Playing 5 Shamans in arena (no dedicated healer)

[Filon]

Hi,

im leveling my first multiboxing team to 80 right now, and i'm planning on playing 5on5s on my own, without a dedicated healer. Do you think one could be succsesfull with this setup?

i havent red anything about this so far here on the forums.

please share your experiance with me

lg
Filon

[Powerwar]

You will storm low rating teams with crap gear and almost no pvp knowledge and you will be facerolled by everyone else.

I have my 5 shamans in an arena team and only play them in arena for the lols. Basically get used to 10 loses per week and then go home.

I used that setup at the beginning to get them geared with decent gear in order to run heroics faster. Elemental PvP gear has considerably good +sp +crit and +haste.

[heyaz]

It won't work. Against good teams, the second I lose my healer it's downhill from there. I've had many games get down to 1 melee and a healer, all four of my shaman with decent mana, and they just drop 1 by 1. It's even worse they have a warlock + healer - that will annihilate your whole team and grounding totems just won't save you.

Shaman just don't have good survivability. Even with my healer, I need massive heals and often pain supression or I will lose a shaman within 1 global, especially against wizard cleave (which is most good teams).

Sometimes I manage to gib 1-2 more targets after my healer dies, but what you're left with is the two that are hardest to kill - usually a priest and warlock, or rogue, and chances of winning from there are very slim. You will spend most of your time healing trying not to lose shaman.

The other issue is AOE. Without any healing at all, a geared team could just spam aoe's until you're dead. It doesn't work when you have a healer (I laugh when I get volley or blizzard against my team when my healer is up - it's just not enough damage). Even lolstorm can be healed through effectively, especially if my shaman heal themselves as well. But that ability alone could drop all 5 of your shaman to <50% hp even with gear, and from there they get picked off.

The other issue is that the 5th shaman is not really necessary. Against full relentless teams, your nuke macro, especially on a hidden focus target, will kill pretty much anything but a warlock unless a big instant heal goes off right in the middle of it. You would just get a lot of overkill damage from the 5th shaman especially against less geared teams.

[Bettysue]

I got to about 1450 before I started running into wizard cleave teams over and over. If you play agressively against them and can drop their shaman before he pops bloodlust you can win, but the lock and healer will prove to be the bane of your existence without a healer on your side.
I usually go for the charge in drop totems gib any of the "non-hard" targets regroup/run heal up and try it again. Trick is don't run too far or they'll rez the guy you killed.
On any of the non-wizard cleave teams, kill whatever charges in first, then blow cooldowns on a healer. If you're still in action and haven't lost more than one you should win.
Adding /cast [target=arena1-5] Wind Shear (each shaman has a different number) to the first line of every nuke helps a bit on neutralizing healers/casters for quick kills. Don't forget purge on warriors you can drop their health a ton without doing a single point of damage, and then your nuke wont leave them running with 1k hp.
Anyway good luck and don't worry if you don't make it far...it is by no means an easy feat. Hell clearing the 1k rating this late in the season may not be an easy thing to do with all the rerolls carrying friends up for gear.

[Noids]

Definitely a difficult prospect running all 5 on your own. I do it without a healer, 4 shams and a DK and generally have poor success. I have toyed with the idea of adding a shaman instead of the DK however and just having them spam chain heal. As heyaz says, there is no point adding extra dps to the mix generally, but I have a resto shaman that can spam chain heal until the cows come home and attaching that to my nuke keys should be enough to keep the team up I reckon.

Cheers

[thinus]

Last week, fresh 80, I went 3-7. The 3 was for teams that didn't show up. Tonight I went 2-8. One team didn't show and the other win only 3 zoned in. 6 of my losses this week looked like this:

Bladestorming machine of death, mayhem and destruction 50-60K damage.
Other misc dps 10-20K damage.
My 5x shaman 15-20K damage each.

I usually manage to drop 1 but that warrior just charges in and destroys my team.

But yeah < 300 resilience, < 2K spell power...gimme more time and...I will survive!
I'll probably recruit a healer at some point to be honest.

[Bettysue]

Spread out or GW and run from the warrior, or do what I did in the beginning, have a slave autorun to the middle of the area and stand there the silly warrior will charge and blow bladestorm on the solo gazelle 9 times out of 10. Kill him while he tries to get to you. If he doesn't come after you just heal the dummy target a couple times and proceed as planned minus the BS of death.
Not sure why but the warrior always seems to be about 10 yrds out of range of his healer and can typically be killed if you're quick enough, at least in the lower ranks.

[Ualaa]

5x Shaman will definitely get you points.
But losing every match will too.

Not sure how high you'd get in the rating.
1850 is a fairly large boost with the weapons.
But it depends on your battlegroup and match ups.

I agree that you'll blow lower teams away with the firepower.
Giving each shaman a target for Wind Sheer in their macro's will help vs casters/healers too.
But I don't see this as a composition that will take on the better teams.

Not really sure what rating level you'll end up at.
But if you have 5 shaman's leveling anyway, it doesn't hurt to find out.
And it would be nice to post your personal results, to give us a frame of reference.

[daviddoran]

It's so late in the season that I'm seeing very geared teams with 1300 ratings, because they got 1800+ in 2s and 3s. I managed to get to 600 by myself, at which point I got a guildie to heal me on his resto druid. We hit 1000 last night (lol) and I just figure I'll let one of my shammys "rot" and not get more upgrades. He is on my heroic farming team anyway so he will get gear eventually.

If you want just points, keep at it. If you want to push the envelope and go for a 5x dps team, more power to you. My suggestion is to take the road taken by many, and get a dedicated healer. plus, having a good healer gives you more options. We were about to lose, they were focusing down my healer, and he was trying to hot himself up like crazy (resto druid) and called out that he was stunlocked, so I tossed him 4 LHWs and he was back to full... at this time, they were not guarding themselves as much so I was able to nuke one down, wound 2 others, and force them to retreat, and we eventually won.

[Ualaa]

A lot of people seem to play 5's, or even queue but don't enter.
Just for the points, because you get full points in 5's.
In 3's, you get 60% of the points that you would get if you had the same rating in 5's.
Same deal for 2's, except its 40%.

Then they turn around and offer gold to join a 3's team with 2 very geared people.
And be carried up to whatever rating.
Where they already have a bunch of points from their losing 5's.