My normal 3v3 PvP teams consist of a combination of rogues, warriors and death knights.  But this season we ended up mixing it up a bit with the addition of a hunter to our team.  At first things didn’t go so well.  Our hunter might as well have been wearing a giant target because he went down fast near the start of almost every match.  Part of the problem was that he was relatively new to arenas and was still building up his PvP set, but I think just being a hunter in general made him an easier target for the opponent.  However, it didn’t take us long to figure out how to use this to our advantage.

Bait, anyone?

We normally use a pretty conservative strategy since its usually hard to tell what the enemy is going to do.  With the hunter in our mix now though we were fairly confident what the enemy was going to do most of the time and could prepare for it.  We decided to change up our positioning a bit and be a little more aggressive.  Every fight we had our death knight or warrior move up and engage relatively early to force a response.  I took a center position and our hunter stayed near the back ready to take advantage of any opportunities and so he’d be harder to kill.

In a large portion of the matches the enemy still went through me and my teammate to go directly for the hunter, which is exactly what we expected.  It gave us a little more time to choose our targets and take advantage of their mistakes.  I made sure to keep Sacred Shield and my HoT up on the hunter before the enemy attacked and I pre-healed him on many matches.  With Hand of Sacrifice, Divine Sacrifice, and the hunter’s Deterrence ready, we were able to keep our hunter up long enough for him and the partner (with some help from me) to burn one of them down (usually the healer or a ranged).  Hand of Protection was especially useful to stop the enemy’s damage in its tracks.   It was also just easier to heal someone when I knew he would be targeted before-hand.

Even when teams started on another target, they would switch to the hunter soon after, so I usually kept Sacred Shield up on him the entire fight and was ready to heal him at a moment’s notice.  Since our hunter stayed in the back it was harder to reach him, but our opponents tried anyway.  In essence, he served as hard to reach, hard to kill bait while we focused on burning down the rest of the opponent’s team who were forced to come out in the open to get him.  If they did go for me or the other teammate, our hunter was free to do as much damage as possible and it became a more typical match.

Messing up their strats

I think we were so successful because the opponent’s strategy revolved around burning our hunter down fast.  When that didn’t happen, their strategy collapsed.  This was especially true for melee heavy teams when I used Hand of Protection.  Without having a clear target to switch to, they would keep trying to beat on the low health hunter, giving me and the death knight precious time to take one of them down.

I can’t say yet whether this comp will be more successful than our previous one, but I do know we were able to change up our strategy to take advantage of the hunter’s weaknesses rather than just giving up on the comp altogether.  So far it seems to be working out well.

As a bonus, below are some other Holy Paladin PvP tips I have in my belt.

Random PvP Tips

1. Make sure to download Gladius or another arena unit frame mod so you know exactly what you’re facing. 
2. Retribution Aura is usually much more effective against a team with any melee compared to Improved Concentration Aura, especially if it is a rogue.  It can put out a lot of free damage.  However, it is useless against ranged teams.  Make sure to have the right aura up before the fight starts.
3. If someone is stealthed or invisible, check for druid buffs.  If there are no druid buffs, it is almost always a rogue.  Turn on Retribution Aura and get in combat early so he can’t use sap.
4. Always gem with Insightful Earthsiege Diamond (both PvE and PvP).  The mana return is just too good to pass up.
5. Don’t hesitate to use Divine Shield to break CC (although only if you must).  If your teammate dies while you were CCed and Divine Shield is off cooldown, you failed (probably). The only exception is if you are Cycloned.
6. Use your Hammer of Justice very early, one of the first things you do to break up their inital strategy.  If you can’t get in range of their healer, use it on a dps, especially if he’s burning one of you down.  Its often more effective than a heal.  Try to coordinate its use with your teammates CCs if you can, especially later in the fight.
7. Follow the other healer around and keep him targeted if you’re not being targeted by dps and if your Hammer of Justice is off cooldown.  Wait until an enemy is at half health and interrupt the healer’s heal if you can, then switch to dps the target down.
8. Keep your teammates focus target targetted as much as possible so you can help with burst damage if he gets low.  Often the key to winning arenas is by taking a risk and getting a little behind on heals in order to burn someone down instead.  An extra Holy Shock, Judgement, and even Shield of Righteousness can put out enough burst damage to take someone down at the right moment.  I often have at least one killing blow in my matches even though I spend most of the time healing and it can mean the difference between winning and losing.  This isn’t PvE, you need to do everything you can to win.