Smokestomp

I usually move out with dual wield ready to jump someone. However, if they quickly move in on you, strap on shield + mainhand. 80% of your damage is mainhand anyway, so the shield will allow you to take less damage while you are doing mostly dispell/totem setup at the start.

I alternate between Stonebreaker's and Vengeful Gladiator's Totem of Survival, depending on whether I am getting focused or not. They both count as magic buffs that help protect from dispel. I recommend the "Elemental" Totem if you decide to use the gladiator's totem for survival, because elem and enhance version both have a 100% chance to proc a buff that last 6 seconds, and your Stormstrike is 9/10 seconds while your shock is 5/6 seconds.

About the purge mechanic: Not entirely sure. Some testing I did with a druid friend of mine with the 30% dispel resist talent showed that I could resist on 1 out of the 2 things dispelled, or resist 2 effects if extremely unlucky. Not sure how this interacts with different classes having dispel resistance and not--Does the first buff to attempt dispel determine resistance? Probably written so the talent they have gives a hidden "improved" version of the buffs, which would make dispel resistance up to each roll of your purge vs the particular buff.

Hope this helps some.

 

thevidon

Do most people go with this thinking? I know that a lot of the time I am not shocking constantly because I am saving ES for an interrupt, whereas SS gets hit every time its up.

 

Taowth

I find the gladiator totems useless. 6 seconds of resil only after I attack someone, either by shock or by ss, that can be purged. Which means in those cases where you're being kited and dont want to shock someone immediatly cause you're going to interrupt heals etc, the buff is useless.
You lose too much dps potential from 70 AP on WF or the shock proc of 110 for the little bit or resiliance thats negated when you're being kited (which is half the time you're taking the most dmg anyways).


In regards to the healing weapon and shield strat, it can be useful, but I feel only at the lower levels, and greatly depending on your team composition. The whole idea being it is to fool that you're resto, however now that buffs can be seen easier on a target bar, when they scan your team and see no earth shield thats a 90% giveaway that you're not resto, but probably elemental, which is even more of a threat than enhancement is.
I say 90% cause there are some that ES mid fight but I dont see the point in that, wasting almost 8% of your mana to fool them into targetting you first when as resto you probably wont be the first target? Its just kinda dumb for healers to do that.
Anyways, as I was saying more than likely they wont buy it at the higher ratings. Then unless you're with a war/pld they'll probably think you're elemental because double healer/dps doesnt really work without a warrior being the dps. If you have a stealth on your team that could help mask the no ES on the visible guys but tbh earth shield on a rogue or druid is so dumb that its laughable, at least for the opening shield.
Then theres the issue of moving in, as if you stay mounted when the fight starts you have to wait to charge to keep up the ruse, and then charge in and switching weapons on, which activates GCDs, delaying totem dropping and such.
Lastly, most people arent going to pop their dps burn buffs immediatly, not til they're solidly on a target etc, by which time you'll have jumped into the fray and pulled out your DW, and since as i said itd work in lower brackets, in the higher brakcets you'll be switched to when they see your dw, unless they were gonna focus another guy anyways.

So in the end, yes it can work, but generally (and especially with the new ability to see enemy buffs) its a waste of time that hinders more than helps.

 

panny

Highly doubt anyone would mistake a Shaman with 5-6k mana as anything but Enhancement. Starting with a Shield is a good idea though. I bought my S2 shield last season just to avoid capping my points, but it's turned into a great investment. When a Rogue opens up on you, it's pretty likely that you'll be stunned and unable to attack for awhile anyway. May as well start with an extra 500 HP and 5000 armour.

In fact, with the shield, I've won almost all my duels against rogues and warriors (with them being S3 geared). In a recent 2v2 match, we had two Rogues use their various CC to take my Priest out of the fight for something like 20-30 seconds and when he finally came out of DR, I was still at 45% health!

I've been moving slowly up and hit 1818 in Bloodlust's 2v2, but I am getting knocked down again due to facing teams that out gear us (S3 weapons/shoulders) while my Priest is still in his S1 robe. That, combined with the higher levels of skill, makes it pretty hard to beat those really annoying combos (mostly anything with a warlock or druid or rogue).

I got a 3v3 with Warrior/Druid up to 1818, but we tended to lose to mages. My druid mentioned that he couldn't cyclone due to the fact he'd get counterspelled, which usually meant that the 2nd dps (usually a rogue) could keep me locked down enough for the mage to sheep the warrior, keeping pressure off their team. He also had trouble healing one of us through a shatter + 1 combo. I really feel that for a 3v3 team that's not 3dps, you'll need a strong ranged class as well as a good counter for snares (in the form of dispels, BoFs or stun lockdown). My next thought is to try Holy Paladin/Hunter. Lots of snares from the Hunter, some draining, strong ranged damage without being too vulnerable to melee as well as MS. Paladin for BoF makes for a slippery hunter or an unstoppable shaman, and BoSac makes CCing the healer less of an issue. Any thoughts?

Fix Spirit Wolves not responding to commands.
DK/Rogue

 

Malan

While that might be one tactic, I could certainly see a shield being useful to mitigate physical damage from a rogue's initial openers or from a hunter starting on you from across the board.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Taowth

Yea Malan, except the beginning of that sentence was about using healing weapon/healing shield as a fake out, not talking about starting with any shield.

For 5s, starting with a shield when you're missing 1 opponent isnt that great unless its 4 dps, (or you're 4dps) as the extra healer can offset the tiny bit of stun from cheap shot.

For 3s and 2s though, starting with a shield when one is missing (and the other 2 have no MOTW) is definatly what I do most of the time depending on the comp (if we're not going to target the rogue I wouldnt shield up cause we're just going to charge anyways, so that rushes most rogues and stun time cant be used as well from repositioning etc).

Most people dont realize how gimped our dps output becomes when you take off the OH, as without flurry we swing very slow with only 1 active use skill. The hitting power of the MH and MH WFs remain, but the lack of flurry uptime hurts more than most realize, and the mitigation from a shield is only around 17% or so (i'm not logged in at the moment so i dont have exacts). So while its worthwhile to use for an opening vs a rogue in the smaller brackets, or vs double physical teams like hunter/war rogue/rogue rogue/war etc, other than that its more of a hinderance.
Warriors can still mortal strike, heroic, etc etc when putting on a shield, but we're kind of stuck.


But yea panny thats another big factor for the fakeout not really working very well. I just see it so rarely its the ES I mainly look at the distinguish elemental or resto. ^.^


In terms of your comp issues, I wouldnt say that 3s that isnt 3dps needs a strong ranged. But there does need to be one of a couple factors, either defensive dispels, offensive lockdown, high cc, or 1 cc and 1 ranged.

War/Druid/Shaman doesnt have any of them, and thus since both shaman and war are melee with only 1 snare break themselves, and the only cc coming from the druid, you cant cc enough of their team for the duration of the snares to really be able to do anything to their team if their healer is good. If you cant kill someone with the initial charge, you're likely to be controlled to death.
But you dont need to do a complete revamp, you can do the switch of druid for the paladin, or the warrior for the hunter, either would work because then with the paladin, theres freedom for 1 of you, cleanses for the other, and thus you gain a bit of longevity at the sacrifice of CC. The paladin's positioning skills will be key though since both of you will be chasing targets. With the war for hunter switch, you still have the CC and roots, and snares will only effect half your dps.

My own 3s is 2 melee and healer, we do ok against snares because my 2nd melee is a rogue, so he provides that offensive lockdown. So while we may be snared individually sometimes we're also getting the target stunned in place other times etc.
The comp does have problems, as yours did, against mages, and because of the double melee we cant target mages first practically ever, not because of iceblock, thats minimal (blind/focus shocking when the mage blocks would prevent most heals unless a pld bubbles for it), its that theres so many snares that combined with blink its just not really viable for us to get him.
The shatter combo hurts big, some things to do in a nova if you cant break it is get a shock off on the mage, it'll do more than shocking a heal from the healer, thats not always possible to do though cause it might be on cd, so you could then spam lesser heal wave on yourself. If you get counterspelled, that interrupts the mage's combo timing, giving your healer more time to get you topped, as well as soaks a cs from the mage that might go to your healer. If you're getting hit enough to knock it back significantly then the nova should break from that, so either way you should be able to get a heal off at least, and even that 1300 is better than 0 when you cant do much and are about to take big damage.

 

Malan

I was watching a video from Season 2 (I forget who it was, the guy on the prior page that made the big wow forum post linked it) and this shaman started out with a KZ healing weapon and a S2 shield at the start of most matches. He'd toss 2-3 heals as the initial round of DoTs + Hunter attacks occurred until the opposing team had closed in range so that he could attack. It seemed to work pretty well.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Kasi

Yeah, but this doesn't really work anymore because inspecting people now shows you more info. I don't recall that you used to be able to see exact mana values, but the max mana of a enh shaman is quite a big flag. Even a crappy geared elemental is going to have 8k mana. Also add in the new proximo. It shows you what the other team's specs are. You're not going to be able to hide anymore that you're enhancement.

 

Malan

Right, but in the example that I used above, the guy wasn't trying to fake anyone out. I think he just decided that he provided more worth to the group in the first 10 seconds of the fight by tossing a few heals and posturing himself defensively until the opposing team had reached melee range.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Barell

I have found that personally we do better when I go defensive the first 10-15 seconds of the fight. Just throwing heals, trying to get totems down and aquire my focus target. This seems to be especially true when the other team charges us. There is usually chaos for 20 seconds but if they don't drop someone, chances are alot of there cooldowns are gone.

As for using a healing main hand, I might try that this weekend. I still need to purchase a good shield, next on my list for this season. Is everyone getting the standard shield or are they getting the healing shield? I was going to get the standard one, but I am starting to think the healing one might be a little more useful.

But I would take this with a grain of salt because we are a 1550ish team, things are a little different down here in the lower brackets. People do some strange things. We lost our amazing Paladin and the 3rd alt resto shaman we replaced him with just isn't the same.

 

Malan

Well the Vengeful Shield wall is going to give you aboout 200 more HP and slightly more resilience while you've got it on, that would seem to the logical way to go.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Taowth

Definatly use the Shield Wall, the whole point of using a shield is for more defensive qualities, so the higher max hp and more resil help you more than healing which you probably wont use, and which will only add like 15 to your LHW.

As for the next item to go for Barell i'd recommend getting the s3 gloves first to get the 5yd range on shocks bonus, its so nice, and will help you game much more than a shield, with extending the range of focus shocking.

 

frozenyogurt

Hey all, been awhile since I last posted my first post in this thread and forum. But since then, I'm now a 2k+ rating enh shaman! my 5v5 rating got to 2015 last sunday (same with my personal rating). don't have enough points yet to get my shoulders, but next week i'll get it for sure.

read some of the recent posts talking about the use of shield and ya know what? shields are awesome! i use the flaming skull shield from hMT (forgot the name) which isn't the best shield but it's the only one I have on me atm, but it does it's job. the added armor from the shield is essential to staying alive long enough so that the healers can bring you back to full.

Addons I use for arena: Proximo (left click = target, right click = focus), Shamanfriend, Enhancer, Itemrack

Macros: Shield macro, DW wep macro, Focus Earth Shock macro, "Battlemaster's Rage" macro (Battlemaster's Determination + Shamanistic Rage), "Bloodserking" macro (Bloodlust + Berserking)

Team makeup (laugh if you want since it is a weird makeup...):
1.) MS Warr
2.) BM Hunter
3.) Resto Shaman
4.) Disc Priest
5.) Enh Shaman (ME!)

Totems I drop (or try to drop):
WF (ALWAYS! for the ms warr), Strength (sometimes), Health/Mana (hardly), Searing (almost never)

Tip: Support support support! No need to go epeen and try to top the dps charts. My makeup, the BM Hunter is the top dps'er. MS warr and I just go out there and wtfWFpwn the target.

2v2-wise...my main partner is a resto shaman. we rush, and i call targets and orders. sometimes we lose, most of the time we win. although 2v2 is just for fun for me while i try to help out friends get arena points for them.

 

Barell

Thanks for the responses.

I guess I should clarify a little bit. I had intended to buy the season 1 shield with honor. Would love the Season 3 shield, but with my rating I doubt that is going to happen. As for my arena points I was leaning towards the legs and then the glvoes. But I could get the gloves and get the legs after. I was going for the legs for survivability. Its either me or our 450+ resilience discipline priest they go after first.

I'll think it over a bit more.

 

jlavarj

As of patch 2.4 Healing Grace (3 pts) will increase dispell resistance of your own spells by 30% along with reducing healing threat by 15%. This is ostensibly an Earth Shield buff, but the description sounds like it should work with Shamanistic Rage and other elemental shields as well. That is a tough call, putting 3 more talent points in the resto tree in order to gain that benefit.

 

Taowth

Yea i just read the worldofraids main page and that definatly caught my eye, and its only going to be a problem for those in the elemental secondary. I'm going to have no prolems with it since its 3rd tier that i'm already in for the hit and totem range, I have 2 wasted points in healing knockback, and then i plan on taking 1 out of Imp Weapon Totems a pve talent for me, so my rogues can suffer 15% out of that AP gain (which is only like 40 from the totem i think, havnt checked), and i'll have my 3/3.
I'm pretty pumped about it too, cause it'll help keep water breathing on, SR, as well as bloodlust. It'd be kinda cool too if it turned out to extend to spells on the shaman, though i'm pretty sure it'll just be spells cast by.

 

Beyers

Frozenyogurt, could you perhaps post the actual macros that you use? I'm mostly interested in the shield and DW macro. Thanks.

>Macros: Shield macro, DW wep macro, Focus Earth Shock macro, "Battlemaster's Rage" macro (Battlemaster's Determination + Shamanistic Rage), "Bloodserking" macro (Bloodlust + Berserking)

 

zigpig

My prefered PvP spec on my enhance shaman would be 0/40/21 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft.
Just for the instant heal on another person or you (Nature's Swiftness).

 

Malan

You would lose 30 seconds of damage reduction and mana returns for *one* instant cast heal that probably isn't going to break 2k? Really? Not to mention you've lost mental quickness for the extra spell damage that would have actually contributed to your +Healing, and you give up the actual pvp talents - improved grounding totem. That's a pretty silly build.


Anyways... I've started a 2v2 with a frost mage. I basically have no pvp gear to speak of, so its a little dicey, S1 shoulders, a S2 axe (benching my Syphon OH for the S2, not sure if its worth it at this point), Dory's cloak and the resilience trinket from CoT rep. So far as long as there isn't a rogue in the opposing team, we wipe the floor with the other guys. The rogues are really screwing me up even when its a rogue/caster though. I'm very hesitant to break the stun lock for fear of getting a blind later that's going to be just as bad.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

shelter

yeah, nice healing against mortal strike from war/hunt/rogue. you'll surelly have a stack of wounding after stunlock procedure. so it is about 1k of hp... I can belive in NS as finisher when you lose your target from melee range and target is about 1k hp you can shock and NS+CL, nice againsta droods, but still it is very rare situation

 

jlavarj

The real power of the nature's swiftness spec is not the instant heal (which will often fizzle out anyway due to mortal strike, wound poison, aimed shot, etc) but in a stormstrike + earthshock + NS/Chain Lit used as a finisher. But I still prefer the damage reduction of Shamanistic Rage.

In a 2v2 with another dps, i would recommend throwing a shield on against a rogue and turtling up, focus more on keeping the poisons off yourself and slipping heals in on the rogues GCD and just stay alive while your mage partner puts some hurt on. My experience in the lower brackets is that when warriors and rogues see they aren't doing much damage to you, they will switch to a new target. That leaves you to go back to DW and pounce a more desirable target as well.

 

foonkiantor

Sup all Foonkinator here from Bloodhoof, My 5v5 Team rocked from 1700 - to 1900's.. But within the 1900's Bracket fighting 2k+ teams it became really really TUFF.
Are Step up .
MS warrior (Swords) Enhancement(DW-s3 weps) UA lock / SL/SL lock and 1 healer (Holy Paladin)

Now we hit 1900 with this make up , and hit a Wall of problems ....... Once we got to 1900-2200 Bracket fighting teams in within the rating we saw ALOT of this
Elemental shaman / MS warrior(Maces) / Holy Priest / Holy Paladin and Ice mage.

We just get WTF owned by it.. So im switching up the UA lock for either a Combat Mace rogue or Ice mage.... Anyone else have any suggestions on Team make up for 1900 +++ teams and any Info on what you do to beat those teams?

We would go after the Priest and Fear the shaman and Paladin... but it wasn't working due to all the massive CC the mage was causing and burst damage....

[ Post edited by Foonkinatorr ]

 

Nurru

Something tells me your stay will be short lived.
You're having trouble with what is probably the most common 5v5 team composition. I'm not sure where to start, but your group composition is all sorts of odd. Not every team makeup can do well.

... did you paste this post from another forum?

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

tzenes

He posted this on the shaman forums too.

Funny story about foonkiantor, he used to be the GM of a guild called sublime on Sen'jin. However, he decided to ninja the guild bank and then server transfer. Took them a while to replace all the Hearts of Darkness he took, so they could do shazz

 

Taowth

The problem isnt particularly your comp, but your strategy vs those setups. You field a 4dps team, yet foolishly you target a healer as your first target. The entire goal of a 4 dps team is to gib someone within the first 25 seconds, doing so much damage that it shouldnt matter how many healers they have. Thus since the 4 dps setup lacks heals you'd of course minimize their dmg output for the long run by mutilating one of their dps.
You should either target the elemental shaman first, while CCing the mage and the priest (to prevent sheeps on your own guys, novas on your melee, and mana burns from their priest in the beginning), or target the mage first while CCing the priest and the shaman.
Who you target depends on how much you've played against a team. Elemental shamans are the deadliest casters to just leave free casting. Yes they'll burn their mana relativly fast, but they have insane crit and dmg for the piddly amount of time it takes bolts to cast. Mages for example may be more damage per cast in a frostbolt, but they might be forced to move more and thus get off less casts etc, or more prone to counterspells. However elemental shamans KNOW this, and if the shaman is good he'll stay relatvily max range if he can, lagging behind the rest of his team while they setup. So if the elemental shaman is particularly good and plays the kiting game well you would probably be forced to blow up the mage, though he has ice block. You could go for the warrior but with 2 physical i dunno if you can blow him up in time.

And while I said your comp wasnt as big of an issue as strat, your team could still do very well to fix some holes in your comp. You're a 4 dps team, and thus you go for the fast kills. Thus one would ask why is a dot spec lock on such a team. Unstable afflic is nice so tehy cant dispel shit, but I personally would prefer having a shadow priest which would throw a silence on said person that would be dispelling, thus they cant heal either for that big burn burst. If the pld doesnt offensivly bubble for the big burst you silence him, then have the other lock death coil him as he gets out of that. Then of course you have mass dispel for enemy bloodlusts and mainly for pesky iceblocks allowing easy mage death.
I would NOT recommend a rogue, 3 melee in a 4 dps burn team is just asking to get owned out the ass by any team with a hunter. I'd recommend as i said a shadow priest, or a mage, and then after that a hunter if you cant find either of those 2.
Your 2 locks just arent going to cut it for the mentioned reasons, as well as the fact that most high end teams run a priest somewhere in there, so the team will have shadow res as the first buff, and while the main target of your team may be dispelled down to nothing, that doesnt say the same for the others who will then resist fears and such.