Arena Season 3: Mage, Priest, Rogue

[Bolty]

After my total epic failure at achieving a Gladiator title this season*, I'm looking for a new setup in 3v3. One of the power combos I'm seeing is a matrix of Frost Mage, Disc Priest, and Rogue (Hemo, Prep).

Advantages: heavy crowd control. With a Dwarf Priest along, you've got Rogue stuns/kicks/blinds, Mage Polymorphs and Counterspells, Priest Chastises and Psychic Screams. The most vulnerable class in the combo is the Priest, who cannot escape pressure on his own but can get away from melee with the support of his teammates.

If the enemy team tries to put together a crowd-control string on the Priest (healer) while burning one of the other two, they both have "oh crap" mechanisms to survive until the CC ends. The Mage can Ice Block; the Rogue can Vanish/CoS/Evasion.

Now, arguably the strongest CC in the game is Blind, since it is now physical and can only be freed by a trinket. One of the key goals of this team will be to force the opponent to burn their trinkets on other CCs (fear, frost nova, stuns) leaving Blind available as the uber CC to put someone out of action for a good length of time.

The Priest can supply Pain Suppression on any pressured target and Power Infusion for the Mage at a key burst moment.

Disadvantages: all three members of the team can be annihilated very quickly if caught out of position and out of cooldowns. In short, all three targets are squishy. Maneuvering and constant kiting will be absolutely critical to stay alive. If any one of the three team members is caught without cooldowns to escape, the Priest as a lone healer will be unable to save them against a hard assist train.

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Duties - Priest
Offensive and Defensive dispelling is all wrapped into one package, and will likely make up a bulk of the time spent. The Priest will likely be a common assist target of the enemy, and must stay alive while taking advantage of the CC support provided by teammates. Mana burning is of course good, but should be the last priority before dispelling and healing.

Duties - Rogue
Able to crowd control *while* dpsing, the Rogue can lock down an enemy target. Use of Blind must be performed at a critical moment, especially against a target that has already used their trinket.

Duties - Mage
DPS/Sheep/Counterspell, obviously. Will have to juggle the CC between offensive moves (sheeping a healer) and defensive moves (sheeping a target attacking us).

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General strategy

With the Rogue initially stealthed, enemy teams will choose to attack either the Mage or the Priest depending on their group makeup. Both should try to lure the enemy into getting caught by our Rogue. This team is capable of putting out some heavy burst on a target if they're caught out of position.

We are capable of a CC assist train on a caster of Sheep, Sheep, Sheep, Counterspell, Chastise, Fear, and Blind in ideal conditions. By the time we get to the Blind in that step, chances are very good that the target has trinketed already. During this time, burst can be applied to a target to put extreme pressure on enemy healers. A critical component to make this team work is instant communication of all forms of crowd control applied to targets, and trying to track when the enemy trinkets. We should set an assist target to die, and a CC target to try to keep controlled at all times. Macros to perform CC commands on focus targets will be a very good way to pull this off.

-Bolty

*We got up to 2249 once, a mere 30-40 points away from Gladiator rank. Then we'd hit a losing skid, and just never get it back. After spending weeks between 2220-2240, we couldn't hold onto it in the last week while watching win-trading farm teams move up, and title-purchasing cheaters get special netherdrake mounts they don't deserve. The system is flawed, Blizzard. Fix it. "Personal Ratings" only fix the problem halfway, and don't stop the win-trading that is rampant at the end of both seasons. The rating needed to get Gladiator was increasing by 5-10 points per week until the last week, when it then shot up by 50. This is not some coincidental thing; it's a direct result of win trading and purchased titles that have ruined the system. Every jerkoff who paid someone to farm them up in rating to get Gladiator pushes someone else out, and in the end the top spots are really going to the same players over and over on multiple teams. The Gladiator title means very little when anyone can cheese the system so readily. Yeah, QQ more, I know.

[Concillian]

This was "the" power combo of Season 2, but I can't help but think Hunter instead of Rogue is going to be just as viable in S3. or Hunter / warlock / priest as an all out drain team, but I fear the warlock may not be as effective, the lack of sheep / nova / R1 frostbolt slow may be an issue for warriors vs. the priest, perhaps that group is best off as Hunter / Warlock / Druid (actually that sounds pretty vicious)

Hunters don't have quite the same OS defense capability as rogue, but a lot better ability to kite and avoid incoming damage. They are also better at keeping damage off a priest and have reasonable mana draining to boot. Rogues are easier to play well, but I think a well played Hunter can slot in the same role as the rogue. I'd expect a scatter / Wyvern sting type build to be the best for this combo, with primary use of frost instead of freezing trap to keep a "kite area" for the priest.

The team is a little more flexible due to the reliance of rogues on combo points. The hunter DPS and target switching is just easier to deal with, and the deadzone changes really have made their issues significantly better. Also the cooldown of Wyvern is slightly lower than blind.

You have the option against non-druid teams of chain CC healer (proper rotation of Wyvern + sheeps + scatter as interrupt + Counterspell + maybe a freeze trap, but I think the traps are probably best used as frost or freeze against their DPSers) and burn down like 3DPS (PS their focus target, PI the mage and 3 of you kill them before they kill the focus), you have a second option of playing outlast by mana draining and applying more steady damage than any melee team can against frost traps, frost nova, scatter shot, sheep and wyvern stings, and this is the strategy that would have to be employed vs. druid healers.

I think if VERY coordinated you can even pull off 2 CCs at the start with starting the sheep train on the healer and a fear / trinket / freeze trap on one of their DPS. Wyvern on the healer before sheep is out and you have potential for 2 people under control for a reasonable amount of time.

This season is a lot more interesting. The hunter changes (and soon mage changes) go a long way. Instant Wyvern is big, and deadzone change is bigger. Arcane shot dispel is nice, but I don't think it's huge in this composition.

[Kevin]

This was "the" power combo of Season 2, but I can't help but think Hunter instead of Rogue is going to be just as viable in S3. or Hunter / warlock / priest as an all out drain team, but I fear the warlock may not be as effective, the lack of sheep / nova / R1 frostbolt slow may be an issue for warriors vs. the priest, perhaps that group is best off as Hunter / Warlock / Druid (actually that sounds pretty vicious)

Hunters don't have quite the same OS defense capability as rogue, but a lot better ability to kite and avoid incoming damage. They are also better at keeping damage off a priest and have reasonable mana draining to boot. Rogues are easier to play well, but I think a well played Hunter can slot in the same role as the rogue. I'd expect a scatter / Wyvern sting type build to be the best for this combo, with primary use of frost instead of freezing trap to keep a "kite area" for the priest.

The team is a little more flexible due to the reliance of rogues on combo points. The hunter DPS and target switching is just easier to deal with, and the deadzone changes really have made their issues significantly better. Also the cooldown of Wyvern is slightly lower than blind.

You have the option against non-druid teams of chain CC healer (proper rotation of Wyvern + sheeps + scatter as interrupt + Counterspell + maybe a freeze trap, but I think the traps are probably best used as frost or freeze against their DPSers) and burn down like 3DPS (PS their focus target, PI the mage and 3 of you kill them before they kill the focus), you have a second option of playing outlast by mana draining and applying more steady damage than any melee team can against frost traps, frost nova, scatter shot, sheep and wyvern stings, and this is the strategy that would have to be employed vs. druid healers.

I think if VERY coordinated you can even pull off 2 CCs at the start with starting the sheep train on the healer and a fear / trinket / freeze trap on one of their DPS. Wyvern on the healer before sheep is out and you have potential for 2 people under control for a reasonable amount of time.

This season is a lot more interesting. The hunter changes (and soon mage changes) go a long way. Instant Wyvern is big, and deadzone change is bigger. Arcane shot dispel is nice, but I don't think it's huge in this composition.

Yeah, I often wish I had better reflexes and more awareness with arena stuff on my hunter. A wyvern/scatter build can really do some nice stuff the faster trap cooldowns that you take with it meaning you can always have 2 frost traps down to really make a nice kiting zone is quite nice too. I'm not as good with scatter, wing clips, counterattack or just general kiting as I should be though. I still think I'm above average but I fear skilled hunters a lot in arenas now.

The one issue with wyvern sting in chain CC is that you have to be good about getting a scorpid sting up on the target when the CC portion is done so that you don't have that DoT running. That can be a problem because with the kiting and such that has to be done at times you can end up not being able to do that for quite some time. But it's something that can be worked with.

I have wondered about the value of readiness (41 point survival) over scatter shot (21 points marks) for a well coordinated arena team. Clearing that 2 minute cooldown on wyvern right away or being able to drop another freezing trap right away could be very helpful. However it's basically a one shot deal since readiness is a 5 minute cooldown. Scatter is only a 30s cooldown and can be a huge key for the hunter to get away from damage as well as preventing damage to a healer.

The biggest power boost I've seen from the arcane shot dispell is what it does to resto shaman. Even with dispells from other classes flying around a lot, the earth shield is often kept on the shaman to help them survive the burst and to get rid of the stutter issues when trying to heal. Since a shaman can't really put up any other self buffs to protect the shield hunters wipe it off all the time and then the pet puts you in stutter land since shaman have nothing else to help them, no instant heals (other than natures swiftness), no HoTs, they don't have the pally ability to run concentration aura to stay stutter proof no blessing of freedom to get away, they don't have priest talents to get rid of stutters after crits and stuff. Hunters are really really painful to resto shaman and since the shaman has to be a statue to heal and with the deadzone changes as well, hunters can often get an aimed shot off on them to get the healing debuff up and while I can cleanse the mana drain sting that is still a global cooldown and I'm going to lose some mana from it being up. I'm seeing very little reason to have a shaman healer on an arena team at all anymore but that is another issue.


But yeah I've wondered about hunter/mage/priest as a power combo. It's too bad our schedules don't work with Frosts anymore as that combo was getting pretty fun before the changes.

[Lissa]

This was "the" power combo of Season 2, but I can't help but think Hunter instead of Rogue is going to be just as viable in S3. or Hunter / warlock / priest as an all out drain team, but I fear the warlock may not be as effective, the lack of sheep / nova / R1 frostbolt slow may be an issue for warriors vs. the priest, perhaps that group is best off as Hunter / Warlock / Druid (actually that sounds pretty vicious)

Hunters don't have quite the same OS defense capability as rogue, but a lot better ability to kite and avoid incoming damage. They are also better at keeping damage off a priest and have reasonable mana draining to boot. Rogues are easier to play well, but I think a well played Hunter can slot in the same role as the rogue. I'd expect a scatter / Wyvern sting type build to be the best for this combo, with primary use of frost instead of freezing trap to keep a "kite area" for the priest.

The team is a little more flexible due to the reliance of rogues on combo points. The hunter DPS and target switching is just easier to deal with, and the deadzone changes really have made their issues significantly better. Also the cooldown of Wyvern is slightly lower than blind.

You have the option against non-druid teams of chain CC healer (proper rotation of Wyvern + sheeps + scatter as interrupt + Counterspell + maybe a freeze trap, but I think the traps are probably best used as frost or freeze against their DPSers) and burn down like 3DPS (PS their focus target, PI the mage and 3 of you kill them before they kill the focus), you have a second option of playing outlast by mana draining and applying more steady damage than any melee team can against frost traps, frost nova, scatter shot, sheep and wyvern stings, and this is the strategy that would have to be employed vs. druid healers.

I think if VERY coordinated you can even pull off 2 CCs at the start with starting the sheep train on the healer and a fear / trinket / freeze trap on one of their DPS. Wyvern on the healer before sheep is out and you have potential for 2 people under control for a reasonable amount of time.

This season is a lot more interesting. The hunter changes (and soon mage changes) go a long way. Instant Wyvern is big, and deadzone change is bigger. Arcane shot dispel is nice, but I don't think it's huge in this composition.

I was thinking something similar when I saw it, but using a druid.

As to Hunter, I would go with a heavy MM build (all the way to silencing) over Wyvern Sting. MM is all about burst damage now and Silencing Shot, while about a 1/3 of the time of Wyvern Sting, will let you do some damage to the priest up front while allowing you to use Viper Sting and unless they have another priest or paladin along or the priest blows their trinket, they'll still be silenced for 3 seconds and the odds of having a druid along means druid could remove the Wyvern Sting, the Priest would take the damage, but would be back in the fight. Also of note, Wyvern Sting has a 2 minute cooldown, Silencing Shot is only 20 seconds (which means potentially 18 seconds of taking someone of the fight compared to 12 seconds).

The other downside now is all the things that would make a survival hunter good in PvP has been neutered (traps now last a maximum of 10 seconds) so the only real things to get in Survival are sub-Tier 5 (Humanoid Slaying, Savage Strikes, Imp Wing Clip, Entrapment, Survivalist, Trap Mastery, Surefooted). Most PvP Hunters are either BM/MM or MM/Surv with some MM/BM while high end Survival now is probably the most raid friendly build (you give up some of your own DPS to boost physical raid DPS).

[Artega]

Yay double post.

[Artega]

I think another weakness of your team is that you're weak to enemy crowd control as well. While you certainly do have a great deal of CC on your side (Blind, Sheep, Fear, snares/roots), your Priest is the sole person on your team that can counter enemy CC (and even then only Magic effects; you can't do anything against Poisons), and you're additionally weak to enemy dispellers. Personally, I'd try and keep the Priest either locked down or CC'd, mash the Rogue, force the Mage to Skill Block™, then eradicate the Priest while keeping the Mage locked down.

*We got up to 2249 once, a mere 30-40 points away from Gladiator rank. Then we'd hit a losing skid, and just never get it back. After spending weeks between 2220-2240, we couldn't hold onto it in the last week while watching win-trading farm teams move up, and title-purchasing cheaters get special netherdrake mounts they don't deserve. The system is flawed, Blizzard. Fix it. "Personal Ratings" only fix the problem halfway, and don't stop the win-trading that is rampant at the end of both seasons. The rating needed to get Gladiator was increasing by 5-10 points per week until the last week, when it then shot up by 50. This is not some coincidental thing; it's a direct result of win trading and purchased titles that have ruined the system. Every jerkoff who paid someone to farm them up in rating to get Gladiator pushes someone else out, and in the end the top spots are really going to the same players over and over on multiple teams. The Gladiator title means very little when anyone can cheese the system so readily. Yeah, QQ more, I know.

This is one of many problems. I also think that teams should not be allowed to carry points from season to season; being able to start off with two or even three pieces of the new set is absolutely ludicrous.

[Artega]

Arcane shot dispel is nice, but I don't think it's huge in this composition.

It ruins Shaman healers, especially now that Earth Shield has a 30 second cooldown.

Sorry, but Hunters do not need dispel.

[NotSoDarklord]

I played this comp in the last week of s3 heavily after having toyed around with it all season. Rogue Mage Priest is a very fun to play and very strong comp but every player must be sure of their role on the team.

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Duties - Priest
Offensive and Defensive dispelling is all wrapped into one package, and will likely make up a bulk of the time spent. The Priest will likely be a common assist target of the enemy, and must stay alive while taking advantage of the CC support provided by teammates. Mana burning is of course good, but should be the last priority before dispelling and healing.

Duties - Rogue
Able to crowd control *while* dpsing, the Rogue can lock down an enemy target. Use of Blind must be performed at a critical moment, especially against a target that has already used their trinket.

Duties - Mage
DPS/Sheep/Counterspell, obviously. Will have to juggle the CC between offensive moves (sheeping a healer) and defensive moves (sheeping a target attacking us).

Your priest description is more or less on the money. Mana burn is a good idea but rogue mage priest has evolved into more or a burst/intense dps team and more often than not is a team that should avoid long games. This means that mana burn must take a backseat in this case to offensive dispels (buff stripping + dispelling of key beneficial spells) as well as cc dispelling. The only thing I didn't see you mention is "Devastating Mind Controls". Get in the habit of watching for windows to toss these out. There is a world of difference between a priest who can get off a couple of these and one who never bothers.

I played a rogue in this lineup. The dpsing is more or less standard and there are no real gimmicks to it. Get in the habit of every now and then tossing out a blind early with 1.5 minute blind to try to bait a trinket.

The mage duty is in my opinion the most make-or-break role on the team. A mage must walk the line between essentially keeping your entire team alive and making sure something dies. Even with pain suppression a priest is very susceptible to heavy focus and with no aid from the mage will die. On the flipside if the mage puts too much time into cc he eventually will run out of mana rendering himself totally unable to provide that protection for you and your team will likely fall regardless against a decent team. It will take experience to tell which playstyle suits your mage best, but in the early days have him try out different roles to find the one that fits your team best.

Here is a link to the most recent rogue mage priest video that I am aware of.

http://www.ourworkisneverover.net/wow/movi...fix-RPM-3v3.wmv

This team is from the bloodlust battlegroup and despite a very undergeared rogue play an effective aggressive strategy against other top teams, if you actually bother watching this for advice try to follow what all three players are doing even if not on the screen at any given time to get a true idea of how to play this.

[Xanthix]

I am the priest in a priest/mage/rogue/hunter group that does 3v3, and I find this discussion very interesting.

I am however curious what people think about dispelling vs healing. When the two teams engage in earnest, there's a lot of need for both, and I wonder what people think should be prioritized. Obviously cc should be dispelled first and so on, but is it more important to shield your mage or refresh prayer of mending, or to strip some enemy buffs? I can see how stripping buffs 2 at a time can really soften up the enemy, but keeping teammates above 50% also seems pretty vital due to burst damage.

Naturally this depends on what kind of team you're against, but do you guys have any pointers? I'm stuck at the 1500 level and would love to improve.

[Bolty]

Naturally this depends on what kind of team you're against, but do you guys have any pointers? I'm stuck at the 1500 level and would love to improve.

I always hate giving advice regarding PvP, because the answer is always "it depends." Some buffs are more important than others, and require priority dispelling.

Priests are the only class with both an offensive and defensive dispel, which means that at any given moment, a PvP healing-oriented Priest needs to make a choice between one of the following actions:

1) Do I heal? Shield/Prayer of Mending/Flash Heal/Greater Heal/Binding Heal/Renew someone who's hurt?
2) Do I dispel defensively?
3) Do I dispel offensively?
4) Do I mana burn?
5) Do I cc? Fear/Chastise if available?
6) Do I hide from enemy cc? (LoS)
7) Do I get out of combat to drink?
8) Do I mind control?
9) Do I LOLDPS? Yes, a key Mind Blast/SW:D combo at the right moment can get a kill.

So that's 9 different activities you have to choose from at any given moment.

Offensive dispelling should be prioritized against certain buffs as a given. Namely:

A) If you have melee on your team, dispel an enemy mage to get rid of his frost buffs that will slow your partners down every time they touch the mage.
B) Remove a Warlock's Fel Armor to reduce the healing he'll get by 30%.
C) Remove Fear Ward from whomever the other Priest put it on.
D) Remove a Shaman's various shields (water, earth, etc).
E) Remove all of a Priest's defenses - as you well know, all of your defense is magic-based and if you're getting chain dispelled/purged, you're dogmeat
F) Remove Blessing of Protection and Blessing of Freedom
G) If you have shadow dps on your team (shadow Priests, Warlocks), removing Shadow Protection can really help
H) Remove Bloodlust/Heroism ASAP or die!
I) Remove Druid HoTs or you'll never kill anything

These buffs are far more important to remove, than, say, Fortitude or Mark of the Wild. So essentially, if you're fighting against Mages and Warlocks, chuck a few dispels at them initially and then forget about them. If you're fighting against Priests, Shamans, Paladins, and Druids, be ready to spend a lot of time dispelling - it's far more valuable to your team than any kind of loldps you could put out.

"But dispelling Lifebloom heals the target - won't that just screw us over?" Not really - if your team's DPS can't overcome the healing effects of a dispelled Lifebloom, you're not killing anything anyway. You want to force the Druid into casting long heals - that leaves him vulnerable to CC lockdowns that prevent casting of pretty much anything, including cyclones.

But you can see how in a Mage/Priest/Rogue makeup, the Priest will spend most of his time dispelling. The other team will try to force the Priest into a pure healing role, allowing them to lock down/cc the Priest and waste someone (what I call dictating the flow of battle). The team that can dictate the terms of the fight to the other one usually wins.

So the answer to the original question may be: against certain team makeups, spam-dispelling the focus target may be far more valuable than any healing, because it'll force the other team to play to your terms and go all panic-heal like. Once you're dictating the battle to the other team, you just keep pushing until they break. Sometimes defensive dispelling is the WRONG thing to do - like if an enemy Warlock dots up multiple members of your team. Just pop a Prayer of Mending and laugh as it bounces around between all three of you, totally negating all the dot damage that was put up on you for minimal mana and time cost.

Oh, and Priest/Rogue/Hunter scares me...they're much better able to play an outlast game than Priest/Rogue/Mage. You should milk that. :)

-Bolty