[2v2] End of Pally and MS Warrior

[Kasarin]

Is this setup done? My battle group has no 2v2 with this setup in the first page, let alone a maximum of 1-2 in the 2nd page. A week ago me and my warrior were 2080, ranked 50th, as you can see if you check my team we went on a huge losing streak, every team seems to be a mismatch, druid + dps, double dps.....we could only kill holy priest + dps teams 100% of the time. I'd trade in half my prot tree for a instant huge heal or a HoT gettin lockdowned for 15 sec straight is bull, there isnt time to fake heal against double dps teams with full dots on both of us let alone the oh so infamous shadow priest silence + mass dispell followed by a psychic scream or fear or howl or skillcoil or spell lock...sigh shoot me pls. And what do you know top 5 teams are druid locks...Whats JoJ good for if i have to sit through 10 second fears .....

[shyst]

I don’t think this setup is dead in the sense that it’s a bad combo now. It’s still a very solid combo that has a good matchup against a large portion of the overall Arena population. However, I don’t think it’s top tier anymore as there are too many top tier teams out there that counter it. And this is before the incoming nerfs…

[Harmann]

Yeah but who knows once the nerfs to the Season 2 cloth armor go into place. -450 armor is pretty substantial.

[Kasarin]

cloth nerf vs bof and bos nerf, increase of time that my warrior can be locked down/ slowed as well as me being cc'd in blind and sheep for the whole duration as if the amount off cc that i have to deal with because i have to stay with my partner and stand still to heal, i dunno as people have gotten equal gear it seems like they dont need much skill, spam cc, i mean even an auto spell lock fel puppy causes a annoyance

i dunno yea im QQ'in but i have this bit of hope that some pvpers better than me in here can slap me in the face and tell me to buck up with advice and strats

we've been trying to control the map but we have no control at all, let alone the bs cc's, we are forced to follow unless the dps(ers) are on me, but more than likely i have to go out of my way to heal/cleanse, out in the open with no advantage what so ever

[Dinadass]

The warrior from my 5v5 teams is in the top 20 2v2 with a pally partner, and they haven't really been pushing much. It's still a very viable combo, but if the top teams on your battlegroup are things like spriest/lock or spriest/frostmage, then yeah war/pal might be a struggle.

[qi]

It works for us. BoF and BoS nerf is gonna hurt, though. Will the resilience change balance it out? Considering 90% of the teams we face are Warlocks, I tend to think so.

[Robe]

Check out the team WHATS GOING ON, 78 wins 0 losses, ranked1 paladin warrior team. see what BT/hyjal gear can do :) (http://eu.wowarmory.com/arena-ladder.xml?b=Misery&ts=2)

[Rhaegyn]

The gear is a huge factor there. He has as much AP unbuffed as most warriors have with battle shout, not to mention the armor penetration and Cataclysm's Edge. And before you flame me, I'm not saying he isn't good, just saying gear is huge on a warrior(and the pally has 700 more healing than a pally in merciless has...)

[mog]

2 highest ranked teams on our battlegroup is pala+warrior as well :o

[Kasarin]

After plummetting from 2080 to under 1700, we've managed to slowly work our way up to 1900 again where we currently stand, there has been ALOT of stratagey reworking, but still remain 100% defeated by frostmage + rogue. Druid lock is quite impossible if the druid is resto and knows how to run with support from his lock. Definately see class matchups that are tough and seemingly impossible, its hard work. Seemingly optimistic again, lovin the challenge, but if we do get drakes from 2v2 it wont be first page ranking I have a feeling, damn druids and locks.

[JarL]

I feel your pain, I ran warrior/resto shm pre WF nerf at 2050 top 20 in our bg. Post WF nerf we dropped down to 1800 and have really struggled our way back to 1900. War/healer definitely is at a huge disadvantage in 2's without a bit of PvE gear to back them up.

[Treisk]

I think a big part of it is that a lot of people realized the Paladin's weakness in Arenas -- Having little to no instant heals. Everything a Paladin does, he has to cast, short of blessings and Holy Shock. Because of that, they're easily neutralized, and any team that isn't full PhysDPS can take a Warrior down and keep the Paladin out of the picture, whether by Curse of Tongues, well-timed CC/stuns/silences/CS's, anything. One clutch heal stoppage, and the Paladin is a nonfactor.

I don't think the makeup is dead, but I do think there are a lot less teams using that makeup that are successful. In any DPS+Healer team, it's always the healer's performance that makes or breaks the team (at higher ratings, of course).

[Molp]

Check out the team WHATS GOING ON, 78 wins 0 losses, ranked1 paladin warrior team. see what BT/hyjal gear can do :) (http://eu.wowarmory.com/arena-ladder.xml?b=Misery&ts=2)

Due to insane scaling of warriors with gear in general and pallies with spell haste specifically I think warrior/pally is making a comeback. A BT-geared pally can heal a PvE-geared warrior through pretty much anything, and the warrior is smashing faces with his 10 gazillion DPS.

But if you don't have that kind of gear I think getting gladiator as warrior/pally is difficult, since with the stock S2+Stormherald setup it is hard to beat SL warlock/druid or SL warlock/pally. And there are so many of those teams up there.

[goodolarchie]

With as many healer + lock teams, I'm beginning to think the best way around these teams is sword spec, perhaps even slam. You need pure burst to kill your way through 2 pets, that pretty much means dumping a HS /slam / MS / WW / Execute and hoping for a proc. Else you should expect the warrior to get cycloned, or the pet chain healed to full while the pali gets drained.

BT teams have no problems with warlocks, so they still reign. Insane AP + full shadow resist gear is GG. I may be wrong, but without this gear it really comes down to a skilled paladin to make the team go far, being able to LOS, avoid cc/interrupts and know when to drink. Warrior is pretty simple in 2's. S.priest + Warlock isn't nearly as rediculous as frost mage + warlock. Playing perfectly with pet killing, spell reflects, etc, this team just has too much cc, snaring, interrupts, tongues, even mana drain to top things off. Fortunately mage teams don't generally make it past 1900.

I'm currently playing a new 2's with a new paladin, and I can't stress how much of a difference it makes when the paladin understands LOS.

[Duljan]

This combo is pretty much done. It used to be good until teams figured out that the best thing here is to simply CC the paladin instead of kill him. And, to be honest, this combo was really only good at the beginning of Season 1 because everybody was low on resilience. Victories were short and sweet and usually depended on a long string of crits. Now, most teams can easily handle this combo.

You still see the occasional warrior + pally team near the top of the ladder in certain battlegroups, but only BE Paladins and Tauren Warriors due to their racials and the two extra spell interrupts here. Alliance warrior + pally teams are pretty much boned. And after these upcoming nerfs, expect it to get much worse.

[Insight]

Check out the team WHATS GOING ON, 78 wins 0 losses, ranked1 paladin warrior team. see what BT/hyjal gear can do :) (http://eu.wowarmory.com/arena-ladder.xml?b=Misery&ts=2)

I think this is mostly due to BT shadow resistance gear and ability to swap gear after entering :p

[Duljan]

Check out the team WHATS GOING ON, 78 wins 0 losses, ranked1 paladin warrior team. see what BT/hyjal gear can do :) (http://eu.wowarmory.com/arena-ladder.xml?b=Misery&ts=2)

I think this is mostly due to BT shadow resistance gear and ability to swap gear after entering :p

It also has a lot to do with what I said earlier: racials.


Also, notice that they're sitting 42nd in the world right now, behind a whole slew of druid + warrior teams.

[Maintain]

You just have to play it right, look at my 2v2. I ran druid warrior up to 2k then my partner decided to transfer and I picked up a pally instead. We are up to 2273 and don't have too much trouble. We find any druid team to be pretty much a free win.

[Duljan]

You just have to play it right, look at my 2v2. I ran druid warrior up to 2k then my partner decided to transfer and I picked up a pally instead. We are up to 2273 and don't have too much trouble. We find any druid team to be pretty much a free win.

Must be some terrible druids in your BG. If the druid plays it right, and is specc'ed correctly, you'll almost never get a heal on your warrior.

[Molp]

You just have to play it right, look at my 2v2. I ran druid warrior up to 2k then my partner decided to transfer and I picked up a pally instead. We are up to 2273 and don't have too much trouble. We find any druid team to be pretty much a free win.

Must be some terrible druids in your BG. If the druid plays it right, and is specc'ed correctly, you'll almost never get a heal on your warrior.

So you are saying the druid should stand in front of a (rage rich, from the warrior beating on him) warrior in caster form and chain cast cyclone on the pally? Sorry, but it does not work that way. We don't have plate armor in caster form. First cyclone gets pummeled. Second cyclone lands. By the time I get to the third cyclone I am - dead.

As a matter of fact, against a geared warrior, getting intercepted in caster form followed by a lucky mace stun proc can get me killed. And yes I am properly specced and geared. My warrior partner once dropped a fully geared druid in 10 seconds. All it took was one resist.

With crappy gear, warrior/pally and warrior/druid are about even. S2+Stormherald tilts the matchup in favor of warrior/pally. Add in BT gear and it becomes no contest. Not to mention that any kind of screwup and bad luck will cause the druid to die. Pallies can recover with their two immunities. So their margin of error is much, much larger which translates to a high win percentage.

EDIT: The reason warrior/pally is on the decline and warrior/druid is on the rise is strictly because of warlocks. Warriors have much, much, much more synergy with pallies than druids. But pallies pretty much fall over when a good lock pops out of the other gate. Druids on the other hand can hold their own.

If warlocks did not exist, every warrior would team up with a pally like they did in the past. It is a complete no brainer. Warrior/priest and warrior/druid are only successful because of the metagame.

[Maintain]

Luckily enough my pally is BT geared so that means SR :p War/Pally vs War/Druid, the warrior pally will win unless they are bad... We find any team with a druid is pretty much a free win, judge justice, hamstring, and BoF there's no way he's getting away from me. A druid isn't able to cyclone because I'll pummel it, as for the second one I'll blow fear, NS is his only chance to heal when played right.

[Duljan]

NS is his only chance to heal when played right.

Again, you must have some pretty bad druids in your BG. Stacking Lifebloom, Rejuv, NS, and the big one: SWIFTMEND.

[Soru]

I'm maintain's pally and even Druid/War is easy for us the only really hard teams are Frostmage/lock and lock/druid. With frost mage/lock they just have so many debuffs on him and even with SR the CS will still screw me so I have to bubble early and pray that he can kill one in that time. Druid warlock the warlock will use fear to buy 0.5-1.5 seconds of time for the druid to cyclone/get away when there's a pummel or whatever. The other team that would cause us trouble if I didn't have SR would be Spriest/lock. Druids are generally easy to get down if you keep dogging them and don't have something like a warlock to slow you down.

[Duljan]

SR is nice, but what happens in the next patch when


1) you can't switch gear in arenas?

2) BoF is being nerfed?

3) BoS is being crapped on?


I foresee the end of this combo entirely.

[carad]

Bumping this to encourage further discussion now that the patch is here. To anyone who runs this combo: what are your plans now that you can't swap gear? will you have 2 SR pieces constantly equipped in 2v2 (BT attunement neck + Night's End come to mind) to have ~165 SR with the aura? How do you plan on dealing with notorious combos such as shadow priest/warlock, paladin/warlock, holy priest/warlock now that you can't switch to an SR suit / full pve gear as appropriate.

I'm also curious to hear what other people do against frost mage / SL warlock. This combo is pretty much the ultimate hardcounter to warrior / paladin and we actually lost 30 points yesterday to a team like this. There's too much interrupts and CC to keep the paladin out of the picture while I'm getting worked. I considered speccing into a full defensive build with blood craze, second wind, imp. hamstring and TM for reliable spell reflects to increase our chances but I don't think it will change much (I'm typically 33/28 for 2v2).

Should I just give up and join the the resto druid club? I love my paladin :|

[Duljan]

I'm also curious to hear what other people do against frost mage / SL warlock.



Yeah, for my warlock / mage team, warrior + pally is pretty much a gimme. However, here's what you do. Keep freedom up on the warrior. Bubble early. Kill the lock. If we ever lose to a warrior + paladin, it's usually because they did all of those things and the warrior got a lucky string of crits on my lock.