3v3 Paladin healer

[agion]

What is gonna be the best combo with a paladin healer for 3v3, I currently do a Pally, SL/SL lock, combat rogue and we managed to get to 2338 and then dropped.

[Tekzor]

I think next season that pally + lock + hunter might be an interesting an overpowered combo. Pally + lock + warrior/rogue teams will still be around, but will not do quite as well as before with the buffs to druids, priests, and hunters. On my bg, I have not seen much of war/pally/[mage or ele shaman], but I know that is a popular combo and should still do very well. I think you'll ultimately find more paladins in double healer + warrior teams, especially with a priest for mana control or a windfury bot.

[Vilu]

I think next season that pally + lock + hunter might be an interesting an overpowered combo.
We played that combo in start to mid of s2 (got to rank1 with the old team before selling it :), and now played it to r1 again after patch, and i have to say gotta say it's much more fun & powerful combo nowdays. Before only way we could win was to outlast or get a lucky soulfire>shadowburn crit after a scatter, now days we can take peeps down from 70% w/o crits if their healers don't heal them the second scatter hits due to aimed's new MS effect and free spelldmg on pallies. Purging innervate with arcane shot has been kinda hilarious too :)

Though that combo ain't much compared to the current rogue/warlock/druid fotm :)

[Satisfy]

Vilu can you explain how this combo works against set ups and what nots if its that good i wanna give it a try... :)

[Ric]

do elaborate vilu!

[Nutron]

Would be interested in this as well concidering I havent done too well in 3's this season :(

[tysopz]

Not been playing 3v3 this season other than boosting alts this season, planning to put together a team next season and lock/pala/hunter is one of the setups I'm considering. Would be interested how performs compared to lock/pally/warr, warr/pala/hunter and warr/pally/mage.

[Vilu]

Basically it all revolves around the frost trap & entrapment procs. We set it up near a LoS obstacle and dance around it the whole game, rarely breaking away from its proximity. Who ever gets focused kites the opposition to trap (mostly people try to avoid the trap area, but by doing so, they have to pick an alternate route slowing them down almost as efficiently).

We don't really focus on draining that much usually (other than constant viper sting), since draining doesn't really put that much pressure on opposition allowing them to pressure us much more in return. We usually just nuke the shit out of our opposition, normally doing way more damage than the rival 2dps/1heal teams (check the screenshots for reference). This forces the opposition to be really careful with their positioning and offensive attempts (they're "low" on hp constantly, wandering too far would be quickly fatal), as well as constantly popping defensive cooldowns.

We play it safe from the start on, not allowing anyone to go too low (since my mana really isn't the issue, it lasts if their hp just does. This however doesn't mean mindless HL spam, my main heal is FoL, I usually do 5-10 HL per match compared to 20-50 or so FoLs) and using defensive cooldowns usually before any risk has even materialized (rogue finally caught up with the warlock? bop him to avoid damage/get rid of KS while BoF is on CD even though the lock is at 90% health, they can't burst the lock until after the next kite session with BoF, giving our pressure more time to work it's magic).

Contradicting what I just said, we don't use BoF for kiting unless it's needed (since if it’s on CD when it would really be needed can quickly spell doom for us), and when we do we CC the pursuer to allow the kiter catch some distance before countermeasures are launched (for example, felguard intercept stun on rogue the same instant BoF lands on the hunter, so he gets away before opponents priest dispels and rogue shivs the hunter again).

http://knockoutarena.com/vilu/bd1.jpg
http://knockoutarena.com/vilu/bd2.jpg

Talking about setups, warrior/dual healers are mainly default wins, since they can't really generate enough pressure to switch me from FoL to HL for other than to allow me to drink, meaning I’m not losing any mana, while their healers are hemorrhaging mana all over the place from having to heal constantly and not being able to drink (pets). Frost trap is awesome cover for dodging manaburns, tongues really fucks up paladins and JoJ does that to druids. Prior 2.3 we had some problems with paladins using BoF smartly, but with dispelling arcane shot that's all history.

Generally all setups with mages are heavily in our advantage since hunter/warlock with BoF available really give them hard time and they oom pretty quickly. One of the few classes our warlock actually uses mana drain vs constantly.
Rogues are oh so fun to fight against with this setup; frost trap is just amazing when dealing with them. You really can taste the tears when they get caught with entrapment, vanish just to get caught again.

After talking of how amazing the setup is, might as well raise the veil a bit on the downsides. Warlocks rape this setup if not kept in check with constant barrage. CoT destroys any manaefficiency paladins have as well as hinder our warlock's ability to CC & nuke. Fear>Corruption with 1p Shadow Embrace on hunter is basically an uncleanseable CC (he's prolly out of range the time you'd be able to get the actual fear off him). If a warlock manages to park his ass next to mine in a match, chances are we already lost. That's why we usually lay a really heavy nuke on locks from start to finish and target swap at some point to kill their pets to allow me to play in more relaxed manner.

Warriors combined with a warlock is almost as bad as it gets for us (add a druid and it's a nightmare), since we have to lay everything we got on the lock to keep him running, so we just don't have the necessarily resources available to kite the warrior properly. Sadly it boils down to RNG vs setups like these, if my HoJ's on the warrior aren't resisted, and the deathcoil goes clean through and we get few entrapment procs on the warrior, we can pull off a win. But if they play it well, know what to do (zerg the hunter with everything you've got from the start) and lady Luck isn’t on our side, we will most likely lose.

Same goes for 3dps lock/spriest/rogue setups, we need some luck to pull off a win, but those happen :)


That's about as much as I can come up with atm, feel free to ask more if there's something I left out.

[Ric]

very comprehensive information, thanks!

though i am curious, why felguard instead of sl/sl for the lock? i can't think of any advantage felguard possesses over sl/sl, considering the loss of: dispels, curse of exhaustion, improved range on dots/fear, burst from nightfall, the viability of drain life+interruptable drain mana - just to earn a pet which does 10% more damage than felhunter, with a stun thats more or less equivalent in terms of utlity to spellock, and a controllable burst (shadowburn).

furthermore, should the opponent choose to focus on the lock, the lock becomes severely weakened and relies only on 2 dots + pet to deal damage.

some insight would be nice :)

[Satisfy]

Thanks Vilu <3 going to try s3 and see if i can pull it off also... very descriptive!

[Vilu]

though i am curious, why felguard instead of sl/sl for the lock? i can't think of any advantage felguard possesses over sl/sl, considering the loss of: dispels, curse of exhaustion, improved range on dots/fear, burst from nightfall, the viability of drain life+interruptable drain mana - just to earn a pet which does 10% more damage than felhunter, with a stun thats more or less equivalent in terms of utlity to spellock, and a controllable burst (shadowburn).

furthermore, should the opponent choose to focus on the lock, the lock becomes severely weakened and relies only on 2 dots + pet to deal damage.
The difference between felpuppy & felguard is that the felguard actually does damage (felpuppy hits for what, a 200 on cloth? felguard hits for 500) and felguards interrupt works on melee too (intercept>bof when a rogue is on your warlock for example is priceless, you couldn't do that with a puppy). Also, felguard has more hp and armor and *avoidance* (50% chance to avoid AoE = you can't reliably CC it, it sticks to the mages interrupting their casts).
Also, one of the more important talents this spec has is bane+shadowburn. Bane allows the warlock to punish the opposition and generate immense amounts of pressure if left alone (with shadowbolt spam followed by a shadowburn).

SL/SL is more suited spec when the warlock is under fire 24/7 and all he can do is instant dots. In 3s (and 5s too) this is not the case. You will get nuked occasionally, even half of the time, but having a spec that's only good when you're being nuked would end up being next to useless the other half of the time. Felguard spec gives roughly the same survivability under fire in *3s* as SL/Sl, since some of the innate survivability traits of SL/SL get compensated by the synergy options of FG.

Curse of Exhaustion would be a nice tool for sure to catch runners trying to drink, but since the whole game revolves around the trap which overwrites CoEX (+ 2 pets to keep peeps in combat), it really isn't as needed. The loss of dispel hurts a bit, but we already have more realiable defensive dispel (you might argue that it could be used to cleanse the paladin when he is CC'd, but BoSacri>Hellfire takes care of sheeps, and with warlock the amount of debuffs would make it sheer luck to get a fear dispelled).

Draining we don't usually do unless there's a mage in oppositions team, and with soul siphon no longer affecting drain mana and MS effects reducing drain life there isn't that big a difference. If someone is on our warlock the drains wouldn't do jack anymore, and when there's no one on him he is better off shadowbolting.
Nightfall procs sure would be nice, but guess you can't really have everything. Besides they're RNG, and we really dislike RNG. Rather win fair & square!

On the range of DoTs/Fear I can't really comment well on, I haven't heard our lock ever complain about not having Grim reach in the FG build, so I'm guessing it's not that big of a deal.


Finally, should the opponent choose to focus the lock, I'd like to thank them for the rating. You just don't leave the hunter unattended and win :)
From the ~400ish games with this setup (~100 losses), we've probably lost 5 to the warlock dying first, and in those games it was either a grievous mistake by some of us or RNG doing it's dirty work (around 10 games it has been me dying, and in the rest of the cases it has been the hunter).


Anything else? :)

[tysopz]

Thanks for such elaborated posts, Vilu. How do you think Hunter/paladin/mage or hunter/paladin/warrior would perform? I'm still trying to find out what setup to run in 3s the comming season.

[Vilu]

Thanks for such elaborated posts, Vilu. How do you think Hunter/paladin/mage or hunter/paladin/warrior would perform? I'm still trying to find out what setup to run in 3s the comming season.
Paladin/mage is probably the most horrid attempt on synergy ever, they're the exact opposites classes, other is lasting power, other is sparkling burst. Even though mage has control options to help the paladin do his job, I do feel that they're just not enough to offset the scale to the synergy's favor.

If mage is being focused, he has to go to defensive mode, and even though paladin could sustain the mage for quite some time, nothing "gets done" by the duo. Compare it to paladin/warlock, if the warlock is being focused; his pet is still does damage and keeps someone in combat, his dots still do damage and need to be dispelled, he can still apply Cot and can deathcoil on demand. Where as mage can just run away and try to keep the one chasing him CC'd, avoiding some damage delt to him (warlock mitigates damage delt to him too, by tanking 26% extra healing and having no MS on pet). When doing all this the mage is bleeding mana all over the place, where as with paladin/warlock only the paladin is really losing mana.

In both cases, when going after the mage/warlock, the hunter would be left unchecked. Even as straining as the hunter on rampage is on the opposing team, it's not enough to solo anyone (before opposing healers are oom). If the mage is being focused, he can't help much with the pressure (twice with water elementals), when the warlock would be constantly draining the resources of the opposition.

Then about the mage/hunter and lock/hunter synergy.

Locks' weakness is the fact that they're prone to harassment from melee, a rogue/warrior glued to a warlock disables them pretty good (one reason rogues are so used class in 2s/3s, there's just so many locks around). Hunter relieves this pressure (frost trap, scatter, conc shot, wingclip), allowing the lock to act every now and then even when being trained. Locks also bring to the table the type of CC hunters are missing, CC that works well on casters (Frost trap CC's the melee, Fear takes care of the casters). To add to the synergy both classes are relatively independant of mana (lifetap/fd+drink), allowing them to continue functioning long periods time, and surviving manaburns/drains without loosing much combat potency.

Mage/hunter on the other hand would synergize mainly around the fact that getting a good aimed shot with combined burst from WE novas would now be deadly rather than a nuisance to heal over. Mage can help out the hunter with CC'ing casters with sheep, but the fact that the sheep breaks on damage is a real downer; you can't Viper Sting a sheeped target (viper is considered to do "damage" on CC'd targets), nor can you stack poisons or keep the sheeped one in combat with pet (could allow fast drink after sheep breaks). Oh, and multishot breaking hard worked sheep is something to cry over :)
Mage needing to end matches fast is pretty big downside too, when hunters shine when the matches start to last, giving Viper Stings really time to sting.

Well, I might have missed some aspects of mage/hunter, mainly speculating it from a MM/entrapment specced hunter's PoV. The synergy might be stronger if the hunter would be BM/entrapment for the 18s burst/godmode, but then it would be a burst setup, why the hell would you want a paladin with that? Also, 2.3.2 changes for mages' manalongevity might allow them to last a bit longer, but still doubt it would be great enough change to make them a class to build a good setup with two classes specializing in outlasting.


About paladin/hunter/warrior

Short version:
No, it just wouldn't work.

Longer one:
Even though all the classes are excellent in outlasting, you just can't outlast the oppositiong without controlling them. The setup features absolutely no CC against casters (although, it would pretty much demolish any 2 melee team, but who runs 2 melee in 3s?).
Without CC to force pressure on opposition the paladin couldn't get many casts through, the warrior would spent his time either CC'd or hitting absorbs on priest shield (since his melee time would be so low). The hunter would be cursing all the opponents constantly training him (why attack the paladin since you can just interrupt him, why attack the warrior when you can just CC him) and killing his pet (paladin couldn't do jack).
Basically the hunter would need to be BM once again to get some pressure (unCC'able, burst) on opposition to allow others to function. But then again, why would you bring a warrior to a burst setup and more importantly, why would you bring a paladin?


If you're still wondering something, just shoot :-)

[agion]

Vilu what spec is your hunter?

[Bravehearth]

paladin hunter warrior imo

[agion]

Yeah, but i dont have any good warriors on my server.

[Vilu]

Who do you usually go for first with your pally/lock/hunter team?
The warlock usually, for reasons stated before.

Vilu what spec is your hunter?
MM/entrapment:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Twisting+Nether&n=Sejta

[Nutron]

I had a Shaman/Warrior/Paladin team hovering around 2k past 2-3 weeks. We just seemed to be missing some control on the more cookie cutter setups. I'm sure with more practice and coordination we could have gotten to the 2200's but it just seemed like swimming upstream compared to how easy other setups make it look like.

2 days ago we figured we would try something different to see if we could make a push for gladiator on 3's as well. Went Paladin/Disc Priest/Warrior. We did suprisingly well and got form 1930ish to 2320 with that setup. Our hardest setup was an enhancement shaman / Warrior / Disc Priest. They were outputting SO much damage it was pretty much impossible to keep my priest alive past the pain supresion/bop/bof even with bos on him and spamming max rank. We defeated pretty much every other setup we could think of... One of the harder ones was a disc priest, SL SL lock, hunter. I spent the whole fight spamming my dispel key on myself and priest. One tiny lil mistake and that was pretty much our death.

Basicaly every single game was extremely technical for us. I was playing the los game nonstop trying to keep my priest up while dispeling/buffing and trying to coordinate bop for uninterupted mana burns. Eventualy we found that our setup could outlast even the 3 mana burn oriented setups if we played it smart.

Sadly we didnt make gladiator with that team... Tons of problems with connections on my part today and some heartbreaking losses due to stupid mistakes... But we feel confident for next season we can build upon it. Feels nice to finally have a nice 3's setup that I feel can perform with the paladin. Until the next paladin nerfs that is :D

[Bravehearth]

We ran Warrior/paladin/shaman s1 and s2, I think the shaman is leveling a hunter atm. But we made gladiator this season and last, I think 2328 rating

[Nutron]

im guessing the problem might be that he was elemental? Esp before water shield buffs...he just never had any decent resto gear to hold his own in arenas.

Paladin/priest/warrior seems SO much stronger in almost every circusmtance tho..

[Kawklee]

pally/war/mage actually works, I can write up about it later...

IE: When its not 4:30 AM

[Hashinka]

There are combos working with a Pala in 3v3 but overall imo Pala is really weak in this bracket.

There are some combos what worked in mid S2 but after 2.3 get more Problems.
Typical combos 3v3 Pala combos

Hunter/War/Pala
Hunter/FGLock/Pala
War/Pala/Priest
War/Sham/Pala
War/Pala/Mage

In most combos replace the Pala with Druid and you are more effective.
This doesnt mean if you have good ppl and know how to counter certain setups and you can pull of some ratings - saw some successfull War/Mage/Pala combos, even if i believe this setup is not really strong but looks that somehow this setup can be successful.
Hope Palas get some love for 3v3 soon.

[JayBro]

pally/war/mage actually works, I can write up about it later...

IE: When its not 4:30 AM

I'd love to hear more from your strats and stuff, Im rolling this setup now, and some head up would be welcome, cheers.

[PhoenixSentinel]

I ran pally/war/mage set up last season at the end of the season and in about 4-5 weeks we managed to get to 2028 rating without too many games played...

I feel that the mage has to be really good to do this, paladins need a lot of help in 3's and your mage has to be good with polly to help slow the dps or get rid of a lock fearing you or something like that.

But if the team is good I think they will just lock down the pally pretty easily and kill the mage, or the warrior. :-\

[Linkie]

Great post RE: Felguard.Lock/Pally/Hunter. Got some insight from it I think I'm going to have my lock switch over to felguard.

I've been playing Felpup.SL|SL.Lock/Pally/BM.Hunter lately and its been ripping RMPs a new one provided that they don't get their initial burst/opening.

[Decided]

We ran Warrior/paladin/shaman s1 and s2, I think the shaman is leveling a hunter atm. But we made gladiator this season and last, I think 2328 rating

I'm actually in the process of experimenting with that setup: paladin, resto shaman, and warrior.

What do you guys find yourselves doing in order to succeed against teams like druid, lock, warrior or disc priest, warrior, druid?

I've also have tried disc priest, warrior, paladin and we did pretty well there too. Not sure which I like better? What do you guys think? I'm not sure what other setups I could really play with? It seems like 1 dps 2 healer teams is the only way to go as a pally. Thoughts?

[tysopz]

Playing in a 2 healer team must be sad. Doesn't get more scrub friendly and boring than that.

[Scarf]

Just hit 2100 today with Pally/Sham/War, having fun with my T6 =)

[Scarf]

I'm actually in the process of experimenting with that setup: paladin, resto shaman, and warrior.

What do you guys find yourselves doing in order to succeed against teams like druid, lock, warrior or disc priest, warrior, druid?

I've also have tried disc priest, warrior, paladin and we did pretty well there too. Not sure which I like better? What do you guys think? I'm not sure what other setups I could really play with? It seems like 1 dps 2 healer teams is the only way to go as a pally. Thoughts?

My team got glad with Pally/Ele Sham/Warrior last season, however, this season I'm running with a resto sham. Like I said in my other post we just got to 2100, and yes we've beaten a ton of RPM, and disc priest, warrior, druid.

For priest/war/druid the most important thing is don't let the priest drink, imo. As soon as he's oom it's pretty much over, problems rise when the druid is very good at keeping both of our healers in combat, or the priest gets lucky fear/burn combos. Usually have our warrior on their priest and our shaman trying to shock cyclones.

[gatoja]

My team got glad with Pally/Ele Sham/Warrior last season, however, this season I'm running with a resto sham.


I was that ele shaman and have since been replaced by a spanish speaking two legged cow.

But our 3's prowess did win us a game of 5v5 :p.

[Nynaeve]

Dinged 2k this afternoon as War/Pal/Dru. Pretty strong, in my opinion, and allows you to sub out for a lock for bad matchups.

Anyone played this setup much? I have like no experience, we just started playing for fun today, and ended up pwning.

[Saffira]

Only problem with your team is no offensive dispel. Which if you can get around it won't hurt really that much except say BoPs. (But you have cyclone, so GG)

[Nynaeve]

Yeah, just wait out the buff :P The biggest weakness is the suckyness of Cleanse, actually.
It eats like, 70% of my GCD. Anyone got a tactic for us against rogue/lock/druid?