Tainter

Yes, I noticed this too. On the weekend I had one WSG with 7 Rogues on the enemy team. I usually end up being one of two healers usually there are 3 to 5 physical DPS on the enemy team that just shred anybody I try to heal. Or they shred me for that matter. The combination of Rogue stuns and Warrior/Hunter damage on top is quite lethal with mind numbing poison (be it snakes or terribly Rogues without Wound Poison) and MS. That combo reduces my Healing to less than 25% of normal. Ouch. On the other hand, we have more melee too of course and if I heal them without getting spotted then I do OK.

 

• Amera

I was mainly just intending to use it as an example of a "burst" that has been possible since the start of arena that could kill anyone, even in a non 5v5 environment. Given lack of defense scaling, it's more powerful now than before. And what is worse is that now melee can pull this off with far less coordination. I'm sure anyone who has run double melee (especially one without a rogue) who has played a mirror match has noticed how ridiculous it is - both teams charge a target and flail at each other until someone falls over, with the victor being decided more by the RNG and gear advantages than any real tactical awareness. RPM may be an over-powered combo, but I've always appreciated the skill differential between amazing ones and decent ones. With double melee it can be difficult to tell who is even better other than noticing one has these green glaives and the other doesn't..

Amerah, Selaste <Serious Casual>

 

Grigori

The Warlock is still alive in 3s due to the power of Druids and Rogues (both as friends and foes). The Felhunter wins stealth wars and helps the Druid's lack of dispel magic; Druids and Rogues are the top peelers. The synergy is there. As long as Druids and Rogues are not significantly nerfed, the Warlock will be alive in 3s as part of the Warlock+Druid+? and Warlock+Rogue+? comps (which, of course, includes the Warlock+Druid+Rogue comp). It is like RPM keeping Mages alive in 3s, except the Warlock has more options on comps.

Of course, Druids and Rogues are in demand for so many comps, there is no doubt that many (less "elite") Warlocks will be left over (and be forced to take on, say, leftover Holy Paladins as partners).

Druid+Warrior
Druid+Warlock
Druid+Rogue

Yes, I see your trend.

How does dispel resistance on poison help Entangling Root hold?

Ironically, without much rating resets in 5s (from both highly rated people resetting and lowly rated people resetting), it is the only bracket where the team's rating reflects the team's difficulty with some accuracy at the lower rating brackets. I see 2s and 3s headed in the same direction once the lowly rated resets dry up due to the lack of further rewards, at which point we will finally have the truly elite arena in 2s and 3s everybody always wanted and finally got in 5s this season.

 

Tainter

Admittedly it doesn't. In a state of sleepiness I confused matters and thought that Cleanse works like Dispel Magic, but it doesn't. But it's still important because it makes crippling and wound poison stick at least.

 

Talgog

No 2v2 in the Top 10 without a druid.
#1-27 (with ties) has 24 druids.
Of 97 teams (including currently unpartnered rogues), 75 have druids.

Needless to say, no one else comes close to druid in representation, although warrior and rogue are pushing bimodal status behind them.

In 3's 1-99 (with ties):

58 Druids, no more than one per-team, ever.
20 of the other teams are RMP.
60 teams with rogues, 62 rogues due to two D/R/R teams

 

panny

Warlocks aren't dead, and there's a bit of a surge of shadowdps teams is just as mindless as melee zerg (moreso, when you barely even need LoS let alone melee range).

Both are exceptionally irritating to play against.

 

Mearis

Shadowplay tipically requires at least crowd controlling a healer through fears/fel locks instead of mindlessly zerging down one target. I agree that it is a pretty lame combo - I wonder how come it is popping up though, shadowplay is absolutely horrible versus anything with a rogue.

In my BG, I have seen exactly zero shadowplay combos. Shadowplay might also be the only comp that pretty much requires your priest be a troll to be efficient 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.

 

Grigori

The CC+Pin-n'-Burn BM Hunter comps in 2s require very little coordination and are irritatingly effective.

The archetype is ShS+BM, CC one, stunlock the other within LoS of the BM Hunter and the BM Hunter just shoves an obscene amount of damage down the kill target's throat. The Restoration and Dreamstate variants work on pretty much the same principle, except with different CC+Pin abilities. The Warlock+BM "lotto" variant is like, flip a coin, if you get horrored/feared away from the pillar you are dead, if you get horrored/feared around the pillar you win.

It requires very little coordination. One toon basically initiates all the control and the BM Hunter just mindlessly zerg down the target with whatever damage support the other guy can muster. These BM comps are actually around at higher ratings. If you don't have a pet to put on the BM Hunter the comp is simplistically scary. At least double melee comps in 3s actually take significant coordination against some comps and cannot mindless zerg every match.

 

Karoo

The BM / dps 2's comps may be simplistic to run but they require a lot of gear.

BM Hunters and Feral druids are both considered weak pvp "off-specs" meanwhile both are scary to play against when in s3/s4/t6+ gear.

Me and a warrior partner (when I was still playing RDruid/Warr in 2's) came across a BM / Feral 2's team in the 1750+ bracket.

We laughed the first game, then they beat us, and farmed us for 3 more losses. Combine a Feral's CC+Spot Healing +immunity to snares/roots with a BM Hunters burst potential and basically what happened was my Warrior was nearly perma CC'd while I wasted mana trying to stay safe and CC the druid.

They weren't able to burn us down but they won the mana war everytime. Mind you in order to be successful as a feral druid you need a very large mana pool AND good offensive stats.

If I had played more offensively to try to keep one locked down for my warrior to assault I'd get bashed/intimidated and they'd try to burn if Beastial Wrath was up. If it wasn't they simply viper stung and kept my Warr CC'd.

We tried killing the pet and succeeded in one match 4 times. We killed the pet 4 times but every time the hunter was able to rez because of the feral's CC + frost/freeze trap. And since he was NE he could drink with ease whenever he wanted. I was unable to keep both a pet and feral off of me for any extended period of time and so could never drink myself.

So yeah, BM hunters can be scary, they need the gear for it though and before this season it wasn't really readily available and so they weren't very prevalent.

 

Mearis

Updates:

2v2 (2200+):
Druid Druid: 156 (29%)
RogueRogue: 124 (23%)
Warrior Warrior: 121 (22%)
WarlockWarlock: 49 (9%)
PriestPriest: 30 (6%)
ShamanShaman: 24 (4%)
Mage Mage: 16 (3%)
Hunter Hunter: 11 (2%)
Paladin Paladin: 8 (1%)

3v3(2200+):
Druid Druid: 27 (20%)
RogueRogue: 25 (19%)
Warrior Warrior: 22 (16%)
Mage Mage: 18 (13%)
PriestPriest: 18 (13%)
WarlockWarlock: 12 (9%)
ShamanShaman: 7 (5%)
Paladin Paladin: 4 (3%)
Hunter Hunter: 1 (1%)

From Zilea's blog.

I hope we get some more accurate statistics soon from Vhari So far this basically confirms every impression I had of p2, melee zerg is out in full force. What surprises me is I expected a lot more hunters, I see a lot around at 1900-200.

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.

 

Grigori

I don't know about the 2s, but I took stock of 2200+ rated 3s with consistent lineups last night and this was what I got:

Warlock+Melee+Healer (19)
9 Warlock+Warrior+RDruid
8 Warlock+Rogue+RDruid
Warlock+Enhancement+RDruid
Warlock+Enhancement+Dreamstate

RPM (18)
18 Rogue+Mage+Priest

2xMelee+Healer (12)
3 Warrior+Rogue+Dreamstate
2 Warrior+Rogue+RDruid
2 Rogue+Rogue+Druid
Warrior+Enhancement+HPaladin
Warrior+Retribution+RShaman
Warrior+Rogue+HPaladin
Warrior+Warrior+RDruid
Rogue+Enhancement+RDruid

Melee+Nuker+Healer (10)
3 Rogue+Mage+RDruid
Rogue+Dreamstate+Disc
Rogue+Mage+RShaman
Warrior+EleShaman+HPaladin
Warrior+EleShaman+RDruid
Warrior+Mage+HPaladin
Warrior+Mage+Dreamstate
Warrior+Balance+Disc

Warrior+2xHealer (5)
2 Warrior+RDruid+Disc
Warrior+RShaman+RDruid
Warrior+RShaman+HPaladin
Warrior+Dreamstate+Disc

Warlock+Disc+RDruid (4)
4 Warlock+Disc+RDruid

Others (6)
2 UA+SPriest+RShaman
Warlock+Mage+RDruid
BM+PoMPyro+RShaman
Rogue+Hunter+RDruid
Rogue+SPriest+Warlock

The percentage of 2200+ rated teams with double melee comps is not that high. Warriors and Rogues are just good in a lot of comps.

 

Malakitoo

From that data, there are

35 druid single healer teams
20 priest single healer teams
5 shaman single healer teams
4 paladin single healer teams

With the breakdown on the double healer teams being:

8 druids
7 priests
2 shamans
1 paladin

And 1 token 3-dps team.

I think that speaks for itself in terms of healer breakdown.

I'm personally surprised there's no priest/druid/hunter teams in there, from what I've heard it's almost the new fotm.

 

Karoo

Priest/Druid/Hunter is what Nihilum runs. I would say that a lot of people are trying it out and realizing that it absolutely sucks. Not because it's a weak setup, it isn't, but because every match you play is going to take forever, unless you lose quick. You definitely aren't going to win quick.

It's hard for people to stick with a setup that is so time consuming.

 

Davidson

There are so many Dru/Pri/DPSer teams on Ruin atm it's basically making it not fun to queue up for 3v3 most of the time sadly. All of these games take forever to end, since all the other team does is have the healers run around a frost trap while the single dpser (usually war/rog/hunter) slowly pecks away until we're oom.

 

Mearis

You are playing a cleave comp and you complain about others playing 'lame' teams?

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.

 

panny

Having a 'brain dead' comp is different to a comp that takes forever to finish, win or lose.

 

Mearis

I cannot wait for the next publically broadcast lan game where they have a 2 healer-hunter mirror match.

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.

 

• Calantus

You can blame that on priests being all but forced to go PMX or PDX because of cleave being too hard without one of those classes to peel and druids being better than priests for every other comp. As much as I hate PDH (sooo much), I can't blame the hunter and priest for using one of the few comps they are actually best-in-slot for.

 

Grigori

4 Warlock+Disc+RDruid
2 Warrior+Disc+RDruid
1 Warrior+Disc+Dreamstate
1 Rogue+Disc+Dreamstate

Well, there are a lot of Hunter+Disc+Druid comps out there, but Hunter apparently is not best-in-slot for the ?+Disc+Druid comp. As for Disc Priests, they have always needed a lot of CC from their teammates to excel.

- - -

Every Disc on the list is supported by either Rogue+Mage or Druid; every Warlock on the list is supported by either SPriest or Druid. Cleave comps are supposed to be rampant, but RPM and Druid comps have apparently kept cleave comps in check, as there are only 12 of them up there. On the other hand, there are 19 Warlock+Melee+Druid comps up there, when Warlocks have supposedly been pushed to the brink of extinction by cleave comps.

It looks like all that melee scaling simply amplified the importance of CC and drove low-CC comps away from the top.

 

• Riot

/rant

I'm getting pretty irritated by the complete dominance of druids in the 2v2 bracket.

/rant

 

Traj

Your post is about a month old so looking at s4 in 5s after some time has passed... There is nothing "truly elite" about it. Unless somebody considers sitting at 2094 as 4th in the BG with 5+ minute queues just to get between 1 and 8 points and drop the occasional RNG game as "elite." This is the worse season of 5s yet. The changes have basically ruined the bracket.

I was told I am really good at PvP but bad at PvE. In other words, I am really good at micromanaging over 15 skills and GCDs while tracking 5 unpredictable entities but I am bad at mashing Shadowbolt.

 

• syeren

Why bothering organizing a 5 man team where you need a lot of communication and synergy with each other to even begin to compete when you get pretty much the same points from playing the "DRUIDS" or "RMP + Druid/X/X" Brackets?

Blizzard refuse to fix this because of the amount of people playing 2s and 3s over 5s, which is literally the only bracket where every class has a chance of success, and isn't a unique snowflake ;p

Our old charter got to 2170~ but people just don't play after they get their weapon and / or shoulder ratings, which means lack of points falling from the top, and if the teams still are active, the majority will dodge and get a 4 point gain in a week by dodging and playing horrible teams.