[4xShaman Arena] Tactics Suggestions for Beginners

[Boylston]

This will be a long-ish post, so I apologize in advance. Its intent is to provide a picture of where I am as an arena player and hopefully get input from others that is helpful for not only me but the entire 4xShammy community. Many of the suggestions will be applicable to other multi-boxers in 5v5 as well, but its intent is to focus on the 4xShaman+Healer 5v5 team makeup.

The team has made a big improvement in gear over the past 4 weeks. The first few weeks, the alts were at 6600 Health, 450 Spell Damage, and 0 Resilience.
Here is a summary of my team and our general gear situation:
Boylston (lead shaman) ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormreaver&n=Boylston') : 10.2k Health, 654 Spell Damage, 386 Resilience
Boylbee ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormreaver&n=Boylbee') /cee ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormreaver&n=Boylcee') /dee ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormreaver&n=Boyldee') (alts) : 9.3k Health, ~590 Spell Damage, 277 Resilience
Arielas (healing partner) ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormreaver&n=Arielas') : 9.8k Health, 10.5k Mana, 1700 Healing, ~200 Resilience (he may not be in PvP gear if you scan his armory)

Other Players: We have occasionally run with a Mortal Strike warrior and/or a Warlock in place of one of the shamans, for what it's worth.

Performance:
We are slightly positive in terms of win/loss record (about 52-44 in last few weeks), but we bounce around either side of 1500 in terms of overall rating. We have beaten some full S3 teams and lost to some teams geared even worse than us. We have tried playing on a variety of nights, and the level of competition seems about the same with our limited number of games. Monday night (pre-maintenance) does have a lot of "scrub points players", but it is also filled with a larger amount of strong teams hoping to capitalize on those folks.

When we win, they are mostly overwhelming victories where our whole team is alive and we've killed 1-3 people without much of a problem. When we lose, it falls into two different categories: a.) we played super-geared players on good teams that knew how to deal with a newbie multiboxer (think LoS games and patience on their part) or b.) we kill 1-2 of them very early, but the remainder of the enemy team is able to finish us off. Perhaps the best way to proceed is to talk about our setup/tactics as well as what we seem to be facing that could use some help.

Setup:
We stay grouped together, or with the healing pally slightly out of the shaman clump. My healer likes to be close to a LoS object so he can exploit it if they focus him early on. Shamans are set up on the BE bridge about 1/3 of the way down it (not too close to the center), behind the pole in Nagrand or off in the nook if it's melee heavy, and off to the right side of the graveyard on the undead tomb map. This positioning is pretty much Ellay-recommended, if I follow his post correctly. Full compliment of totems includes 3xTremor, 3xGrounding, 2x Poison, 1xEarthbind, Wrath of Air, 4x Searings. (4x Grounding and 4xFire Nova totems are the most common configuration). Pally runs Kings on everyone and improved concentration aura.

Burst macro is Elemental Mastery + Nature's Swiftness + Trinket + Orc Racial + Chain Lightning. I am using them all rolled up into one combo, not splitting EM/NS out on two different attacks.



Tactics:
If we are not being rushed, I have been trying to take out a DPSer as a first target, preferring folks who will be easier to kill and don't have as many get-out-of-jail-free cards. This generally means: Hunters, Shamans, non SL/SL Warlocks, Shadow Priests. I will bump a mage up to the top of the list if they are reasonably close.

If a warrior or pally starts charging in, I will attempt to take it out, but only if I think it will be successful. I've burnt down more than one charging warrior who left his healer too far behind (or had a druid healer that unstealthed and didn't blow a big heal to save his teammate). On a charging warrior, I use a Frost Shock first, then a regular LB, and if he's at around 50% or so after those two, I will blow my 4xNS+EM+CL combo to kill him before he gets healed. On a pally that isn't bubbled as they charge in, I cast a LB as soon as they enter range followed by a 4xEarth Shock. Believe it or not, I have killed some pallies this way before they bubble without any special cooldowns blown. If they come in bubbled or bubble after first LB, I immediately switch off targets. My main motivation for attacking these people is not necessarily to kill them (although it's a huge bonus if this happens). I want the healers to a.) reveal themselves and b.) get distracted healing my first target while I switch off.

Dealing with melees-- I am ignoring rogues for the most part, since I am getting a BoP from the pally and have enough gear that I'm not too concerned about them. When any melee appears on the team, I drop 4xFire Nova totems. I try to stay focused on my first target, but if I see them at low health on Proximo, I will switch and attempt to shock/burst them down.

The bait and switch: I have been most successful with picking a first target and flinging out plain ole LBs and CLs. If that target does not die in 2-3 casts, I will switch to a different target, preferably a non-pally healer if I am in range of one. My priority for those is Shaman, then Priest, then Druid. If it's a 2 Pally healer group, I will pummel on one to at least force a bubble. In games without an early, easy kill, I generally need to switch focus targets 1-2 times in order to kill folks. In some ways, these are better matches for me because the healer and first focused target will become very consumed with staying alive, often running out of range or blowing big cooldowns. By the time I have switched to the second target, they may be out of LoS, out of key cooldowns, not sure who to heal, etc. I try to keep target selection fluid, basing it off who I can easily hit and who will do me the most good to kill.

Problems:
Forgetting Bloodlust-- Believe it or not, I sometimes struggle to keep Bloodlust active the whole time. This is just a simple improvement that I know how to fix.

Neglecting to reapply grounding totems-- I will occasionally forget to reapply groundings throughout a fight. Again, this is something I know how to fix.

Positioning-- I have good control of my guys, but I am undecided about trying to move them away from melee folks if I get rogues/warriors swarming me. My gut tells me to stay put and let my healer do his job, so most of the time I don't move unless I need to.

Drawing first blood, then losing-- This is the most frustrating one. A lot of our losses come in matches where I actually kill the first target fast, and maybe even the second. However, I will very quickly lose 1-2 of the shammies and/or be low on mana and unable to finish the match out. Essentially, it feels like I kill 2 of them, then it's a 3v3 match where my team is low on health or mana (or both). I have tried quickly chain healing the whole team once or twice if we've taken some AoE damage, and sometimes that helps. Often times, that just makes the mana situation worse. It's hard for me to diagnose whether I am getting mana drained or just having to blow too much to get those first kills.

Mages-- I generally drop 4xFire Nova totems on an AoE happy mage, shock them with Frost+Earths, and try to get them to ice block. If they DO ice block, I try to get away from them, re-lay totems while I'm running, and switch targets briefly. I try to frost shock them again when IB is down. Most mages I've fought have not been Fire, and they pose less of a problem, thankfully.

Going offensive-- We have not tried rushing the other team much. At best, we will creep away from out starting point by slowly moving the totem farm, but we have not done any mount up and charge type games. I am reluctant to charge in without fear-bomb protection or any totems. However, the longer we wait to have engagement against better teams, it becomes more likely that they have assigned CC to a bunch of us and it is very difficult to win.

Summary:
I think we're doing OK given how late we started, our gear, and our relative inexperience with this setup. It's only been a few weeks, and we have had some monster 21-23 point victories, so we know we are capable of doing well. There's also nothing we can do about full S3 folks on 1450 rated teams. I'd welcome ideas for improvement or strategy ideas.

I think if I can improve on totems/bloodlust and increase my spell damage stats (working on that heavily this week), we will be in a much better situation. The 2.4 Seer's Mail resilience gear was nice in some ways, but it pales in comparison to Vengeful gear in terms of Spell Damage.

It's easy to get frustrated, I had hoped that we would at least be at 1650-1750 rating with our current gear level and really start to make headway against the Vengeful gear goals. We'll keep hammering away and see where it takes us, though.

[Ellay]

Setup:
Try 4x tremor instead of throwing an earthbind in there.Although my healers have been pushing me to add an earthbind into my rotation so maybe I'm the one that needs to make the switch :)

Burst macro: I used to use the orc racial always but the 15 second MS is a heavy price to pay afterwards. In your situation it may be worth it though to push your spell damage up a lot higher.

Everything else on the list seems like you know what the game plan is. Also try not to use the burst combo unless your 90%+ sure it will drop the target.

[Tamu]

Great write-up! My group is only 62-63, so I haven't done arenas on them yet. But, I have a question on how you target on your clones. Do you use some sort of variation of [target=focustarget] for your damage spells so that the opponent can't really tell who your clones are targeting? The UI I use shows me who in my group is targeted or has aggro. If you could throw off a healer expecting incoming damage on player A but you actually hit player B then you might get a slight advantage by drawing out a Pain Suppression, bubble, etc.

[Gallo]

Great write-up! My group is only 62-63, so I haven't done arenas on them yet. But, I have a question on how you target on your clones. Do you use some sort of variation of [target=focustarget] for your damage spells so that the opponent can't really tell who your clones are targeting? The UI I use shows me who in my group is targeted or has aggro. If you could throw off a healer expecting incoming damage on player A but you actually hit player B then you might get a slight advantage by drawing out a Pain Suppression, bubble, etc.

Heh, I've noticed something like this when I play. My clones will all target something different when I hit tab, but only cast to what my main has targetted. Could be nice if you coordinated it.

[Mokoi]

Before I had to stop playing, I had my 5v5 team to the early 1700s and the late 1600s.

the ONE thing I found, was that the patience of TWO people (ie: you and your healer) will outpace EVERY team with 5 impatient people on it.

SO, you will get into high level arenas and face off against good people, but they are impatient just like everyone else, and if you wait in a smart spot on the map so they cant get their hunters LoS stinging / Shamans purging / Mages causing havoc/ etc.. you will always have the upper hand. someone on their team will get anxious and jump the gun getting in a bad spot where you can blast them. once one is down, they are more likely to give up and start charging than anything else, and you have had the time to pick a target, mass purge and spam him for a couple seconds hopefully taking him down =)

YOUR patience, should ALWAYS outlast theirs. 2 people can hold their cool a lot longer than 5. Guaranteed. Learn to be patient and hold your ground. You are a terrible rusher since they can always LoS you easily on most maps.

-McWrathy

[Boylston]

Great write-up! My group is only 62-63, so I haven't done arenas on them yet. But, I have a question on how you target on your clones. Do you use some sort of variation of [target=focustarget] for your damage spells so that the opponent can't really tell who your clones are targeting? The UI I use shows me who in my group is targeted or has aggro. If you could throw off a healer expecting incoming damage on player A but you actually hit player B then you might get a slight advantage by drawing out a Pain Suppression, bubble, etc.

Yes, I use [target=focustarget] for all damage spells. I have one macro that resets focus target to the next living member of the team, which is very helpful in arenas. I don't have to worry about who else is alive if my main goes down.

For what it's worth, Tamu, I'm a member of the Fighting Class of '95! Whoop!

[Boylston]

Setup:
Try 4x tremor instead of throwing an earthbind in there.Although my healers have been pushing me to add an earthbind into my rotation so maybe I'm the one that needs to make the switch :)I will try this. I don't feel that I'm getting fear bombed too badly, but I do tend to put a Frost Shock on all the targets that matter. Neither probably helps me too much, but I could see how your healers might like having an EB down so that a rogue/shammy who decides to break off and tie them up has to get there while slowed.

Burst macro: I used to use the orc racial always but the 15 second MS is a heavy price to pay afterwards. In your situation it may be worth it though to push your spell damage up a lot higher.I have really debated this. I may try a few games without it and see if that helps. I've left it in place because of the preponderance of MS warriors... I figure I'm going to have some kind of healing debuff on anyhow.

Everything else on the list seems like you know what the game plan is. Also try not to use the burst combo unless your 90%+ sure it will drop the target.If anything, I wait TOO long to use my burst combo. I need to get a better feel for when to use it so that I down folks sooner.



Thanks again for the commentary, Ellay. I think those of us that are just getting started now will have a tougher road to travel, but you're advice is helpful.

[Ellay]

I've got a great idea, wondering your thoughts ~

I can live stream my arenas a specific time every week. So that way you all get some entertainment! and hopefully some tips and tricks, also gives experience in games I lose and win against the toughest teams out there.
Thinking about doing this maybe on Friday or Saturday nights, we can all be in vent so you can hear me going at it!

[Boylston]

I've got a great idea, wondering your thoughts ~

I can live stream my arenas a specific time every week. So that way you all get some entertainment! and hopefully some tips and tricks, also gives experience in games I lose and win against the toughest teams out there.
Thinking about doing this maybe on Friday or Saturday nights, we can all be in vent so you can hear me going at it!That's an OK idea, would be even better if you let me HAVE YOUR CHILDREN FIRST!!!1!1!

Seriously, I might turn into a total Ellay fanboi by the end of the day.

[Nitro]

I've got a great idea, wondering your thoughts ~

I can live stream my arenas a specific time every week. So that way you all get some entertainment! and hopefully some tips and tricks, also gives experience in games I lose and win against the toughest teams out there.
Thinking about doing this maybe on Friday or Saturday nights, we can all be in vent so you can hear me going at it!

That would be fun to watch.

[dizz]

I would definitely be up for that ellay.

Nice post boyl! I'll have to take this in later tonight after work.

[Mosg2]

I think that's an awesome idea Ellay. Let us know what/if anything you need to get it going :)

[firest4rter]

I've got a great idea, wondering your thoughts ~

I can live stream my arenas a specific time every week. So that way you all get some entertainment! and hopefully some tips and tricks, also gives experience in games I lose and win against the toughest teams out there.
Thinking about doing this maybe on Friday or Saturday nights, we can all be in vent so you can hear me going at it!Great idea indeed. I would definetly tune in.

[Ztar]

i would also love to see some live-stream action.... Will you make a new post about it if you deside to do it this weekend?

[raz]

I'd definitely be watching. I'm up wo winning ~11-12 of our 14 games a week (currently have 10 other alts between the wife and I so we lose 3 on each of our 2 teams to start the week) but some team combos still give us troubles.

[xtobbenx]

Hello mate.

I am curantly lvling up my 3 other shammys, and i got a 70 druid and elementla shammy.

I would say that you should maybe considure changing your burst macro of a few reasons. First reason would be that Chainlightening might have a CD at the point you want to kill someone with it... second, i allways used chain on a constand CD as of the casting time on it in the start of a battle. And last, CL will get less of your spell bonus dmg since of its shorter casting time.. while a Normal lightening bolt will do alot more focused dps. So if you want to kill someone with it and be sure they drop dead you might wanna go with the NS + Normal bolt and not on the chain lightening.. And rather use CL to do the initial dps to buid up a kill.

Apart from that, thanks for sharing your exparianse and i cant w8 to get to 70 and start on nuking out in arenas :D

[Kyudo]

One tactic I've adopted for general 4x shammy pvp for Mage AOE spammers is to hit my spread out macro:

Shammy 1 Nothing
Shammy 2 Back diagonal left
Shammy 3 Back directly
Shammy 4 Back diagonal right

So that the mage cant hit all of the chars at once, and I'm pretty much guaranteed that my nuke from at least 2 of the shammies will hit him even if he's jumping around like a blue arsed fly. Before I just used to stay on follow and it tended to hurt a lot more. Now they go down quick and I loose a max of 25% health. once they are dead, I rehit follow to reground and ensure I have range on further targets.

I'll sometimes do he same for annoying/skilled rogues to make sure they go down, but in general in arenas I ignore them.

Non arena note on rogues though, is as I have 3 LWers, I put drums of panic into my melee counter totem rotation. Doesn't work in arenas ofc, but they are cheap to make, and give you a couple of seconds to heal up/blast even if they trinket/wotf out of it. People definately dont expect shammies to fear ;)

[crebble]

ellay do you ever get to meet teams that totally lock you down?
ive met quite a few teams with droods mages rogues and locks constantly CCing me nomatter WHAT i do... sap blind focus fire one target at the time.
ive had some easy games aswell in 5v5 and atm im slacking/doing more heroics and dailys then arena so i have barely done 10 5v5 games / week =(

i did one nice thing 2 weeks ago by winning 81 points in 4 games... only highrated teams and they all sucked ass/had no freakin clue! (if i meet this kind of teams in the future ill have around 4k rating in a month =D )

/ stick

[Ellay]

The team your describing is called EuroComp. Which was a very strong counter to the ever popular 2345 and 2346 setups that reigned supreme in all of Season 1 and 2.
I'd say I've mastered the technique to beating them as one of the best EuroComps in the game I've beaten 6-0, they are sponsored and have some pretty famous names on the team - Affix and Azazael.

First this team will lock you down, it's a given :) but you need to prevent this as much as possible.
Second the Mage on their team is the only threat. If you put pressure on him he will have to stay defensive and shouldn't be able to throw frostbolts on you. If you die from a Cheat Death Rogue or a SL/SL lock, then you've got bigger things to worry about :)
Best target is the Mage followed by the Priest, if you take out the Mage it's pretty much over for them, just outlast their petty damage and pop another target.

To note Triple Melee DPS teams are the counter to the EuroComp and many other teams. The counter to the Triple Melee dps is a Tri healer team. Pretty much 5v5 Arenas are Rock/Paper/Scissors at it's finest... except for 4x Shaman and a healer, we have no counter :)

[Maxion]

Think maybe Xzin's 4xmage+priest (or whatever healer) might work against you? sheep all shammies or something like that and dps the 5th? (prolly better to sheep your healer instead of a shammy to prevent dispels)

[Wilbur]

Umm Grounding totems?

[Maxion]

Grounding takes sheep? oh well, no counter ftw then :D

[Ellay]

He could potentially run inside of me and AoE bomb which may work but.. against normal teams I'm not sure how that setup would do.

[Boylston]

2008-04-17 Update:

After watching a preliminary version of Ellay's training video, my partner and I gave it another go last night. We gained 80 or so points of rating and went 17-12 on the evening. The last two games were both heartbreaking -19 point losses, so if we had quit sooner we would have been up 120 so rating on the evening. We feel that our gameplay is much improved!

Here's what we incorporated:
1.) Patience
2.) Patience
3.) Anti-Rush setup. This involves setting up totems when the 15-second alert goes off before the match, popping our first Bloodlust at 2sec before the doors open, and generally being alert to if they're going to rush. We were also mounted up (or mounted+ghost wolf) for the start of every fight. Rushes against us by well coordinated/geared opponents are still problematic for us (more on this later), but this helped a ton!
4.) Better bloodlust awareness and grounding totem re-application, particularly mid-fight. This is related to being "patient" as well-- I have convinced myself that it is "OK" to waste a couple GCDs on having everyone buffed and protected, even if we have taken a kill or two.
5.) 4xPurge on: the first target to kill, people who dart in and out of range to try to bait us out of our setup, and anyone else who becomes much squishier without any buffs (priests and SL warlocks, as examples). In prior weeks, I had not been too concerned with purging people since I thought I would just burst through their protection or extra HP, but I am now a believer in taking a GCD to purge them. Do the math on how much health a warrior has with and without Blessing of Kings, Fortitude, and the Warrior Shout buff, and you'll become a believer yourself.
6.) My awareness of when a 4xEM+NS+CL combo will have a 95% kill outcome has gone up. This has become EASIER since I'm purging people and I have a better idea of what their baseline HP should be.
7.) I took Blood Fury (the orc racial) out of my 4xEM+NS+CL combo for the time being. I think I am doing enough damage to not need it, and I think it's allowing my partner to deal with incoming damage much easier (particularly on alts).
8.) I am becoming better at knowing when to move the team and when to stay put and keep pumping out damage.
9.) We really got better at identifying and killing the DPS threats. In the absence of a mage that is trying to get into AoE range, I am loving a Hunter as my first target. They don't have any immune-granting powers and generally go down fast. When I start on one, I hover my mouse over their location and expect the feign death. I simply target the corpse and keep pew-pewing until they're dead. Compared to mages/warlocks, they also tend to stand in there and hope they get healed.
10.) Resetting. My partner and I have both gained the patience and discipline to tell each other, "OK, let's reset out positioning/totems". This means disengaging, not chasing, and regaining our original position. Totems go back down, water shield up, and we will do the same routine all over again, but just 5v4 or 5v3. We had one fight where they rezzed our first kill, so I'd love some feedback on how to best keep that problem down to a minimum.


Non-Rushes - Results:
We have gotten much better at waiting on the enemy team to make a mistake and then methodically picking them apart. We are better at Nagrand and Blade's Edge arenas in this regard, but using Ellay's positioning for Ruins of Lorderon is helping. We are favoring the charging warrior as the first target, and are getting much better at the following technique.

Warrior charges in, I purge off everything as my first cast, my partner attempts to stun him to keep him in one place. I then cast a LB, then start on a second cast. If his health is around the 60% (or less) mark, I will jump to cancel the second LB and pop 4xEM+NS+CL to blow up the warrior (I may add a /stopcasting into that macro, thinking about it more). Once that target is down, I switch to my second target, which is generally whoever may have been tagged by Chain Lightning on the first kill, since that tends to knock them down quite a bit.

Alternatively, If there's a mage closing, I purge, cast one lightning bolt, and then immediately pop 4xEM+NS+CL so that both land at the same time and he dies before ice blocking. If the mage simply walks into range and stops to begin casting, I will purge, LB, but be a little more careful about burning my burst combo since those mages tend to Ice Block as soon as they see a volley headed their way.

Short story is, we learned a lot from Ellay's video. We fought two or three matches in the Nagrand arena last night that looked almost like Ellay's first match in the training video (except my targets don't die *quite* as fast as his).


Getting Rushed - Results:
This is our biggest area for improvement, I think. We did get better as the night progressed, but Crusader Aura+Mounts in BE, anti-rush setup techniques in Nagrand/Ruins, and some practice/confidence have really helped. I really need to have BL going, a purged target, and some good positioning... but if this is in place, there's a good chance we'll blow up a melee DPSer quickly. Ironic as it is, if the proper setup is in place, then patience is also seeming to help me with being rushed. It's much more important for me to have the right target acquired, get them debuffed, and make sure as many shammies as possible are facing them in these situations.

The ruins map is a little frustrating, since we had some fearbomb events that caused LoS issues right in and around the doorway. There are also some better teams that like to hide in a little nook just on either side of the doorway. By staying in Ellay's spot, we took away the tomb from LoS issues, but created a problem with having people dancing in and out of those nooks. Argh.

Overall, we feel greatly improved and the rating should now slowly climb up. We are beating teams that are a little better geared than us, which feels good. When the team gets more geared, I think we will be in a better situation to rapidly gain rating. This has been much better practice, since I think we are going to build good habits and are starting to understand how to force teams to play into our strengths.

[Ellay]

If they start dodging in and out of the doorway on Ruins, move out a bit so they are forced to come into an open area :)

As for the rezzing, it was one of the first major hurdles to overcome playing this setup. Usually most teams will have at max 2 rezzers, if they have 3 rezzers one of them is usually a shaman and should be the priority first kill anyways.
Basically assign a rezzer to yourself and a rezzer to your healer. So you both have one on focus target and can identify when they are casting. I also use an addon that alerts me when someone is rezzing and I always call it out on vent.
Anything that places the rezzer in combat will stop the rez - so for long range use a purge if they still have buffs, or you will need to close in and cast shocks. Sometimes they are naive enough to keep casting the rez while your loading up a Lightining Bolt / Chain Lightning combo and they die in the process.
For 3 rezzers you'll need to play baby sitter on the corpse, sadly that 85% finished movie you watched cut off the part where I showed this and explained it teehee :P
Searing totems are huge against this, since they will put them in combat, so place them around the body and spots they will usually try to rez from.

[Kyudo]

Boylston, your experiences have been very similar to mine. You just wrote it up better :rolleyes:

[Boylston]

Basically assign a rezzer to yourself and a rezzer to your healer. So you both have one on focus target and can identify when they are casting. I also use an addon that alerts me when someone is rezzing and I always call it out on vent.
Anything that places the rezzer in combat will stop the rez - so for long range use a purge if they still have buffs, or you will need to close in and cast shocks.

Yeah, we saw him rezzing, and I told my partner in Vent. He tried to run out and Holy Shock the priest doing the rezzing, but got feared before he could get into range. Unfortunately,both us and the team were hiding behind the pillars in Nagrand. The person we killed was a hunter whose body ended up on their side of the pillar, so they could stay reasonably well hidden from us to rez. Hindsight is 20/20, but I figure that we should have either come at them hard and aggressively to interrupt the rez or just totally reset the match by staying hidden and wait for cooldowns to reset. The corpse was in a very favorable position for them...

[Crucial]

Basically assign a rezzer to yourself and a rezzer to your healer. So you both have one on focus target and can identify when they are casting. I also use an addon that alerts me when someone is rezzing and I always call it out on vent.
Anything that places the rezzer in combat will stop the rez - so for long range use a purge if they still have buffs, or you will need to close in and cast shocks.

Yeah, we saw him rezzing, and I told my partner in Vent. He tried to run out and Holy Shock the priest doing the rezzing, but got feared before he could get into range. Unfortunately,both us and the team were hiding behind the pillars in Nagrand. The person we killed was a hunter whose body ended up on their side of the pillar, so they could stay reasonably well hidden from us to rez. Hindsight is 20/20, but I figure that we should have either come at them hard and aggressively to interrupt the rez or just totally reset the match by staying hidden and wait for cooldowns to reset. The corpse was in a very favorable position for them...
I'm sure you probably know this but I'll throw it out there anyways. Even if they managed to get a rez off the rest of the team just needs to die once and you still win. I had a crazy fight where we killed 4 of their team but after each one they managed to rez them back up, the only one that did not die once was a pally- so instead of trying to down all the dps and healers again we mounted up and rushed the pally and nuked him down to end the match. It was quite entertaining :)

[Boylston]

I'm sure you probably know this but I'll throw it out there anyways. Even if they managed to get a rez off the rest of the team just needs to die once and you still win. I had a crazy fight where we killed 4 of their team but after each one they managed to rez them back up, the only one that did not die once was a pally- so instead of trying to down all the dps and healers again we mounted up and rushed the pally and nuked him down to end the match. It was quite entertaining :)

Actually, I DIDN'T know that. Thanks for sharing!!

[Ellay]

lol I didn't know that either, is that for sure? :P

[Stealthy]

Any chance of getting hold of your training video Ellay? I'd like to see it as I'm about to start doing arena's myself. :)

Cheers,
Stealthy

[Ellay]

Here ya go :)
http://files.filefront.com/Aelli+Arena+Guideavi/;10013956;/fileinfo.html ('http://files.filefront.com/Aelli+Arena+Guideavi/;10013956;/fileinfo.html')

I'll make a new post to make sure no one missed it as well. It's unfinished of course.

[Crucial]

lol I didn't know that either, is that for sure? :P



When we killed him the match immediately ended and we won so I guess thats the proof, but Its not really an opportunity that presents itself very often, so I haven't had a chance to confirm this for sure.

BTW, thanks for the great video!

[Xzin]

Think maybe Xzin's 4xmage+priest (or whatever healer) might work against you? sheep all shammies or something like that and dps the 5th? (prolly better to sheep your healer instead of a shammy to prevent dispels)

I believe my setup could beat the shammys. But it would lose to nearly everything else. 5x cloth is NOT what you want in arenas!

[Boylston]

I also use an addon that alerts me when someone is rezzing and I always call it out on vent.
Ellay/Anyone-- Mind sharing which addon you like for this purpose?

If I had my druthers, I'd have something like this show only:

Resurrection Alerts
Ice Block/Pally Bubble/Cloak of Shadows/Cheat Death/Pain Suppression - Stuff that indicates "wrong target to burndown"

and not give me an alert for every single spell being cast...

[Boylston]

Update (4/21):

We got MUCH better in the last 10 days or so due to practice and Ellay's advice/tips/training video. We gained 80 or so points of rating and finished close to 1600. In our last play stretch, we were winning twice as many as we were losing, so we're excited about playing more this week.

A good rush against us is still problematic, mainly because I can't DPS down folks as fast with 1-2 people CCed or tied up. I think that more +SpellDmg is going to help all around. The team should be getting another piece of vengeful in the next week or two, which will help both resilience/HP pool and spell damage. 2/4 shamans are now 360 Enchanters, so the spell damage looks like 700, 680, 610, 610 for the team. Better, but still a ways to go.

Another common loss mechanism for us is the dreaded "we kill 1-2 and then stall". It's common for us to kill the first guy right away and then have 2 healers keep up with my guys for long enough that we have mana issues or they drop a shammy. This is only happening against teams with two +1800 or more healers. Purging off HoTs and switching targets up does seem to help slightly, but if a team with good gear turtles a bit, it can be tough at times.

[Darm]

I started another thread, but was re-directed here. I'm not going to cut and paste my entire post, but I am interested in hearing discussion about a tactic that I am having difficulty countering.

To be specific, it's not a "rush" per se that gives me the most trouble. It's when the opposite team takes its sweet time, assigns roles to all of their players in ventrilo, and then attacks simultaneously. The most effective has been a rogue/warrior stunlock on one of my shamans, while a warlock and druid spam fear/cyclone at my paladin. The net result is that I only have 3 shaman to DPS with, and it rapidly turns into a 5v4 game in their advantage.

I know that some folks will describe this as a rush, perhaps this is just a semantic distinction, but I've been in bunches of games where the other team just rides all of their mounts right into my team. That can be difficult, but what I'm trying describe is quite different. It is a deliberate and very well-coordinated alpha strike.

They only reason why the enemy can orchestrate an attack like this, unless I am playing against a very experienced veteran group, is because they have plenty of time to coordinate their plan in ventrilo. They reason why they have plenty of time is because I am passively sitting in my totem farm.

At it's core, a 4 shaman time is an alpha-strike team. It depends on big time frontload damage to win a game. It doesn't depend on CC, mana draining, or interruptions to win a game, it's all about pure all-out burst damage that cannot be healed. I'm beginning to wonder how much totem farm sitting is really consistent with that core identity. The longer I give an opposing team, it seems the longer they have to plan and discuss their counter strategy.

I'm beginning to consider rushing the enemy with my shaman team. Sure, I'll be vulnerable to a well-timed AE fear. But, I can have a trinket on each shaman, and I should be able to get down 2 tremor totems relatively quickly. I won't be doing damage instantaneously since I'll be dropping totems, but what I will be doing, or what I'm trying to do is perhaps just as important -- I'm trying to deprive them of that time they use to coordinate a methodical plan to dissect my team.

My shaman have around 700-720 spell damage, and 150-300 resilience right now. Any comment about those numbers?

[Gallo]

Darm, when you're rushed by a warrior/rogue, do you instantly drop 4x Fire nova totems? Just wondering if that isn't helping quell the rushers. That will make the rogue pop CoS and with some shocks will likely take the warrior out.

[Ellay]

You keep the opposing team in limbo while their working a strat on you, run in and out purging their buffs. Sure they will have a strat on you, but they should have 0 buffs when the rush happens. If they are a well played team, I switch off to defense mode and heal through the first 5-10 ~ seconds then blow someone up. Sometimes you have to ride through their damage to pull off a W.

[Boylston]

A couple comments:

When I and Ellay say "rush", we generally mean that their whole team goes straight for you as soon as the door opens. Ellay's recommended anti-rush tactics on each map generally involve having a totem farm out and bloodlust #1 burned so that if they rush in, you can kill 1-2 fast.

Against the "took their sweet time and have a CC plan" teams, it's more important than ever to focus on killing their DPS first. I really like the following targets:

Warriors: They're going to fear bomb and Mortal Strike you. I 4xPurge them, cast one LB volley, then evaluate their health. If they are in range of a 4xEM+NS+Trinket+CL kill, I burn it and hopefully take them out. Be ready to add a 4xShock on if they don't quite die. If for some reason they get healed through this, it's bad news for me, generally.

Fire Mage: These are arguably the most dangerous DPSers, but they are more dangerous on a rush than if they have setup/strategy time. If there's one present, I prioritize them over a warrior. Frost mages I ignore for the most part.

Hunters: Mana draining stings and multishot wreak havoc if left unabated. I really like to blow up Hunters ASAP because they have no Cloak of Shadows/Ice Block/Divine Shield/Soul Link type immunity/mitigation. When you engage one, keep your mouse over them so that you can retarget them quickly after the inevitable feign death.

Rogues and Feral Druids: I drop Fire Novas and maybe shock these guys. Because Cloak of Shadows is so annoying, I do not try to make a rogue my 1st/2nd kill ever. A feral druid can sometimes drop easily if they got hit with Chain Lightning or Fire Nova damage and haven't yet gotten healing support.

Again, I don't worry about trying to get the chain Cycloning druid or the other CC as much as I try to get their biggest DPS threats down first. Sure, your healer may be struggling to fight CC and you may have a shammy tied up, but if you can take out a strong DPSer on their side, they're going to be left with only 1-2 people that are really going to be a threat.

Echoing Ellay-- I also recommend "turtling" a bit by pitching in heals, reapplying totems/bloodlust, etc. If anything, my early arena experiences showed me that we were trying to kill TOO FAST and not being defensive enough. Feel free to "reset" the battle after you kill the first person (or two). 5v4 or 5v3 is much easier than 5v5.


For whatever it's worth, we're doing about 1600 rating now. My lead shammy is at 710 or so spell damage and 400 resilience, but the 3 others are still at 660 spell damage and 300 resilience. I had similar issues to the ones you are having now a few weeks back, but now I've moved on to new problems. (Such as, how to counter the team with 2 rezzers (or three!!) that undoes all your early kills.

Good luck!

[Boylston]

While waiting, I've had some success with a few baiting tactics. My favorite is...

We keep playing cat and mouse with me purging them (a la Ellay) or flinging out a lone spell volley or two. I can tell they're waiting for a good moment and talking it over via ventrilo. So I'll lay down a totem farm, then take one of my alts and sorta run him 2-3 yards ahead of the group and off to one side. (I'll switch to his client, and just run him a bit say 30 degrees to the right.) This breaks his /follow, and then I'll re-control my main and start jumping up and down and trying to move over there to "pick him up" again.

I fake a technical difficulty where I have a rogue alt, basically.

This will sometimes encourage them to attack "hey, he's got a problem, let's go now". As they start moving in, I mash my follow macro and Mr. Troubled Alt snaps back into line and it's time to kill them. I think I've done this 4-5 times now and it's worked all but once. It certainly isn't going to work more than once against most teams, but it's worth trying to be sneaky a bit and try to get them to fight on your terms and in your totem farm.

Use your partner for bait a bit too. I destroy any warrior who charges my Pally partner first. Love it when that happens.

[Darm]

Gallo -- yes, I do try to use fire nova, but that doesn't save my shaman from dying in these situations.

The "purge while you wait" tactic mentioned by Boylston and Ellay is something that I had not considered, and is definitely something I'm going to try tonight, and it sounds like sometimes it's acceptable to just sit back and heal for a moment or two.

Boylston - thank you for providing your numbers, that's very helpful.

Thank you very much for the replies.

[Ellay]

Muhahaha, I've done the technically difficulty error before on a bait and it worked. I made all of my characters run into a wall faking a DC on all, after about 10 seconds then came strolling in and I blew them up :)

[Boylston]

I really want to try the "lie down in the spawn area, all spread out" tactic. Would be fun to see a 4xChain Lightning from the prone position to the first curious person.

[Boylston]

5/5/08 Update:

We are much more comfortable in Ruins of Lorderon and the Blade's Edge Arena. Our win rate in Blade's edge is very high now, since it really does force the teams to fight on terms that are good for us. Ruins of Lorderon is becoming more comfortable as well.

The Nagrand arena is stifling us a little bit if we face a ranged team and decide to stay put behind a pole. Melee teams where we use the "nook" continue to be just fine from a setup/positioning perspective. If we are stay behind the pole and wait for a ranged team, then better teams are simply LoSing and pole dancing before I can finish them off. I don't know if I'm staying TOO close to the pole once the battle starts, but we fought many battles in the last two weeks (against better teams) where I would get someone to 50% or so and they would run around behind the pole before I could finish them off. If I pursued, it almost always went badly or the entire enemy team would rotate and just hug the pole.

Ellay/others--- Any tips for how to best play around this damn pole? I feel like I'd be better off in the melee nook at all times!




The good news is... We've played enough now that other teams are trying to outlast our patience. We sat for 27 minutes last night behind two poles before the other team decided to attack. We lost though... :(

[Havelcek]

Please keep the updates coming Boylston...its great to read.

[Boylston]

Some day when I'm at 2000 rating, we can all look back on this thread and chuckle!

[Mosg2]

Haha, seconded Boylston.

I'm recording all my games from now on and I'm going to 1.5x speed them, add commentary, and post'em up here. I think that's the best way to get/give advice at this point.

[Boylston]

Update 5/19/08

We finally broke through the 1600 barrier successfully a couple weeks ago. Shamans each had about 700 spelldamage (main slightly higher) and we started to feel like we were doing better. We are still struggling with teams who come in and heavily AoE the team (mages are a pain!), but both me and my partner were happy to end a week with the higher points generated with a 1600 rating.

Last week was awful, as we fought the same team 5 times in a row and lost them all. They are only rated 1650 or so, but the team makeup was:

Holy Priest
Resto Druid
Resto Shaman
MS Warrior
Warlock

Basically three healers and 2 DPS. I couldn't burst down anyone. If I selected the Warrior or Warlock, they got enough heals that killing them was damn near impossible. If I attacked a healer, they bolted for the hills as soon as the first volley landed. We did kill the Warrior once, but the resto shammy rezzed him from behind the Ruins of Lorderon tomb (I got AoE feared for just long enough to prevent me from going over to stop him). They basically outlasted our mana. I have no idea what we'd do differently to beat them.

Anyway, dropped back down to 1550 rating as a result.

All of the team is now at 360+ enchanting, so average spell damage went up. I think the team is now at 750,735,735,755. We're hoping for better draws this week to regain our rating and start pushing towards 1700.

[Ellay]

I've been getting some footage here and there, haven't looked at it yet but I'm trying to record against all the popular combo's.

The Triple healer Warrior/SL lock is amazingly fun to play against! I love getting those teams :) Just burn that warrior, keep chugging LB's on him.

[Boylston]

The Triple healer Warrior/SL lock is amazingly fun to play against! I love getting those teams :) Just burn that warrior, keep chugging LB's on him.

Yeah, I guess that's our only hope. I tried the "pound one and switch off" strategy, but since I'm switching to a healer, they would all just head for the hills the second they saw a LB volley on them.

[Boylston]

I thought I'd update folks on my progress and learnings at the end of S3.

For the last couple of months, I've sustained a modest rating, between 1600-1650. My main healing partner (a Pally) and I learned a lot and really feel like we improved. The biggest limitation to our success has been spell damage gear, in our estimation. This has gotten better (850+3x760) recently, and I'm banking points for the start of S4 so that a few key gear holes can be plugged.

Unfortunately, my main partner left the game, so I've spent the last 2-3 weeks trying out other people, most of whom are a little undergeared still. The best fit so far has been a longtime friend who's playing a druid. The druid is nice because Cyclone can be a good way to buy some time (if used on a DPS) or cut off their healing ability (on a healer) for long enough for the first 1-2 targets to die. Cyclone is incredibly useful mid-fight-- I have stopped seeing us lose even after I burn the first 1-2 down because of Cyclone (and a barkskin+tranquility refill is nice too).

I am still struggling a bit with mana usage against better teams. Many times, I have lost to teams where we outnumber them, but my guys are almost OOM. Keeping up water shield and mana stream is helping, as is hiding a bit to allow regen.

The "resurrection game" is something I'm vastly improved at... we are using it ourselves more and more (I find myself rezzing my healer a lot, esp. since I'm running with some undergeared guys from time to time). It's been 2-3 weeks since I lost a match due to having multiple targets rezzed.

In any event, I'm happy with our progress in the last 4 months. The team went from 450 spell damage, 0 resilience, and 6600 HP to 750-875 spell damage, 380-410 resilience, and everyone at 10k+ health. We are definitely posting more weeks with good records (recovered 90 points of lost rating by going 15-8 this week with the new druid), and I'm excited about S4 starting.


As I progress to "intermediate arena multiboxer", these are the list of things I have to work on.

* Turning of alts to combat rogues/melees weaving through the group.
* Dealing with people who jump off bridges or flee for LoS as soon as you land one volley
* Becoming a little more aggressive with 4x+EM+NS+CL to get the first 1-2 dead.
* Mana management!!

[Groovy]

Boyl, you should make a vid with the druid as main healer, i'd love to see that in action.

[cepheus]

Fun to read your posts Boylston. You got about the same things to work on as me, and I can easly identify with your posts :)

I am only on about 1450-1500 rating atm, but I feel confident that I could be about 100 rating higher if I had spent all my points on gear (lost a lot of matches were the burst target was at 5-10% hp left) , however I chose to save them for season 4.
I have about 400 resilience and 600 spelldmg (+totem of void) at the momen, but when season 4 hits I will gain about 300 more spelldmg from gear+enchants.

Do you think that it is a good idea to gem your main with more resilience/hp than your alts? I have wondered abit about this, but I'm not sure if I want to go this route since I sometimes also do raids, and I want as much damage as possible.

Another idea might be to use full spelldmg trinkets on the followers and medallion of the hord(epic version)+Battlemaster trinket on your main.