Psychodays

I like the Darkmoon Card: Wrath. It's pretty worthless in PvE but for PvP it seems to really help overcome resillience. Crit's being so key for enhance dps with flurry, UR, focus it's hard to argue against as a solid trinket.

Thanks for the post Push about your 5v5 it had some good info. I'd rather do as druids do though and enchant/gem for spell hit. Also what about improved ghost wolf, I haven't used ghost wolf at all, is that a key talent?

How do you guys deal with all of your GCD's at the start of a match? I have 8 that I try to use before bursting, 3-4 totems, BL, SR, Berserking, Stormstrike, Shock...It's a lot to get done if your trying to kill someone fast.

 

◊ Malan

Man you are so far off the mark. First off its already been pointed out that the Elemental Warding talent only provides dmg reduction from Frost Mages and other Elemental Shaman. SR on the other hand is 30% dmg mitigation against *everything*. Secondly, you're going to tell me that Lightning Overload isn't a proc based damage system? And you're calling Elemental Mastery, a 3 minute cooldown, "on demand burst"? Come on. Yah great its on demand at the start of the match. Oh hey SS is a 10 second CD, look at that!

And finally, this thread was intended to discuss teams and strategies that make Enhancement work. If you want to poo-poo enhancement shaman in arenas please take it elsewhere. Everyone here is well aware of our limitations we don't need to have them continuously rehashed. Capice?

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

RaceBannon42

I've got a question regarding mixing Gladiator sets.

To preface, I'm pretty bad at Arena. I normally get focused down rapidly in 3's and cant seem to get enough people together for 5's. But I'm running a lot of BG's to improve my survivability. I've got the Vindicator's Boots, Wrist, Neck, and Ring. Belt should be next, then Vet's Ring. I've got the S1 chest, the S3 legs, and I'm working SLOWLY towards the S3 Helm. The S3 gloves are next on my list, but they are probably almost 2 months away at the rate I'm going. I'm contemplating what S1 gear to get in the mean time. Right now for PvP I'm wearing Felfury Gauntlets and Pauldrons of Primal Fury.

Would it be better to get the S1 enhancement items for those slots, or get the S1 Elemental gloves and add those to the S1 Elemental shoulders that I already Have. That would gimp my dps a bit, but would give me an extra 5 yards to shock plus an extra 35 resilience for a set bonus, as well as a little bit more shock damage.

 

• Shabadu

I'm using a Madness of the Betrayer currently. The uptime is decent since it has no ICD, and IA is always good. Beserker's call would be my ideal trinket as well.

 

◊ Malan

Does the improved ghost wolf really have a place in the arena? Movement speed is great and all but its not like going into ghost wolf is going to do a lot if you're already hamstrung/frostbolt slowed. The value of movement speed lost would be less but then you'd have to factor in the time spent casting and the GCDs too, I don't see that it wins out.

[e] Something else I'm curious about - I've never been a big user of macros on my shaman. What macros do you guys find useful as they pertain to enhancement shaman? Do you /rw announce your SR? Targeting macros, etc etc?

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

Areus

The only macro that I use in PvP is one I use for PvE as well which is just the basic:

/startattack
/cast Stormstrike

This allows me to just hit my bind and start hitting someone regarless if SS is up or not. It helps with damage because otherwise you if you just spam your SS button, you will not start auto-attacking until the SS goes through. Its helpful for switching targets to continue doing close to Max DPS without having to either rightclick on them to start the attack or your attack button if you still keep that on your bars somewhere.

 

Duilliath

I think when leveling my shaman, I placed them as filler points. They do better than Improved Lightning Shield or something equally silly. It has its uses in other BGs too, such as WSG or EotS.

I'm sure Push'll be along shortly though, to say it's a vital component of his Arena play

 

◊ Lord BEEF

This is a team that we went up against last weekend

The World of Warcraft Armory

Went 1-2 against them. Basically they have a rogue, enhance shaman, and hunter for their dps, and then a paladin, and either a priest or druid for a second healer. General strategy seems to be for their rogue to keep the target in place and wound poison is their healing reduction (though aimed shot was probably used a few times as well).

They play quite well but I imagine a decent amount of their wins are from the other team not realizing what just hit them

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

jlavarj

These observations come from 2v2 matches. A couple of reasons I like the imp ghost wolf talent:

1) Ghost wolves can't be sapped by rogues. If a match starts and it's obvious there are two stealthers, I go ghost wolf. Because I play with a resto shaman, he goes wolf as well and then neither of us are going to be cc'd right out the gate. When a rogue vanishes, having that one second to get into wolf and sprint away keeps you from getting cc'd out of stealth and creates seperation on the rogue requiring him to blow sprint if he really wants to get back on you.

2) I've been in a few matches where anticipating my partner's war stomp gave me the lead time to get into ghost wolf and get away to a point where I could bandage and drink for a couple of tics and then come back into the fight.

3) Anytime I get rooted, especially against frost mages, I'll shock, toss a chain lit and then go ghost wolf, and as soon as the root breaks I can close very quickly with the target.

The latest patch removed the GDC with the /cancelform command. I have about every skill macro'd to use that command first (though I think blizzard has made it so any ability used in a shifted form not available to that form will unshift you) so that I can drop a totem or stormstrike to shift me out of ghost wolf.

 

• Juice

Wow that's a hell of a rating on that team. Nice to see enhancement shaman do that well.

Stupid question about ghost wolf - can you melee normally while wolfed? I realize stormstrike will break the form, but can one dual weild, proc windfury, etc. while in wolf form and giving chase to, say, a druid?

 

Nadagast

Cleave setups are dumb, that's all I'm gonna say

 

◊ Malan

No it changes your attacks to an unarmed skill if I recall, its almost like a druid in feral form not actually using their weapon.

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

jlavarj

Attacking in ghost wolf form uses your actual weapon damage and speed, but won't allow procs. Rockbite damage will be applied though.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Nadagast, what do you mean when you say 'cleave' setup? Do you mean teams that make high usage of blade flurry, sweeping strikes and the like?

 

Nadagast

I just mean setups that use a lot of physical dps. They take pretty much no finesse to play and it can give easy wins, either by RNG with some lucky crits/windfury/whatever, or by just out mana'ing the other team by just sitting on someone who will take massive damage from physical attacks. I think they are probably by far the setup that is easiest to play for how strong it is, and that is a bad thing, to me.

Cleave teams can get a win without landing a single interrupt on the enemy healers, they can get a win without casting a single mana burn, and they usually don't have any CC, like poly or fear to use, and so the team setup is retardedly easy to play: they pretty much just mash huge damage on a cloth wearer and think they are amazing players after they win some games. Most cleave teams I've played against are just so subpar too, they just make simple mistakes that they shouldn't be making given their rating. I consistently see many of the same mistakes out of all of them, and it just screams to me that the setup is way too easy to play for how strong it is.

 

• Maligne

Please don't tell me you're using mana burn as an example of a non-"retardedly easy" playstyle?

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

Azaranth

Excellent. All this thread needed was a Warlock complaining about how Melee DPS take no skill in PVP.

Anyhow, I play 3's with your rather formulaic MS War / Resto Druid partner setup. Really, I spent the first few weeks feeling like I was an inferior rogue (and I was). However, we make much better bait than any rogue does. I'm the obvious first target, and 95% of teams come right at me. This is where I put on a shield, pop SR, and start running loops around a pillar while spamming cleanse poison on myself. While the dps from the other team is chasing me around, killing my earthbinds and whatnot, our war/dru can generally wreck someone on the other team. Our team is made up of Alts, but we do alright.

I guess that's my contribution to this thread. Since you're almost always the obvious target - be sure to stack resilience, grab a good shield, and kite kite kite!

 

Nadagast

I wasn't, I was just saying that a lot of cleave setups don't require anything casted other than heals.

Azaranth, I know it's real easy for you to just say 'lol Warlock' and shrug it off, but really, mashing physical damage on a low armor target takes way less skill than playing a Warlock. I'm not posting this out of anger against these setups.. I'm just saying that these setups are way too easy to play compared to how good they are. Tell me which setup with a Warlock is too easy for how powerful it is? 4 dps is the closest you can get, but 4 dps is still harder than a cleave team.

PS. I don't think Warlock is easier to play than a melee dps in arena, but maybe I'm retarded.

 

• LodeRunner

Oh yeah they just mash the heal button and don't do anything else while the physical dps mash the kill button and dey kills da cloths

 

Nadagast

I'm sensing sarcasm but that's pretty much all they have to do, obviously the healers in the setup can use their utility (Purge, Cyclone, whatever) but you would do that with any setup so...

 

• Sebudai

My 3v3 played 10 more games last week and managed to go from 1892 to 1966. Pretty good so far I think.

The two macros I use the most are my focus target macros for rank one Earth Shock and Purge. Focus macros are very important in the arena for pretty much every class(I would assume). I also use a macro that allows me to switch to my S1 Gladiator's Shield wall or back to my Rising Tide with one press(You'll need an addon like ItemRack for this I think.) That one is especially useful against 2 physical dps/1 healer teams in 3v3.

I don't announce my abilities in any chat currently. I just call them out on vent. I've considered announcing my interrupts and Grounding Totem absorbs in party chat, just to show how badass shaman are though.

 

◊ Malan

Can we maybe not dive into the "Class XYZ is OP/stupid/easy" discussion?

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~