HELP!!! What's the strat for (Frost Mage - Disc priest - MS Warr - H Pally - Ele Shammy)?

[kidvid]

What's the best strat for a quad-box shaman and h-pally team?

According to ArenaHistorian, Kicksome and I have played this combination 13 times and lost 11!! Only a 15% win rate for us!

From my perspective as a healer, they do way too much damage for me to heal through. A shaman's health will literally drop from 90% to 0 in less than 3 seconds.

These games generally only last a little over two minutes, and the fight really only lasts about 45 seconds, but really -- after the fight has begun, it's *really* decided in about 10 seconds.

The way it usually plays out is like this:
1) They mess around with us a little bit by knocking totems down.
2) Kick purges or tosses a volley onto anyone brave enough to get into range.
3) After a while, and quite unexpectedly, they come rushing in.
4) After this point, historically, we've only had a few seconds to do anything about it before the whole thing goes down hill, FAST.
5) Kick targets a mage and throws a volley -- mage iceblocks.
6) AOE Fear
7) I BOP the lead shaman and bubble myself
8 ) We get Heroism
9) Mass Dispel takes away bubble and maybe heroism
10) We get Heroism again <-- NOTE: BY this point in time, we've lost the game. We've taken too much damage, we're too CC'd and we've lost complete control of the match.
11) Mass Dispel takes away our second heroism.
12) Mage has been doing AOE damage this whole time, while the warrior has been casting his AOE fear every chance he gets.
13) Game over.

What is their weakness?

What kind of strat will help to guarantee we drop one of them in the first few seconds? It seems to me that's critical. How should we do the targeting and switching?

Maybe earth-shock the warrior or priest during the rush and then switch the target to the mage and blow nature's swiftness? That's the only thing I can think of. Hell if I know what to do, lol.

[cepheus]

I'm not an expert, but personally I would target the mage and focus the shaman before the fight starts.

Purge every chance you get before they come rushing in. Nuke the mage when you get the chance, if you are lucky he will iceblock. At the moment they start rushing in,switch target to the warrior. Drop a fire nova totem, then shock him. This will usually drop his health low enough for the priest to use his pain suppression. At the moment he does that, NS/EM/CL+shock your focus and the shaman should die before they can do anything. After this, it should be pretty straight combat.

[Tizer]

Pretty hard when your focus is set to one of your own toons for control. But i can see how useful being able to use focus for something else can be, but not sure i want to step away from using it. :/ I like you have had this combination against me a number of times, i try my hardest to get the warrior down asap normally :/

[Nixi]

First off, frequently check their targets as they are bouncing around annoying you. Eventually they will all zero in on one guy and begin the rush. You KNOW who they are going to go for at this time. Your shaman needs to do several things in the first couple seconds and his decision making has to be FAST.

1. If he was purging before they rush, and if his spell dmg is high enough he might be able to bust a mage with his EM/NS combo. Before launching he should be in shock range to finish the job. If you pull this kill off you've almost won. That damn mage and his pet eat through your groundings really fast, so with the mage out of the way the shaman's dps can be prevented with groundings and you can work on him next. (as a side note, it typically only takes one volley to kill the pet, so if the mage isn't gonna go down if you can find the time to kill the pet that will help ensure your grounding totems are absorbing big hitting spells from the shaman and mage and not the pet's bolts)

2. If you don't feel like gambling on that insta-gib, then when you see their heroism/blood lust come up your shamans need to PURGE it off of his kill target and if he wnats to switch targets then PURGE it off the next guy. More than likely their DPS will be too high for your shaman to go around purging blood lust off of all 5 of their members so you'll just need to purge it off the first guy and your shaman will have to help you heal.

Basically what will happen is you'll start the match on offense, (1) or defense (2).

If you've taken down one of their DPS early then it should be sooo much easier for you to heal through and your shaman can start mopping up. But if you're forced into defense then your shaman will need to be healing AND putting pressure on them AND purging. It's really mana intensive and he can't mess up or you'll both be outta mana and they will wear you down. On top of all of that, he'll need to keep grounding totems down as long as the mage/shaman is alive and find time to work with his fire totems to keep dps pressure on the warrior.

I used to go for the warriors first, but in a high dps combo like this sometimes i'll start on defensive and scramble to find time to purge a secondary target. Once I get the target softened up i'll switch, throw one last volley of heals on their focus fire target, then try to do the lightning bolt / insta gib combo or just straight up insta gib. You can usually knock a mage or paladin out of action by surprising him.

if the warrior is acting scared and has his shield up you can usually ignore him. The hunter is also doing the healing debuff so killing the warrior at the beginning won't help much. If the warrior is ballz out with his 2 hander eating away your shamans life, then you'll have to think about taking him out. (fire nova totems timed with about anything (shocks, lightning bolt, em/ns) will put him down)

Don't forget your stuns to help keep the pressure off if any one comes in range.

on a side note, your shaman should bust all 4 bloodlusts/heroisms and force their priest into dispelling. It'll take the priest several global cooldowns to keep that many blood lusts off so the priest isn't healing.... This can be a good opportunity to switch up the kill target and bust the paladin because trust me, he's under so much stress being the sole healer than he's not paying attention to a volley coming his way followed by your nuke.

There are lots of ways to take these guys on, there isn't a set kill order in my opinion for this comp.

What usually loses me games against this team is the res'ing, not the actual start of the battle. (i'm playing at 1840 rating right now)

[Elektric]

Nixi is right on, The Priest rez will do you in.

I had a ton of trouble with this comp. Mainly because the players that have extremely good offensive also have some very great defensive abilities that have big cooldowns (ie. Pain Suppression, Ice Block, Grounding Totem, Spell Reflect, Blinking out of LoS (highly underrated)).

This team has three openers.

1. Warrior Charging in. The counter would be to light him up, but since they most likely want you to that because they have pain Suppression and a bige crit heal coming while they follow with two fear bombs (priest and warrior) dont bite.

2. Mage comes in. Mage annoyingly toys with your totems and tries to get you to blow your Nuke on his ice block. He'll only come in totally buffed with shield on Cooldown so make sure you keep the tremors and grounding totems up and you wont have a problem. Purge away and he'll run.

3. If they are Horde, they can send in the Pally he'll bubble before he's in nuke range hoping you'll blow it. He'll usually stun your main and then wait for his team to follow up mounted and then AE your group. With all the fear bombs being dropped and silences being passed around you'll have no chance to heal through the damage.

Thats all they have. Winning in the arena many times comes down to the start. I'll do my best to describe how I play this comp, and its by now means the only way to counter, but it works for me.

Realize that their success is based on timing and you blowing your nuke. This team is highly focused on keeping you in one place and bursting you down while LoS'ing. one of my favorite openers is to let them charge in and run out of LoS. They'll keep coming because they committed but their timing is hosed now. All that silence, fear bombing is out of sequence. Purge the target as you LoS and find the nearest Highest Priority target to drop.

Keep pressure on the Dpriest to avoid dispells and keep one healer out of the game.

Dont allow the Mage to sit and cast. He will single handidly destroy you if you let him play O. Keep him paranoid and get that nuke off on him if you can.

The shaman is the softest target of the bunch. His heroism, grouding totem, windfurty totem, rez, heals, and nuke power make him another great target to nuke. He will destroy you.

The paladin has little D. Get him before he bubbles if you can, else just keep pressure on him whenever hes in range. Remember you dont need to kill a healer. Dealing damage to him will ensure he'll stop healing to heal himself and they can't recover from your damage without cooldowns when you have a guy at 50% when they start healing.

The warrior is a great target anytime he doesnt have a healer focusing him. Dont load him up on rage unless you know you can take him down. He provides the least threat of all the other dps classes.

[kidvid]

Elektric,

Thanks for the post. I've never thought of us picking up and moving during a rush. I guess you can't do that on the Nagrand map with the bridge though.

Let's say that this team rushed you on the Nagrand map, and the mage was in the front, with the priest and warrior right behind.

Would you risk your nuke on the priest or mage?

[kidvid]

:thumbsup:

A) With good gear, it's not a bad idea to chance using a nuke during the rush to try and catch the mage off-guard and drop him, completely messing up their strat. His suggestion was to use NS immediately followed by a frost shock. - Nixi

B) Try to squeeze the extra purge in, so that it negates their bloodlust or heroism, even if it delays nuking. - Nixi

C) Pick up the group physically move it across the map when they're rushing in. The idea is that if one or more of them dismount early and pop a fear or frost nova, just as you're moving away, then they're not nearly as coordinated. -- Elektric

D) Keep pressure on the mage and priest. -- Elektric

E) Use stuns more during the rush as a way to control the tempo. -- Nixi

F) If you can't drop someone on the rush, and you're not going to move, then go into healing and purging mode until they've used up their most disruptive cooldowns (fear, frost nova, etc.). Then go all out. -- Interpretation of Nixi's comments.

G) When the rush, activate all four heroisms/bloodlusts at the exact same time (?) to keep the priest busy for long enough to A) drop someone easier and B) keep your BOP intact. -- Nixi
[color=#ff6600]G Note: If all four shamans cast it at the same time, the fourth shaman who had cast Heroism or bloodlust cast will overwrite the heroism cast by the first three shamans. In this situation, if a priest dispells the heroism/bloodlust, will it still be active from the heroism cast by the third shaman?
If what was meant was that we should be casting them consecutively, then that makes sense, but then it also takes our shamans' GCDs in order to keep heroism up so that the priest is busy removing them.

[Ellay]

The team setup you are playing against is a 2345. They aren't prancing in at just any given time, they are dropping your groundings as soon as your Shaman does so and rushing in before your cooldown is up. It's a premeditated strat I've dealth with many times :)
Their burst is insane bust it's also gimmicky, you have 2 options you either blow up a target before they blow their cooldowns or attempt to survive the burst/cooldowns and then unload.
The best targets are really all 3 DPS, the Warriors / Mage / Shaman are all good in this scenario, I usually purge the Warrior as he runs in and then switch to a caster and purge them. Then I drop grounding and either heal if needed or unload on either target, switch and blow your cooldowns on the other.
Keeping constant pressure on the Mage is most likely the best option though - I ran into issues with this setup using a Shaman for a heal and the poly is disastrous. If he Iceblocks, just heal through the other players damage and then blow your cooldowns the instant he comes out.

In final, survive the initial 10 seconds of the fight and you win =D

[Vyndree]

they are dropping your groundings as soon as your Shaman does so and rushing in before your cooldown is up.

*agree*

Do not, do not, do NOT become predictable about when you decide to refresh your totems. I've had teams wait 10 minutes before engaging just to wait until my totems were almost at the end of their lifetime and rushed in. I forgot to refresh totems in my laziness (10 minutes is a long time >.<)

I've had other teams rush in when they know my groundings have JUST been placed or right before they expire. They will chain-fear you while they take out totems to disorient you (even if the fear doesn't stick). Watch the warrior -- usually they're the first to "give away" when the actual charge is going to happen (watch their rage bar).


Suvega plays priest for me, so I usually can go straight after the mage (mass dispel ftw).

[Nixi]

If what was meant was that we should be casting them consecutively, then that makes sense, but then it also takes our shamans' GCDs in order to keep heroism up so that the priest is busy removing them.

Yeah i mean keep your bloodlust/hero up. Don't blow them all at the same time. He should have blood lust/hero on round-robin so that only 1 shaman is using his GCD.


btw- why is it called 2345?

[Ellay]

It was the staple comp, pretty much the end all be all makeup for end of Season 1 and all of Season 2. Saying it was as easy as pushing buttons 2-3-4-5.

[Alemi]

If what was meant was that we should be casting them consecutively, then that makes sense, but then it also takes our shamans' GCDs in order to keep heroism up so that the priest is busy removing them.

Yeah i mean keep your bloodlust/hero up. Don't blow them all at the same time. He should have blood lust/hero on round-robin so that only 1 shaman is using his GCD.


btw- why is it called 2345?I don't even burn more than one bloodlust on this team until I've dropped the ele shaman or frost mage. The disc priests on my BG would rather just mass dispel spam me to remove my prayer of mendings, shields, and water shields. They're going to mass dispel spam regardless, so why bother burning a 2nd or 3rd bloodlust?

We've hit this combo 19 times and won 12 of them. (We actually did worse against an enhancement shammy in this combo, which i find suprising - looking back through historian nearly ever team was tauren x2 blood elf x2, which explains those losses). The biggest thing I've found against these teams is that, they know who your target is just by looking at you, and they'll los you once you switch targets. I use focus on all my shaman to mask my intended target, and keep my 2nd target as my real target. Then by using /cast [target=focus, exists, nodead] [target=target] <spell name> I can easily keep my dps constant, and not have to worry about switching - nor can they see who my first target to die is.

I have a much harder time with Eurocomps. Too many sheeps/cyclones/kicks on my healer, and far far too much burst and LoS possibilites.

[Ellay]

So you use focus for your intended target and /assist for the main ? How do you deal with the main dying.

[Alemi]

So you use focus for your intended target and /assist for the main ? How do you deal with the main dying.All of my spells are macroed on my other 4 (i rotate my 4th between 2 shammies since I do normally 5 box, but 4 box in arena), 2nd shammy in line has /assist [target=Shaggir, nodead], 3rd shammy in line has /assist [target=Shaggir, nodead], [target=Shaggira, nodead], etc. etc.

Basically, whenever i attempt to cast a spell, lightning bolt, chain lighting, purge, shocks, etc., the macro will always look at whichever Shagg is alive in order and attempt to retarget. I use a 4 button mouse so my 4th mouse button moves the current target to focus and clears the target, and my 5th mouse button clears my focus (in case my focus target is out of range, or if mid fight someone needs to be moved up in prority) and then I can refocus if necessary. Usually by this point, it's not - as someone is dead and it's 4v5.

The only spells in which I don't use /cast [target=focus, exists, nodead] [target=target] are purge and flame shock, since i use those to bait people out. If my main shagg dies, I just maximize the next shagg in line and all the macros are set to have the other followers see him now as the main, and my ui is identical, with proximo, spell alerter etc. So it's an easy transition.

It's funny when I face 2345 teams, and have the mage as my "target" and the shaman as my focus. I see the pally and priest spamming heals on the mage, as I'm casting lightning bolt followed by instant and the shammy drops dead. It completely confuses healers so they can't chase your heals easy, they have to see the first volley fly before they know who's going to get hit - and hunters always get focused just so it's easier to make sure they're really dead and not just fded.

Edit: I'm hitting the same problem you were having. No one above me will q against me, and we face some consistency issues against teams. Hunter/mage/warlock combos seem to just be the death of us, esp in blade's edge when I do manage to kill someone we can't stop the rezzes because of frost aura/entrapment. We did fight a fun 4 rogue/holy pally team that was in the 1600s, and won all 3 games. But this play a game to win 3-4 pts, and then face some other team that simply gets lucky and loose 22 is for the birds.

[Nixi]

Alemi,

I'm still a bit confused as to your setup.

I've done the

/assist [target=toona,nodead,exists] [target=toonb,nodead,exists] [target=toonc,nodead,exists]

method before, and then i used

/cast [target=target] spell

I see you use,

/cast [target=focustarget,exists,nodead] [target=target] spell

for everything except purge and flame shock.

Do you mean you use,

/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead] [target=target] spell

because if you used the afforementioned macro [target=focustarget,exists] then you'd have to be using focus on your alts to focus your main toon.

How do you use flameshock and purge?

[Alemi]

Do you mean you use,

/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead] [target=target] spell

because if you used the afforementioned macro [target=focustarget,exists] then you'd have to be using focus on your alts to focus your main toon.

How do you use flameshock and purge?Yeah, that's what I meant. Thanks for pointing out my typo (responding while waiting for a q to pop will do that to you) :P I've edited my previous post to correct for my mistake.

/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead] [target=target] spell

Flame shock and purge have the standard /assist portion that I laid out, so they acquire my main's target asap and just have the standard /cast [target=target] Flame Shock, /cast [target=target] Purge. Mostly for three reasons. 1- on those teams that send a hunter or mage up to multishot/viper sting or flame shock, respectively, I don't want to waste the mana on a LB/CL combo, hoping for a lucky crit. I'd rather just purge them off and flame shock to cause a little panic. If I was purging or flame shocking my focus target, the team can easily see who that target is - so this allows me to put some pressure on them while still hiding my intended target. 2- I've found that flame shock on a mage will cause them to burn their IB to drop them, esp if their healers aren't around and they're afraid of the instant follow up, and when I have rogue(s) around me, I want them to burn their cloak and put it on CD asap. Since rogues start arena stealthed, and if I'm lucky enough to spot them coming up to sap my healer, I want to be able to flame shock them out of stealth ASAP. This allows me to do that, without having to worry about deselecting/reselecting my focus. 3- I want to purge icy veins/innervate/power infusion as soon as they're popped, purge is not a spell i want to have to worry about it picking my focus - on the same note. It also allows me to target the warrior as he comes in and purge him, which generally means that he's going defensive thinking he's going to be pounded upon, and then launch lightning bolts/cls at my intended target.

I did this, mostly from playing 2s on my shaman or druid, when it's critical that I earth shock heals/poly/cyclone or chain cc someone in 2s. I'd use a /stopcasting, /cast [target=focus] Earth Shock macro a lot or a /cast [target=focus] Cyclone. I thought about branching it out, since a lot of the teams I play now watch my target. If I'm all targetting the mage on a team, the other 4 will rush in and leave the mage out of the fight until I switch targets, and that person would flee/los/bubble/drop a ground/jump off the bridge (I HATE BRIDGE JUMPING TEAMS WITH A PASSION), etc. and the mage would come in. I realized that they're just sitting in their vent saying "He's target <a>. Swap out. He's switched to [b]. He's back to <a>." So many teams on my bgs are all ranged, or 4 ranged + 1 warrior who would just pop defensive/spell reflect and intervene off to a healer out of range of me. It got old and I needed a way to mask my target, and it took a while to get used to, but has paid off dividends now.

[Nixi]

Thanks for clearing that up.

I've never had a problem with a team following my main's target around until this week when i crested 1800 and pushed up to 1890. In this range there are still teams that are easy to beat, but then i'll come up against smart players who I can't beat given my current tactics. I'll have to wise up a bit and out fox them if I want to break into the 1900's and beyond. I might fall back on the assist method for following my main to free up focus. I used to do this exclusively when i first started boxing with my pve team, but adopted focus at a later date because 1) my paladin didn't need anyone to sheep or CC anything, and 2) I was switching out mains a lot for various tasks. (boosting, questing, etc) and I couldnt' stand an assist macro that had 11 character names. I 10 box sometimes so focus was easy to manage.

[Tizer]

The warrior is a great target anytime he doesnt have a healer focusing him. Dont load him up on rage unless you know you can take him down. He provides the least threat of all the other dps classes.
Try telling that to my healer when i have MS on several of my shaman :x