[Shaman] Elemental PVP Thread - Page 2

Arvin · 01/10/08, 1:40 PM

So rogues are starting to suck on a frustratingly high level. So much so that my primary pvp totem macro begins with a Poison Cleansing Totem. Basically, I go into every fight assuming there's a rogue.

Crappy rogues I can kill no problem, and I can kite really well, but as soon as I get that first "Can't do that while stunned." message, it's pretty much game over.

I've tried a few different things. At first I was waiting until the rogue had just used the last portion of energy and then blew my trinket and ran. With crippling *still* on I can't get away fast enough. I've tried to combine that with spamming cleanse poison on myself but it still doesn't get rid of it fast enough to break away.

Also I've tried blowing the trinket as soon as the initial stun hit. That's usually a waste because I immediately get follow up stunned then I'm right back where I started. One would think the trinket would remove the stun AND the crippling. At least according to the trinket wording and my Webster's dictionary.

I've finally resigned myself to the notion that if a rogue with any skill gets the jump on me I'm toast. Which leads me to believe the best way to counter a rogue is to pull them out of stealth but I still have issues on that front. Earthbind + Magma doesn't seem to be doing the trick a lot of the time.

I'd pay many dollars to get Stoneform on my shams. So anyone have any anti rogue tips?

kingkaos · 01/10/08, 2:08 PM

What you need is to ,Poison Cleansing,earthbind, Warstomp, Trinket and run. Im just gonna assume you're not a Tauren, in which case you are boned. The only thing you can do is to stack resil, as against rogues its a night and day difference. Your only hope is to have enough ac/resil/hp to live through the stun-lock while your teammates do what they need to do. Other than that dont expect much, rogue is the blatant scissor to our paper.

Worthe · 01/10/08, 5:19 PM

I've been getting better at handling rogues despite my somewhat awkward setup yet for the following: dropping poison cleansing totem and earthbind (of course) and spamming cure poison as I attempt to get away. I have to ctrl-click my unit frame to do the poison cleansing, which is the awkward part combined with using my keys to maneuver... Wtih a little bit of time and luck, I'll get enough distance where it turns into kiting where either the rogue blows cooldowns and it repeats somewhat or I can regain the upper hand with frostshocks and earthbinds. I'm plenty well geared enough now so that I can survive and have a fighting chance. This may not be quite the revelation for others as it has been for me, but it feels huge to finally grasp how I can successfully survive these encounters. Now I know I need to find room for another bind. Bah.

Arvin · 01/11/08, 10:43 AM

I combine my Cleanse Poison with my Purge like this:

/cast [modifier:alt,target=player] Cleanse Poison; [harm] Purge; [noharm] Cleanse Poison

I went off the top of my head there cause I'm at work, but basically if you're holding alt it will cleanse poison off yourself, otherwise if you have an enemy targeted it will purge. If you have a friendly or self targeted it will Cleanse Poison.

Chemdog · 01/11/08, 11:23 AM

This a nice macro I may jack, Arvin. And I'm in the same boat as you, Worthe - just starting to get the hang of rogues beyond stunlock. Of course, as I'm just starting out in arenas, any rogue can stunlock me to death, I only have a measley 78 res and 8k health. I should probably sit down one day and work a few bindings into my extra mouse buttons because I'm so pve oriented I don't even have cleanse poison on my action bars. Granted, it's nothing a blind or envenom(?) can't counter, but in my 1500 bracket, rogues don't usually do that.

Worthe · 01/11/08, 1:19 PM

That's perfect, Arvin. Thanks, I'll be plugging that in place of my plain old purge bind.

Chemdog · 01/11/08, 3:20 PM

I noticed a few people in this thread mentioning they don't get focused 5v5. I can honestly make the statement that I am the focus fire target and first to die 95% of the time. Last night, we were 6-4 and I survived the whole fight 1 time. We switch it up to get alts involved so our 5 mans were warrior, lock, feral druid, resto sham, and me followed by warrior, 2 hunters, resto sham, and me. TBH, I didn't expect much out of the 2 hunter group, but that's the one I actually survived.

My 3 man is Warrior + Pally or Rogue + Pally + Me. I'm definitely the focus fire in there. In fact, all I do in there is drag down their rating. I get my games in and let them rock the house. This way I can work on my S3 gear and actually become useful at some point.

kingkaos · 01/11/08, 4:45 PM

My 5's floats between 1900-2000, 4dps 1 healer. UAlock, SPriest, Rog, Pally, me. Id say 95% of the time they focus the priest, leaving me fairly free to dominate the damage. Im usually pressured, CS/Poly sort of deal and always Curse of Tongues(fucking OP). I have been successfully dropped as a focus target a few times, against another 4dps. I have the lowest resil on the team at 409, and even still the priest is the logical target.

Argrax · 01/12/08, 3:23 PM

Is the battlemaster/pvp trinket combo the unanimous choice for elemental pvp? We're always a moderate to high chance to be focused so it does seem the most logical; just looking for final confirmation before I drop the 30k honor.

That said, I'm leaning towards the spell crit over the straight spell damage, would most agree with that choice?

kingkaos · 01/13/08, 3:45 PM

dmg>crit by far for pvp. Dmg isnt reduced by resil, Crits are.

Rabidclownz · 01/14/08, 2:30 AM

Originally Posted by xarg

Here's a screenshot which shows all my bindings and the majority of my interface, I figured this should help. I have my target to the right of my self, and focus and focus' target is below that. I do normally play with the 3 bars of bound buttons hidden, but had them on for this screenshot.

The mod you can see spamming my party chat (and have a read of the party chat for a laugh) is called shaman friend. It also writes to the announce area in the middle of your screen towards the top. The bar under my cooldowns bar is TotemTimers which is a must for pvp on a shaman.
ImageShack - Hosting :: wowscrnshot122207190107ki3.jpg

I'm going to assume 5v5 when I mention all of these, since this is the bracket where the elemental shaman excels, and also happens to be the bracket I have the most experience in

When gemming gear, you have to make a choice between going for sta/resilience, or going for dmg/crit. I generally focus on damage over crit simply because resilience reduces the effectiveness of spellcrit. All of my season 3 gear has either potent pyrestones (dmg/crit) or glowing shadowsong amethysts (dmg/sta) in it. If you're fully geared in pvp gear then you'll want to gem offensively. If you're still gearing up you might want to put 8 resil and 12 stam gems in. You can replace these once you have enough survivability. As for the meta gem, I still favour the mystical skyfire diamond over the new crit damage meta. It has far more potential to make a big difference in the outcome of a game, rather than doing very slightly more damage every time.

For enchants, once again you generally want to enchant your gear offensively unless you are still gearing up. Damage enchants on helm/shoulders/bracers/weapon/gloves/pants. Stam or resil enchant on shield and chest as there is nothing offensive here. I'll always pick resil enchants over stam enchants, because resilience is generally harder to come by, point for point. It's unlikely that you'll ever have maxed resilience as a shaman. Most top level players sit around the 400 mark.

On trinkets, pvp trinket is a no brainer for the first slot. The other slot for 5v5 I highly recommend the new "last stand" trinkets, not being affected by MS this can be the difference between living and dying in a game that is all about burst. If you don't have the honor or badges to get it, go for one of the standard passive+activatable trinkets. Xi'ri's gift is easy to get, or icon of the silver crescent. This way you can macro it in with your EM+NS+CL macro.

I downrank earth shocks, frost shocks, and lightning bolts generally. You'll want your focus macro to use rank 1 earth shock, because you don't want it to do nothing when you're low on mana. It's also not the target taking damage so it's wasted mana. Of course, there are plenty of opportunities to still use max rank earth shock. Frost shock is a lot less used in arena but on occasions where you need to stop someone getting away, generally a rank 1 will do the trick. And rank 1 lightning bolts are good, though they used to be a .5 second cast where it's now 1 second. Any time you need to do a small bit of damage to hit something, eg enemy's totems, keeping someone in combat, stopping a drinker. This comes in handy.

As for when to dps and when to heal.. this all comes down to communication. Assuming a 2 healer team, if your priest is getting trained on and your paladin gets locked, this is when you heal. When to DPS is all about communication too. You pick a target in a convenient spot, and you and the other caster in your team starts casting on him. Your warrior intercepts across and gets mortal strike up, and you take him down.

When you're getting focused, you switch to instant casts. If there's a warrior on you he can pummel you and you're not going to be able to do anything for the next 4 seconds (except frost shock). Find useful things to purge. Strip any targets you haven't already stripped. Keep a constant track of where your healers are, and run to somewhere that's in los of your healers and out of los of their ranged dps. Chuck any useful totems - tremor, or if you have freedom toss an earthbind and kite. Grounding totem till it eats something, then windfury back down (this is something you should do any time anyone in your team is being trained on and looks in danger). Mana spring, or poison cleansing if there's a rogue or hunter around. Frost resist if they have a mage.

The main mods I use are:
- Shaman friend. Shows all shocks, purges and grounds in the alert area of the screen, and can report to party chat too. Also alerts when you don't have an elemental shield on.
- Totem timers. Shows time remaining on totems down, which totems you have down, and when tremor/earthbind tick. Also can show in SCT when totems are expiring/destroyed.
- Pitbull. Good unit frames, takes a while to set up, well worth the effort. Party targets, focus frames, the whole works.
- NECB, or witch hunt. As an offensive dispelling class, you want to see when people gain things. I find the advantage of NECB is that you can filter things pretty easily. Keep the enemy gains bars nice and big, and ignore anything minor that you don't want to see. So when the druid gains innervate you get it off quickly.
- Quartz cast bar. Useful cast bar to have, i use it for my focus cast bar too.
- Proximo. A must for anyone doing any arena in any way, shape or form.

As for talents, this is what I think is ideal:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
The main points of this spec:
- Only 2/5 convection. These are just fillers. Point for point, unrelenting storm is worth more mana. As an elemental shaman you really shouldn't be sitting around chaining lightning bolts. You spend a lot of your time purging and shocking and tossing totems.
- Reverberation. Personally I rate this as a lot better than eye of the storm. Especially since we got the new 4 piece set bonus, which makes incidental damage very rarely interrupt you (assuming you have a paladin). Even if you don't have the 4 piece bonus I don't see it worth getting for 5s, as if you're getting interrupted you can get kicked/pummeled and you're not going to be able to cast anyway. You really don't want to cast with someone on you like that. Disrupting the other team's either dps, or more commonly these days, drains (mana burn / mana drain) is extremely useful, and you need to prioritise it pretty highly.
- Elemental precision. Stick a point in it if you're short of 3%, and drop one from unrelenting storm.
- Elemental shields. Any shaman who is resilience capped is really selling themselves short damage wise. As such I think it's a talent worth getting. I haven't tested if it stacks with resilience and thus how many points it's worth putting in, but you want at least one here.
- Imp healing wave. When I need to heal while a paladin or priest drinks, I'm going to be using healing wave. The half second off it is pretty vital.
- Totemic focus. I toss a lot more totems than I heal in an arena. Pretty self-explanatory.

Pretty good post, but I'd like to make a few comments:

Generally speaking, if you are throwing Healing waves (even talented) in high end (1900+) 5s arena you are going to see dead players. LHW is the only heal spell for an elemental shaman that can deal with the burst-potential of a 5s team when having to sub in during CC/silence trains. Thus, i tend to pull in the cost reduction. Also, placing points in %hit from the Restoration tree to offset lack of hit on gear for the 3% cap tends to be more beneficial than placing more investments in heal knock-back reduction. This allows you to focus the elemental points into mana/damage applications. Also, 5/5 reverb generally will only be useful in very limited situations. If you are unable to kill the heal with your 4/5 reverb, then the pally is throwing .5 reduced heals and it doesn't matter. Also, Storm Reach is highly overrated, especially in arena scenarios. As such, you can often place these points over in US for a better mana/5 boost. With the new Water Shield changes, this gives you a fairly decent in-combat mana regeneration.

My notable bind of difference is a self-cast poison cleanse that I use primarily when I am kiting rogues in 3s and occasionally in 5s.

We've run standard 2345 and a Dual-warrior 2-healer setup with my Ele Sham and had success with both in the 1800 brackets. Holidays have kept us from pushing onward since we're only hitting 10game weekly playings.

My recent 3s has been Mage/Druid and it is promising. With minimal games in we finished at 1700 and I would anticipate 2k easily being possible. Our hardest matchups involve priest groups. Against other druid teams, they never have dispells for their melee and CC is easy. I find the dual-CC with snare frost-mage allows us to DPS burst just about anything. We generally target warriors first and kill them through PS and/or SR.

dankula · 01/15/08, 12:02 PM

I get focused so much in my arenas, I think i am going to drop my pvp trink and replace it with the Icon or something. What's the point of breaking a cc when your being focused? Just drop bombs, blow cooldowns and hopefully you did something before they melted you.

Malinor · 01/15/08, 12:16 PM

Originally Posted by dankula

I get focused so much in my arenas, I think i am going to drop my pvp trink and replace it with the Icon or something. What's the point of breaking a cc when your being focused? Just drop bombs, blow cooldowns and hopefully you did something before they melted you.

The point is you may be able to trinket out of a frostnove or kidneyshot to escape behind a pillar, where you can heal yourself, kite around with earthbind/poison cleaning/freedom, or get in range to your CC'd healers.
Furthermore, Elemental is burst on demand, right? If your team calls out the nuke and you say you are ready to go, maybe you get sheeped/feared a second later. You really want to be able to trinket that CC, there is not always time for your healers to dispell you.

There are a lot more situations like these. Leaving the PvP Trinket in your bags is a very bad idea.

doogless · 01/15/08, 1:59 PM

The 20 resilience on the PvP trinket when you're being focused isn't worthless, either, at least from the perspective of your healers.

Worthe · 01/15/08, 2:43 PM

Originally Posted by Malinor

Furthermore, Elemental is burst on demand, right? If your team calls out the nuke and you say you are ready to go, maybe you get sheeped/feared a second later. You really want to be able to trinket that CC, there is not always time for your healers to dispell you.

There are a lot more situations like these. Leaving the PvP Trinket in your bags is a very bad idea.

I think that's a very important point. I do my best to not use my trinket until i really, really need to. We're fortunate, as shaman, that a lot of our early work in an arena match is all instant casts. Drop totems, purge stuff, purge more stuff, dammit stop buffing him... Bomb. I can't imagine ever, ever not having your pvp trinket to break free at important moments.

Kasi · 01/15/08, 4:54 PM

My problem in 5v5 with my shaman is that I'm pretty much asked to be the main dps for our team. I run with pally/disc priest/rogue/mage. The mage is usually CC'ing enemy healers with poly and cs. The rogue is on our main target locking him down, which leaves me frustrated. I can do so many things in that scenario, but doing any one exclusively doesn't work.

I'm supposed to be spamming LBs on the target, purging him, earthshocking cc or healing spells, dropping totems, supporting my priest who is always being assist trained (even with 450 resil) and having to backup heal when my pally gets cc'd. I just don't have the gcds to this all, especially if there is any sort of focus on me at all. So it just ends up me pumping LBs into a target and maybe 1-2 purges at the start and hopefully he blows up. But if that doesn't happen, we lose most often. That's what frustrates me a lot about being a shaman in pvp. I have all this other shit I'm supposed to be doing, but I'm expecting to be the howitzer in the field pumping out the dps. I think it would work much much better if I was not expected to be the primary dps on the team, which I assume in most cases would be a windfuried warrior or of if 2346 a FG lock. Plus if I am focusing so much on dps, that leaves less concentration for other tasks, which inevitably suffer. Anyone here in a similar situation and have advice to give?

Malinor · 01/15/08, 6:10 PM

I am playing 2346 right now and was playing 2345 before (Our mage left the server) So actually, our dps is very similiar to yours.

In the first place, I actually think that if your priests get foucussed, the other team should really pay for it. Since every priest is disc nowadays, it takes us to long to down a priest. The other way around, if they focus our priest we will most likely win. We have 3 dps free to gib their warrior in like 3 seconds as soon as the first window of opportunity opens up. Also nearly 75% of the teams we meet also go for me or our warloock. So if they down your priest easily, you are doing something wrong defensively.
I also really dont think you are the primary damage dealer in this setup. Your mage cannot sit around the whole time and Sheep/CS, he needs to contribute offensively. And your rogue should also deal a lot of damage, even he has to make sure the focus target does not move (deep combat or mutilate for 5s I would say). When the rogue pops his cooldowns he should be able to keep up with a Warrior for the time of your burstdamage.

Kasi · 01/15/08, 6:24 PM

It generally goes like this:

1) Priest gets focused.
2) Pally gets CC'd somehow
3) Priest starts going down fast. She uses PS.
4) Stays alive til PS is down, then dies shortly after.

Maybe this is an issue with what we're supposed to be doing to protect our priest, but she just gets constantly murdered. Against a 3 dps team she'll often have them all on her and will go down, especially since we seem to focus our CC more on opponents healers and trying to get a kill of our own.

In a team setup like we have, what should we be doing to support the priest? If I do stuff like heal her or frost shock melee on her or stuff like that then we have little pressure on our target. So I feel conflicted here between two roles.

Malinor · 01/16/08, 11:54 AM

From my Season3 experience, there is little use in CCing healers all the time. If you wanna gib someone, CC the healers when it counts. Most kills for us are nowadays in one quick motion (fast target switches etc.) anyway, it is really seldom that we are chasing a target down for a longer period of time.

I really think you are helping out your priest the most if you focus your oppopnents DDs, mainly Mages or Warlocks, which also takes some pressure away from you (fears, all time sheep, CoT). a Rogue on a Warlock is so effective, and with a little help of his friends he may be able to shut down a mage also. Of course, then you have the other priest free to manaburn, so you have to deal with that. But you can CS, Sheep, Earthshock, Grounding, and of course you have to play a smart game positioning yourselves.

That you are going to heal the priest is not an option. Of course, sometimes you have to spotheal etc. but as you said, you will never have enough pressue on the other team if you are healing as soon as he drops around 50%. Frostshocking melees... this is a really bad idea, save your shock cd for earthshocks. I would suggest your priest running near a pillar. Then you coordinate an earthbind totem/ frostnove with an additionally Freedom or Insignia. This works pretty well for us. We as a 2346 do not have an icemage to get rid of melees for some time, so in our case the warlock or myself are kiting around pillars with mentioned tools. This works really well and buys you some time. For example, while our warlock kites them around, our Warri and I will go all out on our focustarget.

In my opinion, the best advice to get pressure of your priest is to foucs a DD of the opposite team. If the other 2 DDs are able to kill her anyway (while she is healing herself plus your paladin, then your team is simply doing something terribly wrong defensive wise. What you can do as a shaman is mostly shock their casters CC/Damage on your healers and help them out with earthbind/ reactive tremor.

However, I am not a 2400+ player (between 2k-2,2k all brackets last season, as Resto) and I am not playing your specific setup. So maybe someone in here has better strategies.

gess · 01/16/08, 1:20 PM

There's an issue that seems consistent with most of the posts here. The real problem isn't what to do in these situations, it's trusting in the paladin/priest to kite and stay alive. If your priest is dieing too fast, he's most likely because they're not LOS the casters well enough. The most underrated and over looked portion of pvp is positioning. With enough practice and experience this is a skill that will win fights.

Worthe · 01/16/08, 2:40 PM

I currently wrestle with the feeling of not really grasping when I need to help us defensively by shocking DD (be they frostbolts or mana burns), CC (poly sometimes, more important in 3s where we don't have two classes that can cleans/dispel it) or healing. I'm using Proximo, but I think my ideal interface would show a castbar for all the enemy team which I could quickly use to identify and shock whatever cast is most important when my cooldown is up. Normally I have a focus set and I can't shock anything useful from the other targets. (Maybe I'm being a total nub and haven't spotted an option in Proximo to display casts... Now I need to look into that to be sure.) I think generally for our makeup in 5s (2345 with a lock) I should help early on by playing defensively between purges until it's time to unload, which won't happen until we get the priest to drop their pain suppression on the first target.

I've seen it posted before, but Shaman are so freaking complex (so many choices for any particular global cooldown) and somewhat weak in comparison to other classes, we really do require our teammates to really kick ass for the team to excel, which really is the message of the previous post regarding positioning, in my opinion.

Ninjerk · 01/17/08, 2:17 AM

I don't know how it would work out in serious Arena play but with MSD and Quag's eye having a chance to proc off of purges , totems, and shocks it would seem like you could weave some lightning bolts and chain lightnings in. A lot of my casts with Bloodlust up and either of those procs are smaller than the GCD and thus leave me with a little time I can't otherwise use.

I wish I could find a serious Arena team.

xarg · 01/21/08, 3:39 AM

If a team focuses on you for the entire game then you really should make them pay for it. You can do this in one of two ways.

1. You kite the dps (you can't escape the warrior so well unless you get freedom that doesn't get purged, but the ranged dps will get line of sighted very easily) while your priest empties the mana pool of every caster on their team.

Or, you can go with what I would definitely do on my team:

2. Drag the warrior behind a pillar out of los of his healers and blow the crap out of him.

Getting good target switches going is one thing that will definitely make your team better for it. This is the easiest target switch to make. You drag someone to a bad spot and blow them up before they can get healed.

Typically my team's strategy is to hop on the priest at the start to minimise mana burns etc. Then we just sit around waiting for someone on their team to head out into the open where we can blow them up. Myself or our warlock will call it, and we'll start channeling dps on them. The warrior intercepts across with a full bar of rage, puts MS up and dumps his rage into damage, and the target drops. Depending how good you are at this you can often take something down before the healers have adjusted and put on pain suppression / bop in time.

Herrera · 01/29/08, 4:36 AM

Is the 5-elemental team still a viable 5v5 team? Check this team The World of Warcraft Armory
They have quite an amazing score, although it's 4 elemental shamans and 1 resto, still, it shows the team has potential.
Now, the reason this lineup isn't very popular, is because it's hard to get so many good elemental shamans interested in trying it. What's your opinion? What lineups would destroy this team? Is the 4 x EM CL, Shock enough to make the game 4v5 in the first few seconds? What can counter it?

Totz · 01/29/08, 5:32 PM

the team Herrera mentioned is cheating imo, If u watch the vid the guy made at some point, u can see that the 3 other elemental shaman are just on follow duplicating his movement+spell like some of those farming bots (usually hunters). This means its one person controlling all the dps and making sure its pretty much instant nuke. If u look at their names they are also oddly similar. But hey this is just my point of view