@ Nihilum Arena 5v5 - New Setup?

[Heldericht]

Hey guys,

I noticed in a recent video on warcraftmovies.com (ajukreizi 2450+ Cyclone 5v5 By relox) That you guys were running a different setup from the one you used in the cyclone 5v5 tournament.

Before: Warrior/Hunter/Ele Shaman/Pally/Priest
Now: Warrior/Hunter/Resto Shaman/Pally/Warlock

Although you guys won, I'm really surprised you did considering your earlier setup had almost zero cc. It seemed like you guys kinda brute forced your way to the top. While thats great, I also noticed the Euro setup you faced in the finals wasn't particularly good.

This new setup however seemes to offer some cc with the addition of the warlock, while keeping heroism in the group and making up for the loss of mana burns with an additional mana drainer.


My questions are:

1) Which setup did you guys find better. Or is this new setup just something you guys are experimenting with?

2) How does having 2 cast-based healing classes affect your strategy as opposed to having a priest throw instants on the fly? Do you guys train someone to put the other team on the defensive?

3) How do you handle the problem of mana burns on your healers when you don't have any of your own to counter? Do you switch to the priest and risk getting nuked by the enemy casters? Or do you just use silencing/scatter/fear/CoT to control the priest?


Thanks for your time.

[Nessaj]

Phixus has been unavailable lately which is why they aren't playing with their regular lineup in the video. They've meanwhile been using Slot as restoration to play some games.

[Heldericht]

I see. I thought so.

I was just wondering though how they were making it work. Are there actually some advantages of this setup over the regular one (besides more CC)?

Because I'm thinking of starting something like this up with some of my friends and i'm trying to find 5v5 combos which includes a hunter/pally/shaman (of any spec.)

[Heero]

1) Which setup did you guys find better. Or is this new setup just something you guys are experimenting with?

There are a lot of setups which are good to play, you just have to find one which can be balanced vs the most popular setups. 2346 is extremely good but tends to lose a lot vs "euro comp"

Between warr/priest/pala/ele sham/hunter and resto sham/lock/hunt/pala/warr there are really a lot of difference, we didn't really have time to experience it a lot since our first evening with this setup was what you saw in their movie. And it wasn't that bad I think. I think that resto sham/lock is a more defensive setup relying on constant damage+pressure rather than insane switch and bursts like hunter/shaman. I like it eventho it lacks some dispells possibilities and might make it quite hard to play vs hunter/mage but there is always a counter !

2) How does having 2 cast-based healing classes affect your strategy as opposed to having a priest throw instants on the fly? Do you guys train someone to put the other team on the defensive?

The healing is a bit like for hunter/shaman, Slot tries to control the incoming damage as much as he can, if there is too much, I call for help and he casts, like Phixus did except that phixus always had to do his instants (no CoT = more inc damage on us).

3) How do you handle the problem of mana burns on your healers when you don't have any of your own to counter? Do you switch to the priest and risk getting nuked by the enemy casters? Or do you just use silencing/scatter/fear/CoT to control the priest?

With CoT and if we do enough damage, the enemy priest will never be able to chain burn, he will try to do burn attempts but as you could see in the movie from their priest pov, everytime slot took care of him.

[Heldericht]

Thanks for the detailed response.

This new setup definetly looks fun and we'll play around with it a bit.

Currently we are running hunter/ele shaman/warrior/pally/druid. Druid because there is a severe lack of good priests on our server for some reason.

Anyway the combo works but there is lack of pressure on the other team in some cases since basically aside from cyclone there is just no cc to stop the other team from chain burning (priest) or chain casting (ele shaman/mage/lock). I understand constant damage should make their priest stop burning and start healing, but we can't maintain that kind of damage in all situations.

We especially are having trouble with 2345 setups where the switch burst is sometimes too much to overcome without any kind of real hamper on their dps.

[Stormweaver]

2346? where did the 5 go 0_0

[Heero]

the 5 disapeared when they changed the mage of the 2345 with a lock, don't ask why, it's some US expression.

And Heldericht the 2345 setup doesn't really survive much in top 20 ladder, at least on cyclone, the best was the COOL AZSHELLAROS german dudes who were by far th ebest 2345 team I've met and now they are bound to stay on page 2 because of the number of decent 2346 teams.

[Stormweaver]

hmm i wonder who decided mages were a 5 and locks were a 6

[Savior]

2345 initially came from the online regional qualifying round on the closed servers for the blizzard 5v5 tournament when Pandemic met a team running the 2345 setup(The Fighting
Mongooses). At which point Noktyn and Sck started to spam 234523452345234523452345 in party chat and irc...since they thought that teams strength was popping bloodlust/heroism and spamming as many offensive buttons as possible. That's where 2345 comes from...

2346 is just an "extension" of 2345 where they replaced the last number with 6 in order to distinguish between the 2 setups.

Anyway, back to Warrior, ele shaman, Hunter, Druid, Pala...Have you guys(Nihilum) tried this setup, and do you think it could work?