Sorry if this has been repeated, but does anyone have any opinions on the choice of a meta gem for Restoration Shamans in arena?

I really would love to pick up the [Mystical Skyfire Diamond] or something else like maybe the [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond].

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I believe I have found the best possible specification for a restoration shaman in 2vs2

5/5/51

with this spec u have the increased damage from elemental and the shield specialization from enhancement, all I've done is merely get rid of elemental warding and the 2 in improved chain heal which is a complete waste in arena, what do u guys think xD.

I was going to go with MSD this season because I'm a little trigger happy. Aside from tossing out those chain lightnings yelling Kamehameha I think it gives you a lot of other utility- though I guess you can use it on two other things, healing and ghost wolf. However, I'm a little hesitant to use it since it got nerfed. IED is probably a much safer alternative, a solid passive benefit and added proc that's worth between five and 20 mp5. MSD is more of a clutch play gem when it procs.

So I have played a mage since release and now have a resto shaman alt for PvP purposes. My question is that of earth shield and dispells, specifically against warlocks and hunters. With the new arcane shot and autopurge from felpups, it is nearly impossible to keep earth shield up and in that case how do experienced resto shammies deal with incoming damage on yourself or your partners to keep up? Without earthshield pets cause too much pushback and between CoT/spelllock and having to keep stupid viper sting off, it gets very hard to maintain sufficient healing to keep up with incoming dps. Any tips on how to deal with this? (i play mostly 2s and 3s, in the 1800-2k range)

You really want reduced cooldown on grounding, stacking with the set bonus. I'd go with 5/7/49, personally. Just drop a couple of points from Ancestral Healing (keep 1/3 so you still get a buff to cover stuff like earth shield and lust).

Well, the 2.3.2 change will help somewhat here. Obviously don't ES yourself if it's getting instantly autodevoured. I usually try to ES my partner by default, and deal with pushback myself. The mana from Water Shield makes it worth the tradeoff. CoT sucks, a lot. You really just have to use LoS, try to stay away from the warlock, and drop a grounding as you pop out to cast, and hopefully it'll catch Tongues and/or Lock. But yeah, welcome to the shortcomings of the shaman class in small-bracket play.

Option #2 is exactly what I tend to run, but actually #1 is quite interesting now that I think about it. I'd dump Eye of the Storm and put 1 in AH and 2 in Healing Way for buff protection (and also Healing Way efficiency).

The 5% extra mana is useless, so really it comes down to 2sec off grounding vs. 1sec off shocks. That's a tough call. Shocking heals and cyclones and polys and such is invaluable, and being able to do 20% more of that is pretty huge. But at the same time, grounding can really turn entire matches in smaller brackets where it's not getting eaten by garbage effects. Nothing can replace grounding a CS, Death Coil, Silence, etc.

Personally I am going to be going with Guardian Totems. I can't even count the number of times I had just shocked a spell and then watch them recast with grounding 1 or 2 seconds away from being off CD. I may have been tempted to go with the lower timer on shocks but with the new 4pc bonus I don't think it will be as viable. My only question is what talent points I should drop to gain 2 extra points for guardian totems; right now I am thinking about taking 2 points out of Ancestral Healing.

Yeah, that's exactly what I've done. 1/3 Ancestral so that I get a buff proc. Most of the time the bonus armor really makes a minimal difference, anyway.

I've got a shaman that I only play 3v3 (me, ret paladin and rogue) and some 2v2 (me and the ret paladin) with, nothing out of the ordinary. Mostly to keep in touch with friends on my old server.

I feel that my mana pool is very low, 8891 at the moment with +30 int on my weapon. The weapon enchant is what I'm thinking most about. 30 int was just something I had mats for and slapped on since my mana pool was low, but I'm not sure what to put on the weapon.
Spellsurge is kinda nice, but the cooldown makes me think it's a bit of a waste since I reckon it won't proc more than 2-3 times in a typical game (which makes 30 int as good, if not better).
What I want here is some input I guess. Is it stupid to enchant my weapon with intellect? Would 81 healing be much better, or maybe even spellsurge?

I've read many shamans saying that mana issues is one of the biggest problem for resto in arenas, and I feel the same way. I'm just not sure how to counter it, I do use some downranking but most of the times I can't really afford to lose even the smallest amount of hps.

Same goes for bracers, boots, chest I suppose. Those slots are a bit easier since there's stamina to slap on them, which I usually need as much as possible.

Edit:
My current gear is here: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...nt+Dawn&n=Doul
Some elemental pieces from the old days of season 1 when I still was a lightning girl and our paladin was holy.

I would definitely go with +81 healing, the returns you are going to see from that are going significantly outweigh 30 int and spellsurge in 3v3. Only time spellsurge becomes viable is for 5's in my opinion.

As for just managing your mana I would make sure you have a hotkey bound to drink your arena water, usually there are numerous periods where you get a few ticks. Also if you aren't getting FF'd make sure to slap on WS especially if you have a felhunter on you.

With the posted 2.3.2 Earth Shield changes on the EU boards, I'm curious if any dispel protection will be coming for Earth Shield if the 30 second cooldown really comes into play. Link (in German):

WoW-Europe.com Foren -> 2.3.2 PTR Patch Notes

I don't speak german so the first thing I did was run it through google language tools, which brought me the following: * 'Erdschild' (restoration): Mana costs were reduced and now has a decay time of 30 seconds.

Now, the chances of the meaning being horribly mangled by the translator are pretty high, but to me that seems like the duration ("decay") is what is becoming 30 seconds. If so it's not too huge a change for PVP really. If it is cooldown... that's a pretty big hit to its effectiveness if it can be dispelled just as easily as now.

The translation is up on the thread in public discussion. The duration is still 10 charges. It does have a 30 second cooldown, which yeah is pretty bad unless they give it some sort of dispel protection.

Worldofraids.com has it translated as cooldown as well: World of Raids :: Index

I've found that going with an affliction lock works out pretty well. It got us gladiator in season 2 and would have in one but he quit the game for a month or two and I tanked the rating with a warrior. Right not my warlock partner is felguard, but thats just because hes poor, but it works for the lower ratings. The hardest combos for us to face are rogue/priest and druid/warrior. Against those teams, you just have to help the lock burst someone down in the first few seconds or you are screwed, but other than that its a solid combo.

Either that or some sort of small resistance to dispel mechanic. But halving the mana cost is a good start and I know I will be using it a lot more now.

Is Shaman/Warlock really a stronger 2v2 team than Shaman/Warrior? My alt lock plays with a Shaman on occasion, and we haven't quite worked out a strategy that lets us put enough pressure on the other team before we get overwhelmed--without UA, we have to play the outlasting game, but without SL, I'm under a lot of pressure from the other team's DPS. From a theorycrafting POV, it seems that Shaman/Warrior would be a natural metagame counter to Druid/Warrior.

I think you should be able to dispel powerful abilities. Especially ones with no cooldown. It's rather hypocritical of shamans who have had purge since release to be complaining about dispels and honestly I'd rather not have any dispel resistance of any type in the game, and for blizzard to stop diluting the offensive dispel ability. To do this to shamans when purge is one of our main pvp abilities, and at the same time keep the priest/paladin monopoly on defensive dispel is rather unfair.

As for the 30 second change I think most people are giving off a lot of hot air over a change that has little effect. If you are casting earth shield so many times in such a short timespan because of dispels you will find yourself oom and are better off casting water shield to bait them(mages in particular) into using mana/cooldowns into dispelling that.. If earth shield is not dispelled it takes about 50 seconds to expand all 10 charges.

As for keeping your earth shield the obvious answer is to put pressure on dispellers. It's getting more difficult though, but i was running an interesting 4 dps team with myself as the only healer and my earth shield never got dispelled. They were under too much pressure to do something like spam purge/dispel. I would grant that part of it was our gear. I almost never came under pressure since I gave my ES to an elemental shaman and was wearing all my tier 6 healing gear, and all 4 dps had black temple level weapons.

I'm in the same boat, the change to ES cooldown will have no affect on my playstyle at all. I hardly ever recast if it is purged unless the situation somehow calls for it.

Guys, I was looking in depth at my shaman tree and seeing how I could maximize my pvp team playing abilities, and alas I believe I have found the perfect talent tree:

8/7/46

Here, we basically have full resto with elemental warding AND guardian totems combined with set piece, gives only a 10sec cool down on grounding totem. And believe me, those 3.5 sec’s saved can mean all the difference of a 4k crit landing on you and the grounding sucking it up, and saves many games.

All I have done to alter the resto tree is take 1/3 instead of 3/3 ancestral healing, 0/2 chain heal instead of 2/2 because lets be honest its never used and 4/5 purification instead of 5/5 because that 2% really doesn’t make a significant difference!

I would like to see your feedback, but I have been playing this now for a full day and the rate of our winning has been significant.

Let’s think about it. Let’s say a game lasts 4mins. With the 13.5 cool down that’s 17 times u can cast grounding totem, but with this set up u can cast it 24 times. Lets say it sucks up 4k crits that’s 28,000 dmg u don’t take. Combined with shocks, which have a 6 sec cool down your seriously reducing your team’s damage intake.

This has got to most definitely the best resto shaman spec out there, and I came up with it all by myself. I deserve a cookie….or 2.

Sorry, also -1 in Reduce Totem mana and -1 in Healing Way, as the difference between 4/5 and 5/5 and 2/3 and 3/3 is very minimal.