Rugrud

Hello,
i've searched, but i haven't found a thread about resto shamans in arena...

Just let me say that i'm more pve oriented than PVP, in fact i've juste began arena a month ago or so, first in 2v2, now also in 3v3 and 5v5, and i'm in the 1500-1650 range depending on the team size.

Seeing my level, i'm not expecting to be full arena set of the last season, i'm more or less leaning to 2-3 items per season. My question goes in these condition to the choice between the healing set and the elem set.

Being a PVE healer, i have acces to a good set for healing (complete kara and gruul, progressing in SSC and VR), something aroung 1700 + heal.

I also have a "elem" gear for farming essentially, with good blue items and some epic from héroic and kara when noone wanted them.

I was thinking at taking some elem items for the following reasons:
- I find the elem gloves to be really powerfull. +5m on shocks is really usefull for CS and slowing with FS.
- Having taken the elem gloves and seeing my points inflow, i'd like a second one to have the bonus set, and that will be it for the season ^^

More generally speaking, do you think it's worth it to sacrifice some +heal to have half +damage/heal for shocks, elem items often coming more with +scrit instead of + MP5, which can be more usefull in arena?

What i do is use my PVE healing set, replacing the gloves by the elem arena ones, and using some elem epic stuff (legs from heroic, shield from nightbane...) using +stamina on them (wheras my PVE shield has + int for instance).

So here it is for the stuff question, do you go full healing stuff or mix it with some +dam pieces?

Some other question:
- Do you prefer to use max rank ES/FS, or to use rank 1 just for the effect and saving mana?
- what do you use as "default" for totems? i'm using tremor/grounding/poison cleansing/frost resist-searing, and siwtching to earth bind if no fear in the opposing team, and WF if the warrior is there in our 5v5 team. (me +hunt as 2V2, same + warlock as 3v3, and same + Priest/Elem shaman/Feral druid/MS warrior as 5v5 depending on who is online...).
- Any tip than can be usefull?

Thanks in advance

 

wow

Ideally you want:

2/5 resto Gladiator season 1
2/5 resto Gladiator season 2
1/5 elemental season 2 (Gloves)

the only damage gear you should be using should be the gloves once you get an ideal set of gear.

what are you stats using your current pvp gear with the damage pieces exactly? healing/resil/hp/mp5

I use rank 1 fs/es always with the highest rank on a shift binding for the same key for finishing people, duelling, etc
totems all depend on whos on the other team, you can always see it as you go in. vs stealth teams though it's always the totems you listed up front; grounding to absorb a cyclone

http://ctprofiles.net/95562

 

Teewee

I play in a 2 warrior 3 healer (healers are random out of a group of 2 shaman, 2 paladins, and a druid) so my totem choices might differ from yours.

Most times when I shock I use max rank, since it is either a healer and I'm interrupting his heals, or frost shock to slow down someone who is being chased by our warriors. If I'm using max rank earth shock, it gives them an extra 1kish damage to heal through, and if I'm using frost shock, it helps kill the unit that the warriors are focusing down. If I'm oom and the other healers are not, I either try to drink or just purge/rank1 shock for utility.

Totems depend on who we are playing. Look at the classes and drop the "counter" totems for that class, like tremor/grounding for warlocks. If I'm dropping grounding and it is being eaten up or destroyed right away I'll try to toss down a rank 1 windfury while the grounding cooldown is up, to give the warriors that extra burst. If they are quick on destroying totems and theres not a chance for a fear, sometimes I'll try to drop a stoneclaw and hope that they are stupid and get stunned.

Also the spell I cast more then anything else is purge. I tab+purge like crazy trying to dispel everything, if the warriors are after someone I try to follow them around and spam purge on that unit to dispel freedom and shields.

 

• Gwaihir

As an arena shaman, your biggest problems are always going to be mana, specifically, running out of it. No other healer can spam their mana pool dry quite as fast as we can in an arena, so plan around that.

I use full healing gear, no elemental stuff. If I have time to help damage between spamming purge, totems, poison cleanses, and heals, then it's an easy win for us anyhow. The most damage I will ever do an in arena is fire nova totem + max rank frost shock to help finish someone off, if it's gonna be close. When you have someone at 5% hp and they catch a BoP/a healer is midcast on them, you always wanna purge the bop/shock the heal rather than going for a frost shock to try and whittle their last bit of HP off yourself.

There are a few things you need: A focus frame with a nice fat casting bar, and a macro to rank one earth shock your focus. This will greatly ease your ability to control opposing healers. Also, always keep spamming purge (Unless it's on a lifebloom druid). You can eat all sorts of good buffs, notably the paladin buff that grants them 2 second holy lights. I also make a macro to purge my focus so I can have two purge targets under my fingers fast, for when a BoP or BoF gets thrown out that I need to eliminate fast

Lastly, using grounding totems, of course throw it out before you engage to get the timer going, but during a fight wait for a good time to use it rather than just spamming each cooldown. Spamming it is just going to make it Icelance bait, waiting to drop it during a cast means you either gain time as the enemy caster breaks his cast to destroy the totem first, or you end up having the totem eat a real cast time frostbolt/shadowbolt/fireball for some serious mitigation.

 

korndawg64

Does anyone know of any good Resto Shaman spreadsheets? I can't find any. Thank you all for the discussion on this topic. I have mana issues along with getting the focus down. I agree with everything discussed so far.

 

GoG

Incoming newb question, but, can you still buy season 1 gear?

Gog the Shaman
Ferall the Warrior
Orthrus the Warlock

 

Xhunter

Yes, until the end of Season 2...

 

Johnald

Try to to time grounding to eat a CS.

I like to drop grounding right before I start a heal.

Here's my checklist basically:

At the start of the match, just chain purge the assigned main target. You don't want to be purging trash buffs when the time comes to get that BoP or BoF (and get yelled at by your warrior). Try to resnare the target after a BoF purge.

Play it like a priest. Hide/abuse los, etc. Don't play too offensively (running in and purging next to your warrior) and set yourself to be a target.

Coordinate your interrupts w/ your teammates. You don't want to both interrupt the same heal.

Try to twist wf/grounding.

Try to purge the freedom on the warrior.

If your FF'd teammate has freedom on, try dropping an earthbind for him. Quickly redrop tremor if needed.

 

Odinn

Im currently Restro Shaman focusing on 2v2 Arena.

The main problem I'm having is surviving Rogues. I can never seem to get away from them or kite them. They are stacking poisons on me faster than I can cure and interupt over 50% of my heals. I have 9.3k life unbuffed and 275 resil.

Any advice would be much appreciated

 

Xhunter

My alt is a Resto Shaman, 255 resilience 10.3kHP 9.7kAC for reference. You have the stats to survive for quite awhile against a rogue. Find a rogue guildie thats a pretty good pvper and duel him over and over, trying to get away/survive/kite, until it becomes second nature what to do(When to drop poison cleansing, earthbind, strife away and Frost Shock, trinket, etc..).

 

• Gwaihir

You should not have too many issues surviving rogues, so long as they are not mace specced. If it's maces, you may as well throw up your hands, because unless the rogue plain sucks or is playing with 600+ latency, you are not getting to cast anything after one NS heal. You have earth shield and poison cleansing which will all do their work while you wait out the initial stunlock, after that just keep trying to heal early and trust that you have enough hp to last between kick/kidney shot cooldowns. Keep earthbind down and spam cure poison on yourself in addition to your poison totem to keep crippling/mind numbing off- As soon as crippling is off frost shock for good measure and get some space. You can usually get enough space for an easy lesser healing wave. If it's a dagger rogue, keep spinning to face them and make it hard to backstab/mutilate you.

 

fail

To get away from rogues I do the following which usually gets me away from them:

1)drop earthbind

2)use trinket on the kidney shot if the duration is longer than 3 seconds. Save your trinket if it's longer than 3 because they want you to bust out of an early one, a 4/5 second kidney shot will follow.

3) Start spamming poison cleaning totem and running away. You will eventually get away from them as long as they are snared via earthbind.

4) The rogue will have to blow sprint to catch up to you.

5) Stop, reapply earthbind, and just heal yourself until sprint wears off. Continue to drop poison totem until you're free from them.

 

Tutanka

Cure poision is better to use then the poision totem. By using the single target dispell you wil get the 5 second pulse as well as the cure. Make sure Poision totem is down, but dont spam it.

 

Nott

Last piece of advice, always cast lesser healign wave with a rogue on you. I see way too many shamans try to cast the longer one, and I can almost always stop it in time. Even if I have 0 energy, it will recover in time.

 

Rowdy

I am starting to get a dedicated set of gear for PVP now and have been looking at the helm and shoulder enchants. I have been wondering if maybe its better to get defence rating rather then they mana regen on shoulders and the little amount of healing on the helm.
I seem to more often then not be the first person targeted, and i am wondering if a little extra defence(i think its 30 between those 2 enchants) will make any difference or if i should stick to healing and mana regen.

 

subscience

[Post edited]

Ok, after reading through some of the posts, it seems like people are having trouble forcing the kite on Mace Rogues / Warriors due to their unexpected stuns.

[Note- I'm not the healer on my 5v5 team, but we run a 1 healer setup so minimizing damage is vital to our flimsy survivability. I often end up with a Warrior or Rogue on me as you can imagine and putting a stop to their melee is vital.]

Here's a few things I've learned from playing as Restoration in season 1 and now Elemental in season 2:

1. LoS is your best friend. Depending on what bracket you play in, many times the Mace Rogue / Warrior is accompanied by various bolts, arrows, shadowy cloud things and blue lasers. It's bad enough that you're getting locked down, but you have to deal with a ton of ranged damage. If your healer should be near a pillar or some other LoS obstacle, you can quickly call for a BoP/F (both work fine) and break the ranged LoS immediately. This will completely halt all ranged damage (think about how many Shatter combos and Chain Lightnings you've taken). When you're getting that BoP/F remember to drop an Earthbind immediately followed by Groundings to stop incoming Dispels / magical damage. We usually stick our healer behind an obstacle and anyone who's being focused runs to him, breaking LoS on ranged damage and giving the healer cover from Counterspells, Mana Burns, and other Paladin-unfriendly things.

2. Don't waste your PvP trinket. The immediately reaction of a lot of people when KSed / Intercepted is to use their trinket and attempt to kite and minimize damage. The problem is, there's a lot of unpredictable things that can happen in the few steps it takes to get out of melee range- Shiv, Mace stuns, Intimidating Shouts, etc. So in order to effectively use your trinket, you need to be able to prevent your aggressor from being able to react quickly. If you have a Warrior teammate (and, c'mon now, when's the last time you saw a Shaman without a Warrior? Nuvas I guess <_<), have him save his Intercept stun for when you catch a BoF / use your trinket. "Rogue just full-duration KSed me" or "Intercept on me" followed by a "Intercept now!" gaurantees that your aggressor takes a 3s non-dispellable stun and snare (except through BoP) while you can immediately PvP trinket out, Grounding Totem to prevent any magical snares, and run your ass around a pillar and play the pillar dancing mini-game with the melee.

3. Frost Mages are your best, best, best, BEST friends. Ask your Frost Mage if he can save 1 AE snare for defensive purposes. When that Warrior or Rogue is in a position out of their support's LoS, ask your Mage to lay down an AE snare. Get out of melee range and start booking it and hopefully their support won't be able to dispel / BoF due to LoS. We've kept Rogues, Warriors, and Rogues and Warriors caught behind pillars for 10s+ with this. The tomb in Lordaeron, the two pillars and ramps in BEM, and, obviously, the pillars in Nagrand work as terrific snare-dispel blockers.

4. Getting any amount of space beyond melee range is important. Even if you're both snared at 50%, the Rogue/Warrior won't be able to touch you as long as you keep on running (and their Intercept is on CD, but if you're using LoS, they'll be hard pressed to get into minimum range). Unless it's dire, keep on moving and support your team with instants (and keep Water Shield up!) like AE Poison dispels, Groundings (if you set your Focus to a DPS target, you can time Groundings very precisely from nearly anywhere since it's a group buff- Great for stopping Cyclones), and Shocks.

Some of this is probably basic, but it took me a helluva lot of games to learn some of this and I hope someone can glean some knowledge.

 

Myul

[Libram of Constitution] -> + 100 HP for your head & [Fortitude of the Scourge] are the only non-tbc interesting enchants for pvp for you as an shaman, beside the +heal ones. +Defense won't help you against (caster) damage pikes and with stacking resilence items you regulary will really want the extra +heal to have a balanced hp/res/+heal/regen setup.

 

Grimfury

I am a resto shaman and i currently have teams in all three brackets. My biggest downfall is usually when a warlock or rogue get ahold of me. Currently i am still working on finishing out my pvp set, i have 1 season 1 piece and 1 season 2 piece and i'm currently a couple hundred points away from another season 2 piece. I guess what my question was, and it's very general, is what are some good benchmarks for a shaman as far as hit points and mana go for the arenas. I have 4 piece tier 4 and all equivalent level epic gear plus some 25 man gear from Serpentshrine filling in the spots that i don't have arena gear on so I know that i'm sitting pretty strong on mana and plus healing but i'm only sitting around 8k on hitpoints unbuffed. Besides that, the only other question i have is that i would like some pointers on how to deal with warlocks, i am really horrible against that class especially. Thanks for your help in advance.
Grimfury

 

Teewee

The benchmarks are hard to say just because it differs greatly from a 1600-1700ish rating to a 2200+ rating. I started to feel comfortable when I hit 300 resil, 10k HP, and 12k armor, and at the time, our rating was about 2000-2100 for season 2.

About rogues, if you can't tell otherwise, if you have tons of poisons applied it's probably a mutilate rogue. An easy way to piss that rogue off is to put your back to a wall, or constantly turn in circles, so they can't easily get behind you. You can spin while removing poisons, and while it doesn't make you instantly win, it helps a lot. Also, if they aren't mutilate spec, watch out for blade flurry, if they have it, make sure that you aren't near your friend(s) so you both don't get hit.

For warlocks you gotta make sure you have grounding/tremor down at all times, and try to line of sight them whenever possible.

 

Winfurae

Good thread.

I myself am a heavy pve oriented enhancement shaman. However I massively fail at playing enhancement in arena and find it very frustrating. Since I would love to get S3 weapons for optimal raid dps and general coolness, I decided to spec back and forth between resto and enhancement. I only play in the 2v2 bracket where I team up with an amazing combat rogue that's wearing full merciless and all the veteran pieces.

My gear is not amazing. I am mainly wearing heroic blue's and a few Kara epics that I picked up along the way when no one else wanted them. I sit at around 8k health unbuffed, paired with 1300 healing/100mp5 and about 50 resilience. Not great at all.

We had our first go this week and managed to win 12 games quite easily, however we did lose 4 and ended up with 1616 rating.

This is the spec I use:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I didn't take improved chain heal cause well I never use it in arena. I put the points in nature's guidance instead as I use rank 1 earthshock to interupt heals.

For enchant/gems, what should we focus on? Should we go with stam/resilience gems, healing/int/mp5 or just blindly throw solid star of elune's in any socket we meet? Should we use stamina enchants on bracers and gloves, or go with +healing/mp5? I find myself go OOM very fast against any team that has a paladin (we faced a paladin/rogue team and I was oom when the paladin was at 60% mana). Should I get 30 int on my mainhand or get 81 healing?

 

SectorX

3/5 Glad Season 2 Resto
2/5 Glad Season 2 Ele

Is the ideal setup a arena resto shaman. Season 2 ele gear has almost as much + dmg as Season 1 has healing and you get to keep the +35 resi bonus on both sets of merciless pieces.

 

Darkmantle

Season 1 gear will be available by paying with honor from the normal pvp vendors once S3 hits.

 

Teewee

I would probably go for +stam and +resil gems, while keeping any socket bonuses that are helpful. You need to be able to survive, you have enough +heal for being able to heal your rogue it seems.

When you shock, just make sure you are using rank 1 earth shock if you are running low on mana. I'd try to interrupt the other healers if possible, to help out your rogue with killing his target.

And for your weapon I'd go after the +81 healing.

 

• Avair

Seriously, this has nothing to do with you as a player, and everything to do with the fact that enhancement shaman might be the worst of all 27 possible character specs for Arena. Other than massively outgearing your opponents, there really isn't much you can do right now with a spec that lacks survivability,