First of you need to understand what your doing wrong. The best way to do that is to watch Ellay. What does he do in his videos that you dont? In Nagrand did you see how much time that warrior had to chop chop? Absolutely zero. Ellay used our Quadbox Shaman strength and exploited their weakness. A warrior running out in the middle of the arena away from a healer is like a christmas tree full of lights. LIGHT HIM UP! Purge away, lightning bolt followed by the NUKE destroys almost anyone in game.

When you watch Ellay's video dont watch in awe, I know its hard to do but trust me the skill is in the details. If I could SUM up what it takes to be great with this composition it would be: Timing, Kill Order, Landing the Nuke (this means use purge), and patience. If you dont have any of those, you are going to lose over and over, these aren't nice to haves they're necessities in winning with this setup.

If the warrior is charging in and chop chopping you to death. Theres a bunch of things that could be happening:




  • The warrior could be toying with you to blow your Nuke while they healers already have a big heal charged up. Now you have a warrior full of rage that will rip through your guys.
  • Not having gear, all those pieces of PvP gear really add up against the melee with the extra armor.
  • Your healer might not be geared enough to heal through the damage. You might need to toss a lesser heal, like other people have posted, you will die everytime you chain heal to survive burst damage.
  • Are you keeping Bloodlust up? My experience while I was undergeared was that bloodlust made healing through damage and dealing it much better, If I played things right my healer or I would go oom before I died.

Mages AoE'ing. Mages cannot be allowed to feel like they can even approach you. Its Purge Purge Purge...still no ice block, NUKE + ES =gg. I played a the top 5v5 on my server last night, Top 7 in the BG group. They sent their mage up front to do just that, AOE the crap out of the dumb shaman standing together. I purged everything off of him, he didnt Ice Block and he died quicker then his bunny hopping a$$ could hit the ground. After I do this to a Mage, the are never again the same. They iceblock after a full purge, and throw nothing but Ice Lances. Mages are dangerous and if you let them wind up frostbolts and keep those grounding totems up. Make Mages afraid to show face and you wont have to worry about AoE. Yeah there's two, but if you drop the first, the last thing the healer is going to be saying over vent to the Mage still alive is "Go in there and AoE ill heal you threw it."

Instant kills cause panic. Stay calm and capitilize on their mistakes.

My favorite Quote from Ellay is "There is no counter for 4xShaman and a Healer." If nothing else believe this. Believe your losing because you're making mistakes, because the other team is exploiting your patience and making you play their game. Gear allows for you to make mistakes and live through them. When you are in full PvP gear it will help, but it wont be the difference between you winning and losing against a good team. In the 5v5 bracket one mistake could be a loss even against a horribly rated team.

Everytime I watch Ellay's video I pick up something new. Last night I had a little trouble with a triple melee team in nagrand and realized I was standing in the wrong spot of the little cubby. Position matters, thats why there's different maps. Learning how to play and where to start the encounter from will be the difference in the top rated teams. In the 1800 bracket I have to be careful where I kill people. There's no worse spot then to kill someone on the bottom of the Blade's Edge Arena with three Rezzers still up. They find every possible way to LoS you and get the rez off. I think this is a big reason why Ellay says, OWN the bridge.

And the more I read your post the more it sounds like you are still wearing questing greens. Grind out that PvP gear and keep arena'ing. As long as you keep learning from your losses its worthwhile regardless of your rating.

P.S. Elektric's wall of text crits the dual-boxing forums once again, soz for the long post.