Dealing with CC rotations in 5v5?

[heyaz]

So, finally back in the game with a good healer and some potential. Nasty grind to 1200, already playing high ranked teams from 0 rating. Went 5-19 last night and wanted to quit. Then we log on today, and boom - 17 wins in about 2 hours, up to 1520 rating.

So far only 2k+ teams are beating us, and with the exception of 2 teams, are all using the same tactic they didn't use the times we beat them - a 3x or 4x aoe cc rotation. They run in, shadowfury, then arcane torrent, then fear bomb, then any of the above again. Warrior is spinning away, lock/mage/whatever blowing stuff up, and I don't regain control of my shaman until 2-3 of them are already dead. I can trinket any (except arcane torrent), only to be cc'd again. If they're really good with the CC, the 5th will sheep/hex/cyclone my priest, in addition to all the aoe.

How in the hell do you counter that? I tried thunderstorms, went through all 4 in a rotation not a single guy fell off (funny though against 1200 MMR crap teams, one thunderstorm sends them all to the far corners of the map, when I don't even need it). Can't heal through it because I keep getting interrupted, and if I even manage to get my power up macro off, they never get to cast the instant.

[Ualaa]

Spreading out will help with the AoE attacks and stuns.
It won't do much against single target AoE attacks, but at least Shadowfury or Bladestorm cannot hit the entire team at once.
Basically the same tactic as you would use against a pre-nerf Fan of Knives rogue.

[Clovis]

Yeah, some of the teams are crazy -- last night I went up against a "1500" rated team that all had their relentless shoulders (ie, they hit 2k+ in 3v3) and we lost 17 points, it was awesome.

DId get up to 1720 this evening and back down to 1705 but its progress none the less

Anyhow, against shadow fury (the warlock AOE stun) and AOE fear bomb -- I now drop 4 tremor totems staggered with three ,,, in there

so its a
/castsequence reset=4 tremor totem,,,,,,,,,
/castsequence reset=4 ,,,tremor totem,,,,,,

ect ect -- I also drop 4x grounding totems and refresh them everytime the cool down is up. Usually a destro warlock will be paired with an elemental shaman -- burst that fucker down -- here's the trick to getting past the grounding totem since it will eat all 4 flame shocks if cast togather making lava burst pretty weak.

Main shaman does

/castsequence reset=4 flame shock,,
the rest do
/castsequence reset=4 ,,flame shock

So the rest of the flame shocks will go off on the 3rd button smash, maybe a quarter second after the first so only the first flame shock gets grounded -- with 3 flame shocks on and 4x lava burst he's usually going down.

I'm now running 5s with a priest and druid (seperately) -- the priest has some nice tricks -- group power word shield and hymm of hope -- he cast hymm of hope during the opening burst from the other team (its a massive AOE heal) -- basically it buys us enough time to survive their burst and get down one of them -- on a wizard cleave team, take out the elemental shaman and they suddenly lose their balls since that comp relies on dual bursting from the warlock and ele shammy.

[heyaz]

We tried a few strats, trying to play more offensive and make them worry about healing instead of CC, but a lot of the teams tonight just outgeared us and/or were just too well coordinated.

I've got the staggered totems macro set up finally, and that helps - except on ring of valor where we spend 8 seconds in every fear. I've tried mounting up and running but every team has a destro warlock and just shadowfury's the platform. My only hope there is so bloodlust and nuke a target right off the bat, then strafe to the side and re-lay totems. i wish they'd fish that bad.

But on the positive side: we broke 1800 tonight

[Clovis]

Yeah, ring of valor is hit or miss for me -- if the other team has a melee cleave and they're geared its usually GG for me.

There's two strategies -- popping hero just before hitting the ground and blowing up someone (ret pally shamans are the best, followed by warriors). OR -- ghost wolf and immediately run behind the rear pillar -- I've had about the same success and failure with either so I can't really say which way is the better way to go, all though the immediately nuke seems to work slightly better if you target a melee or someone unlikely to start off the match running behind the pillar.

However mages love to run in, frost nova and blink behind you while you're stuck and rogues shadow fury while the warrior comes in blade storms.

Did I mention kill the shaman?

[Clovis]

Oh, btw -- grats on breaking 1800, that's badass! We finished tonight at 1705 so I'm hoping to get 1800 this week which will mean 4 new shields which is a huge upgrade (two of my shamans still have blue quest shields because I never found anything better -- the main has a furious shield and the other has a healing shield from naxx 25 so yeah, huge upgrade for only 300 points.

[Clovis]

Wow, you were able to do that with titan steel?? Jesus, seeing that makes me want to xfer to your battle group

Or maybe not, I also saw that you're server rank is 220... we hit 1670 last night and landed #90 -- maybe thats a good thing, or bad thing -- it seems like the earlier in the week we queue the more 2K teams we'll get who love to beat us up and take our lunch money but as we get closer to monday a wider variety of teams queue up.

Ie, we started out at 1670 this week.. dropped to 1570 and finished tonight at 1705 (high of 1720).

[heyaz]

Wow, you were able to do that with titan steel?? Jesus, seeing that makes me want to xfer to your battle group

Or maybe not, I also saw that you're server rank is 220... we hit 1670 last night and landed #90 -- maybe thats a good thing, or bad thing -- it seems like the earlier in the week we queue the more 2K teams we'll get who love to beat us up and take our lunch money but as we get closer to monday a wider variety of teams queue up.

Ie, we started out at 1670 this week.. dropped to 1570 and finished tonight at 1705 (high of 1720).

Eh, I don't think reckoning is very easy, or fun. Small pool, competitive teams, I think the #1 is 2700+. Since 0 rating we've been up against 2k teams, and during the week we just get rolled by the same 2 or 3 2200+ teams we have played a hundred times. I don't know if I'll even break top 100 with 1800.

Yeah all I had was the titansteel, but the rest was pretty decent - managed to get most of the relentless pieces from my 3v3. Plus my new healer is just amazing, I owe a lot to that guy.