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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!
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.
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.
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.
Battle healer =/= Selfless healerQuote:
Originally Posted by Ellay
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.
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by valkry