Winfurae

I got my warrior for that. Believe me, when you're used to a warrior wearing 400 resilience paired with a mooncleaver, there's nothing worse than playing an enhancement shaman. Charge and intercept are just that good.

Anyway.

I've resocketed my gear today with mostly 12 stam gems. I've also placed a 8 stam thing on my gloves, going to replace healing on bracers with stam as well. Should have about 1k more hp the next set of arena games.

What do you guys think is the perfect trinket setup? I got the luxury of having the choice between alot of them:

Timelapse Shard - Items - World of Warcraft
Medallion of the Alliance - Items - World of Warcraft
Alembic of Infernal Power - Items - World of Warcraft
Scarab of the Infinite Cycle - Items - World of Warcraft

Now obviously I am going to want to wear the Medallion. But what about the 2nd slot? The Timelapse shard has amazing stamina and resilience, the Alembic has a really good proc which helps with our mana problem, and the Scarab (especially combined with Heroism) is amazing to heal through lots of dps.

I'm leaning towards the Timelapse Shard and Medallion.

 

TheSorcerer

I have an restoration shaman alt myself - actually I switched him to my new main char just a few weeks ago. I arena with him aswell and are around 1,8k-1,9k rating in all 3 brackets currently. I have 3/5 s2 gear (just started late this season) and all together go with about 10k hp and 270 resilience. For trinks I have medallion of the horde and the compass from underbog heroic, but might be switching to talisman of the horde in that slot soon.

Personally I never had problems with rogues, not in duels nore in the arena. Only if paired with heavy range dps like mages, locks or hunters I fear rogues for the ability to make you feel absolutely helpless against the attacks of their partners (cannot protect yourself well against frostbolt shatters or soulfires with shocks or grounding totem or stand upon a hunter if your stunlocked).

However, personlly I think theres 3 points you should be aware of in the arena if you want to be competetive.

First thing is you should know your opponents. What is each class an their most common specs for arena capable of doing? Where lie their strengths and where their weaknesses? What do you need to be prepared for and what is unlikely to happen? Duelling alot will greaty help you learn this type of stuff. Also talking to guildmates / friends / arena partners about how they play their class in arena will help.
Second is your movement. LoS is your biggest friend. Ever asked yourself how to beat a discipline priest in 2v2 in razoredge arena ontop of the bridge? Fact is, it's hard and you should move beneith the bridge to be able to out-los him on stuff like manaburn. Watch where your opponents are moving keep out of LoS, use obstacles and make it hard for your opponents to get you. Those mages will hate you for keep jumping over the gravestone in Lordaeron.
However, if LoS is your biggest friend it can be your biggest obstacle. This is the third thing you have to learn and what I'm currently still learning. After all purging, shocking, los'ing, etc, you're still a healer and your arena partners depend on you. Something that will start happening when you are just about to learn how to position yourself good out of los of your opponents is, that your warrior teammate will follow the opponent's discipline priest around the pillar on the other side of the arena, you lose los on him and the deep affi lock's dots are ticking hard on him. At this point the match is close to be lost. Either you move out of behind your own pillar, over to the one where your warrior and the priest have disappeared behind and propably get feared and/or death coiled by the lock or watch how your warrior will die to dots. The third lesson is to learn to play together. Not everyone by his own, but beeing aware of where your teammates are standing, what their strategy is and when you might be able to help them in their strategy. Applying intercept stuns and hs or frostnova snares on opponent dps to help your healers survive should be a common task for your arena partners and yourself.

After all theorycrafting the besst thing to do is to practice, so go do some arena matches

 

Teewee

This is what I would do. Scarab is a lot better now with the spellcasting haste buff, and the Alembic could potentially help you with mana problems. But you need Medallion for arena, and with your current health and resilience, you're going to want the extra stamina and resilience from the Timelapse.

 

Winfurae

So I've upgraded my gear by quite a bit, am now sitting at around 9000 health unbuffed, but still only about 65 resilience.

Played some games with my rogue again, we managed to get to 1705 rating this week. Our goal is to get 1850 before the patch so we know that we can do it, and try to get it again in next season, so we can buy the S3 weapons.

We seem to lose about every game against any team that has a decent geared/skilled frost mage. Especially if they are specced for the water elemental, their burst is insane. Especially if they are paired with another dps class (like a rogue, we lost about 4 games in a row against frostmage/rogue), I seem to die within seconds. I've tried just about anything to stay alive, dropping grounding totems right before a heal, but they will either ice lance it or it absorbs a water bolt from the elemental instead of the counterspell. Them spellstealing my earthshield doesn't help.


When I started doing arena, I assumed I would have lots of trouble with warlocks, but they are not as hard for me as I thought they would. I usually tell my rogue at the start to go and kill the felhunter (it dies really fast) which gives us a huge advantage. If we somehow can't kill the felhunter, it's still doable but very hard. A little trick I've found when fighting warlocks: before you want to do your NS heal, cast something silly like water shield. The felhunter will automatically eat this and whatever the spell is called will be on cooldown. If you don't do this, the felhunter will eat your NS before you can get it off, which can lead to some interesting verbal outcomes on ventrilo...

Any advice on how to beat teams with frost mages would be appreciated.

 

wilfan

What are your thoughts on Darkmoon Card: Vengeance for the second trinket slot? Especially compared to Timelapse Shard - is 24 res. (0.6%) worth more than 14 STA? I'm sure that damage bonus on the Vengeance is practically irrelevant (in effect 10 damage per strike).

 

Winfurae

Probably would still use the Timelapse Shard, seeing its a really good balance between the 2 most important stats for arena (stam and resi).

Plus to be perfectly honest with you, I can't be arsed spending hundreds of gold on it.

 

Quantity

This is just untrue. Any skilled player can successfully play an enhancement shaman. For instances,

http://http://www.wowarmory.com/char...an&n=Tsalrioth

It can be done, it just takes a massive amount of skill and coordination. The setup they play is Priest, Warrior, Paladin, Enhancement Shaman, and Hunter. It's a very frustrating setup to deal with that is very different from playing against the 2345 or mage/warlock teams.

 

• Avair

So to support your theory of 'any skilled player' you link an enhancement shaman with nearly full T6 gear? How does that refute my claim of 'You must massively outgear your opponents'. And his team mates are pretty much all full S2/BT geared as well.

I don't mean to take away from this players' accomplishments, but I would say his is probably rather the exception rather than the rule. If he's doing well, it's in spite of his class, not because of it. He is probably a very good player, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't be better off as, say, a rogue in arena rather than enh shaman.

You mention that 'it just takes massive amount of skill and coordination'. What specifically do you mean by that?

Edit: Nevermind, its probably best not to answer this here, as this is a resto thread, and I'm already guilty of shitting it up with enhancement questions. We should continue this discussion where it belongs.

http://elitistjerks.com/f38/t13634-s...pe_choice_2v2/

 

Quantity

He uses full Merciless and honor pieces in the arena. If he doesn't wear 300+ resilience, he gets dominated. I have access to full Black Temple DPS gear, and have most of it, yet I wear MAYBE one piece in 5v5. It's simply not worth it as any class anymore - every class (including warriors now) needs 300+ resilience to survive.

 

Winfurae

Exceptions make the rule.

Or maybe I am just bad?

Anyway I believe this was a thread about resto shamans in arena, let's keep it that way.

 

• Avair

I will avoid further derailment of this regarding enhancement, but I will talk about PvP and PvE gear for new players. More specifically, what I will refer to as:

The First Mover Advantage
Back at the start of Season 1, I played as a newly leveled Resto shaman, with a rogue partner who had decent kara gear. Neither one of us had any great battleground gear, but because we started very early, we were able to get up to around a 2k rating in 2v2, which despite the low gains from the early 2v2 bracket, gave us a good amount of points. The point is, by starting during the 'blank slate' period it was very easy to get a good rating with a set of scrapped up high stamina blues.

I take a break for a few months, fast forward several months to middle of season 2, and when I return, I start playing my rogue (who I leveled up to 70) in Arenas. Now, I'm well behind the power curve. My scrapped up blues/pvp gear is enough to confine me to a 1500-1600 rating. Most of the teams we face are in full karazhan gear, or quite a few S2 pieces. While I take some pride in being competitive with people who seriously outgear our team, its a bit frustrating to know that had I just started earlier, things would be much easier.

So bottom line is, if you didn't start early, you just need to expect to get kicked around a lot, especially by the 'Arena for PvE gear' crowd in the middle brackets. As a new resto shaman, I would focus most of your energy on collecting as much stamina gear as you can lay hands on. 10k HP should be your target.

 

Trifle

Depending on the team it might be worthwhile to have your partner kill the water elemental; it dies fast, and if left alone puts out a surprising amount of damage. If they summon it before you engage then you can try to play los games til it despawns, too.
If they like to play the spellsteal game, then stock up on fish scales and enduring breath yourself after earth shield, chances are the mage will steal that.
Keep yourself (and your partner) as close to full as possible if you can so you can live through a counterspell, but against bad mages you can often bait it out with gift of the naaru or some such.

Rank 1 healing wave is good for this; healing way is dispellable. Also helps protect earth shield.

 

Winfurae

Those are some very good points. I never even thought of buffing waterwalking/waterbreathing just to make them dispell/purge/spellsteal twice as many buffs. That's really good.

 

• Avair

Not much point to buffing waterwalking, as I believe it would drop as soon as you took any damage.

 

Sovereign

Interesting read..

Few tips I like to use for kiting.

Its a massive advantage to put warriors in combat, stop them getting that first charge if you don't then you have to wait for him to blow intercept or hope he's sloppy and he lets hamstring drop off. Basically the idea is you only trinket a warriors intercept, but you have to time this... normally after a warrior intercepts you can count on a hamstring right away. Regardless [b]you do not[b] trinket as fast as possible, wait for him to go on global then blow the trinket to escape. This basically grants you Free kiting till he's got intercept back.

How to put the warrior in combat?

Mainly works on stupid warriors but a well timed rank 1 lightning bolt can sometimes work.(if speced for reduced casting time)

Earth bind + Searing totems - basically you drop them, then start backing off but showing enough of yourself to let him think he can get a charge off. Works on stupid people. I love it when they shoot it with there ranged weapon putting themselves in combat too

You should always make sure in arena that somebody on your team is focusing on making sure the warrior is put in combat at the start. Being able to kite the warrior at the start is a massive advantage.

Rank 1 frost shock is a must!

Rank 1 Earth shock

Rank 1 Lightning bolt(if ele)

Rank 1 Magma totem(snake traps + preventing Stealth jumps at a tiny mana cost)

Recent Shaman buffs

Reducing the base cast time of bolts is a joke, I heard we lose 15% spell damage? And no push back prevention buffs.

Water shield looks good though and if they are working on mana problems with shamans I think it could be time for me to go back to resto.

Enhancement for 5v5

Does not suck for arena, its very viable you just cant expect to stand a chance with pve gear. All you need to do is stack up the resilience and then be prepared whenever you get focused to switch to a shield. Its that simple

The common mistake people in arena regarding Enhancement shamans is to expect them to die fast and they are often a main focus target. Switching to a shield when focused makes you just as hard to kill as most other classes. Id recommend if you use an enchantment shaman you target priests and roll with a rogue
If they do target your shaman they can expect to get mana burned out of the game by your priest.

Setup id use is - Priest(holy), Paladin(Holy), Rogue, Enchantment shaman and Warlock / mage(frost)


hope this helps


Sovereign.

 

Morgan

Another tip for depriving warriors of the initial charge is to use purge, assuming they have a buffing class in their team.

 

snakedance

What are your thoughts on a pure PVP Resto build? I've been 2v2ing with a rogue or warrior, running 8/0/53, which is mainly a PVE spec that's "good enough" in the Arena... but I'll not be raiding at all for the next month or two, so I'm thinking of rebuilding to focus specifically on Arena. The two options I'm primarily looking at are 16/0/45 and 8/7/46. I could even potentially do 8/9/44, because there have been times when I would have liked to be able to play poor man's druid and Ghost Wolf the hell out of the way.

Obviously, I'd be dropping Healing Way and Imp. CH, and from there I'm not quite sure where to go. I'm leaning towards eliminating Totemic Focus , but I'm not certain I want to lose Ancestral Healing, so I'm debating how to move up the tiers (i.e. I could do 5/5 in both T1 talents, or 3/3 Ancestral and 2/5 Tidal Focus).

 

raemond

I've played resto above 2k in all three brackets. Im not implying im great just stating I've played enough games to mull over what talents are important.

Unless you have concentration aura 24/7 EotS is just too good to pass up for anything in enhancement. Imp GW sounds good in theory for kiting but in practive I rarely ever found it useful. It suffers from knockback and if you have a melee class on you you aren't getting away without assistance peroid. EotS on the other hand helps me every time im tanking a rogue or a pet and I go into spam heal mode. Every second counts in tough matches and pushback is just too aggravating to deal with.

Other not-so-obvious talents I wouldn't play without include elemental warding, focused mind, and Nature's Guidance. Warding bascially cuts all mage and elemental shaman dmg by 10% which is incredible. Focused Mind is pretty straightforward, and Nature's Guidance is for resists on purge and earthshock. Spell hit is hard to squeeze into healing gear so I try to pick up points in this talent where I can.

 

snakedance

Nature's Guidance is a good heads-up; I wasn't considering it, but it's probably wise. EW and Focused Mind are a no-brainer. EotS, though? It seems like a lot of points to spend for a protection that only kicks in while Earth Shield is down.

 

• Avair

Which is any time there is a priest, mage, shaman or warlock (with felhunter) on their other team. I.e. a lot of the time. There are ways to work around this (garbage buffs, etc), but competent players are going to clear the focus fire target of really obvious buffs (Earth Shield) before serious DPS begins.

 

snakedance

True enough. And it could also allow for pushback resistance on CL if it comes down to that. I have to admit, I'm tempted by the decreased cooldown on Grounding Totem (especially in light of the new 4-pc bonus), but I'll give PVP with EotS a shot and see if I like it better. Thanks for the advice.

 

raemond

It seems alot of top resto shaman follow your logic and take imp grounding totem. Maybe it's just my style but I play with a warrior in every bracket so generally after the opening volley I just refresh windfury(rank 1 always) and save grounding for when im about to heal or someone is taking major spell damage from multiple sources.

And yes, ES can't be relied on for pushback protection. It's uptime is just too low with all the priests and locks running around added to the fact that sometimes your teammate needs it more than you do.

Good luck with the warrior/shaman combo its fun in 2s you just have to play as offensively as possible against most teams. Make sure your warrior knows how to turtle when you get cc'd so you can catch up on the heals.

 

panny

Using a shield does help against being focused by physical damage classes, but the real issue with Enhancement Shaman is getting into melee range and staying there.

Also: what's up with