Can't Decide, opinion?

[Paintrain]

Hi there, I am part of a 2v2 and 3v3 arena team and my 2v2 partner is a druid and I can't decide if I should be playing with lock or my rogue. They are both equal geared and its the same thing for our 3v3, my partner's for that is a warrior and druid.
So I just wanted to ask you guys and gals what would you do? im just looking for opinions and idea's. So far we have done 2v2 with the lock and 3v3 with the rogue and its working ok but we are thinking maybe the lock would be better?

[Schleppy]

Depends on your rogues gear. I'm running on my druid as rogue/druid with a decked out rogue (if only we had started up pre CD nerf!). Once your teamwork gets up to snuff, you will find a lot of the "difficult" comps turn into almost free points. Warrior druid becomes eazysauce with no dispel for the roots while the rogue can stick on the druid if he uses his cooldowns well. Rogue/mage can be dicey, but once you get your teamwork up to seemlessly switch targets to get a CC chain running, it's another fairly easy matchup. The problem will be the weird comps will give you trouble, anything with a human rogue will be very rough, 2 humans together will be very difficult. Any ret pally combo will be highly dangerous to you. Shaman/warrior will be either very easy, or almost impossible if the warrior cannot be seperated from the shammy. Once you finally break free of the 1500 bracket, you start running into fewer and fewer of these types of teams, which makes you life much easier.

You will be able to outlast any team other then hunter/disc priest mana-wise or obviously a mirror match so you have a bunch of different strategies open to you. The better the rogues gear is (meaning the more ap and ArP he has) the more and more your druid will be left alone to add CC and dps to the rogue.

Bottom line, I've had a lot of fun playing rogue/druid, moreso then I had with druid/war or druid/rogue/war, and that should be the ultimate barometer of what comp you want to play as, the one you have the most fun with.

[Kazeyonoma]

Rogue/druid is extremely powerful and less annoying than warlock/druid (lawls drain mana, wait 45 minutes, win game, kinda scenario). My druid runs with our rogue from 3s and they're very successful, having broken 2k in the first 2 weeks of s4, and made a strong push for 2200, (and they did this using pvp gear, not cheap ass pve gear and abusing broken cheat death). Warrior/Rogue/Druid is also a very strong combo. It's all about control, and gib. Improve Exposed Armor with Blood Frenzy puts out so much damage its insane.

I'd have to disagree with warrior/druid being easy for druid/rogue. At least at higher brackets, a defensive warrior player can make life literally miserable for the rogue/druid combo and just rely on RNG to win them the game, especially with Maces.

[Schleppy]

Im not up in the 1900 range yet, so I can't speak about that, but anything below 1800's the typical pattern of play has been..

Rogue hops on druid

Warrior hops on rogue

Druid pops to heal rogue/cc warrior then casts green stuff at warrior or druid

Warrior gets on druid as he gets tired of green globs flying over his shoulder

Druid frustrates warrior until warrior smashes his keyboard (god knows I've been the warrior in that situation)

Rogue/druid collect 15-17 points.

The only 3 warrior/druid combo we lost to had either S4 weapons (1 sword, 1 mace) or the freaking 2 handed sword out of sunwell. I got hit for 1780 non crit white damage in bear form with no sunders up over 18k armor from that damned sword, that hurt. We were extremely outgeared so I discounted those since we were still in the 1500 bracket when we ran into those teams. To be honest, counting on the RNG for a win is just as cheesy as counting on broken CD to allow T6 gear to be used. Or maybe i'm the most unlucky guy in the world on my warrior, I either got 3 mace stun procs in a row or it never procced unless my opponent was already stunned.

[Kazeyonoma]

If you check on Arena Junkies, it's reported that rogue/druid loses probably 80% matches against warrior/druid. You just handle casters better, but against warrior/druid a defensively strong warrior will never die.

[ebs2002]

Really, Kaz? That surprises me. War/Dru has a hard time against Rog/Dru by killing the druid first. Between sap/blind/root/cyclone, the warrior is constantly CC'd and the rogue can stick to the war/dru's druid long enough to wear him down.

At least, that's how I've been beaten. Maybe my druid needs to be better at surviving vs the rogue, though.

[Kazeyonoma]

abolish poison, hot up, stay in bear form.

warrior helps protect the druid with everything he can, intervene a lot, etc, should be able to hold em off.

[ebs2002]

warrior helps protect the druid with everything he can, intervene a lot, etc, should be able to hold em off.

But through feral charge/bash/root/root/cyclone/cyclone/cyclone/blind? And if the rog/dru druid roots the war/dru druid, he can lower the DRs on rooting the warrior, right?

The only way I can see a druid surviving through the warrior being CC-locked would be if the war/dru's druid hugged the warrior enough to let the warrior beat on the rogue...but eventually the druid's gonna have to drop bear form to cast something, and the warrior's gonna get CC-locked while the druid gets stunlocked and it's GG.

That's at least how I'd go for winning if I were on a dru/rog, and as a warrior on a war/dru I don't even know the best way to combat it. Maybe a quick spell reflect on a cyclone followed by a quick intervene+int.shout

[Schleppy]

Arena junkies deals more with the high brackets then the low to middle area. As I said I have no experience in the 1900+ bracket, so I can only speak of personal experience in the middle to lower brackets (1500-1800) In those brackets most warriors lack the comprehension of knowing when exactly to switch between playing offensively and defensively.

Honestly, how many warriors have you seen spell reflect a cyclone at the lower end of the brackets? Typically warriors that play smart enough to do things of that nature sure dont stay at the low brackets for very long.

[Schleppy]

abolish poison, hot up, stay in bear form.

warrior helps protect the druid with everything he can, intervene a lot, etc, should be able to hold em off.

No arguement there, and the smart druid will stay as close to his warrior as possible in that matchup so the warrior can keep on the the rogue during cyclone/blind immunity.

The issue is when the druid and war get seperated and the rogue is smart enough to save his Cd's for when the druid is caught out of bear form. Dumb rogues waste Cd's on druid in bear form, slart ones save them for caster form.

[Schleppy]

Really, Kaz? That surprises me. War/Dru has a hard time against Rog/Dru by killing the druid first. Between sap/blind/root/cyclone, the warrior is constantly CC'd and the rogue can stick to the war/dru's druid long enough to wear him down.

At least, that's how I've been beaten. Maybe my druid needs to be better at surviving vs the rogue, though.

He needs to stick to your hip as much as possible and eschew pillar-humping unless you can follow him. Being rooted doesnt stop you from hammering the rogue, the rogue not being in melee range is what stops that. It's your druids job to keep that rogue in the warriors melee range so only cyclone stops him from beating on the rogue. From playing the druid in a rogue/dru combo, the war/dru wins the mana war if the war can beat on the rogue, I cant CC if I have to chain-heal my rogue, and if I cant CC I cant stop you from killing my rogue.

[ebs2002]

Good point.

[Schleppy]

Another thing, against 2 stealthers your druid needs to be in bear form standing beside you, getting caught in cat vs. 2 stealthers is a reciepe for disaster. You dont know if you are facing rogue/druid, rogue/rogue, rogue/mage, all of which can maul your druid inside of one stunlock in cat form.

[Paintrain]

I see alot of people are talking about the rogue/druid combo and reading this has helped me understand the class combo more. But there has been little said about the lock/druid combo.
Is it just not that good of a combo anymore or is there something i am missing?
I figured that lock/druid combo would smash the war/druid combo but die insanely fast to the rogue/druid combo.

[ebs2002]

Warrior vs Lock = dead lock.

Assuming the warrior knows what to do, the Lock can't get away unless the druid helps him out a lot. Pummel fears on the druid, berserker rage/deathwish any fears on you, sunder him up and you'll put out more damage than the lock will and win the mana race.

[Kazeyonoma]

Kill the pet first btw, to let your druid drink, then you can win the fight, it's a long fight but sunder up the pet, kill it, work on warlock, he instant summons, you keep him fully sundered, if he instant summoned a voidwalker, you work on the warlock while your druid LOS the pet away from the enemy druid and helps puts the dps (insect swarm, moonfire yay) on the pet and calls out when it is below 50% (you're attacks on the warlock get shared with the pet remember?) you quick intervene/intercept to the pet/your druid and finish off the pet, boom, now you just work on the warlock and make sure he doesn't resummon pet. He'll drop fast fully sundered with no soul link, you win.

Part of the thing that hurt lock/druid combo is that the change to resilience to help it reduct the effectiveness of dots/drains, not to mention the nerf to spell damage conversion to drain mana. My druid now can basically eat a full mana drain for about the same cost as going into bear form with his 450+ resil. And my beating on the warlock/pet makes the enemy druid burn mana faster than my druid does.

Likewise warlock/druid vs rogue/druid is almost a 99% win for rogue/druid there simply isn't much you can do, it basically is a stall game, the warlock/druid team has NO WAY to kill the rogue/druid because the lock's damage is so minute to the rogue and even at 0 mana, the druid can keep a rogue healed because of his ability to vanish/sprint/CloS/Blind and run away. It just becomes a retardedly LONG match that relies on the rogue's cd's to come back up and a burst of damage. If the rogues have warglaives it's over even faster since the pet goes down in an instant. My gladiator rogue/druid friends who I run 3s with, ran into a 2hour long 2v2 because the rogue just never got chain crits against the lock during a full lockdown on the druid. Sad but it happens. But during that 2 hours, the rogue and druid NEVER ONCE were below 50% health.

[Schleppy]

My favorite is my rogue and I coordinate when wound poison has a 5 stack up and the lock is below 50% health when he has the VW out. Cyclone the pet, that turns off SL and makes the lock eat extra damage, then rotate between cycloning the pet and the druid. (Feral charge also works on the druid if you can catch him casting healing touch, which happens quite a bit once the lock takes extra damage from SL being turned off.)

Pretty much lock/druid eats up any combo that doesnt have a warrior or rogue in it in 2's. The problem is 75% of the comps you will run into have a warrior or rogue in it. There is a couple of lock/druid combos in my battlegroup in the top 20, so it defintely can work, but it has a steep learning curve.