Flesseck

Elemental Warding is really nice. In terms of those talents you listed, I would take several actions with the following talents:

A) Imp. Chain Heal - I would most likely get rid of this. This is rarely used in arenas, and you should definitely free up two points.

B) Ancestral Healing - If your talent points permit, I would at least place one point in for dispelling purposes and because it's actually a decent buff. Granted it's only 8% of your armor for one point placed in the talent, this can be useful if someone on your team is taking heavy melee heat.

C) Tidal Mastery - This is more of personal preference. If you love crit, go for it. If you're trying to grab Elemental Warding, I'd put the least amount I could considering crit is useful but not as useful to a Shaman.

D) Healing Way - This can be treated the same as Ancestral Healing. I rarely use Healing Wave in battles unless I can anticipate its use in battle by effectively timing it. Putting a point in it isn't a bad idea for dispelling purposes.

Overall, I rate Ancestral Healing and Tidal Mastery above the other talents listed if you were to choose.

Unfortunately, there is some limitations with Elemental Warding considering it only affects Frost, Fire, and Nature spells. Therefore, this would be a good talent against Frost Mages and Elemental Shamans for obvious reasons. In a smaller arena setup such as 2v2 and 3v3, I wouldn't doubt the usefulness of the talent. But then again, you don't see many Frost Mages and Elemental Shamans at the top of the 2v2 bracket. They do fairly better at 3v3 for sure, though.

Personally, I haven't had a real use for it since I really like a lot of the talents in the Resto tree, and I've been happy with my 0/7/54 build. I mostly do 5v5 arena and 3v3 as well. I also rarely am the focus target considering there is a Frost Mage in my 5's lineup, and 90% of the time he is the target.

I hope that helped.

 

Flesseck

You sure they haven't changed it? I believe the recent post about the new Season 3 rewards and 2.3 patch notes were just copied from a previous post MMO-Champion.com made a while back.

Click here to jump to the post showing the change to the Restoration Shaman gloves.

Also, here's the actual picture comparing the old glove set bonus to the new set bonus.

 

Nerull

I know Flesseck, I was surprised as well when I saw this http://www.mmo-champion.com/images/n...an-wartide.jpg

at the frontpage of mmo-champion.com

Not sure if they posted it wrong by accident or not. Still I would probably take gloves from elemental as you lose the least healing I think by taking them ( havent really calced it, just basing it on that chests and legs give more stats , thus more healing also compared to gloves ).

 

Flesseck

If you look at the 4-piece set bonus, it states that it lowers the CD of the Grounding Totem by two (2) seconds. That was a typo actually implemented in a very early build of the PTR a while ago (It was meant to be 1.5 seconds), so if my reasoning is correct, that picture is outdated. And the new glove set bonus should be +5 yards to shocks.

 

◊ Praetorian

Yeah, I've always used elemental gloves/BP and resto helm/shoulders/legs to get the best combination of bonuses and stats. In S3 I'll just go with 5pc resto for the first time.

 

SerasofHeroic

I'm a little bit late into the forum posting dealing with tough classes, but I figured any information would still help.

Suprisingly, Rogues and Warriors should be more than cake for a team with a Restoration Shaman on it. The classes I really watch out for are Mages (Frost in particular) and other Shaman. The reason being their nasty dispels. Honestly, the Mages are tough, and usually destroy Restoration Shaman. Grounding Totem and Earth Shock are still your best friends, as it takes a fair bit of time to cast their spells. LoS 'em and pray you live. Other shamans are tough in particular as well, there's no real point to even keeping an Earth Shield up. Elementals need to be Shocked/Grounding Totem, and Enhancements need to be FSed. Stay away from them, and use grounding totem as well.

The near impossible teams for me, however, seem to be anything with nasty slows (I.E. warriors and rogues) mixed with an annoying restoration druid. Any advice on fighting those?

 

Bachi

I had a question thats been bugging me.

Would spell haste be a good stat to stack?
Lets say I have 100 spell haste, but If I were to use that gear I'd lose ~100 healing, would it be worth it? 1600-1800 healing

 

Teewee

There are a bunch of questions regarding haste, theres even a thread that is just about haste. But when it comes down to it, it's all about the encounter or what is getting you killed in pvp. If your heals are too weak and you can't outheal damage people are taking, people need to CC or pop timers, or you need more +heal. If you need the heals to come faster because you get interrupted often or just like to cast faster, grab some of that. But chances are you'll be trading spell crit mana regen, or resilience, not +heal.

But here is the thread about haste, look at that for arguments one way or the other:
Spell haste and healers

 

Insanity

I am undecisive as to whether I should go for the full resto set or 4piece elemental for the 70% knockback and focus on healing items for the rest of the slots.

4pc Thunderfist (ele) - 4pc Wartide (Resto)
Healing / Damage: 0/183 - 339/101
Crit: 112 - 109

For the 70% knockback resist I lose on 156 healing. I think the knockback is priceless, although realisticly speaking it's interupts such as kick / pummel that cause the real problems.

Gives me the chance to give the earth shield to a more deserving class, an elemental shaman perhaps.

 

Touf

So when you're under focus fire, you cast Lightning Bolt? Seems strange to me.

 

Teewee

Yeah this makes no sense whatsoever. It's 70% avoided knockback on lightning bolt only, not all spells.

 

Edorin

I'm currently playing a resto shaman in a 5v5 with around 2k rating with the setup (holy pala, resto shaman, shadow priest, frost mage, ms warrior). I'm using full S2 armor with pve weapon and shield. Since we tried some 4dps matches with an elemantal instead of a resto shaman, new season coming up and the fact 1/3 of the healing is now added to spelldmg I was wondering what you all think will be the best for season 3; full resto, full elemental or a mix. I did some calculations with the S3 gear, here are the stats if you have the full sets (both sets have almost the same hp (11k) and mana (9k):

S3 Resto + Resto spec
Resilience: 448
MP5: 64
Spell dmg: 706
Healing: 1840
Spell crit: 17.05

S3 Elemental + Elemental spec
Resilience: 445
MP5: 24
Spell dmg: 896
Healing: 896
Spell crit: 20.05

Since a mix of S2 and S3 of the same spec can't be used anymore to get the 2x 35 resilience bonus an other option would be to use 3 resto and 2 elemental pieces. If you use the full resto set with elemental gloves and chest you'll get:

Resilience: 484
MP5: 63
Spell dmg: 740
Healing: 1749
Crit: 17.11

You can also swap weapons in combat with the spell dmg mainhand and shield which will give you:

Resilience: 481
MP5: 63
Spell dmg: 857
Healing: 1459
Crit: 17.07

The specs I was thinking about are 8/0/53 for resto and 40/0/21 for elemental. This means both have 5% extra spelldmg and nature swiftness. Difference between the specs is mainly casting time for dmg and healing spells and extra crit/attacks for dmg spells.

Here are the pros and cons.

Option 1: Full resto
Pro: Good healing (1840), good mana regen (64)
Cons: Not too much spelldmg (706), less burst dmg

Option 2: Full elemental
Pro: Good spelldmg (896), good burst dmg, shorter casting time on dmg spells
Cons: Crappy healing (895), longer casting times on healing spells

Option 3: Resto gear with 2 pieces of elemental, weapon swapping and resto spec
Pro: Good spell dmg (857 when swapping weapons), Good healing (1749 when swapping weapons)
Cons: A bit less burst dmg because of lacking elemental talents


What do you think is the best option?

 

Teewee

Well if you are going as an elemental shaman, you need to go 40 points in elemental. Elem shaman are mostly about burst, and without all of those good talents later on in the tree, you lose the reason people use elemental shaman.

For the same reason, you don't want to heal in an elemental spec. A lot of the end talents make restoration worth going, Natures Guardian, Earth Shield, purification, mana tide and so on. You should stick with one role and gear and talent for that role specifically.

This doesn't mean you can't DPS as resto, or you can't heal in elemental. You'd want to decide your main role and specifically make that your strength. Grabbing a few pieces here and there of elemental if you want to stay resto should be fine, as long as your main focus stays with healing specs.

As far as which spec to pick, if you don't care, just check with your team to see what they want to do.

 

Bachi

Thanks, helped me a ton!

 

berg

From wow forums We will have to see to what degree the reduction is but these changes could be very meaningful. Some kind of purge resist would still be best though.


As far as the dps'ing as resto build goes the recent elemental changes did not help. They moved the power of the elemental tree further down where it is now inaccessable.

 

Cull

Just doing some thinking about s3 and gear/spec.

Come patch day I am going to be purchasing s3 resto helm, chest, and gloves. I plan to socket the helm with the reduced cast time meta gem (though the 5% stun resist does like very nice also). As for gems I will be going with the 4 resil/6 stam talasites. What do you guys think about these gem choices?

I have access to BT gear so my reasoning is that I can make-up for any lost healing or regen by swapping in pve rings or other pieces.

As far as spec I am eyeing up an resto/enh build mainly for guardian totems, I believed someone mentioned this in another post. Seeing as I will be doing mostly 2v2 the advantages of a quicker grounding would be superior to that of elemental warding.

Also I managed to pickup a Tome of Diabolic Remedy from ZA the other day and am contemplating using it as my other trinket slot, it has a decent cooldown of 2 min but with a passive 18 mp5 and huge +heal on use I think it would be fairly decent.

Sorry if any of this is way off base, until recently I played a paladin in arenas and am making the switch back over to my shammy

 

Grazghskull

I have a problem here. Since I will probably be playing 2s and 3s as a resto shaman and 5s as an elemental shaman, I can't decide which gearset I should purchase with all the points I have accumulated over the course of S2 and from capped honour. Spec wise I have no problems respecing for games depending on brackets, it is the gear that concerns me.

Should I go for full ele, full resto or partial sets for flexibility?

 

Phat69

i am about to ding 70 today

i am a very good pvper although i am in all attack power gear with +hit rating and firgure that this sucks for elemental or resto.

so the question, for arena, im guessing 3v3 and 5vs5 elemental or resto considering the team will b all v good pvpers but we hav no gear as we hav all dinged 70 recently due to all of us being banned and quitting pre TBC due to glider haha!

so do i go resto or elemental, the only other 100% clarified member that will be in 5v5 that i know of so far is going to be playing a holy/prot paladin.

im thinking more towards 40/0/21 than 21/0/40 but what do u guys think ur the pros. i need to get s3 gear within like 8 weeks hopefully, but i dont want to join every game and get locked down by a rogue and be useless, so maybe 21/0/40 is more appropriate.

thanks in advance!

im at work so either post on here or PM me its not a problem...not like im doing any work anywhere haha!

and please dont message me griefing me about athene, yes i know he is an idiot lol

 

Skeez

Did you know that you can use the shift key to make capital letters? This will help you out a lot in your life, especially if you plan to post on these forums more often.

As for your actual question, its very hard to say how to spec without knowing more about the composition of your team. Personally I would go resto. If you get your healing up high enough then your damage is also reasonably good with the new heal to damage mechanic. Although I would say that from reading this thread you should have more than 40 points in resto if you do go that way as there are lots of goodies in that tree that you will be passing up going 21/0/40.

However if you want a more definitive answer, find out who the rest of the team is likely to be (even a list of 8 people is a help).

 

Teewee

Yeah you really need to spell check and use your shift key, these aren't the Blizzard forums.

If you go elemental you'd want 40/0/21, but if you go resto, you'll be much better off if you go at least 53 in restoration. You specifically should get earth shield, it is a really good ability that shouldn't be skipped.

If you are fine going resto or elemental and don't care one way or the other, check with your team. They'll either want an additional dps class with great burst, or an additional healer.

 

Nabukun

How many of you play rogue/restoration shaman in 2s? I've been playing it all through season 2 because the warriors in my guild already had teams. Nothing serious, just 10 games a week to get points. I find it quite hard going up against the standard fare of warrior/druid, warlock/druid and plenty of double dps teams (double hunter hurts quite a lot now).

I'm beginning to think I'm just bad at PvP, after seeing how well Wodin/Gurgthock have done.

Here's my armory link:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...hoof&n=Nabukun
(Zul'Aman mail healing hat isn't showing for some reason)

Before you laugh, I'm already aware of my most garish mistakes- not using a pure PvP spec, and trying to play as restoration with damage gear in 10 slots. I intend to rectify these problems when season 3 opens.

I would like to ask the more experienced of you for some textbook strategies to use against the more common comps that play. Is there a basic step-by-step routine or does one just run a bootleg? Also, what do you think is the best comp to run for a restoration shaman in 2s and 3s?

With rating requirements coming into effect I'm afraid we can't fail our way to full season 3 gear anymore, so I'm asking for help for the first time. ^^

 

Phat69

Sorry, I didn't know using grammar on a forum is so needed; obviously I was wrong and will pick up on it in future.

The thing about 53 in Restoration is Earth shield is a 100% waste. Why you say? Because it’s dispellable. And any team with a shaman that isn’t mentally retarded will purge that almost instantly, making it as useless as shamanic rage in pvp. I was thinking of 21/0/40 over lunch because this enables me to get the 100% more crit, and still make me a pretty good heal/purge/shock bott.

I've spoken to my friends and I believe the team will look something like this; hopefully you can give me more advice:

Me (Shaman Undecided maybe 21/0/40)
MS Warrior
Holy/Prot Paladin
Shadow Priest
Frost (water ele) Specced Mage

So....ele or resto, however I still see the 53 as waste in resto as earth shield as said before is a 100% waste!

 

Teewee

Putting 53 in restoration doesn't just get you earth shield, and I completely disagree on earth shield being 100% waste. Having more then 41 in resto will also get you Natures Guardian (5 points, awesome talent), Natures Guidance (for interrupts), Focused mind, purification, restorative totems, and all of the other good talents that you need to grab to get up to earth shield.

In regards to your opinion that earth shield is a waste, in my 5v5 team, we've been floating between 2200 and 2300 rating, and a lot of the time earth shield is up for the entire duration. Also in 2v2 and 3v3 there are plenty of teams that don't have an offensive dispel. If you have a pet on you, you can toss on earth shield and completely ignore its damage, or you can ES someone else and water shield yourself for lots of mana. Also shaman can't purge around corners, so if you properly run out of line of sight of the opposing players, you can avoid a lot of their purges. Between earth shield, natures guardian, and my own heals, I can practically ignore most warriors and rogues when they are on me.