WotLK PvP 2v2 Arena Team Comp Tier List / Rankings

Welcome to the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King PvP 2v2 arena team comp tier list! We will be ranking some of the strongest and most popular 2v2 arena team comps in the game, as well as explaining their position in the tier list.

We rate each comp by taking the following factors into consideration:

  • Overall Power: How strong the comp is in the broadest terms possible.
  • Counters: How many counters the comp has, along with how popular these counters are. For instance, a comp with a poor match-up against Arms Warrior / Holy Paladin, the most popular comp in the game, would be rated unfavourably.
  • Surprise Factor: How likely the comp is to sneak a few victories by surprising the enemy team, due to being an uncommon or unpredictable comp. Teams with a high surprise factor can win games when the enemy team doesn’t expect their gimmick, but they tend to do worse when you fight the same team over and over, as they adapt to your tricks.
  • Difficulty: How difficulty the comp is to pilot. Comps that do okay but take significant effort to play well will be rated slightly unfavourably.

Note that this Tier List covers classes and specs in their patch 3.3.5 state. This works just like in previous Classic expansions: although we’re doing content starting with the very first phase, our spells, talents, and equipment are already in their finalized states, which has great implications on the metagame.

Furthermore, this tier list ranks all the comps for their overall performance through the expansion’s duration — we do not rank them for 1 specific phase. Arms Warrior / Holy Paladin is typically considered to be stronger in latter phases and weaker in earlier phases, for example, which would change how it is placed slightly.

s tier dps rankings
a tier dps rankings
b tier dps rankings
c tier dps rankings
d tier dps rankings
  1. Arms Warrior / Holy Paladin (S-Tier)
  2. Subtlety Rogue / Shadow Priest (S-Tier)
  3. Affliction OR Destruction Warlock / Restoration Shaman (S-Tier)
  4. Frost Mage / Shadow Priest (S-Tier)
  5. Retribution OR Preg Paladin / Marksmanship Hunter (S-Tier)
  6. Feral Druid / Discipline Priest (A-Tier)
  7. Marksmanship Hunter / Discipline Priest (A-Tier)
  8. Frost Mage / Discipline Priest (A-Tier)
  9. Retribution OR Preg Paladin / Enhancement Shaman (A-Tier)
  10. Unholy Death Knight / Holy Paladin (A-Tier)
  11. Affliction OR Destruction Warlock / Restoration Druid (B-Tier)
  12. Subtlety Rogue / Discipline Priest (B-Tier)
  13. Retribution OR Preg Paladin / Discipline Priest (B-Tier)
  14. Subtlety Rogue / Feral Druid (B-Tier)
  15. Retribution OR Preg Paladin / Subtlety Rogue (B-Tier)
  16. Unholy Death Knight / Discipline Priest (C-Tier)
  17. Retribution OR Preg Paladin / Unholy Death Knight (C-Tier)
  18. Subtlety Rogue / Frost Mage (C-Tier)
  19. Subtlety Rogue / Balance Druid (C-Tier)
  20. Arms Warrior / Restoration Druid (C-Tier)
  21. Marksmanship Hunter / Restoration Druid (D-Tier)
  22. Arms Warrior / Restoration Shaman (D-Tier)
  23. Elemental Shaman / Discipline Priest (D-Tier)
  24. Subtlety Rogue / Affliction OR Destruction Warlock (D-Tier)
  25. Subtlety Rogue / Restoration Druid (D-Tier)

S-Tier

The S-tier represents the most powerful comps in the meta. These comps are extremely powerful and have few counters, typically only really having weaker match-ups against other S-tier comps. You will likely be fighting these comps for the majority of your games.

Arms Warrior / Holy Paladin

Power: ★★★★★ (5/5)
Counters: ★★★★★ (2/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★★★★ (0/5)
Difficulty: ★★★★★ (2/5)

If you’ve ever played WotLK PvP before, or know someone who does, you’ve likely heard of this comp before. Simply put, this comp is THE comp to beat, as it is the strongest comp in the game. As many as 25 to 50% of your games will likely be against WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin, so you’ll need to be prepared for it, and your comp’s strength will likely live or die by how well it fares against it. It couldn’t be lower than the S-tier, and honestly, a good argument could be made that this comp belongs in the SS-tier, all by itself.

This comp is just incredibly powerful, combining the insane damage and mobility of an WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior, with the incredible healing, survivability and crowd-control immunity of a WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin. You’ll win many of your games in the first 30 seconds of the game, as many specs simply roll over and die when faced with an WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior buffed with Hand of Freedom. In particular, you will completely demolish Wow Warlock Icon Warlock teams, and maybe like very difficult for WoW Priest Icon Discipline Priest teams.

Having said that, this comp does have a couple of weak points. The most obvious being that since it’s so ubiquitous, everyone is trying to counter you, and everyone knows how to play against you. Moreover, the comp doesn’t really take off until season 7-8, as WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior need a lot of armor penetration gear in order to do the ridiculous damage they’re known for. Finally, while it has very few counters, 2 counters are extremely popular: WoW Rogue Icon Subtlety Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest and Wow Mage Icon Frost Mage / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest teams can focus down either of you, dispel your WoW Paladin Icon Paladin’s Divine Shield with Mass Dispel and then kill either of you. Climbing as WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin generally means avoiding WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priests like the plague!

Subtlety Rogue / Shadow Priest

Power: ★★★★★ (5/5)
Counters: ★★★ (1/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★★★ (1/5)
Difficulty: ★★★ (1/5)

This comp is the 2nd most popular comp in WotLK and for 2 very good reasons. One, it is incredibly powerful in general, and two, it is one of very few comps that can boast about countering WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin, the top dog of the meta. Undoubtedly part of the S-tier, this comp can best be described as the WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin and WoW Priest Icon Discipline Priest killer.

This comp has crowd-control for days, as they can keep a single player out of the fight for what feels like years. You will get Sapped into Psychic Scream into Silence into Psychic Horror into Gouge into Blind — that’s 37 seconds of crowd control right there. This comp has so much CC and damage that it can kill anyone, at any point; they can choose to go for either the DPS or the healer in DPS/healer teams, which very few other double DPS comps can do. If you ever use your PvP trinket at the wrong time against this comp, you’re likely dead.

As far as weaknesses are concerned, the biggest one is that Wow Warlock Icon Warlock soft-counter you, as they have many tools to put themselves and their partner in combat, thus circumventing your Sap, which complicates your CC chain significantly. Furthermore, while this comp is excellent overall, it runs on a pretty short clock; WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priests cannot reset very well as they lack mobility tools, and are surprisingly fragile. This means that you typically either win fast or lose fast, so teams with potent defensive cooldowns that can survive longer than normal can give you trouble, as you run out of steam.

Affliction OR Destruction Warlock / Restoration Shaman

Power: ★★★★★ (5/5)
Counters: ★★(3/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★★★ (1/5)
Difficulty: ★★★★ (3/5)

Warlock / Healer teams were among the strongest teams in TBC. This trend continues in WotLK, with Wow Shaman Icon Resto Shamans typically being considered the best healer in such teams. This comp can be played with either a Wow Warlock Icon Destruction or Wow Warlock Icon Affliction Warlock, and both are certainly S-tier, though this comp does have an extremely unfortunate weakness.

The Wow Warlock Icon Destruction variety of this comp has insane kill power and crowd control thanks to the Improved Succubus talent allowing you to very easily crowd control 2 players at once. This variety is extremely strong against caster-based teams, and double DPS teams in general. The Wow Warlock Icon Affliction variety meanwhile excels against DPS / healer teams, as the Wow Warlock Icon Warlock’s damage-over-time spells apply an insane amount of pressure to the enemy healer, which all but ensures that you win a mana game. Both varieties are amazing against WoW Rogue Icon Rogue teams, as you can make their opener extremely annoying and complicated.

However, both varieties also happen to suffer from a huge issue: a weakness to WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warriors. Simply put, WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warriors can destroy your pet, then run you over like a train. Given that WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin is the most popular comp in that game, that weakness is absolutely crippling. The Wow Warlock Icon Affliction variety does very slightly better against WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warriors, as Wow Warlock Icon Destruction struggles to even get a cast off with a WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warriors sitting on them — however it’s still not enough to say the match-up is decent, so you’ll generally have to pray that you don’t run into WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin all that much. On the plus side, you have extremely favorable match-ups against most other types of teams. The Wow Warlock Icon Destruction variant has an extra weakness, however; it can sometimes struggle to kill healers, with games frequently running very long. You generally won’t be losing, but a lot of your wins won’t be as easy as they would be with Wow Warlock Icon Affliction.

Frost Mage / Shadow Priest

Power: ★★★★ (4/5)
Counters: ★★★★★ (2/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★★ (2/5)
Difficulty: ★★★★★ (2/5)

This comp is extremely similar to WoW Rogue Icon Subtlety Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest, in that it’s a very powerful comp whose main claim to fame is having an extremely good match-up against WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin, the strongest and most popular comp in the game. That is enough to propel it to the S-tier on its own, but it cannot be underestimated that this comp is incredibly powerful even without that one specific strong match-up.

In many ways, this comp plays very similarly to the ubiquitous WoW Rogue Icon Subtlety Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest: you take 1 player out of the game for an extremely long time, while killing the other player. However, there’re some slight differences: Wow Mage Icon Frost Mage / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest cannot CC people for as long as WoW Rogue Icon Subtlety Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest can, having a maximum CC time of “only” 32 seconds. They trade those 5 extra seconds for significantly higher burst damage, which allows them to kill people at any time, with no warning, where WoW Rogue Icon Subtlety Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest is typically more predictable. Furthermore, Polymorph is spammable, which allows this comp to reset the fight at any point — simply crowd control both players and go eat / drink behind a pillar. This ability makes it an extremely annoying comp to face, as you have very few chances to score a kill against them.

This comp’s weaknesses are also largely the same as with WoW Rogue Icon Subtlety Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest; Wow Warlock Icon Warlocks unfortunately soft-counter you. Moreover, certain double DPS comps (mostly involving WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladins) can give you trouble, as they can zerg down your WoW Priest Icon Priest before they get a chance to do place their DoTs, which is an issue that WoW Rogue Icon Subtlety Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest doesn’t suffer from to the same extent. Finally, the gameplay of constantly resetting the fight with Polymorph until your cooldowns are available again isn’t for everyone as it can be pretty repetitive.

Retribution OR Preg Paladin / Marksmanship Hunter

Power: ★★★★ (5/5)
Counters: ★★★★ (3/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (1/5)
Difficulty: ★★★★ (3/5)

This comp isn’t quite as popular as the other comps in the S-tier, but it is just as powerful nonetheless. This comp has one mission: kill every single WoW Priest Icon Priest. And well, they do it really well, despite having an unfortunate weakness to 2 top-tier comps.

WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladins and WoW Hunter Icon MM Hunters have some of the most absurd burst damage out there, so pairing them together is a no-brainer. They have so much burst that they can blow people up before they even notice they’re being attacked. This is one of very few double DPS comps that can truly target almost anybody, DPS or healer, and just kill them. This comp excels at killing healers in general, but more specifically, it has an unmatched ability to destroy WoW Priest Icon Priests; both Discipline and Shadow fall prey to your insane damage, coupled with the WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin’s ability to bypass a WoW Priest Icon Priest’s damage reduction effects with Sanctified Wrath. Given that WoW Priest Icon Discipline Priests are the most popular healer, and that WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priests make up 40% of the S-tier, that’s an incredible boon to have.

Having said that, this comp has a fairly substantial weakness: WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladins are extremely resilient, and thus you have an unfavourable match-up against WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin, the most common comp in the 2v2 bracket. It’s by no means an impossible match-up, but you have to play extremely well to come out on top. Moreover, while you can absolutely slay Wow Warlock Icon Warlocks as they’re clothies, Wow Warlock Icon Warlock / healer teams can give you trouble, as they can crowd control you extremely easily. Finally, while this isn’t a “big brain” comp so to speak, WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladins don’t really have many ways to reset a fight, which makes this comp surprisingly challenging to play. You typically cannot afford to make even small mistakes, as you only get 1 or 2 chances to get a kill before your WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin dies himself, though this becomes slightly easier if they are WoW Paladin Icon Preg spec.

A-Tier

The A-Tier represents very powerful comps with high meta relevance. These comps tend to be slightly less well-rounded their S-tier counterparts, typically having some very strong match-ups and some very weak match-ups, and are thus more highly dependent on the current state of the meta. You should expect to see these comps very often, so be prepared.

Feral Druid / Discipline Priest

Power: ★★★ (3/5)
Counters: ★★★ (3/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★★ (2/5)
Difficulty: ★★★ (3/5)

WoW Druid Icon Feral / WoW Priest Icon Disc is a very peculiar and polarizing comp. It has some extremely good match-ups, and some really meh match-ups. But for reasons that I’m about to explain, it cannot go any lower than the top of the A-tier, and many would even argue that it should be in the S-tier as well, and they may just be right.

This comp absolutely decimates Wow Mage Icon Mages, to the point where many Wow Mage Icon Mage / X teams will just straight up leave when they see your comp. Wow Mage Icon Mages just can’t control WoW Druid Icon Feral Druids at all, so paired with a WoW Priest Icon Priest constantly dispelling the Wow Mage Icon Mage’s shields and buffs, you’ve got an extremely one-sided match-up in your favour. Furthermore, it does very well against WoW Priest Icon Disc Priest teams, as they struggle to peel your WoW Druid Icon Feral thanks to Berserk’s fear immunity and quickly die to your outstanding damage + dispels. It tends to do pretty well against teams that struggle when they can’t create distance from your WoW Druid Icon Feral, such as WoW Hunter Icon Hunter / Healer and Wow Warlock Icon Warlock / Healer teams.

As mentioned previously though, these great strengths come with some fairly major weaknesses. For one, WoW Druid Icon Ferals don’t have a healing reduction effect, so your match-up against DPS / healer teams that don’t have a WoW Priest Icon Disc Priest healer is miserable — you have a decent chance of winning, but it will be a long, annoying match where nobody can kill one another. Furthermore, as all of a WoW Druid Icon Feral’s damage is Physical, you are unfortunately walled by WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladins and their incredible armor; this means that you have a pretty bad match-up against WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin, which unfortunately is the most common comp in the game. Finally, WoW Druid Icon Ferals do great damage, but they take a while to build up combo points and “pop off”, so you will also have a tough time against teams that can blow up your WoW Priest Icon Disc Priest in a matter of seconds, such as WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest or WoW Paladin Icon Ret / WoW Hunter Icon MM Hunter.

This comp is certainly worthy of its high spot in the tier list, but beware of these weaknesses.

Marksmanship Hunter / Discipline Priest

Power: ★★ (4/5)
Counters: ★★★ (3/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★★ (2/5)
Difficulty: ★★★ (4/5)

If there is such thing as an all-rounder comp, WoW Hunter Icon MM Hunter / WoW Priest Icon Disc Priest would be it. This comp doesn’t have any extremely strong match-ups, just a whole lot of decent match-ups, very few bad ones, and only 1 extremely poor match-up. Thus it finds itself in the A-tier, being an incredibly solid comp overall.

This comp has a lot of damage, and even more CC. WoW Hunter Icon Hunters do some crazy damage after a WoW Priest Icon Priest has removed all of the target’s buffs, and the fact that traps don’t share a diminishing return with a WoW Priest Icon Priest’s Psychic Scream allows you to keep players crowd controlled for 20-23 seconds, which is absolutely exceptional, as it gives you a lot of opportunities to get a kill. This strength is pretty generic so you’ll have a somewhat favourable match-up against many different comps, and DPS / healer comps in particular. Wow Mage Icon Mage teams in particular will be pretty scared of you, as the WoW Hunter Icon Hunter’s instant ranged damage makes getting chances to attack pretty difficult.

Getting to the comp’s weaknesses, the biggest and most obvious one is that Wow Warlock Icon Warlock / healer teams are practically an automatic loss for you, as WoW Hunter Icon Hunters unfortunately just can’t do anything to Wow Warlock Icon Warlocks — though thankfully, Wow Warlock Icon Warlocks aren’t too common in 2v2. Furthermore, you have a slightly unfavourable match-up against WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin, the most popular comp in the game, and as WoW Hunter Icon Hunters don’t have the best peel tools, teams that can kill your WoW Priest Icon Priest extremely quickly will give you a tough time. However, the real weakness of this comp is the sheer jankiness of the WoW Hunter Icon Hunter class — a lot of the times you’ll be ready to set up a kill after the opponents have used up their defensive cooldowns, only to have your trap resisted. Sometimes Scatter Shot just breaks on its own or it doesn’t last long enough for you to trap that WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin. Despite its very balanced match-ups, this comp is held back by a plethora of causes of annoyance, with so many small things that can lose you games, even when you’re playing perfectly.

Frost Mage / Discipline Priest

Power: ★★ (4/5)
Counters: ★★ (2/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (3/5)
Difficulty: ★★★★ (2/5)

This comp was pretty popular in TBC, and it continues to be pretty popular in Wrath for largely the same reasons. It has a lot of CC, and a lot of burst damage. It firmly belongs in the A-tier, though it’s hard to place it within that tier, as it largely depends on what the meta game will be like.

This comp is incredible at blowing things up. A Wow Mage Icon Mage on his own can already pull off some crazy Shatters, but when you add in a WoW Priest Icon Priest’s damage as well you have some incredible kill power, being able to kill someone from 100% in just 2 to 3 seconds. Both players have a spammable offensive dispel, so Wow Mage Icon Mages, WoW Priest Icon Disc Priests and WoW Druid Icon Resto Druids are in trouble. Furthermore, as both players have CC abilities, when things get tough or when you’re losing the mana war, you can just crowd control the enemy team and reset, drinking to regenerate your mana etc. As a result, by just being patient, you have a very decent chance of winning any game, particularly against DPS / healer teams.

But of course, this team isn’t without its weaknesses. The most obvious one being the fact that you have a really ugly matchup against WoW Druid Icon Feral Druid / WoW Priest Icon Disc Priest teams, as they just destroy your Wow Mage Icon Mage. Furthermore, while Wow Mage Icon Mages have incredible peel and crowd control tools, WoW Priest Icon Disc Priests are pretty fragile, so comps that can go invulnerable to your Wow Mage Icon Mage’s spells / CC temporarily, such as WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin / WoW Hunter Icon Hunter, icon - death knight Unholy DK / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin etc, can kill your WoW Priest Icon Priest so quickly that you don’t get a chance to fight back. This applies to the extremely popular WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin to a lesser extent, though that’s not a particularly poor match-up for you by any means, you just need to play carefully during their immunities.

Retribution OR Preg Paladin / Enhancement Shaman

Power: ★★ (5/5)
Counters: ★★ (4/5)
Surprise Factor: (4/5)
Difficulty: Meta dependent

This comp is a distant cousin of WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin / WoW Hunter Icon MM Hunter, in that they have a lot of the same strengths and a lot of the same weaknesses. It is an unusual spec that only picks up in latter arena seasons (7/8) once WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladins can switch to the WoW Paladin Icon Preg spec, though it can work even with regular WoW Paladin Icon Ret. It’s certainly an explosive comp, hence its position in the A-tier.

This comp puts the “zug” in “zugzug”. You have one thing in spades, and that thing is damage. The gameplay is very simple: you run in, your WoW Shaman Icon Shaman pops Heroism / Bloodlust, you pop all of your cooldowns and you kill stuff. Healers who aren’t WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladins just roll over and die to your insane damage, though you can absolutely destroy a whole bunch of non-healers too, like Wow Mage Icon Frost Mages, WoW Hunter Icon MM Hunters and even Wow Warlock Icon Warlocks. While this would normally mean you need to kill something within the first 30 seconds of the game or just straight up lose, the WoW Paladin Icon Preg variant has surprising lasting power, particularly against DPS / healer teams, as many specs struggle to out-damage the WoW Paladin Icon Preg Paladin’s high healing output.

Unfortunately however, this comp has a really, really ugly time against WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin, the most popular comp in the WotLK meta. You can’t hurt WoW Paladin Icon Paladins, and attacking the WoW Warrior Icon Warrior just feeds him rage to kill you even faster. For that reason, it’s a full tier lower than WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin / WoW Hunter Icon MM Hunter despite playing very similarly, as the latter stands a decent chance against WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin. Furthermore, WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest double DPS teams, such as the extremely popular WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest and Wow Mage Icon Mage / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest, also pose a major challenge, as they can lock down and kill your WoW Paladin Icon Paladin after Mass Dispeling his Divine Shield, which halts his healing output and severely limits your team’s damage output. This means that, despite this comp being legitimately very good, you have a somewhat troubling match-up against 3 out of 5 of the teams we consider S-tier, so it unfortunately cannot be higher than A-tier in our opinion. If you somehow happen to play in a meta that consists of other teams however, this team can steamroll its way to very high ratings, with very easy wins throughout.

Unholy Death Knight / Holy Paladin

Power: ★★ (3/5)
Counters: ★★★★ (3/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (2/5)
Difficulty: ★★ (2/5)

This comp can be best described as “poor man’s WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin”, as these 2 comps are very similar, with the latter unfortunately being significantly stronger, hence the position in the bottom of the A-tier. Still, it’s a plenty strong comp, which shouldn’t be underestimated, as it can sneak some very surprising victories.

icon - death knight Death Knights have exceptional damage, and the very powerful ability to become invulnerable to multiple types of crowd-control for a pretty long time. Pair this strength with a WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin constantly dispelling any crowd control that manages to stick and keeping them mobile with Hand of Freedom, and you have a very potent 2v2 combination. WoW Priest Icon Discipline Priest teams in particular are extremely vulnerable to your icon - death knight DK’s ability to stick on them like glue, very often dying in less than 10 seconds of sustained uptime. Other teams that typically need to keep a distance from your icon - death knight Death Knight, like WoW Hunter Icon MM Hunter / healer and Wow Warlock Icon Warlock / healer teams, can also be pretty easy prey for you.

When it comes to weaknesses, this comp has a very clear one: icon - death knight Death Knights lack a healing reduction effect. This means that WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladins, WoW Druid Icon Resto Druids and to a lesser extent WoW Shaman Icon Resto Shamans, all get to tank you, shrugging off your damage as it is not enough to kill them. As a result, DPS / healer teams without a WoW Priest Icon Disc Priest healer will be extremely painful to fight, as neither team can really kill the other, causing a stalemate. To make things worse, this comp has a pretty unfavourable match-up against WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin, the most popular comp in the game, as WoW Warrior Icon Warriors can kill icon - death knight Death Knights no problem, while the opposite is significantly harder. What’s more, a lot of the comps that give WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin trouble, such as WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest and Wow Mage Icon Mage / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest, can also destroy you, which unfortunately solidifies the idea that this comp, while plenty good to take you to reasonably high ratings, is just a poor man’s WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin.

B-Tier

The B-tier represents some very solid comps that can hold their own in the meta. These comps tend to have a specific thing they excel at, which unfortunately usually comes with a fairly major drawback. Some of these comps are also a “budget” version of a higher-tier comp, though they’re still powerful enough that they shouldn’t be written off. You won’t run into these comps as often as S-tier or A-tier comps, but they’re fairly common regardless.

Affliction OR Destruction Warlock / Restoration Druid

Power: ★★ (3/5)
Counters: ★★ (4/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (3/5)
Difficulty: ★★ (3/5)

The B-tier consists mainly of comps that are not bad by any means — in fact, a few of them are surprisingly good — but they are largely outshadowed by a different, extremely similar comp. This is exemplified by Wow Warlock Icon Warlock / WoW Druid Icon Resto Druid, which is a somewhat weaker version of Wow Warlock Icon Warlock / Resto Shaman in most meaningful ways. This comp is mainly ran with an Wow Warlock Icon Affliction Warlock, though Wow Warlock Icon Destruction can work just as well.

When comparing this comp to Wow Warlock Icon Warlock / WoW Shaman Icon Resto Shaman, it’s clear that there’s a direct trade-off here: this comp sacrifices some kill power by losing the WoW Shaman Icon Shaman’s Purge and Heroism / Bloodlust, for a far more durable healer in the WoW Druid Icon Resto Druid. While WoW Shaman Icon Shamans are prone to getting blown up by double DPS teams like WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest and WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin / WoW Hunter Icon MM Hunter, WoW Druid Icon Resto Druids can usually survive fairly easily with the help of a Wow Warlock Icon Warlock peeling the enemy for them. As a result, this comp has an extremely strong match-up against most double DPS teams, particularly when the Wow Warlock Icon Warlock is Affliction.

But then the trade-off we mentioned kicks in: this comp loses so much kill power, that unfortunately the Wow Warlock Icon Warlock on his own will struggle to get kills vs DPS / healer teams. These match-ups aren’t unwinnable, they’re just prone to being extremely long and frustrating, as your team is extremely durable so you aren’t likely to die, nor kill anyone for the matter. The exception is WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin, which unfortunately destroys you even harder than it does Wow Warlock Icon Warlock / WoW Shaman Icon Resto Shaman, as you lack any way to meaningfully pressure the WoW Warrior Icon Warrior into switching to Defensive Stance and thus allow your team to go on the offensive. And unfortunately, having this bad of a match-up against the most popular comp in the game is a very debilitating weakness.

Subtlety Rogue / Discipline Priest

Power: ★★ (3/5)
Counters: ★★★★ (2/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (3/5)
Difficulty: ★★ (2/5)

Once considered possibly the best comp in the game, a series of nerfs has pushed this comp down to the B-tier. In reality however, this comp is very well-rounded, so even though it’s no longer in the highest tier, it can perform extremely well and even snatch wins from many higher tier comps.

Despite being a DPS / healer team, this comp plays very similarly to its double DPS version, WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest. The idea is that you CC someone out of the game, and then burst the other player down — very simple. With a WoW Rogue Icon Rogue’s incredible damage during Shadow Dance and a WoW Priest Icon Discipline Priest’s often underestimated burst, not even WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladins are safe from you, with this comp having a surprisingly decent match-up against WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin, the most commonly encountered comp. The way you do this is fairly simple: you Sap one player then open on the other with Shadow Dance. This likely forces either player to use their PvP trinket in order to stay alive, so you simply hide behind the pillar until your Shadow Dance is ready again, with the enemy team no longer having a PvP trinket to save them. This comp resets constantly, until it can finally catch someone off-guard and get a kill.

On the weakness side, this comp doesn’t have a lot of them, but the ones it does have are pretty substantial. First of all, Wow Warlock Icon Warlock / healer teams are very annoying to fight, as Wow Warlock Icon Warlocks can prevent you from getting a Sap off on them by sending their pet to attack your WoW Priest Icon Priest, thus getting in combat. As they typically play with a WoW Druid Icon Resto Druid or WoW Shaman Icon Resto Shaman, you effectively cannot Sap anything, so you’re forced to just go in and hope for the best, which sadly works less often than you imagine it would. Furthermore, while WoW Rogue Icon Rogues have exceptionally strong CC tools to peel enemies with, certain teams — like WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin / WoW Hunter Icon MM Hunter and (ironically) WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest — can kill your WoW Priest Icon Priest too fast for you to be able to save him. But perhaps this comp’s most significant weakness, if you could call it that, is how repetitive its gameplay is. All you’re doing in most games is resetting the game over and over, until you find a chance to kill someone. At the very least, this is certainly not a comp for people who lack patience, as you need patience in spades in order to climb with this strategy.

Retribution OR Preg Paladin / Discipline Priest

Power: ★★ (2/5)
Counters: ★★★★ (2/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (3/5)
Difficulty: ★★ (3/5)

This is a comp you likely won’t run into very often, as it’s not all that popular due to a variety of factors that will be explained below. However, it technically counters half the meta, so it could not possibly be any lower than the B-tier, despite not being all that common.

This comp is known as the double DPS destroyer, as it has an outstandingly good match-up against most double DPS teams out there. Both players have a magic dispel, so it’s almost impossible to keep either of them crowd controlled for long, which makes things very difficult for double DPS teams. Moreover, WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladins have incredibly powerful defensive cooldowns, like Hand of Protection and Divine Sacrifice, which allows them to save their WoW Priest Icon Priest when things get rough. So most double DPS teams will futilely try to kill the WoW Priest Icon Priest, while the WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin makes short work of them with his high burst damage. Double DPS teams will really, really not enjoy facing you — even more so if the WoW Paladin Icon Paladin is WoW Paladin Icon Preg specced, as he can then also heal the WoW Priest Icon Priest out of difficult situations, though typically the WoW Paladin Icon Paladin will be WoW Paladin Icon Ret.

On the flipside, this comp has an extremely obvious weakness: WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladins have no healing reduction effects, and while their burst damage is good, their sustained damage is just meh. This means that winning games against DPS / healer teams is a matter of praying that you crit a bunch of times in a row, as you have no reliable way of killing healers, except maybe WoW Priest Icon Priests. Your lack of sustained damage means that you have a slightly unfavourable match-up against other DPS / healer teams with better sustained damage, and Wow Warlock Icon Warlock / healer teams in particular will be next to impossible for you, as will WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin, which is very unfortunate. This means you’re in a very bizarre situation, where you have an extremely strong match-up against half the teams you’ll meet, with extremely long and tedious games that you have a slightly sub-50% chance of winning against the other half.

Subtlety Rogue / Feral Druid

Power: ★★★★ (5/5)
Counters: ★★ (4/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (5/5)
Difficulty: ★★ (3/5)

Despite not being super powerful, this comp stole many people’s hearts in TBC, as it offered some very high adrenaline gameplay. It is not significantly stronger in Wrath, but it has enough good match-ups that it finds its way into the B-tier.

This comp players more or less the same as it did in TBC: you Sap 1 player and then blow up the other player, typically the healer. WoW Priest Icon Discipline Priests and WoW Shaman Icon Resto Shamans are extremely susceptible to this strategy, and as the former are extremely common in the meta, this means you’ll have plenty of prey to hunt. It’s not just WoW Priest Icon Disc Priests that need to be scared however; the fact that both of you start the game stealthed and that this comp isn’t too common gives you the element of complete surprise, which allows you to blow up a whole bunch of different classes before they can notice what happened. icon - death knight Death Knights, Wow Mage Icon Frost Mages, Wow Warlock Icon Warlocks, WoW Hunter Icon MM Hunters, even WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priests, nobody’s truly safe from your absurd burst damage.

That’s not completely true though; there is 1 class that is almost completely safe from you, and can in turn make their partner safe: WoW Paladin Icon Paladins. To begin with, the fact that all of your damage is Physical means that you’ll really struggle to damage them. Even if you do get them low however, their Divine Shield will save them. They’re very difficult to crowd control thanks to Hand of Sacrifice and Divine Sacrifice, and even if you ignore them and nuke their partner, their Hand of Protection will stop you in your tracks. You will struggle to get any wins off against WoW Paladin Icon Paladins, and unfortunately the 2v2 ladder is chock full of them, with WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin being the most popular comp in the game, and one that you have almost 0 chance of beating. Moreover, even against non-Paladin teams, this comp doesn’t have the luxury of resetting whenever they feel like it like other WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / DPS teams do, which means that you only get 1 chance to score a kill before things quickly start spiraling out of control.

Retribution OR Preg Paladin / Subtlety Rogue

Power: ★★★★ (5/5)
Counters: ★★ (4/5)
Surprise Factor: (4/5)
Difficulty: (4/5)

This comp has had its ups and downs, as a series of nerfs to both WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladins and WoW Rogue Icon Rogues have shifted its power level significantly over the expansion’s duration. In the 3.3.5 patch that we’ll be playing in WotLK Classic, it’s certainly pretty strong, but it has a very common weakness that places this comp in the bottom of the B-tier. This comp is usually played with a WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin rather than a WoW Paladin Icon Preg.

If you ever played as or against this comp in TBC, you’ll likely be familiar with how it works in WotLK. You Sap one player, and nuke the other – simple stuff. You have 2 very powerful instant CC in Blind and Repentance, which do not share a diminishing return , which allows you to force someone’s (usually a healer’s) trinket, which in turn enables you to swap to them, stun and kill them. This strategy is simple yet effective: all healers bar one are easy pickings for you, and there’s practically no DPS class that you can’t blow up: Wow Warlock Icon Warlocks, WoW Hunter Icon Hunters, WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priests, icon - death knight Death Knights — all very easy targets for you.

Just like it is the case with most other double DPS teams consisting of 2 physical damage dealers, this comp unfortunately flops when faced with other WoW Paladin Icon Paladins, and particularly WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladins. Seeing how you’re likely going to be seeing a WoW Paladin Icon Paladin in 30 to 50% of your games, that’s a pretty substantial weakness — WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin for example will be an extremely uphill battle, though you surprisingly have a slightly better chance than some other dual physical DPS teams do, as 50% of a WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin’s damage is Holy, which bypasses Hand of Protection and thus allows you to occasionally murder the WoW Warrior Icon Warrior out of nowhere. On the flipside, compared to WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / WoW Druid Icon Feral Druid, this comp has 1 fairly significant drawback; WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladins cannot become invisible in any way, and so Wow Warlock Icon Warlocks can send their pets on them to enter combat, effectively disabling your WoW Rogue Icon Rogue’s Sap. This makes Wow Warlock Icon Warlock / healer match-ups pretty annoying, though they’re nowhere near as bad as DPS / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin match-ups.

C-Tier

The C-tier is the a bit of a “limbo” tier. The teams on this tier are by no means bad; you can probably get a Gladiator title if you are an good player. However, in all honesty the comps here are just a straight-up weaker version of a comp in a higher tier, which means that you’re unnecessarily making your life harder by deciding to play these comps, if a Gladiator title is what you’re after. If you don’t care about titles, these comps can be very fun to play, however.

Unholy Death Knight / Discipline Priest

Power: ★★ (4/5)
Counters: ★★ (4/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (2/5)
Difficulty: ★★ (2/5)

WotLK saw a major nerf to the WoW Priest Icon Priest Mana Burn spell. As a result, many WoW Priest Icon Priests forgot it even exists, as there’re generally not that many chances to use it anymore and you’re usually better off just dealing damage instead of burning the enemy’s mana. If you’re playing this comp, you should get used to using Mana Burn a lot, because this is practically Mana Burn: The Comp, finding a solid niche in the C-tier.

This comp has an extremely simple gameplay loop: every 27 seconds, the icon - death knight Death Knight Death Grips the enemy healer to the WoW Priest Icon Disc Priest, who then fears them with Psychic Scream and proceeds to burn their mana with Mana Burn. You repeat this over and over, until the enemy healer has no more mana, at which point you win. This gives you a very strong match-up against other DPS / healer teams, as you almost always win the mana war.

We say almost always, because unfortunately there is 1 healer that isn’t affected by this trick: WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladins, who Blizzard in their infinite wisdom decided shouldn’t really need mana in order to heal. You simply cannot burn WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladins, making the match-up against them very painful, and WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin in specific is pretty much impossible to beat. This comp has a further major flaw in that it tends to do very poorly against double DPS teams, as icon - death knight Death Knights and WoW Priest Icon Discipline Priests are both very fragile and tend to die quickly. But the most significant weakness of this comp, if you could call it that, is that its gameplay is extremely repetitive and the games tend to be very long. This makes climbing with this comp pretty painful.

Retribution OR Preg Paladin / Unholy Death Knight

Power: ★★★★ (5/5)
Counters: ★★ (4/5)
Surprise Factor: (5/5)
Difficulty: ★★ (2/5)

Anyone who has a passing degree of familiarity with WotLK PvP can tell what this comp is about. A distant cousin of WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin / WoW Shaman Icon Enh Shaman, this comp aims to quickly destroy someone before they can even understand what happened. That’s usually easier said than done however, hence the position in the C-tier, 2 tiers below its cousin.

Most teams will see a icon - death knight Death Knight / WoW Paladin Icon Paladin team and assume that the WoW Paladin Icon Paladin is Holy. This comp uses this assumption against them, as you rush in and attack someone before they figure that the WoW Paladin Icon Paladin is Ret. A surprising percentage of the time, that results in a kill, as the enemy team is caught off-guard and doesn’t react appropriately. WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladins can ignore damage reduction effects with Sanctified Wrath and icon - death knight Death Knights have an on-demand 5 second silence in Strangulate, which cannot be trinketed in WotLK and prevents several classes (WoW Priest Icon Disc Priests, icon - death knight Death Knights, WoW Shaman Icon Shamans, WoW Druid Icon Druids) from using their defensive abilities, which means that if you successfully caught them off guard, you have most likely won. WoW Priest Icon Disc Priests in specific are extremely vulnerable to this zerg strat.

Unfortunately, that strategy has a pretty glaring weakness: if the enemy team is aware that your WoW Paladin Icon Paladin isn’t Holy and use their defensive cooldowns before being silenced, your chances of victory drop significantly, as neither of you have a healing reduction effect and thus cannot straight up kill someone who is prepared for your damage. Furthermore, WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin teams will be very tough to beat, as they can remove Strangulate with Divine Shield and laugh at you — WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin in specific will be very rough.

Subtlety Rogue / Frost Mage

Power: ★★★★★ (5/5)
Counters: ★★(4/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (4/5)
Difficulty: ★★ (4/5)

This comp used to be one of the most popular comps of TBC. WoW Rogue Icon Rogues and Wow Mage Icon Mages complement each other very well, which is why it’s still a very decent comp overall, but with a very obvious weak point, usually being considered a flat-out inferior version of WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest or Rogue / WoW Druid Icon Feral Druid, hence the position in the C-tier.

Just like it was the case in TBC, this comp wins this game with raw CC, as both of the players in the team have a seemingly unending amount of CC. You Sap one player, typically the healer, and then blow up the other player — a very simple yet effective strategy. WoW Rogue Icon Rogues and Wow Mage Icon Mages both have so much burst damage that you can honestly pick either player for your kill target, as very few specs really are safe from your damage. This comp can even boast of having a pretty good match-up against the ubiquitous WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin; despite lacking the ability to dispel the WoW Paladin Icon Paladin’s Divine Shield with Mass Dispel like our superior cousin, WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest, you can usually just keep resetting until you get a chance to CC one player and kill the other.

The most obvious counter to this team is Wow Warlock Icon Warlocks, as Wow Warlock Icon Warlock / healer teams in general will be very tough to beat, as you cannot really Sap anything against Wow Warlock Icon Warlocks, and they can dispel your Wow Mage Icon Mage’s Polymorph with Devour Magic, or even interrupt your Wow Mage Icon Mage’s cast with Spell Lock with their Felhunter pet while the Wow Warlock Icon Warlock himself is crowd controlled. But the real weakness of this comp is that it has a fairly poor match-up against many of the most popular double DPS comps out there, and WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin teams in specific will pose a very difficult challenge. As WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladins are very common in the 2v2 bracket, this is unfortunately a crippling weakness.

Subtlety Rogue / Balance Druid

Power: ★★★★ (4/5)
Counters: (3/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (5/5)
Difficulty: ★★ (5/5)

I’ll paint a picture: you’ve just queued up some 2v2 arena. The game begins, and you see 0 players on the enemy team — they’re both invisible. One of them is most likely a WoW Rogue Icon Rogue, but what’s the other player?? A WoW Druid Icon Feral Druid? Another WoW Rogue Icon Rogue? Perhaps a Wow Mage Icon Mage using Invisibility?? Suddenly, a WoW Rogue Icon Rogue stuns you and you prepare for the worst… but this, you couldn’t possibly prepare for. A freaking Icons - Moonfire GIANT Icons - Moonfire CHICKEN Icons - Moonfire OF Icons - Moonfire DEATH Icons - Moonfire appears out of nowhere and starts blasting you with a torrent of STARS , causing explosions left and right. As you lay on the floor, barely conscious with your HP reduced to 0, you think to yourself, “what the hell just happened??”, as the chicken proceeds to do a vulgar dance in your face.

boomkin dancing

That picture is half-truth, half-fiction, as in all seriousness that’s largely what WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / WoW Druid Icon Boomkin plays like. This comp has completely absurd burst damage thanks to Starfall, which will very often catch players off-guard and kill them right in the opener, before they realize what even happened. But the element of surprise with a powerful opener isn’t all this comp has: WoW Druid Icon Moonkins are actually surprisingly durable in WotLK, and can do some decent healing. This allows this comp to constantly reset and try again for a kill. Starfall and Shadow Dance both have a pretty short 1-minute cooldown, which allows you to always be in sync with your burst damage, and giving you kill opportunities more often than enemies have a chance to use their trinket. Even the all-powerful WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin isn’t completely safe from your constant pressure and reset power, and you have a very good chance of beating many teams on maps that use the vertical axis, like Blade’s Edge Arena and Dalaran Sewers, as your WoW Druid Icon Moonkin can always push the enemy off the platform with Typhoon and forcefully reset the game if things get ugly.

But with great burst damage lies great responsibility: besides this very linear loop of pop cooldowns, hopefully kill someone, reset if you failed, this comp has very little to brag about. Comps that have very durable classes, like Wow Warlock Icon Warlock / healer teams, will be very hard to beat. Furthermore, it tends to do pretty poorly against WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin teams, as they can counter your first Starfall with Divine Shield and prevent you from resetting with Judgement of Justice, thus causing you to most likely lose if you fail to kill them in the opener. As WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladins are extremely common this is a major weakness, and thus this comp cannot really be higher than C-tier. Having said that, it’s an incredibly fun to play, so if the story from before piqued your curiousity, do give this comp a go!

Arms Warrior / Restoration Druid

Power: ★★★ (3/5)
Counters: ★★(4/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★★★ (3/5)
Difficulty: ★★★★ (3/5)

WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin is a completely oppressive force in the meta-game, to the point where you’d be forgiven for forgetting that WoW Warrior Icon Warriors can actually play with other healers, there’s no rule that says it must be a WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin. However, all WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / healer teams are sadly essentially a poor man’s version of WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin, with WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Druid Icon Resto Druid being possibly the next best thing, all the way down in the C-tier.

To keep things simple, WoW Druid Icon Druids are usually less durable than WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladins, with one exception: they don’t roll over and die to Mass Dispel from an enemy WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest like WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladins do, which means this comp has a better chance against the very common Shadow Priest / DPS teams, as WoW Druid Icon Druids can surprisingly survive their opener reasonably often. Furthermore, this team has actual crowd control in Cyclone, which can occasionally allow you to get kills by crowd controlling healers, where WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin largely just do damage and hope for the best.

The benefits sadly end there, as this comp is just flat out weaker than WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin in almost every other way. WoW Druid Icon Druids are far more vulnerable to non WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest / DPS teams than WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladins, so you will lose a lot of your games against double DPS teams because your WoW Druid Icon Druid died right in the opener. Furthermore, WoW Paladin Icon Paladins can disable your Druid’s Travel Form with Judgement of Justice, so you have a terrible match-up against them, which unfortunately includes WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin as well, making that match-up extremely one-sided against you, and WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladin teams are also going to be very scary for you. For these reasons, this comp is significantly harder to get wins with than WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin.

D-Tier

The D-tier is the limit of teams that we’d reasonably consider viable. These teams are good enough to win a decent percentage of the time, and even climb the ladder up to the Gladiator range. However, they have very big issues that hold them back, and in general you will need to play significantly better than your opponents in order to win your games, with a very slight mistake often being enough to cost you the game. Very often, they’re just a weaker version of a higher tier comp. On the plus side, these teams are very uncommon, so you can occasionally win games just because the enemy team isn’t prepared to face you.

Marksmanship Hunter / Restoration Druid

Power: ★★★★ (2/5)
Counters: ★★★ (5/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (4/5)
Difficulty: ★★★ (5/5)

This comp was very popular in TBC, and caused many a sigh in its time, with its extremely annoying yet effective mana drain strategy. Blizzard swung the ban-hammer against it very violently however, as WoW Hunter Icon Hunters all but lost their ability to drain mana, with Viper Sting having been nerfed to near uselessness — most healers regenerate more mana than it drains over its duration. A host of nerfs to WoW Druid Icon Resto Druids meanwhile causes them to be one of the worst healers to have in mana wars, and so this comp, unfortunately finds itself in the D-tier, despite having some legitimately good points.

With mana drain gone, this comp would be doomed were it not for the other major strength that these 2 specs have: crowd control. A Scatter Shot -> Freezing Arrow -> Cyclone x3 -> Silencing Shot -> Bash combo will keep an enemy player crowd controlled for 28.5 seconds. This is only 1.5 second shorter than Scatter Shot‘s 30 second cooldown, which essentially allows you to rotate your crowd control abilities and keep a player controlled almost indefinitely, in the best case scenario. This is a major strength against DPS / healer teams, which you generally have a decent match-up against. Furthermore, this CC chain isn’t limited to being used offensively; you can CC both players and force a reset at almost any point, which allows this team to recover from some very ugly situations.

However, this comp has several debilitating weaknesses. First of all, WoW Hunter Icon Hunters and WoW Druid Icon Resto Druids are both very fragile, which unfortunately gives you a terrible match-up against most double DPS teams, as they can easily blow up either of you. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, these long CC chains represent the best case scenario — in normal situations, the extreme jankiness of the WoW Hunter Icon Hunter class can cause things to go wrong very often. For example, traps getting resisted and Scatter Shot randomly breaking are common issues that cause you to instantly lose a game. Finally, this comp has a bad match-up against every single S-tier comp, which means a majority of your games will be an uphill battle — which is not ideal, to say the least. It’s not so terrible that you can’t even win — it’s fairly decent in fact, with fairly balanced match-ups all in all, but WoW Hunter Icon MM Hunter / WoW Priest Icon Disc Priest is just straight up better.

Arms Warrior / Restoration Shaman

Power: ★★★ (4/5)
Counters: ★★ (5/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★★★ (3/5)
Difficulty: ★★ (4/5)

The second in the “poor man’s WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin” line, this comp is unfortunately just that. A very straight-forward comp with glaring weaknesses, it unfortunately cannot be higher than the D-tier.

This comp works exactly as you expect it would: the WoW Warrior Icon Warrior rushes in and the WoW Shaman Icon Shaman uses Heroism / Bloodlust right away, then begins spamming Purge on the kill target. The goal here is extremely obvious, you try to kill someone right away with incredibly high damage and pressure generated by constant dispels. WoW Priest Icon Disc Priests, WoW Druid Icon Resto Druids and to a lesser extent Wow Mage Icon Frost Mages are all surprisingly weak to this tactic, which can allow you to end games very quickly against such teams. That’s one of this comp’s greatest strengths: other WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / healer teams can have very long games, with WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin mirror match-ups famously being complete stalemates. Meanwhile, this comp has very quick games, so even if your win rate isn’t the best, you can climb the ladder surprisingly quickly.

This “strength” however works both ways: you win fast, but you also tend to lose fast. Double DPS teams will absolutely massacre you, as both of you are extremely susceptible to pressure from some of the most popular double DPS specs, like WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladins and WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priests. In fact, every single S-tier comp, with the exception of Warlock / healer teams, will absolutely destroy you — an extremely unfortunate position to be in. This comp truly lives in the shadow of WoW Warrior Icon Arms Warrior / WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladin, unfortunately, having all of its weaknesses but barely any of its strengths.

Elemental Shaman / Discipline Priest

Power: ★★★ (1/5)
Counters: ★★ (4/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (5/5)
Difficulty: (4/5)

This comp is a complete odd-ball, with very peculiar strengths and weaknesses. It’s actually very hard to place it on a tier list, because it’s extremely uncommon and thus hard to tell how good it really is. We believe that the D-tier is a reasonable guess, though it might be as high as the C-tier if the metagame is favourable.

This comp does one thing, and it does it well: Purge people of all their buffs, with both players having access to an offensive dispel. This gives it a decent time against specs that rely on magic buffs in order to do their thing, so to speak: Wow Mage Icon Frost Mages, WoW Paladin Icon Ret Paladins, WoW Druid Icon Resto Druids, WoW Priest Icon Disc Priest, they all get really annoyed by you, having to play without their strongest tools. Moreover, both players having healing spells and anti-CC measure makes this comp surprisingly durable, giving it an unexpectedly strong match-up against double DPS teams that can’t simply kill the WoW Priest Icon Priest faster than the WoW Shaman Icon Shaman can heal him. If the WoW Priest Icon Priest survives, the WoW Shaman Icon Shaman has a decent chance of killing someone with his incredible burst damage, giving you an unexpected win.

On the flipside, while WoW Shaman Icon Shamans can boast having some of the best burst damage in the game, they unfortunately have little to no sustained damage. This makes games against DPS / healer teams incredibly painful, as you lack a reliable way of killing most healers without first Mana Burning them empty. That would be a pretty significant strength for this comp normally, but it’s pretty easy for many teams to simply have their DPS player “tunnel” the WoW Priest Icon Priest, preventing him from casting Mana Burn at all. Meanwhile, your WoW Shaman Icon Shaman is also running out of mana over time, and has to keep drinking in order to stay in the game, which makes for some incredibly annoying and long games, both for you and your opponent.

Subtlety Rogue / Affliction OR Destruction Warlock

Power: ★★★★ (4/5)
Counters: ★★ (5/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (4/5)
Difficulty: ★★ (5/5)

WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / Wow Mage Icon Mage is a “poor man’s” version of WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Shadow Priest, and WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / Wow Warlock Icon Warlock is a “poor man’s” version of WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / Wow Mage Icon Mage. That’s 2 levels of poor right there, which is why this once-beloved comp finds itself in the D-tier. Typically played with a Wow Warlock Icon Destruction Warlock, though Wow Warlock Icon Affliction can work as well.

This comp works exactly like all other WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / DPS teams do: you CC one player, and set up a kill on the other player. That’s not too difficult with a Wow Warlock Icon Destruction Warlock instantly bursting someone for 50% of their health pool, which is why it’s the more popular variant. This comp excels at killing people suddenly and unpredictably, and it’s surprisingly good against most comps out there, both DPS / healer and double DPS teams.

It has a fatal flaw however: it is extremely difficult to kill WoW Paladin Icon Paladins, both Ret and Holy specced ones. Wow Warlock Icon Warlocks just aren’t as tanky as they were in TBC, so WoW Paladin Icon Paladins can use their Divine Shield and cause all sorts of trouble for you; WoW Paladin Icon Rets will simply kill the Wow Warlock Icon Warlock, while WoW Paladin Icon Holy Paladins will dispel their WoW Warrior Icon Warrior, who will in turn kill the Wow Warlock IconWarlock. With WoW Paladin Icon Paladins making up as much as 25-50% of your match-ups in an average day, that’s unfortunately a very ill omen. Moreover, while this comp doesn’t have weak match-ups against other teams per se, Wow Warlock Icon Warlocks being this fragile on their own means you have to play almost perfectly in order to win. Where other WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / DPS variants can afford to make a few mistakes and can reset the game if things start going south, WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / Wow Warlock Icon Warlock unfortunately only gets 1 chance to win; if you fail to make something happen in the opener, you have likely won, so this comp really demands perfection.

Subtlety Rogue / Restoration Druid

Power: ★★ (1/5)
Counters: (3/5)
Surprise Factor: ★★ (5/5)
Difficulty: ★★ (5/5)

If there’s a comp that can best describe the concept of teetering on the line between “viable” and “unviable”, this is it. A far cry from arguably the strongest and most popular comp in the game during seasons 2 & 3 of TBC, this comp struggles to really find a niche and thus finds itself in the very bottom of the D-tier, and it could be argued that it may in fact belong in a lower tier.

You could easily make a comparison between this comp and WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Disc Priest, and surmise that this comp is completely garbage, as WoW Priest Icon Disc Priests are simply better healers than WoW Druid Icon Resto Druids in 2v2 and synergize with WoW Rogue Icon Rogues far better than WoW Druid Icon Druids do. That wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate, but there’s one thing you’d be neglecting: WoW Druid Icon Druids are typically less vulnerable to exploding in an opener than WoW Priest Icon Disc Priests are, which means this comp has a surprisingly good match-up against double DPS teams, where WoW Rogue Icon Rogue / WoW Priest Icon Disc Priest typically struggles. Wow Mage Icon Mage / DPS in particular will struggle to beat you, as they cannot Polymorph the WoW Druid Icon Druid. Paired with the fact that you both start the game in stealth, guaranteeing that you have the element of surprise, which greatly helps when facing double DPS teams.

What this comp gains in durability however, it unfortunately trades in damage potential, as WoW Druid Icon Druids simply have 0 offensive pressure. Your DPS / healer match-ups are atrocious, as you lack a way to reliably kill healers — the element of surprise cannot help you there, unfortunately. Furthermore, even against the double DPS teams you do well against, you need to play extremely well in order to win confidently — without the great synergy that WoW Rogue Icon Rogues have with WoW Priest Icon Priests, you cannot afford to make mistakes at all, as your chances to get a kill will be very limited, while chances to get killed will be plentiful.

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