So first night went not so bad considering the last time i played dk/healer was back in cata and as unholy!
We went 19-12 and worked on strats mostly, gained 200 mmr and didn't want to cut my eyes out after either so good result! I'm going to do a write up here on what we found worked vs different comps. I'm doing this firstly so that any other people on the forum starting dk/hpal have a little starting help and secondly because it helps me process how I need to improve for next time! *disclaimer - we play the comp in our own specific way, other talents/strats ect are more than viable*

So breakdown of the games:- 19-12

Lost :-

Hunter/healer x3 - overlapping def cds / heavy dampening
Mage/healer x3 - bad strat
Boomie/mage (glads) - outplayed / wrong talent/glyph choice
Boomie/priest - oom / maybe wrong talent choice
Ele/hpal - Outplayed by glads and bad strat
Feral/hpal - oom / wrong strat
Dk/hpal - Bad defensive usage, very close game
Warr/Rdrood - oom /rdrood was damn amazing


Won:-

Rsham/Warr x2
Rsham/affli
Rsham/demo
Feral/Dk
WW monk/disc x2
Mage/rogue x2
Ret/hunter
Mage/Healer x3
Hunter/healer x3
Rogue/Disc x2
DK/Mw monk

Double DPS
Overall double DPS should almost always be a win really, I play the glyph that heals 30% max health when you use empowered rune weapon and save the 5 min cd just as a mini lay on hands, spending the runes it gives on death strike and death siphon, this combo is enough to save you through one set up, even more so when paired with ams / Ibf. pally has trinket, sacs, bubble ect so you can break their set ups several times and just push aggressive, don't let them reset.


Mage/Hpal or Disc
Played this comp 6 times, first 3 were against Hpal mage and we lost every time because I was trying to either train the Hpal or hard swap to the Hpal and the mage just did so much damage or cc, even if stole poly and got the mage in cc during our burst we would get through bubble ect but the mages momentum would get too high. So we took 5 mins and figured out a new strat, luckly for dw frost denounce does not stop our killing machine crits from happening so we are punished less than other melee for not sitting on the pally. I go mage all game, play glyph of regen magic, dispel and dark sim + stun talent, every 30 seconds we fist the pally and i always have prepurged the mage + have cds or near full runic power to burst the mage.

Every time the mage gets away from me i stun him + dark sim, either he lets me reconnect or he blinks and I steal blink, at this point i grip.. he blazing speeds and I blink ontop of him and he has nowhere to go. Later in the game i always communicate with my pally if he has something for the next set up, if he doesnt i save blink for the set up, blink the fist stun and either stop the poly or blink to my healer and los while he sits sheep. after swapping to this strat and being smart with def cds and dark sims / grips we won the next 3 games vs this comp without breaking a sweat. If the mage starts being a smart ass and not giving me blink i sim his poly instead and put it on the hpal into a fist.


Healer + Hybrid
Had a lot of issues vs these comps as I went for silence so i could take out the healers only to find that due to lacking cross cc their hybrid would just stop drop and hardcast heal through our silence into fist into RM. Or spam clones into me once my ams dropped. I feel vs hybrid comps I might have to just swap to playing stun and go for the hybrid with fists on the healer again, same way we play a lot of games. Vs Hpal/Ele and Hpal/Feral we lost to either insane peels or insane off healing, vs boomie/disc we lost because we went oom, the boomy could never generate enough pressure to score a kill before that. Either way i'd be tempted to try either fisting the hybrid with silence into RM on the healer or playing stuns as i mentioned before.

Rogue/Disc
Found this comp super easy, they normally go for the pally if they are combat.. played stuns and pooled burst for every 30 seconds, prepurged rogue into stun with fist on priest and soul reaper up ofc and burst for 100-0 once they use up all their trinkets / PS. The stun gives your pally room to breath and heal up to full or help you burst. really obvious when the priest is going to fear/silence so its easy to sim that stuff and end the game faster. This with a Rdrood might be much more of a pain in the ass but easier to sim clones than fears I guess.

Hunter/Healer
We opted for playing stuns here, fisting the healer every 30 seconds with stun on the hunter, full runic bar + pre purge and soul reaper aimed to end when the stun ends. Most games we played we either won due to getting our setups right and forcing deter / skins / ps often and killing when they have nothing left/ dampening is kicking in. Or we lost in heavy dampening due to a mistake that hunter/healer just punishes by being unforgiving to melee/healer. Any time we lost it was at about 50-55% dampening and the enemy had no deters left ect. I don't mind facing this comp in all fairness as I see them as the gatekeepers to rating in 2s, learn to beat this + mage comps and the rating will just go up and up and up!


That's all the important stuff i can think of right now, the reason I started 2s last night was because we wanted to work on my dark sim/grip usage in a more slowed down arena bracket and our rotating def cds / communicating whats left to help our 3s keep going up. Dark sim will make or break a lot of your games.. not sure if its working as intended but when you sim a discs silence it turns into the shadow priest 5 second silence. (and unless your healer is already in cc, a disc will normally always silence into fear to stop your healer from stopping the fear) taking stun i find is really flexible, every 30 seconds you can.. stun the dps and fist the healer, or later into dampening you can fist into stun the healer for 8.5 seconds and get healer kills easily, the only thing i miss is the root but hey freedoms are awesome so.. =P Vs Rsham comps i still play silence + winter, I just find silence is so bad if you queue into a dwarf who can trinket/stoneform your silence every 1 min without fail for the whole game.

Anyways hope this gives anyone playing the comp a rough idea of what could bring you some success, ask any questions or give any advice on beating some of the comps we lost to!

Cheers
Rath

*edit - really need to remember to set up drinks in games*