Because everything else going down to Conc Blow is even more worthless.

Thats a whole lot of points for your own HoJ. Do you find it more necessary than the points in flurry? I feel like anything in prot besides 3/3 TM is pretty...odd.

Yes, I never ran with flurry for more than a few weeks back in S1. My best team is War/Lock/Druid, so I feel that the greater control amounts to more than what is not too large of an increase in damage. If I do spec back, it will be to MS/SS because I'm unwilling to give up TM.

If I do spec back, it will be largely due to the high percentage of time Conc blow fails for whatever reason.

I've been flirting with the idea of giving up TM for 3/5 flurry, but I feel like I'd really miss it. On more than one occasion a quick defensive stance/shield/spell reflect combo has won me an arena match, and it's flat out hilarious to reflect a PoM pyro every once in awhile.

I do some low-end PvE (kara, ZA) in the same spec I PvP with, so that's my reasoning behind going flurry over TM.

I recently took a break before Season 2 ended. I have always favored TM. I feel without the ability to spell reflect instantly from a different stance really plays against you in arena.

What has really confused me, is all of these high rated arena teams for S3, all the warriors have 3 points into Blood Craze. For the past 2 years this talent was laughed at, and still if you do the math, on average an arena Warrior has about 12k hp. 3% of 12k is 360hp. So you get back 360hp not instantly, but over 6 seconds... which is about 60hp per tick. Now this talent still seems worthless to me.

If there is someone who can tell me why Blood Craze is being utilized that would be greatly appreciated.

I play 33/25/3

I love imp slam, SS, SW, and TM. Imp slam is so underrated.

Build rage while keeping MS/HS on your target -> intercept + white attack + imp slam -> MS -> WW -> white attack + imp slam (if white crits ill have the rage). Its such an effective burst combo and I use it after a priest drops pain suppression or something similar.

I won't play without TM ever, in any build.

Blood craze rules. Way better than commanding presence imo, at least for 2s. Maybe not in 5s.

I'll have almost 14000hp buffed with priest or pally buff, so its 400hp in 6 seconds or so. And it keeps happening repeatedly during the fight.

Any thoughts on Warrior/Pally vs Warrior/Pally mirror in 2v2?

If I attack the other warrior I do significantly more damage, which seems better, but their pally can try and sneak away and drink to win the mana war. Should I start on the warrior and then move to the pally partway through?

It doesnt seem to work well for us to just have two warrior vs pally fights because I'm maces and if the other warrior is swords he does much more dmaage (and my stuns dont really help me burn the pally down, he'll be able to get heals off at some point.

We play war pally mirrors depending on what the other team does. If their warrior gets on me (the paladin), my war gets on their paladin. If their war gets on my war, they just attack each other and we have a mana battle. If their paladin tries to get away, just intercept him.

We actually had this discussion about 2 pages ago and I was pretty much in the same camp as you. These guys convinced me that it was worthwhile, now I specced over to it and I wouldn't PvP without it. It's 118-119 a tick for me, and it's up quite often. When I'm doing the PvP daily queueing solo, it's not uncommon for me to end up at the top of the damage charts, AND at the top of the Horde side healing charts. I tallied 42k healing in a 20 minute AB. Granted that some of that was second wind, but Blood Craze is still pulling it's weight in that equation.

I think I ended up giving up 45ish attack power or so with the switch. For as much healing as that talent does, I'd definitely rate it over 45 attack power.

Hey guys.

I've just started playing with a good shaman but we have troubles against a few different setups. Warrior/Paladin, Warrior/Druid, Warlock/Druid.

Any suggestions to help fight these combos? Much apprieated.

Cheers we've found that helpful. Still we do find it heads or tails when fighting them. Our current problem is a retri pally/BM hunter. Now that may sound odd but they kill me in seconds. The rep my shammy, he trinkets, they HoJ him, intimidate then im dead.

I got no clue what we can do to counter this?

See if your shaman can drop a grounding totem for the first Repentance/HoJ, then eat the second stun, and trinket the third to heal you. Other than that, shield/spell refelect and humping pillars are your friend.

Disarm the Ret Paladin and try to kill the pet. A BM hunter without a pet is more or less useless. Also, have your healer at max range and intervene out to him if you get in trouble. It'll buy a few seconds with at least the Ret Pally unable to hit you.

Nevermind

How is he going to bubble? His teammate is a resto shaman, not a holy paladin.

Luckily we managed to hit 1853 rating last night and surpass them so we shouldnt see them again. Thanks for the tips regardless

I had a 2255 2v2 with a shaman pre-2.3 (I switched to a druid for the gladiator push for various reasons).

This almost seems the opposite of what my experience was.

Warrior/Paladin - This team was the hard matchup for us, as a good warrior will do a lot to prevent the windfury advantage, and a paladin is harder to kill than a shaman and will always outlast in a mana battle. Your only hope is to get the paladin down before your shaman does - earth shield is luckily very effective versus warriors and they have no offensive dispel. It's on your shaman to stay alive and drop you WF when he can, and its on you to keep the paladin from getting off heals by rotating pummel/intercepts/intimidating shouts.

Warrior/Druid - Kill the druid. A very good warrior will make this difficult as he'll intercept/hamstring you whenever the druid gets low and has to run to drink - return the favor and let your shaman do the same. Eventually you'll get a burst that lets you kill the druid when his NS/instant roots/bash are down. I found this matchup a lot easier than Warrior/Paladin, especially if you can get your shaman to help you burst the druid down at the right time. Trinket is best used on druid bash when trying to kill a druid. An intercept->slam followed by a mace stun, then MS, another slam and WW can practically drop a druid, fear bomb if the druid roots you out of range and be ready to pummel if they try to cyclone you.

Warlock/Druid - This was the easiest team for us by far. We'd pray to fight this team every time as it's almost a sure victory. First, kill the felhunter. If he sees you and starts summoning a VW right off the bat, see if you can interrupt him. Use bloodlust if necessary, have your shaman shock cyclones if possible, and hamstring the warlock so your shaman can more easily LOS him. Once you destroy the felhunter, have the shaman try to purge the warlock's fel domination. If this succeeds, you stay on the warlock and win the game. If he summons another felhunter, kill it again. If he summons a VW, stay on the lock, interrupt his mana drains, and have your shaman LOS and be as mana efficient as possible. You can easily outlast this team. Kill the VW when it gets low from beating on the lock if possible.

Well yeah your advice might be better, since I never quite got to the numbers you did. I would agree with what you said about the war/pally and lock/druid. However I just am not sure really how you expect to stay on a druid. Even if you were left alone (and you won't be) its pretty damn hard to stay on a resto druid with all the outs. Sure if you're mace spec you might get a lucky proc and nail him in caster form but I don't see this setup working too well for the shaman/warrior due to the CC the druid has.

Any thoughts on Warrior + Disc/Holy Pirest + Holy Pally 3v3?

Outlast game, you stay alive, and mana burn their healer until theyre OOM and then you can kill them.

I played that last season. It's reasonably strong but it lacks any offencive ability which makes good drain teams very hard. You also tend to lose badly against heavy physical damage makeups with a dispell. Without that 2nd DPS it's very hard to put the opposition on the backfoot so you'll find your healers having to scramble around doing nothing but keeping everyone alive and out of CC much more often than you'd like. Honestly I very, very rarely cast manaburn in this setup until the mopup phase. Any team with a rogue will make it essentially impossible until you've already won (getting away form the rogue is 90% of the fight). Against druids you will rarely ever get the opportunity to burn them as they're either LOSing or are in bear recieving the beatdown. Against drain setups it's far more important to protect your own mana pool than to knock down theirs. Really the only teams we beat via mana burns were mirror matches or warrior+paladin+druid.

I did some test runs last week before starting a new team with war/disc priest/resto druid and it works well enough at low levels. Id guess that war/priest/pally would work im a similar fashion