Best duo paring?

[Nebu]

Well, this is my third installment in re-learning WoW after not having played it for a LONG time.  A RL friend and I want to see as much of the game content as possible without having to play a warlock or hunter.  Any suggestions on the best duo pairing for instances, leveling, etc?

Thanks.

[bhodi]

Most classes have some synergy with each other. Druid+Rogue or ShadowPriest+Rogue are probably the best combos. Massive duo damage plus one of you has a bit of healing for the bosses and elites. Evasion tanking for when you're in trouble. Different armor/weapon classes so you don't fight over loot.

Maybe shaman would be good too, I was alliance pre-bc so I haven't duo'd with a shaman ever.

One could also play a pally, but honestly his damage isn't high enough to make an effective duo class. He works better in larger groups.

[Rasix]

If you're going to go melee + other,  I've always found that other is best as a druid or shaman.  Healing + dps + utility.  A shadow priest isn't bad either. 

Funny though, most of my duo time has been shaman + shaman.  Both when I first started playing and then when I came back for BC and switched servers.   

[Dren]

Shadow Priest and Druid.  Gives  great DPS, Healing, Tanking depending on what you need at the time.  The added healing/mana regen while the SP does DPS makes for very little down time.  Most versatile yet effective duo I think.

Another less optimum is Rogue and Druid.  Great DPS, but less for healing/tanking.  However, awesome for stealth runs, which can make finishing quests a snap.

[ajax34i]

I second the druid + rogue.  The druid is a versatile class, and if you want to "see as much of the content as possible", and that includes a little bit of the end-game raiding, maybe a little Kara, maybe Zul'Aman, I've found that druids are accepted in guilds either for healing or for tanking, and you won't have any trouble levelling him up (even solo) in cat dps form.  The rogue, of course, is fun, easy to level up, and can offer solid DPS and some CC to a raiding group/guild.  Both of you can stealth past stuff and get certain quests done a lot easier than otherwise, and in general it's a good team-up.  Heck, even RP, street urchin + wilderness sage = kickass one-liners.

[Fraeg]

my mains are a 70 druid, and a 70 rogue, my 2v2 is druid/rogue and/or rogue/rogue

played hunter, priests etc.

I can't say enough about the druid rogue combo especially given the love that druids have received and will be receiving.  If pvp factors in at all to your gaming delight, then again it is a great combo.   when you get up in the levels assuming you have a bunch of mage water, that duo will have next to  nothing in down time.

When you get up in lvls and are running BC 5 mans you have a great start of a group:  heals and dps/cc or tank and dps/cc ... though there is boomkin which imo is sweet IF you have the gear to back it up.  a lot of the boomkins running around simply don't have the gear to back the spec up.

the downside is early on you will be competing for armor i suppose

[ajax34i]

But not for weapons, which matter more to the rogue than armor, esp. with pocket druid buffs and heals.

[Fordel]

Do you have a preferred play style?


While not flashy, Warrior+Paladin is the solid staple for duo teams. You'll be able to tackle anything PvE wise, You'll have the two most important parts of any 5 man in your control and you can eventually form a 2v2 arena team and be successful with minimal hassle.

[Paelos]

I've found warrior-druid to be very amusing and easy. You can tank while druid does dps, then druid flips over after fights to heal you, then back to the action.

[Fordel]

Really, any class combination where 1 person can 'tank' and the other can dps and/or heal will work.


That's why things like Druids, Shamans and Paladins make great duo partners for everyone else.


In the case of druids, you can just go Druid/Druid really, no reason why you couldn't.

[Phred]

 A RL friend and I want to see as much of the game content as possible without having to play a warlock or hunter.  Any suggestions on the best duo pairing for instances, leveling, etc?

Thanks.

By as much content as possible I assume you mean instances. You can't go wrong if one of you plays a healer and the other a tank. Takes all the hasse (other than just general moron hassles) out of making a group when you don't have to look for a healer or a tank and you know that neither of them suck. Add 3 dps and you can do almost anything in the game. Even 2 pallys, one spec'd holy the other protection, would be fun. Two druids, the traditional warrior/priest or any variation on that works too. Shaman kick ass as instance healers as well.

[Fordel]

A Resto shaman is probably the best 5 man healer in game as things stand currently. EarthShield is a HoT that doesn't over heal or run out and ChainHeal is just cheating  Then you have totems that can cover any group make up, plus things like poison cleaning totem make some boss fights complete jokes. Shit, even healing stream is pretty cool with 1k+ healing power.


Windfury + Warrior =  (any melee class that isn't a druid will spooge over windfury really)

[Kail]

For levelling, just a few days ago in Outland I (protection spec Paladin) was grouping with a Restoration Shaman, and it was so insanely effective that it seemed broken.  He was only level 57, so he didn't throw too many spells, but he did drop windflurry and mana tide totems, which combined with my own Reckoning talent and seals, judgements, and blessings of wisdom, meant I literally couldn't spend mana faster than I could regen it, unless we were fighting demons (when I got to spam Holy Wrath and Exorcism).  He just ran around pulling mobs back to within range of my Consecration, threw a heal or two if I was too busy to do it myself, and we were killing three, four, five mobs at a time for something like a solid hour.  It was pretty crazy.

As for which two classes duo well together, I'd say that Wizards are a handy partner class, since they can summon food and water for their buddy (as well as nice crowd control and DPS).  In my experience, if you're just duoing in the normal world (i.e. not instances), you're not going to be throwing tons of heals around (since the non-group content can generally be beaten solo by the tank anyway), but food and drink will still be handy.

Also, I did have a lot of fun duoing two Rogues.  We'd stand on opposite sides of the mob and one of us would backstab until the mob turned to face the guy doing the backstabbing, and then the other guy would start backstabbing him.  Shredded normal mobs.  Elites kicked our asses, though (and we'd have been fighting over the same loot, too).  Plus, since we were both stealth, we could do some neat things like stealth through an entire fortress, kill the last guy, and then stealth back out, which you can't do if you're duoing with a non-stealth class.

[Selby]

Warlock\Mage is good fun for pure mage DPS and the built-in tanking abilities of the voidwalker, free healthstones, etc.  Having a friend to portal you around eventually is nice too.

Mage\Priest is great for fast leveling as the mage can DPS the hades out of monsters with AOE and have the priest keep them alive.

I would personally not suggest 2 of the same class due to arguments over gear, lack of variety, and potential problems if something one of you can't handle comes along and frustrates you.

[Fordel]

Two of the same class is fine as long as you use one of the hybrids to pair up.


A Feral Druid and a Balance druid could not be further apart from each other gear wise even if they tried for example.

[Arrrgh]

If you just want to level up any two will work since you can do it solo easily enough.

If you want to instance as you level a tank/healer combo would provide the two hard to find members of a 5 person instance run. Just grab 3 DPS and you're off the newbie instances.

If you want to 2v2 arena at 70 (nice toys for non raiders) you have to be careful about pairings. Go to the armory and browse the high ranked 2v2  teams to see the combos/builds that work.

[Calantus]

Warrior+Healer is the best duo you can possibly make if you want to do everything. Leveling up doesn't matter so much, any 2 random classes are fine. For instancing you want a tank and a healer. For 2v2 with a healer you want to base your team around rogue, warlock, or warrior for the best chance of success and only one of those can tank. So warrior+healer is where it's at.

Who you choose for the healer depends on what you want to do most. I'd recommend NOT going for priest if you intend to 2v2 PVP at all as priest+warrior is by far the weakest warrior+healer combo and it's very frustrating to auto-lose to every other warrior+healer and to lack the auto-win against rogue+healer teams that other warrior combos enjoy. If you lean more towards instancing any non-druid would be better due to the cooldown-less resurrect. If 2v2 is your thing druid is the best. If 5v5 is what you want to do then I'd say Paladin is the best healer for warrior based teams. For BGs any healer is fine. So either warrior+druid or warrior+paladin gets my vote.

[Xanthippe]

If you want to 2v2 arena at 70 (nice toys for non raiders) you have to be careful about pairings. Go to the armory and browse the high ranked 2v2  teams to see the combos/builds that work.

Unless this is something you have your heart set on doing, I'd avoid this, because by the time you get to 70, it's quite likely the expansion will be out, and everything in arena will be different.

[Arrrgh]

If you want to 2v2 arena at 70 (nice toys for non raiders) you have to be careful about pairings. Go to the armory and browse the high ranked 2v2  teams to see the combos/builds that work.

Unless this is something you have your heart set on doing, I'd avoid this, because by the time you get to 70, it's quite likely the expansion will be out, and everything in arena will be different.

So how do you suggest they pick an arena pair then? Wait till the expansion comes out and the current teams hit 80, then wait a month or two longer for the high scoring pairs to get sorted out in the rankings, and then finally start playing WoW?

Some new god duo might form, but I doubt any of the combinations that currently work well will suddenly go to hell at 80.

[Righ]

Unless this is something you have your heart set on doing, I'd avoid this, because by the time you get to 70, it's quite likely the expansion will be out, and everything in arena will be different.

That's if you plan on playing significantly less than half an hour a day on average for the next year. Note the year on the expansion 'due date' - its not this November, its 2008. Plus Blizzard, so no chance it will happen without at least one delay.

[Sogrinaugh]

If you want to 2v2 and not put up with bullshit, i would point out that in no iteration of this game has warrior/paladin been weak.  Think about all patches since release...  Other then the first month when warriors weren't getting rage off parrys and some other wierd stuff that left them starved alot of time, one thing people always dreaded (on horde) was the warrior/paladin.

In todays current arena meta it might not be the most optimal (warrior/druid as has already been pointed out) but you can be fairly certain that no amount of "tweaking" on blizzards part will make your duo "bad".  Warrior/Paladin teams played by competent people are pretty much garanteed to have access to season 3 weapons for example.

Additionally, one of the greatest things about the paladin as a healer is their pvp spec is exactly the same as their pve spec.  You don't even need to move 1 fucking talent point.  As a warrior, the upcomming talent changes that are more clearly defining the fury vs arms tree, leaves more points available in prot for a pvp spec warrior.  I know several warriors who think forsaking fury in 2.3 and going for improved disarm and concussion blow is were its at.  That means you will have defiance by default (+threat) since you will need it to get deeper in the tree, which means even spec'd for pvp you willl be a serviceable tank for heroics (assuming you collect the gear for it).

This being a "fun" combo or not however is entirely contingent on wether the height of gaming fun in one or both of you opinions is seeing the flash of huge red numbers over a targets head.  If this is the case, and it is the case for a great many people, i would humbly suggest rogue/mage as a rock-solid double-dps duo.  This pairing is loaded with crowd control, enough to exhaust both opponents trinkets, the slowing effect of your frostbolts combined with the rogues crippling/wounding poison means its hard for people to run away, the mage can spellsteal the blessing of sacrifice off the warrior after the rogue saps the paladin (forcing trinket or bubble usage early), the ability of the mage to counterspell a distant healer's holy/nature treat is house, the synergy between a rogue's stuns and a mage's slow-casting high-damage frostbolt is also obvious.

If you are going to play a double-dps pair, i would highly recommend playing alliance.  We have many times the healer and significantly higher tanking population then does horde.  If you level a double dps pair as horde, you will (no exageration, no hyperbole) be in an endless sea of dps looking for a tank/healer.  I have 4 characters horde side above level 60, and i play none of them for this reason (i am loathe to play a shaman as resto spec, as i see their class design as much better suited to dps groups).

[Nebu]

Thanks for all of the input.  It turns out that my friend wants to play a mage or a shaman.  I'm thinking that a shadow priest or warrior may be my best choice (priest with the mage and warrior with the shaman).  He's also considering playing a warlock now, so I'm at a loss to decide what might work best with that.  I think this is mostly for pve as he's not a pvp person.  The goal is to see how soon we can do some of the 5 man instances with a solid duo.  I've been leveling a rogue so that I can pvp solo as much as I can.

[Drubear]

Warlock/Rogue worked out pretty well with my partner on Alliance. Being able to vanish, fear and ultimately ditch your tank works quite well. We kept First Aid and Cooking maxed (for stat foods) and I (rogue) took up Herbs/Alchemy while he took up Tailor/'Chanting (bags and breaking down greens.)

We'd never done instances duo tho - we'd always bring along some others.

[Nebu]

Regular PvE is no problem.  We seem to struggle only when we get larger pulls or pulls with multiple elite mobs.  The rogue/mage worked ok at first.  I'd sap one target and he'd sheep another then we'd work down the third.  Then re-sheep the second etc.  The problem arose when we'd get to the instance bosses.  They do so much damage so fast that it seemed that our rogue/mage pair just had no way to tank after 15s when evade went down.  I'm hoping that something like warrior/shaman will be better and was kind of considering whether a paladin would be better with a shaman.  Any thoughts?

So, if he plays a shaman, should I play a warrior, paladin, or shadow priest?   Is there something I should consider?


FWIW the rogue is by far my favorite character to play and I'm looking forward to doing as much pvp as I can with it at the endgame.  I just have to convince my friend to give pvp more of a try... that or I may consider re-rolling on a pvp server for something to do when I'm not helping my friend out.

[Xanthippe]

I'm pretty sure you won't be able to duo any instances your level.  If you are very interested in instancing (it's really not necessary to set foot in an instance in order to get to 70), then I suggest you make a tank/healer combination so that all you need to ask for is dps or maybe a cc'er and dps.

But really, you should both play what you enjoy.  The class strengths and weaknesses are different at different levels.  What seems OP at 30 isn't at 60.  Plus, it being an MMO, things change all the time, as you know.

[Nebu]

I'm pretty sure you won't be able to duo any instances your level.  If you are very interested in instancing (it's really not necessary to set foot in an instance in order to get to 70), then I suggest you make a tank/healer combination so that all you need to ask for is dps or maybe a cc'er and dps.

We're not really wanting to do it "at out level" so much as before it gets too low green.  We've enjoyed playing the mage/rogue duo as we have a ton of CC to handle larger groups but find that we're really lacking a tank when it comes to the bosses.  Maybe we just need to experiment with the lower level instances with a few level 25 or so toons and see what synergy seems to do the best.  Again, we're interested in a duo suited primarily to do instances/instance quests as a) my friend will never pvp with me and b) the surface pve is so stupid easy that any two classes can do just fine.  I am leveling a shadow priest and a warrior right now and my friend will have a druid and shaman soon.   

Again, thanks to all of you for your suggestions. 

[Chimpy]

Any 2 hybrid class combo will give you a lot of options.

Especially with the changes they are making tomorrow, levelling should be a lot less of a "find the perfect combo" than it is now. And now it really works well to have any two classes that won't really compete for gear.

Hunter + healer was horribly OP when I levelled my first hunter way back in the pre-anything but Marks sucking days. I did levels 25-60 basically duoing 75% of stuff with a shadow priest. When we went after elites he healed the pet out of shadowform, when we were grinding kills, it was just a DPS festival.

Right now, BM hunters are retardedly OP levelling, esp above level 40. A BM hunter can solo the vast majority of the 2-3 man recommended group quests in outlands (which are harder than the old group quests in the old world) no problem. You add in a class that can heal/buff to that makeup, and you are going to town. Hunter+shaman would be pretty OP I would think, but any class that either has a pet to tank, or a pretty good tanking ability of it's own (pally/druid would be my first recommendations over a warrior as warriors are totally gear dependant even at the mid levels) you will plow through stuff. The only thing I would recommend outside of the getting a good comp like that is that you find a third person who want to level with you guys, as you get back about half the XP lost from grouping when you have 3+ members in the party. There is a 50% reduction in kill XP when there are only 2 members in the group.

[Chimpy]

Oh and the biggest advice I have:

AVOID ULDAMAN!


Worst instance in the game, even Blackfathom Deeps or Lower Blackrock Spire are more enjoyable, and those places are about as fun as having your brains eaten by Hannibal Lecter with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

 

[Nebu]

1. I don't really care about xp (if you can believe it).  I'm mostly wanting to enjoy as much of the content as I can without having to rely on too many other people.  I tend to play very odd hours as does my friend (we're both academics), so I'd rather focus on things that I can do solo or duo.

2. I've been pondering between a warrior and a paladin for days.  I figure that I have my rogue to farm cash to keep the warrior geared and that should I ever breakdown and join a guild, that the warrior may be more useful.  I could be wrong on the second point.  I've been leveling the priest for the same reason.  The game is giving me some fun for now and I like having the option to try a few different things.  If I stay with it for the long haul, leveling something for a guild won't be a problem if I can find people that play the crazy hours that I do.  One of these days I'm going to learn how to sleep.  

[Nebu]

Oh and the biggest advice I have:

AVOID ULDAMAN!


Worst instance in the game, even Blackfathom Deeps or Lower Blackrock Spire are more enjoyable, and those places are about as fun as having your brains eaten by Hannibal Lecter with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

 

I've been doing Uldaman solo on my rogue, but I can't imagine going in that place with a visible group.  I've only been doing it because I'm trying to get my Ironforge faction to Exhalted (I'm a gnome and hate my robo-chicken).  I think I completed like 4 of the quests solo while they were still green to me.  The only trouble I've had is that the boss in the map room and at the end are too much for me still at level 48.  Level 40 instance bosses are just too much at 46-48 solo.    I've come very close to beating them, but it's so dependent on the RNG that I can get one to 10% one fight and to 80% on another.  I figured I was just a noob and screwing something up or that my gear was limiting my ability to kill things.  I think I've only seen one usable blue drop in the first 50 levels playing. 

[Phred]

So, if he plays a shaman, should I play a warrior, paladin, or shadow priest?   Is there something I should consider?

Warrior. And you will have to make clear to him that if he want's an easy time making competent instance groups he'll have to go a bit towards resto no matter how much he loves fucking shit up or blowing it up.

[Fordel]

If your going to stick to PvE, A Protection Paladin + Resto Shaman  means you laughing all the way.

[Xanthippe]

2. I've been pondering between a warrior and a paladin for days.

Read the Lack of Tanks thread.  There's a lot of good information in there.  I don't know if it will help you or confuse you further, but more info is better.

[Xanthippe]

If you want to 2v2 arena at 70 (nice toys for non raiders) you have to be careful about pairings. Go to the armory and browse the high ranked 2v2  teams to see the combos/builds that work.

Unless this is something you have your heart set on doing, I'd avoid this, because by the time you get to 70, it's quite likely the expansion will be out, and everything in arena will be different.

So how do you suggest they pick an arena pair then? Wait till the expansion comes out and the current teams hit 80, then wait a month or two longer for the high scoring pairs to get sorted out in the rankings, and then finally start playing WoW?

Some new god duo might form, but I doubt any of the combinations that currently work well will suddenly go to hell at 80.

I was under the impression he wasn't trying to pick an arena pair as the primary thing so much as just a duo pair to play the whole game - leveling up and everything.

If he wanted primarily to arena, that's different, but that wasn't what I thought he was asking.

[ajax34i]

1. I don't really care about xp (if you can believe it).  I'm mostly wanting to enjoy as much of the content as I can without having to rely on too many other people.  I tend to play very odd hours as does my friend (we're both academics), so I'd rather focus on things that I can do solo or duo.

Unfortunately, part of "content" when it comes to instances is the feel they have when you go there at the appropriate level; I mean you could go to Deadmines at level 60 but then you're just looking at the scenery.  And the problem with level-appropriate is two-fold:

1.  The con system (green, yellow, orange mobs) isn't quite accurate in instances, or the instance starts as grey mobs but ends up with a deep red boss.  Supposedly they fixed the level ranges now so they're tighter.

2.  Instances are designed for 5 people in ways that can't be beaten by being slightly higher level:  groups of 5 elite linked trash mobs, for example.  Runners.  The pathing and frequency of patrols.  The abilities and damage output of bosses, some of which are scripted to require 2 tanks or specific crowd control or actions.

It kinda sucks, but you'll probably have to invite an additional 3 people to instances, if you want to visit them when their content is level-appropriate.  And that's why you see all the suggestions for making a tank/healer combo so that you only have to invite DPS, which are easy to find.

If you have absolutely odd hours, server choice might be the top factor.  Some servers have late-night or off-hours guilds or teams of people, too.