Warning for Moskau: 2. All opinions should be stated as succinctly as possible.

• Aldriana · 11/13/09, 4:36 PM

Post: [Elemental] PVP Specs?
User: Moskau
Infraction: 2. All opinions should be stated as succinctly as possible.
Points: 0

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

Please don't quote-split.

Original Post:

Hey guys, I'm 2400+ rated in 3s and do quite a bit of mathcraft relating to Elemental PVP, didn't see any other PVP threads so if anyone has some questions/topics for debate on the matter I'd be happy to field them.

It seems some of the things I do are a bit unorthodox so any advice I give I'll try to back up as well as possible.

I recently started playing 2vs2 with a discicpline priest. As we feel that this comp is not that bad we decided to give it a try (only started doing pvp again last friday after a break of 2 years, so don't be shocked by my rating), however we struggle a lot against combinations with heavy crowd control, especially rogue/mage, mage/warlock and in general against teams consisting of two damagedealers who can time their crowdcontrol well. The problem is that I have very little resilience (only ~300 yet) and therefore often die while my mate is locked down, which is also partially due to me wearing 4t9 (still working on getting some pvp offset pieces). What can we do to survive their initial burst phase? I try to use stoneclaw, grounding, wind shear, kiting (frostshock/thunderstorm /earthbind+firenova) and line of sight but when counterspelled, locked down, frozen/crippled etc., I can barely do anything and die away quickly. Is this simply a matter of lacking resilience or do you have any advice on how to survive these kind of situations?

While not experienced in 2v2, I've done enough of it to know that with 4pc T9, you're really banking on having completely full PVP gear otherwise, probably a couple of resilience gems to compensate, and a damn good healer. 2s is especially rough as elemental with no real defensive cooldowns to speak of - burst comes much harder and is much less stoppable than it seems to be in other brackets. I hate to say it, but it really does end up being a gear thing.

My second question was about if 4t9 is "viable" at higher ratings, and if so (as I guess, seeing how Moshne does), what are the primary stats that I have to get on offpieces, seeing as there are often spellpower/haste and spellpower/crit variants for the same slot (e.g. cloak)? From a dps perspective haste is tempting, but with regard to burst I feel that crit would make some sense as well, however crit seems not that great to me due to how resilience works.

Again I cannot say if it's used in 2v2, but I seldom see it in 3v3 (unlike 5v5, where elemental shamans are rarely the primary target). In 5s, you tend to be focused less so you can make more use of it. The catch ends up being that in 5v5, less of your overall damage ends up coming from Lava Burst. Still, 20% is a lot, you just can't be caught with your pants down.
Gear-wise, haste is possible if you're in 4pc t9 but it's quite a commitment, because without very large amounts it's worthless. Again, I would also only stress this in 5v5 - in 3v3 and 2v2, you have much less time casting, and when you do it's usually when you have a few seconds uncontested. Since kill moments often happen lusted, you should never really need more than 3 seconds of freecast time to get your burst out, so haste won't help so much.

Thirdly, I feel that a well timed thunderstrom may decide a game and wanted to ask about your personal tricks when to use it best (if not for defensive reasons). I found it very effective in the dalaran sewers/circle of blood to throw down the healer in order to take the other target down quickly (or to avoid damage). Do you have some more nifty tricks you'd be inclined to share?

(With a hunter) kiting somebody over a trap, TSing them back to the other side;
(With a hunter) TSing somebody into an untriggered trap;
Using it as an interrupt while stunned (often, it will be beneficial to try to hug close to a warlock or mage attacking you for this very reason. You can eat the shadowfury or deep freeze (if you don't ground it), but block them from casting anything during it with the TS);
Shooting kill targets out of their healer's LOS (this takes lots of coordination to pull off, because you must position yourself using mathematics and triangles. A calculator may be necessary);
Dropping a fire nova, pulling the melee on you away, then shooting them into it as it explodes (but no more in 3.3, wtf);
Especially in Nagrand arena, shooting people as they cross pillars into the center. Often this proves devastating and causes them to die or pop defensive cooldowns. If a match stretches out so that they fall into this trap twice, it is almost always victory (100% of the time if their healer is off of cyclone DR)

My final question is about our (insane) burst and how to optimize it. I always felt that FS (which stays for 27s), then LvB, instant LB (elemental mastery), CL + FS/Frostshock (depending on range) was the way to go due to all the spells hitting in a very short timeframe if the range to the target is long enough. Is this what you are using as well or do you have any better suggestions?

This is a topic of contention among me and many elemental shamans on my BG. Fortunately, you are already reasonable enough to understand to use EM LB, while most shamans see fit to use LvB or CL. Those are both stupid for their own reasons (however, EM LvBs and CLs do have their place, but only in niche occasions). My recommended burst order is as follows:
FS (obviously, but refresh for Relentless totem effect), LvB, CL, EM LB, Pyro Rockets, Frost Shock, and possibly a Thunderstorm.

The idea is this: stagger damage so as much of it hits in as small of a timeframe as possible. With 3.4k SP, this will nearly always kill somebody with 1k resilience at 18k health (assuming they are fully purged). To squishier targets, with my hunter providing additional DPS (most importantly, the MS and kill shot are crucial), we can often lust after fully purging them and drop them in two globals.
Anyway, LvB is a projectile. So, you have time after casting that to cast the CL. This means that the CL and LvB hit at once. Next, you EM the lightning bolt (saving more casttime than EMing either other spell), which is off GCD, Pyro rockets, also off GCD, and Frost Shock. The FS hits before those two, bridging the gap between the LvB/CL and the LB/rockets. This means that, while you cast for about 3s and used 3 GCDs, you're putting tons of damage that all hits in about 2.8 seconds on average (depending on distance, really) - under 2 GCDs. People tend to be unable to react to this, and unless they predicted and precast defensive cooldowns, they are often in peril of death from this burst.
(The thunderstorm at the end is often used if they start to get hit by it and begin LOSing. Once you cast your two spells, the rest are instant, so you should spend that entire period running into close range of them. If they don't die and try to run, this puts you in position to TS them and/or earthbind root them for your partner/you to kill.)

I'm a bit confused here. Does anyone here have a solid talent spec for PVP? And is this BGs, Arena or both?

This is the spec I run with (though most shamans do it slightly differently)
Quite frankly, I think Elemental Weapons is nearly worthless for PVP. I do have elemental precision, but only as a holdover (you can easily reach hit cap with the relentless ring, hit cloak and neck. Crit is not the most optimal stat, so it's best to take hit for those to cap you and frees you up of talent points).
Those two points would, preferably for me, go into Reverberation, but next patch they go into Earth's Grasp for sure. Reverberation isn't the best talent but especially against teams who rapidly dispel, it helps to not be caught with your pants down when a nice burst opportunity arises. Plus, Frost Shock is very useful in a myriad of ways, so using that very often is not a bad thing.
The reason I say elemental weapons is nearly worthless is because, point for point, you aren't getting very much out of it. Sure, extra damage is nice - but it's very slight, and I think more utility is more important. Again, maybe for 5s I might take it, but I don't find it worth it for 2s/3s.

Are the PvP totems (Deadly/Furious/Relentless Totem of Survival) any good? Is Thunderfall still superior?

Thunderfall is nice, especially at lower ratings when you aren't going against triple 1k resilience teams (at this point, wearing full S8 PVP gear with absolutely no resilience from trinkets/gems/socket boni, I have 996 myself). However, as survivability builds, so does the percentage of your overall pressure that comes from Lava Burst. With 4pc T9, for sure, but most PVPers are not running that and so it is not optimal. The only thing is that you must accomodate your playstyle to shocking often enough to keep the buff up.

RE beating RMPs as a spell cleave: If your lock is taking little enough pressure to use coil offensively, you should probably full purge the rogue while faking onto mage (so they hopefully won't realize the buffless rogue until it's too late), then performing a quick switch onto the rogue during a CC chain on priest (with focus shocks on polymorphs only - you can eat a frostbolt at this point), starting it with an immolate+FlS, coiling him before he can react, and unloading a proper burst onto him. Depending on how fast he goes down, it's your judgment to use EM on CL to die before coil fades, or trusting the lock enough to shadowfury as the coil fades so you can get off one or two more spells (such as the cast CL, then EM LB into a frost shock) + shadowfury. If the rogue is clairvoyant enough to see it coming, he'll at least blow his trinket and cloak, and you can easily blow him up again in 30 seconds, when shadowfury is back up and the priest is off DR. Otherwise, you probably want to be idling on the mage to mitigate his damage, get quick purges on icy veins, and possibly force blocks to turn the mage into a viable and good kill target choice.

Anyway, I upload many of my team's matches against 2200+ MMR teams (lately, 2300+) onto Youtube (raw frapses) for posterity. It's fairly entertaining (for me, at least), but also helps for match reviews with my teammates. Often, even in successful wins, we catch errors that we made (in both gameplay and judgment) and it makes us better players. If you do watch any, though, be weary of the sound. It's often 2/3 of the players of the team, the only one not being heard is the most vocal. So you're probably better off just muting the sound.

Oh and lastly, protip: In high rated 3v3, more GCDs should be spent on totems. Knowing how to effectively use totems (notably, selecting an appropriate water totem based on enemy comp, and constantly juggling earth totems) as well as position yourself/your teammates/your totems well is integral to making the most of your class.