Since the online qualifiers are going on right now for Blizzard’s first “official” 3v3 tournament, I figured I’d take the time to write a blog about how our team plays the 3v3 bracket and why we were so successful in the past with the mentality we have. Currently, there are only a few teams still playing in the 3v3 scene that have been there since the beginning: Team Pandemic, Fnatic and MoB Gaming come to mind. Our teams all went through a lot in every tournament we’ve been to, we’ve seen what people do when money is on the line and how they handle themselves in a competitive environment. What I’m talking about, of course, is “counter comping” your opponents to achieve victory. What is “counter comping” you ask? It is, very simply, running a class makeup that counters another class makeup. This has won us tournaments in the past and I feel it will continue to do so in the future. Our team is a team that strives to win, we play winning strategies, and the very first thing we learned was that picking one comp to play and only playing that comp is not a very effective way to go about 3v3. I know a lot of people want to pick one class and play it over and over, but this is not how you play 3v3; you have to learn multiple classes and how to play all of them at high-end arena play. A lot of these new teams think we only won these tournaments because our competition was bad, but I laugh because MoB is a team that has been in the top 5 since the qualifiers began. The new teams can continue to think that running one comp is the way to go and that they can’t get countered, I’m fine with that, because I know that not only is that not playing to win, it's just very unintelligent. Every class composition in WoW has a counter, and if you know all of them, your chances of winning at LAN events will be extremely high. Winning always comes first with our team and will continue to come first until WoW is no longer a competitive game.

Enough about counter comps though, let’s talk about a specific comp: rogue/mage/priest (or “RMP” for short). Currently, RMP is a very strong comp on the ATR (arena tournament realm) because of how it works. Subtlety buffs to rogues put them over the top, with cheat death, shadowstep, and prep they are basically unable to be kited now. Couple this with the fact that the ATR has a very large selection of tier 5 items to wear and you have every rogue running around in 200 resilience with over 2100 AP thanks to double evasion, cloak of shadows, vanish, and cheat death. Mages also received some changes with Icy Veins and their mana gem. In the past, a lot of comps and a lot of strategies to beating RMP revolved around knocking the mage back and running him out of mana to win. This is very hard to do now with Icy Veins providing 100% pushback resistance and the new 3 charge mana emerald. Rogue/Mage synergy is already extremely powerful as both classes are self-sufficient for such a long time, so what healer better than a priest? A priest’s strength in healing doesn’t even lie in the fact that he has prayer of mending and power word: shield; the true strength of a priest healer in rogue/mage/priest is the harass ability the priest has with mana burn, dispel, and fear. The priest is the one healer in WoW where if he is left alone to do whatever he wishes, he can make a very strong impact on a fight either by running an enemy healer/caster out of mana, landing a clutch fear, mashing dispel on druid HoTs, pain suppressioning himself or a teammate dying, provide power infusion for quicker mana burns or mage casts, or mass dispel a mage out of ice block to ensure his death. Let's compare all of that to a healer like a resto shaman; sure he has harass tools with purge and shock, as well as providing his team with tremor totem, windfury, and grounding, but at the end of the day he will still have to sit in one spot and channel heals over and over. In a game where instants are king, you don't want a healer like this, you want a druid or priest to be your healer because they can harass as well as heal instantly, without the need to channel and open themselves up to lockout. All of these things are what make rogue/mage/priest such a strong composition on the ATR and I expect it’s popularity to only rise, not fall.

In closing, I’d just to like to say to remember that WoW is a game of counters, and although the ladder may not reflect on this very well, tournaments will. Strategy and second-guessing your opponent are what win WoW tournaments, not individual player/class skill. If more people had this mentality, you’d see a lot more top teams, but sadly people like to stick to the mindset of “I’m a shadowpriest, I only play shadow” or “I’m a slow arcane mage, that’s all I play.” Even rogues who refuse to spec deep subtlety because it’s a “lame” spec; I’m sorry but if being lame wins me and my team tournaments, then I’ll always be lame. Winning comes before everything: being “fair” or having your tactics “respected” always come second to success.

For those of you that are already a part of the competitive arena scene in WoW at the moment you already know what I'm talking about. For those of you who just read the title of this blog and asked yourself "what the heck is he talking about?" allow me to elaborate on what "2346" is exactly. "2345" was a term dubbed by me in season 1 that I used to describe every shaman-centric composition in 5v5 arena, which primarily comprised of Mage/Shaman/Warrior/Priest/Paladin. The team had high burst damage and four threats you had to keep in check at all times which could be very stressful for a lot of teams that ran compositions like ours in season 1 (Hunter/Paladin/Priest/Mage/Warrior). Anyway, the point was that it was so easy to play as a composition, yet so effective at the same time. As long as the shaman just focused on casting lightning bolt and timering when he felt he could get a kill, he was playing at 70-80% effectiveness; as long as the mage chain casted polymorph and frostbolt shatter combos with a water elemental, he was playing at 70-80% effectiveness, heck even if their priest just spammed mana burn and didn't even try to back-up heal his group and play smart, his team could potentially win a match over it. We learned our lesson about all of that in season 1 and decided to play said composition in season 2 with the pick-up of Douja, our current shaman. Now that I've explained to you what "2345" is, let me explain exactly what "2346" is.

"2346" is the exact same composition as 2345, except you sub out your mage for a felguard warlock. Team EG did this in season 1, but at that time it was much harder for anyone to survive the burst damage being put out by other shaman teams. Since they lacked a warrior peel (hello mage polymorph), this often resulted in their priest, Koorban, dying every match first without his team being able to do much for him. Seasons go by, resilience goes up, suddenly warrior peels become less useful. People can now tank warriors in PvP since everyone is now sitting well over 400 resilience. This is where warlocks start to outperform mages; they can apply constant pressure and none of their damage is cool down-based like a mage's (water elemental, icy veins, need nova to burst with, etc.). They also have infinite mana via lifetap and can simply sit at max range and spam damage on whatever target they feel like. Sure, a mage could try to employ this same strategy, but let's assume he pops his water elemental and tries to do it so he can burst someone, it won't happen. Why, you ask? If the other team has a brain in their head, they will see the water elemental pop up and immediately a red flag lights up in their head that lets them know the mage is going to burst. Mage damage is cool down based and limited, warlock damage is consistent, always there, and infinite. Mages were simply better when people couldn't survive burst damage, when a priest couldn't solo tank a warrior with just a paladin healing him. Also, mages get hit significantly harder than warlocks do, but have easily removable immunities to help with this. I could go on and on about the mage versus warlock argument in 2345 and 2346 variants, but there is something else that both teams have no matter what the caster is that makes it overpowered.

Elemental shamans. Yep, that's right, and ever since discipline got buffed for priests it's only gotten worse, far worse. I think it's unacceptable how much damage an elemental shaman can dish out and never be knocked back on his casts with a paladin in his group (four piece PvP armor + concentration aura makes him 100% immune to knockback, even a mage doesn't have this, mind you). A power infused shaman with a damage trinket up can do upwards of ten thousand damage by himself with one cast and his instants after. This is broken, please fix it. Power infusion just puts their damage over the top, it was already amazing without it, but now it's just simply too good. Speaking of power infusion, that reminds me of the main reason why 2345 and 2346 are good. The primary reason why no matter how well you play, no matter how much you stop and dispel the shaman and the warlock, there's still a sly guy standing by in a robe who appears to be a healer, but don't be fooled. He is not a healer at all, my friend, he is a priest, he is the third threat. Sure, ten thousand damage instantly can suck, so can focus soulfires and fear spam; but none of it compares at all to mana burn. Mana burn itself is what puts both of these compositions way, way, way over the top. All a priest has to do in these kind of groups is chain cast and spam mana burn on the enemy team over and over and force himself to be a target, because if you do not get on a mana burn spamming priest, your group loses. Fix this, please for the love of god, fix it! If mana burn simply had a cool down or the amount of mana burned was significantly lowered, it would do heaps for competitive PvP.

So let's recap on what needs changed to bring 2346 back in line with other 5v5 compositions in arena:
-Shaman shouldn't be immune to pushback. If they are going to be immune to pushback, then make mages immune to pushback.
-If a shaman casts a lightning bolt or chain lightning, he now receives a debuff called "Burnout." Burnout prevents the shaman from using nature's swiftness for 2 seconds. This debuff is not dispellable.
-Fear now has a 3 second cool down before it can be cast again.
-Power Infusion only increases damage and healing by 5-10% instead of 20%. 20% is just too much, sorry priests, err I mean mana burn bots.
-Mana burn now has a 5 second cool down -OR- Mana burn now burns for 200-400 mana instead of 1000.
-If a mass dispel is cast on a team with Bloodlust it immediately will remove the Bloodlust before any other buff.
-Lifetap now has a 10 second cool down.

I was originally going to put Curse of Tongues on diminishing returns, but it felt it too harsh of a change given the fact that it's one of the main things to help counter burst damage in arena, and it's already been nerfed once (10 second duration when it was 30 way back when). Thanks for taking the time out to read this blog and I hope it helped someone in some way.