Priest/Rogue 2v2 Frustrations

[TheDragoon]

I don't agree with this. All it does is slow down the movement of teams - it doesn't change any actual outcomes. Assuming that at this point of the season most teams have found their level, all it will do is take some of the sting out of your losses. It's not going to make you go up. If anything it will make it worse, because good new warrior pally teams on their way up will have to beat you like a drum over and over again to get past you.

Actually, this is not correct. Let's look at a hypothetical situation of matches between evenly ranked Warrior/Paladin and Priest/Rogue. In general, evenly matched teams will earn/lose the same amount of points for a win or a loss. For this, let's assume that the winning team gets 15 points and the losing team loses 15 points. If the Warrior/Paladin can win 2/3rds of the time, then the average result for each encounter would be as follows:

Warrior/Paladin => (15 + 15 - 15)/3 = +5
Priest/Rogue => (-15 - 15 + 15)/3 = -5

So on average the Priest/Rogue team will lose 5 points per meeting. Now let's look at a situation where the Paladin/Warrior team only gets 5 points if they win while the Priest/Rogue team gets 20 points when they win.

Warrior/Palain => (5 + 5 - 20)/3 = -3.33
Priest/Rogue => (-5 -5 + 20)/3 = +3.33

In this case, the Priest/Rogue team is GAINING rating despite the fact that they are only winning 1/3rd of matches. This is entirely due to the handicap. As you can see, a handicap can definitely affect more than just the rate of movement, it could influence the DIRECTION of movement, as well. :)