3v3 setup strategy

Alright, I'll bite.

In the following post, I will be a little less focused on your specific class composition, and a little more generic when it comes to my personal suggestions in how to approach 3v3 arenas in general.

Before I continue, though, I would like to point out that this is my personal take on how to approach arenas. Some players might have different motives for playing; in which case my suggestions might not be what they are looking for.

There is a lot that can be said about mentality and approach to arenas. One of the biggest differences from arenas to battlegrounds is that you can't really just enter an arena with no game plan and expect it to turn out in your favour. What I mean by that is, for every team composition you play as, there are different synergies between the members of your classes that can play out to your benefit, but also as a disadvantage.

What does this mean, exactly? Well, take CC's for example. Some classes have CCs sharing diminishing returns, while other classes have CCs on independent DRs; Priest and Warlock fears come to mind for the prior, and Warlock and Mage fear/polymorph comes to mind with the latter. It is important for any team that enters the arenas to fully discuss their synergies in depth before entering.

Then, as if that was not a lot to consider in advance, comes the synergies of how your team plays against different compositions of opponents. For example, a Rogue/Mage/Priest would play differently in a mirror match than against, for example, Paladin/DeathKnight/Hunter. Due to the amount of classes (and talent builds!!) existing in WoW, the possibilities of what you might face are rather numerous. An example of this: if a team has a Resto Druid, a Prot Paladin and a Fire Mage you'd have to play in a certain way in order to win. If the same team then respecced to being Feral Druid, Holy Paladin, and Frost Mage the next time you encountered them, you might have to employ a completely different strategy all together.

It has been said before, but it needs stating again. Communicate with your team members and plan for as many possible scenarios in advance; repeat them until they sit firmly and there is no confusion as to what needs to be done - then execute it well.

I think it is likely that many players and teams neglects to take the aforementioned into consideration when entering arenas; something that can result in a poor match experience for players. Is it because they're bad players? Not necessarily; perhaps lack of some planning and foresight can be attributed to the loss though.

So then, what would be a good way to approach arenas?

• Analysis is key.


• Pre-planning and knowing "innately" what to do in each situation is important.


• Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your opposing team's class synergy, and then employing that against them contributes greatly to pulling off that sweet, sweet win.


• If you lose, don't instantly blame classes for being overpowered or the opposing team for having "too good gear". Rather, sit back and look at what happened, talk with your team mates and see what you can improve on. Perhaps your healer moved the wrong direction and went out of LoS? Perhaps your dps ducked behind a pillar and missed his heal? Perhaps your team was fighting in a strategically bad location (such as out in the open with no environment to make use of).


• Try to think "outside-the-box". Is there something clever you can do to surprise your opponents? Arenas are not static, and it is realistic to say that if you play the same team 5 times in a row, each game will play out differently. This is not only due to natural player randomness, but also due to different maps and players being in different locations.


• Don't give up. You can (in many cases) pull off a win - even with odds favouring your opponents - if you can do something unexpected and cause your opponents to make a mistake.

With the upcoming Arena Tournament in mind and players eager to participate in it; these are all points that could be considered as part of the preparation.

With that said, we would like to invite players to share and discuss tactics, synergies, strengths and weaknesses and the likes in this thread. There are many very talented players out there from whom others could learn lots. We are eager to see what thoughts you all have on arena tactics so don't be shy!

This thread is a chance for you to shine!

Edit: grammar

Q u o t e:
Slorkuz you little Undead Warlock, come to papa!

Gnomes will overrun you for such comments! ;) Rumors are they've been practicing arena games while nobody was watching. 3 dps at that!