Emary

Your rogue should be muti combat if he's going to stay muti.


The druid needs to open on the rogue with a pounce to an immediate cyclone, that's going to force the rogue to either blow his trinket on the cyclone to stick to the lock, cause if he doesn't you can coordinate with your warlock to feral charge/bash/roots long enough for your lock to establish a good control rotation. Your rogue shouldn't have any trouble killing the mage with offdots from the lock.

It's also important to be mindful of your DR on cyclone on their rogue, communicate it with your rogue, after it resets call for your rogue to get a full duration blind on the other team's rogue. 10 seconds of distance and damage from the lock is more than enough to throw the fight.


edit: You as the druid really need to help your warlock out with CC, any rogue worth anything isn't going to let the lock alone control him, but timely feral charges and cyclones can make a huge difference.

 

• Encross

I had to follow the train! Losing solely because of weapon spec burns.

Also, I'm just going to agree with what the quote says. It is a straight up composition advantage; recently, I switched to a mage instead of a warlock and had a lot more progress as far as getting my caster mobile. It's still hard, but at least we stood a chance.

 

Emary

Anything mage/warrior is a pain for us, hstring and intercept harass on me is hugely annoying. I still feel that matchup is in the PMR's favor if the priest can land some burns on the mage, it essentially turns into an outlast fight and with the warrior not doing damage since there isn't a felhunter dispel, the PMR should be able to pull it out.

 

khel

We have a priest, hunter, warlock setup now and have been getting the PMR teams a lot, and also priest, warlock, rogue teams. Our priest is disc, I am MM/survival, and our warlock has tried both sl/sl and UA specs. When sl/sl, the dps would generally be focused on me and the dps wouldn't be enough from the sl/sl specced warlock. When UA specced, the rogue would generally tear our warlock up.

I think we are going to try our warlock as felguard spec, and me as 41/0/20 or so next, because right now it's melee teams that are really hurting. Caster teams we have very little problems with.

 

Emary

Your team only has to survive for 30 seconds until the mage is oom and their pressure is reduced by a huge amount. Just trap kite and LOS their mage while keeping sting up on the mage, your warlock should be doing his best to peel the rogue from you and to land some easy dots and mana drains .

 

Kaber

I have had a lot more experience going up against PMR setups now with around 8 games against them out of the 30 we have done so far this week. We lost to two of them. The first we lost to because it was the first time we ever saw them, we adjusted our strategy and beat them the next time around, along with every subsequent team. Our last two bouts with PMR's was against a group of Gladiators (mind you none of us had ever gone much beyond 1900 before). The first time they won because I popped out early on the Priest to pounce and lead into a cyclone. The Rogue was just waiting for me, and hopped on with my Warrior sheeped, our warlock snared and getting mana burned, and both the Rogue and Mage burned everything they had to drop me during the stuns (not to mention they got a few lucky mace stun chains leading into kidney shot). We lost miserably. The second time around I waited as long as I could, since it was obvious the rogue was just waiting for me. I popped out to heal and cyclone the priest, then shifted bear to wait for the rogue. When he did pop my warrior intercepted, dropped defensive stance and disarmed him right as the rogue was chaining in to his burn rotation on me, and I managed to outlast and kite once I was able to get away from the rogue. We simply focused the rogue and with a well timed Cyclone we managed to drop him. Granted I cannot tell you if our opponents simply dropped the ball or if it was because we did everything right, but I feel very confident that a well played Warrior/Druid/Warlock can beat the PMR 4 out of 5 times.

I will say we went against a setup exactly like our own, only their warlock was Felguard and ours was SL/SL. We lost pretty badly, and I think it was entirely because of the felguard. They burned our Felhunter and intercept stunned me with the felguard at the perfect time just blowing our lock up.

 

Maligne

Played 50 games today, ran into quite a few PMR teams. Didn't have much trouble at all as mage/hunter/pally. I polyed the warlock while the hunter drained the priest. We had a little some trouble towards the end (when we got to the 1700 level) when the opposing rogues and priests played very well, but overall I was surprised at how well we did against them.

Inform your dealers and whores of my credit, and pour me a goddamned drink!

 

Diao

You didn't play a PMR if you polyed a warlock.. it was a priest/lock/rogue in that case. On another note, my MS war/disc priest/holy pally was able to beat a few PMR teams by me pressuring the mage if they focused our priest, and our priest manaburning their mage if I was being focused.

 

Maligne

Wow yeah, meant mage there. Posting after 4-5 hours of straight arena might be a bad idea.

Inform your dealers and whores of my credit, and pour me a goddamned drink!

 

Juli

I played the cookie cutter (discipline)PMR setup most of last season, but this season I grabbed shadow gear first for a change of pace, and since it allowed me to get a pve weapon sooner. I'm curious what strategies you'd employ in the SP/M/R vs P/M/R matchup, as it was the only team that gave us any real trouble at all in our first night of playing. Our rogue didn't bother to respec AR/prep and just ran his pve combat build so we'll obviously do better with that, and we're mostly just inexperienced with the setup. None of us have ever played on a healerless team or gib team of any sort.

I'm curious who you'd focus first, who you'd try to get to blow a trinket so you could blind (especially against the tri-undead variant where you can't get a trinket to pop with fear), and who you'd use silence/CS on and when (unreliable silence against disc priests makes me sad, especially when I don't have time to get shadow prot off first).

Obviously I always have the option to go disc again, and I'll have all the gear for both specs by late-season, but I'd like to give this setup a real chance since it's pretty fun to blow people up.

 

BrTarolg

Hehe i was having fun (trying) to play PMR with my disc priest friend and a decently geared rogue

Unfortunately we are struggling trying to get past 1500 atm :P. Probably because me and the disc priest both have just short of 8k hp, which probably really isnt enough (usually our priest just gets jumped on, and even with pain supression/CC help its not enough to survive). However I think partly the reason is because this the first time we have ever decided to do arena properly and we just need more practise.

One thing we are struggling with is which character to target overall. It's great that i can just spam polymorphs on people throughout, however i am always unsure as to what target to go for (well, I always target the same target as the rogue and CC a different target - mainly what I mean is the *rogue* has a problem picking targets). We came across several teams with a resto druid or a rogue on their team, and if our rogue say, goes to stunlock the warlock for a bit (and sapping the other person first) - we are sometimes unsure what to do if a rogue pops up - should we switch targets to him as they have no healer?
Or what if a druid pops up - starting to spam hots on the (usually) SL SL lock - since i cant really poly the druid, we have considered the rogue changing targets to the druid and i can poly the lock (who has usually blown his trinket and on full hp) - however this often leaves the other person (hunter,mage,warrior some kind of DPS) to have free reign on us.

Perhaps our real problem is just poor gear. I've got 150 resi atm, and just short of 8k hp. Perhaps i shouldnt really expect to get past 1500 with that? I've comfortably gotten to 1600 on 2v2 with a lock just by being (gasp) fire PVP, but recently, im stuck again at 1500 there, even as a full frost with much better gear than before.
Then again, I always hear people of getting to decently (ish) high ratings like 1700-1800 just by wearing green "of the stamina" gear, and not having more than 2 pc merciless. TBH, id be chuffed if i can get to 1650 and hold that atm :P

 

Diao

Shadow PMR vs a disc PMR setup is much weaker due to complete lack of heals, and the opposing team has a lot of control/dispels which really lowers your damage output. Your best option is probably sheep their priest first, mana burn the mage, then when sheep runs into DR, blind/sap and resheep. You should be able to burn down their mage and force an iceblock, which you can MD. If the priest trinkets for a PS on the mage then targetswap to rogue. In all likelihood they'll try to cc your rogue or mage and burn you down first, as SP survivability is next to nil.

 

Juli

Conventional wisdom says they should focus me ("always kill shadow priests first!!!"), but honestly I don't have a hard time surviving usually. 487 resil and 12k-ish hp, the ability to dispel all frost novas to stop ice lance damage and help kite, and stoneform coupled with the ability to drop form for an instant unpoisoned desperate prayer really makes me a lot more survivable than most people try to make you believe. I haven't felt squishy against any team we've fought and if they focused me we'd probably have an easier time than if they focused either of my teammates.

I'm also very skeptical of mana burn, and even picking up the talent, as shadow. Shadow isn't an outlast spec, and I question our ability to get him dry before they wear us down without healing. If you don't get him to 0 mana (including his mana gem) or at minimum force him to waste cooldowns or play defensively, the burns were worthless.

 

Mearis

I think the reason to focus shadowpriest is because a shadowpriest who is getting focused by a rogue is completely shut down, while a shadowpriest left alone and able to mindblast/mindflay/vt is going to be putting out insane amounts of burst. Shadowpriests aren't insanely squishy, they are just extremly easy to pressure.

 

• Snowy

I'd be very skeptical of it as well, especially running as a 3 dps team. You aren't going to win an outlast game, because your mana is going to be at zero as well, due to shadowpriests going through mana rather rapidly. Good communication on who has used their trinket on the enemy team is very key here, as you have a lot of CC at your disposal. If someone had to use their trinket on a blind, then they are open to eating a full duration fear or poly.

Generally spriests are the first target not so much because they are squishy, but they have no escapability and it's easy to shut them down. Once I get crippling on me, I'm crippled. (pun intended) That rogue is going to be sure that I can only cast instant spells, which basically means shielding myself and SWP. I sure as hell am not going to be able to get off any mana burns.

Mana burns are much more of a holy/disc thing, since that's a completely different school of magic from holy and adds a second facet to the priest. (healing and mana burning/offensive power)

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

Emth.

I play Mage/Resto Shaman/Warrior and i've been having a few problems staying alive vs this setup. With an AR/Prep rogue going all out and a priest dispelling both his roots/snares and my iceblock it seems hopeless. Their mage can take our warrior out of the picture for long enough to pull it off. My armory is well out of date and i'm at 10k hp and 360 resil now.

 

◊ Greenexile

Does anyone have any advice for dealing with PMR as a mage/lock/druid team? We got absolutely dominated by this combo yesterday and I'm kind of struggling to think of a way through it. We are not great pvp'ers but we managed to finish season two with an 1800 rating so we're not completely hopeless as our current rating suggests.

Generally our strat is to come out and burn one of their dps while keeping their healer completely locked down. The problem is the opposing rogue gets on me (the druid) keeping me stunlocked and doing quite a bit of damage, meaning I need some of our CC to help get free, meaning the opposing priest can heal everyone to full and start mana burning our mage. We tried burning down the rogue first, however there is a big problem with doing this (versus say, a warrior) as we have to wait for the rogue to pop before we can start playing our game. We've also tried burning down their mage and CC'ing the rogue when he pops, but generally the rogue is able to use enough 'get out of jail free' abilities to avoid the CC and start piling on more offensive pressure than we can really manage.

Should we focus fire on the rogue and keep working our CC on the opposing priest? Should we CC the rogue and try to burn down the mage and CC the priest? Is there another creative strat that might work well? It seems as though our big strength (massive CC) isnt kind of nullified against this team.

 

Diao

I'll admit I wasn't thinking about dwarf priests and stoneform/DP; however, I'll tell you that in my experience, the moment a spri drops form to heal is the moment I know we've won the match. In 100% of the matches that I have played against spri, in 2s and 3s, if they drop form, we win. I haven't seen any priests drop form in 5s yet, so I can't say for that. SPri survivability out of shadowform is much too low and they are generally low on mana already from DPSing early, so it is basically an act of desperation. I can see how in some cases it might save you long enough for your teammates to burn someone down, but I have yet to see it happen.

Since you can see buffs now when the match starts, you should target the priest to see if he FW himself or not. As the druid, you should always start in stealth and wait for their stealth to come out first. Wait for their rogue to attack (generally will focus your lock as he has fewer escapes than a mage), and then pounce->cyclone him. Your mage should sheep the priest and you focus on their mage. You should have no trouble kiting a rogue after the 3x cyclone, and if you get caught by him, mash your bear/NG key and feral charge their mage/priest who should be far from the rogue. Keep abolish up and you should have no troubles escaping. Your lock should help with fears on the rogue whenever he's not cycloned, and banish on WEs. With as much CC as you have, PMR shouldn't be much of an issue.

 

Cob-

Exactly, which is why I need to find a good mage/rogue. Damn Crushridge.

As for the OP- it's really a hit or miss, and it all depends on the map. If it was Nagrand Arena and the mage is focused on the warr you might be able to pole dance a Cyclone. PMR is just insane right now- even the mediocre can dominate.

 

Clockwise

As a lot of people are wondering about PMR counter-comps, I thought I'd bring up War/Pal/MMHtr as a possible counter-comp. We seemed to do pretty well initially at playing an outlast game, killing the anyone we liked once the priest was sucked dry (putting me on the mage to prevent large output usually meant that it died first). Practice and getting to know our teammates playstyles/classes well (never played with a hunter since early early S1) can only improve the matchup I think.

If Lock/Pst/Htr or Lock/Pst/Rge is a counter-comp to PMR, then I think War/Pal/MMHtr is strong against these teams too, with the susceptibility of priests to Viper Sting and the ability to not get drained myself. Even against opposing drain teams, we seem to trade our mana for their mana, then I kill someone since I'm still going. We also found it effective to drain opposing hunters dry (takes 2 Viper Stings, so not long) before draining priests, which went a long way towards protecting our paladin's mana pool. Usually games would end with the opposing team OOM and our paladin somewhere between 30-50%.

In general it seems as if priest teams are just *everywhere* in 3s now, even to the point of seeing the formerly classic War/Sham/Pal replaced with War/Sham/Priest or War/Dru/Priest as the standard 2 healer/Warrior setup.

Lastly, I'm not exactly sure what a counter-comp to War/Pal/MMhtr would be, in theory. I'm sure we'll run into teams that clean our clocks, but I don't have enough experience with this comp to figure it out. Maybe Dru/Lock/Rogue, but we've been pretty effective at killing warlock pets so far. Dru/Lock/Warrior hasn't given much trouble so far, either. It seems like even teams that aren't very harmed by drains are able to just get burst down by a hunter/warrior team, especially without a BoP. Scare Beast on a bear druid is always a nice plus.

 

Juli

Dropping shadowform relatively early can be a good move, it really just depends on who you're playing against. Prayer of mending is absolutely amazing even as shadow against a team that dots multiple players or dots 1 and has a pet hitting another. Also the comment about survivability being much lower out of shadowform is only true against physical dps, shadowform doesn't mitigate spell damage (and if the mage is doing a good job controlling any physical dps it really doesn't hurt me that much, the loss of 15% of my burst is more painful). If we blow up a warrior its almost always a good idea to immediately drop form and heal up if any of our remaining players is low. Also note that when I drop form I gain the ability to use chastise as well. It has definitely helped win a few games.

 

• Snowy

This is likely true for you, if you're talking about your warrior. However, I found quite a bit of success dropping out of shadowform vs magic DPS teams in 3v3 -- i.e. mage/warlock/priest. (my 3v3 reached over 2300 for reference) A lot of times it was just about us surviving long enough and prayer of mending vs warlocks and mages is amazing. Generally we weren't going to win by gibbing one of them, it was more about control and having a second backup healer was key when either my shaman got focused, or controlled.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

◊ Praetorian

Basically. It doesn't mean you've "won the match" if you just blew your wad and failed to kill your target. If your primary healer is in a KS he can't trinket or just got school-locked and is getting bursted, dropping form to provide a cushion during those crucial few moments can make all the difference. Against gib teams, if you survive the major "gib" attempt where cooldowns are popped, things are usually looking good.

 

Jacktwok

I recently started running on a with a disc priest and hemo rogue for a PMR combo. ATTM, I'm having a lot of difficulty with one particular makeup: War/Druid/Lock. I'm having a difficult time prioritizing what I should be doing and then executing the game plan. Our game plan basically involves going after the lock first while locking down the warrior with sheeps and novas and mana burning the druid. Our rogue will open up on their lock and I'll focus on keeping the warrior locked down and counterspelling as many of the druids cyclones as I can.

The problem we seem to be running into is that the lock isn't dying before the warrior and the lock are killing one of; usually the priest or the rogue. Having my time split between 3 targets and being on constant lookout for cyclones when my CS is up leaves me very little time to get off shatter combos or do any other kind of DPS on the lock.

I'm farily certain that the improvements need to come from me at this point. Both of my teammates made glad last season in the 3v3 bracket with a lock who is currently still on the team and they've done very well with the lock as well this season and not quite as well with me. The majority of my problems come against this team because my actions are being spread out across all 3 targets and I'm having to constantly watch cast bars and sheep/DR timers.

How should I prioritize my actions here? Focus more on DPS? Do I simply need to get better at multitasking?

Thanks

 

crimsonsentinel

RMP teams (am I the only one who says rogue mage priest instead of priest mage rogue?) are a CC and controlled burst team. That means in order to win, you have to either negate their CC, or negate their burst. They do not last long, as none of the players on that team is nearly as effective 5 minutes into the fight as they are at the onset. Once their mana is depleted, cooldowns are used, they are easy to defeat. This is especially true with the new rogue & priest changes. Combat and holy are both fairly sustainable specs, without major cooldown requirements and good sustained output. AR/prep and disc, on the other hand, are very cooldown dependent and aren't nearly as good as their counterparts once those cooldowns have been used. The problem is lasting until then.

I think the key to playing against RMP is knowing how they kill you: full duration CC's followed quickly by cooldown oriented burst. To win consistently against them you have to negate either the CC or the burst (or both), of which there are plenty of ways. Locking out the mage is the most obvious and simple solution. If you can control the mage you negate both sheeps and shatter combos. Easier said than done, and there are other ways to beat RMP, but stopping the mage is usually the best way to win.