Rogue / Mage / Priest 3v3 Arena Strategy

The rogue / mage / priest combo has been around since the beginnings of arena. It was always a strong combo, but no one could have anticipated just how amazing it was about to become. Prior to season 3 a series patches added sizable buffs to subtly rouges, discipline priests, and frost mages.

All of these changes combined to quickly catapult RMP to the preferred combo of season 3, even today nearly 19% of high ranked teams (2200+ rating) play with a rogue / mage / priest matrix.

Rogue Arena Strategy
The rogue’s role here is going to be fairly simple. Your job is to basically keep your target (likely your team’s primary target) under control. Prevent any casts and make certain you manage your cooldowns properly in order to stick with the target in the event they attempt to kite you.

While RMP has great burst damage it’s also heavily crowd control based. You and your teammates must be in constant communication and let each other know timers and diminishing returns on fear, polymorph, and blind. Effectively linking these together on a healer will be important if you want to succeed.

Mage Arena Strategy
Personally, I think mage has the most difficult job in this setup. It’s a constant struggle between dealing damage and crowd controlling. Unfortunately I don’t really think there is ever an all inclusive answer as to when to go on the defense and when to blast offensive. This skill will be attained through practice and experience.

Generally speaking, throw your big damage earlier. This really is where RMP shines, you can go out, drop a 6k shatter combo on the primary target while the rogue locks him down. This type of very aggressive play is the bread and butter of the matrix and will immediately put the opposition on the defensive. This scenario allows you to then gain further control via calculated sheeps, blind, and fear…toss a clutch CS on a heal and you can be sure to get the kill.

More Mage arena tips!

Priest Arena Strategy
Let’s face it, disc priests are not really meant to last in arena. However, what they lack in raw healing and mana longevity they more than make up for in overall utility, especially in RMP.

Your primary focus is always going to be keeping your teammates healed up. That said, never allow yourself to slip into a passive role. Link your fear into your teammate’s crowd controls and mana burn when necessary.

Also, remember timing on our power infusion is key. Typically you’ll want to have your mage call out when he’s ready for it, just make certain you are in position to cast it.

Arena Talent Specs
Rogue - For most players I’d suggest just going a standard 20/0/41 shadow step build. It’s got enough cool downs to allow you to stick with even the most difficult classes that can kite you. Some players may prefer going with a mutilate spec, this is fine if you are comfortable playing it. The major downside with mutilate is simply the lack of as many cc breaks on command, but it can be effective due to the incredibly burst damage.
Shadowstep rogue talent specs

Mage - One word, frost. 17/0/44 or 0/5/56 are both ideal talent specs for the matrix. Quite often the mage will be targeted by the opposing team so it’s important you have maximum kite-ability.
Frost mage talent specs

Priest - Pretty self explanatory, 41/20/0 discipline. There’s some room for variation in a few a talent specs to give you a bit more of an offensive, defensive, or well rounded approach, but many of these talents are more of a personal preference.
Discipline priest talent specs

Rogue / Mage / Priest Arena Matchups:
(coming soon!)

Arena Strategy: Learning to Communicate

Without a doubt the most overlooked of all the important factors for arena, PvP, and World of Warcraft in general. If you cannot communicate effectively with your teammates you are missing half of what being on the same arena team is all about. Maybe you’re thinking, “Oh yeah Zuggy! We always talk in our games and communicate”, I guffawed just thinking about it.

Communication in arena isn’t just simply calling out targets and crowd controls, it’s about taking the intensity of the game to a new level, increasing focus and rapidness that decisions can be made. You and your teammates should be constantly communication, are you sheeped? Are you feared? Did you fear someone? Are you getting focused without an iceblock up? Do you see the hunter lay a trap down? The list goes on… the most important thing to remember here is, your teammates do not always see what you see and the converse is true also.

When I play a match I’m literally talking the entire game, previously I used a ventrilo push to talk bind, though I’ve just started turning it on voice activation so I simply speak as fast as the thoughts flood into my mind.

So what’s the point right? Well, the ultimate goal of increased communication is to allow you and your team mates to stop function as three individual players and begin functioning as a single moving force of damage, heals, and crowd controls. I’ve really achieved this with my mage partner on my 3v3 team of druid / mage / rogue. I throw a gouge on a target, I call it, he knows the timer on gouge so he holds that sheep for a few seconds longer. Was it a huge call? No, but rarely is any call huge, it’s the cumulative effort of these calls which slowly but surely allows your team to take the advantage. When he throws a counter spell he calls it, this allows me to continue to DPS while still being aware of his timer, once I know the counter spell is almost up I’m looking for that paladin or what ever class it may be to start casting a spell, then I’ll be right there with the kick.

In the end it’s all about taking great control of the game and communication is one of the simplest ways to do this. You go beyond just a group of individuals who players together and can transform into a single force, enhanced communication and practice will enable you achieve this goal and become a more skilled and accomplished team.