Is 2v2 arena broken or am I doing something wrong?

[Szyrex]

Howdy,

I'm a disc priest playing with a frost mage. He sometimes switches to fire.

It seems impossible to get past 1550, as stupid as it may sound I've played over 200 games with this guy, he seems decent and says he's played at 2k mmr before.

I do the following:

• Shadow word: Death Polymorphs as much as I can
• After 2/3 Polymorphs I get a full 6 second fear and then depending, I DPS the other or MC the healer after the fear.
• I dispel everything off my partner providing I'm not silenced and he's not LoS'd
• Pillar hug as much as I can while keeping instants up and then coming out for fears
• Mana-burn as much as possible (When he's nova'd the target or they're in open ground

We play 40 minute games and get locked in stalemate with mirror combos and rogue/priest... Sometimes Mage/Rogue games go for 10 mins and we eventually lose. We can't win against feral/disc. When we get perfect CC chains (fear/polyx3/MC/fear/CS) the other enemy still doesn't die half of the time, they LoS/dispel their way or just simply survive it. During this time I have DoTs up and I'm spamming mind spike.

I've often burned a healer down to 0 mana and it regens so fast they can just keep themselves up through the mages burst...

Here is my armory, before you bang on about my few pieces of PvE gear, I rarely die within the first 10 mins of a match unless his peels are awful. Against double DPS I pain sup through their cooldowns and never really have any problems.

So... Can a seasoned arena player tell me where I'm going wrong? Is my team mate doing it wrong? Is arena 2s broken (40 min matches are ridiculous, IMO) or is our combo not working? I've seen similar combos as a higher rating...!

Cheers

[Tihr]

2s isn't balanced at all, and never will be. Try picking up a good Rogue and going RMP instead.

[Szyrex]

Okay.. But surely despite it being imbalanced - 1800 could be achieved?

[JakeXP]

Disc - feral is a comp you probably won't beat and this statement will become more and more true the higher rating you achieve. From my experience of playing as a disc priest alongside a mage in 2v2, I've found that the majority of the matches we play against healer DPS teams will go on for a while. It just requires a good mage and for you to help him DPS when he wants to go for a kill with fiend and what-not.

[Zethlar]

Hi Szyrex,

First off I'll start this by saying 2s is not a balanced bracket, but this actually works in your favor believe it or not. If you check arenastats.com you'll see that mage/priest is the most played comp above 2k (and remains high in any bracket+) and its been that way for the entire expansion pretty much. So there's nothing wrong with your comp, it's just how you're playing it. I've played the comp to 2,200 both S9 and S10.

So what I notice with mage/priests at lower MMR's (and all comps really) is they really don't have much synergy or awareness of the game as a whole. They know enough to be able to line up a poly into a fear CC-chain but can't really take full advantage of it. They sort of just dick around until they get a kill, and don't get me wrong that can work at this mmr lol but it won't get you too far.

You sound like you're a decent healer from what you've written and you're doing a good job keeping you and your partner alive (as evidence by your 40 minute games =p) I think you just need to work on the getting a kill part.

For the record I don't like Mana Burn (quite happy it's going away in MoP) and I firmly believe mage/priest almost never needs to play the mana burn war to get a kill. Exceptions being an overly defensive mage/priest mirror that seems hell bent on winning by mana but even then a CC chain kill is still completely viable.

The things you want to look for before you know a viable kill window is open: Trinkets, are enemy trinkets (undead racial too) on cooldown? If they can just trinket/racial out of your CC chain that won't help. Defensive cooldowns. Has the priest used pain suppression already? Does that rogue have preparation up to reset his vanish cooldown? Positioning. Is your kill target in the open giving your frost mage plenty of space to work with? Your own cooldowns. Do you have enough cooldowns up to do the burst dmg needed to land a kill? Icy Veins, Power Infusion, On use spellpower, Shadowfiend, etc.

Note: With a frost mage at this mmr, I'd almost always stick to a CC the healer, kill the dps strategy. Fire mage I'd do things differently but I'll get to that later

So how do you get all these cooldowns/trinkets forced in preparation for a kill window? You create pressure, a lot of pressure. Is your mage getting interrupted a lot? Does he know how to properly juke interrupts (addons: interruptbar/juked are great for this). Are you keeping their healer constantly harassed with fears, impacts, poly's, and counterspells? You mentioned you're good at dispelling your partner which is awesome, but priests (and mages) have offensive dispel (spellsteal for mages) as well and that's another way to create pressure. If you're up against a priest, dispelling those PoM's, PW: Shields, and what not make the priest have to work that much harder between being CC'd to keep his partner up. Also dispelling/spellstealing other beneficial buffs such as pally wings and hand of freedom (I always let my mage get these if possible) can help a great deal too. And since you mentioned feral/disc, dispelling predatory swiftness off the feral as soon as it procs gets rid of his ability to insta-clone you which can prevent them from peeling/pressuring - learning to be lightning fast on getting that can go a long way to beating that comp.

My mage I play with almost always uses deep freeze as a form of CC on the healer, a constantly CC'd healer means no dispels which means my mage can have fun all day, he can get a shatter off a nova just the same especially if it's not being instantly dispelled. If we're in a kill window, he'll even go so far as to cold snap another deep freeze on the healer if we need an extra few seconds to land the kill or before another CC is off cooldown/DR. A well placed Ring of Frost is another awesome ability to create pressure and keep the momentum in your favor.

Versus mage/rogue as mage/priest the game is usually over if they don't manage to kill you in the opener or shortly thereafter once their cooldowns/momentum ends. They may be able to prolong the game a bit with peels and kiting but that's about it. Basically we stick to the mage like glue, my mage happens to love mage vs mage duels so he's quite good against them. We create a lot of pressure after or during the opener (if possible) the key being to force the rogue to trinket at some point. Once the rogue trinkets you can just control him all game, just keep him in frost novas, poly's or fears, he becomes our bitch after that trinket is used. He may be able to peel/pressure a bit with cloak/vanish and a re-stealth here and there but he shouldn't be able to get too far. While the rogue is controlled, chase the mage till you win.

Lastly I'll touch upon playing with a fire mage. They've become very popular in pvp this season, you're starting to see them more than frost mages here on NA ladders, not sure how it is on EU. Dragon's breath is an amazing CC and fire mage dmg right now can be insane for pressuring. So when you play with a fire mage this is the time when I'd recommend you make the healer your kill target. You do this with combustion, combust is your game ender. When you're in a good position to open the kill window you want to proc combustion then blanket the healer in as much CC as possible to prevent him from being able to dispel it. Typically the fire mage I play with will chain a 4 second blank cs into a dragon's breath into an impact and I can come in for a fear as another form of control. I'll also try and put SW: Pain up on the target too and if you have time, the holy fire DoT just to create an extra debuff to go through. If done right and the healer's got nothing to pop and you're controlling his dps partner he should die.

Anyway I'll stop writing now, so yeah just work on that pressure and those kill windows. These are just guidelines to follow, different strats for every comp (especially double dps) can be used of course. If you can't make something work on 1 target, try a switch.

I was able to play mage/priest with multiple mages to 2k+ just by basically doing the things I've named in this post. Though I know I didn't cover everything so if you have any questions do let me know, and good luck climbing the ladder!

- Zeth

Edit - Just clicked on your armory link, I'd advise you get to the 4% hit cap. Your comp depends upon landing CC at the right times as you know if you managed to get this far into my post and a missed fear/MC can cost you your kill window. You may think it never happens but it can and will, so you might as well remove any possibility of a "miss" on your CC. You have plenty of spirit/crit/haste, it won't hurt your stats that badly to reforge some of it to 410 hit rating.

And also your resil, you mention you get by fine without it. You could stand to gain about 1k more resil or another 10%+ dmg reduction. Maybe in the 1400-1500 bracket people aren't geared or skilled enough to burst down a healer easily but as you get to a higher mmr you'll most likely want to equip more pvp pieces. There are lots of players who've been working on their pvp set all season and have a completed set of ilvl403 cata glad (on top of pve weps/trinks) and trust me when you face melees at higher mmrs, they'll hurt, a lot this season.

[Szyrex]

Great response... I've made a thread here as it seemed more appropriate.

Thanks

[Rfx]

I don't know a stronger comp then Disc/Mage for twos. :O