My Biggest Challenge as Balance Druid for 2v2 Arena

It’s not what you might think. E.g. the lack of survivability, the lack of counters that other caster classes have, etc.

The biggest challenge I’ve faced is simply the unwillingness from the playerbase to try 2v2′ing with a Balance Druid, aka Moonkin. Aside from my real life friend from high school (who plays a Mage) and his co-worker, I’ve only found 1 person (Kashmír, an Enhancement Shaman) willing to give it a legit shot. I’ll get to Kashmír in a bit.

To see what it’s like partnering with other classes, over the 6 weeks I’ve responded to individuals looking for a 2s partner on chat. Most people were not willing to give a 1.1k resilience-geared Moonkin a try, and even the few that did remained skeptical – even when we had a winning record together.

Let me give you an example. One of them was a Warlock with a team with a Team Rating (TR) of 1475. I checked on wowarmory and his team had been hovering in the 1400s for a couple weeks. He was asking for a Mage or Resto Druid on /2, so I sent him a whisper asking if he’d try a Moonkin. He agreed and invited me to his 2v2 team.

We had neither practice partnering with the other class nor with each other. We lost our first 3 matches (and to his credit he was patient), then went 11-6, so 11 wins and 9 losses overall. That showed me that we could hold our own around 1500 even though we were new team mates. At the time, I didn’t have any Wrathful gear with a TR requirement. My PR (Personal Rating) started at 1000 and finished at 1230, so I was not too far from getting the 1st Wrathful upgrade. I logged, and while I was offline the Lock replaced me on the team with a Mage. The Lock sent a very polite email, which I appreciate, saying that he wanted to try a more conventional partner. He found a Mage. I checked the next day and it turns out they had a losing record together, even though the Mage was better geared than me.

In the past the Lock’s highest TR had been around 1600, and IMO if we kept playing together and I got the Wrathful upgrades at 1300, 1400, etc, I’m quite confident we would have broken his highest TR. But, your partner has to believe that too.

Fortunately, about a week ago Kashmír the Enhancement Shaman was looking for a 2s partner on chat. He was very willing to give me a shot, as he had met a Wrathful-geared Enhancement Shaman in a battleground who had gotten to 1950 TR with a Moonkin.

As with the Lock, neither Kash nor I had played with each other’s class/spec. When I joined his 2v2 team (Beasteh), the TR was around 1380. We went 48-37 over our first 85 matches, and that was including 6 DCs on his part. If the DCs hadn’t happened, we would have gone 51-34. And on top of that he didn’t have a working mic so our communication was limited to me talking, him typing. Nevertheless, we got to 1551 TR in three days and Kash got his 1550 TR achievement. Our matches go incredibly fast and I’ve seen firsthand that an Enhancement Shaman packs a lot of burst, good survivability, and strong utility – contrary to the common perception that Enhancement Shaman is a weak 2v2 class.

This week Kash got a working mic and we’re now at 1617 TR. The competition has gotten steadily better in terms composition, gear, and skill, but we haven’t hit our wall quite yet. Neither Kash nor I have Wrathful set gear or a weapon, whereas our competitors often do, partly because it is late in the arena season and getting to 1800 now is harder than it was months ago. Both of us want to try getting to 1800 with our preferred spec instead of facerolling with a Resto spec. With 145 matches played together, we’re still learning and experimenting, especially against healer/DPS comps.

If we can crack 1700 or so TR, I’ll record some footage for a 2v2 narrated video.