bjj13

What do you think about Rogue/Shaman 2v2?

Resto Shaman

 

yarikh

If your rogue can stick on the target to sustain pressure and also provide peels for you when needed I don't see why it wouldn't work.

 

Bhanshei

I have a rogue friend who wants to run this setup as well. Any advice out there for the Rsham /rogue setup?

 

mobarabian

I currently started this like a few days ago, the rogue/rshaman comp.
For a strat it all depends on what you are playing. For a priest/rogue opponent we will cc the priest and both, burn down the rogue. We can basically take down any team except for a Holy pally/warrior team, escpecially when the hpally is that prot spec with a silence and stun every like 20 seconds, Other than that team you just have to coordinate your cc, hope whatever you cc pops a trinket, if that happens, you have to use the other cc you have not used, once this happens hope to down something, if you can manage it, help the rogue burn down his target when heroism is popped.
-My question: With this comp can anyone give me a good strat on how to beat the hpally/warrior comps. =] -Thanks

 

ol'man willow

People keep saying elemental is so bad and resto is so amazing. I am not quite 80 but I see some potential for elemental even in the 2v2 bracket. The upfront burst presented by FS->EM->Lava Burst seems pretty good when combined with lets say a ret pally. That ret pally can also protect that shaman from double melee dps pretty effectively. I feel as though this should alow Elem to participate in double dps fairly effectively.

I prefer elem but also have a resto pvp question, because I plan to heal for a 3v3 team when I hit 80. I did play in TBC and healed a hunter/shaman team up to a 1750 rating ... I know not that impressive ... but best I could do at the time. In a resto shaman/ret pally/Frost DK set up what should my focuses on talents be. Should I be going for most healing possible or defensive as possible. Also gearing wise what should I be looking for in terms of total amount of resilience. Thank you all in advanced.

 

ol'man willow

Ok, I've given up on the idea of elemental. Just wondering since I'll be running with 2 guildies one is a hunter the other is a warlock are their differences in the way I should gear for each. How much resi vs SP should I be stacking ... crit vs MP5 what is the balance... how long should I be expecting fights to run etc. Its seeming like resto has huge potential from the survivability I have being under geared in BGs. How often are healers being focused these days as opposed to the DPS. Really mostly curious about how to gear, and glyph.


First stratagy question. With the warlock how much pillar humping will I be expecting him to do, considering he is destro. This isn't like the old days of healing an affliction lock who is ducking around walls. So will I need high raw healing with him and just be able to heal for days?

Second, with the hunter, how much snaring will I be doing for him to maintain range. And will that mostly consist of EB or FS?

 

TroubleShoot

Yesterday I tested either enhancement and resto specs skirmish 2v2 i noticed that enhancement is way better in 2v2 when played with a ret pally, dk, dis priest. When i played with my resto shammy i never won.
After reading this post i see that resto sham seems to be better in all kind of arena. the thing is that i probably don't play it well, actually (when i don't get killed in 2 sec) I go in front and try nuking the same guy as my team mate.
Do you guys think i should stay far, try to avoid opponents attack and focus on healing my team mate instead?

 

Budikah

I think your question is a bit too broad bro, it depends on what the opposing team is. Some teams you may need to stay back and CC/heal your ally, some you may just have to go all out. Try doing both when you can. That's what arena is all about.


I just started doing 2's with an Affliction Lock in my guild. I'll post any problems we seem to encounter. Our gear isnt all that great for PvP (Kara/early Uld PvE mixed with some PvP) but we've had some limited success. Most of our victories came from the Lock and I taking out the healer quicky while I keep us up. We have had issues with Disc Priests and Resto Druid's though.

It'd be good to see this thread get some love.

 

Woolies

What do you guys think we actually need? Fix totem stomping sure & our mana issues, but what "couple of ideas" do we believe blizzard are working on?

I'm still naively hoping for a damage reduction cooldown of some sort, but I'd settle for a means of escaping constant lockdowns & lockouts.

 

Akraat

The main problem with shamans in pvp I find, is the inability to create pressure when pressured. I have found that a shaman left alone spamming LHW, lightning bolts, raping as enhancement with wolves or free to cc is deadly. But, everytime I come across shamans in 2s, 3s and 5s, I just say over skype/vent "go for the shaman". I can easily solo them. Ice lance to break grounding, shatter combo followed by a CS on the LHW. Come in with a frost nova and Deep Freeze. No chance. Now, with 1-3 more people helping me rape, its not a problem at all. Imagine that scenario against a druid. If i can even get him in one spot to create a shatter combo, it wont be enough pressure that he will have to cast a heal, making a 4 second CS useless. Barkskin + Nature Swiftness/regrowth macro plus swiftmend on top of that will get him up from 10% even against 3 marauding dps.

Yes I would agree that shamans need help of escaping lockouts. Anything to help wouldn't hamper them in pve like when blizzard had to change ret palas burst, and they were smart to change vindication. But they need to be careful not to make it overpowered like a warlock's conflagrate before the hotfix. We don't want shamans to be near impossible to kill (have enough druids), but we don't want them to be uber easy to kill.

 

liquidroyl

I play Rogue / Shaman in 2s at ~2300 (same MMR). I could write up a guide of sorts if there is demand, but if you have more specific questions than a question for general advice, I can certainly try to field them in the short term.

I can verify that we have many of the cited problems when the Shaman is focused rather than the DPS, but that is the very reason why Rogue/Shaman works to any degree in my opinion. Similar to Rogue/Priest, having two targets that are fairly vulnerable also means that you probably can't ignore either for extended periods of time or bad things happen. In general, if the Rogue is sticking the opposing DPS, the DPS should be pressured to the point where he feels like swapping off the Rogue would only lead to him getting killed. This is particularly true if the Shaman positions defensively (away from the opposing healer, with the 2 dps in the middle, rather than the shaman being close to the opposing healer). This can change based on the context of the match and the specific matchup.

 

Zoee

I play RLS currently at 2200 MMR, and we mock around a bit in 2s (~1900) as well. The problem as I see it is that if my rogue is HfB we have a good chance to win if they are a dps (other than rogue) + healer. However, if we face pretty much any rogue team or double dps we're screwed. If he specs prep, we're fine against double dps and we can fare well against most rogue teams, but there's no way we can take down most other healer+dps teams (like DK/paladin, warrior/druid etc) as I will go oom way before we manage to kill anything. It's a quite frustrating to be so reliant on the RNG of queueing. Do you see it the same way? And one more question, how offensive does your shaman play?

 

liquidroyl

My experience is very similar to yours; I ended up keeping track of our matches (win/loss, comp) to see how they changed week to week to get an idea of exactly how many rogues we were playing against. What I found was the deeper we got into the season, the more Druids we played against and the fewer rogues. Based on this I made the decision to spec HfB, and that is the spec that allowed us to get to 2350. When I made the transition, I re-geared and glyphed defensively (dropped Glyph of Vitality and took Cloak) to attempt to make up for the loss of cooldowns. 18% extra damage is an absurd offensively boost, so I was comfortable suiting up with more res/stam.

Against rogue opponents as HfB, we won about 30% of our games, with most of those being against Rogue / Priest, not Rogue/DPS. So, I can't claim to have a good game plan against Rogues. The main thing I ended up changing tactically from Prep to HfB was concentrating on Rupturing to deprive vanish reopens for as long as possible - without Vanishes to counter their clean vanishes as Mut/Prep I was getting blown away every time they managed a restealth, and Fan isn't reliable if they manage to get out of range briefly.

We start with the first Earth Shield on me to protect it from dispels and to allow me to open aggressively to prevent getting sapped (If you don't already, you should swap to your PvE gear, pop trinkets, and then cast the first ES in the prep-time, then swap to your actual gear setup).

In terms of how offensively we play - As HfB, my partner turtles, bursting whenever I call Kidney Shot if he is comfortable with his mana. Against Druids he will position himself as far away from them as possible unless there is a threat of them drinking, since Hex is only usable against their DPS if we pull them out of LOS of their healer, and there's rarely anything to shock. Against Paladins and Priests he usually stays within shock range of them, unless we are against a Warrior because making transitions into / out of range without getting swapped to is too dicey. As Mut/Prep, he pretty much is chain casting because there is very little chance of us winning once we're outside of Heroism / Cooldowns against healer comps that are good at preventing resets (DK and Druid comps).

 

Dollar

Not that your point isn't valid but I find it hard to believe that a frost mage can solo any resto shaman that has half a brain or grounding totem/shock bound.

"Oh he's a sad little man? He's thrown a kettle over a pub, what have you done?"

 

ol'man willow

3.2 changes are posted .. anyone start thinking about those. Resto is looking to be pretty good. The 10% damage physical damage reduc instead of the armor buff is sweet. Making it so tidal waves basically ensures this crit happens is even nicer. A nearly indestructible earthshield, man we're in business. I'm mostly pvping w/ my shaman now again, so hard to choose between that and my rogue, but I know my shaman better and learning takes more time.

 

MatsT

The Tidal waves change is a huge nerf. The only thing we have when pressured is our ability to cast 0.7-0.9 sec LHW that are very difficult to interrupt, letting us get heals through and sometimes causing wasted kicks/counterspells. The 25% crit isn't nearly as useful.

This has to be weight against several buffs we get. The Earth Shield buff is huge, making it virtually undispellable which means a lot easier to drink without risking your partner's life against priest teams. The biggest buff is probably the Ghost Wolf though. This is gonna be huge if it goes live, though i'm not cheering just yet. To put it in perspective, even if a rogue has sprint active, you can simply Frost shock him and run out of melee range. In real situations, where you need to LoS that mage with a rogue on your back or when you have a friend peeling, it's even better. It's gonna be virtually impossible to stay on a shaman long enough to force him to Earth Shield himself.

The minor buffs to Nature's Guardian, base health, shock range, mana tide and totem bar will help too, but are quite small in comparison to the other changes. I'm not quite seeing how we will fit in all the talent points though. I'm running 4/5 crit, 1/3 AH and 3/5 NG now, and i will almost certainly want to fit in 5/5 NG after the patch. With the change to Earth Shield i might actually even skip the 1 point in AH since the dispel fodder isn't needed anymore. It's not really a noticeable buff over the current version, the problem is still that a lot of classes deal mostly magic damage. If rogues/warriors continue to dominate 2on2 it might be worth it i guess, but i don't see any way around skipping 3% crit to get it.

With the current decline of hunters and death knight in favor of warriors and rogues, the totemstomping nerf wouldn't make a huge difference, but if hunters/warlocks rises in popularity it will come in very handy.

 

ol'man willow

I think over all the buff will be significant, because of our proposed greatly increased escapablity. This combined w/ crits from LHW means less mana spent on keeping ones self up. I guess rogues are gonna be the main problem due to having such an ability to keep you still as well as interrupt etc. but other than them, drop an eb totem run RT into LHW for a healthy amount of healing. I think over all this is going to be a pretty nice improvement.

Also of note 2s arn't going to be the main focus of arena. 3v3 will due to the change in the way rating works. Considering that it would seem as though we'd need to look at slightly different aspects of resto's game. I havn't healed 3s much yet and havn't at all at lvl 80 so if anyone could provide insight into that it would be great.

 

• Juice

The tidal waves change is interesting. As a resto healing someone else, it's not a clear buff or nerf. The LHW is now easier to interrupt, but improved water shield has more opportunities to proc. Net throughput is increased, at the cost of potential interupts. Because the shaman has additional synergies with crit (Ancestral healing, Ancestral awakening), LHW will still be very attractive. When the shaman is self healing, the tidal waves change is a nerf as interrupts and lockouts will be raining in with a greater opportunity to land. However, this nerf is balanced by other improvements. Nature's Guardian is an additional Battlemaster's trinket, earth shield is no longer attractive to dispel, and shaman can now drop melee's DPS uptime with ghost wolf. Where melee uptime on a shaman is currently probably 95%, it will drop significantly in the future (not to zero as stuns and charges and sprints and etc will have their place in holding the shaman for a pounding).

And don't forget healing way and the 2m NS. Given the LHW boosts available (Arena Totem, etc), I don't know that I'll start using HW over LHW, but it's something that shouldn't be idly dismissed. Ultimately I think the added critical strike on LHW will keep it as the cast of choice for resto pvpers.

Elemental PVP won't change much from direct changes to shaman. The ghost wolf change is really huge for elemental shaman. Since the elemental isn't the only healer (typically) on the team, they can focus on the kite (aided with EB root) and let someone else keep their health up. As resto there's always an element of risk when I'm zerged or even with a sole warrior on me (warriors are bad news to shaman) - do I try and hex him or frost shock and kite him, or will I last longer by just face tanking and heal spamming? Unfortunately I've found the answer to that question, under present mechanics, is most often face tanking. This is something blizzard needs to address, and the GW change will really help. I see people saying they aren't sure if it will go in (as if it's too good to be true) - but it's a really smart change. It's not as powerful as travel form, but doesn't give any single melee class the ability to do patchwerk dps on any resto shaman in arena. Now they'll need to coordinate cooldowns/stuns/roots if they want to zerg the shaman.

 

azrale

In reference to you 3s comp, on my shaman I personally run Paladin/DK/Resto. This subs out the MS from the War/DK/Resto but adds some protection from burst, especially by cleave teams with the bop. I also find that a DK is often better at controlling and peeling than a warrior, even more so if the DK is Frost. The way Frost Strike currently works there isn't an issue with burst even with the lack of MS really, however with the 3.2 Frost Strike change I may change out the DK if he cant keep the burst up as needed.

 

SquallJT

i've recently started to do 2's/3's on my shaman as resto. i have around 755 res in my pvp gear but i seem to be dieing a lot faster than what my partners seem to think i should be (RS/dk and rs/ret/war), epically when a rogue gets on me.

are there any tricks out there that can help me survive? such as dropping NR/cleansing for rogues and poping trinks for ES.

 

• Juice

The survival tricks are really obvious - the problem is they aren't very effective. There are some classes (rogues, warriors) that shit on shaman and there's not much you're going to be able to do about it. Earthshield yourself, cleanse spam, stoneclaw totem glyph, and juke interrupts. Unfortunately, without serious peeling help (Dks are reasonable) you will go down. Particularly against warriors, it's just a matter of time. You rely on your partners to either peel them off or kill the enemy before you go down. I've had a lot of luck in 2s and 3s with a rogue partner because they are a fantastic peeler and an extremely attractive target for the enemy. When the resto shaman isn't the focus target, they do reasonable well (still worse than all other healers). Unfortunately, they're often the best focus target in the field.

Resto shaman just aren't very good. They face tank worse than other healers, they have decreased throughput and longevity when compared to other healers, and their offensive pressure and support is best used when they are not the focus of the dps train. It's far more enjoyable to play elemental these days, as earthbind and thunderstorm make a huge survival difference.

 

SomeIdiot

Post-3.2 I think we will have an easier time against warriors with better HpM from LHW and the ability to run away until their next intercept (as a result probably also being able to keep WS rather than ES on yourself), but I doubt much will be changed against rogues, in fact we may be far worse off with our heals being slower. If the rogue is alone it may be possible to distance yourself from him, but against e.g. a rogue/mage combo that is just not going to happen.

It remains to be seen what the GW change will do, but it seems to me that we are missing a trick to escape stuns because of the fact that we are so vulnerable to interrupts. Allowing us to shift out of stuns into GW would be one (possibly OP against warriors) option; the fact that we have to stop and cast might balance it out though.

 

MatsT

For 2on2, Shamans longevity isn't that bad since it's very hard to stop us from drinking without triggering water shield. Using pets to stop drinking works well against priest and druids, but not against shamans. As long as we can keep the offensive pressure of the opponents low enough that you can use Water Shield without dying I'm usually ok manawise. Shamans are also one of the best classes to abuse the drinking trick (Healing Wave->Riptide->Drink).

For 3on3 it's a totally different story as the amount of dpsers per healer is doubled. There is virtually never any time to drink without someone dying and this means shamans tend to run out of mana before the other healer. For this bracket I guess we have to embrace our offensive capabilities to score a kill before mana becomes an issue. The problem is we aren't all that effective at doing this either. Damage output is mostly a joke as we want to keep wind shock up, purge is ineffective against non-shaman healers and if we are under any kind of pressure we will never be able to land a Hex.

This last thing is actually where it would be easiest to make an improvement. Hex is just so weak right now. With 20 yards range and 2.2-2.5 seconds cast including pushback, the target is rarely still in range and LoS when the cast finishes. Increasing it to 25 or 30 yards and making Healing focus affect it would go a long way, both for resto shamans and other speccs.

 

Academy

With the Wind Shock change coming off the shock CD, resto will be able to DPS a little bit more, but I don't think that is the problem.

IMO, with the talent trees the way they are, elemental gets so much SP boost from its talents, that it makes resto DPS terrible...I only have about 2k Healing in my gear, and my LvB hits for 3k...if I'm elemental it will take someone down by 8 to 9k depending on their resi. And on the PTR its hitting for 6k T_T

Were other healers have some form of decent dps. Holy Fire hits for a crap ton when it crits, Holy Shock and Judgements all can take a chunk out (and they can't be grounded >.<) and a druid can spem moonfire and not worry about their mana.

 

Opioid

The problem isn't that shaman have trouble drinking, I agree they are probably the best drinking class overall. The problem is they're the only healers that need to drink anywhere near as frequently (resto druids being the extreme of never having to drink whatsoever)

This also leads to secondary effects like being the only healer that seriously has to consider gemming for int/MP5 for arena, reducing power that way, etc.