The how to beat wizard cleave thread

[Clovis]

The purpose of this thread is to create a list of strategies that have worked for others when going against arguably our most difficult comp, the wizard cleave.

A wizard cleave is any team with a destro lock and an elemental shamam.

The entire strategy of the team is based around the shaman and warlock being able to burst down targets one at a time.

Typically, a wizard cleave will have the above two mentioned classes, a melee (warrior or rogue usually
/.w ) and 1-2 healers.

The strategy is simple against us -- the melee distracts and pressures the shaman and healer while the warlock and elemental shaman two shot people.

The key to defeating this flavor of the month comp is by killing the elemental shaman as fast as possible.

This set up assumes you're running four elemental shamans + a healer -- priest works best, followed by a druid.

Positioning is key -- for this comp the multiboxer is on defense. On most maps the ideal defense place is just beyond the gates - with the exception being on blades edge where its the end of the bridge just above the ramps.

Required macros (for wizard cleave and all comps and general

Anti-fear -- the staggered tremor totem bound to it's own key.
shaman 1 -- /castsequence reset=4 tremor totem,,,,,,,,
shaman 2 -- /castsequence reset=4 ,,,tremor totem,,,,,,
shaman 3 -- /castsequence reset=4 ,,,,,,tremor totem
shaman 4 -- /castsequence reset=4 ,,,,,,,,,tremor totem

Totem bar drops

For your totem bars, I suggest having each shaman drop 4 grounding totems and also have a 4x grounding totem drop bound to another key (all of my totems are bound to various x-keys).

Shaman 1 -- grounding totem, totem of wrath, fire resistance totem - EARTH TOTEM BLANK
Shaman 2 -- grounding totem, frost resistance totem, mana spring totem, EARTH TOTEM BLANK
Shaman 3 -- grounding totem, magma totem, healing stream totem, TREMOR TOTEM
Shaman 4 -- grounding totem, magma totem, cleansing totem, EARTH TOTEM BLANK.

Here's the reason behind having blank earth totem slots on the totem bar. You have one shaman drop a tremor totem in case the other team rushes and you lack the time to drop the tremor totems seperately -- but in most cases the first minute is a stand off and you'll have time to set up. With the earth totem blank it prevents your staggered drop formation from blanking upon resetting totems.

Flame Shock Macro

Personally, I use have flame shock and lava burst bound seperately (to keys 3 and 4 repsectively). This means that I can put 4x flame shocks on multiple targets without having to immediately place it on a target prior to the lava burst -- this can be great for taking out a ranged healer or hunter.

This is the key to killing the elemental shaman

Shaman 1 -- /castsequence reset=4 flame shock,,
Shaman 2 -- /castsequence reset=4 ,,flame shock
Shaman 3 -- /castsequence reset=4 ,,flame shock
Shaman 4 -- /castsequence reset=4 ,,flame shock

Here's what happens -- the ele shaman and shamans in general will have their grounding down. If all four shamans shock at once, the grounding totem will eat all four flame shocks. However, with a slight staggering only the first flame shock is grounded and the other three land which means the shaman can be killed with 4 lava burst, 3 of which will crit and (probably) kill him.


Implientation

Go to your favorite defense positon -- in every map mine is just outside the gates.

Hit your totem bar to drop all totems, then spam your tremor totem to drop tremors in a staggered order. Don't worry about refreshing magma totems (I don't but once the fire nova changes goes through I'll change this to to keep them up or replace with longer lasting fire totems -- its going to be a great melee finisher move).

More then likely, the other team is on their side and its a staring match -- keep on eye on grounding and refresh it whenever it has less then 10 seconds or so remaining. During the fight itself, refresh grounding totems everytime its up -- get the mod "Doom_cooldownPulse" -- it will flash the spell's icon and alert you whenever cool downs become available -- seeing the grounding totem icon flash reminds me "drop them like its hot!" You can also get "Power Auras Classic" to alert you when the grounding totems are gone -- at least, I think that's how it works - I just got this and haven't had a chance to set it up but my partner told me that's how it works

You should now be facing the other team with your defensive totems and your healer behind something to provide LOS.

The opener can start roughly one of 4 ways.

1) (most common) the warlock charges in and does a shadow fury -- the rest of the team charges in after him. Resist the urge to flame shock and blow him up, chances are you won't kill him, infact you'll be lucky to drop him below 50%-- with nether protection, he's going to have a straight 30% reduction to fire damage (bull shit, I know!). As soon as they rush in your healer should pop their AOE heal, assuming you're running this with a priest or druid -- this will buy you some time by helping to negate a significant portion of their cleave damage. Having an AOE heal going gives you 6 seconds or so to kill your first target which is that fucking elemental shaman of course.

As soon as you're out of the stun, pop hero and look for the elemental shaman -- hit your shocks -- if your macro is set up, 3 flame shocks will land and you can blow his ass up with lava burst followed by an immediately chain lightning to ensure his ass goes down. Once the elemental shaman is dead the rest of the DPS is healable. Following the shaman's death its a good idea to take out the melee (there will be only 1-2) -- I prefer killing the warriors because, well, I fucking hate blade storm and the rogues can cloak of shadows and practically have spell immunity. When there is a hunter I like to load him up with flame shocks, change to another target, flame shock and then back to the hunter to unload lava burst -- good ones will pop deterence as soon as they see you're about to blow them the fuck up so this is the multibox version of "fake spell casting" except you get to actually do damage.

2) The warrior charges in and blade storms or fears (or both) -- ignore the warrior, look for the elemental shaman and blow him the fuck up. If your timing is better then mine, you can thunder storm him off just before he pops blade storm or "whirly twirly" as one of my shaman friends calls it.

3) The rogue stealths through your totems somehow and opens on your healer, trying to get you to blow elemental mastery while he cloak of shadows and LOL's IRL -- hit him with the chain lightning, frost shock nuke -- this often kills him -- don't flame shock or he'll just <poof> -- the chain lightning/frost shock is damn near instant and hey may not have the reaction time to cloak fast enough. If you're lacking the spell power, purge the rogue first, then chain lightning/frost shock his ass to HELL (where all rogues belong, fucking sapping my last shaman in the train in BGs, god I hate rogues).

By the way, that macro is -- /castsequence reset=3 chain lightning, frost shock -- all shamans have this exact same macro. Its bound to #1 for me. This macro is enough to kill someone with up to 25,000 HP instantly and hilarity ensures when used in battle grounds.

4) They all charge in -- usually only the newer cleave teams do this, because hey, it works for melee cleave right? inorite!? Ignore all others, find the elemental shaman and blow him up.

You may have noticed by now that in all cases the elemental shaman is the primary target -- kill him and you've cut off their legs and you're left with Joe from Family guy -- a lot of shouting but a greatly reduced threat. With staggered tremors the fears should be minimal.

So this is what's worked for me - so far our highest rating is 1720 with a new priest so you're millege may vary but hopefully this helps.

-Clov

[gitcho]

OK - so if they have a destro lock, and an ele shaman, you unload on the lock first right? jk

great write up - and grats on getting to 1700+. What mod do you use to let you know if a hunter has popped deterrence, or rogue has used cloak of shadows, or anyone else has used trinkets (so you know when to unload)?

[Clovis]

Thanks

I use gladius for the rogue's cloak of shadows (it puts a nice little icon with a timer of his name) -- for the hunter's deterrence I generally look at the hunter -- there's been a few times where I've flame shocked him and even though I see the little axes pop up around him I can't stop myself from hitting "q" (elemental mastery / lava burst macro) -- I'm fairly certain the deterrence icon also appears over the hunter as well but I generally just switch to another ranged DPS when the hunter bubbles.

[Eloxy]

yeh good writeup

what would be cool would be to see a movie of a few wizcleaves (even wipes) to see how others handle it

[Ogloo]

thats what i do to kill the wizard cleave teams (highest 1717), i have a macro that says the order that I kill stuff, and shaman is alllllways at the top ;-0

[asonimie]

I want to add what I do against Wiz cleaves.

Basically the warlock will stand out in front of you and just keep spamming because he knows hes invincible. Ignore him as always. If he is the only visible target initially, just LB spam him to keep healers on their toes and most importantly to keep the split target wind shears going(as with most games, ALWAYS try to keep casting something, don't let yourself just stand there). The warrior/hunters job is to MS the kill targets, usually warriors on these teams will just sit with their shields the entire match and spam MS.

There are a couple things to remember that will help a lot. Yes, your target is the ele sham. A good one will LOS you heavily and rotate between grounding / los until they are ready to burn. You can tell a lot by what the shaman is doing. Obviously if bloodlust goes up, it's game time. My wind shear macro setup helps a lot against these guys, and I recommend trying it if you guys haven't yet. Also, the only way to get a clean kill against the elemental is going to be through focus targeted nuke, while casting on someone else. The best way to eat groundings is with purge imo, its invisible, instant, and can be easily staggered. Also, this team will usually shadowfury you as soon as they burn your groundings, giving them 3 seconds to launch 3 spells each. It's important to re-grounding and get those wind shears out asap when shadowfury is done. My priest will also try to PS + fear if they are goin for the kill.

Anyway, here are the most important points I try to remember:

1) Focus target shaman for EM nuke(and keep an eye on him the entire time - his positioning will determine when you go for the kill),
2) Cast on someone else (warlock if nobody else, it will make him run eventually), while rotating TS + and grounding totems the entire match.
3) Don't blow bloodlust until they do. This is a good rule for any team.
4) When it comes time to make your kill - try to wait until after a shadowfury so you have a few seconds of free casting(nothing worse than blowing EM and getting stunned between the flame shock and instant LVB)
5) And finally, Purge someone in front of you (not shaman) - and blow your nuke. Gratz! dead shaman!(hopefully)

[Clovis]

I'll second the wind sheer macro being built into casting -- that thing is great, I get a ton of interupts out of it -- nothing better then nuking a target and getting the screen shake (that's an add on, it "shakes" my screen when I successfully interupt) and the healer stands there.

Like Asonimie mentioned in his windsheer thread, I've seen people stop their rush and back peddle a few times when I go to flame shock the charger and 4/5 of the other team gets a green burst on their toon =P Its like they're saying "whoa! wtf was that?"

[heyaz]

I haven't tried this yet, but it's my only idea. We just got wrecked by 5 up-and-coming wizard cleave teams in a row (and by up and coming I mean 1800-1900 mmr and we lost a lot of rating).

They all do the exact same thing:
- Get all my groundings down
- Shadowfury
- Instant kill a target
- Some other cc happens, second target is dead

So here's are my ideas:
1. Do not re-lay grounding totems when they eat through them. I was re-laying them when they were up, which wasn't necessary - priest is behind me so he won't get CC'd, and no one is going to instagib me from behind a box or pillar.
2. Wait for bloodlust (dead giveaway) or warlock charging in alone. Drop totems then. When you are stunned, the lava/shatter/conflag combo should at least be half eaten by totems. Enough to survive while they just blew their cooldowns.

Concerns: could 4 totems be eaten up before/during the burst? would it even help? What's to say the mage doesn't mirror and eat 4 of them before they nuke.

-or-

1. Same as above
2. Allow shadowfury to happen, have finger on trinket + grounding totems keys, trinket out and put the totems up before the nuke.

Concerns: One - would it be fast enough, and two - would I just find myself instantly cc'd again with no trinket.

Otherwise, I have no idea. I can survive the team with a destro warlock that opens then tries to aoe fear while melee run in. I cannot survive, nor can my priest heal through, shadowfury + 3x big nukes.

We've had some long hard battles with wizard cleaves, some we've beaten, my main issue at the moment is that combo they use which drops it to a 5v4 or 5v3 almost instantly. It's like those stupid quad shaman teams that instant kill a target right when the game starts. gosh

[Gares]

You know all this stuff is great but I think my major problem along with no having a healer might be keyclone. Adding alot of the functionality (Like the windshear macro in all /casts) is very difficult for me to do. I have it in my main nuke and my regular /cast sequence of Flame shock, LVB, CL, LB, but other then that not. I seem to get wrecked so fast it doesn't matter in most matches.

[Moorea]

Sorry for the silly question but why is this team combo called a wizard cleave ?