Dealing with chain cc, shaman getting split up, etc.

[heyaz]

How are the top teams currently dealing with the constant fears, snares, etc. that make it difficult to even get the instant casts off?

We had a pretty rough night tonight, but overall came out ahead. 1615 was our top but the teams are just getting too precise, too organized. Tremor totems arent' doing a damn thing and I'm getting feared all over the joint.

The biggest problem I'm having is shaman not facing the target (especially with all the cleave teams) and just generally not being able to nuke even if I picked a target. Most games are playing out like:

1. Frost DK runs in an CC"s entire team - I trinket
2. Warriors fear bombs, tremor totems don't help much and they're all split up, all facing the wrong way
3. Atempt to regroup, have the shaman are snared and have to crawl their way back to the main, by which time I get fear bombed by the priest, or the melee is spinning so fast I can't face them.
4. Pop a thunderstorm or two if I haven't already. Targets go every direction and by the time I can find a target and get all the shaman to face them, they're already on me again

I'm currently running a pretty well gear holy paladin, he can keep people alive for if needed, but I have to stop and heal myself at times. Most of the organized teams will start to CC him like crazy once they've rendered all my slaves useless.

I find that my only real chance to instant nuke is before they even engage, but often times I get flame shock and elemental mastery popped, shaman get fear bombed and split up, target is already obvious at that point and struggle to get 1 or 2 instant casts on them which are futile when the healers are already popping CDs.

We played a handful of 2100+ mmr tonight, and I expect that kind of teamwork from them, but we also lost some games to much lower rated teams with 3 or 4x pvp/pve geared melee who are smart enough to aoe cc just as much.

Looking for some tips, we really want to at least get 1700 this week, I know we have the gear and reaction time :)

i watched Negativ1337's videos, hoping for some ideas, but the teams he's faced in the video, we have no problem with. We grabbed 21 points from a high rated team whose strat was to just dps like crazy but not cc, and that won't work once the shaman have gear

[heyaz]

I swapped in a furious geared druid and we hit 1651... yay furious rings. We played some tough teams too, all cleaves, all high rated. The beauty of having a druid or priest healer is they actually attack them (no one ever got near my paladin). It's soo easy to blow up melee from range while they attack my druid. Still same CC issues though, but he would use wild growth + tranquility to get us through the first several seconds.

[merujo]

I dunno bout u, but with my low rating, whenever i face a team by the second time, they just aoe me to death :)

[Colakongen]

Have u tried being just as bitchy as they are?
Use more roots/fire nova totems? :P, worked for me ^^

Got to 1944 with a priest, but currently burned down to 1880 by a 4dps pve team with combat-fok and destrolock >,>

Keep on trying, U'll grind teams easier than they grind u once u get the hang of it!:D


Hail next patcH!!! "Vindication: Removed!"
<3

[Dominian]

Earthbind totem helps alot when thunderstorming, since it greatly increase the time it takes to get back to you. If you can knock someone who is slowed off the edge in dalaran sewers you take them out of the fight for 7-8 seconds.

Why are you trinketing that aoe freeze thing if your only gonna eat a fear? (well asuming theyr not killing your paladin, but he should outlast them with losing) If they start nuking one your pretty much forced to trinket anyway and you have to eat the fear, and are you sure they are not taking down your tremor totems before fearing?

My bet is that they are destorying your tremors while your busy getting control over your shamans.

Like Colakongen said:

Drop earthbind/fire nova totem, you will be suprised how much this suprises people.
Start rotating thunderstorm the second they get close.
If the enemy team got a shaman ALWAY purge before you push your blow up button or the burst will end up in a grounding totem 50% of the time.
Once your EM/FS/LvB is gone they can rush you as much as they can, practice on getting kills without using EM. (I wiped a team with 2 gladiators and 3 challengers in under 30 seconds without bloodlust or EM, ring of valor and tbh im not sure what happened but it was a match i never will forget)

Your paladin needs more then gear and be high rated in 2v2, i used a guy who had 2300 rating in 2v2 he did not have a clue on how to behave in 5v5. He kept getting counterspelled,sheeped,spellocked,feared etc sure its impossible to avoid them all the time but with your pressure he should never allow a mage to sheep him if there are pillars around.

My 2 new healers are both amazing since they never eat counter spells,sheep or any cc apart from maybe a druid who comes from stealth and tro a cyclone on them.

[merujo]

Im still working on a macro that would TS and Earthbind, each one on a different shaman. What do u guys use? Hit different buttons?

[Dominian]

Im still working on a macro that would TS and Earthbind, each one on a different shaman. What do u guys use? Hit different buttons?

currently i use different buttons, after 300 arena games i discovered a funny flaw in my rotated macro. shaman 2 and 3 blow thunderstorm at the same time!! aka i have only used 3 knockbacks!!! :(((

Im not sure what happens if you bind thunderstorm and earthbind on the same key, will it root the enemy and ignore thunderstorm. (since you can thunderstorm rooted targets) or will it knock them back and root them?

[Ualaa]

I'm not high-end arena, but here is some theorycrafting for you to consider:


If you had them on castsequences, and different keybinds that could work.
You'd have to be able to press both keys easily at the same time.
Something like:

/castsequence Earthbind Totem,,,
/castsequence ,,Thunderstorm,

And then move the spells along (or move the comma's) for each shammy.
You could also put them into the same sequence so one shammy does each on a keypress.
I personally prefer separate keybinds, as you may want to chain one without the other at times.

As far as the fear bomb, the "Click to Move" and "Interact With Target" keybinds are amazing for world pvp.
I'd imagine you'd have good results in arena too.
Your team has been fear-bombed. Tremor will tick in 1-3 seconds.
As soon as it does, click interact - which will have each team member turn to the target and then run towards them.
Now click your forward/backwards movement keybind to end the movement.
And click your Flame Shock + Elemental Mastery + Lava Burst macro.
There is a 0.5 second macro in the pvp section, forget the posters exact name, but he's amongst the top in 5's in his battlegroup.
You could even have your team all run at one toon, via Inteact/Click to Move, as a method of having them all run at once towards the same destination for a regroup.

[Kruschpakx4]

Im still working on a macro that would TS and Earthbind, each one on a different shaman. What do u guys use? Hit different buttons?

currently i use different buttons, after 300 arena games i discovered a funny flaw in my rotated macro. shaman 2 and 3 blow thunderstorm at the same time!! aka i have only used 3 knockbacks!!! :(((

Im not sure what happens if you bind thunderstorm and earthbind on the same key, will it root the enemy and ignore thunderstorm. (since you can thunderstorm rooted targets) or will it knock them back and root them?

earthbind+ts: they are getting knocking and root fades but they are still slowed
ts+earthbing: they are getting knocked but out of range for root, root has a range of 10 yard

[heyaz]

I'm definitely trying to make it as hard as possible for them as well - 4x thunderstorms on rotation, 4x earthbinds on rotation (most of which just root them on top of me, but whatever), and fire nova (not on rotation). Considering moving fire nova to a rotation with thunderstorm. When I was on the PTR I thought 4x earthbind would be godly but I'm surprised how hard it is to keep a 3 melee team rooted for more than 1 second.

I have two TS hotkeys - one for the sequence, and on that will do it on all four. This is for a guaranteed kill only, like a warrior at 5% hp after a nuke that is about to be healed back to full.

Now on dalaran, TS can win the match (maybe). I fight near the boxes and I can blow 1-2 melee off with the first TS. They're then out of range of healing and pretty much dead. Blade's edge is random, but I'd say 80% of the time TS does not blow anyone off the bridge - they either conveniently get thrown back towards their team, or hit the edge of the bridge as if it's a solid barrier (stupid).

I don't know about the DR's on fire nova totems but it seems like 4 in a row could take melee out of commission for awhile.

Even with all of that though, any team who has played me a few times, or a 2400 MMR that takes 5 minutes to open, will almost certainly use a CC rotation - frost dk thing, warrior fear, priest run in and fear, arcane torrent, etc. God forbid they have a destro warlock, those games are hells. ranged aoe stun every 45 second is probably the second biggest gimmick ever in wow (behind fan of knives)

[heyaz]

I'm not high-end arena, but here is some theorycrafting for you to consider:


If you had them on castsequences, and different keybinds that could work.
You'd have to be able to press both keys easily at the same time.
Something like:

/castsequence Earthbind Totem,,,
/castsequence ,,Thunderstorm,

And then move the spells along (or move the comma's) for each shammy.
You could also put them into the same sequence so one shammy does each on a keypress.
I personally prefer separate keybinds, as you may want to chain one without the other at times.

As far as the fear bomb, the "Click to Move" and "Interact With Target" keybinds are amazing for world pvp.
I'd imagine you'd have good results in arena too.
Your team has been fear-bombed. Tremor will tick in 1-3 seconds.
As soon as it does, click interact - which will have each team member turn to the target and then run towards them.
Now click your forward/backwards movement keybind to end the movement.
And click your Flame Shock + Elemental Mastery + Lava Burst macro.
There is a 0.5 second macro in the pvp section, forget the posters exact name, but he's amongst the top in 5's in his battlegroup.
You could even have your team all run at one toon, via Inteact/Click to Move, as a method of having them all run at once towards the same destination for a regroup.I've just set up the interact with target and bound it to a mouse key, wondering how to handle refollowing so they don't keep running towards the target (but then again that doesn't matter with instants). I've heard there's still no way to macro interact with target so two key presses are still necessary, but maybe if they were close together I could just hit both.

I've got a nuke macro for the combo, but I'm frequently running into the issue of not all the shaman facing the target. Without all four, most geared players can survive 3, definitely 2 of the shaman.

I'll try more with this interact keybinding and see what I can come up with. I wonder if it could be at the point of being spammable so you could follow melee around

[asonimie]

ranged aoe stun every 45 second is probably the second biggest gimmick ever in wow (behind fan of knives)Every 20 seconds. And yes its the biggest crock of shit I've seen in a long time. Aside from FOK interrupt spec, that is.

[Kruschpakx4]

ranged aoe stun every 45 second is probably the second biggest gimmick ever in wow (behind fan of knives)Every 20 seconds. And yes its the biggest crock of shit I've seen in a long time. Aside from FOK interrupt spec, that is.the biggest shit is spellreflect^^

[Multibocks]

/clarification "Spell reflect working on Thunderstorm." WTF, indeed.

[Kruschpakx4]

/clarification "Spell reflect working on Thunderstorm." WTF, indeed.spell reflect reflects aoe root X.X

[Multibocks]

holy shit I didnt know that. That's seriously messed up!!

[heyaz]

Tried a TS + Fire Nova Totem macro that seemed to have decent results. Gives me three fire nova stuns as they are running back from the thunderstorm.

I'm considering turning spell effects back down to minimum as well, some games, especially on ring of valor or dalaran, I can't even see my shaman there is so much crap flying around on the screen.

Last night was a rough one, ran into several teams that could wipe us all in under 15 seconds. Pretty much the same thing over and over - hungering cold -> warrior fear -> priest fear or something else, then it's pretty much gg. During this they do such insane damage we're all dead, or at least 1-2 shaman are dead after the cc chain making it not really possible to nuke anyone. I'm kind of out of ideas as to how we counter that.... do I need new healers or what?

[Ualaa]

The higher you go, the harder it is.

With four shammies, if you can land a Flame Shock, Lava Burst combo, you should insta-kill one opponent.

Setting one opponent as your focus, and having a burst macro targeting the focus can really help.
That way, you can have say the Priest as your focus target, but be dpsing the Paladin hard.
The priest runs out for a Dispel Magic or something.

Your macro targets the focus.
The macro is to the effect of:

/cast Elemental Mastery
/stopcasting
/castsequence [target=focus] Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Chain Lightning

As long as you have facing to the Priest, you nuke him down, without even targeting him.

I know easier said then done.
Still when its suddenly 5v4, they can be intimidated by your firepower.

[Kruschpakx4]

With four shammies, if you can land a Flame Shock, Lava Burst combo, you should insta-kill one opponent.


you won't kill a geared warlock with that combo :/

to nuke a warlock you need very much skill..... and very much crit luck :D

[heyaz]

With four shammies, if you can land a Flame Shock, Lava Burst combo, you should insta-kill one opponent.


you won't kill a geared warlock with that combo :/

to nuke a warlock you need very much skill..... and very much crit luck :DWon't kill a geared anything with that combo unless they're purged naked, and then they'll still probably bubble or get a heal when you're casting CL + frost shock to finish them off.

Difficulty is having the time or presence of mind to be able to pressure anything into blowing cooldowns and bubbles, then being able to nuke another target. We're chain cc'd and being torn in half in about the first 10 sec of the battle, I'm lucking to even get purges off on ring of valor.

[heyaz]

So I was watching some of the old Aelli videos, including his narrated instructional video. He was amazinging skilled, but my god things looked different back then. Aoe CC was such a joke - fear bombs broken instantly with the old tremor totems, shaman don't even split up. No shadowfury spammers, no hungering cold, no knockbacks, his shaman just stood in one place and nuked to their hearts' content. Now I can't even find my alts half the time, they're all running around like retards in opposite directions, frozen in blocks of ice, silenced, flying in mid air, or being yanked all over the place by death grip. All while super blood elf paladin is doing over 200k damage in 30 seconds while his -4% spell hit talent somehow means 3/4 of my shaman missed that lava burst

Then there was the old instant kill - no global cooldown, no putting 4 flame shocks on one guy (might as well be an arrow over his head that the other team can see).

And some of his tactics - like purging the rogue, switching to the warrior, purging, then insta killing. Have people just gotten twitchy since BC or what, that crap won't even work on a 1000 rated team, would've so much as looked at that warrior and boom - spell reflect is up, pain supression, power word shield, earth shield, riptide, and I haven't even cast purge yet :)

what happened to pvp

[drevil]

3.0 was the end for good pvp.

blizzard already glued some realmpools together but less and less people doing pvp.
our EU bg pool now has 30 !! servers but there are never many games open,
and you already see the same players over several games.