3v3 PHP: How to get to 2K Rating?

[Kelemar]

Good day everyone.

Currently I'm playing Ret and I started to do some 3v3 with a Priest and a Hunter, since there are hardly any comps for a Ret outside of that (to my knowledge).

Now, we were doing pretty okay up until ~1750, and then we kind of hit a wall. And since none of us really have much 3v3 experience, we don't really know what to do against certain comps. Some seem totally unwinnable, even. 2 Affliction Warlocks and a Resto Druid totally wrecked us, Fury+Affli+Resto is pretty difficult to deal with as well. Or Rogue+WL+Resto...

So I kind of want to ask you, whether you can give me some tips and tricks for our comp, how to play against certain comps and in general what to avoid or what to look out for. Or maybe you can give me directions where I can look this stuff up myself.

I know I'm asking a lot, but I really want to get to 2k this season for the Elite set.

Thank you in advance!

[Deleted]

Hi,

I don't have any experience with the comp, but I just wanted to give you a more general type of advice - just play a lot and experiment with different strategies (if the statistic is correct you only have 110 3v3 games this season). Your weakness seems to be X/Affli/Rrdruid, so think about why you're getting beaten and what you can do against it. Also some comps will just be harder for you, and you will lose the majority of the match-ups, no matter what you do.

[Kelemar]

Thanks! You wouldn't know where to look up what I can do against such a comp?

[zenga]

At that rating most people just play arena on their own, not really coordinated as a team. All it really takes to get 2k is grab a piece of paper, list your own team CC abilities and make a chain. Practice that for a few days. E.g. when you say 'go' hunter traps healer, you follow up with a HoJ and your priest with a fear, and hunter is ready to interrupt the first heal. Repeat that till you do it automatically and your rating will see the biggest boost ever. Not only to score kills, but also defensively: when your healer gets CC'd and they blow their CD's try to get a CC chain going on one of the DPS. Again practice that. And with practice I mean you should not care for a couple of days about rating, even if you drop back to say 1500. Once you have that all down (as in practices enough that it becomes a natural thing) start lining up CD's, it's pointless when the enemy healer has still his trinket to blow your own offensive CDs). And last but not least, make your healer in charge of your defensive CD's, so he calls out when you need to deter/bubble (based on when he wants to use his trinket). Really, at 1750 rating those are the key things to improve on as a team, and that can easily net your 2-300 rating in a very short time frame. But there is also stuff you can practise alone. When I started to do arena I had trouble with my focus target. So I went into a random battleground with the only goal to interrupt 10x a focus target. I didn't care about win/lose/whatever, I just wanted to practise.

If this all sounds too obvious, then I guess there is another reason why you are stuck at 1700, but I'm pretty sure it's 9 out of 10 times lack of coordination.

[Divinism]

General playstyle for PHP / ret hunter teams is to burst the squishiest DPS during CC chains on the healer (HoJ -> trap -> fear). It's important to start with a stun so that the hunter can launch trap from range

At sub 2k rating, you can simply just stun the healer right away and immediately pop wings and burst with your hunter. Because of such intense damage you both deal, there is a good chance that the healer is forced to trinket the stun, and then it is easy to follow up with trap + fear and secure the kill.

If you fail to kill the target, just survive and continue CC chaining on CD until you get your wings back. Usually you will be able to force so many cds each CC chain that he will eventually die.

Protips.

-Ret has traditionally had excellent support and offheals. For each teammate, make a macro for your heals and Hands (/cast [@party1/2 or playername] Hand of Protection, etc)

-It's good idea to save Execution Sentence for healing unless you are very confident that the healing won't be needed. It heals for a shit ton. Especially with wings the heal approaches holy paladin levels.

-Your team has a lot of defensive CDs. Do not overlap them. For example, you can tell your priest to ask for a hand of sacrifice / BoP so that he gets to save his trinket / Pain Suppression. You can also ask for hunter's Roar of Sacrifice (will negate critical strikes) as well, if he is not already doing it.

-Against melee comps use Divine Protection glyph (no brainer), against rest I'd recommend Word of Glory (personal favorite) / Flash of Light (against spread pressure healing). Do not replace Hand of Freedom and Templar's Verdict glyphs.

-Do not save all the "Hand" cooldowns for yourself. For example, it's usually better to give your partners Hand of Freedom as you can remove your own slows/roots. However, you can use freedom on yourself while bursting so that you do not waste globals on Emancipate. It's perfectly acceptable to use it to reduce the CC duration on yourself as well. Hand of Freedom will help your priest get fears with angelic feather and it will help your hunter to get traps more securely if he is getting tunneled.

-You are squishy. Against ranged teams, it's recommended to be positioned near a pillar at all times so that you can LOS the dpsers if your healer gets CC'd. Try avoid chasing your kill target behind your healer's LOS, as it will force him to come out and risk his position, making him vulnerable for CC.

-Use Seal of Justice when you have no auto-applied slow in the team. I recommend swapping to Truth when bursting, however.

-Do not sit on 3 stack Selfless Healer for too long. You don't want to waste stacks, and especially not risk getting it purged. This is all situational however. When I have no damage, I like to help my healer with healing and just focus on surviving until we have a kill opportunity.

-If you want, you can run Hand of Purity vs warlocks and use it to counter their Haunt. It will fuck them up. Additionally, try to interrupt Haunt if possible.

-Hand of Protection is a great tool. It can remove physical debuffs and CCs like most stuns and blind. It will also remove hunter's Crows and it will remove monk's karma (salty monk confirms) if you HoP the monk's karma target.

-Related to above. Your hands are very vulnerable to dispels, therefore comps like turbocleave (enh/warr/healer). Be sure to keep your Blessing of Kings/Might up and encourage your friends to rebuff once in a while to delay their dispels by few globals.

-Against priests, be ready to interrupt Mass Dispel when you bubble. Yes, the cast is fast, but it's fairly easy to interrupt if you are expecting it and have no lag. When you know you need to bubble soon, you can already start positioning close to the priest already that you can interrupt if right away.

-Trap and fear have the same CD as your fist of justice. You can chain them every time.

[Kelemar]

@ zenga and Divinism: Damn, thank you! That's exactly what I was looking for!

Now what I only need to know are the important abilities of classes. For example, I didn't know that Haunt was that important. Always thought I need to watch out for Chaos Bolt, and didn't really care for what I'd interrupt otherwise if my kick was free.

Definitely going to take your tips to heart and talk to my mates about it.

Could you direct me to what I should be looking out for such as Haunt and stuff? Don't know what other classes have, really...

But thanks already!

[Divinism]

You can download an addon called "GladiatorLossa", which will announce enemy cooldowns / major abilities in voice.

But here is a simple list what you should watch out for.

Warrior:
Recklessness. 50% crit chance and 10% crit damage buff.
Avatar. 20% damage increase and removes roots.
Bladestorm. Strong AoE spin attack.
Shockwave. 4 sec aoe stun. It will reduce the CD by 20% if 3 targets are hit. Never be stacked in front of a warrior.
Stormbolt. 4 sec single target ranged stun.
Intimidating Shout. 8 sec fear. You can HoP this off.

Rogue:
Shallow/Moderate/Deep Insight, also known as green/yellow/red buffs. These increase rogue's damage by 10/20/50%. (Combat)
Killing Spree. Combat nuke, this is very often used in conjunction with Deep Insight (red buff) and Kidney Shot (6s stun)
Adrenaline Rush. Increases energy regeneration therefore damage. (Combat)
Vendetta. Flat out damage increase on the target rogue used it on, you can use HoP to remove it. (Assassination)
Shadow Dance. Allows stealth abilities to be used while not in stealth (ambush/cheap shot/garrote/sap). Subtlety nuke.

Hunter:
A Murder of Crows. Strong hunter DoT on 1 min cooldown.
Frenzy & Focus Fire. Pet attacks give the hunter "Frenzy" stacks, which increase pet attack speed by 20% at 5 stacks. Hunter can consume these stacks with Focus Fire, which will give the hunter 40% attack power increase.
Barrage. Does significant damage when used in conjunction with Bestial Wrath and Focus Fire.
Bestial Wrath (BM).

Mage:
Ice Lance. When you see a spinning blue orb (Frozen Orb), mage will get shit tons of Fingers of Frost procs, which allow Ice Lances to deal their maximum damage.
Ice Nova. Frost nuke, seen in conjunction with frozen orb + ice lance spam.
Icy Veins. Frost damage cd, increases haste.
Polymorph (stop this as much as you can).

Warlock:
Dark Soul (+30% secondary stat depending on spec)
Haunt (buffs affli dots)
Chaos Bolt (destro nuke)
Demonbolt + Chaos Wave (demo nuke)
Soul Link (passive 20% damage reduction, kill the pet if it's an Observer or very low health)
Unstable Affliction (primary affli dot)

Druid:
Incarnation (all specs)
Berserk (feral)
Starsurge (boomkin)

Shaman: Hex (stop this),
Ascendance (all specs),
ANY totem (KILL THEM)
Wind Shear (ranged interrupt),
Earthquake (ele, fissure ground effect)

Paladin (holy):
Denounce (reduces crit chance by 100% and does decent dmg)

Death Knight:
Breath of Sindragosa (all specs, strong nuke, save some CDs for this, unless he is running defile/necrotic plague)
Pillar of Frost (strong frost CD), Anti Magic Shell (don't stun into this), Icebound Fortitude (don't stun into this either)
Desecrated Ground (don't stun if he is standing in this )
Gargoyle (you can use Turn Evil to fear it)

Priest:
Devouring Plague (shadow). A shadow priest DoT, you can Cleanse it off.
Psychic Scream. 8 second fear, keep eye on priest when he approaches your team, this is a clear intention to use this ability.
Psychic Horror (shadow). 3 second horror effect. If you get this on you, expect to receive huge damage. Be ready to use CDs.

Monk:
Leg Sweep. AoE stun. If a healer monk approaches, his intention is to use this ability.
Paralysis. 4s ranged incapacitate. Leg Sweep is a common follow up.
Touch of Karma (windwalker). When monk uses it on a target, all the damage monk takes is redirected to that target. You can, and should use HoP > Divine Shield to remove it.
Tigereye Brew (windwalker). The stacks between 1-20 you can see on the monk buffs. Each of them increases the monk's damage by 6% if he decides to consume them. Max 10 can be used at a time.
Fists of Fury. Windwalker nuke, often used in conjunction with 6-10+ stack Tigereye Brew.

[Kelemar]

@Divinism - if there was an upvote function here on this site, I wouldn't know how often to press it until you've received the correct amount. This is amazing! Thank you very much!

A bit off topic: How long do you think will the current season last? I hope I still have enough time to get to 2k (already have enough conquest and the 27k achievement).

[zenga]

If you have some time left you can go on the PTR and make a fresh lvl 100 toon in full gear for the major classes you don't know and practise a little bit vs the target dummy. Often playing a class will give you a better idea about the mechanics than just reading up.

[Knolan]

The only thing I can add here is that you can use cleanse to remove hunter's wyvern sting effect from your ally. You can also use it to dispel DK diseases, but is not as important as it used to be.

[Kelemar]

Unfortunately, I neither have the time nor do I have the disk space right now >.<

But thanks! Will definitely try to Cleanse more often.

[Kreeshak]

To answer the topic question:

Ban all gladiators and rank 1s that sell boosts or level up alts, populating the vast majority of the ladders themselves.

[denominator]

To answer the topic question:

Ban all gladiators and rank 1s that sell boosts or level up alts, populating the vast majority of the ladders themselves.

2k is nowhere near R1 or even Glad. Thus this comment is completely and utterly useless.

[Kreeshak]

2k is nowhere near R1 or even Glad. Thus this comment is completely and utterly useless.

You didn't understand. They are not playing their accounts who camp ratings. They are playing other accounts (or their alts) at 2k mmr to sell whatever they sell.

[denominator]

You didn't understand. They are not playing their accounts who camp ratings. They are playing other accounts (or their alts) at 2k mmr to sell whatever they sell.

If you actually believe that the sole reason you can't break 2k is because of people selling carries, I really do feel bad for you.

[Kreeshak]

If you actually believe that the sole reason you can't break 2k is because of people selling carries, I really do feel bad for you.

This is not about me. Stop personal insults. Carries, alts, account sharing is a big reason people are struggling at certain ratings.

[denominator]

This is not about me. Stop personal insults. Carries, alts, account sharing is a big reason people are struggling at certain ratings.

No it absolutely is not. Playing boosted accounts is such a minute percentage of games, especially at trivial ratings such as 2k that it can be considered an outlier and not at all relevant to the thread.

[Kreeshak]

No it absolutely is not. Playing boosted accounts is such a minute percentage of games, especially at trivial ratings such as 2k that it can be considered an outlier and not at all relevant to the thread.

No. the percentage is higher. considering the boosted account can and will start as low as 1000 or 1500 rating. Now imagine a couple or three boosts happening at the same time. It will hinder legit players even at trivial ratings.

[Arkura]

All teams can be beat with almost any comp that has some sort of CC wich isnt in the same DR.
But some teams just becomes your kryptonite.
Like that example with 2 Affli locks and a resto Druid. They have so much self healing and just incredibly strong survivability so unless you acctually kill them in that Trap, Stun, Fear chain you will just get pressured until you're not able to keep up anymore.

Against comps like this what me and my friends tend to do then in 3s (if we are unable to nuke someone down in a cc chain) we tend to switch target alot. Apply our debuffs and dots and then switch causing the Druid to having to keep all hes hots rolling on all 3 all the time. Of course this will put alot of strain on your healer also. But more often then not if you then see a window where your dots/dmg is on one of them enough to lets say put them at 80% hp and you then start cc chaining the healer and try to burst one guy down it you will force some cds/trinks out of this.

I dont play Ret this expansion, I switched over to Rogue. Just my 2 cents, im currently sitting at 1800 mmr now with 60 games won on my Rogue.