I play 2v2 with a resto shaman that is a RL friend of mine. Some of the hardest teams for us to take are double rogue, rogue/healer, warrior/healer. I tweaked my spec a little to max out shield spec and anticipation and then this morning we took a double rogue team quite easily. The key was I threw on a shield and popped shaman rage along with the moroes pocket watch I've been trying out lately. Damage on me became almost trivial and it gave both of us time to spam poison cleansing (which is going to be even more important with rogues moving to mutilate). We let our searing and fire nova totems do most of the damage and just slowly worked the rogues down for a decent win. Keeping earthbind, stoneskin and grace of air totems down helped us both stay alive as well.
I'm doing 2v2 with a Disc Priest in BG9 at about 1700-1750 and I'm getting rather frustrated at the Resto Druid + Warrior combo. With MS, I take too much damage for my Priest to do much Mana Burning. Either we lose the mana war, or I get bursted down during a Cyclone. We do our best to LoS/Grounding Totem/interrupt Cyclones but even without mace stun, one will eventually land. And even if it doesn't, MS is too much.
Panny, I'm having a huge problem with this as well. As an experiment, I put on a shield, moroe's lucky pocket watch and took a few warriors with decent s1/s2/stormherald gear outside of org and just wanted to see how long I could stay alive against them. What was surprising was, not only could I stay alive for a few minutes (it's easy to sneak LHW in between 3.8 sec swings) but the damage my auto attacks and searing totem did in that amount of time took the warriors down low enough that out of 8 duels I only died twice. Both the warriors told me that I was dodging like a madman, probably due to the pocketwatch and grace of air. I kept stoneskin down as well.
The next step is to take this idea into the arena. When I see warrior/healer I turtle up immediately and try to cut down on that immediate damage. One of two things seems to happen then. Either the warrior sticks on me and I take care of myself while my resto shaman healer goes on the offensive against the other healer, or the warrior changes targets to my shaman and I'm left hamstring free to take off after the other healer.
I need a lot more games against warrior/healers before I can call this a success, but anything has to be better than losing to an endless stream of s1/s2 geared warrior/pally teams.
Thats why i said test 2h and DW with equal weapons on a 350+ resilience, 11k armor warrior. It wouldn't prove which is better overall, but it counting the high resilience, and damage reduction you would see roughly which weapon choice has the higher damage output on stormstrike.
I completely understand what Push, Sebudai, Mek etc are saying. DW has more consistent burst and damage, and uptime on UR, better for Shamanistic rage and interrupting healers, But claiming that DW does more damage on Stormstrike completely baffles me and i fail to see how that is possible. Thats what i want to be tested and proven. Maybe it is just because my 2h is superior to my 1 handed weapons, but it is also possible that their duel wielding choice is superior to any 2h they might have or do use.
Still reading from page 5 but i'll reply to this now.
From my experience Stormstrike with a 2h on a warrior is bad compared to DW. I currently have S2 MH s3 OH, and for 2h i have a Soul Cleaver.
You're pretty much only using SS for the chance to proc WF. As stated in other threads and such, 2h its the regular 20% for a wf, and with DW its what was it 36% total for any WF.
Now if you could switch to 2h for just the SS for the chance of the big wf thatd be fine, however you cant due to the GCD activated by switching weapons.
So you'd have SS CD finishes, switch to 2h -> GCD 1.5 -> SS -> GCD 1.5 -> Switch back to DW -> GCD 1.5.
So to get this 2h SS and switch back, you're using 4.5 sec of GCD time, which with 2.6 speed DW weapons is 1.7 cycles of regular swings, each of those having been able to proc WF as well if your SS with DW didnt.
Add into that that switching weapons resets their swing timers. So switching to the 2h and then back after the SS means the only dmg from the 2h will be from the SS, and then switching back to the DW means your dmg from that then comes 2.6 later (less if flurry is up obviously).
Add into that the info commented on in the enhancement shaman mega thread that someone found out that in a SS the MH is prioritized on a WF proc (meaning it rolls mh wf before oh).
Push commented, and I heartily agree, that in arena its all about GCD management. Totem replacement and spell interruption through shocks are key to performing as enhancement in arena. While you're in this 4.5 seconds of GCD to do SS on a 2h, thats 4.5 seconds that the other team has to freely heal or cc, as well as the other things replacing a totem would counter, such as fearing/poisoning targets other than you, etc.
Add into that the fact that resiliance greatly counters the one thing that 2h is good at, the WF crit burst, and that 4.5 sec of downtime as well as the reset swing timers after its over means you're trading off Very good regular damage, the chance of wf on the dw, and interrupting heals (i very much doubt in a real arena situation you can feasibly time heal interrupts within 6 sec of your ss being up) all for the SMALL chance that you'll get a WF proc on the 2h for slightly more damage.
The only time 2h is any good is in battlegrounds, simply for the reason that your opponents have little resiliance, so the big burst crit reliance of it doesnt matter, but when your 2h doesnt crit a WF it doesnt do squat to someone with 10k health.
5. Watch out for pallies. Seals are going to stick now so you will just mana burn yourself trying to take it off. Their blessings can be cheap so if they just keep putting them up for you to purge, concede the battle and save your mana. Same with any class that tries duping you with "dummy" (rank 1) buffs. Don't dispel a disc priest Pain suppresion, it has 85% dispell resistance with silent resolve so save your mana if you see their blue bubble.
I must say I disagree, i'll always keep Might off a ret pld. Few will ever keep rank 1 on their bars so if they're worried about doing that then they're not watching their CDs and such.
And Pain supression i personally spam purge on. PS is used as the oh shit move on someone going to die, and if that 15% goes through they're dead. My ES cancelling 1 heal from another target isnt going to mean squat against PS when the priest casting and the other healer are casting on the guy with the DR time to get 2 big heals off. With the exception of 4 dps in 5s of course. But if my purge gets off on the PS then they're dead, not only that but it will make their healer panic knowing it got purged off.
Of course, this only really works with enhancement shamans too which is why most teams dont see it happening (and why most times i face are surprised when it is purged by me) simply because if you're elemental you dont want to stop your dps time to purge something with 85% resist, better to get dmg in on that or other targets, but enhancement dpses through using the purge so I can do it without losing total effectiveness.
In regards to gems, i prefer survival gems and dps enchants. I only gem for resiliance because I cant gain it any other way via enchanting, and a couple hundred hp isnt going to matter much in the long run. Its always the crits that bring me down, regular damage adding up doesnt kill me with my healers doing their jobs its the crit. And since i'm the primary target most of the time it pulls its weight.
While yes my direct role is dps, I see my role as inciting panic. My dps is in their face with them slowed trying to get away, while countering fears on my healer and interrupting theirs. Putting 10 str (for example) into all pvp slots for 140 AP isnt going to do as much for me on my opponent compared to me surviving 30 more seconds minimum through not being able to be crit.
I use PED and Surefooted because the things that hurt me most is getting stunned (meaning i cant react with totems etc) and frost nova. There has only been 1 case in all my arena where i've ever said to myself that I wished i had minor run speed to catchup to someone. If they're running from me that means they're not casting anything to interrupt with shocks. If they're a dps and not a healer and they're running from me, that means (unless they're a druid) that they're not doing damage to me for the most part so i can counter a heal easily without worrying over them getting out of range before CDs are back for earthbind.
For the most part.
I do wish surefooted was 10% instead of 5, i dont see it often enough but when I do it 100% means that mage is taking a shitload of damage and usually has to ice block if i'm on him, or if i'm not on him then it means I can stay on my target doing that damage to them without taking a frostbolt/ice lance shatter combo.
I finally started doing serious 3v3s a few days ago with a warrior and a holy paladin. We went from 1500 to 1880 in a few nights of playing (one of which had horrible queues, or it would have likely been in 2 nights).
We had a lot of bad match-ups against people with a lock+another cc. With them managing to lock down our paladin and burn me. This improved a lot last night when our paladin started using seal of blood more often, and turned a lot of hard fights into wins with breaking polys and blinds almost instantly. We were also bad about consistently staying on the same focus target. Partially due to my overzealous switching to avoid kiting, and partially due to the warrior intercepting too far away.
Also, 1.5 or 2 healer teams with a mana burn (hunters usually more then priests) give us a lot of trouble. They are doable by staying near each other so I can lock down a priest and cleanse poisons. 2 Healer is hard to impossible to burn through and if they manage to drain us, we're pretty much dead. Focusing one of the healers is usually the way to go there, and a druid with justice on him can be melted fairly quickly.
Overall it was a lot of fun, the paladin negates some of our largest weaknesses, namely being kited. Freedom/bop combined with my own snares let us put a *lot* of pressure on our focus target. An ms warrior with wf and bloodlust + me being close to unkitable puts a large amount of pressure that one healer can't keep pace with.
My general strategy is to pop bloodlust as soon as possible, although I'll wait a little bit until we're mixed up to avoid the dispell. Then to pop SR immediately as we start dps while prioritizing purge for cooldowns. Other enhancement shamans can make it a bit difficult if they are on me purging though of course.
Druid healers in general are easy for us if we can close in on them initially. They are fairly squishy, and with smart purging have a lot of their healing negated. And with the paladin snaring them, they can't run away very easily. If the druid isn't cycloning we can usually ignore him all together and burn a dps, as his rejuves won't stay on very long with purge. A smart druid who is max ranging and line of sighting while spamming cyclone can be a bit of a headache, but luckily haven't hit too many good ones yet.
We kept running into issues with out ranging our healer in some form, which is more of a skill issue on our part. After it happened a few times, we made it a priority to stay within 20 yards of our paladin at all times. Turning around and running back if necessary. Consciously making that a focus definitely was a help.
I just started pvping again recently (grr s3 weapons) and have been trying out different gear combinations. I don't think stacking resilience is the best way to go, but I know a lot of people are res capped and it helps keep clothies alive.
Which brings me to my next point: [Darkmoon Card: Wrath] is horrifically overpowered against max resilience targets. I'm going to try to get more sample and some logging going, but against a max res target I went from having less than 1 in 10 crits to 1:4 or 1:5 crits. I've only tested against a max res shadow priest, and a 350res s3 elemental shaman, but in both cases there was a substantial increase.
Guys, do someone have a video with enhancement shammy in pvp ? I'm not looking for some PEW PEW OMFG CRITS or something, I'm interested in study and learing videos. Like tricks and moving strategy. I got lots of experience in a1/a2 seasons, at the moment I got 346 res with AP enchants and around 10.2k hp (I had 375 res + 26 from proc from a1 relic and 11.2k) but seems like AP enchants > surv. Anyway I really suck at arena, my max raiting was 1700 in 3x3 and 5x5. I've tried lots of setups and builds. So at the moment I'm saving arena points and honor to respec as elem for PvP, but there is still a hope I can do it in elem. So if you can post some solid learning videos I guess it helps not only me.
Guys, do someone have a video with enhancement shammy in pvp ?
Push is rumored to be coming out with one soon.
Warcraft Movies also has one that was decent of a shaman from Frostmourne, but he was dealing with high ping in all of the games so I felt it wasn't a great showcase for what enhance is capable of.
Zagine has one up on warcraftmovies.com. The second clip is funny because he starts out with an arena shield and shard of the virtuous on before he goes to town on somebody.
Zagine has one up on warcraftmovies.com. The second clip is funny because he starts out with an arena shield and shard of the virtuous on before he goes to town on somebody.
I think I've seen the same one, but I didn't really feel it was very useful. My experience in 3v3 is limited so take my comments with a grain of salt. Anyway, most of the problems with Enhancement PvP are with being snared and CCed. It seemed that most of the teams were pretty surprised at his spec and didn't really know how to handle him (the Frost Mage for example). Having a UA lock and a resto Druid meant that Zagine was never the primary target, but even when I'm not the primary target, Warriors usually switch to hamstring me before switching back. With no other snare but Frost Shock/CoEx, I don't see how Zagine's target couldn't have escaped.
From what I could see, Zagine's magic CC problems were usually solved by having his teammates Fel Hunter Devour it, which was cool. And as soon as a Rogue would open on him, his Druid would cyclone him. If anything, this video made me crave a Druid (even more so) on my team.
Yea, Zagine's video is pretty much the only quality enhancement video featuring arena. I'd try to make one myself but fraps doesnt get along with my machine very well and so I dont risk using it in such a high bracket when i know i have performance issues with it.
But yea, its not just a single snare/cc that is the problem with enhancement, its the chain snares that lead to the target gaining huge distance. The more time you take running to your target, the more time runs off a CC's DR timer.
When you say they didnt know how to handle him, thats not nessecarily true. You'd be surprised how little chain CC there is, unless its poly and you're not the primary target, as well as the ability to stay on a target, at least in the 2k bracket for reckoning.
If theres alot of pressure on the target sometimes healers don't chance a dispel immediatly, or the dispeller may be ina cyclone or other CC at the time and thus cant. Theres also earthbind to deal with. But most notably, the heal interruptions the shaman should be doing will force the healer to focus on that next heal compared to a dispel, since they cant dispel in the ES lockdown. Then lastly depending on your teammate, the dispels may not get the slow, as SS is a magic effect and if theres another effect on there, the dispel would catch those 2 if they're put on after the slow, which is definatly possible, so it could take a 2nd one, allowing more cd time for either another FS or EB.
Not trying to say the target can never get away, i'm just saying there are circumstances where a slow can and does stay on your target for a decent amount of time.
WOW! That's awesome advice that no one here has ever thought about or posted about. Sweet.
I particularly like the part where you advocate using 25-33% of your Global Cooldowns to refresh watershield, even if it doesn't need to be refreshed. Cause we all know that all shaman have GCDs coming out of their ass and can't find good ways to spend them.
Originally Posted by PVPRO
5.RULE #1 WATER SHIELD EVERY 5-8 SECONDS. WHY? SO YOULL MAKE IT A HABIT AND NEVER FORGET TO USE IT.
You should check out the WoW Shaman forums. They could really benefit from your wisdom.
I currently run with the Netherbane and the Talon of the Phoenix, both tier 5 weapons. My goal was to get the season 3 claws because I felt it would be a sign of success for me. But now I'm wondering if it's better to just wield dual Syphons of the Nathrezeim for the 2.8 speed, or if it will be worth it in the end to keep working towards 1850 for the season 3 claws.
Last edited by HirayaTube : 01/19/08 at 4:04 PM.
Reason: Removed a redundant sentence.
I currently run with the Netherbane and the Talon of the Phoenix, both tier 5 weapons. My goal was to get the season 3 claws because I felt it would be a sign of success for me. But now I'm wondering if it's better to just wield dual Syphons of the Nathrezeim for the 2.8 speed, or if it will be worth it in the end to keep working towards 1850 for the season 3 claws.
My goal is Syphon MH and S3 OH (I say goal cause i have dual S3 atm cause supremus hasnt dropped a single syphon for us after 17+ kills). I see the higher top end damage and proc as worth more than the stam/crit/resil/hit on main handing a season 3 weapon, however not in an offhand because the strength of the syphon is its top end but thats cut in half for the OH, and the procs dont stack, so the stats from a S3 weapon are much better.
Not only that but the slow OH only weapons are cheap, only 1125 points.
When you're looking at weapons, dont look at speed, look at min and max damage. Syphon's 2.8 speed means nothing to me, its the top end that i look at. Sorta why I havnt taken a Rising Tide and never will. Its 100dps and 2.6 speed but it has shitty top end damage in exchange for bottom end damage.
So, myself and an Arms warrior are toying with the idea of going 2v2 in Arena. MY resilience is laughable at best, I have like... 110 or something... but I'm still PvE geared and have close to 1500 AP / 25% give or take a few. He has a pretty full set of PvP gear (Named Whalluv, same server) with a Deep Thunder. I've already read what you said about the team match ups, Push, and that's pretty much what we're going by as a guideline. I was just wondering how much I should lower my AP for crit, or damage for resilience. I know you said gem for damage and not survival, I agree with you on that factor since I'm meant to deal damage, and making myself able to take a beating with lowe that, but I was wondering if there was a decent resil range at which I should be comfortable at. We're going to start in the 1500s obviously, so we'll most likely wreck some teams no problem since we both can do some pretty sick damage against most classes, just wondering if you have any tips for a PvP-nubile Enhance Shaman..
Aaand before I forget, I'm probably grabbing my s3 gloves once the arena rolls around. Or should I save up for the weapons, and try for an 1800 rating.
I checked out your armory and you have a S2 cleaver for MH, so that will last you a long time. I only just replaced mine last week so i'd say focus on getting the s3 gear.
As for how much you should lower your AP, i have this mindset for my guy. I can't do damage when i'm dead. And since most of the time, enhancement is the primary target that survivability is huge. Dont forget that the gladiator pieces arent just resiliance, you'll also see gains in armor and stamina, which are both big in their own rights.
In terms of what to get, i'd recommend the following order: Gloves -> Chest -> Legs -> OH (the OH only ones, costing 1125) -> Shoulder -> Helm -> MH
For tips, i'd say the biggest thing you can do is learn to interrupt off your main target, and thus learn not to spam your shock CDs on your primary. Yes there are times you'll still need/want to, either ina a finishing burn where you dont see a cast from the healer, or frost shocks to slow etc, but thats the biggest thing I could say. Interrupting heals is big for arena. Either pickup mods for enemy casting alerts, mods for focus bars, or just keep your eyes peeled and and good reflexes to tab switch or mouse switch to earth shock a heal and get back on your main guy. 95% of the time cancelling that 1500 heal will do more for you than a 800 dmg shock.
Yea, that cleaver took a while at 250pts a week, ahaha.... so yea, I figured the gloves first as the range on the shocks would be pretty useful. Tips were good though, it'll give me something to think about while we play some practice games to get some synergy going. Would the resil set bonus' themselves be enough to survive well, or would I need to supplement some resil gems to be more effective?
And yea, I was gonna hunt down some good PvP mods for cast timers and such, that's a given, hehe.
For tips, i'd say the biggest thing you can do is learn to interrupt off your main target, and thus learn not to spam your shock CDs on your primary. Yes there are times you'll still need/want to, either ina a finishing burn where you dont see a cast from the healer, or frost shocks to slow etc, but thats the biggest thing I could say. Interrupting heals is big for arena. Either pickup mods for enemy casting alerts, mods for focus bars, or just keep your eyes peeled and and good reflexes to tab switch or mouse switch to earth shock a heal and get back on your main guy. 95% of the time cancelling that 1500 heal will do more for you than a 800 dmg shock.
This.
If their team has a priest its not a bad idea to focus him for Eshocking manaburns and healers, if not a paladin is also a good target.
Off target focus shocking with Primary purging is what lets an enhacement shaman pull its weight, and with no "casted" spells you really only have GCDs to worry about when shocking. Enh shaman Purge and Interupt shock better then elemental, because they get to do damage at the same time.
Also in regards to what Taowth said about the damage. You want to interupt heals because the more straight you put on healers the earlier they will have to use cooldowns like BoP, PS, etc and the faster those come the faster you can get them off leaving your targets open for kills earlier.
Last edited by Levidian : 01/21/08 at 4:03 PM.
Reason: Added info.
Taowth, I have one question for you. What do you do in arena? I have been running with a ret pally and ms warrior for 3s and have been working on a better 5s team make up.
I was wondering what it is that you do for threes? You have a rogue, druid, mage on the team...could you explain what you run with and what you do.
Are you asking what specifically I do in an arena game? Or what the team does in terms of strats for the fight?
The mage on my team doesnt play, So the comp I run is Rogue/Druid/Me. My rogue was dropping in activity at the end of season 2 (enough so that games were delayed for 2 weeks until the last 2 days of s2 in which queues were abysmal and thus we couldnt get up into the 2200 range). We picked up the mage cause he was a friend of the druid but is more of what my guild calls a pve clicker, but my druid hoped we could train him up. It didnt really work out so he just idles there.
In regards to your own comp (while waiting for reply to my question) I wouldnt recommend it at all. 3 melee dps burn teams just arent that effective. Yes, you can hurt someone bigtime with WF/BL on the 2 people with 2h, but CC hurts you guys big, alot more than a 3 dps with 2 range and 1 melee. Any team with a hunter will dominate you guys because freedom can only be on 1 guy at a time.
If you insist on 3 dps, i'd say switch the warrior with a bst hunter with aimed shot, and make sure that hunter prioritizes aimed shot to get that debuff up.
3 dps really relies on controlled burst and control cooldowns used very early to get the other team off balance. Ret pld, warrior, and enhance shaman are all burst but uncontrolled in the fashion that you're looking for. You're depending on windfury totem, wf on yourself, and JoC on the pld to get enough burst in that short time to get someone low enough for executes. Combine that with your team needing to all be in melee range and your setup can be countered pretty easy by a mage or hunter immediatly, and teams consisting of dual cc. You'll still get dps in a decent amount of it, but more than likely someone will die on your side before theirs.
Granted this is talking about good teams in a high bracket, when you're still low it can work better than my outloook projects.
01/11/08, 2:05 PM
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