Looking for advice/assistance; 4 Ele Shamans

Currently they are low level, but I still need a fair amount of help. I'll explain in detail below.

In a nutshell, I suck. I have been doing the odd queues at 'x9' while leveling and it seems very unsuccessful. Fear bomb, Rogues, CC, etc... I just can't seem to spread all of my attention to my slaves.

I have them all setup with Innerspace, F5-F8 to select them, but I am usually too late and one of them is dead.

I am more or less looking for tips on how to play them effectively. What do you do to keep yourself from getting ravaged?

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Originally Posted by Vociferate

Currently they are low level, but I still need a fair amount of help. I'll explain in detail below.

In a nutshell, I suck. I have been doing the odd queues at 'x9' while leveling and it seems very unsuccessful. Fear bomb, Rogues, CC, etc... I just can't seem to spread all of my attention to my slaves.

I have them all setup with Innerspace, F5-F8 to select them, but I am usually too late and one of them is dead.

I am more or less looking for tips on how to play them effectively. What do you do to keep yourself from getting ravaged?

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all you need to do is practise realy all the way to 80 should be tweaking your settings/playstyle. my team isent 80 yet either but i might have some nice tips for ya,

1. Make a round robin for tremor totem. this way its nearly imposible to get feared very long. (this needs practise to i forget to drop them sometimes but youl get it eventualy)
- use grounding totems when alot of casters are near this way its almost imposible for them to kill one of your toons while single targeting dps

2. rogues are a pain indeed i just start to cast chain heal on lowest target then bounce back the rogue turn my team flameshock and a fast chain lightning to finish him. if he pops cloack of shadows just chainheal your team till its over.

to do step 2 multiple times make also an round robin for Thunderstorm.

3. CC doesnt realy matter just make sure you can always watch your slaves hp on your main. also make sure you have jamba set up to show you when a clone has stoped following.

try to keep your enemy at distance. my prefered kill prio is:

Boomkin Druid>warlock>priest>

Mostly because these classes give me the most trouble druids only because they just AOE nuke your team dead in seconds.

choose your targets and spells wisely. when you see a group at range and melee geting closer ignore melee more than range. since range hug sometimes and are easy chain lightnings targets. while melee trys to get behind your team. I do this because if you disable any range dps its lesser need to heal. you can try killing the melee while hes huging your back but in the meanwhile the range dpsers kill one of your slaves.

this is realy about feeling/playstyle just try to keep your team alive. sometimes when i get swamped with melee i let my BG teammates (always a couple of followers) kill the ppl who are huging me and i just spam chainheal so no one dies.

i hope this helps any at all. sorry for the bad english.

if you have any other spesific problems please post them cant think of any usefull tips. most is situation spesific.
i had most of these problems to but you get the hang of it how to deal with them.

Greetings,

practice is everything.

Like Aevra said: staggered tremors to counter fear. ALWAYS drop your 5 grounding totems when they're off cooldown and you don't got 5 up.

And i don't know what level you're at, but there's a good chance any twinked melee class will rip you to bits. Try to ignore that, it'll happen to anyone. Since it's very hard to outheal dmg that killing you in 1 second. Play defensive and don't cast spell to pressure someone or to get dmg out. Cast spells to kill. Pick a target that WILL die. And be sure to keep yourself alive. Casting 3 Chain heals, then 1 CL + LB to kill someone and 3 Chain heals again can be needed if you got several enemy players swarming you. Or even just cast 5x frost shock on every CD. 2 shocks x5 should kill people if 1x 5 isn't enough allready.

Use Iinteract With Target to make your shaman face a melee that's dancing around you.

Lower level shaman are kinda squishy, especially elemental. Get specced into insta-ghost wolf as early as you can, and learn to use it to get out of AoE. Get a trinket asap, and use it along with tremors, because the tooltip for tremor totem should say "removes fear effects as soon as you run out of range of tremor totem" (I rarely use tremors, I use trinket, it's too iffy for me it seems).

Just always target any class who can AoE fear and take them out first (warriors, priests, locks). Do not, under any circumstances, let a warrior get near you, as their whirly-spinny-thing-of-death will make quick work of a pack of shaman. Ghost wolf and get the hell away from them. Make use of staggered earth binds, and spec into the points that make them root enemies (elemental tree -- Storm, Earth, and Fire).

With practice you will become very good at escape and keeping the dangerous classes away from you. Knowing when to get away is just as important as knowing who to kill first.

Edit: Make sure you have a macro for all 4 shaman to cast lesser heal on your main within easy reach, because inevitably your main will be focus fired.

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Originally Posted by Siaea

Lower level shaman are kinda squishy, especially elemental. Get specced into insta-ghost wolf as early as you can, and learn to use it to get out of AoE. Get a trinket asap, and use it along with tremors, because the tooltip for tremor totem should say "removes fear effects as soon as you run out of range of tremor totem" (I rarely use tremors, I use trinket, it's too iffy for me it seems).

Just always target any class who can AoE fear and take them out first (warriors, priests, locks). Do not, under any circumstances, let a warrior get near you, as their whirly-spinny-thing-of-death will make quick work of a pack of shaman. Ghost wolf and get the hell away from them. Make use of staggered earth binds, and spec into the points that make them root enemies (elemental tree -- Storm, Earth, and Fire).

With practice you will become very good at escape and keeping the dangerous classes away from you. Knowing when to get away is just as important as knowing who to kill first.

Edit: Make sure you have a macro for all 4 shaman to cast lesser heal on your main within easy reach, because inevitably your main will be focus fired.

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Might be a good idea to get both those talents and go into cheap shocks (-45% costs) in enhance and then worry about ele. Since instant GW is more important then Thunderstorm or doing even more dmg imo.

Sorry, but i think i want to be in your BG for fun. Not dropping tremor totems is even worse then playing with tremors and being naked. You really have to lack priest/warlocks/warriors with a brain to be able to afford that.

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Originally Posted by Littleburst

Might be a good idea to get both those talents and go into cheap shocks (-45% costs) in enhance and then worry about ele. Since instant GW is more important then Thunderstorm or doing even more dmg imo.

Sorry, but i think i want to be in your BG for fun. Not dropping tremor totems is even worse then playing with tremors and being naked. You really have to lack priest/warlocks/warriors with a brain to be able to afford that.

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I may have mis-stated that. I meant "I don't depend on tremors", not "I don't use them". They just never seem to work for me. They are in my regular "drop all 20 totems" key, however. And, you'd be surprised how many people try to stand at range and have a casting war with 5 shamans, instead of CCing them.

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Originally Posted by Siaea

I may have mis-stated that. I meant "I don't depend on tremors", not "I don't use them". They just never seem to work for me. They are in my regular "drop all 20 totems" key, however. And, you'd be surprised how many people try to stand at range and have a casting war with 5 shamans, instead of CCing them.

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You do stagger them? Don't drop them all at once, but at least in 3 stages so tremor *ticks* every second instead of every 3.

When you say low level, how low of a level? There's a few key talents that make elemental good -- elemental reach, lightning mastery, and storm, earth and fire. Without these, it's very hard to kill anything due to the extremely long cast times and the fact that most of the range classes have a farther range than you in early levels. If you spec ghost wolf immediately, you won't have access to those talents until the 40s.

The 10 to 29 bracket were almost impossible (probably 10% win/loss ratio for me). @ 30-39, it started to get even, then in the 40-49 backet and up, win/loss ratios went very high -- 80%+

What I did on my new team of shammys was glyphed fire nova totem with improved points. This can help a lot at lower levels especially when melee charges you. Magma + nova every 3 seconds eats anything in range alive. Unfortunately, you'll still run OOM rather quickly, but you should at least have a better chance.

So depending on what level you are at, I say stick with it and see how it turns in your favor as you continue to level.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Littleburst

You do stagger them? Don't drop them all at once, but at least in 3 stages so tremor *ticks* every second instead of every 3.

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I thought it was changed so they all tick on a global clock now?

My little band of 3 shaman just hit 50 and I've been PvP'ing them in between boosting with my 80 protadin.

I sucked hard at first but lately I've been raping the BG's I'm in. Obviously, it helps to be in the higher end of the level range of your bracket too, but starting about the halfway mark I do really well.

Key for me is to try and NOT be the initial focus of the other team. If I can be the second person (my team) to enter a melee, I'm very deadly. Its simply amazing what 3 toons' focus fire can do.

Also, get the pvp trinket as your first honor award. Helps immensly.

Also, I think its "fire nova" but it shreds melee. I usually get one cast off before they're on top of me and behind me messing up casting. So, I try to get one off, then hit 'em with fire nova and spam an earth/fire shock. This finishes off a lot of the melee.

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Originally Posted by Greythan

Key for me is to try and NOT be the initial focus of the other team. If I can be the second person (my team) to enter a melee, I'm very deadly. Its simply amazing what 3 toons' focus fire can do.

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Very good point aswell!

Gogo hide behind treestumps in WSG for example.

They were changed at one point to pulse on a server clock. And have been changed back, for quite a while now.. at least several months.

They pulse every 3 seconds I believe. So divide the number of shammies by 3, to get the optimal time between staggered Tremor drops.

I just have my Call of Whatever spell, which drops four totems for each shammy, and have that staggered. Most of my teams have two or three shammies, or none. So it's two presses over three seconds or three presses over three seconds, for the totem stagger. Then assorted stuff, such as everyone does a Grounding or round-robin for Fire Elementals or Earth Bind etc.

How do I get the round robin setup? For some reason I haven't been able to get it set up properly.

Here is what I have:

DPS Key 6

Actions:
Assist HoT Character
Sends 6 -> Toon 1
Sends 6-> Toon 2
Sends 6-> Toon 3
Sends 6-> Toon 4

They all cast it at the same time, how can I change it to make it Round Robin?

With IS Boxer, I just make a mapped key, with a Step per character.
Step 1 sends the hotkey to Target: Slot 1 (or Character 1).
Step 2 sends the hotkey to Target: Character 2.
Etc.

You could do it with Warcraft macros.
A: /castsequence reset=5 Call of Ancestors,,,,
B: /castsequence reset=5 ,,Call of Ancestors,,
C: /castsequence reset=5 ,,,,Call of Ancestors

(Assuming Call of Ancestors is one of the three, drop 4x Totem at once spells. Not sure if that was one or not...)

This is what I have, and it still casts them all at once:

http://i34.tinypic.com/u1ptu.png

Right click on Step, and add a new Step.

Then have only one shammy do something on each step.



*Edit*
Steps are different actions which occur on subsequent presses of the same key.

You currently have a single step, where all of your shammies do the same thing.

To make this a round robin effect, you would want one step per shammy.
And then have the "6" sent to only one shammy on a given step.
So with four shammies, you have four steps.

You can then spam your "6" key (or whatever the hotkey is set to) at a pace of your choosing.
And on Step 1, you get the totems dropped by shammy 1.
On the second press, you get the totems dropped by shammy 2.
Etc.

as Ualaa said,
you currently have

Code:

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Step
  +- Actions
      +- Action 1
      +- Action 2
      +- Action 3

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you need

Code:

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Step1
  +- Actions
      +- Action 1
Step2
  +- Actions
      +- Action 1
Step3
  +- Actions
      +- Action 1

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i think

They suck until 80 and a lot of resilience, but while leveling is a great time to get acquainted with their abilities and how to effectively use totems. Don't worry too much if you get owned at low levels, shaman just aren't that powerful until 80 whereas other classes are massively overpowered very early (like rogues).

Awesome, thanks for the advice guys!

Oh and hit the upper half of 50's, and been doing a lot of AV's. If I get a good vantage point, it's not bad. I just need to work on people moving out of LoS and my reaction time.

A lot of great little tips though, thanks everyone!

Man staggered Tremor's is great. I find priests and warlocks heaps easier now!

Oh and Round Robin Wind Shear, is just cheese. =D

Asonimie has a thread in the PvP forum, for things Shammies can do.
Like building Wind Shear into your normal attacks, so one shammy is pretty much always casting that spell at your target.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ualaa

Asonimie has a thread in the PvP forum, for things Shammies can do.
Like building Wind Shear into your normal attacks, so one shammy is pretty much always casting that spell at your target.

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I would read it, but I believe that's in the rated arena subforum, which I don't have access too. :(

Just kidding, I found the thread. cleverly disguised. :D