If 4 DPS "dies" as serious competition to 2345, and if drain team setups never come to fruition with a rogue (we played a few in the first week that had some pretty good Rampage players on it, which is what brought that up), then I'll totally agree with you that 5s needs and adjustment for rogues, druids, etc. It will probably be a few weeks to see how it will pan out.

Randomness is always there, sure, but I think it resolves games way less than people think, especially after that change
to interrupt effects (because that definitely did). I don't think that really has anything to do with the comparison to 3s and 5s, though. As in the PMR thread, if you come against a hunter, assuming equal skill/gear level, you are going to lose a hugely disproportionate amount of the time. That's just one example, but there are many. I don't like that particular element of hard counters and I don't think they are good for the game in any bracket.

Anyway I've never felt totally helpless against any of the top 40 teams in our 5v5 bracket due to their setup (due to their skill, sure), and we run a weird 2 healer team. Perhaps that is a huge perceptual bias, but I think functionally speaking there are way less hard counters in 5s than any other bracket. Basically what he says:

Anyway either way, if rogues don't end up with a few competitive matrices in any 5s setup then I'm not going to disagree with you at all. And I really do love the 3s bracket, I just think it would take quite a bit of work to re-balance the arena game around it.

I'm currently using a Mage, Paladin and Warrior combination for this season. What is the pros and cons for this set-up?

That's a terrible setup .

Two easy people to kill, and an easy healer to lockout. Not a ton of damage output either, all things taken into account.

Didn't that setup dominate all through season 1?

If i replace the mage with a warlock, would the set up be of a outlasting fight? And would it be more balance?

To Caal: Is there any reason why there is no shammy and warrior in dreamhack top finalist?

heh no, that setup didn't dominate anything through season one. Half their advantage was in being able to drink. After that was gone...

As far as Shamans and Warriors being nonexistant in Sweden goes.. Neither class is doing particularly well in 3's right now. Warriors are required to have a Druid to stay alive, or two healers. If they're given a Druid, they become immensely controllable. If you run with double Healer, you're pretty susceptable to a lot of teams, to be honest.

But, the real reason you didn't see either class much is, what exactly did people do in Sweden? Noone was willing to run their composition against my team, for example. Everyone was insistant on running some ridiculous counter comp. Can you think of a lineup that a warrior fits into that's a complete counter comp to the teams in Sweden? What about a Shaman? Nah, me either.

edit: Yeah dude, Warlocks and Warriors are a very good combination. Those classes combined can offer up enough pressure to keep your Warrior from being an overly burstable target.

no they weren't

Could've fooled me with a 2400 3s rating and a $10,000 prize purse from China, but sure, BG9 is the only battlegroup and Priest/War/Mage couldn't dominate other BGs because you say they didnt get top marks in yours.

Anyone have any tips/experience with holy pal/resto druid/war double healer team? Just started this team at the beginning of season 3 and we are hovering around 1700 rating right now. We have pretty decent gear with a mix of season 1/2/3 glad gear. The armory isn't working so well right now so I can't link my teammates profiles.

We have seen a lot of the new rogue/mage/priest teams so far this season and I'd say we win around 20% of those matches. So far for this setup I have been focusing on the rogue while my teammates los fbolts/mana burns. However between sheeps and all the escape+mitigation options ar/prep rogues have I have had a tough time bringing my target down, as well as trying to keep the mage in check.

Our other problem is when all 3 targets are extremely tough to kill for me, such as disc. priest/sl warlock/frost mage, it seems we just can't outlast them long enough to bring a target down.


I'm thinking of switching to a season 3 mace instead of my current bloodmoon when we hit 1850 rating for the stuns in order to have a little more control over my target, even if it is in the form of random procs.

I'd go on the mage instead of the warrior or you're going to spend a lot of time sheeped. Have your druid partner cyclone and root their rogue (ideally doing so as he pops AR).

I don't like warrior on rogue in this matchup mainly because it leaves the mage largely uncontrolled (especially without a shaman or something to at least spam shock/ground -- all your druid can do is cyclone and in the process open himself up for a CS from the mage) and because AR/Prep rogues burning timers are going to be exceedingly difficult to really shut down the way you'd hope. Also he'll be taking less damage due to evasion and such, allowing their priest to play offensively by burning and setting up dangerous psychic screams.

You're not likely to burst someone down with your setup, so your job is to outlast. Kill water elementals, stick to their mage, and run him out of mana, then make sure he doesn't evocate or drink, and that should be enough to secure the win.

I ran a Mage/Pal/War on my alt last season for about the second half, it's really not that bad, but it does require quite a bit of finesse and puts the lion's share of the pressure on your mage to be able to do damage while being focused. You have enough burst to blow up warriors on most warrior teams, which is nice. In general, though, you don't really have a super easy time against any common combos that I can think of, so there are better bets.

Praetorian mostly covered it, but this was the other team I actually ran with my warrior for a few weeks. You should be able to beat a lot of team setups since your healing is far less vulnerable to CC and with paladin support your druid should be able to survive against most DPS trains pretty easily. Against the PMR team definitely get on the mage. Put out enough pressure early that you can avoid mana burns, and make sure your paladins uses a rotation of freedom, BoP, and Bubble to avoid their burst combos (assuming they are on the druid). By that time you should be able to really take control of the match by wearing the mage down and CCing the other two when appropriate to get away.

You should also probably do better against drain teams than other 2 healer + war setups for obvious reasons. You'll end up with the inevitable long games all 2 healer teams play, but if you play well you should be able to beat most combos.

Play with a Druid + Warlock + Warrior could be nice if the Warlock can control his felhound

You got much CC with the Druid and with the Warlock, you got Damage over time so that the other Team will have enough Problems with keepin their life up and dont fall down.

Yeah sure you can play this Setup with a Rogue instead of the Warior but it could be played like this :P

priest war mage? what? If you ask them they'll tell you flat out that's a horrible setup. How about you take my word for it?

Anyway.

The only way you can run a Warrior with a single Healer is to back him up with a Rogue or a Warlock. Both those classes put out enough pressure to allow you to run somethign other than a Druid. We'll see what happens with Hunters this season. They might be able to slide into that spot too, but it doesn't seem too likely. 3 DPS with a Warrior is a bit silly :p. They just don't replace a Rogue in that spot, period.

The reason all 3 non-Chinese teams ran that setup was longevity. Pre-Illumination nerf Paladin healing plus drinking meant you could defeat most other compositions by outlasting their healer's mana. Needless to say, that won't quite work these days. Blessing nerfs and Hypothermia were just nails in the coffin.

Wasn't he talking about pal/mage/war?

I know what he was talking about. It's bad, mkay?

Ret pally, warrior, druid? Warrior gets the benefits of a druid healer AND BoF / Cleanse. I suppose the weak-link might be the ret pally's longevity, especially if he needs to emergency heal if druid eats a fear or something (BoP to counter blind is very nice too), or vs drain teams. I unfortunately don't really know enough about Ret Pallies and how they currently do in PvP, but seeing some of the numbers their lucky crit + SoC streaks could produce has made me wonder. Also, perhaps having the ret pally BoF the warrior would leave him open to perma-snaring? Again, I'm not sure. Comments from ret pally PvPers would be welcome here

edit - this isn't a reply to the above post (best 3s team for druid), just some musing regarding Caal's comments about warriors in 3s.

That would be it, imo. That combo is completely ludicrous atm.

I'm looking at getting into Arena with my warrior. Is Warrior/Resto Shaman/Priest a remotely competitive setup?

Hi all. Long time reader, first post.

Last season I ran a longevity team mostly using Warrior/Resto Shaman/Holy Paladin. It worked pretty well and we coasted pretty easily until we hit 2000 or so where we just seemed to top out against highly competent CC teams. I personally found the idea of outlasting the opposing casters mana pretty boring and I don't think it took any real "skill" on our part.

For the start of this season, we ran Warrior/Ret Paladin/Holy Paladin and Warrior/Ret Paladin/Resto Shaman and have had pretty decent success. Were at about 1700 in week 2 and we've been facing alot of fellow Duelist or Gladiator teams.

We've beaten some PMR teams mostly by catching the rogue before he can open and putting enough pressure on him to force the priest to heal, but we've also faced a few PMR's and gotten torn up. Typically they go after the Ret Paladin and neutralize his burst with stuns and slowing and MD his bubble and finish him. Both the Shaman and Holy Paladin are susceptible to interupt/counterspells and god forbit they're close enough to the action to get blinded.

I'm not really sure what our best strategy should be yet and I'm curious what you all think about Warrior/Ret Paladin/Healer setups. The burst is excellent and I think were really catching some teams off guard with our ability to gib cloth or leather. JoJ is also proving incredibly effective against Druid teams where they lose alot of time to CC with our pressure on them.

We also have a pretty well geared Resto Druid and the Resto Shaman actually would like to play Elemental.

I can run any combination of Warrior, Holy Paladin, Ret Paladin, Resto Druid, Resto Shaman, Elemental Shaman, and also know a good Demo Warlock and Hunter. Which setup should I go with? It seems like so many teams run priests at the moment so I'm not sure what to do. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

My 3v3 of Warlock/Warrior/Paladin is really struggling. I know this was a very strong setup in season 1, but is this combination doomed to sub 1800s ratings due to environmental conditions? Or should we really just work on our teamwork more?

The warrior is arms/fury and paladin is holy as expected. I've tried SL/SL and UA and we seem to do alot better in general when I'm UA. However, if run into teams that eviscerate me quickly it is game over. Given the armor penetration coming in, perhaps I should spec Felguard.

We are running this setup mostly so far this season (also have a druid on the roster though). If the other team goes after the warlock we tend to win, if they can effectively shut down the paladin while dpsing me, we get owned eventually. Good PMR teams seem to be a problem, because the mage is sheeping the pal or lock, rogue is locking me down so I can't pressure anyone, and once a CS lands on the paladin, we basically lose. Still trying to figure out the best bet against that setup, need to try some new things (only thing that has worked so far is putting enough pressure on the priest early to force him to kite/heal himself, while not allowing the mage/rogue to force me defensive).