Probably because both talents are close to useless for enhancement, so people just randomly pick left or right It's what I do many times.

Since my guild won't be raiding for a while, I've decided to take a more pvp oriented talent build. Up to this point I've always been pvp'ing as a pve build, not that there's a huge difference in the two but some things would have been quite nice to get. I'm currently at 385 resilience, wearing full vengeful/vindicator.

The spec I went for: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I've kept 2.4 in mind while speccing this. Toughness will obviously be a must have. Anticipation is just really nice to have against any melee and I am absolutely loving improved ghostwolf, even with a one second cast. I can see this become really good in 2.4.

I've decided not to take enhancing totems, since we rarely get to use dps totems. The only points I am not too sure about is elemental warding, as someone mentioned on a previous page, the only real class that it matters for are frost mages, who should be able to wipe the floor with us pretty easily anyway. I guess it helps some against destro warlocks, that are becoming more and more popular in the 3v3 bracket in my battlegroup (Ruin EU). Altough to be honest, I am considering moving these points in improved lightning shield.

The biggest downside of this spec would have to be losing 3% spellhit for me. Purge or earthshock resists can be a deciding factor in losing or winning, but so far it hasn't been to bad. Ten less yards on totems won't be as bad in 2.4, since that only really is an issue for me when I get feared out of tremor range. Seeing they are going to pulse more often in 2.4 and totems will have a shorter gcd, we will be able to spam tremor as we chase a lock.

On another note, what healer do you guys think works best for us in 2v2? I've been doing some 2v2 to help one of our resto druids get started with pvp (she has a t5/t6 level of gear, but like 50 resilience) and we've been doing quite well, mostly hanging around 1700-1720 rating. I find playing with a restro druid very challenging but sometimes very frustrating, as I can't possibly keep a warrior or rogue off her, and she gets totally owned by these. I would like to try playing with a paladin (of any spec really) for the blessing of freedom. Not sure how we would do paired with a disc priest or possibly another resto shaman, so if you have any experiences running these setups in 2v2, I'd be interested. It would just be for fun (I find playing with a healer very mistake forgiving, so you can really learn alot), since I 2v2 with a BM hunter in my "real" team, currently rated 2096.

I've run 2v2 with every variety of healer (though not a Shaman since the Water Shield buffs) and absolutely nothing compares to a Druid. You get a CCer, a 100% healing debuffer, a rooter, and the toughest, the most difficult to lock out/mana burn, long lasting healer. You even get a decent DPSer during Bloodlust.

BoF doesn't even help as much as Entanglng Roots does for keeping in melee range.

2.4 might change this a bit (I suspect Resto Shaman will get better, but still below Druid).

I'm liking the look of this build for arena so far, don't *really* need the extra hit for pvp and having 5/5 toughness 2/2 imp grounding and imp ghost wolf would be very good, sucks that i'm gonna have to change spec from pve to pvp >.>

Thanks to all who've contributed to this thread, has made some very interesting reading.
Whilest I'd love to be able to be competitive in arena, due to high ping issues in Australia, I've focused more on the battlegrounds. So thought I'd give some thoughts about those experiences with you guys.

I'll start with the only rule of any BattleGround PVP: There is no such thing as a fair fight.

WSG:
As defence (which is not playing to our strengths), I usually wait ontop of the flag with Earthbind, Magma, Poison Clearing and Grounding. With weapon and shield.
Or if there is a team mate with a stun ability there, up top, ready to drop down on whom ever is incapacitated.
Unfortunately defending the flag is a lower priority that getting the opposing one, so its rare to have more than 3 defending. So when theres a big rush of their O, they will pretty much get the flag, and its more a case of delaying them.

I find that it is better when controlling the mid-ground with 1 or 2 supporting team members. As we can chase down flag stealers quite well with FS and imp GW. Or assist our O by taking out the locks and priests that like to fear when going to/returning with flag. As for being flag carriers, well if there are no warriors or pallys or druids, then its an option, but lack of hp/armour makes being the focus difficult.

AB:
work with your group, else your totems loose so much of their potential.
When capturing a flag point: observe who's guarding and plan totems accordingly on the ride towards it. having someone to fear (or drums of panic) helps with disruption of their defence. kill first, grounding totem, then cap.

When assaulting the Blacksmith, there are 2 extra approaches that are possible with waterwalking, the first is when leaving stables and heading towards the lumber mine, near the fork in the road turn left. The other is from the opposite side near the junction between goldmine and farm. With practice can jump as leaving the shore, cast waterwalk on self before landing for a quick 4 second dash to an unexpected approach. Odd bit of trivia- can drink/eat whilest have waterwalk buff and standing on water (but you probably already knew that).

When defending a flag point: magma totem is a must to keep a constant ping to anyone (or serveral) trying to cap whilest your dealing with someone. If attempting to stall before re-inforcements arrive, earth elemental can be of help, less so if outnumbered.

EOS:
I cant offer any enh shaman specific insight to this BG, its something I need to work at.

AV:
The king of unfair fights. Accept that you will die if you are alone. Use of terrain to set up death from above style ambushes. When with a zerg, there are a couple of options. 1st is kamakazi, being mounted and near the back, line up a squishy or a healer and circle around the combat to get to the target. 2nd is defend your healers, kill anything that goes for them, pets included. 3rd is ghostwolf as a fake hunters pet (better if they actually have a wolf pet) to go for a target. A funny thing is the number of people that try ride past you with out engaging, as they are begging to be frostshocked and chased, especially as Alliance on the bridge. Capped RH and East and West Towers and got nothing to do, sit on the ramp into the generals room with earthbind and magma totems to catch stealths and anyone porting back that want to do mischief.

Also I think that having the elementals available on the odd occation when i've been 1 on 1 with a rogue or warrior has helped with my survivability. Also, the battle standard that gives health is a worthwhile extra totem when holding a position. Cheers Herb.

Both left and right tree are not good contributers to enhancement shaman.

Alot of good Enhancement players use the right tree for the 25% less mana to totems and improved melee hit %. It is like 3% increase to hit which is not significant at all and the totem mana cost is a good reduce to already cheap cost of totems, so really the improvement is not good overall. In my opinion the right tree weakens enhancement shaman from what its intended use is for "to hurt and hurt hard". Also the 30 yard totem improvement on the right tree is pretty decent for 5s arena but then- if your totem spamming then it seems somewhat useless also.

I use to copy the talent trees when i was newb from players like push and diivide but after a while, i started to change things after so many arena fights and bg's, to fit the encounters that i had problems with. Mainly rogues and hard dps teams. I look at my enhancement shaman now and he looks nothing like any shaman i used to copy and it works for me. I gave up the right tree altogether and dont see any reason to ever use it again.

I believe the attack power gained from windfury is very important to the damage you want to give out. So important that i went on heroic mana tombs to find the relic totem that gives +85 more Ap to the WF proc. the results were not sutle and i believe Totem of the astral winds is a must for all enhancement shamans. Damage works in burst as we all know so AP buff trinkets are very important to end players fast. Attack power is not as important as i used to think and i surrendered about 64 attack power for about 1000 more health and play with stamina buff players to increase me even more. my Ap is 1286 now from 1356 and i still do massive damage and now stay alive longer too which relieves alot of pressure from those trying to keep you alive. I just have to time my attack power buff trinket properly...ussually when a player is at 60% health i trigger it along with bloodlust and then i become a 2k+ attack power (Wf with relic)shaman with 30% speed and most likely mongoosed triggered, thats gg no rematch against any player short of plate and/or massive dodge/parry %.

Moreover, i believe the Left tree is superior to the heal tree just based on the reduction of a whole second on shock spells.I cannot even begin to explain how great this is against casters. their is also a 10% mana reduction cost for use of shock spells which is huge since your always going to be casting shocks but not always planting totems.

My Enhancement Shaman is on Velen Realm and Named Joon if you would like to see a different design opposed to conventional enhancement shamans using heal tree. I focus mainly on stamina improvements thru gems and attachments. My damage still gets me a spot on most arena teams and i still am in top 3 for all bg's in Damage. Just dont be too judgmental on my arena ratings, im always trying new combos and players as well as helping others that need a team so i may be anywhere from 1400-1800 at any given time. thx.

I'm going to try a completely different PvP build. Subjectively, I have much more success with a 2H. I believe this to be related to:
1) Burst capability
2) My WF Procs are concentrated on one Big weapon, and not being "Stolen"
3) Due to the myriad CC issues discussed above, Time on Target is low, so concentration of damage is a priority

Still, Respeccing has never been much of a priority because most of the talents in the enhancement tree were useless, so might as well keep the DW talents, save the cash.

Now it seems there are viable replacements to the DW talents, and to me, a 2H build makes a lot more sense. Even if you accept the conventional wisdom on this thread, that DW is a superior damage dealer, the freeing up of points to be placed elsewhere may justify the slight nerf in DPS (While still alive).

This build is based on the theory that I will be coming out with a shield on in a Melee Gib team. If I am on a more mixed team I take the two points from Imp Wep Totems and move them to cap off Elemental Devestation.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

2H in pvp was addressed much much earlier in this thread. The numbers were fully laid showing that 2H will be a dps reduction compared to DW.

2h is going to be even worse for arena now that any lvl 70 toon will have access to 170 resilience out the gate via the new honored rep pvp sets. I won't deny that swinging a 2h in a BG is a lot of fun, but it's not the right choice for being competitive in arena.

I have acknowledged that a 2H is a theoretical DPS reduction, based on talents as they existed pre-2.4. The point of the spec that I have proposed is increased versatility, survivability, and utility. It accepts as truth the maxim, death=0 dps. God knows experience has shown that Arena is much less about DPS, and much more about burst, survivability, and more importantly...control. Although our options for control are limited, Reduced Shock cool downs...reduced Grounding Cooldowns, Earthbind range, Shield Spec, Elemental warding are all talents to the aforementioned ends. Ultimately, what I have attempted to do was eliminate the "Wasted" talent points. The ones in the initial tree of Elemental aren't that great (But more useful than the initial tier of Resto) and Elemental Devastation is suspect due to a low crit chance for enhancement, but this build can pump out a lot of damage and is a lot more control/survivability oriented. The "Math" needs to take into account those factors, which is different than the PvE math used to such great effect in Malan's thread, which I am a huge admirer of.

I say again, you need to re-read the first 10 or so pages where some guy argued this over and over. This isn't "theorycraft" its straight up facts. And I don't see what talents would have changed in 2.4 that would affect using a 2H vs DW anyways.

No mage will ever stand in your face trying to cast a frostbolt, no matter if you're DW or 2H. However, the arguments for DW vs 2H according to me are as follows:

- DW means more UR uptime for you and your party which is a proportional dps boost, more SFocus procs, too
- DW means harder time for healers, but not necessarily, in 5s with a paladin, all healers have 100% pushback interuption
- 2H means really good burst once you're on the target, and that burst followed by a shock on a big heal can kill a target, however on a moving target, which is the most common form in arena, 2H may lose a swing, so generally it's much less dps
- 2H sucks if you get miss/dodge/parry, it's about 5-7 seconds of you not dps-ing

DW is really the only way to go in arena.

Edit: Also, what's up with Blizzard again, adding a "supposedly shaman weapon set" with a fast OH? Have they not learned anything?
The Fists of Fury

Pretty sick of discussing the same things over and over. Do a search on what you want to post about and actually address what comes up.

I'm giving up on enhance for arena for now. Maybe they will make it viable one day, but it really isn't yet. The changes did make us better, but only in comps where we already did fine. It didn't open any new doors for us.

I am currently spending all my arena points, badges and honor on resto gear and hope to complete my swap in the next couple weeks. Shaman/warrior 2's here I come.

Anyone know if Push ever finished his arena video? I checked over on the Dark Iron realm board but he doesn't seem to have posted there in quite awhile.

No, his video won't be finished. He does not have editing software that works with his computer. I saw a post on it, I will see if I can dig it up.

Found it

I guess you haven't seen any of my announcements about it.

I have no video editing software that works with my operating system (Windows XP x64), so there's no way I can make it. It's on hold, man. I'm sorry you didn't know haha there's nothing I can do.

WoW Forums -> 2.4: PvP Enhancement Shaman Reign

Post #194

Just started running a cleave setup for 5s and undergoing the new team learning to play together phase this last week but we did fairly well on our 2nd day together... Any team with an entrapment hunter is really giving us troubles though. Their warlock and mages kite us over the frost trap and we cant apply the pressure we need to.

Its still pretty fun even if I do wear a shield most of the time

If you're running with a rogue you want the rogue on the mage, controlling him, while you and the warrior focus on one target. I can see being kited by a mage or a hunter but between tremor, interrupts and a trinket I have no problem staying on a warlock. If you're trying to chase down a hunter or a mage at the start of the fight you're just going to be frustrated.

Teams with hunters in general (and especially entrapment ones) are a huge pain for the typical cleave team. Although warriors can intercept out of a frost trap, as an enhance shaman you will be constantly stuck in it and get basically zero facetime with your dps target, while at the same time the hunter will be absolutely destroying you.

It is such a problem that I will usually call out the hunter as our first target to get down. Their ability to drain your healers, snare your entire melee group, and still do ridiculous amounts of dps just makes them too deadly to leave alone.

Hunters really are a pretty hard counter to cleave teams. I dont think Ive ever beaten a good double hunter team for instance with my 5's cleave team.

That's why we just ignored the hunter, the first game we faced one both I and the warrior were being kited around the entire match and we ended up not killing a single member of their team. We changed up our strat and just ignore the hunter and burn down whatever can't initially kite us. We split the dps so that the rogue is terrorizing something that he can control (mage or priest I think?) while the warrior and I gib a rogue/lock/retadin/druid.

And as I said, I just ended up having to accept being unable to stay on a target. If I couldn't reach the focus target, I switched to whoever happened to be standing next to me just to keep the healing pressure up.

I'm certainly not at the 2k bracket so I can't say if this will remain valid, but at the 1700-1800 range we were demolishing shit like this.

If your rogue is on the mage you will have the hunter viper stinging your healers as well as some random mana burns coming in. It is probably better to have the rogue on the priest most times in my experience, since poly can be cleansed/dispelled.

Once I complete my swap to resto, I plan on trying out the same kind of composition with warrior/warrior/rogue/rshaman/dpriest. I have played teams with 3 healers and 2 warriors, but I havent really seen cleave teams with a resto shaman backing them up.

I like to first preface this by saying on my server horde side talent pool is very thin w/ only one horde guild that has even seen BT pre-patch 2.4. Also only one 2v2 team has hit 2000 mage/rogue and only one 5v5 team that has hit 2000.

With the abundance of druid/lock, druid/warrior, druid/rogues in the 2v2 bracket I was fortunate enough to find me a guildy that has a druid alt that has now become his main. Last week we did ok just learning each others play style. If not for the 2 DC’s we would have been at mid 1600’s at least, so I was very optimistic.

This week though w/ the new patch, we figured we run some games for fun. Out of the gates first game was against a Warrior/Druid combo. Warrior started on me and me vice versa to force druids to pop. His druid pops first because I was putting out more damage than his warrior. My druid pops, cyclones his warrior and the chase is on. I go for druid which is our game plan. My druid cc’s dps so they don’t put out damage requiring less heals while I put pressure on druid so he can’t cc. No way can we win the mana war if I go heads up w/ a warrior since he has ms plus I don’t want to feed him rage. I do pretty good against the druid as his heath is constantly hitting 2000 easily but not able to finish him off due to warrior constantly peeling between cc’s. This druid is smart he is always running back within range of this warrior so I’m am stun/hamstrung every time warrior is not cc which give druid plenty of time to gain his health back. My druid is also helping me by trying to root/ bear form stun druid to slow him which I think was our mistake. My druid going bear form stunning other druid just allows warrior the time he needs to hamstring and do major damage on me. It’s not my druids fault as the previous week I asked him to go bear form to help out w/ some stuns. We just stun the wrong person. We lost the game but we were just warming up.

Second match I jump for joy as I see a hunter/druid combo. I start off targeting hunter as he targets my druid. I do a quick swap to pet and bloodlust right away to kill pet. Druid pops out to heal pet as apparently the huntard has gotten tunnel vision on my druid. First druid attempts cyclone right away which is easily grounded. Then he throw a hot on pet and attempts a heal which is shock now pet is dead. Time for the chase . W/ pet dead and no interrupts on my druid there is no way tard is gonna kill my druid before I kill his. So I put pressure on his druid as always so he can’t cc while my druid cc’s tard. The whole match they are on the defensive as the only thing the huntard can do between being cc’d by my druid is to peel to help his druid. So the match goes on and on until his druid is oomed. They both run back to the starting point where they die. It took over 80k damage to kill the both of them. While huntards damage was a measly 30k because of being cc’d.

Third match we see no one so I assume Rogue/druid which was correct. I drop magma totem, grace of air then switched back to wolf. Should of drop poison totem but rogue opened up on me. So it begins my druid cyclones rogue and I go for druid. Once again I have no doubts that the only way I’ll kill druid is if I run him oom by making him switch forms and putting out more damage forcing him to use all his mana. The rogue using shadowstep to stun me constantly between cc’s to help his druid. When Shadowstep is on cool down it’s gets rough for the rogue as I drop my earthbind totem slowing him down while I bang on his druid. Match goes well and I oom his druid. Druid has barely any mana so he goes bear form and has to stay there. At around 2000 health rogue starts a stunlock on me while his druid gets outta my range. My druid then charges his druid (mistake since druid is going nowhere cuz he’s oom). Maybe my druids cc was on dm or maybe rogue was using cos either way it seems like rogue had me stun locked for eternity. By the time I got outta stun lock other druid had regen enough mana to heal himself. I was to demoralized at that point and gave up. Not my druids fault as he played flawless up to that point and he’s too busy w/ cc’s/healing to monitor other druids mana. If I had a mic and w/ better communication we would of won that fight since my druid would of charged rogue freeing me to kill his oom druid. The only advantage we enhance shamans seem to have is the ability to put out major damage and avoid druid’s cc w/ grounding etc. but a smart druid will cast cyclone or root forcing you to use your earth shock then he travel outta there and I’m force to ghostwolf and chase him another 6 secs while my shock is on cooldown. Grounding has a long cooldown and earthbind never works seems to work when druid is already in travel form and has a lead on ya.

Now this is in the 1600 bracket. I just don’t see how people are getting to 1850 w/ shaman/druid combo… it’s a uphill battle

And yes I know resto- shamans benefited more w/ the patch and are more viable in 2v2 or 3v3 and elemental are top dogs in 5v5. I think if played perfectly we have a chance to beat every combo except for warrior/druid or warrior/pally. As they will constantly run back to warrior allowing him to ms/ hamstring me. Any other combos… if the druid gets away from me I can always swap targets and put pressure on dps forcing druid to come back to me and w/ my dps putting constant pressure on his healing the druid will go oomed before mine. After the initial attack to get druid to pop I always try my best not to hit warrior to avoid feeding him rage...

Any tips guys….I ‘ve gotten the best gear I can w/ my ratings I just can’t believe it’s this hard in the 1600 bracket. Is my strategy flawed cuz I’d figure it’s the only way to control the match which iscontrolling dps and pressuring druid the whole time so they play defense.