I play 2v2 with a rogue partner and while we were doing decently at first, we've had several really poor weeks and have dropped back down into the mid-1500's. I realize part of the problem is all the highly-ranked folks "rerolling" teams because they have more time on their hands due to the holidays, but I can't help but wonder if there's something we're missing that would help us improve our rating.

We just started 2v2 together this season and only played for about 1/3 of S2 in a 5v5 together, so there's definitely a "familiarity" issue, plus a bit of a gear issue (both of us are at 10k+ health and ~300 resilience, but we're only just now starting SSC, so we're not able to mix in particularly good PvE gear to offset the holes in our arena kits). I'm currently 8/7/46 and my partner is AR/Prep (swords). Neither of us are truly hardcore PvPers, so our goal is a modest 1850 rating, rather than the Gladiator title many of you are concerned with.

Playstyle-wise, we tend to be the first group to move to the other side, though we don't charge right out of the gates either. I typically hang back until my partner gets a sap off before moving forward to support him. I'm typically purge-spamming his target initially while trying to keep grounding/tremor up as appropriate, then turning to shock the healer/second DPS if I'm not being focused (in which case I'm typically trying desperately to get my heals off before one of us dies). We still have some work to do in keeping in range of each other while I'm playing LoS games, but that's starting to improve. Our hardest matches tend to be against warlock/mage and warlock/s-priest, although warrior/druid is always a tough fight as well (fortunately, at our current bracket, we're generally pretty successful at dropping the druid).

What should my priorities be with our combo? Should I worry less about purging and help with a little DPS initially to strain the opponent's healer? Should we be playing more defensively to take advantage of totem farms? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

All these shamans posting about stacking resilience, but have you done the maths?

Lets suppose you have 394 resilience, 10% less crits and 20% less damage from them.

The amount of damage reduction depends on your opponents crit rate and damage muliplier. Assuming x2 for crits.

@10% crit, 110%->100% -> 9.1%
@20%, 120%->90%+10%*0.8*2 = 106% -> 11.7%
@30%, 130%->80%+20%*0.8*2 = 112% -> 13.8%
@40%, 140%->70%+30%*0.8*2 = 118% -> 15.7%

Clearly you gain more from resilience the higher your opponents crit rate.

But resilence has a cost in terms of other stats, you could use blue +8 resil gems or blue +18 heal gems for example. At this rate of conversion our 394 resilience means dropping 886.5 +heal.

In a perfect case from all sources with no lags that 886.5 +heal with 15% crit would give us

(886.5*1.15*1.1)/3.5 = 320.4 hps using lhw
(886.5*0.3*1.15*1.1)/3 = 112.1 hps from ES triggering every 3s
886.5*(0.06/2) = 26.6 hps from healing stream

So in the perfect scenario we lose 459.1 hps. Thats a huge number, even at 40% crit they would need to be doing 2924 dps for the +resilience to overcome the +heal.

But lets suppose a non perfect case, where we dont have healing stream, ES has been dispelled and we are only able to cast 50% of the time.

We get 160.2 hps from the +heal. meaning they would still have to do 1020 dps for us to be better off with +resil.

Clearly the less time we actualy get to spend casting the worse the +heal compares. At 25% its 510 dps. Yet if we only ever get to cast 25% of the time we are just punchbags anyhow. In most 1v1 cases the other guy cant put out that type of dps or CC you for that percentage and the +heal is the winner.

In cases where you are focused fired they can exceed the dps threshold and keep you perma CCed. In these cases resilience wins out. However you are still likely to drop soon anyhow. You have only bought 15% less damage from the resilience even against 40% crit. Most PvPers will avoid crit so you wont see 40% crit builds.

An addition benefit of the +heal is you spell damage goes up too.

What you realy need to survive those bursts is sufficient stamina. All our hp is simply a buffer for our heals. People die because it hits zero before they can heals. In most cases a high stam, high heal build should outperform a high stam, high resilience build.

An an example in T6 with 2400 heal I have over 9.6k hp unbuffed. lhw heals for 2400 non crit, ES for 1040 non crit. Provided I dont die I simply heal up any damage, and have the MP5 to do it forever. To make this a more PvP set I would drop down on MP5 and buff +stam to enable survival through bursts.

Or am i missing something vital?

I think you're neglecting the impact burst damage can have in arenas even at high levels. There's a number of occasions where, at a pivotal moment, an opposing Warrior or Rogue got a huge crit string that seriously impacted the fight's outcome, pushing me to the point where a Mind Blast/Death or something like that could finish me off. It's unlikely to happen statistically, but a loss is a loss and Resilience seriously reduces the chance you'll be put in that situation. Putting the whole situation in terms of static health loss/gain simplifies it too much.

You also don't account for Pummels, stuns, CCs, dispels of your Earth Shield, healing through DOT damage on multiple targets, people killing every totem you drop (and needing to re-drop), shocking opposing players, needing to move out of caster LOS while being beaten on...it's not enough to say "I spend X percent of my time healing, and this goes either down or up."

Yeah, basically it's complete theorycraft and completely off the mark. The only healer class that can get away with PvE-ish gearing is paladins, and even then the idea is 4pc t6 because of their stupidly good set bonuses (as opposed to our wonderful chain heal bonuses that are great for raiding but completely irrelevant in pvP), with PvP gear in other slots. Paladins still have 18k+ armor and enough class-based survivability (bubble, BoF, etc.) that they're rarely a top-priority target. Thus they can get away with this. Shamans don't have that luxury.

Resto shamans are popular targets because we inherently have the lowest survivability of any healer -- paladins have much more armor, bubble, BoF, and 100% pushback resist on heals while being focused; priests and druids have stacking anti-crit talents, instant heals/HoTs that can be reliably used under pressure, and druids of course have great mobility. With purge-spam backup a priest is a better target, and with JoJ a druid is, but ordinarily, shamans are one of the best healers to target.

Take a basic 2v2 scenario. I PvP in 5pc s3 at the moment, with 367 resil and >+1800 healing. An S3-geared warrior on me, especially with mace stuns, can apply enough pressure to me that it's not simply a matter of not running OOM, it's at times a matter of not dying even with lots of mana to spare. If I get a heal pummeled, then get a mace stun 0.5sec before my next heal lands, then intercept stun on my next heal, then pummel again since it's cooled down, I can very easily be looking at a quick death to a solo warrior. Rogues are no better. More resil gives me more of a buffer in which to act, allowing me to use more efficient heals when possible, but crucially, allowing me to actually play the game and contribute as something other than a passive damage sponge. In theory maybe with 2300 +heal and lots of mp5 I could keep myself alive for longer than I could with 1800 +heal and minimal mp5 but a lot of resil, but in reality the better healing stats only help when I'm actually healing. And in order to contribute, I want to be purging, dropping totems, shocking enemy casters, etc. The less time I have to spend healing, the better. Resilience not only lets me survive burst DPS (and stamina simply is not an answer here -- at least not to the point of being able to offset resilience) but it also lets me take less sustained damage throughout an entire engagement, allowing me to spend less time worrying about my own health and more time playing the utility role for which shamans are best-suited.

What if we translated that 394 resilience into stamina using +8 resil gem = +12 sta gem. At zero resilience you would have an extra 5910 hp (6205 tauran). Seems to me that would help you survive a lot better than under 15% damage reduction which is realy only buying you another 1500 or so hp.

Now you cant do that due to the itemisation, but you can when you choose gems and chants. The +12 stam would seem to be a better choice than +8 resilience.

You could reasonably argue that it's better to socket Stamina than Resilience after a certain point (or in general). Like most gemming, it's a matter of personal preference and playstyle. I will say that in a situation where your capacity to output healing is limited (your target has MS/Aimed Shot/Wound Poison, you've got Curse of Tongues, you're avoiding interrupts...basically all arena PvP) then reducing the incoming damage is preferable to having a bigger Stamina buffer to work with, pretty much categorically. I've seen a lot of Arena matches decided when a target lost LOS on his healer and got crushed by a big WF/crit string before that could be sorted out.

Let us say that you are fighting in 2 vs 2 and you got roughly 800 dps targeting yourself. With 400 resilience that 800 dps effectively get reduced to 680 dps. In the "no resilience" scenario you have to output more than 800 average hps to survive. In the "resilience" scenario you only have to do 680 hps to survive. You will as well lose 120 effective hp for every second you are targeted and those 5910 hp will have been gone after 5910/120 sec = 49.25 sec. And you will be spending a bit over 15% more mana healing yourself. If you only throw 1 LHW in average every 5 sec that is already 60 mp5 saved due to resilience.

As said earlier, more resilience will make you have to heal less and by that having more free time in arenas. It's worthless if you don't get targeted, but as soon as you do get attacked it's a awesome stat.

Tried Holy Paladin/Resto Shaman/MS warrior tonight for 3v3, and this combo is pretty badass. On teams where I'm not getting focus fired, I chuck 1400 damage lightning bolts and earth shock people, and heal when the paladin is CCed or interrupted. Against teams where I get FFed, I just run around with water shield on and heal myself when the paladin has to drink. Concentration aura is money.

We actually just ended up outlasting several drain teams because we could kill the pets (the free spell damage from healing is so great) and run the priest out of mana.

Tonight was also my first time using a [Design: Mystical Skyfire Diamond] and I'm already wondering how I ever PVPed without it. 1 second chain lightnings, 1.25 second max rank healing waves, and if you get (un?)lucky, a 5 second res, is just nuts. I gained 70hp going to the S3 helm, so the 18sta loss didn't really hurt too much.

I'm running with a BM hunter (RL friend) in 2v2 right now and we're having some issues with positioning and target selection against 1 dps/1heal teams, especially in Lordaron. We've been between 1470 and 1570 all season, and when we're at the high end of that range I can almost always point to one or two small mistakes on my part that kept us from winning. We both have a mixture of Kara/S1/Vindicator gear with a few pieces of S3 between us.

Against the dps/healer teams we are usually able to get to the point where the opposing healer is OOM are nearly OOM while I still have around 30% mana, however my hunter partner is usually also on very low mana, sometimes with a dead pet. Most, but not all of the time I've used bloodlust, NS and Mana Tide. When we get to this point the other team tries to have the healer sneak away to drink. Our issue here is switch dps to their dps and try to kill him with me shocking what heals I can when the healer comes back, or try to chase down a pillar kiting healer? And how much should we change our strat based on which dps we're agaisnt? We're having issues agaisnt hunter locks and warriors with a healer.

Also, does anyone have advice on trying to balance my need to use LOS to get away from their dps, and his need to stay in LOS of his targets? And where is the best starting spot for us in Lordaron, we can't seem to find a good one.

Seeking advice from other shaman who have run the Sham/Pal/War setup.... I've recently started running with this setup, and one problem we seem to have is against drain teams. Priest(SP)/Warlock/X combos where they just come right out and mana burn/drain us...

Is this just a flat out LOS fest at all cost type for defense? I'm interested in hearing what are some plans of attack against these FOTM teams, such as kill order and whatnot... Thanks!

Outlast them. Kill pets. Drain teams don't do much damage. Kill all the pets that are keeping you in combat, then take turns drinking while your warrior wears down their healer's mana pool. Can be a bit more complicated than that, but that's the gist of it.

You can also kill their healer quickly, but that's risky since you'll be dangerously behind on mana if it doesn't work. But pal/sham/war can blow up druids quite easily (JoJ, windfury, everyone hug him so he can't charge away, etc.), and if their only healer is a priest, purging+shocks+windfury while the paladin heals can drop him quickly as well.

I use parrot, and have a custom event set for when I gain a focus proc, complete with a sound effect (I use the legend of zelda rupee noise). The nice thing is the sound will still occur if you have your game sound disabled via CTRL+S, so you won't miss it.

Gurg hit the nail on the head vs drain teams. Their damage is pretty lousy, so you only need to outlast the mana of the priest or hunter. We usually kill whatever pet is on the paladin so he can drink, since I can just run around with water shield and that usually generates enough mana to keep us afloat while the paladin drinks.

Played around 60 games today with a Warrior in 4 piece gladiator (1 Vengeful, 2 Merciless, 1 Glad), S1 Sword, and Various Vindicator/Veteran Items. My personal stat is as follow

360 Res, 10.7k HP before Commanding, 1.6k Healing, ~18% Crit to healing after 3/5 Crit talent. Spec is 15/0/46 for Reverbration.

The combo that consistently give us trouble without feeling that we're just outplayed are basically 2 DPS team with a rogue stunlocking while shiving wounding poison on. Since Shaman lack mobile healing abilities, guess I'm just short on luck here. On rare cases that they jump my partner warrior, he just switches to 1h/shield and play very defensively, so that's less of an issue.

The infamous Warrior/Druid is obviously a problem when the opposing warrior puts a decent amount of pressure on me, preventing me from helping out my warrior by earthshocking cyclone and roots while he is out of range from previous crowd controls. Should we try to get on the warrior instead? Isolation games heavily favor the druid since he'll be taking signficantly less damage from my partner due to superior control.

The mediocre Warrior/Paladin we can lock down pretty well alternate interrupts. Against better paladin/Warrior teams we started running into smart Paladins that get their FoL pummeled on purpose and then follow with a holy light after the interrupt chain is broken due to CD. I asked my partner to ignore FoL since pummel is on 10 second cooldown.

If we're doing anything wrong please let me know, otherwise I'll just working on leveling up my personal skills =P

I don't think ignoring FoL is a good idea. FoL is FAR more efficient than HL, so if you let him spam those (which is all any decently geared paladin needs to stay alive with a warrior on him), he is going to win the mana war with ease.

No, its not. HL is more hp/s and hp/mana than FoL if it doesn't overheal. If you can sit there and cast Holy Light's, you should. I play both sides of the warrior / healer comp - warrior (me) / druid, and warrior / paladin (me). If a paladin is geared, you wear him down with mace or sword procs, and occasional pummel/intercept chains. You don't want a HL to go off, ever, whereas you'll never be able to catch every Flash, so why bother?

[Paladin] Healing Efficiency says Flash is much more efficient, which has always seemed to be the case for me. Am I missing something? I'm genuinely curious :O.

I believe it's only more efficient in a PvE sense with the target having Blessing of Light and obviously no MS. In PvP, with MS up FoL will at best keep the pally afloat against an equally geared warrior. The issue in PvP is that if you pummel FoL then pally knows you have no interrupt for 10 secs and starts queueing up Holy Lights, if he gets two holy lights thru, all the windfury/swordspec proc etc hard work you did in putting pressure on him is negated. I am no highly rated arena player, but with my Resto shama/warrior 2v2, I interrupt everything I can whenever I can shock, and my partner saves pummels for holy lights. You have to start saving your earth shock for a BoP/Heal though if he starts getting low.

I suppose things are very different for resto shaman/warrior. When I do 2v2 (rarely), I play with a druid so I don't have much help with dps or interrupts. I generally try to pummel every FoL I can to make the paladin fall behind and start casting holy lights to eat through his mana faster. Most of the time I can't ever come close to scoring a kill unless the paladin is oom or undergeared.

Yeah, I'm inclinded to agree with you. I play a Druid on my main (feral Pve, resto PvP) and Shaman as an alt (enh pve, resto PvP), and the mentality of winning a game against a warrior/paladin is drastically different.

As a Shaman, it is imperative to run the paladin "heal-less" (aside from holy shock that he may attempt to do) since no matter what you do, against similarly geared and skilled opponent's, it is high unlikely, if possible, that you can outlast the paladin. I'm also inclined to just say that even when you manage to kill the paladin and seal the win, your mana remaining will be much less than that paladin's just before he died.

Druid on the other hand, has a lot of control over a warrior but not as many direct interrupts (feral charge only, 15 second cooldown). With roots, cyclone, and 1 minute bash, as well as ability to get away and lol-drink, winning the mana war is easy. The match might be really really long, but if the game does turn into an isolation game (warrior vs healer), running the paladin out of mana is a matter of time as long as sufficient pressure is put on him. This is of course, assuming the druid is skilled enough to stay away from JoJ (Which I'm still not doing very well at)

Hey guys, I'm leveling a shaman as we speak, and it's getting closer and closer to 70 (62, yay water shield

Anyways, I was thinking of going Resto after I get S1-gear, as well as pick up some raiding. However, given that I'll most likely have an epic mount and not too much gold left, is there any spec that's good in arena (preferably 2v2 and 3v3, but can work for 5v5 too) AND raiding? I need to have a low budget, as I've rerolled on a completely new server.

I was thinking of Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft - is Healing Grace really useful for raiding/heroics at all? (I'm not in a raiding guild at this moment, but I am going to jump into entry level and hopefully SSC/TK as soon as possible.)

EDIT: Woops, forgot to mention to ask if Healing Grace was needed.

If you have other shaman that can put up healing way for you, its possible to drop healing way and put it into Nature's Guidance. Either that, or you'll need to gem/enchant for some spell hit on your pvp exclusive items.

I also have a question about Pala/War/Resto Shaman setup in 3v3.
I run this setup , last season with pretty good success ( reached almost 2000 rating ) but this season we have a lot more trouble, especially against PMR teams which seem to be everywhere ( Last time we played 70% of the teams we faced where PMR ).

So far there are two situations : I get focussed ( shaman ) - We put the warrior on the rogue , continually dispelling him from nova's / sheep so he can hamstring the rogue ( I also frostshock rank 1 the rogue always ) . If we play this well and am able to take minimal hits before the rogue has blown all his cooldowns to catch up with me then we have a good chance at outlasting them. I have to say I find it pretty tricky to kite and avoid being in LoS with a priest to prevent eating mana burns, but I always have a grounding totem in worst case scenario.

They switch target between the paladin and me : They basicly burn the paladin down to force him to bubble. Being an easy interruptable target I have to heal a lot here ( although Im thinking of helping the warrior here with lightningbolts on the rogue to put pressure on them ) to keep my pala buddy up. If my pala is out of LoS for mass dispel, the damage is quickly switched to me instead until they catch the paladin again after which he cant bubble anymore and basicly gets raped.

This aside the fact they have countless annoying tricks ( sheep pala, then mana burn him while Im kiting ) which I have to say are giving us serious headaches.

Main reason we go for rogue is that if we sent our warrior on the mage then I usually get focussed by the rogue after which Im gonna eat mana burns while stunned effectively undoing what we are suppose to do : outlasting.

anyone experienced in this setup has some nice tips aside the kiting and obvious LoS pillar game ?

I have to say it feels harder this season as well getting higher with this setup as we face very heavy CC teams ( PMR + Warlock rogue druid are about 3/4 of all our match ups ) which is very unforgiving for us.