[Guide]Retribution paladin and frost mage in 2v2.

[Canizzz]

First of all, I'm running this setup in 2k and the person I play is my second mage

So, I know I'm leecher, and I havent contributed at all, but, I'm giving a shot now, and I hope people doesnt just ignore me ^^
Sorry about my english, it's not my primary languaqe, so there can, and will be typos

What do I need to start running this combo?


First of all, you need retribution paladin, and frost mage (duh), ventrilo/ts/skype (coordination is VERY important in this combo), and some skill.

Okey, I got the pala and mage now, how do I start?

Now, to the specs. What I use is

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000000001153203003000000000000000052320512033312302135201301

And my mage is

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?tal=23032022010203000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003533203310203100232102231051

If you want, you can change the spec the way you like it.

Okey, we have specced, what now?

Okey, now for the glyphs. I myself use Turn Evil, Judgement and Seal of Command glyphs, and my mage haves Evocation, Blink, and Icy Veins

Now we got the glyphs to, can we start arena now?!

Sure, if you want to rush to your doom. Now, I'm going to tell you the tactics for different kind of setups. Starting from easiest, and going to hardest (atleast, what we feel hardest)
So, let's get started?

Elemental/enhancement shaman and mage

We have faced this combo couple times, if they coordinate right, they can hurt you, but, it's easy to counter. If the shaman is enhancement, he's going down VERY easy, if you can time right.
Fight is simple. Keep mage cc:ed via sheep, silence and repetance, while keeping focus on shaman. Around 50% of hp, hammer and nuke it. If he blows the wolves, insantly storm, so the mage wont get them.

If the shaman is elemental, it can be more tricky fight, if the other mage is good player. First, you might need to LoS littlebit, if other mage is arcane, since they can hit HARD with instants, so be ready with bubble. The fight is pretty much same as with enhancement, but it's doable if you can just time the cc.

Mage/Rogue
No matter what spec mage is, they will almost everytime go to paladin. Becaues of this, you need to be VERY aware of your hitpoints, but with our tactic, we have found this fight very easy. At start, your mage might get sapped, he needs to trinket instantly! Repetance the mage, and get elemental out. When they start unloading you, around 30% bubble up, but DO NOT HEAL!!
The rogue will try to vanish, but if you were good boy, and saved Divine Storm / concentration, run on rogues direction, and use it! We get the rogue out around 80% of the time, hammer him, mage your mage use Water elementals frost nova on trinket (he will use it) and heal full. Your mage and his pet wont allow him to resteath, so you can just pick him up, after it, finish the mage

Retribution paladin/any dps
Always go on the paladin (well, ofc if there is war with 15k hp, pick him) but, mostly. Let your mage start, get water elemental out, make him use freedom, and hammer him. When the paladin bubbles, your mage should IB and you should bubble, and heal both full hp. After it's done, rince and repeat, the paladin goes down (we have lost this far 2match against ret paladins)

Fury/ms war and healer/dps
If you are facing healer (usually paladin or shaman) the paladin should start working on him. The mage sticks on warrior, making him freeze, to avoid normal running and nuking around. First job, is to make healer use trinket, ASAP! For that, mage should start nuking the warrior, while paladin uses HoJ and repe on healer (wich is enough 99% of time). After it, cc the healer, as "Sheep->Sheep->Silence->Repetance) while nuking the warrior, he will go down, you might need to do this once or twice, but he will go down.

If the warrior is with another dps (mage/shaman/rogue/hunter, you should pick usually the dps, since warriors is way to easy to cc via frost mage.

Wlock/rogue or mage
This setup might be littlebit tricky, since wlocks can bring some heavy damage on arena, so it's very important to cc them as much as possible. If the wlock is demonform, the Turn Evil glyph is lifesaver! Always, start with fearing the pet, and deciding wich you want to go, wlock, or his companion. If it's non demo, we usually go to wlock, while cc:ing the other partner, if it's demo, we kill the other, while fearing the wlock, simple, but still sometimes hard.

Feral/boomkin druid/rogue
Those setups are pretty anoying, since they can bring very heavy burst dmg in arena. The key to victory here is BoP. Be ready with it, since most setups on lower rating is usually feral/rogue in double steath on higher boomkin. When they pop up(might sap you), you need to trinket it asap, when they pop up. Go for the rogue, and smack his face! Mage should bring elemental out, asap, and frost them, since if druid changes forms, you can with good luck, hit him with repetance, and force himt to trinket out, while smacking the rogue. If you see druid starting heal the rogue, mage should use counterspell to interrupt it, it's pretty easy win, if you can get the BoP up in right place, and some lucky crits. Again, save the Divine Storm!

Double Rogue
It's pretty easy. They are mostly coming on you, and you need to be ready with the bubble. When they pop up, start with freedom on first ks, and judgement one of the rogues, while mage freezing them up. Both of them will cos/vanish when you bubble up, and because of that, SAVE Divine Storm It's killer in this arena, when they vanish, just use it, and it usually brings one rogue out, and then you can just rape him, using hammer/freezes, and when rogue is out, you can heal in peace.

Shadow priest/rogue
Go for the shadow priest, immediately! Get Sacrifice up on mage, and go! The priest can bring very heavy dmg on you, and just nuke him, burn the cooldowns, but BoP up on mage, if the rogue is on him, and make mage cc the rogue, if he is on you, you can bring the priest down fast

Feral druid/healer
The key to victory is having the druid being stunned in catform. He can take massive damage in it, and even if he pops in bear, you can burn him down with luck. Having massive cc on healer, while freedom on mage, limiting the druid runspeed as much as possible, you can beat this combo, sometimes even in like couple minutes!

Holy paladin/dk
This fight will be VERY anoying, and hard, but when you learn the basic, it get's pretty simple. You should always start with killing the pet, while using repe/sheep on pala, for avoiding him to heal the pet. After the dk pulls pala/mage in, use freedom on him, and dispell some dots. They key to victory is cc. You should start on dk, stacking Winter's Chill up, for avoiding cleanse. When it's done, you simply sheep the dk, and go on the paladin. Get pet out, freeze the paladin (he usually uses freedom here), spellsteal him (everything you can) and start nuking him. When the mage used second sheep, he should use frostbolt on the dk, for movement speed reduce efect.
This setup might take some time, but, if you can cc the dk enought, paladin will bubble up. When that happens, fall back (stupid dk:s follow you) eat/drink, if the dk comes, kite him behind pillar, nuke him, so the paladin has to come, and start it all over.

Wlock/Healer
This setup is simply hard. The best choise is always go on the wlock unless the healer is just fail, or doesnt have resilience gear (looks like noob running in 15k hp). Fear the pet, and try to interrupt every fear he does. They will usually go on the mage, while trying to fear the paladin, so it's important to interrupt fears. Mage should do the cc chain again "Sheep->Sheep->Silence->Repetance". They key to victory here, is healing while not allowing the wlock to fear you, or your partner. Fearing the pet helps, since most of them use hellhound. (Not sure about the name ^^) If you can keep this up enought long, you will "outlast" their healer, and beat this combo.
We got around 50/50 winrating around this setup

Hunter/healer
This is very hard combo, since the hunter brings massively damage on your mage. No matter what healer the hunter got, your screwed. Since, the hunter is 99.9% survival, use fire resistance aura, and mage should be using Fire Ward (explosive shot is fire dmg). Keep hunter busy, and try to stay as near, as possible all the time, to avoiding most of the dmg. When your mage gets low hp, use bop/heal depending about the situation. Cc the healer, with repetance/silence mostly, and LoS him if possible, since sometimes the hunter even follows you behind the pillar, when mage/you can go other side, cc healer, and rape hunter.
We are having roughly 35% chance beating this combo, depending the opposite healer. About druids, see below

Rogue/healer
For us, this have been the most hardest combo this far, EVER! They will 90% chance go on mage raping him, but we think the most efective way in this setup is to beat the rogue down slowly, and suddenly burst, while trying to cc the healer. Since rogue is melee class, you can kite him behind pillars with freedom. After the rogue have used cos/trinket, he is very vulnearable, and then you should strike! Blow wings/trinkets, elemental, everything! Hammer the rogue, silence the healer/sheep him, and just burn the rogue down. Around 30% of the time this works, but, since healers are just waaay to op against us (no ms) it's very hard.

Resto druid/warlock
Okey, this is VERY hard setup to beat, and you need to work perfectly with your partner to be able to beat them! When you start, first go on the warlock DO NOT hammer/deepfreeze him! Fear the pet asap, and be sure the wlock doesnt cast anything(silence in fear!) When the druid comes, the mage must freeze, and immediately deepfreeze the druid. If the druid doesnt use trinket (probably wont) wait untill deepfreeze wears almost off, and hammer in like 0.5second left. If the druid doesnt trinket, you have won! Since, it's 100% crit from judgements while in hammer or deep freeze, that makes you +8k alone from judgements, including melee attacks, crusader, storm and mages damage.

Resto druid/hunter
This is hard setup, probably the hardest. They have insane cc, insane heals, and insane amount of survivability. In this situation, use same tactic, then on warlock, with the point, start on repetance, and sheep the hunter, while paladin nukes the druid. You cant allow the hunter to do almost any damage, otherwise you will loose really really hard.

Resto shaman/DK
Okey, this is our new favourite setup. They got insane heals, due shaman being able to ground half attacks, etc. The key to here is make dk use his defencive cooldowns asap, with shaman trinket. Meaning, sheep deathknight, while making the freeze/hammer combo on shaman, they both will blow their cooldowns, the dk will probably go on paladin. Kite him to another side of arena, and nuke him as hard as you can, while mage sheeps the shaman, and helps you nuke the deathknight. If you get lucky, you can drop the dk after he have used his cooldowns on the cc rotation

I'm not sure, did I forgot some setups, wich are common, but if I did, let me know. The key to victory is speaking, knowing when your mage/paladin is going to burst or cc, and not breaking it.
If you want, I can paste some usefull macros I use in arena (paladin only tho, my mage is away for 1 week, cant get his macros).

This whole guide is written by me, and all the tactics are what we use to beat those combos, if you got better one, I can put them up, for alternative tactics. Please, do not be to hard on me, this is still my first guide
I know here is lot of text, but hey, arena is cheriuz businez!
Remember, do not copy this guide, without my permission!

*Updated rating*
~Caniz~

[Tenni-T]

Good efford! +rep, and grats on your first contribution!

Read it through, tho, cause you made mistakes here and there like:

"the healer is 99.9% survival, use fire resistance aura"

Where I'm pretty sure you meant hunter. This only tells me that you wrote this yourself, which is a good thing =)

Keep contributing!

[Canizzz]

Editing the mistace ^^ Havent slept over in day, so :P

[thekrazyking]

Great guide. While I don't have a pally partner it really gives me a lot of information on how your team plays.

[trumpeter617]

Interesting looking combo, going to take some of your tips for my team (ret pal/rogue) and see if they are applicable in any way, shape or form.

[slayer932]

i found something minor in your guide on rogue/rogue
me and my friend play dual rogue and we rape ret pala/ any mage
your guide didnt account for dual ambush rogues like us, we can normally 3 hit the mage(sometimes 2 hit )
then the pally only has 1 trink and bubble, 1 stuns him and other waits for trink then stuns him, then let the stunlock begin, when he bubbles 1 of us will always get away and restealth while other holds him till bubble goes away then he has nothing

edit/ we r both shadow dance ambushers

[Canizzz]

Slayer, you forgot the point mage is frost :/ He gots 2xib, he got my bubble, and all, going for frost mage (atleast against us) it's huuuge mistace :P

[drano]

Slayer, you forgot the point mage is frost :/ He gots 2xib, he got my bubble, and all, going for frost mage (atleast against us) it's huuuge mistace :P

if two rogues ambush at the same time and get crits for 10-12k, your won't have time to use those cooldowns, then even if you do get one off, they'll just vanish and do it again

[Canizzz]

No-one is going to crit 10-12k on 700 resi mage :P First, when they show up, we both are ready, when someone get's sapped me/mage, first, Sacrifice up, pet out, and when they strike, ib/blink/bubble, and rape one target, belive me :P We havent lost SINGLE time to rogue/rogue :P Not even when my mage was full green/rare against full nax 25man >.>

[gibbo1967]

great guide! i sold my paladin though :P

[slayer932]

dude u must be fighting some weak rogues
because i hit 10k min on frost mages(with crit which i have about a 90% ambush crit chance)
we can 2 hit anything under 18k health, 3 hit with shadow dance aanything under 25k
your mage will be dead before u know wtf is going on
and as for raping one of us pft CoS and just restealth make u pop cold snap and make u use your second block then u r screwed

edit/ thats if u dont die instantly (vent ftw)

[Canizzz]

Slayer slayer.. Reason why I said, dont pop Divine Storm at start :P With good luck, we got both rogues out from stealth, and CoS doesnt help in it.. After it, it's just piece of cake.
And, yes, it's possible, I repe one rogue in start, my mage blinks, then there is 2 rogue standing in middle..

[slayer932]

u just dont get it lol
we 2-3 hit your mage
idc wat he has for resi
then its 2v1 rogues vs ret pala
um pwned kkthxbai

[Canizzz]

Oh, yes I do get it :P 2 rogues cant kill my mage, me supporting him, while he knows how to play :P
You must have been facing SO poor palading/mages this far.. And, no, you dont 2-3hit my mage, not with even slightes chance :P

[slayer932]

ight w/e u say
but we do rape mages
knowing how to play wont save him