[Elemental] PVP Specs?
 

Are there any EJs looking into PVP specs for Elemental? I'm new to PVP elemental for wrath so I'm speculating talents in terms of their value. I'm goofing around with specs but here is what I am coming up with:

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Shaman -> Talent Calculator

This is the non 3.0.8 but some things wont change much.

Is totem of wrath very useful in PVP? I am thinking about dropping Imp Fire nova more due to the blast wave stun similarity.

I'm leaning more to putting points in Thundering Strikes (+5% crit) vs. Reverberation (-1s cooldown for shocks). I think the burst value outweighs the tactical value of reduced shocks.

Is lightning the default shield? I can see using water shield if you are hurting for mana, but lightning seems to hurt more with Improved Shields.

Any feedback would be great!

Beesknee
Crushridge

Improved Shields and guardian totems are nice, but if you don't take lightning overload, you are gimping your burst damage, which is the elemental shaman's role in arena. An extra proc can be the difference between life and death.

As far as reverb goes, I personally would drop convection for it, being a high priority target, who works best with burst teams, the chances of you or them living to see the end of your mana bar are pretty slim, and even if the fight does drag out, you can usually maintain it with water shield procs.

For ToW, I've found that searing and fire nova totem are your best bets for arena, as they continue to do damage even when you can't, just don't drop them near the CC target.

Id say something around this would be good for post 3.0.8.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?sham...h=000000000000

Unless a pvp veteran can say different, id say 3% crit would be better than 24% duration off snares.

How much of your time are you casting LBs and CLs though? It would seem all your burst damage would come from LvB combos, which cant proc Lightning Overload.

Even at lvl 70 with massive pushback, we were able to hard cast quite a bit in 5s and 3s. In fact, successful teams with an Ele Shaman were largely focused on giving him space and allowing him to hard cast. With pushback the way it is in WOTLK I expect we'll be hard-casting quite a bit, and Lightning casts of various kinds will remain our main source of damage. You'll use LvB to deliver on-demand burst damage, but if it's the main component of your damage you won't be doing much.

Let's get a discussion on some hybrid specs going, ele~resto builds look good for 3 dps groups.

I always thought it would be interesting to play a Balance Druid / Elemental Shaman in a 2v2 bracket, both having knockbacks and very good burst damage, while being able to use a fair amount of CC, take a fair amount of damage, and do a fair amount of healing. That being said, I can see this setup getting torn apart by setups that have strong CC, Rogue / Mage could be a huge problem.

In 3v3 Balance Druid / Elemental Shaman / Disc or Shadow Priest looks like it could be very fun and viable, with a high skill cap. Also trying different setups by replacing the third member (Hunter, Mage, Warlock) could be just as strong.

I would really enjoy seeing a triple DPS-Caster Hybrid team do well.

Absolutely. I can't say much for 3s, but in 5s the team (2345/6) the team would often lay down a foundation of damage on one target and then shift to another. The elemental shaman had to take part in both of these efforts. If the decoy target didn't take enough damage for the team to take the threat seriously, the switch and gib wouldn't have been successful. So you'll spend plenty of time casting lightning bolts in arena, using your LvB as part of a burst effort.

Unfortunately, I don't think elemental shaman will get any better in arenas at 80 than they were at 70. They'll still be terrible in 2s and very weak in 3s. They'll be effective in the right 5s teams, with about the same burst potential they enjoyed at 70. The new elemental mastery makes an interesting change, giving the shaman 20 seconds (presumably during bloodlust and trinkets) where they turn out a shitload of damage. Great on paper, but in competitive arenas, it means elemental shaman have to be shut down. Just like at 70 they'll have a couple people standing on them to stop their output. They have greater survivability with the 30% damage reduction while CCed, so that will help the rest of the team keep them standing.

In the 2345 at 70, the opposing team had to shut down the elemental shaman. Doing so meant the inbound damage could be managed, aside from the NS+EM+CL burst with a shock. At lvl 80, that tactic doesn't really change, except that now the opposing team doesn't have to worry about an instant cast burst from the shaman. The shaman has to use part of his old burst (earth shock) to set up a flame shock, fire timers, and then hard cast their burst (including LvB). This makes the shaman's burst more susceptable to mitigation via interrupts, pushback, curse of tongues, nature tree lockout, etc. I think what I'm saying is that, at lvl 70, a rogue on the elemental shaman would wreck their damage output, except for their 2 GCD burst potential. At lvl 80, the shaman will still have their shock, but the rest of their damage will be from hard casting only. So the tactic to beat a 2345 (stop the shaman from producing damage) will even be more effective than it previously was.

Sure, elemental got a tool to help (Thunderstorm), but I think it will be largely ineffective in taking the shaman from a lockdown to free casting. It will be better used to interrupt healers or to push healers out of position with respect to their team mates rather than be used as a defensive tool (in 5s).

A Thunderstorm could give you time to get off a hex on someone trying to counter the Shaman, although I don't know who would be a better target for the hex whether it be the burstee or the elemental counter. I have come to love hex, as you can unload on the little frog a ton before the actual CC breaks.

I'm going to try doing 2s with a rogue baiting the healer with a stunlock burst attack from the shaman and rogue, and hex it when they trinket.

I am just starting to pvp on my shaman after being pve resto for BC, so any tips would be cool.

Thus far I've found it very powerful for previously mentioned situations, in Blade's Edge and Dalaran Sewers, both of which can force a healer to have to walk all the way around to heal their team mate/mates. Especially in Blade's Edge, for making a switch it highly useful to knock their Paladin off the edge.

delete

I saw something above about mix specs, didn't know for surely if it was for Pvp/Pve mix or like Ele/Resto but for the Pve
I would go for something like: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
And for the Ele/Resto Pvp spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
I don't know to much about the Pvp spec, maybe wanting a little more into resto for the cleanse, but that's pretty much how it went for my mix spec. (Accounting less things because of level 70)

Mobarabian, Beside outdated Talentcalculators, you are missing every talent that grants survivability.
I'm doing battlegrounds in PvE-specc, thats okay as long as you don't meet one of the fab4.
Arena on the other hand counts extremly on "not dying". Thats why you need talents like Astral Shift and Elemental Warding. Improved Fire Nova Totem and Reveberation grants you CC wich keeps the opposing team from killing one of your teamates or preventing their healer from healing your focustarget.
I am really confused right now, because I also want to go for Guardian Totems (imp Grounding) and Ghostwolf.
As you can think of, my damage and/or my mana will suffer.
In addition you have to reGlyph. Your damage/mana will suffer again.

I really don't know wich specc would turn out best.
Help appriciated.

You want 6% hit to cap against taurens, night elves, and blood elves. Up until this previous patch any hit over 4% was worthless because talents and racials were unaffected. Blizzard fixed the racials, said nothing about talents. With 3 pieces of deadly hit you have 4.35% hit, draenei has 1 more, and 1 point in the ele talent will cap you.

I think ele is still pretty borked as far as 2s goes, however, I have not tried it this season personally (resto for 2s). I play ele for 3s and 5s and use this spec Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (should also be in armory).

I think reverb is a pretty useful talent especially on teams where you may switch targets very rapidly and any lower cooldown on your shock can be helpful. However, with the comps that I play I prefer the fire nova stun. If you can catch a healer in the nova stun you can almost solo them with a decent rotation (drop totem, CL, FShock, LvB hit on stun, CL should be up again, shock or ts, etc). Also depends on your dps partners in 5s. I wouldn't take imp fire nova if say I were playing with a 2 or 3 caster team (rogue/spriest/mage/ele/paladin as an example) because taking the 280 sp and 3% crit away from the other dps during a burn may be less beneficial overall.

Leaving out elemental oath is silly with the new changes to how it affects clearcasting.

Another option for a spec is to go ele/resto, something like this Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I don't think I'd do this for 3s, even though the dispel resist on flameshock would be very useful. This build is something I've considered for 5s (specifically 4 dps) because getting a few big tidal waves heals off after your first target dies can usually be more effective in ensuring a win, especially if your paladin is already out of bubble and probably being harassed/zerged by now. I don't currently do 4 dps 5s though, so I've stuck with the ele/enh spec.

[e] Thunderstorm is definitely more useful for throwing off positioning. Another point I left out is that I feel if you're playing ele you really cannot play without a holy paladin. Conc aura allowing you cap any pushback is too important without NS as part of your burst. In my 3s, we will often even use Hand of Protection for the sole purpose of allowing me to burn something that got stuck in a trap, rather than use it to save someone.

So while you can be successful, elemental shamans are far from favorable to play currently.

I've played an Elemental Shaman as my main pretty much forever and have always been a PvP guy as opposed to PvE. That said I'm pretty sure that this is the darkest time for Elemental Shaman in the history of WoW.

Here's the spec I've been working with lately for arenas.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?sham...h=000000000000

I'm going to try to address some of the question that might come up.

5/5 Reverberation. I find this talent essential because shocks are the biggest form of Shaman utility and you want to have the option to use one as often as possible whether to interrupt a caster, kite a melee, or set up your Lava Burst burst. I also think that if you are going to get it has to be a 5/5 as opposed to a 3/5 because .6 seconds reduction is just going to throw off the timing of your GCDs.

No Totem of Wrath. I opted to not spend a point here because in past experience ToW would be down for about 5-6 seconds if I had setup time before I would be dropping Fire Nova for the stun. Once you get that far into a fight you really don't have time to waste a GCD redropping ToW (provided you live that long). Also, if you get jumped without prep time you definitely will not have a GCD to spend dropping ToW.

I noticed that some people didn't go in for Lightning Overload or Elemental Oath. Oath's 10% damage is really too good to pass up especially since we now have a guaranteed crit in LvB not to mention a really high crit rate from gear and talents. Oath definitely should be in every Elemental spec. LO is slightly more questionable. In 5v5 it is a must have as you are guaranteed to get in some Lightning casts. In 3v3 and 2v2 when an Elemental Shaman is almost guaranteed to be the focus target, and thus probably locked down, I could see how people might want to pass this up.

No Improved Ghost Wolf. Again, my spec is mainly built for 5v5 and I find that I really do not benefit from having instant GW. Even in 3v3 and 2v2 it really doesn't get me away from any melee (who WILL be on me) so I find I'm just wasting my GCD's casting it.

Guardian Totems. I see a lot of you going into Guardian Totems. I'm not really sure why. Stoneskin I find is not worth a GCD even with the extra 20% and 2 seconds off Grounding Totem is nice but not essential since mainly I find that melee is my problem, not casters.

Improved Shields. Again, don't really find this essential. I'm always dead before I get close to oom and the Lightning Shield damage is mediocre at best.

I think that's everything people might question, but if there are any other questions on my spec please post away with them and I will answer as best I can.

One last thing. With the sort of announced nerf to Chain Lightning's single target damage it may be possible to pass on Storm, Earth, and Fire since with that change we probably won't be casting Chain Lightning anymore, or at least not often.

Thanks for reading.