Weekend Summary - Quadbox Shaman 5v5 Experience (50-15)

[Elektric]

One of the greatest joys in Quadboxing is that I only need a healer to 5v5. Prior to last night I had rolled all my healers into one team. Unfortunately balancing the amount of games played and rating proved impossible. My solution was to have each healer create their own team. Of course my rating resets everytime I decide to play with someone else but atm Im after the learning experience for both myself and the healer.

Surprisingly many of my healers are at all different skill levels. The worst healers have me constantly paying attention to my health bars and throwing lesser heals on myself and them. The best healers allow me to focus on DMG and only need me to heal under opposition Cool Down blowing Zergfests. What I found fascinating is that playing with the lower skilled healers allowed me to learn what mistakes were being made and how to counter them. I learned little tricks like keeping the Healer in front of me, so when he's taking dmg I can burst down his attackers effortlessly. And when the healer gets locked up behind me, the "turn clones seperately" move that Ellay showed in the video is taking my game to the next level. This simple strategdy is melting opponents that have given me trouble in the past. The scene in the tutorial on the Blades Edge Bridge is nothingless than mad skillz, I inspire to look as flawless when I pull it off. And mind you Im working on that move because it seems to be the only way to get a fight started in that place...letting the idiots charge you when your backs are to them! And then just MELT EM DOWN!

My new found success came from finding a healer at the same gear and skill level as myself (yeah I actually think Im good at this stuff :D). Im proud to say that the only teams that give me any trouble atm are top 100 teams. That being said many of them are BG1 transplants that have had previous practice (thanks Ellay!!!!). The arena is all about timing, and to be successful in 5v5 arena both the healer and myself have to be MONEY!

So we stopped last night at 1709 and after losing 3 matches to the same team. 30 minute fights...both the healer and I made silly mistakes (it happens at 1 am in the morning, hehe). I feel good about the weekend session because for the first time I didnt run across a team that I thought was unbeatable. And here's some advice to you up and comers, once you realize the power and grow confident in what your doing, a quadbox shammie group is UNSTOPPABLE! We played one match last night and the team just came in and destroyed us. We requeued and it was the same team again, ready for the zerg this time I took down their healer and a dps but went OOM...it was a turning point because I new that this well organized team in full S3/S4 and "Gladiator" titles by their names was beatable. But here's were the real confidence boost came from, we queue up again and its a scrub team and in the middle of the battle I get a whisper from Elektronic, typical level 1 Tauren Warrior. He asks how long I'll be playing and if what Im doing is even legal. I tell him I'll be playing all night and its legit. I then ask "You wouldn't" happen to be from that Glad team I almost beat? Thats right people at number 88 with my 4th shammie still in reputation PvP gear, the queue dodging has begun. Turns out that team is the rated #1 in the battlegroup atm.

Sorry for the long post, and thanks for providing such a cool community. With all the haters, and QQ's its nice to come to a place and share my experiences without the typical "WTF" "HAX" response.

[Naysayer]

Effing sweet. Keep it up and get some real gear.

[Ellay]

Good times, glad it is working out well for you :)

I queued up last night and fought the #2 team, they got some lucky burst on me with their rush and got the win. I re queue hoping to get my revenge and it sits in there for 5 minutes.. I log onto their server and ask why they haven't re-queued and they told me I was scary and that they were done for the night. Dodging is lame! heh. So now they are sitting in first because there aren't any other teams remotely close to our rating and this one refuses to play against me.

[bugilt]

I went into the arenas for the first time yesterday and got my asses handed to me a few times. I didn't expect to win anything with the current gear I have on (4pc s2 and random 60-70 blues and greens.). My friend was playing his pally as my healer, also not very well geared atm. The AOE teams crushed us the first few games, but after getting down to 1420 we started getting teams that get softened fast. My healer friend was getting upset even after telling him we are only doing this for practice and I don't expect to win much. I was planning on playing 50+ games over the weekend, but I need a understanding healer to sink with my ship atm.

What else should I be working toward as I collect my honor gear?

[Elektric]

I went into the arenas for the first time yesterday and got my asses handed to me a few times. I didn't expect to win anything with the current gear I have on (4pc s2 and random 60-70 blues and greens.). My friend was playing his pally as my healer, also not very well geared atm. The AOE teams crushed us the first few games, but after getting down to 1420 we started getting teams that get softened fast. My healer friend was getting upset even after telling him we are only doing this for practice and I don't expect to win much. I was planning on playing 50+ games over the weekend, but I need a understanding healer to sink with my ship atm.

What else should I be working toward as I collect my honor gear?

As you collect your gear...make sure you get exalted with the factions for +dmg gryphs/inscriptions. Save up those shards from farming your Totem of the Void...all those Large Prismatics add up to some serious Gold.

Skill wise I've really been working hard to work the clone turn into my playbook. In the bg's its really hard at the moment since most people die before ever reaching my shaman. Another nice skill while Bg'ing is when confronting a group, just like you would in arena, practice burning the most dangerous target first. Identifying and executing kill order needs to be second nature to do well in high end arena. Totem management is another big one, practice keeping your Grounding totems and Tremor totems up. It sounds silly, but against the really good teams, they'll go after these immediately realizing that immunity to polymorph, silence, fear, instant nukes is really where our power comes from. How do you beat a team that can nuke but you can't?

I try to play with as many healers as possible. Playing with different healers has allowed me to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the healers, myself, and our opposition. Experience doesnt get any better than that. I try to never enter a bg without a healer in the group and on vent. Killing people while communicating is what 5v5 is all about, and you can get that experience in the BGs. Most of the time they just laugh and say how watching Chain Lightning kill people never gets old. BGs aren't any real comparison to arena, but they do allow you to work the basics.

Speaking of Chain Lightning, my new Joy in arena is blowing the Nuke on scrub teams and killing two targets at once. Its never worth any points but its funny as hell! lawl

[bugilt]

I have been lacking on the clone turning even though it's setup. I'm thinking about setting my mouse buttons for clone movement. I guess I have another long haul in front of me for rep and gear.

[Elektric]

Enjoy the turning and think about all that clone turning you'll be able to get in, lol.

[Mercurio]

Elektric, that's fabulous, I'm glad you are doing so well.

Thought I'd share my experiences in 5v5 when 4-boxing shammies:

My guys are basically epicced out:
S4 hands
S3 heads
S2 shoulders
Veteran Bracers, Boots, Belts
Battlemaster trinkets
Guardian Necklaces
S2 weapons
Totems of the Void
all +dmg and +resil enchants that are available, tons of crit, basically modelled off Ellay's gear on the armory and not terribly far from what she's got
Same talents as Ellay's shammies

My healer is a holy pally with better gear than I have (over 400 resil, etc)

I've played a few hundred arena matches with my healer and we have gotten to an all-time high rating of....







1503!!


Of course, that was after resetting my team back up to 1500 last week and getting lucky by running into total noob teams a few times in a row, but it still doesn't lessen the accomplishment.

After doing this for a few weeks and getting enough points for another S4 piece I capitulated last night and paid a duelist 850 gold to raise each of my four shaman's 2v2 personal ratings up to 1550 so I can buy the pants.

It has taken a long time to get my guys as geared up as they are now and it is very interesting to see how varied our experiences are.

Keep the lessons coming, haven't heard anything I'm not doing already yet, but nothing can hurt at this point. /salute

[Thulos]

I must have missed it in the videos but how do you handle the individual clone turning? I'll watch the videos again but a simplified rundown would be great.

[Elektric]

Bind a key on your clones not your main that makes them turn left and right.

In Blade's Edge in Ellay's video he purges and then he gets stunned by something. He turns his clones around using this button and nukes away. This is mad skillz and he makes it look ez. Adding this simple tool to your bag of tricks will make you more powerful. Controlling your clones is more important than you main. Theres 4 of them and one of you. How many times have you had a Rogue/Warrior run through you and only your main is hitting them because the follow turn can't keep up with your target so only your main get dmg off. Controlling your clones and nuking destroys this stupid melee aproach to destroying us multiboxers.

And BTW, once you get it down you can see the fear in the Melee's movement that his little figure 8s arent helping him at all...only seconds till a nice yellow HK on your screenie.

[Thulos]

Ya after rewatching the video I could see it clearly. I thought you were talking about binding for each one and not just all the clones. Reading comprehension for the win. I set this up a little earlier and it did help a good bit in running instances. Definately going to take getting used to. Thanks for the help.

[merujo]

i went 1582 yesterday, with 4 of my shammies plus a disc priest friend. he's actually the one always insisting on us to practice more and more. Hes a long time friend of mine, and we played togheter for some years. My goal was the bracers, and i did it on 3 of the shamans, im rotating one every 15/20 games. I was actually impressed by what we achieved. The hate tells even came from a team of our server.
my gear consists of S2 enchanted and gemmed+totem void without: rings, trinkets, bracers, cloak, and once i get those, our goal is 1600/1650

when i get my brutal legs, gloves, chest (1600 i hope), new rings, icon of the silver crescent and cloak from badges, battlemaster spll dmg trinket, our goal is 1800 no matter what, and i tell u guys, we will work hard as hell for that, i want thos good lookin maces on me :)

btw, what do u think of a disc priest as healer? sometimes it gets squishy, but tell u what, 4 gifts of naaru @ 380 per tick each 2 seconds helps. it's 2000+heal each 2 seconds, for 15seconds when he also uses he's gift. hes a draenei as well.

[Meathead]

Reputation Gear? If so dam 1706 in that gear nice man!

[Elektric]

I want to make it clear that three of my Shaman are completely geared. The 4th shaman, that I leveled after I realized that 3v3 just wasnt going to work as well as Quadbox + healer in 5v5.

That fourth Shaman is still in the Rep PvP gear (merciless shoulders and I dont show the helm so he doesnt stand out) and we stopped at 1795 last night. We plan on playing some more today...we'll see how we do.

Theres another post about Ellay saying Resto Shaman aren't his style, and its not mine either. I had an incident this weekend were we had the top 13 team in my bg group requeue after they barely beat us. My healer missed the rez interrupt after watching Proximo...Proximo only shows casts on your focus and target and he didnt have the rezzer targetted, DOH! But bottom line, I blew up a full Gladiator Team and Instant Nuked their Merciless Gladiator Pally. Nothing beats nuking the best in game combined with not letting a Pally get their bubble off. Its just funny - and thats my style.

[Elektric]

i went 1582 yesterday, with 4 of my shammies plus a disc priest friend. he's actually the one always insisting on us to practice more and more. Hes a long time friend of mine, and we played togheter for some years. My goal was the bracers, and i did it on 3 of the shamans, im rotating one every 15/20 games. I was actually impressed by what we achieved. The hate tells even came from a team of our server.
my gear consists of S2 enchanted and gemmed+totem void without: rings, trinkets, bracers, cloak, and once i get those, our goal is 1600/1650

when i get my brutal legs, gloves, chest (1600 i hope), new rings, icon of the silver crescent and cloak from badges, battlemaster spll dmg trinket, our goal is 1800 no matter what, and i tell u guys, we will work hard as hell for that, i want thos good lookin maces on me :)

btw, what do u think of a disc priest as healer? sometimes it gets squishy, but tell u what, 4 gifts of naaru @ 380 per tick each 2 seconds helps. it's 2000+heal each 2 seconds, for 15seconds when he also uses he's gift. hes a draenei as well.

First off, congratulations on 1582. As you gear up you'll slowly move out of that bracket and 1600 wont be the barrier, then its 1700, then its 1800...next thing you know your waiting for the #1 team to queue so you can get revenge :D

I ran 3 shaman in season 3 in 5v5. The four shaman setup is incredibly more powerful for two reasons. You dont have to depend on your 5 person to execute perfectly and theres no counter to the burst damage (assuming it lands) of 4 shaman. Getting the nuke off on the right person at the right time to ensure it drops the target takes great reaction time. In season 3 I found it much easier to hit the target when I had a warrior beating them down. That said, get the rating for the gear and then get your practice in. Im for learning early in the season. I dont want there to be a team out there I can't beat. Once you get all the pvp accessories you'll be able to instant nuke S4 Shoulder teams (see the above post).

As far as healers go for me I've noticed its more about their abilities then class. I have two Dpriests I paly with atm and our only probem is mana. But in the high end arena many teams will drop back after you down a target and try to rez. Time to drink = gg. As long as they tell me when their taking huge damage I just heal them right through it. Its amazing how much healing Lesser heal does under bloodlust.

I also played a little 3v3 this weekend on my Warlock. What a difference in intensity from 5v5 to 3v3. Not to mention all the cool little tricks I learned from the good oponents I've been facing in 5v5.

[merujo]

the accessories will bring me close to +100 spell and lots of resilience. im going for the trinket spell dmg from badges of justice, and the medalion on my brain. full tuned, i hope we can get far.
another reason for having the dpriest, huge reason, mass dispell for ice blocks and bubbles. as arenas go by, our sync gets improved, and its good to see "unbeatable teams" going down. thx for the comment, and gl on ur arenas matches as well :)

[Mercurio]

As you gear up you'll slowly move out of that bracket and 1600 wont be the barrier, then its 1700, then its 1800...next thing you know your waiting for the #1 team to queue so you can get revenge

For those of you just starting out or reading this and thinking about putting together a 4xsham team, I'd like to offer a caution to the above.

I ground out another 36K honor for my guys this weekend (yeah, lots of work) and purchased everything else I could from honor. There is now nothing I can purchase from honor to improve my resil (except for that 40K honor anti-CC trinket with a bit more resil than the 8K honor one that does the same thing but has about 20 less resil).

Think about that - every single slot on all my toons has the best resil gear possible. As for arena gear, I have S4 gloves and pants, S3 helm, S2 shoulders, and blue rep chests. So I have everything you could want except S4 chests (actually, one of my four shammies has that too). Everything optimized by enchanting/runic spellthread/etc for PvP.

I've spent a lot of time optimizing macros and making the most of my 9-button mouse to be ready for anything the opponents throw at me.

Listing all this out is in no way bragging, quite the opposite. With this gear (and a similarly geared holy pally) we made some great strides last night and got all the way up to 1509.

So take all this "once you get gear, you'll own" stuff with a grain of salt. You may actually do so, but it's far from a guarantee. Groups with Aelli-type gear can rise to 2300 or be stuck at 1500. It's not about the gear, it is about the skill.

Thing is, though I'm certain I'm not one of the most skilled people out there, with the time and effort I've put in, I'm pretty sure I'm at least decent.

Good luck to all of us! :thumbup:

[merujo]

It's not about the gear, it is about the skill.
well, i think that applys best for FPS's and some of the same genre...but not in a game where imo: 40%skill | 10%luck | 50% gear. thats almost a fact. im not moving up at the moment because some teams in full vengefull get away with 1k health. they dont do pre healing, some dont do los, and in the end they survive due to stamina, resilience, aka gear. theres no skill on getting away with 1k health :D

but i do share u point, well some of it. u cant take for granted that u will rise according to ur gear, but!, i also happen to not have met more than once a team that fight in the middle of BEM or Nagrand. i saw some..i really cant tell exactly, some 1800 / 1900 teams in aelli training videos, and that was 1300 positioning on a 1850 gear, dont get me wrong, i do know the higher it gets, the bigger the pain is, but seems to me, in certain battlegroups we face stronger teams earlier. But is also a starting of a season, thats why all this bitching.

like i said before, after i get all pimped, if i get stucked on the 1500, something is wrong, because im more than able to insta kill someone.

[Mercurio]

like i said before, after i get all pimped, if i get stucked on the 1500, something is wrong

Watch out, you may hurt my feelings! ;(

Lol, it's not a huge deal to me. Would be nice to be uber like Aelly, but I've got a good handle on the fact that WoW is just a hobby.

[merujo]

like i said before, after i get all pimped, if i get stucked on the 1500, something is wrong

Watch out, you may hurt my feelings! ;(

Lol, it's not a huge deal to me. Would be nice to be uber like Aelly, but I've got a good handle on the fact that WoW is just a hobby.

lol, no man, no intentions on that, and my intention with that last statement is that, there can be also good teams stucked in the 1500's. Man, from 50 games, i only played 2/3 games against non geared teams. Geared teams are those in Vengefull, weapons, and some even have shoulders. That can be happening to u, still, u gotta take advantage of ur burst. I was using my instant pretty early, and once i managed to send some LB's first, i started to down 1 at the beggining, but LOS teams can be a huge pain.

It's a hobby for me as well! But i can't agree with ir not being a huge deal, u gotta achieve something, u work hard in hobbys as well. It's not a matter of being uber, gotta have some skill and practice, and yes, it wont come out of nothing. I bet aelli must have around 5k arenas on his legs :P

[Nixi]

When I first started doing Arenas my Holy paladin and I plumeted to the low 1400s, I worked really hard to get some gear and then we climbed to 1500, then with a little bit more gear we climbed to 1600. After hitting 1600, I only equiped my main with a couple new pieces, (he's at 850 spell dmg and 370 res while my alts are at around 800 spell dmg 300 res). The alts are in 2 piece blue pvp gear. The whole time my paladin wans't wearing PVP gear, he was simply sporting 2/8 tier 6 raiding gear (shoulders were a piece so he looked like he was in s3) and almost 90% of the time our opposition ignores him. Our big run to 1700 came late at night.. i mean really late at night. Like we started at 1am and played until 5am. At that time people were just tired and wouldn't fart around for 30-40 minutes playing LOS games and would rush. It was great.

Btw- i have a question. I'm trying to get trinkets for my guys. I know i need 1 burst trinket but i'm not sure what the 2nd trinket should be. The burst trinket i'm looking at atm is the 41 badge icon. The other trinket i'm not sure if i should go for the pvp trinket, the spelldmg/last stand trinket, or a stamina trinket. Any advice, especially to those with the 75 badge last stand trinkets, i'd really like to hear about whether that's a game breaker in tight situations.

[Feehza]

Bind a key on your clones not your main that makes them turn left and right.

In Blade's Edge in Ellay's video he purges and then he gets stunned by something. He turns his clones around using this button and nukes away. This is mad skillz and he makes it look ez. Adding this simple tool to your bag of tricks will make you more powerful. Controlling your clones is more important than you main. Theres 4 of them and one of you. How many times have you had a Rogue/Warrior run through you and only your main is hitting them because the follow turn can't keep up with your target so only your main get dmg off. Controlling your clones and nuking destroys this stupid melee aproach to destroying us multiboxers.

And BTW, once you get it down you can see the fear in the Melee's movement that his little figure 8s arent helping him at all...only seconds till a nice yellow HK on your screenie.

I dont understand how a good Melee-player can be focused from a 4-player-group which turns via keys. Warriors and rogues i met in Arena do strafing 2 rounds per second around my whole group. And ... its hard to see opponents who hide in my big tauren-models.

[Mercurio]

I dont understand how a good Melee-player can be focused from a 4-player-group which turns via keys. Warriors and rogues i met in Arena do strafing 2 rounds per second around my whole group. And ... its hard to see opponents who hide in my big tauren-models.

For running melees I have found that facing my main towards my slaves and casting away does some good. Unless we're getting CCed/interrupted, there is a 50% chance my target will be hit by one LB and a 50% chance it will be hit by 3. Eventually they will die, but yes, it is frustrating.

[Nixi]

Zzyzxx71 posted this thread ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=7766&pageNo=1&highlight=mx+revolution') about an awsome mouse for multiboxing. I went out and bought it right after reading the thread. The first couple gaming sessions I had a bad feeling that I wasted a hundred bucks, but now i'm used to it and it's a REALLY good mouse for boxing. The scroll wheel on top of the mouse can be pushed side to side and that is how I turn my alts (again due to Zzyzxx71's suggestion). It's a GREAT way to keep up with mages and melee bouncing around like gummy bears, I've actually seen some melee just get tired of jumping around when they see I'm turning and they just stand there and take the hits. It's really improved my arena game, and my partner noticed.

Sometimes when the battle is hectic, my guys were feared, stunned , CC'd etc, and there are just a mass of people stacked up in one area I lose sight of my followers and I just mash the follow button and turn my main around and do the 1 shotting in reverse trick also. Better to hit with one bolt than miss with all 4.

I gotta say that cracking 1500 was really hard for my teammate and I, and our run to 1600 was a long one. Patience, targeting, and knowing when to insta-gib someone are the things I've improved the most to turn our game around. And those are still the problems I gotta continue over coming to make it higher.