The future of the shaman arena team?

[magwo]

Maybe I'm just burned out from grinding to 80.. but. Hmm. I'm having my doubts about the viability of the 5v5 shaman team in high end arena now.
The reason this matters to me is because the only real reason I multibox is for the challenge and fun of competitive arena PvP. The rest (heroics, raids, BGs) is just means of doing the former. So if my team won't be viable, I should probably stop playing now.

Thing is.. WOTLK brought a lot of mechanics that turn the table in favor of non-boxed/mixed teams.

* A bunch of classes were given powerful group buffs that add high amounts of synergy to multi-class teams. This can make the damage output of a mixed team way higher than a pure shaman+healer team.

* Many classes were given heavy AoE and AoE interrupts/stuns/knockbacks. This is very bad for stacked shaman that basically only have cast-time heals that can be AoE interrupted.

* DK is basically an anti-caster class that messes us up.



In a way, I feel that a lot of the stuff put into WOTLK was designed specifically to counter multiboxing, and even more specifically, multibox shamans, to prevent us from succeeding in 5v5. I guess we'll see how it goes. I'm just.. not sure if it's worth the massive time investment to gear up in order to get ahead in the gear race for S5.

[Kaynin]

Actually, I think it's more the quad that might not work that well.

I'm thinking of going priest/dk/3x shaman myself actually. 3x Lava burst or 4x Lava burst effectively isn't different.

Anyhow, it's not the season yet. I'll try out different things and get the feel of PvP for a few weeks before really making a statement, but at this moment, I think we'll have most viability as a tri-shaman in the new season.

[magwo]

Mmm that's an interesting concept, a 1+1+3 team.

I even began thinking about 1-boxing a resto shaman.. :\

[Elektric]

The season hasnt started, and my quadbox isnt yet 80.

I think you are suffering from burn out.

As for the Quadbox Shaman team not doing well, im still confident I can play 4 toons with a good healer better than 95.5% of the WoW world can play a 5 man team.

The power of our arena team is unpredictable burst damage. People trying to disrupt that isn't anything new. I would even go so far as to say that these new abilities don't add a new level of complexity to the game but rather complicate an already existing aspect.

Realize that 5 perfectly played toons played by 5 different people will ALWAYS be greater than a perfectly played Quadbox Healer combo. Yes we are very close to unbeatable, but when you play against the World's Best, you'll notice that they can do more better and faster. Also realize that only a small number, less than 0.5% of the WoW communtiy obtain these skills and its likely you can achieve #1 without ever queue dodging. So BG Group #1, and GLad titles are well within reach.

Im sure you are still pondering my unpredictable burst damage statement. I have a very strong feeling that after any team faces me in arena they will be much more scared than they were last season, why? LAVA BURST BABY! Yeah I know you need flame shock up on the target but remember unlike Chain Lightning it has travel time. As long as it takes longer than your global cooldown to reach the target you're all good. Just pop Flame shock and BOOM 4xCrit Lava Burst + 4xFS = FTW.

Add this in with focus casting + Hex and Im more excited than ever that when I do get to 80, geared or not, Im going to destroy people like never before.

Call me optomistic, in denial, not yet 80...whatever your conclusion i'll still be Glad x4! (<-short for Gladiator x4 )

[magwo]

Im sure you are still pondering my unpredictable burst damage statement. I have a very strong feeling that after any team faces me in arena they will be much more scared than they were last season, why? LAVA BURST BABY! Yeah I know you need flame shock up on the target but remember unlike Chain Lightning it has travel time. As long as it takes longer than your global cooldown to reach the target you're all good. Just pop Flame shock and BOOM 4xCrit Lava Burst + 4xFS = FTW.

Not so. The flame shock is consumed "on release" rather than "on arrival", so it can't be retro-fitted to the target.

Add this in with focus casting + Hex and Im more excited than ever that when I do get to 80, geared or not, Im going to destroy people like never before.

I'm unable to use Hex with focus at the moment. I'm hoping this is a bug. /cast [target=focus] Hex doesn't work.
If this doesn't get fixed, I think we'll need some macro string type of thing to do this with bursted keypresses of varying counts to different instances to select different targets.


Hmm.. yes you are correct that we will probably easily beat the not-so-well played teams. But as it looks now, I think that we will hit a big wall of dominance once we encounter players that play reasonably smart. It seems that we are more vulnerable to "smart play" as a team now than before.


One thing to consider is that TS might not be the answer to everything. For example, consider the Glyph of Earth Shock combined with Lava Burst and Nature's Swiftness:
Flame Shock
Lava Burst
Earth Shock
EM+NS+CL


However I'm not sure if we'll be able to compete with this in the new environment of knockbacks.. Maybe..

[Alemi]

I'm unable to use Hex with focus at the moment. I'm hoping this is a bug. /cast [target=focus] Hex doesn't work.
If this doesn't get fixed, I think we'll need some macro string type of thing to do this with bursted keypresses of varying counts to different instances to select different targets.

It's been posted around the forums a number of times... just adjust your macro.

/target focus
/cast Hex
/targetlasttarget

Same functionality, exact same consequences. Works just fine for me in pvp and pve.

The season hasn't started, and people are theorycrafting left and right about comps, but fact of the matter is, I compete just as well in Wintergrasp vs. 2-3 20 stacked Tenacity buffed alliance players as any other 5 person team. Not many teams can take out a 90k+ hp DK, pally, and mage without suffering a loss.

And everyone talking about DKs and their anti-shamanness boggle my mind. Anti-magic zone is an Unholy talent, and only absorbs a certain amount of damage. Ironically, I can lava burst an anti-magic zone out of existance in one cd. It's pretty weak. Anti magic shell lasts for 5 seconds, and is on a one minute cooldown. Essentially, it's a spell reflect on an insanely long cd. We've managed these in the past, right? All of their damage that can get through groundings is melee damage, so round robin thunderstorms, normal fire novas, and hex should take care of the rest of them.

Seriously, I have more concern about multiple ret pallys than multiple dks.

Finally, knockbacks - are typhoon and enemy thunderstorms that big of an issue? If a shaman is charging you to thunderstorm, he's not dpsing. He's vulnerable to frost shocks and then your burst. I don't find the knockback that serious. Typhoon is more of a nudge and interrupt other than something useful. Maybe it's just me but a thunderstorm or typhoon on me makes me laugh. I can still heal everyone, they're all still facing the right way, and you just moved my characters so I can't be futher aoed? Thanks. I can pew pew you down now.

[Ellay]

Oh I'll have many videos for you to watch when the season hits
Some classes though are pumping out an insane amount of damage. I expect them to be toned down and for PvP gear to offset this. Other than that Lava Burst is pretty much our pinnacle ability. Repeatable never ending on demand burst at a very very low mana cost.

We don't just have 1 move anymore which is Lightning Bolt - > Chain Lighting - > Eartshock and throw in a NS in the old days.

You have that +
Flame Shock - > Lava Burst - > Chain Lightning - > Shock
Fire Nova Totem - > Chain Lightning (optional) -> Thunderstorm

Our heals are out of this world. 4x Chain heal cast on themselves is absurd healing. 50% hp on all characters pretty much tops everyone off.

[pinotnoir]

I'm unable to use Hex with focus at the moment. I'm hoping this is a bug. /cast [target=focus] Hex doesn't work.
If this doesn't get fixed, I think we'll need some macro string type of thing to do this with bursted keypresses of varying counts to different instances to select different targets.

It's been posted around the forums a number of times... just adjust your macro.

/target focus
/cast Hex
/targetlasttarget

Same functionality, exact same consequences. Works just fine for me in pvp and pve.

This does not work. Also, I predict many upset boxers once arena strats. :thumbdown:

[Kaynin]

The thing I think will happen, mainly at higher ratings, is dk's lossing you and pulling chars off of you for their group to kill. If they do this right, we would stand no chance.

I can think of only one way to reliably counter this, is by having a dk of your own, pulling their dk before they pull one of your chars. :P

[Iceorbz]

Grounding totem works on death grip. That crap got mad annoying in AV when i was doing the 60 bracket, it was seriously soemtimes 35 dk's 4 shaman (me) and a random joe.

Same thing for the other team lol. Talk about getting pulled around alot.