no outs and you are almost guaranteed a kill. You pretty much have to let the hunter go free except for the occasional hamstring or cyclone. Killing the hunter pet really isn't going to help you because with all the CC options they have the hunter can easliy res it quickly.




vs PMR

Every time this will be a touch match. Against mediocre teams doubling up on the priest can win you the match with a quick kill as long as you spend your cooldowns controlling the mage with a rep followed by a cyclone chain. For most matches: Outlasting them with defensive play is an option but any one of your team could be killed at any moment which is no fun. Most matches there is going to be enough CC hitting your team that you will not be able to stay on any one target so just have your warr/pally hit whatever they can but keep your main focus on the priest or mage. A few things to remember: the priest must be slowed at all times otherwise your druid is going to get feared and if he sits the fear most likely either your warr or pally will die, if he trinkets the fear he will be blinded with the same end result.

I like to have the warr on the priest full time slowing him and preventing mana burns with your pally on the mage or you can have both the warr and pally on the priest for added pressure, whichever your team is most comfortable with. However, you must kill mage pets as soon as they are popped. Hamstring on the rogue is nice as well if your warr can manage that along with pressuring the priest.

Another thing to remember is that if your warr gets on the mage he is going to have debuffs stacked up the wazoo making it pretty difficult for your pally to dispell sheep which is why I prefer to have the warr on the priest.

Hopefully you can keep up enough pressure on them preventing them from executing a cc chain on your druid and a shatter combo on any target which is what usually will end the match in their favor.

As a note, if you come up against a team where the priest has rocket boots take your loss then stop queuing until you can get different team because the chances of winning are very slim. Lucky for you it looks like rocket boots will no longer be usable in the arena in 2.4.3.

 

Rej

Thanks for the great advice. 2 follow up questions:

- On Drain teams, most people have advocated going for the priest (or possibly Druid), applying lots of early hard pressure. When we tried this, our biggest problem was keeping the Priest in melee range since the Hunter and Druid bring significant CC. Especially as a Ret pally, I have no Intercept and cannot easily catch up over Frost Trap. Should I be target switching while the Warr sticks to the Priest? Stopping manaburns is good, but aside from that the priest can still use most of his spells with impunity, leaving the druid and hunter free to CC like crazy? The problem with splitting DPS is that I have no MS, so any damage I do to the Druid is very easily negated with their double healers. But when we focus fire, we have big issues with CC.

- For PMR, pressuring the priest has been our primary strategy, with some switches to the Mage (mostly me) when I could. The one danger is the Rogue and Mage catching our druid in a stun/shatter combo when we pressure just the priest. With double Iceblocks, we're not going to kill the mage, so mostly I'm there to stop him from killing the Druid. However, with Freedom purged I have a hard time keeping up with the mage. Should the Druid stay close to us when we're against PMR?

 

moowalk

About hunter/priest/druid or in general X/priest/druid:

Playing the priest, I'd much rather you were attacking me than the druid. With some trash debuffs padding roots, if my druid can stay there and CC I won't die. You're much more likely to kill the druid by a quick switch and CC chain on me.

 

Davidson

I'll agree with a quickswap kill on the druid being a good way to win, but war/ret/dru cannot afford to pressure a druid all game when the priest will just mana burn the paladin to 0 in 10 seconds and then the game is already over.

 

Mearis

Do you know how easy it is for a druid to kite away melees forever with a frost trap and a hunter peeling?

Sorry but I really can't take this kind of shit seriously when it's coming from the guild that thinks drawing swastikas with chain heal and relentlessly abusing someone whose only 'crime' is that he takes himself a bit too seriously is the height of humour.

 

moowalk

I'm not saying it's a winning strategy, I'm just giving my opinion that it's better than the alternative option of spending the entire match with 1 dps. I normally lose vs ret pally/warrior teams by my druid dying, and while that's probably my fault, I'm not terrible and it will work against most teams.

 

Rej

I'm really not sure why you think the druid makes the better target. With Frost Trap, Feral Charge, and no Freedom, smart Druids can easily kite us to no end. And if he does make a mistake and get caught, he can bear up for ridiculous mitigation against our all-melee damage (then Feral Charge back out after Bashing one of us). And if we make any mistake and lose the Druid, the priest will simply manaburn us when there's no pressure to heal.

The only advantage I see is that we have a better chance of stopping his Cyclones and Roots. But realistically, if he's away for just 2 seconds, he can Cyclone one of us and let the hunter/frost trap take care of the other. That's a very slim margin for error if we decide to go for the Druid. Whereas piling on the priest does demand significant mana investment from him in order to keep up Shield, etc., and stopping manaburns is much more likely.

 

moowalk

I should clarify that I'm not talking about hunter variant in particular and yes, a hunter would certainly make it easier for the druid to get away. I played with a warrior in S3 and leveled numerous teams and we did occasionally lose to 1700 double melee teams by them killing my druid, we almost never lost pre-1900 teams by me dying. Theorycrafting aside, this is what happened.

Coming back to the hunter variant, I've seen a lot of druids spec dreamstate in that combo. No feral charge and no swiftmend imo make them a susceptible target to burst.

 

BlackCadian

My warrior and I (resto shaman) have recently picked up a warlock to 3v3 with. Most setups we do fine against, but double melee, which seems to be frequent in S4, just rapes us, wether they go for the warlock or me. To be honest, we don't have much experience regarding this particular setup, but thought it worthwhile on paper.

If all else fails, what other class goes well with Resto Shaman/Warr in 3s? I guess Retri would work, but I feel that this setup would be slightly worse than Melee Shaman/Warr/Pala and I don't have any melee gear so...

If anyone has experience with shammwarrwarlock I'd be very grateful for advice.

"If teh alliance had shamens, we wud win more battlegrounses" - random ally (Pre BC)

 

Mearis

You cannot really run a warlock in 3's unless you are running a shadowcomp or playing with a druid to help peel melees from you.

Basically, playing war/warlock/shaman, they will piledrive the hell out of your warlock without anyone being able to help him out in the slightest. Warrior/ret paladin/resto shaman is very very strong as a burst team, you rely on a good ret paladin who understands that his number one job is cleansing the warrior and keeping him mobile.

You also need to be completely on top of shocks/groundings. If you can stop the first two cyclones/sheeps they are usually so far behind that the druid has to start healing. Momentum is absolutely everything - stop the initial CC and you will do very well.

Sorry but I really can't take this kind of shit seriously when it's coming from the guild that thinks drawing swastikas with chain heal and relentlessly abusing someone whose only 'crime' is that he takes himself a bit too seriously is the height of humour.

 

Brainer

We're trying a Warrior/resto Shaman/disc Priest combo, and at the moment we're still playing in rather low rating but already we faced a team that we couldn't find any winning strategy for - Rogue, resto Druid and disc Priest.
I'm being constantly CC'ed by druid, our priest is being eaten by rogue and drained by the other priest, and the shaman even when shocking the druid as much as possible, can't give me enough freedom to nuke any of the targets.
We tried going for priest at first, since we have the advantage of purge, however druid managed to keep me CC'ed long enough to keep priest over 30% health at all times.
We tried rogue, and got him to cheat death a couple of games but druid was always there on time with cyclone/roots and we never had a real chance on downing him.
Going for druid seemed to work for a while, but if I stay on him, my priest just gets manaburned dry in no time.
We played 5 games against this setup, two different teams, and they won us every time.
What is recommended course of action against them, and if someone has played a similar setup before, what are the other combos we should be careful with?

 

Rej

It's an uphill battle for you. Druid/Priest is a popular schtick right now because of the synergy between the two classes (longevity, CC, and instant heals). It's an easy comp to play, and they'll most likely just run you dry of mana since they can CC your DPS while letting their own DPS run free. Our team also fares poorly against Druid/Priest combos, since we're an all-melee team weak against mana drains and dispels.

I don't have much experience with your combo, but your best bet might be to make use of Bloodlust and catch their priest off guard. Focus your warrior on catching the priest in a bad spot, then bloodlust at an appropriate time and drain their priest dry with manaburn while you can keep him in sight. When he's dry, stick someone on their priest to prevent drinking, and have your warrior start hassling their druid with fears + Manaburn while the Warrior tackles the Rogue. You MUST catch the Innervate and purge/dispel it.

It's a tough fight either way. That Rogue might really screw up your attempts to manaburn during the bloodlust (and you don't really have any way of stopping him), so all this has to be carefully coordinated.

 

Grigori

The Druid needs to work double overtime here to keep up the pressure on the Priest. Try to get a combo point or two on the opposing Druid early. Then do 2+ Cyclones on the Druid followed by 2+ Cyclones on the Priest. When the last Cyclone on the Priest ends, the (bubbleable) Paladin HoJ the Priest and Repentance the Druid while your Druid makes a dash for their Druid. Then CC train the opposing Druid with Maim+Bash+Intercept+Indimidating Shout. At this point the Cyclone DR ought to have reset or be close to it even with trinkets. Do a second set of 2+ Cyclones on the opposing Druid and hope you are far enough ahead to finish off the Priest. Be quick with trinkets if the Hunter interrupts your CC train at a critical junction.

Pressure the Mage and Intercept/Hamstring the Priest instead and just switch target on IBs and go back to the Mage afterward. Hard switch to the Rogue if he manages to peel off the Mage, then switch back when the Mage comes back. The Paladin's top priority is to keep the Warrior on the Mage or Rogue so the Priest does not have a lot of time to Mana Burn. The Druid needs to be quick to switch from kiting to CCing whenever the Rogue switches from hunting the Druid to supporting the Mage. CC the Priest before you rape the Rogue with HoJ on a switch so your HoJ is not dispelled.

Allowing both the Mage and the Rogue to operate freely is generally not a good idea. They have more CC when both healers are pressured and if you trade healer kills you will almost certainly lose. Pressuring the Mage stops Shatter combos and drains the Mage's mana. Essentially, you want it to be a race between you running the Mage OoM (the Priest can neither heal a Mage's mana nor keep an OoM Mage alive) and the Rogue trying to kill one of you. If you run the Mage OoM he will die and you will win 3-on-2 even if the Priest burns your Paladin dry first.

The Warlock needs either a Druid or a Rogue (or both) in 3s. The Felhunter helps the stealthers win the stealth war, and the stealthers peel for the Warlock. It has always been that way, but the need has become more acute in S4.

You can also go Warrior+2xHealers with a Holy Paladin.

 

BlackCadian

Thanks for the comments! We played again yesterday and it became obvious (just like you suggested) that this is not really going anywhere.

I guess we'll go look for a retri now.

"If teh alliance had shamens, we wud win more battlegrounses" - random ally (Pre BC)

 

Colbert

We basically run a frostmage/holypaladin/elemental shaman(Me being the shaman) comp and we were doing pretty well so far this season(getting to 1750 last week) but all of a sudden we seem to be facing a LOT more Rogue/Druid/Warlock teams that completely destroy us.

Our basic strategy so far has been to rush in,blow bloodlust/trinket/water elemental ect and completely nuke down a target while the mage polymorphs another one.

Normally against this comp we chose to nuke the rogue since the druid and lock will just waste bloodlust by LOSing us until it expires while the rogue has to stay close. We can pretty much burn the rogue down in a couple of seconds but then its completely hopeless agains the lock and druid due to curse of tongues.fear.mana drain,cyclone and the combination of dots and hots. Theres been plenty of matches that lasted over 10 minutes that end with us just getting fed up and afking out since its really not worth it. The main problem is that all of us go OOM after a while and with the warlocks pet and moonfire its pretty hard for us to get a drink off.

This has been a major problem and we've gone from mid 1700s to low 1600s simply because none of us can really stand spending 15ish minutes a match just pillar hugging and losing and trying desperately to get a sip or two of water in. So far our best bet was to sycn all major cooldowns that we could(elemental mastery,trinkets,water elemental) and try our very best to nuke down one of them but thats only been marginally succesfull since the second they see the elemental they start ccing like crazy and when youre low on mana its pretty hard to drop a tremor totem every time a felhunter kills it(/target macros make it so its down seconds after I drop it). I was wondering if there's any way to counter these guys without having to replace our paladin for a restokin or bringing a rogue in?

 

Sumie

Has anyone tried Warlock/Mage/Druid with any success?

It'd essentially be a variant of the 5v5 euro comp, putting the 3 best CC's on one team. Warlocks would have both a mage and a druid to peel melee off of them, and if the druid is a restokin, the three could put out strong caster bursts while CC'ing a healer.

 

Rhod

I've done lock/mage/druid on my alt (druid, no one was that geared, we hovered in the mid 1700s S3). It's alot more difficult than you think to control the pace of a fight with casters. Against a PMR everyone on your team is succeptable to being burst down while pined by a rogue (with all of your CC/healing being dispellable AND hugely succeptable to pushback/counterspell/kick) and against ret/war/rshaman, the lock just gets demolished. In short, it's a solid comp but has huge short comings against many of the popular set ups.

One match up in particular sticks in my mind, double rogue (PVE geared)/druid. The rogues trained the lock hard then switched to me, with trinket, WoTF and CloS, they were both immune to CC long enough to just gib me down with 2x KS and blinds on the lock. The reason why it's so rememberable, is that the druid actually DCed at the begining of the match and the two rogues just duoed all 3 of us (they vanished and waited for cooldowns after gibing me).

 

traejan

hi guys,

i need some advice on putting together a 3v3 combo. i'm trying to play with some RL friends so our group makeup is limited. i have a druid and warrior. rl friend #1 has a mage and warlock. rl friend #2 has a priest. in terms of pvp gear it's warrior (330+ resil) > druid (200ish) > mage (100-150) > priest (60-70) > warlock (maybe 40). to this point we've been running warlock + shadow priest + resto druid with pretty bad results. playing 15-20 matches a week, our best has been like 8-5 and this week we were probably 5-15. we tend to win drawn out games and lose quick burst games unless the other team sucks.

my question is: given this available class pool, what would be the strongest class/spec combination. i don't have much hope of being 1700+ at this point since we can barely stay in the 1400's thus far. but winning a few more than we lose would be nice. i'm thinking since my warrior is the best geared and has the best burst potential, maybe warrior + disc/holy priest + whatever. maybe mage since it has better burst. i've also tossed around the idea of disc/holy priest + lock + swiftkin for flex dps/healing from multiple sources. maybe that's a dumb idea.

what do you guys suggest? we're getting frustrated. do you think it's more a group composition issue or a l2p and gear issue?

thanks a lot in advance.

 

Spookeh

Going by resil it'd be warr lock priest
Anyway, with the blue rep Battlegear, there's no reason to go into arena with less than ~190 resil

 

traejan

is war/lock/priest a decent combo?

what should the primary strategy be? warrior just whale on someone while the warlock tries to remove someone from the fight via fear? and priest does everything he can to keep the warrior free? i hear that cc and free movement are more important than heals.

to this point we've had more success starting on a soft dpser and trying to fear/cyclone their healer. but with a warrior + MS maybe it's better to take down their healer first.

sorry if these are all total noob questions. i've done a lot of battlegrounds and feel like i have a handle on how to play my warrior. but i'm totally new to strategies for fighting various 3v3 combinations.

 

Grigori

Warlock+Disc+Resto drain/outlast is probably your best bet. You definitely need to kit your toons out in blue rep PvP starter gear. Your Priest and Druid can go 2 piece each Mooncloth/Sain and Kodohide/Wyrmhide for double +35 Resilience bonuses. Dreamstate is probably not a good idea at your gear level, because your Druid will have his hands full trying to keep teammates alive even with Swiftmend and Feral Charge peels.

 

traejan