Arena success?

[fling]

What I want to know is, has anyone had good luck with classes other than Shaman when 3-4-5 boxing in arenas? I haven't heard of any, but I would think there are some out there. I am curious as to your class selection and how many machines you run them on (basic).


So far I have gotten up to 4 accounts running in the 40-50fps range at once on my systems, and now I am trying to decide on my classes.

I was thinking of just adding a warlock to my war/sham honor farming duo I am working up, so I would have 3 different characters to arena with individually. However after playing 4x shaman, I am thinking I would like to try something similar to Ellay with 4x and another player healing. I can pull the trigger on a 5th account, but 3 or 4 is what I would prefer, so I am trying to figure what my best bet is based on your info. I like the idea of mages or warlocks with a priest, but am not sure if anything besides shaman would be really good arena wise. Thanks!

[Ellay]

4x Warlocks with a healer might be insane. All it would take would be to get off 4x unstable affliction on a target and that target is pretty much toast

The instant aoe fears to pull them off you, the only problem though is you are very very squishy. I would imagine the style of play would be to dot dot dot and run around. The class does have draw backs though in that it can't answer some counters. Overall though it would definitely be a runner up to the performance a Shaman can do in the Arena's.

[fling]

Thanks for the reply! I really like the theory behind the warlocks, I may just have to bite the bullet and level them on the side as I level my shamans. I'd love to see an arena video with someone using 3-4, but no luck so far. I really like mages as well, but I think they are a bit to squishy for my skills, who knows though.

How do you think the changes to lighting will effect your shamans? I watched your video of your 4 earlier today, good stuff! Ellay, is there a post on your setup somewhere? I've been searching but I must have missed it, just curious since I want to run something similar. Thanks!

[Phate]

I'd imagine 5v5 would be doable with 4 warlocks + shaman (chain heal, totem of wrath, grounding totem, tremor totem (very important), etc.)

Rogues really wreck your shop, but aren't very popular in 5s.

Warrior/healer will fuck you up, and are very popular, but you can mitigate some of that with intense mana drain, and chain skillcoil.( Just remember terror has a DR now, so don't overdo it.)

I've always been very curious about mages. 5 frost mages (or 4 with a healer) would be very potent, if you are very careful.

What you want to do is get a spec to maximize ice lance damage, without frostbite, and be very, very, very careful with your frost novas. Pick a target, bust out all of your elementals, begin casting frostbolt, cast freeze ONCE right before the frost bolts finish, follow them immediately with an ice lance, if it breaks, freeze again, ice lance again, they're either dead, or bubbled. Quickly pick another frozen target, ice lance once. If you've already cast freeze twice, you have to pick a new target, this one will only sit 2 seconds in the next freeze. It really only works if you make sure to NOT catch a couple of them in the freeze until you are going to kill them.

In theory with water bolt + frostbolt + ice lance you have so much burst it's barely possible to heal through it (with 800 frost damage vs 400 resilience, this should be 20-30,000 damage.)

A very high level of control over your characters is required though, fragile characters, and placement is important.

Another possibility with the patch is subbing a hunter in for aimed shot (mortal strike shot) to really do some damage. I think this would be wise considering the growing popularity of 3 healer 2 warrior teams.

All depends on your level of control.