If you’re still waiting on Shadowlands or already have it, you may be looking for compositions to play to push your rating in 3v3 in the first week of playing. Even looking for compositions you and your teammates to play and have success within the new expansion. Or maybe just a returning player looking at how the meta has changed and evolved.
The following tier list makes sure each spec has a good composition so you’ll know which one to play with and ranked into three tiers: easy, moderate, and hard. so you would know which composition is strong to play for your class or spec. Let’s get started.
1. Easy Compositions
Easy tiers are generally compositions that require little to no coordination and either has a lot of sustained damage, high burst damage, or just durable. Meaning, you can just jump straight in and have a high success rate.
| Spec Composition | Recommended Healer | Description (with Pros and Cons) |
| Army Warrior + Death Knight (Teh Super Gosus) | Druid or Monk | • high pressure and durability of both classes combined with a mortal strike effect from warrior make this a very potent cleave. |
| Wind Walker Monk + Death Knight | Mistweaver | • enables you to pick a target and tunnel opponents down. • the recommended healer allows extra leg sweep and instant crown control. |
| Marksman Hunter + Disciplined Priest (Red Hunter Disc) | Shaman | • relatively easy to play when combined a freezing trap onto a healer while looking to offensive cooldowns to a DPS. • insane burst damage makes it easier to perform at lower ratings and makes it easier to pick up than other setup based compositions. |
| Retribution Paladin + Arms Warrior | Druid or Shaman | • does very well into other cleaves due to the defensive utility provided by both specs while still having strong single target pressure. |
| Enhancement Shaman + Arms Warrior (Turbo Cleave) | Druid / Monk / Paladin Healer | • has seen better days but with added utility, the arms warrior brings help over some of the enhancement’s inherent weaknesses. • enhancement’s best bet on pushing over the arena. |
| Shadow Priest + Warlock (Shadowplay) | Restoration Druid | • rots enemies by maximizing damage on all targets thus creating heavy multi-dot pressure. • warlock compositions can be played with either destruction or demonology but affliction is the best pick. • can be played with any healer except with Priest. |
| Shadow Priest Elemental + Warlock | Druid or Paladin Healer | • maximizes damage while in turn being incredibly durable with all members having the ability to off-heal on top of strong defenses. |
| Balanced Druid + Warlock (Owlplay) | Restoration Shaman or Paladin Healer | • maximizes damage while in turn being incredibly durable with all members having the ability to off-heal on top of strong defenses. |
2. Moderate Compositions
Moderate tiers all require some form of setup as well as tactics to perform well. If you’re going to war without a game plan or even synergizing with your team, then you will find it slightly difficult to climb raiding.
| Spec Composition | Recommended Healer | Description (with Pros and Cons) |
| Hunter + Marksman | Pharaoh druid or Disciplined priest | • don’t play this composition with any other healer. • disciplined priest gives extra damage with a dark archangel and potential psychic scream to follow up traps. |
| Marksmanship Hunter + Subtlety Rogue | Disciplined priest | • both specs have the highest burst damages in Shadowlands. • achievable potent crowd control chains. • simultaneously lock down your kill target with cheap shots during shadow dance. |
| Shadow Priest + Warlock | all healers except for Priest | • focuses on securing crowd control onto the healer. • offers more crowd control in single target pressure doing extended crowd control chains. |
| Shadow Priest + Affliction Warlock | all healers except for Priest | • focused more on spread damage due to warlock’s higher cleave pressure looking to maximize damage a secure crowd control onto the healer that overwhelms your opponents. |
| Arms Warrior + Shadow Priest | Druid or Restoration Shaman | • plays around with combining stun silence with sharpen blade and is one of the most durable compositions. • maximizes damage while either crowd controlling or doing swaps onto healers to maintain pressure. |
| Unholy Death Knight + Shadow Priest | Druid or Restoration Shaman | • the main strength of this composition is combing death with psychic scream for some decent setups. |
| Shadow Priest + Retribution Paladin | Druid or Restoration Shaman | • has a ton of utility and defensives and a lot more burst • crowd control healers with shadow’s instant crowd control as the paladin pop wings then survive and play defensive during downtime. |
| Shadow Priest + Pharaoh Druid | Paladin Healer | • focuses on putting instant crowd control onto the enemy healer while maintaining the pressure on the DPS. |
| Shadow Priest + Subrogue | Restoration Druid or Restoration Shaman | • requires a little more setup. |
| Shadow Priest + Assassination Rogue | Restoration Druid or Restoration Shaman | • may need to sacrifice some control and burst for sustained damage. |
| Any Healer + Any Warlock | Restoration Druid or Restoration Shaman | • affliction looks for a class that can bring some added support to help them survive while also bringing high damage themselves. • affliction being the strongest and demonology being the weakest. |
| Warlock + Warrior | Restoration Druid or Restoration Shaman | • combines the spread pressure from a warlock with the powerful single target damage of a warrior in order to create pressure. |
| Warlock + Wind Walker | Restoration Druid or Restoration Shaman | • similarly same strength with warlock + warrior but instead got a tiger’s lust and the ring of peace to help the warlock survive. |
| Warlock + Rogue | Restoration Druid or Restoration Shaman | • more control compared to the other warlock compositions. • dot up targets and let your rogue either crowd control the enemy healer or make swaps. |
| Affliction Warlock + Retribution Paladin | only with a Restoration Shaman | • much weaker alternative but has had relative success combining a high burst of retribution with high consistent damage of affliction. |
| Warlock + Elemental Shaman | Druid / Monk/ Paladin | • focuses on high damage output and doing setups. |
| Warlock + Frost Mage | Druid / Holy Paladin / Mistweaver | • played with the strongest mage. • a little more crowd control-oriented when combined on a healer with the ability to kite utilizing the front mages snares. |
| Elemental Shaman + Arms Warrior | Druid / Disciplined Priest / Monk / Paladin | • focus high pressure on one target then combine lightning lasso on your kill target with either an end cap or storm boat onto the healer. • high survivability and high consistent pressure. |
| Elemental Shaman + Wind Walker Monk | Druid / Disciplined Priest / Monk / Paladin | • focus high pressure on one target then combine lightning lasso on your kill target with either an end cap or storm boat onto the healer. • high survivability and high consistent pressure. |
| Sub Rogue + Retribution Paladin | Disciplined Priest | • combination of sub rogue’s insane control while retribution paladin unloads all of his damage. • when playing this composition, expect very explosive games. |
| Balanced Druid + Sub Rogue | Shaman or Paladin Healer | • brings high burst damage on a relatively short cooldown making this composition strong at doing consistent setups. |
| Balanced Druid + Wind Walker Monk | Shaman or Paladin Healer | • brings high burst damage on a relatively short cooldown making this composition strong at doing consistent setups. |
3. Hard Compositions
Hard tiers are all built around setups as well as doing damage at the right times. You’ll need to know tactics, match-ups, and also good communication with your team in order for success.
(shadow play or god composition) shadow priest + frost mage + restoration druid
subrogue + frost mage + druid or priest
| Spec Composition | Recommended Healer | Description (with Pros and Cons) |
| Shadow Priest + Frost Mage | Restoration Druid | • commonly known as the “shadow play or god comp” depending on the healer. • revolves around doing extended crowd control chains in order to create pressure. • you’re gonna need to make sure crowd control chains. • the higher you get in this composition, the harder it becomes. |
| Sub Rogue + Frost Mage | Druid or Priest | • this is a hard composition when it comes to raiding basically because you need to consistently land crowd control in order to create pressure. • landing crowd control damage as a mage isn’t easy especially when enemies are actively playing to stop you. • with enemies correctly avoiding crowd control and preventing or peeling setup, you need to be consistently crowd controlling and combining with your rogue and healer in order to control it. • the mage, rogue, and healer need to be on the same page to secure clean and well-executed setups. |
Video Chapters
0:00 – Intro
1:13 – Easy compositions
5:42 – Moderate compositions
12:59 – Hard compositions
14:55 – Recap