What is preventing 4 Shammies + Healer from breaking 2200?

[Kromtor]

I was expecting to see some 2200+ shammy teams by now. What exactly seems to be keeping you guys from breaking into the top? Tremor killers + fear bombs? CC'ed healer? Unable to burst down initial targets as expected? I've heard rumblings about melee cleave issues but you've got 4 big knockbacks + earthbind. That screws me up bad enough when there's just 1 shaman. What's the deal?

I was thinking about doing something serious with my shammy team since my restokin team was a bust and more than 10 games on my rets seems counterproductive but i dont know now...

[asonimie]

Shamans are still very strong. This post is not to deter people from rolling traditional shaman teams. A few of us have consistantly hit 2k+ at lvl 80, but please don't think it's easy. Success at this level requires perfect.. i mean PERFECT execution, target choices, positioning etc - while our opponents can sloppily just zerg us and have the same level of success. There's a million issues with them (both solo and boxed), but most of it has been talked about already. Shamans are basically a micromanaging nightmare

To summarize the main faults, while probably just as bad of an idea as listing faults in your team, are as follows:

1) Aside from instant lava burst which can be countered 30 different ways, shamans lack any instant cast dps. Having to stop and stand there while casting everything makes us extremely vulnerable to aoe silence, aoe stun, and melee weaving behind us. Without heroism our DPS is slow as shit and easy to dodge... meaning it takes 2 seconds to actually start putting out dps. This leads to:

- Lots of ranged enemies LOSing while only showing themselves in the open for 3 seconds at a time, as soon as they are targeted they run off and the remaining 4 people sit on you(along with melee). When you switch targets and start casting, the new target blows immunities and runs off while your previous target resumes dps / heals. Healers can pre-heal faster than you can target switch + recast. That = fail right there.

2) The "turret effect". Having to be aligned, grouped, stationary kills us as a class, both solo and boxed. Our ability to kill melee dps is really horrible. Talented warriors and DKs can be near impossible to kill once in melee range... and thunderstorm is a joke. Warriors (good, which above 2k you can assume they are) will either re-intercept you instantly or blow spell reflect while running 10 yards out of range.

- If feared, knocked around etc, you must re-follow and re-align yourself before reliably being able to DPS again - wasting 3-5 seconds each time.. which makes rotating CC pretty easy for a skilled team. This should paint a good picture of failure right there.

3) Lack of Snare / MS effect / Crowd Control. We have no (realistic) snare and no MS, and hex is a joke. This means we have to be twice as quick and hit twice as hard as a normal wiz cleave, or my rogue team for example. The difference I'm noticing MS effect makes is truly startling, Healers have to not only heal twice as hard, but they have less time to react and begin healing. The net effect is 3-4 times more difficulty in healing... not just the 200% healing amount you would expect on paper.

- With no MS effect, and being easily interruptable creates a separate problem as well. While its true we are a 4xDPS team which is normally quite scary in arena - with no MS I have found that losing even ONE shaman makes it almost impossible to out-dps a single talented healer. This means we are now RELIANT on having 4 dps all casting effectively. Either 1 shaman dying, or a rogue kicking/stunning a single shaman can make our DPS easily healable. This is a huge problem.

The reason I am so excited about my rogues... relates DIRECTLY to the above problems/roadblocks we are faced with as shamans.
Line of Sight gimmicks? Nope. I'm stuck to you like glue.
Slow casting/reaction/switching speed? Nope, all dps is instant cast and not silenceable.
Shutting down my dps? Nope, other than stuns (which everyone faces), I can pretty much maintain 100% of my DPS potential over time... something I never achieve as shamans.
Losing cause my 3x dps is healable? Nope, with MS and instant casts, just TWO of my rogues can put out as much healing pressure as 4-5 of my shamans. This pretty much sums it up.

[Ruodhaid]

Well at 70 there was alot of shamans hitting 2k, and that was kinda high back then, and it wasent relly that hard for a boxer, but when we hit 80 and pvp was so stuped shamans were just to soft to be playabel, and i think thay made moste old players quit, thats for sure the main reason that we dont see alot of them anymore

you can look at my movie in the bottem of this post, that was done in lvl 200/213 pvp gear only weapons and shields were pve, sure i could 1shot alot of players and yes the movie is recorded at low rating as i never got more then 1600 rating

at 01:36 in the movie i face a team covered in furios gear including 2350 weps and that was the top gear back then, try ot see how fast thay killed me, in secund go vs them i removed there warrior pritty fast, but then there mage/shaman burned my main shaman in 2 sec? and i relly found that was the same story over and over again were i got owned by rating sellers

i could priolly have gotten higher but didet relly try as i took a brake from wow just a few days after making this movie

http://www.vimeo.com/5585886

[Fat Tire]

I was expecting to see some 2200+ shammy teams by now. What exactly seems to be keeping you guys from breaking into the top? Tremor killers + fear bombs? CC'ed healer? Unable to burst down initial targets as expected? I've heard rumblings about melee cleave issues but you've got 4 big knockbacks + earthbind. That screws me up bad enough when there's just 1 shaman. What's the deal?

I was thinking about doing something serious with my shammy team since my restokin team was a bust and more than 10 games on my rets seems counterproductive but i dont know now...

Thought you were going feral with your druids?

Asonimie post summed up quad shamans to a T

imo healing is insane in general currently /shrug

[Iceorbz]

Warlocks and AOE stun lol.

On a serious note for me, i really think its my BG that keeps me from hitting at least 1800-2k.
At an 1k rating, I was playing half the time guys in near full relentless or having relentless weapons. When you face off against disc priests in 30k hp's... not sure what the hell to do with that I didnt have the spell power to burst through most of them.

[Kromtor]

ya i'm having flashbacks of my hunters now, melee weaving in and out dealing damage while the healers and ranged dps LOS'ed... yech

[heyaz]

Zero margin for error past 2000.

Beat a 2300+ team 4 times in a row, they figure out a strat we can't counter - never beat them again. Have to quit for the night if that's the only team playing.

Wizard cleave? If we get a few wins on them, they adjust to this exact strategy:

1.
- Get grounding totems down.
- Totems on cooldown? Bloodlust + shadowfury + global any of my shaman, through pain suppression.. 3 shaman left, can't kill anyone with gear.

2.
- Get grounding totems down
- Realize I have them ready, not on cooldown - LoS game and oom my priest, or even attempt to global my lead shaman while I can't really dps anything because they'll just see me cast and run away.

God forbid we get them on blade's edge or dalaran sewers. Ele shaman flanks, or even just runs straight at you, thunderstorms your guys to the far corners of the map. We started having my priest pop the grounding totem and I hit IWIN button as the shaman rides in... but most of the time I leave the shaman at like 5% hp as I can't finish the macro (CL would have killed them) since I'm in mid air at that point.

Blood elves on the team? How about shadowfury + aoe silence. Trinket + drop groundings instantly won't work against that.

I have over 3k spell power unbuffed on my main, and a lot more with totems and cooldowns, and rocket gloves, and a single cc'd shaman, or a little rng, and your focus target, whom they have no idea you were targeting, lives with 1000 hp and gets a NS heal to full. After that, it's difficult to coordinate any burst that's really a threat to a good LoS team. I'm still just at a loss for words as to how people manage to run 10 yards behind a pillar during a bloodlusted lava burst cast, and avoid them all. When I play solo I can't even make it 2 feet, I just get hit behind the pillar.

Massive amounts of passive healing that with a little RNG will save your nuke target with just enough HP to get a nice big instant heal.

A plethora of AOE cc that gimps a grouped caster team to no end.

A bubble on practically every class that any player over 1500 rating has wired to their brain for instant reaction time.

List goes on. But I'm sure we'll get a little lucky streat and hit the 2100s if not 2200, but I still don't have a good proven strat to get there. We're already using every trick in the book, all kinds of split cc with arena1-5 targets, interrupts, focus, hard switches, thunderstorm rotations.. what's left?

[heyaz]

I was expecting to see some 2200+ shammy teams by now. What exactly seems to be keeping you guys from breaking into the top? Tremor killers + fear bombs? CC'ed healer? Unable to burst down initial targets as expected? I've heard rumblings about melee cleave issues but you've got 4 big knockbacks + earthbind. That screws me up bad enough when there's just 1 shaman. What's the deal?

I was thinking about doing something serious with my shammy team since my restokin team was a bust and more than 10 games on my rets seems counterproductive but i dont know now...

The thing about thunderstorm is if you do it to them, they'll go like 2 feet away, and it's a miracle if they fall off the bridge or the platform in the sewers. Paladins will run right back, ferals and warriors will charge in mid-air (they're that quick), and DK's will often get a nice death grip off when you thought you had grounding totems down.

If a single elemental shaman does it to your team, you will fly 30 yards in every direction, except maybe one shaman who will get stuck by himself and get gibbed.

[Void]

Yep blades edge only way to knock someone off bridge is to blow 3-4 TS but like it was said a single TS on me and all my chars are pinned in corners somehwere.

[daviddoran]

The mass AOE CC and damage spells astounds me. its too easy for a team with half a brain to do a cc sequence and pick off shaman one by one. the warlock aoe stun has way too long of a range, they cast it and run out of range and im helpless, then a blood elf does an aoe silence, then i get thunderstomped, then aoe fear, etc etc. the whole time I'm unable to do anything past my first use of the trinket.

The AoE Everything needs to get toned down, maybe diminishing returns on any sort of stun/CC? Although the supposed DR on Fears doesnt seem to work when its multiple classes doing it.... In AV trying to cap a tower, I've had a warrior priest and lock run in and chain fear me, and it seems like i get the full duration every time.

It's made me not want to do arenas at all, but thats the only way to get gear upgrades until 3.3 for me.

Rated BGs might have hope, but I fear that all it will do is put these arena gladiators into BGs and they will continue to rape us.