Elemental x5 Arena and BGs - Need Advice

[daanji]

Hello everyone! I hope that some of the pros out there may take the time to read my post.

I recently leveled x4 shamans (I already had a shaman as a main) and my intent is to do PvE and PvP.

Once I hit 80, I rocked the heroics and have cleared everything so far.

However, I'm hitting a wall when it comes to BGs and arenas so I'm seeking advice.

My arena team is here: http://www.wowarmory.com/team-info.x...+Paths+of+Pain


The gear on the main is decent, the 4 alts I'm just starting to gear up via badges and honor farming.
Without further ado, I have several question that I'm hoping someone could answer (Yes, I have looked around quite a bit already).

1. Is there a guide to x5 elemental PvP? Anyone resources would be appreciated


2. So far, I'm getting rolfstomped in BGs and arenas. It is probably due to my lack of resilience, but just want to make sure. I'm not doing something wrong. Typically, when the opponents spot my team in a BG, a ret paladin will come by and divine my group to death. Usually, they are mounted and rush into the middle of my group. They dance around me in circles and I can't do much and I usually end of dead. How can I counter this? I usually thunderstorm x5 (seems to knock them back x5 the distance) and I use my earth bind roots, and I purge them like hell, but I still fail.

3. Click-Cast Sequence

In PvE, I'm using the click-castsequence tragey as outlined in one of the many threads. It works very well. Should I also use this for PvP at all? I have all the important abilities key bound (tremor, grounding, earth bind, fire ele). But the main dps rotation (flame shock, lava burst, chain lightning, lightning bolt) I just use the click cast sequence.

4. Movement

During BGs, I typically get AoE focused. I usually try to strafe out of these, but usually I get slowed or stopped as well. I try to find the person or person(s) doing the AoE to interrupt them, but by that time I'm already low on health. Perhaps once I get more resilience this won't be an issue.

5. Round-Robin

Currently I have, earth bind, wind shear, and tremor (to get 1 second fear breaks) on round robin. Are there any other spells you recommend I round-robin as well?
Perhaps thunderstorm?

6. Opponents Dancing Around You

Say you are faced by 2-3 opponents who close the distance very quickly via a mount. How do you kill them if they keep running around in circles? Mainly, ret pallys and blade storming warriors are major headaches.

7. Magma or Searing Totem

In BGs or Arena, should I drop one of the other? Situational?

8. Hex

Is hex worth casting at all? I suppose I could put it on round robin and keep CC up on someone for a while.

I suppose in arena, if I could set the focus to a separate opponent on each shaman, I could randomly hex that toons focus whenever I wanted. Thoughts?

9. Gearing

Right now, I'm running BGs and arenas for points (I try to win and have won a couple, but usually roflstomped lose).
In warsong gulch, my team makes up 1/2 the raid. Sometimes if the opposing team is bad, its ok. However, I've been yelled at and told to stopping queuing. Should I just stick to heroics and winter grasp until I have 5/5 PvP gear on all toons at least?

10. Knock Backs, Fear, etc

It seems like in arena, that I spend more time trying to maintain order than dpsing. I use FTL system, but with the fears, knocks backs, slows, etc. My toons end up facing all sorts of directions.

11. Insta-gib

So I've been hitting opponents with x5 lava burst and they aren't dieing. Perhaps my gear is just that bad and they outgeared me by that much? Though, I doubt few could survive x5 flame shocks and x5 lava bursts hitting all at once.


Sorry if my post is long. Any input is appreciated, even if its GTFO noob! Read this tutorial over here...

[Littleburst]

with <600 resilience there's not a lot you can do against a warr lolstorming you. And you playing 4 sham + seperate healer is the best setup for shaman in 5vs5.

Best bet vs melee is Chain heal, or if you're dropping fast a Lesser healing wave 1->2 2->3 etc. drop magma totems + use fire nova. Just shock them and heal through the damage. The problem here is that you die way to fast. Try getting WG shoulders + 4/5 furious, then you might stand a chance.

Always drop your totemfarm, 4 or 5 healing streams = awesome.

macro for hex in arena if you have gladius(which you should):
#showtooltip Hex
/cast [target=arena1, exists] Hex
chance the 1 to any other number on the slaves. and you cast a hex on all 5 players with a single click.

People surviving 5 Lvb probably had a cooldown popped, shieldwall, hunter reflect thing, barkskin, salvation or w/e. Then someone still has to have 25k hp and 1k resilience to survive though i think.

[Bettysue]

That's a good macro listed above, and for the record it does NOT depend on an addon arena# targeting is a function of the core UI not an addon. However, gladius is a very nice addon, if you leave chat bubbles on it provides a decent visual on whose up and doing what.

I've found chipping away at one while keeping up through the initial burst helps a ton. When I get charged, I spread out, trinket the first fear, if it hits more than 2 guys I blow the trinket on all 5. Heal the focus target till they really fix on him then hit my IWT and back really quick to face my kill target without closing up on each other, and nuke the hell out of it. Once EM is used I bloodlust and FS while all the guys are returning to follow on the current leader. By the time they gather up, FS and LvB are ready to go on a target that was not hit with FS during the gather process, this is usually a focus target on all the chars.

With hope the healer blew CD's on the guy they thought would be nuked and you've killed 2 guys with all 5 of yours still up. At that point it's just clean up and prevent rezzes. Remember you can nuke a player in a global, ignoring the healer is an option you will need to exercise whenever possible. If they have more than one warrior, or a warr pally combo, gib the healer with magmas down on the warrs. Try putting 2 purges in with a windshear, to get healers. Timed properly it will either get them to run or they die to incoming dmg. Never chase healers while they have DPS up, you'll get destroyed.

In your case though gear is more important than any strategy, get your resil up, while keeping high spell dmg balanced with enough spell pen.

[Ualaa]

1. Not sure if there is a guide per se... You'd probably want a pvp spec on them, something like: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hVIVqcd0tGfuAo0gRco. Go with Glyph of Shocking, after that its a preference. I'd use Glyph of Lava and Glyph of Fire Elemental for battlegrounds, but Lightning Bolt is a large portion of your damage too.

2. Do your arena games each week for the points. You might as well try to win, as some will queue and not even enter. And every game you lose, lets you learn why you lost. And practice how to kill people, etc. Don't get upset if you go 0-10 for quite a while, at this stage its about the points.

Also run Wintergrasp each week, its a lot of honor and WG marks and Stonekeeper shards are good too. There is gear you can get here, which is pretty decent for pvp. Especially the new three items brought in, in the last patch.

Over time, your gear will increase; until it does, not much you can do against a geared enough toon. You can try to spread out and such, magma's or other aoe totems, snare totem etc.

3. For PvP, especially with 5x the same class... don't bother with click. You'll want manual control of all your spells.

4. Gear will help for sure. As will more experience playing in the pvp environment. With 5x Healing Stream and Chain Heal, you can last through a lot of AoE's, but getting out of them is an idea too.

5. I have Fire Elementals, Earth Bind, Tremors, and Thunderstorm on round-robin. Also have a macro - all Healing Stream, 1x becomes Cleansing, 2x becomes Cleansing, and 3x (all) become cleansing on subsequent presses. Also have everyone drops: Grounding, Healing Stream, Magma, Nature/Fire/Cold Resists.

I've just build Wind Shear into assorted spells. So on a Flame Shock one shammy does a Wind Shear. On a Lightning Bolt, a different shammy does Wind Shear etc.

For the Totem Farm macro. Set up the wow ability which drops one of each totem type as the round robin. So, you drop 4x totems on Shaman A, then press two has Shaman B drop 4x totems etc. That way, you have your Tremors staggered on minimal GCD's dropping totems.

6. Make a vs melee totem stomp. Spread out if you can and heal through it. They're taking damage and are snared, you're healing and eventually 4x of your 5x shaman will be nuking them down.

7. I like Magma if they're near me. Used to use Searing a lot, but generally have Totem of Wrath in my stomp macro now, for the PvE spell power glyph, which might be decent for PvP not sure on that.

8. I've not messed with this, but you could have it target arena frames. Or perhaps /targetenemy (and 2x /targetenemy, and 3x, and 4x) to have it land on a different player for each shammy. Hex is pretty weak, but it is a spell interrupt something like silence.

9. Run a mix of BG's, but the only one I can contribute in well is AV really. You're too dependent on your team in the others, and with a boxer they rarely do what you need them to, for the team to have a shot.

Heroics will get you pvp gear via badges, faster then grinding battlegrounds.

10. If you're serious about arena, get a dedicated healer. Go with 4x Shaman, either rotating your toons in so each has similar rating and at least 30% of the games, or just stick with 4x for arena. And maybe grab a DK or Pally or another purely PvE option for the 5th slot.

11. With gearing, 4x Flame Shock + Lavaburst should kill just about anyone that it hits. It's not a guaranteed kill because of bubbles, pain suppression, decursing magic, line of sight etc. In BG's it should be, and if you catch someone in the open it should be too. With 5x, and it's not a kill, I'd guess its a lack of spell power.

You can also have the IWIN button target a focus target on all toons. And then have them on someone else. When the untargeted focus is in the open, the macro will target the IWIN at him.

You could mess around with having all the slaves /target arena 1, instead of /cleartarget... to disguise who you are going for.

[ash1ey]

Cool thread answered a few of my own questions as well.

You can also have the IWIN button target a focus target on all toons. And then have them on someone else. When the untargeted focus is in the open, the macro will target the IWIN at him.

As soon as i started using /focus for my kill target it has made a huge difference. I usually open with a few lightning bolts on my target and healers will generally think im about to nuke thim, then I use bloodlust and spam my IWIN macro on the focus.

/cast [target=arena1, exists] Hex

I use a similar macro for purge so that when i spam it, its hitting everyone thats in range.

When I hit 80 i was striaght into arena for lols and it sucked but just keep playing for practise and points. Soon as you get geared you will see a huge difference.

My BG sucks for 5s and atm i've been letting random friends play with me as well, I had some decent success bringing in a rogue, he would stunlock a healer and i just one shot my /focus. Have a decent priest joining so im hoping to improve on my 24% win ratio this week

Did a funny thing this week in arena actually.. went to ress my rogue as i had some stupid disc priest LoS me pillar hugging and i had 3 guys up. So the first person i targeted it let me ress so i automatically assume its my rogue friend, next thing i know i just ressed there holy priest :O I managed to kill him before any heals hit him luckly. So go back to ress the rogue and let the stupid priest ress his druid mate, anyways we won but it could have been worse.

Problem i had today actually. I managed to wipe out all this ones team dps and was left with 2 healers. So they split up either side of the map so i can only go for 1 and both start to ress :/ was a real pain in the ass ended up just leaving cus i hate long games.

[Ualaa]

I've not really implement this yet, but have it on my list of things to do with the feral team.

Prioritize Focus over FTL, if focus is set.
So I could theoretically... have a druid or two, on a healer target.
And spamming the dps key would alternatively have them target their focus and do a DPS, then target their focus and hit their IWT key.

Not sure if this is just an idea, that might not be useful.
Or if there will be an advantage to this.

[Danos]

I only started arena a few weeks ago as well and am not particularly good but I bring my priest in and have him spam heal on my shamans dps buttons which kinda works - I found they just got burnt too fast otherwise, so maybe switch one of yours to resto and spam CH until you can find someone to heal for you. There's a couple of threads on here that I found really useful for macros, I'll find them and link them. A few things I've found though:

- focus target priority on your IWIN button helps a lot.
- try and focus a ranged dps (use /focus arena1 macros to quickly focus the same guy on all your toons), keep an eye on where that guy is so when you press IWIN it's used well.
- melee I find a real pain in the ass but drop magma/FN to keep some pressure on their healers and round robin TS while you try and kill a ranged.

[Danos]

This thread has a couple of tips and Acidburning links some very useful macro threads.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=28565

[daanji]

Thanks for the input guys.

My game has improved and I've acquire more pieces of gear. My main has 1300 resilience while the others have about 500.


I have another question that I hope someone can answer.

I wanted to create a macro specifically for BGs. What I want is to cast Hex on all 5 shamans, but one 5 separate targets.

It there anyway to do this? It is easy to do in arenas...

[daanji]

So here is a macro I came up with. I've tested it out in BGs and seems to work ok. The only drawback is that sometimes hex will get cast multiple times on the same target.

#showtooltip
/targetenemy
/cast [target=target, exists, nodead, nohelp] Hex


Then on each shaman I add an additional targetenemy.

So for the fifth shaman, she would have 5 targetenemy statements.

Seems allow me to have each shaman target a different enemy and I can mass hex a group swarming me.