Aelli - This is why I don't play Ele Shaman anymore

[Ellay]

Title sums it up. On another note, great to see other multiboxers in Arenas!!
Edit: This isn't a knock on this player at all, it's a fresh 90 team. It was more or less showing how devastating aoe silence lock outs are. Can't imagine 5.2 with monks ring of peace.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs1B7jPYL5g

[zenga]

Come on man, can't draw conclusions based on this one game. Check his armory:

The guy is in quest gear (greens and blues, not a single pvp item).
This was his first arena ever on his shamans (and the only one apparently)

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormreaver/Tsprite/statistic#21:152
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormreaver/Tcoke/statistic#21:152
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormreaver/Tdrpepper/statistic#21:152
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormreaver/Tpepsi/statistic#21:152
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormreaver/Tmtndew/statistic#21:152

Ele's are in a really poor pvp state since 5.1 (not that they were that good in 5.0), but it's a bit too easy to use this as a reference to state why you don't play ele shamans.
Call me mister negative, but that's how I see it.

[heyaz]

Sure, you can't draw conclusions based on one game.

But, Elemental is unequivocally the worst pvp spec in the game, even solo. Multiply that by four, add in disadvantages of stacked hard casters and it's even worse.

They don't get a lot better with gear. Mine are in full malevolent and they still suck - everything hits like a wet noodle, they have zero survivability, and ascendance is the easiest thing to chain cc and lock down. I went resto on all four of them, super OP healing spec that stacks very very well.

I think that game would've only been a little bit longer had the shaman been fully geared, all epics. They really don't stand a chance.

I did a 2v2 carry the other night on one of the DKs and we ran into Ele+Priest. Both for full malevolent. The damage output of the shaman was garbage even when I let him free cast for a bit, when it got too much it was easy to just lock him down for the duration of ascendance. The rest of the match (which the super geared priest prolonged) he threw out some elemental blasts which hit for for a whopping 40k, and some lava bursts, and it was just laughable. My partner was in greens/contender's gear and easily healed through it while I focused the priest.

When multiboxed you have no instants unless you take ascenstral swiftness, and you can bolt out a... wait for it... ~200k burst, maybe. Then you stand there and hard cast like an idiot, assuming you aren't cc'd (which you are most of the time)... when melee are weaving in and out you can IWT + lightning bolt (which btw hits for less than my Resto druid's wrath), or use spiritwalkers grace and try to hard cast a bunch of crap.

[Ellay]

It was more or less the frustration I felt as playing Ele Shaman back in the day amplified. 1 Solar Beam completely locks out the entire group for 4 seconds and a trinket isn't going to save them. That's long enough time to drop a target and at that point there usually isn't enough oomph to 1 shot anyone. Back in the day Blood Elf racial locking out the group for 2 seconds was massive.

They do really need to buff Ele's in general, and I figured his gear was a fresh 90. It's just the game has evolved so much - you'd think Blizzard would give them more tools of the trade.

[heyaz]

It's had major survivability issues, mobility issues, and general issues as a hard caster forever. They haven't had good survivability since BC and earlier when many of your talents were in the resto tree. The totem mechanics for elemental have always been clunky, they've always been referred to as turrets, for which they Should have increased survivability, but somehow with mail+shield they are squishier than shadow priests or even mages. If they have no option but to stand still and hard cast everything, they need to be about as "resilient" as holy paladins.

Every expansion they end up doing a couple bandaid fixes, buff a couple damage reduction effects and then raise the spell coefficients to absurd levels to where they hit like trucks. At that point people just focus and blow them up. I was doing around 2200MMR RBGs back in cata when ele shaman finally scaled up and as the target caller, yeah that ele shaman was dead as soon as I gave the word. We all knew they still had no survival tools despite being a hard hitting caster.

[zenga]

My point was more: it doesn't really matter what multibox team you there in quest gear who plays his first arena game vs a season geared boxer with a rank 1 title ... he is always gonna get raped, definitely without a healer.




But, Elemental is unequivocally the worst pvp spec in the game, even solo. Multiply that by four, add in disadvantages of stacked hard casters and it's even worse.

They don't get a lot better with gear. Mine are in full malevolent and they still suck - everything hits like a wet noodle, they have zero survivability, and ascendance is the easiest thing to chain cc and lock down. I went resto on all four of them, super OP healing spec that stacks very very well.

I've a shaman with the T2 2/2 weapon, and there the damage is really good vs full geared players (elemental blast / instant lava burst / full fulmination combos hit like a truck). But totally agree that compared to what other specs can do consitently ele is in a really poor state. I went resto on that shaman and have the 4p resto bonus (silence/interrupt immunity for 5s during spirit walker's grace) which combined with an aura mastery from a hpally makes it a bit less problematic. But I'm not even gonna go into the flame shock dispel and no defense issue.

However I've done a bunch of wargames on the PTR and I'm somewhat positive (from a solo perspective). Nature's guardian (which already was good) no longer removes the gained health, which is basically a free heal every 30s when you are low. Stone Bulwark totem got buffed as well, but the problem remains that it's an earth totem for tremor and earthgrab. Unleashed fury got buffed (-10% lb and +10% lava burst damage after unleash fury) which makes imbue dancing pretty good when you have to go defensive (rockbiter gives you 40% mitigation vs the target you unleash on for 5s, on a 15s CD). It's not like you were gonna cast a whole lot when trained by melee. The biggest defensive buff however is shamanistic rage, and more so the glyph. Every minute you take 30% less damage for 15s, but your offensive spells won't consume mana either. That might sound as not important, but ... remember that rolling thunder won't proc vs shielded targets. Seeing how they buffed disc, there gonna be a bunch of comps out there who run with a disc and mana could really become an issue there (definitely with the purge nerf and if you off heal a lot). Besides the dmg reduction shamanistic rage allows you to do more in general, without going oom. But the glyph is even better since it removes all dispel-able magic effects. Meaning you don't have to trinket the first swap on you (deep, hoj). All this makes ele way more tankier, and a less likely target to swap on to.

Damage wise, ele is the lowest performing of the common raiding dps specs currently. And on the PTR they haven't really tuned the numbers of the spells yet, more so the mechanics. The dmg and buff that elemental blast provides makes it less of a necessity now to damage with elemental mastery on a 1m30 CD, unleashed fury buffing lava burst and primal elementalist got buffed with 30%. I mean there are several options now. But it would be really problematic if they were not to buff single target damage this patch. Cleave/AOE already got buffed: chain lightning no longer loses damage for each jump it does and lava beam increases by each jump. The only reason I can see that prevents single target buffs is the new PVE tier 15 two piece set bonus: it does a lightning strike proc similar to cunning of the cruel in cata, which currently does about 5-6% of my single target damage on the ptr (17-18% when aoeing). So I hope that set bonus does not withholds a single target buff to lava burst or lightning bolt (still hoping for some execute effect with earth shock).

And the main reason why ele has been lagging behind in the recent patches is always poor scaling. Other specs get more benefit from their main stat (int) and from secondary stats. This chart (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvjwZoWzKatOdGhTSDJMd0RMVDJQX2h2eGpqSDA0Y UE&usp=sharing#gid=0) shows pretty clear (mind you it's for pve where the effect is obviously more noticeable than in pve) what the issue is. Stat weights basically quantify how much a spec gains out of a certain stat. An affliction lock gains 4.73 out of a single increase of int, whereas an ele only gains 3.86, Secondary stats for ele are really low as well compared to what other casters gain out of it (these numbers are based on the entry epic pve gear, but it's not like they are completely upside down with higher ilvl, quite the contrary).

So yeah I think if they were to buff single target damage, ele will be in a pretty decent pvp spot in the next season, how that will affect boxing ele's is another thing.

[Ellay]

Very nice post Zenga, enjoyed it :) If they buffed the scaling for Ele's or gave them more tools (not exactly sure what) they would definitely be in a better position for competing. I compare them to a hunter without the mobility or defensive cooldowns.

[Starbuck_Jones]

I missed that one lol.

[zenga]

Very nice post Zenga, enjoyed it :) If they buffed the scaling for Ele's or gave them more tools (not exactly sure what) they would definitely be in a better position for competing. I compare them to a hunter without the mobility or defensive cooldowns.

I want to apologize if my first post was too negative. Your videos made me start playing wow and multiboxing eles from day 1, so when you post something (like this video), my expectations are a bit higher by default I guess :)

[heyaz]

I've a shaman with the T2 2/2 weapon, and there the damage is really good vs full geared players (elemental blast / instant lava burst / full fulmination combos hit like a truck). But totally agree that compared to what other specs can do consitently ele is in a really poor state. I went resto on that shaman and have the 4p resto bonus (silence/interrupt immunity for 5s during spirit walker's grace) which combined with an aura mastery from a hpally makes it a bit less problematic. But I'm not even gonna go into the flame shock dispel and no defense issue.

I think you already implied this, but compared to T2 warlock, spriest, mage.... ele shaman aren't that impressive outside of the lucky mastery/echo proc and a crit on fulmination (good luck, with the 10% crit chance and no modifiers). Getting off that kinda combo on someone that's paying attention also requires CC which... shaman don't really have much of.

I was messin about in Goldshire on my resto druid the other day, pretty much being unkillable flying through, kiting away, flying and mid-air healing myself, etc. Then I got feared while flying mounted (??), immo/conflag/chaos bolt -> dead with half of the fear left. My druid has 61% resil and 380k hp and there was about 50-75k overkill. Now back to ele shaman....if a shaman tried to pull some big combo on me I'd probably lol and hot through it. If he goes ascendance I'll just tree form and remember he has no way to stop me from casting. Most classes react to ele shaman the same way.

[HPAVC]

Jesus, 10-15 of them wouldn't stand up much longer against him. But your right that about the gear.

I wonder if gear would have really matter much.

[simpletom]

his arena team is called hopefourofyoudc haha feel his pain i remember boxing freshly dinged ele shams in arena in cata

[MadMilitia]

When I do box I like to run the anti-cluster sort of approach.

I have three sets of keymaps for this. One for PvP and one for PvE and another for follow. When I activate the PvP keymap, all my hunters will constantly follow melee then healer (order of pref) and then bounce backwards on an alt spam key. This way against a moving target they are never facing the wrong way. The regular spam key they just IWT. Melee IWT on both former and latter.

The PvE setup works the same. The only difference is that PvE equips all the PvE gearsets and PvE specs. Such as blood for the DK instead of unholy.

The follow setup nobody IWT or bounces. They just follow the healer. No spec or gear change on this one.

Then I keep a color-coded icon on a click bar to remind me which one is active.

Usually my guys are never clumped together unless I'm in a tower in AV or something. They will be on follow mode for that. I have to say I think hunters shine with this setup as they aren't interrupted by the follow and bounce mechanic.