Surviving mages in 2vs2 as a resto shaman
 

I'm wondering how do shamans (resto) survive against a mage in 2 vs 2? I play with a hunter and what essentially always happens against a mage team is I get polied for about 15-16 seconds with a repoly, and he dies in that time without me being able to do anything. Against bad mages I can avoid the poly for a very long time unless I get unlucky (LOS, grounding totem, shock), but a sufficiently good mage will simply come up to me (or invis and walk over to where I am roughly), icelance the grounding totem, frost nova, imp. counter spell, and poly me (I cannot los or shock or recast grounding while silenced/novad). Then usually they blow arcane power, instant POM pyro my hunter friend and finnish him off, this is especially easy for a double dps enemy team. With a healer/mage team sometimes my partner may survive through using all his interrupts (silence/scatter/feign death), but against a double damage team there is nothing he can do at all.

Has anyone tried a full arcane resist set or is there any other good tricks to use? At this point I'd rather fight the dreaded paly/war combo instead, at least against those teams if I manage to interrupt the pally properly and the warrior doesn't interrupt me we have some chance of winning.

It really depends on the mage...

I find that dropping grounding totem very early and dropping again as soon as the icelance kills the first works quite well (this does bug with lag from grounding effect hitting you sometimes). Hopefully that'll eat a counterspell if thats their next move leaving you open to shock the sheep. I 2v2 with a shadow priest so normally can get that dispelled (if they sheep him I just outlast the damage). Remember to purge your shield off them (or better yet ES spell steal if you can.) and just keep em interrupted.

It'll end up as a mana fight 1v1 unless they get a very lucky CS - so searing totem down all the time, water shield and mana spring. Save NS-HW for when they think they've got you as often they don't notice that and blow their cooldowns while you're happily healing to full.

When you both get to low mana- rank one frost shock, searing and melee with firebrand. Polymorph heals you so don't bother healing up past about 6k health if their CS is on cooldown.

One thing to try is regen enough mana to ressurect, and when they run off to drink res your dps buddy and drop tide.

Here's a somewhat situational anti-CC trinket. You could swap it on at the start if you see 1+ Mages I guess?

As a Shaman, if a Mage wants to Polymorph you, he will eventually Polymorph you. I've found Frost/Fire Resist Totems somewhat helpful as well.

Have your hunter harass the mage to prevent a polymorph.

Nova -> Imp CS -> Poly doesn't work against a scattershot, silencing shot, or even enough spell pushback from a pet + shots, and if you break it up the mage just lost 2 important cooldowns.

He doesn't need to be on the mage the entire time, just in the gaps your totem/shocks can't cover, or when the mage goes for a combo like the one above.

Both players need to Pole dance against mages.

If one of you gets sheeped the other just makes circles around the pole messing with their LOS untill the sheep wears off.

It really doesn't take that long for a mage to kill my hunter though. He has about 8.3K hp (unbuffed obviously), which doesn't seem that low to me. Avoiding instant spells with los is rather impossible so the mage will always get in the arcane power POM pyro then fireblast and most likely at least one more fireblast at least. Of course if most of those crit it's game over but even if they don't the hunter will at best barely survive. And this is aside from what the mage's partner may do - if it's another dps class then he really has no chance to speak of to survive those 16 seconds before I can NS him. Unless of course he manages to freezing trap the mage but unless we get very lucky or the mage is really incompetent that doesn't happen. Even with frost/fire resist totems it's rare for him to live through the AP mage outburst in the end. Pole dancing is fairly easy for me to do if the mage decides to poly my hunter instead even with my miserable 6.4K hp, but almost impossible for the hunter.

And yes the hunter can sometimes prevent the mage from polying me but it is very iffy. Silencing shot has a flight time which makes it alot harder to use effectively to stop a specific spell (especially a short one like poly). The mage can have mana shield up to prevent some pushback - after all if I'm polied it's game over in any case, no mana issue. Also, hunters have lots of LOS issues of their own - if I am trying to LOS the mage I will most likely los the hunter as well in many circumstances. I.e. if I run behind a pillar to los the mage and he comes behind me now we're both out of los of the hunter. And yet if I don't los him I can't prevent him from polying me forever.

Don't get me wrong it's not like we don't ever win against mages but it's extremely frustrating being the only healing class without a way out of poly, when a poly on a healer in a 2 vs 2 is essentially an automatic loss. Druids of course might aswell be immune, pallies can use blessing of sacrifice or if they messed that up, shield out of it, and priests while they have fewer options can at least use their pvp trinket to escape the first one and hope the fight is resolved favorably before the diminishing returns reset.

That trinket however is extremely interesting, I'll need to get it :). If it breaks poly it will be great.

That trinket does a lot of damage when you wear it. People have problems ressing when they die wearing it.

"poly on a healer in a 2 vs 2 is essentially an automatic loss"

This is simply not true.

If it's mage + healer, you have almost no chance of being killed if you los the mage. If it's mage + DPS, all you have to do is take your time and poke away at their health and mana pools. As a hunter you have lots of tools you can use to prolong the encounter.

If the mage keeps sheeping the shaman Dimishing returns kicks in, if they sheep you, you heal to full while the shaman plays the same game.

Take your time and pole dance, the longer the match goes the more it tips in your favor.

I wont lie....I dont have a decent second trinket so Violet Badge has actually been helpful against mages who dont get Arcane Focus. Stam + CS/Poly resists.

"He has about 8.3K hp (unbuffed obviously), which doesn't seem that low to me."

Unfortunately 8.3k HP is way too low to be competitive in the 2v2 bracket. Take a gander at the armory profiles of any hunter on a team above 2k rating. They will all have above 10k unbuffed, and most will be above 11k.

Well, I can see how an extra 2K hp would be sufficient for him to survive a mage/healer combo - probably. But it would still be far from sufficient against a mage/dps combo. I am polied for about 15-16 secons - optimally it should really be 18 but a mage cannot afford to let me out for even a second so he'll repoly with a second or two left, meaning a total of 15-16 seconds. So 10K/15sec=666 dps. LOS or no LOS, if a mage + any other dps cannot output 333 dps in a arena situation with all c/ds blown then we shouldn't have issues anyways.

In practice alot of these mages usually have arcane power, pom and pyro so they just do the AP+(trinket)+ pom pyro+fireblast which takes off a healthy 6K or so hp without crits in the first couple seconds of my poly, then finnish him off. Even I as resto can do about 2k damage in 15 seconds spamming frostshock with all +healing gear.

LOS games can usually stop people from getting off casted spells against you unless you are kited but I don't think you'll be able to stop a mage from getting off instant casts unless they are much worse players then you- especially when they have blink and CoC as well. Not to mention that most partners to the mage can either slow/stun the hunter or prolong the CC on me (i.e. kill tremor then fear me as the poly is running out from a warlock/priest).

I guess it will just have to be an arcane resist set if this trinket doesn't pan out.

Step 1: Listen for crackly noise
Step 2: /cast Grounding Totem

..if you can eat a POM-anything it will make your odds of surviving Mages go up 10x.

Not to nitpick, but the "crackly noise" is actually Arcane Power :D


The "voom" sound is POM winding up.


To answer the OP: if you're getting chain sheeped, your hunter teammate needs to just focus on surviving. Use pillars (on both Nagrand and BE), use scatter/trap/silencing shot, and just make to minimize the times open that the mage is able to DPS.

Also, you can work very well on avoiding sheep by playing the pillar game. If the mage gets frustrated and goes to DPS the hunter, you can go and heal (if you get CSed, you and the hunter should engage the pillar hiding strategy). Winning arenas at the high end really is about artifically extending your life expectancy through utilizing every aspect of the arena terrain.

It's ultra important for the hunter to avoid nova and kite like crazy if they have entrapment

Resilience makes a big difference. Cutting 10% from a fireball crit is significant not to mention te 5% less crit anyway.

Since they are arcane/fire they can be trapped which immediately gives the hunter same time to survive.