We've been running the Pal/DiscPst/war setup also and have ton pretty well against the PMR teams. The only real danger that this team presents is their "nova" or cooldown explosion. You need to be very aggressive and clear with your defensive cooldowns to win. I'd say about 80% of the time they focus our priest. We actually use freedom on the priest to kite the rogue (protected with fecundity buffs if possible), stuns, BoP, Pain Suppression, or bubble (for big uncounterable heals) during those. You do have you keep your warrior on the mage as much as possible, though, which means your priest needs to be aggressively dispelling offensively and defensively, and doing almost nothing else besides instant heals and opportunistic mana burns. If your warrior is on the mage, he won't be able to do an effective shatter combo because he won't be able to cast, which is really the key.

Did anyone else's heart break when they ressed their rogue during that game against EG?

It absolutely blows my mind that these teams who've been playing Pandemic's PMR makeup forever the vast majority of the teams failed to cs/trinket/mitigate in any fashion the FIRST shatter combo that, in almost all of the games, led to an early death.

When finally EG got in a spell lock on the initial shatter it led to a double kill which ultimately put them in a vastly better position that they promptly let slip away with such an awful mistake. I can't see how with one person dead, and only two people up to watch 10 seconds of rezzing slipped by.

It's simply amazing how poorly people countered Pandemic.

If you stuck around a bit after the final match ended, pandemic's rogue actually revealed what went down that let the res go off: their mage CS silenced the druid before he could moonfire apparently, allowing the res to go off.

I find it funny how pally/priest/war plays completely differently against PMR then Druid/Priest/War does. We have our warrior go for their priest, he is kept clean of poly via priests dispells, who is kept clean of rogues via abolish and cyclone on the rogue. The moment the WE is out I cyclone the mage and the warrior kills the WE before he can burst with it. Even if they CS the cyclone, wich I cast mid frostbolt cast to buy ~1 second, i then feral charge the next frostbolt to buy enough time to get the cyclone off after the School lock effect. I mean, yeah of course it changes depending upon the oposing teams actions (does the rogue immediately trinket that first cyclone? Keeps more pressure on the priest but if the WE isnt out it is less burst when the WE does pop since the rogue is now CCable.)

Anyway, I just found it funny how a paladin instead of a druid forces you to play a much longer game instead of a druid due to needing to keep pressure on the mage. Depending on how well I can chain cyclones and roots and how well the priest can kite the rogue, sometimes the warrior just sticks to the priest like glue. 5 sunders + fairie fire and a well timed bash or a cyclone so the warriors intercept/pummel are up soon causes most priests to drop quickly to a warrior.

If there is going to be so much attention on 2s and 3s, they really need to reflect on their balance decision prioritizing 5s. These tournaments are all interesting to watch and learn from, but so few setups really have a chance.

^^ Yah. The thing is too if you watch the tournaments, the teams micro manage the set ups. How can one of the 3 team mates counter someone on the other team? There are so many expamles. One team switched out a warrior to a warlock, I think to counter a mage. I also recall at least once or twice a warrior was brought in to counter a rogue on the opposing team. Between the last two 3v3 tournaments, there are several examples of this.

I have no clue how to balance though based on all this. A rogue on yoru team might counter a warlock on the other team who is on your mage, but a druid ont he other team might counter your rogue, and yoru mage can counter their druid with CS at a specific point etc., etc. Not to mention it's a bit more complicated with other abilities countering in other ways like mana drains, purge/dispells, types of heals, various snares and so on.

Edit: Bah, I am tired. I meant to add Blizz keeps focusing on 5s like you mentioned, but it really seems in a way small scale pvp is as much a part of PvP in wow as 5v5 is.

My team is a Paladin/elem Shaman/Warrior and i am also having problems beating this combo any tips that might be helpful would be appreciated.

After playing PMR a bit more, i'm beginning to get the hang of the matchup (if this is the wrong place to ask, say so, but its a PMR thread after all :P)

One thing i've been having particular difficulties with are dealing with druids, and dealing with polymorph dispels. Atm im focusing heavily on CC - the only time i'll ever burst is usually when im sure that it wont just get healed off (because i have personally CC'ed the opponent in question).

Is this just a case of that i need to coordinate my CC's better with the rogue? Sometimes i'll shout "blind this dude" if im really stuck or in trouble, and we have a blanket rule about saving a well timed Imp CS and blind for the druid when it's needed.
In the case of polymorph dispels, i understand thats probably the case that i should be CCing the healer so he cant dispel it? We sometimes come up against healer+warrior+something and i really feel stuck who i should be concentrating on.
Or maybe i should concentrate on both the healer AND the warrior? (i.e - i need to L2p :P)

Lastly in a sort of, general battle plan, we are kind of confused as when to draw out the fight to go for mana burns and run the healer OOM, and when we should be attempting for full length CC to kill off one of their DPS quickly. I find it's hardest to CC vs druid matchups, yet I know druids are the best at running around pillars and dragging out the match as long as they can. Whereas someone like a paladin is significantly easier to CC, i risk 2 of their CC's just ganking our priest and then a place where i feel we can mana burn the paladin to nothing actually turns into a quick burst fight.

I, like many have mentioned before, am also having trouble with 2 particular makeups against us (PMR).

1) Druid/Warlock/_____
Druids just seem to be a royal pain for us. What we decided to go with that worked reasonably ok is for our rogue to stay on the rogue, our priest to chase around the druid and try to mana burn him when possible, and myself (mage) to keep the 3rd person CC'd. That CC either being sheep or frost nova of course. Usually that last person is a warrior for them in our experience.

2) 2 healers/Warrior
This one we have had some trouble on as well. At first we went for the warrior thinking we could try to CC the 2 healers, however that didn't work since one of them nearly always got out of some form of CC to get a heal off. The strategy we found that worked was to have the rogue be on one of the healers, again our priest on the other healer, and myself on the warrior.


Overall it seemed to us to be a combination of deciding between burst and CC. The 2 healer team it was difficult to keep that warrior CC'd because of 2 dispells usually (priest/pally), although burst DPS was nearly impossible with them.

The first example was difficult due to mana constraints. If I laid on too much DPS too early I would end up OOM too early in the fight. The other issue is mana burns from a spriest or the warlock on our priest.

If it became a mana fight, well-coordinated drinking sessions were a key as well. At one point myself and the priest had to drink and our rogue got lit up.

Any other helpful suggestions are appreciated that haven't been posted already!

Playing against druid/lock/warrior is pretty easy setup if you execute it properly. As mage you should be on the warrior full time. Start with ice lance / rank 1 bolt / nova. After that you can poly 3 times (he probably will not trinket, if he does you got the chance to get a full blind on him. The rogue should play really aggressive on the warlock. Burn cooldowns as fast as you can and evasion if the warrior tries to harass you for a bit. As Mage its the most important thing that you cs a root/cyclone as soon as possible. (You usually miss the first one because of druid cycloning from stealth but the second should be yours. This forces the druid into healing afterwards and stop him from controlling. The priest can do various things, first he should dispell the warlock to nothing (should only take 2/3 dispells) and make sure he keeps the fel armor away. Use every fear offensive on the druid to force an early trinket. (silence cyclone into fear is a good way to force NS early in the game). Then he can either manaburn the druid if there is a chance, or manaburn the lock. If you got a cs on the druid or a fear burning the lock can be a good tactic. 5 stacks of wound poison, chain dispelling and being oom and needing to lifetap every 5/6 global cooldowns puts alot of pressure on him. When your CS/Fear is back on cooldown go for silence/fear/blind combo on the druid or just fear/silence and blinding the warrior.

Double healer warrior is hard of really hard depending on setup. Against Pally/Shaman we put the rogue on the shaman, mage on the warrior (dpsing) and the priest has to be spot on dispelling freedoms. Constant pressure on the shaman and warrior forces the paladin to heal which is easy locked out or feared. Alternative would be controlling the warrior (if he goes on priest), rogue on paladin and silence/fear shaman. Rotating strats to find whats working best for you. Against currently popular druid/mage/warrior we have the rogue on the priest, mage on warrior trying to control and cs-ing cyclones. Because there insane durability we try to force an early kill by doing 3x sheep on warrior (priest has a hard time dispelling because of rogue). CS cyclones and just burst the priest with everything we have. When the warrior is out he probably intercepts the rogue and just double evasion that period and go back to triple sheeps. Use offensive fears on the druid and try to get a kill. But we only have a 50% win against this combo either so still figuring out the better strat.