Druids can kite, root, cyclone and shift to avoid burns, priests will be burning targets themselves, the lock will be fearing and CoTing. You don't need DPS on a drain team. You need pressure from mana burns and DoTs, and with 3 people that can burn on top of 3 healers you will run the opposing team out of mana, at which point your DPS doesn't matter because you will kill people that no longer have healers backing them.

If those are the most important criteria, wouldn't a boar be the best choice of pet then?

Also, if your warlock is felguard spec, do you have problems with CC on the felguard (ie banish/roots)? The felhunter has enough resistance that it's not an issue, but a felguard is a lot more susceptible to magic.

Banish may be a problem for a felguard (on a side note, mass dispel removes it I believe, or at least that's what I've been told), but I can't really imagine roots being an issue, since there will almost always be a more worthwhile target to use roots on, unless you're doing it to try and get a drink in.

Cat dash is very important to keeping people in combat.

And no; I have a VST. My felguard runs around in arenas with 279 shadow resist.

A priest with Curse of Tongues, being attacked by a Hunter, a Cat pet, and a Felguard is not getting mana burns off.

Boars can charge and root people on the same timer dash has. With a 30% passive run speed boost from BM, I really don't think you will have issues with keeping people in combat. It is more important to protect Viper Sting, and you cannot drop snake traps every single time to protect the sting because on top of giving the enemy warrior a full rage bar to unload, you are not really helping people kite unless you luck out with the snakes proccing crippling poison and the snakes are easily killed by pretty much any AE in the game with their 100ish health. If you are claiming cats interupt better than other pets, that is also false. All pets have the same attack speed, and any arena specced pet should have Cobra Reflexes and Claw/Gore. Based on whether I need interupts/damage or sting protection I switch my Scorpid's auto attack between poison and claw. Dash is mediocre at best.

Then how is your Hunter successfully mana draining people?

Boars can learn both Dash and Charge. They also have innate health and armor bonuses. Seems better than a cat. To change the subject a little bit, as long as you're providing some insight into how you run, who do you usually drain first against 2345? We gave your setup a try tonight and ran into problems with both a good 2345 setup and any 4dps team that managed to coordinate CC well.

Whenever he Viper Stings, he calls it out and we CC enemy poison dispellers. Considering that these poison dispellers are also healers, and we're also actively DPSing enemies during their CC, after the CC ends, they are given a choice: spend a GCD to cleanse a viper sting and risk getting CC'd again before they can heal, or let the viper sting keep ticking and heal.

Relying on the scorpid sting crutch is a major handicap.

Ah. I'm no expert on hunter pet, I admit. I didn't know that boars can dash as well.

In any case, I do know that the hunter on my team also uses his pet for additional DPS when people are LoSing, and I'm pretty sure cats do more DPS than boars. I'll ask him about it, though.

Always drain priests first. Mana burn is deadly, and avoiding it via LoS can get annoying.

Against 4 DPS teams, coordinate CC against their DPS to minimize it. Communication on vent is key, in order to juggle cyclones and fears to maximize the time the enemy team's DPS spends CC'd. Keeping CoT on enemy casters is key as well.

Lastly, make sure your priest and paladin are actively dispelling fears and polymorph.

The DPS difference isn't huge between Boars and Cats, though it certainly does exist. Gore makes up for a bit of the innate damage bonus that cats gain, but over all cats are the squishiest pet there is while Boars are a fair bit tougher and have more utility. It may just be a preference, but over all I like Boars for PvP in general. I still do not see how dash could possibly help when your pet is already moving 30% faster than run speed. Are you dealing with Hamstring on pets?

Dash and charge share a cooldown.

I must admit, I don't find scorpids very intimidating anymore. When I see them I generally know that the hunter is going to be focusing on draining, so I pre-emptively and aggressively abolish to keep poison stacks low and help get VS off as it lands. We've also got a "figure out target switches to pets" on our to-do list, and once we've got it sorted I can't see scorpids posing too many problems for us.

What I find most annoying is a VS followed immediately by scatter / silencing shot / fear, etc. It's a much more effective means of protecting VS imo, and seeing a hunter with a cat generally means I'm not thinking about abolish as much.

But you can use either depending on the situation. If it can't charge(bridge), you can dash instead.
If you're not going to use scorpids, I also think boars are the best choice, they're tougher(which seems to be a big issue for the setup, considering the spec relies on increasing pet's health/armor), and pet dps difference is minor enough if you're not BM speced. Now, really, the main problem of boars is well...They look ugly as hell. Obviously.

Firstly, it's nice to see unstoppable defending his setup and enlightening people no matter what forum it's discussed on.

Secondly, onto the OP's post. I run both the drain teams listed, 3's and 5's team, and I'm having polar success rates with them. After reading several 10+ page threads scattered about I assembled the classic drain team and on my fairly low pop, low "skill", low competition bg we're having great sucess.
But, our 3v3 team, is getting mixed results. I perhaps have to tweak our hunters strategies, as I've seen a frost trap about three times in 40 or so games this week. But I'm currently pinning blame on the presence of our priest. Mainly for the fact that he is target number 1, and goes down so fast and is a powerful part of our drain. So, I will be either switching him out for a druid (he's going to form a PRM team - which I'm sure will do very well on our BG). Or if he doesn't find willing (or unwilling) members for his team I will get a druid regardless, and possibly switch myself out some evenings. I think that druid/hunter/warlock or druid/priest/hunter will do alot better versus the current counters and rating rapers we come into contact with.

Well, pets are getting resilience in 2.4, so the survivability issue will be . . . less of an issue, I guess. Wouldn't having the boar learn charge mean he's giving up a damage ability?

I'll talk to Foxcat about it and see what he thinks. I'm the warlock expert, not the hunter expert.

After playing a sp+lock+pala setup last season (nothing special - about 1.8k rating) I switched to a priest+lock+hunter drain team with some friends. We are having a hard time at~1600. The reason is me (the warlock) getting some serious beating from other team's melee classes (warriors/rogues). I'm pretty ok gearwise arounf 12600hp, 401 resilience. I know that many of the teams we play against atm were highly ranked last season and are on their way to their ''natural'' rating but when a melee can dish out 25-30k dmg on me in a 30-40 sec game (thats when I die) while our priest is sweating to keep me alive is a little disturbing. We can't make this mana drain/outlast team work because I can't stay alive long enough.

I've been thinking about it and a mage really sounds like a better choise. He might not contribute much drain-wise or be more vulnerable to drain/outlast teams but the large control you geat against melee classes is great.

Anyways can anyone that plays this (or against this) setup know of any good ways to reduce the damage a warlock get? Better positioning? What traps should the hunter use?

SL/SL or affliction? Rogues will usually still burn SL/SL warlocks, even though they are the hardiest arena spec, so you need support from the Hunter with scatter shot, traps, and snares. This is probably why a mage is a better option, they are almost impossible for a rogue or warrior to deal with while Hunter CC is pretty weak for controlling opposing players. If you've got everyone gunning for you, have your Hunter pop Rapid Fire and go to town on someone with an Aimed shot followed by a steady/auto rotation (mixing arcane shot in whenever possible to dispel buffs/hots) while the priest dispels everything he can off of you. He has 15 seconds, so he should get in 2 aimed shots (with sub-2s casting times) and a lot of DPS. This will force the opposing healer to focus all of his healing on the person being focused by the Hunter, so try to avoid letting the Melee follow you around a pillar out of the Hunter's LoS (and don't run straight for the Hunter either, this has happened to me multiple times and led to me having to break my DPS to move or use my very weak melee, neither of which keeps the pressure you want on the person in question). This will generally force them to peel off and play defensively or face a possible death (you should also be applying DoTs to them the entire time). Between his healing debuff and incoming DPS coupled with your constant steam of DoTs, this should make it very difficult for their healer to keep up and often you will get the results you desire.

If you are being pressured by Casters, then the Priest will need to try and start mana draining offensively to force them into hiding or to switch their attention. Generally though, drain teams handle ranged teams rather easily since Hunters and priests have more abilities for dealing with them effectively.

You might also really need to work on your kiting and placement, as well as your Hunter's frost trap placement and communication.

Does this include warlock pets? Killing two fel hunters is annoying as it is.

This has been my experience so far, but maybe we just need to work on general tactics. Rogues are tearing us up as warlock/hunter/priest in 3's, and if they go for the warlock then our draining is limited to a single viper sting, as the warlock is busy just trying to stay alive and our priest is spam healing the warlock. I don't really understand how this setup is a supposed counter to the PMR groups.

There is also the issue of who to drain first...the healer or the caster dps? It seems to be a tough call most of the time.

Rogues are squishy enough that if you can unload on him early it will break his cycle on the warlock. Of course if you are getting sheeped by the mage, this could be problematic which means you should have your pet on him, which then leaves their priest open to heal... well, you get the picture. Whichever side is doing the DPS has the advantage, so you need to make sure you have one of their players on the ropes the entire match or you lose, so positioning is key. I think against a PMR you need to be aggressively draining the mage, because he is the key to allowing his Rogue teammate the freedom to run around wrecking people and once he is out of mana he will no longer be sheeping and snaring. If the mage is busy trying to dodge mana burns, then you are left open to light the rogue up, which leaves your warlock free to fearlock the mage, which leaves you open to burn the priest. It's all about swinging the CC in your favor, and it always has to keep the Rogue in check. In my W/W/D team we have to put our Warrior on the Rogue the entire fight so that the Warlock is free to deal with mages or other casters/healers, so when I go into an Arena with my Hunter I follow the same principle. If the rogue breaks off from the Lock and gets on me, it is to our team's benefit since the lock has better CC, DPS, and Draining options to use on the mage/priest and the hunter has better kiting options against the Rogue.

We ran into a very difficult team today consisting of Disc Priest, 2 Hunters, Shaman and Druid. This team dropped snake traps at every cooldown and covered two viper stings with silencing shot and snake poisons.

Try as we might, we couldnt figure out how to beat this team with the standard Hunter, Warlock, Druid, Pally, Priest drain team.