Yesterday, our 5v5 team got a new warlock and we were one win away from hitting 2k rating with warrior/warlock/ele shammy/priest/pala setup, considering most of our guys are not gear-capped and we played this setup for the first time, we have huge potential here, and it’s a blast comparing to 2v2 (as my pally says: “I’d rather hit the desk with my head than play 2v2″). The team first played 10 games with “secondary squad” so everyone can get 30%, they dropped 1866 to 184x or something, no hard feelings, everything working as intended. Then we played our new setup for the first time and in 20 games we had 13 win streak, giving us total of 17 wins and 3 loses, too bad those 3 loses were for 20, 19 and 26 (that was our last game, bad mistakes happen when people get tired), ended at 194X which is still a huge jump in rating comparing to last week, could still play 3 games today without people dropping < 30%, but we wouldn’t do 2k unless those 3 games were wins for 20 points. We managed to beat one supposed to be good team on our realm (hi2u Wolowin ;]) for 20+ after they won with our 2ndary squad 5 times during those 10 games they played, felt good. Either way we can always get 2k early next week to get our shammy and priest new shoulders (they, like me, will upgrade S1 to S3).

5v5 is not only better balanced, but it’s much less stressful, when playing 2v2 in a setup that has very low mistake margin, a single mistake of one of you can decide on the result of the game. In 5v5 there is always backup healer, or backup dps. If I stand in nova and out of LoS from pally, there can be still a priest around to dispell me and so on. Basically instead of swearing and doing drama, we had a really good time yesterday, even when we lost. We are also starting to get serious points per week so guys from the “secondary squad” will get geared up faster and we can try different things (were doing really fine with hunter instead of the lock, our new lock got much better gear than the hunter tho).

Terhix

UPDATE: Added MatsT’s comments

Why would you pick a Paladin and not a Druid? I don’t know, you might know someone you used to play for months in wow or even before who got well geared Pally (my case), you might not know any Druid, or all the Druids you know already do 2v2 with a warrior, or better yet, a warlock or hunter. Either way, you are foolish enough to want to get your ass up on the ladder with what you have, since if you don’t have what you like, you like what you have. So here is a short list of tactics for most popular 2v2 teams you might face:

WARRIOR/DRUID
Status: winnable

It’s very unlikely you will win a mana war with such team, since it’s very easy for druid left alone to drink, while hots keep his warrior alive. What we did against that setup was simply killing the druid, you will need Mace Spec for that, a bit of luck, good timing on pummel, good to have freedom under your feet, and the druid MUST have Judgment of Justice on his ass. Since the druid starts in stealth, start on the warrior but don’t beat him too hard, get as much rage as you can for when the druid shows up. You can trinket one cyclone and than you have to pummel all the rest.

Warrior/druid: You are partly right here, as killing the druid is the way to go. However, it’s quite a bit more complicated than you make it sound. Against a good druid, you have little to no chance to catch him and kill him straight up, even with a JoJ. In order to win, it is imperative that you can also help your paladin to drink, until you finally get that lucky crit+mace stun streak that will kill the druid. Sometimes, a simple hamstring+freedom can let paladin get away and drink on other side of pillar. Sometimes, you will have to wait until druid tries to drink, then nuke warrior hard, to force the warrior into turtling and meeting up with his druid, while your paladin drinks. We have never lost this matchup in season 2 nor 3, but the wins often take as long as 15 minutes, when trinket+NS is on cooldown and i i get lucky.

WARLOCK/DRUID
Status: pain in the ass

Basically same thing as with warrior/druid, except this time you are killing the druid with a timer, that timer is your pally’s mana being constantly drained. You can also try to do it the “normal” way, push on the warlock, kill the pet, back on the warlock, kill another pet, your pally can drink now, push on the warlock and if they do enough mistakes you have a chance to win. Pummel all fears and mana drains you can.

ROGUE/PRIEST (HEALER)
Status: this is your day!

Try to get in combat, find the rogue or do whatever not to get pally sapped. Picking your target depends on what the rogue will do, if he goes for your pally you have to go for the rogue, if he goes for you, you can go for either priest or rogue. If you decide to go for the priest with rogue on your back (not good idea if it’s dagger rogue btw), prayer of mending will heal for some nice amounts every time you use whirlwind, there are two solutions for that: a) don’t use whirlwind or b) use sweeping strikes, I prefer b, you will have tons of rage anyway from rogue beating you. If you stay on the rogue and your pally is smart enough to LoS mana burns, you will win mana war, the priest can’t really do many mana burns since after evasion fades he will have to drop heavy healing bombs on the rogue. It’s good idea if your pally will assist you with hammer of justice on the rogue when he use evasion, also use intercept to stun the rogue whenever you can, stun means he can’t dodge, and dodge is what makes keeping MS debuff on him difficult, either way you should deliver him a lot of pain.

Rogue/DiscPriest: After the HARP nerf, this is one of the better matchups. However, it’s not nearly as simple as sticking on the rogue and winning the mana war. If your paladin can stand still and keep you up with flash of lights, yes, his mana will last longer. However, the other team won’t let him do this. The priest can easily keep the rogue up while still having plenty of time to chase paladin with fears and mana burns. If the paladin is forced to use holy lights to keep you up between LoS-ing mana burns, the priest’s mana will last longer. In addition to this, keep in mind that even ONE dodged mortal strike will cause mortal strike debuff to fall off for at least 2 seconds, which is more than enough for their priest to land a greater heal. The strategy to winning usually involves staying on the priest whenever there is an opportunity to do so. Your damage output becomes a lot higher, and your paladin will have a lot more freedom to stand still and heal, or even drink. Once their rogue manage to peel you from the priest, you usually have no choice except hitting the rogue, especially when pillars is involved. The priest will typically heal himself to full and try to drink. If you can not follow him, you must instead nuke the rogue to force the priest to come back. This may be a win opportunity if you have HoJ and/or intimidating shout to cc druid while finishing rogue with paladins help. If you don’t think you can pull it off, intercept the priest as soon as he comes back into LoS. This will put pressure on the priest while the rogue is still on low hp. Hopefully, the priest won’t have enough to heal both himself and the rogue and still get away and drink more. Eventually the priest will oom and die.

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Terhix