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.


HUNTER/DRUID
Status: Zzzzz…

Very unlikely you will be able to kill the druid, even with JoJ, scatter, cyclone, trap, roots, repeat while your pally is fighting with scorpid poison and viper sting. Kill the pet and push the pressure on the hunter. If he rez the pet (many 2v2 hunters have improved rez-pet which allows them to rez in 4 seconds), kill him again. Once the hunter is OOM you have the chance to win, it’s easy for him to get away, feign death and drink tho. Expect a half hour game.

ROGUE/DRUID
Status: winnable

You can win this on mana, chasing druid can be difficult due to stuns and crippling when you can’t get BoF. Very similar fight to rogue/priest except druid can’t manaburn your pally.

WARLOCK/PRIEST (HEALER)
Status: mission impossible

Push the warlock, kill the pet, push the warlock, kill 2nd pet, push the warlock. Again, pummel all fears and mana drains you can. Chances are you will still loose if you do everything perfect.

WARRIOR/PALADIN
Status: don’t be a nub and win

Mirror match is not something you will have with warrior/pally, but it does happen. Go for the pally, it can take a while, but you will either take him down or OOM eventually, the other warrior will most likely go for your pally as well. Manage your rage, keep MS up ALL THE TIME, even at cost of not pummeling that heal or 4, it’s better for you to allow the pally 4 heals with MS debuff, than to allow him 2 heals without the debuff. Do not use whirlwind/slam/sunder/intercept (as stun) if you know your rage gen is not good enough, use MS, hamstring, pummel in that order. Obviously, try to stay behind him, parry on MS can be problematic (if you see MS is going down then you can try to use intercept-stun and/or pummel at all cost before you get the rage for another MS). Stay on him after he bubble/bop, eventually go away and prepare for charge if he can’t LoS you in 1 second. If he stun you and you got your trinket ready, gratz, you just got 20 rage for free. Once he is going down a nice train of mace stuns, pummels and intercept stuns can basically render him unable to do anything, but again, manage your rage when you are doing this. Do not execute at 19%, try to get him down to 10% or so, loosing MS debuff because you executed too fast is bad as well.

Warrior/paladin: There is pretty much 3 theoretical strategies that can be used here.
1: stay on paladin until he ooms.
2: stay on warrior until he dies/paladin ooms
3: switch targets continously depending on who is in range, who has freedom and if paladin tries to drink.

The strategy you describe is number 1. That strategy can work well under some circumstances. It is the preferred strategy for us because it is very easy to execute. However, there is a problem. If the opposing warrior wants to, he will be able to stop you from staying on their paladin. This means that either team can force the other team away from this strategy. If you still decide to use this strategy, a few hints:

*Never pummel a holy light. Holy lights are ridulously manaineffective. Let them land, and instead pummel flash of lights, since this can force him to or scare him into using holy lights to get back to full.
*Sunder armors can be powerful, but it can also backfire. A paladin that has 5 sunders and 50% hp can simply bop himself and use a bandage. Sunders removed, no mana wasted to heal, and you have very little chance to kill him before forbearance goes away. If the enemy paladin uses this strategy i wouldn’t recommend sundering him.

Now to the other strategies. Consider the following hypothetical scenario. All players stand still. Team A warrior is attacking Team B paladin. Team B paladin heals himself. Team B warrior is attacking Team A warrior. Team A paladin heals Team A warrior.

Which paladin will run oom first?

If you answered Team A, you are wrong. Attacking a paladin in 17k armor and righteous fury is less mana effective than attacking a 10k armor warrior in berserker stance. EVEN WHEN the extra rage you feed him is taken into account. In order to get any benefit out of attacking the paladin here, you must be able to kill him before he goes oom. If everyone were standing still, you would succeed in this since you have so much extra rage. If you are getting hamstringed and the paladin freedoms himself and pillarkites, you won’t.

In fact, due to the damage you are taking and the fact that you run away from LoS of your paladin, you probably won’t be able to keep attacking him.

The benefit of attacking a paladin instead lies in that you get automatic drinking prevention. When both teams contains good players, the situation will eventually end up something like strategy 3. You will not be able to stop the opposing paladin from drinking totally, but by switching targets back and forth correctly, putting high pressure on their warrior when their paladin tries to drink and turtling good when your paladin does, you should be able to squeeze out a 2k mana advantage here and there, that will eventually lead to a win.

Few things to keep in mind with that strategy:
*Demoshout is very worth keeping up
*Don’t be afraid to use BoP’s as a way to keep warrior alive instead of throwing 5 holy lights into him mortal striked.
*If opposing paladin tries to bop himself at reasonably low hp to save divine shield, HoJ can be a gamewinner.

Terhix