Disc/lock gets countered by warr/druid. If your counter comp is the most common/generic team at high ratings, you better be damn good with it.
rDruid + Warrior.
rDruid + Hunter.
rDruid + Rogue.
rDruid + a sandwich.
rDruid + anything
Jokes aside, rDruids were pretty much broken but there was plenty of good stuff still. Frost Mages, Holy Palis being pretty versatile in most comps. Locks still strong as well.
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Warrior/Druid was by far the strongest and most represented combination throughout BC. Warlock/Druid, and Rogue/Priest extremely good as well.
For 3v3s, the two god comps were Warrior/Warlock/Druid (WLD) and Rogue/Mage/Priest (RMP).
I played WLD to gladiator in s2, s3 and s4.
Hoodrych playing WLD:
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If I was going to prep an arena toon what would be good solo in bgs and arena 2v2 only.
I don’t mind playing anything but locks.
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If those are really the only two things you care about go Human Rogue. Get openers on every rogue in 2v2/BGs from perception racial, and get instant BG queues for being Alliance.
Yes all that “Arena Skill” LOL
2’s: Warrior / Druid and/or Shadow Priest / Warlock
3’s: Rogue / Mage / Priest
5’s: Elemental Shaman was the must
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You forgot Hunter/Hpal - i went to rival (yea i know not special) on this comp season 1 and 2
True. Started as Lock/Pally and could beat anything but a mana burn team (of which there were plenty) once we switched to Lock/Druid it was good times.
5 rogues. Everyone sap a player then CB ambush/bakstab the healer while 1 rogue stun locks.
Here is my estimation of relevant 2v2 teams and their overall relative strength. I played on TBC private servers from 2015 until Classic release and was (just barely) able to achieve 2k rating (all TBC private servers that I know of are based in EU or Russia which led to me having to play with latencies of 200ms at best against players with 50ms, which as a rogue is a pretty huge handicap.)
Please keep in mind that seasons 1 and 2 were better for certain classes, while 3 and 4 favored others. Rogues and druids scaled ridiculously in the later stages of the expansion.
God-tier:
Dreamstate druid/rogue
Hunter (mm/surv spec)/rdruid
S-tier:
Disc/rogue
Warr/druid
Lock/druid
A-tier:
Spriest/rogue
Rogue/mage
Disc/mage
Disc/hunter
Rsham/warr
Rsham/ret
Lock/rogue
B-tier:
Spriest/mage
Disc/lock
Feral/rogue
Warr/Hpal
Hunter/rogue
Disc/warr
Lock/rsham
Mage/rdruid
Double mage
Double rogue
Spriest/lock
Mage/lock
C-tier:
Rogue/hpal
Rogue/ret
Enh/rdruid
Hunter/hpal
Feral/disc
Spriest/rdruid
The god-tier comps have no hard counters. They’re incredibly strong with great control, survivability, burst damage, and decent sustained damage to maintain pressure. To play them to their max capabilities, though, requires incredible skill, game knowledge, decision making, and the best gear available. All of that kind of goes without saying, but the ceiling for these comps when everything is played perfectly with the best gear is higher than any other comps.
A lot of the A-tier comps are A-tier and will achieve high ratings mainly because they hard counter one or more of the S-tier comps. Conversely, the A-tier comps left over are A-tier because the S-tier comps counter THEM instead. The lower tier comps can still do well and achieve high ratings, but will probably need to employ queue dodging/sniping tactics at some point, which are heavily frowned upon within the pvp community. With that being said, queue dodging/sniping will probably be happening amongst all tiers of teams at top ratings.
TL;DR some comps counter others, the fewer counters a comp has, the higher the rating it can achieve. So you get rogue/druid and hunter/druid at the top.
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Despite what people remember, TBC was an era of “anything can work” I saw damn near everything all the way up to 2300, one of the wildest teams I ever saw was an Enh Shaman/Priest/Hunter team that handed our asses to us as RWD. In addition to that, my rogue and I regularly sold 2’s points around 1950-2000 queuing as Rogue Warrior. People cry about resil, but burst was still nuts with it being stacked…
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Hunter (mm/surv spec I think)/rdruid (unsure of spec)
Hunter was BM for Season 1 and then SV/MM for 2-4 drain comp with scorpid. Better drain with Priest, but more survivability with Druid.
I did basically nothing but 2v2 throughout TBC, and my recollection was that the most gigantic pains in the @%$ to fight were as follows, in no particular order (I was the Warrior in a War/Holy Pally team):
- Resto Druid/Demo Lock
- Resto Druid/Arms Warrior (Stunherald, in particular)
- Disc Priest/Rogue
Druid CC + travel form made them the best healers without exception, particularly anywhere they could LOS you.
Disc Priests were the tankiest thing in the entire game in PvP. Absolute pain to kill.
Warriors, particularly mace spec with stormherald, had great uptime, dps, and random cc.
Warlocks, especially demo, were insanely tanky and had great dps.
Rogues are always great in PvP, but when paired with the tankiest healer, an absolute blight.
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The thing about arena… Unless you’re capable of competing for Gladiator, your comp really never mattered. The ratings that almost every player would make it to skill was what made the difference. Having the FOTM comp only matters if you’re able to play at the level that you can actually execute that comp the right way.
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For more amateur arena 1400 rank ish, would elemental shaman be ok.
I mained Enh in pve and pvp in TBC. I tried all kind of stuff in 2v2 but hit gladiator in season 1-3 as Enh Sham/Demo Lock. My partner was real life friend and thats why he stuck with me. His race was Blood Elf and mine Tauren.
I don’t remember all the little things we did but main were Lock would eat Void pet for 20s or something to see invisible classes like Rogue to prevent openings. Also we would stand with our backs to the wall also to prevent sap, I would always be in wolf form as well until Rogue opening.
Vs Hunter/RDruid - you kill BMs pet two times because 3rd time he couldn’t insta resurrect and then you train Hunter forever until druid goes oom healing him
Vs SL/SL Lock/RDruid - you kill Lock’s pet two times because 3rd time he couldn’t insta resurrect and then train Lock forerver until druid goes oom healing him
SPriest/SL/SL Lock - pretty hard but you kill priest 1st because unlike with healers you got x2 amount of dmg coming and don’t have time to kill Lock’s pet
Rogue/Healer Priest - #1 counter vs our comp but likely there weren’t many comps like that because they got wrecked by the ones i mentioned above.
War/RShaman - #2 counter but doable if you kill RShaman quick
Rogue/Mage - #3 counter and pretty impossible to beat but they were none existant pass 2100+ rating
Anything else is a piece of cake.
I tried to find 3v3 group but the stigma of “enh shaman sux in arena” was hard. I did War/EnhSham/RDruid for some times into 2k+ but guys were super impatient and went some other way with their comp.
I did hit Gladiator in Cata EnhSham/HPally/SPriest - i don’t know why noone ever tried it back then but we steamed rolled almost through all comps back then once we learned our chain CC.
EDIT: I also forgot to mentioned my RL friend hated the fact he choosed Blood Elf for lock ( for forever reason, I dont remember now)
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Elemental gets wrecked in 2v2 and 3v3, its the worst pvp spec along with Boomkin unless you are doing 5v5.
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ROFL you have no clue, stop lying
in season 1 and 2 - Warrior/lock/druid was the most common comp that hit glad
(17% of the glads in s1 and s2 were warlocks for this reason)
There are archived pages from arena junkies on this stuff.
Top 2s comp was warr/rdruid
I took a screenshot of the page for season 1 and 2. Here is the data for season 1, s2 follows a similar trend but shamans and hunters are at the bottom.
Season 1 Gladiator:
Warlock - 93 (17.03%)
Priest 14.65%
Warrior 13.74%
Paladin 11.90%
Rogue 11.54%
Mage 9.71 %
Shaman 7.14%
Druid 6.59 %
Hunter 5.13 %
He’s right. Based on the data it was hardest to hit gladiator as a hunter. You needed to be really skilled and have good team mates - more so than usual.
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