Either Resto or Elemental is viable, it depends on preference/group make-up. Korbin is Elemental, but ZERG IT DOWN's shaman is heavy resto. I guess as long as you have Bloodlust, you are all right. Still, Elemental is definitely cookie-cutter at the minute.

Granted, I am hardly an upper-echelon PvPer, but the team I'm on is mid-1900s and has played most of the top teams on our Battlegroup, so I'm not entirely clueless. I feel pretty useful as a resto shaman on my team (unlike as a resto shaman in the smaller formats). I can heal well, I'm nontrivial to burst down (very much so if they don't have a handy way of removing Earth Shield, and Nature's Guardian is amazing regardless), with >9k armor and >10k hp, I can get out of some bad situations with BoF+Earthbind and running away, and can pretty easily interrupt enemy spells and purge while taking care of healing duties. Mana Tide is also useful in fights that have slowed down as both sides run OOM, giving the extra boost needed to finish off the other team.

Hunters are extremely gay to fight on blades edge because they can just molest cloth and melee.

Paladins in general can heal to well for to long.

Warriors do way to much damage and the damage bonus from enrage+deathwish+extrarage stacks to well.

Mages are very strong with iceblock or blazingspeed+freedom and counterspell off global.

Sums up the way arenas work. All those things need to be adjusted imo.

The melee's gotta be on someone fucking them up. If it's the shaman, I'm free. If it's me, the shaman's free. Either way someone is always being assisted on and unable to function. Have you had a chance to play Ninjas in Pyjamas yet? Neans, Fisker, Jug, Avick, Makoplux. A good example of what I'm talking about.

And yet in the same Arena, Hunters are absolutely useless if you're clustered up at the ramp due to Deadzone + LoS + funny Ramp geometry.

All I know is I'm dying to know what blizzard is going to do to make warlocks viable in 5v5. Theres so many things they could do, some to our class, some to others. All I can do right now is pray the team we are up against sucks, because if they dont I die in approximately 6 to 9 seconds usually, sometimes longer if we get a bit of initiative before they can setup. 12k and 14k HP just don't matter much with 11% armor and mortal strike.

If Blizzard wants to nerf our PVE damage all they have to do is drop the spell damage coefficient on Lifetap really. But fixing arena 5v5? I'm dying to know what they are doing with all their arena data, because what they would even have to do to do that would make the WOW forums catch fire and explode (and I really want to see that happen actually ).

My 5v5 team just passed 2000 rating last week and because of IRL friendships and other reasons we now have 8 players on the team, who all play in two different setups.
Team Caster: Warlock(me), Mage, Warrior, Paladin, Priest
Team Melee, Druid, Warrior, Warrior, Rogue (Shaman last week, because rogue is on vacation), Paladin

As a warlock im specced 42/0/19. I wanted Unstable Affliction so i could use dots for dps and i needed a spec that could also work for raiding, so i went for Destruction range as well. I miss the 15% stam boost, but i can survive without.
As of this wednesday im sporting 700 selfbuffed spelldmg for PvP, 240 Resilience and 10K unbuffed HP.

I tried out the demonology spec and i just hated not having the tools for PvP. I had no range, i didnt have Insta Howl, no CoEx and no Unstable Affliction.

I used to feel like Zoner, that warlocks had no spot for 5v5. But after i got some descent pvp gear and i reached 200 resilience, i have changed my mind. No longer can i be bursted down before my healers can land a heal. I now have at least a fighting chance.

MY job as a warlock is to try and lock down the paladin with CoT, Spelllock and fear. Usually i can do this quite effectively.
Besides this i dot up our focus and CoT as many healers as i have time for.

I would still like to have some selfactivated defense, where attacking me would be a bad idea. Random ideas could be: i selfheal for some portion of the damage done to me, or a group wide heal for some portion of the damage done to me or mana regained to me or group for ...
Even With all my HP/Resilience i am still the most likely target on our team, and i dont think there is any spec that can change that (even soul link imo).

i'd really like a self banish, make it instant cast, 5min cd, 1 shard e some hp as casting cost.
for balance sake wipe all the dots placed when you use it

EDIT: mispelling

My team wins quite a bit by focusing warriors. Granted, it's an alt team in the 1800s, and warriors aren't geared as well as they perhaps should be, but MS+Our Warrior+Mage+Our Other DPS seems to kill warriors well.

Nice read.

First off, apologies if this is going to sound like a rant.

I do 5v5 in the Rampage EU Battlegroup, currently hovering between 2130-2200.(We keep facing hunter teams when we go with 2 melee, hence the 'hovering' )

Our normal setup is: Warrior/Paladin/Priest/Mage and then either Rogue or Hunter.

I can completely agree with you that rogues do need some sort of survivablity buff for 5v5. Our rogue currently has 10500HP and 288 resilience unbuffed. Hardly undergeared, however, he can still die in a proper assisttrain with intercept/macestun/deathcoil and so on.

That's not even mentioning the dreaded hunter trap were you're almost fighting 4v5 if the hunter has a clue and you're running two melee.

A hunter friend recently joined my team, and I'd almost say with a certainty that Hunters trivialize the two melee setups.

I'm quite sure you know of the "Warriorx2/Paladin/Priest/Shaman" teams who intercept you, get a few lucky Windfury crits and you as a rogue, go from 80% to execute range.

When we go with our hunter, we pretty much have zero problems with those teams. Every now and then they get some lucky WF crits and drop someone fast, but that's an exception and not the rule, because it's quite hard for them to get in to range with constant snares and entrapment.

Our hunter is still a bit undergeared, but we do seem to do better with him overall. I like playing with my rogue friend as a person, not because of his class.

Completely agree. When we go with our hunter, I do feel sad for the double melee teams we run in to in the 5v5 bracket.

They generally don't have a chance unless they play really well, and we play rather sloppy, and that's really not because we suddenly got more skilled. This isn't to say that we don't win those teams when we go with our rogue, however, it becomes a lot harder.

I've met a few amazing Druids as well, however, they're the exception and not the norm. I quite frequently see Cat Druids trying to attack someone in 5v5. That's really not going to work, switch targets, force him to go bear, if you're lucky and catch him in a stun, you can finish him off.

Cyclone if used properly is really, really annoying.

PS: My suggestion for entrapment would be that it only has a chance to proc on the first tick of the trap, although at a higher % then.

Warlocks are prolly the class closest to balance in 5on5, tho with gear progression i can see them becoming total beasts (well, tbh, our lock already is :| ). What you need is to grasp the situation PvP =! PvE when selecting gear and spec. Spec SL/Ruin. Screw damage gear until you have 13k & 300 resi hp unbuffed. Always use Felarmor, and refresh it when it gets purged. Keep your pet out of harm's way. Start out with Felpuppy, insta summon void once it goes down, when void is gonna go down sac it.
What you have now is unkillable tank, as long as your healers arent totally played out of the game, who is your opposition's healers & mages worst nightmare (CoT on all casters, and forcing the opposition's mage to cure it all the time, distrupting his play even more). If he is left unchecked, the bolt spam with lust and sburn every 15secs is just huge preasure on opposition's cot'd healers, and is usually enough to decide games (he can curse even while focused).

Shamans, are awesome imo, but just like paladins, full resto is the only smart way to go. Elemental is good, but situationally only, basicly requires the opposition ignoring you. Which means you need atleast 2 highpriority targets on your team so you'd have some private time, so that even if the opposition splits dps, you'd still wouldnt be among the two selected.
It also requires you to run with 2 other healers, since 1.5 heals just wont cut it, basicly making it a trihealer already, forcing the last 2 to be non-mana users, and combined with the current state of the rogues, the only choice you'd have is a double warrior. Now since you want your ele shammy to have even a chance vs and assist train, and dont want a single mage to totally devastate your melee's, you need a paladin. And unless you dont want to be totally owned for not having curse removal, you need a druid too. That's about the only setup a ele shammy would work without being severely handicapped versus teams with either hunter/warlock (still, 2 melees is 1 too much vs a hunter team). And you still wouldnt have the "requied" 2 priority targets on your team, so you would get disrupted alot, or plain out assist trained to ground.
Some preasure alongside with cot is usually enough to force elementals to go defensive, and a shock every 5s and one NS chain isnt just enough, what other 'DPS' classes can pull off while FF'd (mages can kite/blink>sheep/become immune still, locks can still keep cot/sburn/dc/spellock, hunters can still aoeslow/MS/AA/vipers, which all are superior to few shocks and a burst when needed). If focused the survivability is one of the weakest, atleast resto can refresh eathshield and nature's guardian is just what the doctor ordered to live throught that nasty assist train.

Well, that's how i see it atleast :]

I currently play Elemental/Resto 37-0-24, but I was previously Resto and did quite well~

If my team was structured differently, I'd go right back to it ;P


Also, a comment was made on page-2 as to the majority of teams using a War+Paladin core. While this is certainly true (and for good reason), Clan Hex is running a very interesting no-war team that is doing quite well ;P

It'll be very interesting to see how arena play develops in the coming months, but as an avid Arena player, I am quite happy with the current gameplay, and most of my complaints have little to do with class balance, and more to do with lack of Arena-point itemization~

Interesting thread, especialy with the world tournament rules released. We run with 9 people or so in our 5vs5 team. For the tournament we gotta pick 5 of those to represent us. The current topic on our forum is which of the folowing would be strongest:

2 deep thunder ms warriors
2 paladins
1 resto druid

or

2 deep thunder ms warriors
1 paladin
1 holy priest
1 resto druid

or

2 deep thunder ms warriors
1 paladin
1 resto shaman
1 resto druid

I'm leaning towards team setup 1 or 2.
edit: My point beeing that this says a bit about how strong different classes is. Don't think a single member is arguing against 2 ms warriors (got a great rogue and a hunter to choose from) and atleast one paladin and one druid. Opinions vary which one of the setups will be strongest within the team with a slight majority towards team setup nr1.

Team #1 setup is capable of being very successful: Look towards the team called "The Challenge"

The weakness of team setup #1 is teams with heavy caster-burst. Opening salvos properly executed can drop an unsuspecting warrior :x Priest teams will be quite dangerous as well, with mana-burn and mass-dispel~

Team #3 is a setup similar to what we use, and the strength will lie in the versatility of the team. You can play that team 2DPS-3Heal outlast, or 2.5/2.5 by running the shaman as elemental~

All your team choices are very capable of being successful : )

-Running Paladin as a solo dispeller will make you more vulnerable to burst teams
-Giving your warriors WF totem will give them at least 10-20% more damage, it's an amazing synergy
-In it's current state, Druid cyclone is amazing, if you aren't running a priest, run a druid for the CC ~
-Priests with manaburn is a very important part of an outlast -type team (2DPS/3HEAL), try to keep one around :P

Off the discussion trend, but I really really hate Nagrand arena. I find Blade's Edge way superior and much less irritating (despite bridge entrapment spam). Nagrand never fails to turn into pillar games or even worse, fun heat-seeking tornadoes tossing you around. Blade's edge has a lot more strategy to it, especially fighting on the bridge.

The strongest setup is probably warrior/(warrior/hunter)/paladin/shaman/priest. As said earlier on heroism mana burn out either their primary healer, or DPS depending on which you find to be more of a threat, then rely on outlasting them.

to be quite honest I don't think our hunter is good enough for me to make a fair judgment of the class. When we meet hunters they allways cause trouble (except against the 2pala setup which disable them) but our mostly seem to jump around getting ganked while trying to find his frez trap button

The value of a resto shaman in 5v5 is greatly diminished to be honest. Earth Shield gets dispelled very quickly. You need at least two strong healers though, and one needs to be a pally. I'm still spec'd resto, mainly due to the fact that 5v5 is a barren wasteland in my BG, and its still good as a solo healer in 2v2/3v3. I would say, Resto shamans (with high HP - 10k) make good tanks.

I have not played enough as elemental though in 5v5, but it seems really risky unless you have 2 Full Healers on the team. No team in their right mind would leave you alone, and the survivability is lacking as compared to resto.

I think resto druids are the weakest of the four healers in 5v5 arena, mainly because they absolutely cannot heal under pressure, so all it takes is one melee class to shut them down.

Resto shamans aren't terrible, but they are not priests, and that can be problematic. Mana burn is a very powerful tool, and hence that's why people run Warrior/Mage/Elemental Shaman/Priest/Paladin, rather than 3 dps + resto shaman and paladin.

I do feel like elemental shamans run into mana issues as the game gets longer and Viper Sting / Mana Burn / casting takes its toll.

If I had to rank classes in 5v5 - Paladin and Warrior are excellent, Mage is great, Priest is nearly good enough to not complain much, Hunter is good, Shaman is okay, and Druid/Rogue are subpar. It's pretty clear rogues need some minor survivability tweaks to make them better (I've been pushing the idea that quick recovery should negate healing debuffs), and druids are just flawed in general, they might work with some specific line-ups but they don't fit well into a standard (Warrior/Paladin/Caster + Healer + DPS) line-up.

This is true, also you need Soul Link. While it isn't the best PvE spec, it is the best PvP spec. The 200+ Resilence and Stamina makes a *big* difference for a Warlock.

While the itemization does not support Destro, however if you have 43 in Demo and 11 in Destro, you can get the Felweave set and sort of play like a Destro Lock, using Searing Pain, Immo, and Shadowburn to blow up your foes (this requires the Felweave gloves to pull off well).

I agree that Druids are the weakest 5v5 healers (mostly b/c you have to do so many things to do well). Using Bear form bash/charge, good use of Cyclone/Roots, and smart use of Swiftmend. This is challenge to pull off these tasks all at once, so that is why Druids are the lowest # of players on the top teams.

We run with myself and a resto shaman, and it works very well. He can do all the things you say, and as long as I can keep him alive, we're good to go. I think resto is perfectly viable if you have a certain team setup. But I wouldn't complain about having an elemental shaman either, the pal/priest/elem shaman team setup is just brutal if played well.