Return of Mosg

[Mosg2]

Yarr!

A bit of a hiatus but I feel the itch again... And I've got grand ideas!

My plan is to lead with a Druid healer and run either 4 Enhance Shaman or 4 Frost DKs. I need YOU to convince me one way or the other.

The way I see it, healing with the Druid will be a cakewalk--I've got a pretty swank healing setup currently. My melee train can open up on my burst target and I can either Solar Beam on the target if they're silence-able or focus Solar Beam the healer. With my healing setup plus IWT I can focus my energy on kiting with the Druid.

Where I'm at now is deciding between the DKs and the Enhance Shaman. From what I've seen it should be no problem to immediately 4v5 burst someone dead with the Shaman but their survivability/lack of gap closers worries me. On the other hand the mobility of the DKs is really appealing. This is primarily for 5v5 but I'll extend it to 3v3 for points and rating, potentially, if it seems lucrative. I just don't want to put in a bunch of time getting gear on the one team and then have it be a waste.

What do you all think? The faster you convince me the sooner you get a Mosg Ascendent Manifesto :)

[Owltoid]

I think that's the current debate, which is better for multiboxers: DKs or enhance. My enhance team is a great deal of fun, and I think they would have a shot in arena with enough practice. Ellay is leaning to DKs, and it's hard to ever discount the strength of DKs. I'm not sure you can go wrong - both teams are in a solid place and no nerfs incoming.

[Mosg2]

The question in my mind is:

Can 4 DKs burst through healing currently? With Solar Beam on their healer? Round robin Strangulate?

If the answer is no then I think Enhance is definitely the winner. Being able to burst a target from 100%-->0% in Ascendance with 4 Shaman is, it seems, completely doable.

[Shodokan]

If you want my opinion you know where to reach me lol.

I'll leave you with this much info since I don't really want to explain things. Monk ring of peace will negate both teams' burst if not done properly.

[Fat Tire]

Monk ring of peace will negate both teams' burst if not done properly.

Yea not looking forward to that aoe disarm.

They fixed hunters powershot for 5.2 to not miss anymore even if the target is moving. 3 hunters can 1 shot someone, I have gotten 150k-200k on a single powershot and 150k is common when it didnt miss, if not a clean kill should be able to follow up with a kill shot. I see alot of QQ coming for hunters. So something to think about also.

[Shodokan]

Yea not looking forward to that aoe disarm.

They fixed hunters powershot for 5.2 to not miss anymore even if the target is moving. 3 hunters can 1 shot someone, I have gotten 150k-200k on a single powershot and 150k is common when it didnt miss, if not a clean kill should be able to follow up with a kill shot. I see alot of QQ coming for hunters. So something to think about also.

All i can think about here is phantasm > aoe fear, charge > fear or shockwave

Too many things to interupt the cast time since its so long. Them having 3 seconds to do something about it sucks (unless you can move with it now?)

[Ellay]

Welcome back Mogs2! Recently returned myself and it's been enjoyable.

In regards to the hunters, they can stealth for the opener and their damage is absurd as a whole because it's instant and on demand at 40 yards away. Been thinking how they could be combined for PvP...

On the DK's or Shaman route. DK's in my opinion are very bursty just like Shamans with the staying power. If Obliterate is your first priority ability you essentially can throw down 6 of them in quick fashion and if I'm correct their GCD is only 1 second. I've refined my DPS macro's repeatedly to where they both pump out the exact same DPS on a single target dummy but in Arenas, the DK's also AoE cleave so well, you can swap to another target if that one won't drop and they already have usually 30-40% of their HP shaved off.

I still use 1 shaman in the mix though for group buffs + Tremor + Stormlash. (Heroism/Bloodlust does not work in Arena), but at the end of the day I'm still not impressed/satisfied with their damage output. They are always the first to be targeted because you can tunnel them down and they do have shamanistic rage + astral shift to mitigate some damage but the DK's can sac their pet for a solid 50% heal which seems to buy me more time for longevity.

My composition right now is 1 Druid / 3 frost DK / 1 enhance shaman. Even though I just received the weapons on all of them, the Shaman still lags behind in what I want them to do and it's a constant debate internally to drop and go with a 4th DK.

[Mosg2]

I decided on the Shaman, at least initially. I think that their ability to one-shot virtually any class at range outweighs the cleave and survivability of the DKs. I guess we'll see what happens--My Druid is 83 and the Shaman're 85 so it'll be a bit before I'm up to speed.

[Ellay]

DK - Grip -> Pow, Grip -> Pow, Grip -> Pow, Grip -> Pow
Shaman -> Boom, twiddle fingers for 3 minutes.

Also Shaman do not apply enough offensive pressure to force trinkets or put their team on the defensive. Asphyxiate is going down to a 30 second cooldown in 5.2 from a minute. With 4 DK's that a 6 second AoE stun in arenas every 30 seconds, up to 30 yards away for each target.
This also does not include Remorseless Winter for the 5 second AoE stun.

Both have their pro's and con's, I have both currently on my team and have played 4 Enh shaman at 90. The initial one shotting is nice... if it works. If it doesn't it's an uphill battle. DK's are constant offensive pressure and will run their healers OOM in no time flat.
Talking about this further I think it's time to drop my Shaman from my team and just gear out the last DK.

[heyaz]

I decided on the Shaman, at least initially. I think that their ability to one-shot virtually any class at range outweighs the cleave and survivability of the DKs. I guess we'll see what happens--My Druid is 83 and the Shaman're 85 so it'll be a bit before I'm up to speed.

Well, that mostly limits your viability to 5v5 arena, which isn't the most active bracket anymore and the amount of aoe cc is crazy. The shaman are inferior in other pvp settings - BGs and wpvp.... just due to poor uptime and lack of gap closers. World pvp is a pretty big deal now and 10 man BGs are viable with DKs, if you don't suck

[Owltoid]

Well, that mostly limits your viability to 5v5 arena, which isn't the most active bracket anymore and the amount of aoe cc is crazy. The shaman are inferior in other pvp settings - BGs and wpvp.... just due to poor uptime and lack of gap closers. World pvp is a pretty big deal now and 10 man BGs are viable with DKs, if you don't suck

Say what? You're telling me that shamans can't roll in BGs? Hogwash - the team is solid.

Have we seen anyone successful in RBGs yet? Othewise we all suck.

I don't know which one is better, but they're both viable. Having shaman teams say DK teams are horrible, or vice versa, is wrong.

[Shodokan]

I play both.

I see dks flat lining early vs shaman teams with the healing changes and class changes. The ability to kill whatever you want in the opener is too powerful, the choice of what to kill will make or break how high you get your rating IMO.

Dks will be strong with the changes to ring of frost but a lot of targets are hard kills initially for dks, their spread pressure is still amazing and their burst for 6 seconds is amazing if you have full uptime on the target but defensives and un-reducable CC (new aoe disarm) can easily negate dk burst. If shaman had a gap closer and were able to use elemental blast efficiently and stay on targets at the same time then they would win hands down but their mobility is pretty crappy unless you are specing purely into wind walker totem.

[heyaz]

Say what? You're telling me that shamans can't roll in BGs? Hogwash - the team is solid.

Have we seen anyone successful in RBGs yet? Othewise we all suck.

I don't know which one is better, but they're both viable. Having shaman teams say DK teams are horrible, or vice versa, is wrong.

I said inferior, in my opinion, not terrible. As in, not as good. In those settings - BGs, World PVP. Longer fights where instagibbing one target every 3 minutes isn't a game changer as it would be in 5v5 arena. I've seen them desperately chase targets around only to finally close the gap and slap around wet noodles and auto attack. DKs on the other hand grip everything in, can use their hard hitting abilities very frequently, and produce tremendous AOE pressure pretty much nonstop. They're also... dare I say this... a lot less squishy than enhancement shaman, which says a lot because Frost DKs are squishy. These are small BGs as low as 10 man, and world pvp.

Again, this has nothing to do with 5v5.

But maybe my opinion is out of place in this thread as Mosg, Shodokan, etc. seem to be talking strictly 5v5. In that case, enhance shaman. Honestly I'm not sure why 5v5 keeps coming up, with it being so dead, and going into obscurity at this point. And it seems like a lot of frustration for little more than a shot at the 1900s.. not exactly a prestigious bracket

[Shodokan]

I said inferior, in my opinion, not terrible. As in, not as good. In those settings - BGs, World PVP. Longer fights where instagibbing one target every 3 minutes isn't a game changer as it would be in 5v5 arena. I've seen them desperately chase targets around only to finally close the gap and slap around wet noodles and auto attack. DKs on the other hand grip everything in, can use their hard hitting abilities very frequently, and produce tremendous AOE pressure pretty much nonstop. They're also... dare I say this... a lot less squishy than enhancement shaman, which says a lot because Frost DKs are squishy. These are small BGs as low as 10 man, and world pvp.

Again, this has nothing to do with 5v5.

But maybe my opinion is out of place in this thread as Mosg, Shodokan, etc. seem to be talking strictly 5v5. In that case, enhance shaman. Honestly I'm not sure why 5v5 keeps coming up, with it being so dead, and going into obscurity at this point. And it seems like a lot of frustration for little more than a shot at the 1900s.. not exactly a prestigious bracket

No one has done well in RBG's for an entire expansion and certainly no one this one... so speaking to that is sorta beating a dead dog as well.

There are very few people who do world pvp from my experience and everyone knows how strong dks are for that sorta thing.

[Ellay]

I totally won a rbg last week, totally.. I'm like 1-9 at this point. Pretty sure that is baller status.

[Multibocks]

Haha I can confirm that he did win. I watched the entire thing ;)

[Kruschpakx4]

I havent played my shaman team (and wow) since christmas but it was pretty fun in bgs/wpvp and also viable in 5v5 but with the removal of t2 rating requirements I'd suggest you to go with the dk team, once fully geared with t2 weps dks will be much more fun in pvp

[Lyonheart]

I feel like i wasted a few months of my life on my shaman team.. hope the next patch makes them better ( ele spec ). I just dinged a fury warrior..frost DK and combat rog to 90.. got them a few upgrades..no weapons yet ( they almost exalted with Klaxi so ill wait for weapons ) And my DK is doing 50k on the target dummy as a fresh 90! My damn shaman are lucky to pull 45k average, and they are geared ( 470ish ). The Fury is doing 30k right out the gate as well.. i have to tweek his macros a bit i think. Anyway.. I'm focusing on my DKs until i have a full team again, grrr!! Unless DKs get nerfed into the ground, they are a safe bet for fun+ownage.

So, OP, my vote is for DKs as well! Way easier to box then Enhance.

[pinotnoir]

If you play another boxer you can win a RBG. Otherwise it's pretty tough.

[Shodokan]

With how next season is going to work, just play both.

Personally I see geared shaman winning more arenas than dks unless you are amazing with your split CC. (which trust me isn't too easy to accomplish)

[Ellay]

I'm still super torn on both. I swapped over a dk to be 1 Druid 4x dk and somehow I feel internally awful for it. Like I am shunning the class that defined me.
I did do a lfr last night and there was an enhance shaman pulling amazing dps. Hs rotation was the norm. I wish I saved his parses but checking his armory his ilvl was 487 with two badass weapons... So... Maybe enhance shames with amazing gear will stomp?
If I had the time on my hands that I did back in the day I would play both and be content but Ij barely have the for one set.
For Pve I would love love love to use 4x enhance shaman and a tank Druid and just off heal heroics that would be ideal. I think that can work but for pvp they just don't have a great gap closer..

[Shodokan]

I'm still super torn on both. I swapped over a dk to be 1 Druid 4x dk and somehow I feel internally awful for it. Like I am shunning the class that defined me.
I did do a lfr last night and there was an enhance shaman pulling amazing dps. Hs rotation was the norm. I wish I saved his parses but checking his armory his ilvl was 487 with two badass weapons... So... Maybe enhance shames with amazing gear will stomp?
If I had the time on my hands that I did back in the day I would play both and be content but Ij barely have the for one set.
For Pve I would love love love to use 4x enhance shaman and a tank Druid and just off heal heroics that would be ideal. I think that can work but for pvp they just don't have a great gap closer..

All melee classes innately scale with gear more so than casters. Melee REQUIRE gear to do well in PVE and in PVP. Theres a reason KFC with t2 stomps people where as KFC with t1 can be laughable to someone with gear.

They do have a gap closer... just a really shitty one and it is talented.

[heyaz]

I'm still super torn on both. I swapped over a dk to be 1 Druid 4x dk and somehow I feel internally awful for it. Like I am shunning the class that defined me.
I did do a lfr last night and there was an enhance shaman pulling amazing dps. Hs rotation was the norm. I wish I saved his parses but checking his armory his ilvl was 487 with two badass weapons... So... Maybe enhance shames with amazing gear will stomp?
If I had the time on my hands that I did back in the day I would play both and be content but Ij barely have the for one set.
For Pve I would love love love to use 4x enhance shaman and a tank Druid and just off heal heroics that would be ideal. I think that can work but for pvp they just don't have a great gap closer..

Maybe you could just have a separate PVE team? Even if it's just swapping the shaman back in with your DKs.
Someone pulling great DPS in LFR using a PVE rotation doesn't really reflect multiboxing pvp or pvp in general, where enhancement shaman are just limited.

4x enhance with a good rotation can do well in heroics with a tank and no healer. I know a guy who runs 1x warrior 4x enhance and blasted through most of the heroics in a night with little preparation.

You could always maintain both teams anyway, with a little more effort. Capping 5s not too tough, and running LFR all at the same time makes it easy. I play my DKs 80% of the time, shaman 20% of the time and it didn't take much more effort to keep my entire 10 box group geared for whenever I may want to use them.

[Mosg2]

I looked again at the PvP blog post and realized that I misread earlier--They're not just lowering the rating requirement for the T2 weapons et al, they're removing them all together. There's no longer really a "goal rating" that you want to hit in order to access anything--It just comes down to whichever team you have more fun playing. I like it.

With that in mind, I'm definitely leaning towards the DKs.

[heyaz]

I looked again at the PvP blog post and realized that I misread earlier--They're not just lowering the rating requirement for the T2 weapons et al, they're removing them all together. There's no longer really a "goal rating" that you want to hit in order to access anything--It just comes down to whichever team you have more fun playing. I like it.

With that in mind, I'm definitely leaning towards the DKs.

Yeah it's nice to know that eventually, you can get the elite gear (they're treating it like another tier of PVE gear, as it were), no matter what rating you have. In which case that coveted 2.2k rating, at least for multiboxers, may no longer dictate what comp you play (i.e. a comp with a much better chance in 5v5 yet overall less utility in pvp than another).

The rating will still play a significant factor in how quickly you acquire the elite gear, and expect the top players to have it in <8 weeks while it takes an eternity for players with no rating >1500 to get it.

The conquest requirement is 27000 to purchase the elite gear. I started getting as much conquest as I could (close to cap) on my DKs since late october or early november and I think I only Just passed 27000 points. My Shaman were in arenas (lol 3v3 elemental) beginning of october, they missed a few weeks here and there, but they also just passed 27k.

If you cap 1800 every week (assuming you can't do RBGs - but you could always spend an entire night queueing around the 900mmr rating and hope for a lucky win), you're looking at 15+ weeks, nearly 4 months before you can upgrade. So like... July.

That's why you'd wanna push rating. That and titles, and cosmetic gear or whatever. May be interesting to see how the new team rating inflation affects point you can acquire... wonder if you can just play a lot, be 2000 ish and have a good cap, while the good teams are closer to 3000 or higher.

I'm still not entirely clear on all the outrage about 2.2k rating if there is going to be a team inflation. If they keep going up, and 2800 or 3000 is the new 2.2k, who the hell cares about 2.2k anymore? If they keep the achieves the same and it works like they say, everyone and their mother will be an arena master.

[Ellay]

With all of that in mind. I tried out 4 DK's and having 1 Shaman in the comp is equally important. So I am back to 1 Druid / 3 DK / 1 Shaman. It's powerful and enjoyable and when I swap over to PvE it's extremely powerful having 6/8 group buffs. After all my theory crafting I feel at ease and hope to start expanding on it so others can enjoy it :)
in a nutshell Mogs, throw in a enhance shaman just for fun!

[heyaz]

Did you ever really conclude if the shaman benefits you in PVP at all? Compared to having a DK in its place.
Wonder if in the upcoming gear reset I could try enhance on one or more shaman.

[Ellay]

Trying not to hijack mogs thread too much just giving experience here.

I've done about 60 5's games this season and its been mostly with junky gear while my opponents out gear me.
The shaman brings about 1.5-2k dps more per character from the buff. They pump out in arenas roughly 22-25k each in current gear and the mastery buff itself feels like it adds 5% more damage. On a good game the shaman will do 18-20k and a bad game 12k. This is how I mark their performance. Also to note the Shaman is ALWAYS, targeted first. So he is getting stun locked etc while the dk's go to town. This actually isn't terrible since the shaman mitigates more damage blowing active cd's than a dk does its a weird benefit.
So the dps loss the shaman has is made up for in the amount if gives the others. Additionally the shaman gives the healing Druid 10% more spell power on top of the mastery buff which adds about 2k spell power and 6% more effectiveness on my heals through mastery. Netting my regrowrth spam an additional 10-14k heal per cast while in pvp mode.
additionally a healing stream totem is dropped or healing wave.
Plastic but not least solar beam is and can be a game changing opener. 4 second targeted aoe silence really sets the tone.

Lsing the extra double grip makes the death grip rotation a little more spread out I did enjoy a never ending grip practically every 3 seconds. You can also perform an aoe stun via asphyxiate on 4 targets instead of 3. And doing two separate double remorseless winters really adds to the cc.

At this pint I'm back in the 1x Shaman boat and if I can further tune/hone the dps/burst if may be another reversal where I get 3 shaman and a dk. The opening burst power on the shaman is really what wins the game and right now I am not dropping targets as fast as I would like to be. They literally have to flop as soon as you hit them with the insane amount of "outs" every class in this game has for the,selves and others and I still need to learn all of the abilities. I sat there trying to burn down a warrior today while a monk literally made him immune to damage.

So lets have a class merge! Give me the dk's with the shaman 3 minute burst and we'll call it a day.

[Chivalrous]

Ellay my enhance hit 478 iLevel and I tweaked her rotation and she did 78k DPS overall in HoF. I was driving from tank/healer most of the time. We just gotta keep gearing up and tweaking macros I think. It's getting better.

[Ellay]

78k is pretty badass. I should be able to upgrade my weapons to ilvl 478 and can maybe get some gear from the ah to get close to that. If we can replicate those numbers things may turn out pretty interesting for pvp ;)

[Ellay]

I'll eat my words a bit more. I wasn't factoring in on the recount meters the damage from elemental force on the shaman it puts it in it's own category. The shaman is doing damage right on par with the DK's now in arena matches and it's mostly single target as opposed to AoE.. a new shift may be in order. Was also able to drop my first 1600 rated arena team. Moving on up!

[smalltanker]

Ellay have you thought of maybe using a retadin in the group vice the shaman? Still brings the mastery buff, is much more survivable, decent DPS and kicks out some decent heals using Divine Storm (IIRC and Selfless Healer), decent stun/repentance and of course AOE blind/knockdown. With the slow for judgement (12 seconds if I recall) helps you have more uptime on target and again potentially can operate as a second healer if the tree got popped. Finally the aura mastery and the ability to bubble your tree could be a nice addition to a melee heavy comp.

[Ellay]

I've thought about a retadin and a few things on why I currently shy away from it.
Using selfless healer you have to use a seal that doesn't fulfill maximum dps of the class. The symbiosis is not that good for PvP, I'd lose an AoE silence and end up having to symbiosis a DK to gain Icebound Fortitude which is still nice but not as good in my opinion.
You can talent a DK so that frost fever snares a target to 50% if they have frost fever on them, howling blast is an aoe 30 yard range snare essentially and it's always going off, so that base is covered.

The BoP would be amazing and so would the bubble. Right now my focus is on dropping targets which I am doing at a decent rate, but that might make the process more difficult. Going the Retadin route I think I would go unholy in 5.2 and pick up antimagic shield, and play the outlast the other team method. Spread out the dots and make it unhealable.

[Ualaa]

If your primary play is battlegrounds, instead of arena...
The Ret Paladin is a good addition, in that they add a lot of utility to a composition.
But they don't have the burst that a lot of others have, so are often seen on a 10-box more than a 5-box.
The utility is nice, and with 10 you have the firepower to kill quickly, even if not everyone is as high on the DPS.

[Shodokan]

I've thought about a retadin and a few things on why I currently shy away from it.
Using selfless healer you have to use a seal that doesn't fulfill maximum dps of the class. The symbiosis is not that good for PvP, I'd lose an AoE silence and end up having to symbiosis a DK to gain Icebound Fortitude which is still nice but not as good in my opinion.
You can talent a DK so that frost fever snares a target to 50% if they have frost fever on them, howling blast is an aoe 30 yard range snare essentially and it's always going off, so that base is covered.

The BoP would be amazing and so would the bubble. Right now my focus is on dropping targets which I am doing at a decent rate, but that might make the process more difficult. Going the Retadin route I think I would go unholy in 5.2 and pick up antimagic shield, and play the outlast the other team method. Spread out the dots and make it unhealable.

Battle healer =/= Selfless healer

Making use of Selfless Healer can be done in any seal. Their changed seal of justice makes their damage higher as well now.

Enh still better for the comp though.

[heyaz]

I agree with shodokan enhance is probably better for the comp. Provides same mastery buff and spell power and a much better symbiosis spell. Enhance can be tuned for decent dps and their burst is crazy.

Paladins won't provide that kind of burst, can't break aoe fear, no raid-wide freedom, etc. They have some other things like LoH, great stun (but you already have 2x asphyxiate), and bubble. There's a 10 boxer with 5x DK, 4x Ret, 1x Holy. He said the rets put out crap damage and offer little more than buffs and extra cc.

As far as unholy, you lose howling blast which is awesome aoe pressure and frost fever / snare on everyone. Unholy is designed much differently with significant ramp up time to burst and a more complicated rotation.
I tested it on one DK and the diseases definitely hit harder and since you stack haste will tick more, but I had no aoe snare and no hard-hitting ability without rampup time (obliterate). I played it solo quite a bit in cata, up into the 2200s or so in 3v3 and in BGs. It plays much differently than frost - the pets are pretty important and account for a lot more damage than you'd think, and also provide stuns/interrupts which are key for building "pressure". They always refer to unholy DKs as a pressure spec not really a burst one - the burst is in a window that you have to build up to, unlike frost. That being said, I still kinda wanna try 5x unholy just for fun to see what 5x pets + gargoyles, mass diseases death coil that's worth casting.

I just don't know if the "pressure" of all this will result in the quick kills you want when multiboxing. Multiboxing PVP depends not as much on building pressure and exhausting enemy cooldowns, but globaling people and providing so much burst that their cooldowns can't save them anyway. If you watch any arena (older ones, cata) where unholy is played, they use constant pressure to open up a window where someone becomes vulnerable to a kill. But I'd still love to see someone pull off 4x unholy in arena and use their constant pressure while staying alive until the other team completely exhausts their options. Cool, in theory.

Either spec can use anti-magic zone. And both specs have to give up Lichborne to do it.

[valkry]

4x AotD is better than 4x elementals for showing off in cities... This is all that matters, the choice is obvious!!

[Owltoid]

4x AotD is better than 4x elementals for showing off in cities... This is all that matters, the choice is obvious!!

You forgot the wolves for enhancement. Elementals plus wolves looks pretty cool.