Not sure if this has been mentioned before but I used a mod called Afflicted for this. It will tell me when someone has used a cooldown and how long until it is back up. Especially useful for Pummels/Kicks/Counterspells.

Just quoting myself here to point out my error. Surefooted provides melee hit rating not spell hit rating. I'd still argue against boars speed. Either go full stamina or consider another.

Well you're looking at vitality/full stam vs. Boar's speed. +3 stam vs. Minor speed increase and an enchant better suited for an outlast strategy which resto shaman don't really play. Seems like a very minor quibble.

It likely is minor, it just seems a waste to do Boars as you'll get very little from it, whereas on other classes it's the default. I'd also argue against the notion that shaman cant play outlast effectively. Now that we have instant ghost wolf the whole 2v2 is either your shaman as a .5 dpser, making you a burst team, or using ghost wolf to get peels and drink, making you a druid-like outlast team.

I assume you mean your medallion, not battlemasters? I don't see how you could survive without being able to trinket a cc against any rogue team. Also, almost all 2dps teams are rogue/x and almost none are warrrior/x. So I'm not sure what you mean by MS in this case.

As a general principle, try to separate the other team so your warrior is pressuring the caster and making his life difficult while you LoS the damage and tank the rogue. The warrior can always intercept --> hamstring the rogue to buy you a few free seconds. If you get in trouble, first move should be to trinket a kidney shot, then NS heal, then battlemaster's. Try to save NS in case your warrior gets low, a good warrior should be able to solo a spriest/mage/lock with WF and lust and a 4k heal, but if you use your ns early on yourself, you're going to have to try to cast heals on the warrior, which is A) easier to stop, possible letting your warrior die, and B) forces you into LoS of the caster for more time than you would like. Use bloodlust defensively, taking advantage of the fact that it makes you really hard to interrupt.

Minor speed increase is huge, I make sure I have it for every set of gear I wear. There's plenty of time in an arena match where you're running and not in ghost wolf form. Like probably 90% of the match, in between every purge/shock/totem global when you're running, whenever you're silenced, etc. Maybe I just don't ghost wolf enough, but I'd say the vast majority of an arena game I'm running around not in form.

Besides, the tradeoff is what, +3 stam or -9 stam +5 mp5? That's not much. There was a thread way back when that showed minor run speed to be the most important dps enchant for raiding, since it would allow you to get in position faster after a movement phase. I have the same philosophy for pvp, except it's probably even more important as being able to round the corner and los a cyclone that much faster can win you a game.

If you're trying to outlast via drinking, a couple extra mp5 is likely irrelevant anyway. Also, instant ghost wolf is nice and all but it doesn't help alot with hamstring/intercept or crippling w/ 5 woundings, deadly throw, shadowstep spam etc. All that would probably be alot more manageable with toughness, granted, I just can't find enough stuff to ditch from resto, tho.

Toughness is required for serious 2v2/3v3. Otherwise the warrior/rogue can just sit on you all day and you'll die.

I don't play 3v3 that seriously, only barely (or at least barely by the AJ calc) hitting glad for my ret pally friend, but in 2v2 I can say that toughness is certainly not required.

It does make life easier against warrior/rogue teams, which are the majority, but only if they attack you. The second you face a rogue/priest that rides your warrior, or a warrior/druid that plays defensively, or any warlock or hunter team, those points in toughness are a waste. Against double dps, it's more or less a wash, depending on who they target, and even if they do target the shaman, the extra healing power can be more useful than forcing the rogue to shiv more often.

It's most handy vs. warrior/shaman mirrors, and warrior/rogue + druid teams that tunnel vision the shaman.

Generally speaking, at a high level of play, you won't get away anyway. If a warrior or rogue wants to sit on you, they will unless your warrior gets some lucky procs, no matter whether you have toughness or not. It just forces them to hamstring / shiv more often, so you take less damage.

Is it reasonable to expect to have any amount of success running a shaman/rogue setup? It seems that any team with a warrior (which is a good portion of them) is a severe uphill battle but in contrast we seem to do decently against caster teams.

On a semi-related note, we played a handful of games against a double rogue team and I couldn't for the life of me, do anything to stay alive long enough for my Rogue to kill one of them. Should I just stand in place and try to heal through their interrupts or make a more concerted effort to try and get away?

Against 2 rogues I'd advice staying put, using heroism and just healing through, while your rogue partner sits on one of the rogues. Try a fake cast whenever one is stunned, to get heals off.

Warning: this is experience on lower ratings, where rogues aren't that painful just yet.

Rshaman/rogue can do okay- there is a strat guide on AJ about it even. I'd actually say its stronger than running shaman/warrior in the middle brackets (1600-2000) purely because it does much better vs pretty much every double dps team. Warlock+healer and hunter+healer are in your favour, rogue+healer varies- priest is easier than druid.

Most decent warrior/druid will wreck you unless you surprise them, ditto pally/warrior. Shaman/warrior depends on whether the warrior is swords or maces. Oh your rogue has glaives which normally increases the viability of the combo, not sure how todays patch will change that.

Oh yea I only ran it to ~1950 in the last few weeks of s3, and got 1700 first week of s4 without a loss. Haven't had a chance to play since(been doing 2s with other people including a different less geared rogue).

As far as beating double rogue. Especially as an orc you should be able to tank them with es. Use your racial to clear wound and then NS a big heal followed by vial/battlemasters.

I would argue for Boar's Feet because like others mentioned I do find myself running around plenty. Run behind a pillar for LoS or running into range to interrupt their healer etc.

I had an idea (that I later saw briefly mentioned on AJ forums) to run a Resto/Frost/Marks 3v3 team. I think capability of the team to CC is very strong (stronger if I were a druid but alas), we have a mana drain option, and burst potential.

What I would like to hear is what our potential weaknesses (I would assume not having a magic cleanse would be a big one) would be, any pointers against generic team makeups (double melee of any sort, etc.), and what I can expect from a Marks hunter in PvP (as I have little experience with them).

This comp would be better off with the hunter as BM....and you just burst people down. Shaman are not the optimal healer for a drain/cc style team. I have tried the comp with the hunter as both marks and BM and BM just plain works better.

Can anyone point me in the direction of some quality videos of Warrior/Shaman for 2s? I've checked Arena Junkies and I can only find one there and it's extremely difficult to find a current video off WarcraftMovies without having a premium membership.

Any help is much appreciated.

Look up GC's videos. There is also a good new one out called Slashbored.

I've run Enhance since my shammy was born, but I'm not getting anywhere in arenas, especially since the RL friends I do 3s with are a Ret Pal and MS War. However, as Resto, I think we'll have a shot to move up a little bit; atleast to 1600.

Most of the talent advice is pre-2.4 and with the GW/Toughness changes, its no longer applicable today. 0/20/41 seems like a popular choice.. somethin like this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is the best I've come up with.

EDIT: I found an answer to my previous question,
So my new question is, once my armory updates and you all can see, what's the best progression for gear? Is it still wise to grab two pieces of elemental (s1 gloves, s2 chest) and the resto resto (s4 gloves, s3 when i have pts, and s2 the rest)?

I've only been doing resto for the last 3 or 4 weeks (was elemental prior to that) but I'll try to answer your questions. Basically my advice for speccing is to try a bunch of different specs and find out what works best for you and your partners. Your first few weeks are probably going to be a painful learning experience.

If melee are jumping on you from the start and focusing you down most of the time then I'd spec into toughness and try to kite them around. If instead they focusing one of your partners most of the time and your healing isn't sufficient to keep them up, then you may want to go to a 0/9/52 spec to increase your healing throughput.

Within resto, the big question is whether to get mana tide or not. It takes 6 talent points to get (which is a big cost, especially for a toughness build) and it can get killed pretty easily. With a low gear level, chances are you are going to die before you run OOM anyway, so you may want to take that into consideration.

Gear-wise, I don't think the additional +35 resil from the elemental 2-piece bonus is worth losing the 1.5 seconds off grounding totem from the resto pieces. Absorbing a polymorph or cyclone or root will win more matches than 35 resil imo. Honestly I don't think there's a one-size-fits all progression strategy. I tend to hate 'wasting' honor points, so I tend to buy pieces that I think I won't replace for awhile (i.e. pieces that the s4 version of requires a high rating). It all depends on how much AV you can stand though.

With regards to gemming, what do people feel is the optimal gem for a slot (regardless of socket colour). I've seen players favouring pure healing, healing + mp5, as well as healing + int.

I assume that, as long as you are not playing long turtle games often, int is preferable to mp5 due to a larger mana pool and a boosted mana tide, and possibly the ability to drink sometimes.

edit: Also can anyone point me in the direction of a decent write up of general tips and strategies for a shadowplay team, I'm trying to put one together.

I have run Rogue/Shammy exclusively since S1 (Shammy is a close friend and guildie). We sat in the 1800-1900 bracket almost all of S3 but have barely had time to play this season (60 games total over 2 weeks I think). Thus far we are stuck around 1600 (which we consider terrible) due to the even greater concentration of War/Druid than in S3. Our win rate is 85% against non-warrior teams... and we're at 52% wins (as opposed to 65% last season). This should tell you that just about HALF the teams we've fought have been War/Druid, yes, it's that bad. We had a few losses to good rogue/mage teams, and we are very out of practice (took a month off pvp), but the real story is just that War/Druid plagues the 1500-1700 bracket in my battlegroup. If you think it's as bad in yours, I'd advise against Shammy/Rogue.

The key of the success of shadowplay besides assuming your warlock and shadowpriest are good dotting and switching target very well, coordination of attacks and cc's is you being extremly offensive dropping some LB and CL or even NS+CL, must have also max earth shock rank as an attack, you want to push them as well not just interrupting.
Specially against 2 healers team you want to go all out instead of playing defensive otherwise your team will lose because it would become a mana battle and as you have guessed shadowplay is a mana based team.

Hi All,

Here to share a sad story, feel free to mock my gear/rating/whatever, took so much as resto shaman I can take a lot more
Read a lot of this thread (not all I admit) and I'm still as clueless and helpless as I always been. I'm playing a resto shaman and recently started to do a few arenas with a few rl friends in both 2v2 and 3v3. Now we're all wearing pretty much full or close s1/s2 gear, honor gear, in bg Misery Europe (my char is Thickleather on Kazzak eu).

Problem is a very high loss ratio. No arena experience fo rneither of us. We're (recently) sl/sl lock, ms warrior, feral druid, warrior doesn't count since he has only like 5 pvp items so he's killed by anyone (I easily beat him in duel). So after a few matches we're at 13xx ratings.
Interestingly most success with these guys I had in pair with the feral druid, 5-5 first week and 3-2 last week when I played with him. Is this normal? I thought a lock should be more successful and I can't hear much from feral druids in arenas. Quite often he kills the other healer (even palas) while I try to run or simply tank the other dps. We even beat 2 rogue team (yuppee) well they were crap and I almost died but just always :p
I hate it when I know I need to improve and don't know what;s wrong. Are we doomed to 1200-1300 just because of the gear lvl / lineup? Or we're doing something terribly wrong. I thought locks should be decent in pair with us but the guy isn't doing great, I don't know what is he doing just either him or me dies before 1 of the enemy.
Not talking of 3v3 where we tried something like them 2 burst 1 healer down and always we died before that primary (damn, why) even if they weren't really focusing on 1 (like usually 1 dps was on me so I can't heal). We did 9-1 in 3v3 in 10 trial matches (we still spend time in AVs, respeccing a little etc so we don't play a lot of matches).

From BG experience and a few duels which might not be the same to my great surprise it seemed to me that I'm much better off playing offensively, like doing a real 1v1 against rogue/warrior/hunter for example can be relatively even, as in with difficulty and luck but I can kill some of them. If I play defenmsively (tank dps) that's not good, these classes all destroy me (or kill me slowly, depends).

So should I just charge into the other group and bring a small hell (reall small but ehm) on them by shocking etc and hope we live till we kill someone and then start to heal? No idea. Any feedback / idea would be greatly appreciated.

thx