5v5 Arena make up

[memetootoo]

Hi I'm trying to get a 5v5 going with 6 of my friends, the classes they have are listed below. I was wondering what would be an optimal group make up? I've listed their classes, from what they want to play the most to what they want to play the least.

One or two group make ups with these players would be greatly appreciated, thank you! Obviously we have 2 players with with SL locks so I would assume one would be a sub?

Player 1-SL/SL lock
Player 2 MS warrior, Combat rogue, marksman hunter,
Player 3 holy pally (Might also be willing to bring in his combat rogue)
Player 4 Holy pally
Player 5 Enhancement shaman, marksman hunter, fire mage, and resto druid.
Player 6 SL/SL lock

Oh I forgot to add the only player who might be willing to repec is player 3 on his combat rogue.

[Polaba]

Forget the druid imo, Druids are stinking up 5's right now. It depends on gear a bit, but an ideal team if all had equal gear for me would be:

Holy Pally - healbot
MS Warrior - Meatshield Dps machine
Combat Rogue, though I'd rather have Subt. for Hemo
Fire Mage should go PoM-Pyro and he'd be good
SL/SL Lock.

You could argue that 2 SL/SL locks might be better if the rogue or Mage wants to sit out.
MM is not as good as BM for PvP imo, my 3v3 with 3 BM Hunters has yet to be beaten after 27 games.

Again, depends on who has xx stam and xx resilience.

[Pongle]

Please.. do not take the advice of anyone who suggests Fire for a mage spec.

I'd say this:

Holy Paladin
MM Hunter
MS Warrior
SL/SL Warlock
Resto Druid

Ideally you'd have the hunter play his shaman and spec it elemental, but with the state of enhancement in arena you're better with the hunter. Also ideally you'd magically turn the druid into a priest somehow, but the druid/pally spine can work now with mana burn being a much lower priority for priests than before with the increases in dps over the seasons.

Games with that setup will take a *long* ****ing time by the way. Also for 5v5 Felguard > sl/SL.

[Polaba]

Please.. do not take the advice of anyone who suggests Fire for a mage spec.

Actually PoM-Pyro is technically an Arcane Spec. Admittedly though it is a bit broken, now that resilience comes into play.

[Pongle]

Actually PoM-Pyro is technically an Arcane Spec. Admittedly though it is a bit broken, now that resilience comes into play.

Resilience isn't why it's broken.

[Polaba]

Yes it is actually; Resilience decreases the damage taken from crits and the chance that you'll be crit. PoM-Pyro depends on quick burst damage from fast and instant crits. Therefore, PoM Pyro is broken due to it doing much less burst damage if the target has resilience.

[mender of bad soles]

First, both your teams lack direction. You don't have a clear goal with the team, which will bog him down since he lacks certain classes important to your strats. You need to choose a overall strat that fits the classes involved for a team to be really sucessful. I won't choose players or one of these styles for you, as it really does come down to playstyle. You could build around one of these styles.

1. Mana Burn, Bal. This would be 2 healers(not 2 pallys), 2 characters based around draining(warlock or hunter), and a third adding a slight flavor to the build. For example, you could add a damage dealer to add pressure and help spring deaths(ie warrior), or you could add more mana burn and CC to further your main goal. The one reason to stay semi balenced(ie not 3 burn, little else) is that it would really gimp you against some teams. -I recomend this considering which players you have, but you may just not enjoy its playstyle.

2. Heavy Offensive Variations. This would be 1 healer, 4 others which mostly focus on one idea. This could be a even heavier mana burn, CC/Gimp, or somthing with a balence of all three. This relies on you ruining their players and stunting their plans before they can begin to work them. This team useally turn arenas into Rock paper scissors as some teams will destroy you, while others you will almost always beat.

3. Heavy Defensive Variations. This would bring 3 healers(4 healer exists-it simply dosn't beat enough team combos to be good.) and the other two would be based around a goal-this goal would further the idea of an outlast victory ie a combination of control, damage, Mana Burn, and/or CC depending on inclinations. This relies on the healers multitasking and filling more than one role, so if your druid is talented, this could end up well for you.

4. Bal Bal. This is a team that has no lean to it. You rely on shifting your strategy to whatever your opponent's weakness is. For example, you play outlast against a burst team, and go burn based against a heavy healer team. This would be somthing like Pally/Druid/Damage/CC/Burner. This is somewhat hard to play, and requires fairly spesific classes that you(somewhat) lack. -I'd not recomend this without acess to respcing some characters.

Sorry OP if i ramble more than a little or have gramatical/spelling errors, I've just driven 12 hours back from a Xmas visit.........

Polaba, your idea of PVP is burst damage. Everything you say indicates this. From your suggestion of using a PoM Pyro to your idea that BM>MM for hunter, i can see this idea is clearly imprinted in your head. That is not always true, and with how Blizzard is implimenting pvp, your idea is growing more outdated by the minute. Burst weakens with amount of players, so in 5v5 burst teams get picked apart by more balenced ones.

Druids are not gimped for 5v5, many succesful Bal. teams use one. Outside of that setup, They work well in defensive(ie 3 healer) setups. For offensive teams, yes they are gimped. They cannot hold the weights that a priest or paladin can with 1 or no partner.

PoM Pyro is useless because it lacks survivabilty, reliabilty, and longevity. Either you burn the Pyro early and are largely gimped for the rest of the match, or you use it to finish someone, in which case you have had a limited role untill that point, and will be gimped after it. For burst, I'd take 33/0/28 over a PoM Pyro anyday. Why? because they are harder to shut down, able to contribute more before/after the PoM is gone, and last but not least they are consistent with what they can do. In 5's a mage's role is to CC and add damage when possible. Going PoM Pyro gimps both those roles severly because you have very little survivability and thus are easy to shut down, and because frost can add sustainable damage worth far more than a heavy burst that relies a great deal on luck.

I agree that BM is somtimes better, but only if you have a focus on burst. If sustainability is a major objective, then MM emerges on top.

Pongle, I like the team you put together. Very good example of how Bal. can be well played. I beleive that SL/SL is beaten out somtimes by any of the xx/3x/1x builds, but am not sold on the value of the Felguard. Perhaps you can provide me with your ideas on why it is more usefull than a puppy and what you gain from the other trees?

GL with the new team meme :thumbsup:,

Ronan

[Pongle]

Yes it is actually; Resilience decreases the damage taken from crits and the chance that you'll be crit. PoM-Pyro depends on quick burst damage from fast and instant crits. Therefore, PoM Pyro is broken due to it doing much less burst damage if the target has resilience.

Thats not the problem with PoM-Pyro, it can still burst well in a team environment.

The problem is that a PoM mage is incredibly squishy (unless they spec iceblock in which event their survivability is about 10% less lolworthy). Warrior gets into a Pyro mage, and it ends ugly for the mage.

[Pongle]

As I can't seem to find an edit - I will unfortunately have to make an extra post.

Pongle, I like the team you put together. Very good example of how Bal. can be well played. I beleive that SL/SL is beaten out somtimes by any of the xx/3x/1x builds, but am not sold on the value of the Felguard. Perhaps you can provide me with your ideas on why it is more usefull than a puppy and what you gain from the other trees?

The reason for Felguard is that the intercept is generally more useful in terms of control as it works on melee as well as casters, it does more damage than sl/SL, and it does quite a bit of casting push back.

It is more vulnerable to magic nukes, but you can always feldom a felhunter should it get killed from that.

Standard felguard build is something with soul siphon, shadowburn and felguard.

I think this is it, though I think the standard is to drop a point somewhere for Mana Feed 1/3 - as a non-Warlock I'm never sure, I just know what gives my teams more problems.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warlock/talents.html?0500020000000000000002050030133250100531351505000010000000000000

Basically you have a high dps pet with push backs, reasonable burst damage and good draining capabilities.

[WarStallion]

1. MS Warrior
2. SL/SL Lock
3. Mage
4. Holy Pally
5. Rogue or SL/SL Lock

[Pongle]

1. MS Warrior
2. SL/SL Lock
3. Mage
4. Holy Pally
5. Rogue or SL/SL Lock

That team has almost no apparent point to it, I guess you could use it as some kind of 4dps but it's really low on damage out because of the specs for a 4dps team.

[Amiral]

Just for speculation, I wonder how it would work with

Warrior
Shock/Ret-paladin
43/5/13 priest
Elemental/NS shaman
Balance/resto druid

all except warr in healing gear...

[Baboon]

We have a funny line up, it's without casting dps:

Holy Paladin
Resto Shaman
MS Warrior
Rogue
Hunter

We use all the melee dps enhancing totems and try to nuke a soft target down really fast. It get's us to around 1600 rating.

[Pongle]

Just for speculation, I wonder how it would work with

Warrior
Shock/Ret-paladin
43/5/13 priest
Elemental/NS shaman
Balance/resto druid

Gets owned hard by teams with 2+ draining classes

[nosoup4crr]

As long as you cover the bases, and don't have an enhancement shaman in your group (haha!), class makeup matters less than skill. I recently saw a video of a very interesting 5v5 team.

Resto Druid
SL/SL Lock
Combat Rogue
Shadow priest
Frost mage

That's right. no warrior. And they were in the top 10 of the shadowburn S2 rankings. Keep in mind that the rogue was neilyo (who is commonly known as the best rogue in America) and the priest was xantim. But, still. Different groups can be successful.

Furthermore, hunters can be seen on good arena teams as well. In an article that appears somewhere on worldofwar.net, cherekee was recently named the best PvPer in the world. He's a hunter who is a part of the number 8 2v2 team, number 1 3v3 team, and number 2 5v5 team in his battlegroup.

If I had to choose, though...

MS warrior
Disc Priest
Holy Pally/Resto Druid
SL/SL lock
Combat Rogue

or (4 DPS)

MS warrior
Holy Pally/Disc Priest
Shadow Priest/Frost Mage
Combat Rogue
SL/SL lock