Shamans in Arena - week1, my thought

[Alemi]

I really am enjoying arena. Played games 5 boxing my druid + 4 shammies and a few games with a priest friend and my shammies to get him his conquest points for the week and raise his cap (I even asked him to go shadow).

Just my thoughts/observations...

• Mana is an issue... a big one. I've completely dropped chain lightning from my rotation because it's just a mana hog and find myself popping water shield for the passive regen when I can. I can easily attest 50% of my losses to simply running out of mana. I can have it down to 3v5 but if there's a feral druid or warrior up, they can keep me in combat and do enough damage to keep me mana starved and slowly take me out.
• Resilience, obviously, is necessary. Teams that had resilience were REALLY tough or beat me completely. Also, with my 500 resilience 5% damage reduction, 10% damage reduction from casting I still got hit with a freaking 34k heroic strike.
• Stacked Healing Rains = OP as hell.
• Ring of Frost... not as big of a concern as I thought. I can't confirm but I think grounding will absorb the freeze effect and as long as you don't move, you don't get refrozen (or people kept breaking them with aoes).
• Curse of Gul'dan is groundable, but will drop a circle around your totems.... I try to drop my groundings a little to my left so I'm not in the circle o'stun.
• No one can heal over steady burst. Double healers were still unable to counter the constant burst, unless I gave them time and stopped to heal. 150k prot warriors were still dropping pretty fast.
• Spiritwalker's Grace - absolutely amazing. If a shaman/mage/hunter try to run out of your range, pop it and take them out. It's better than EM imho.
• Feral druids suck. They can easily drain my mana and a single healer can out heal my damage with their reductions, cc drs, and melee dancing.
• With mana an issue, it's almost imperative to kill non mana using classes first because they will just keep you in combat and prevent any drinking.
• Bring lots of water. You will need it, even for a just a few seconds to let that water tick.
• Need to test out stoneclaw absorb, but can't figure out a glyph to drop for it.
• Glyph of Hex is really really really nice.
• Need to get spell penetration, bad. Resists are going to be a big deal.
• MMR is broken beyond belief.

On a side note, my druid right now has more AGI than INT since he's in mostly tank gear (didn't take too much int get questing up) so he's just there to solar beam & instant root... his damage is useless, but moonkin form is a pvp taunt and i can't tell you how many teams focus fire him down over and over again.

Ended over 1300 which was #2 on the fail BG that is retaliation.

Oh, and my priority kill list based on what I've seen teams do to me so far:

Warriors > Feral Druids > Hunters/Deathknights > Enhancement Shaman > Elemental Shaman > Healers > Balance Druids > Mages > Warlocks > Ret Pallys > Rogues

[Lpwned]

I gota say man... that just amped me up for arena!

I have been leveling my shammy's for the sole purpose of Arena. A friend of mine is leveling a Holy / Prot pally right now. Level 84.5, but going out of town for a week

Are you in mainly quest gear / heroic PvEs? Or do you have any PvP gear?
Also, did you try Enhance?

I played with it a little in WotLK (Never got to arena as I hit 80 post Cat patch). It seemed relatively powerful. I was surprised that I was always able to keep my guys together in BGs. I'm not sure if it has the level of raw damage you need as a boxer though. None the less, 8X wolfs all stunning would be a Healer killer. That coupled with stacking Storm Strike debuffs + Earth Shock.

[remanz]

since we are talking about shamans, I have one question


Say I am a rogue on the opposing team. You come out and set your totem farm. My teammates of 4 come out hide behind a pillar. I stealth up to you at 20-30 yard right in front of you. My teammate charges in. At 30 yard, I use smoke bomb right in front of you. You are not in it. My teammates are all protected by it for 10 seconds. For 10 seconds, you cannot target me, and I get to nuke your team for 10 seconds.

How do you counter that. Run up and thunder storm ?

This is obviously theory crafting.

smoke bomb reference

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=76577

[Littleburst]

Niiiice write up, thanks for that. I'm wondering how much resilience we're gonna get and ofcourse how much damage reduc it will be, once fully geared.

Because i think the currenct lack of resi situation could be in our benefit. Unless AoE still hurts like a truck.

[Kruschpakx4]

Did a couple of games today, I dont see any problems to get 2k or 2.2k with shamans in a couple of days but I'm switching to the death knight team for arenas because once everyone has ~30% damage reduce the damage is too low to beat the high rated teams with shamans(no more instantlava kills). I think death knights are the ultimate arena boxing class now, stacking necrotic strike is really retarded now and if blizz doesnt fix that death knights aboslutely have gladiator potential

btw ring-o-frost is srsly overpowered

jk grounding totem

[Alemi]

A team did exactly that yesterday, while you cannot target into the smoke cloud, you can make their lives hell for doing so. Immediately dropped healing rains and treants for passive healing and then hurriquaked into their smoke bomb. While I cannot target them directly, you can AOE. I have hurricane glyphed for 50% movement reduction to anyone affected & earthquake x4 with the chance to knock down is pretty damn nice. Effectively ruining their 3 minute cooldown and putting their healers at a massive healing deficit across their team. Soon as smoke bomb ended I was still over 60% health on all my guys and their were under 60%. Immediate em/lava burst and then it's 5v4, hexed the hell out of them and then spiritwalkers graced and ran away from their melee while nuking down their priest (mana burns hurt a TON). 5v3. Then mop up.

Enhancement is a pita imho. Roots will effectively kill you. While it's hard to peel a shammy off because their can remove snares and/or ghost wolf. They have 0 defenses against roots. A single frost mage will make your life a living hell imho. I much prefer elemental.

I'm mostly in PVE/Heroic/Justice gear and had a whopping 500 resilience yesterday. After the conquest reset, I'll bump that up to about 900 tonight.

As an FYI - I fought a warrior with 150k health, 1.9k resilience (20% damage reduction) and had him completely dead with the initial volley (fs -> lvb -> lb -> thunderstorm) in a number of matches. I fought them about 7 games and went 2-5 against them. Prot Warrior/Ret Pally/Feral Druid/Arcane Mage/Resto Druid. The single deciding factor in that game is the damn feral druid. I couldn't take the time to nuke anyone down because I was constantly having to deal with his bleeds ticking for 6-9k while being arcane blasted when groundings were down while the resto would toss a few heals and then wild mushroom spam.

Most of my losses were to this team, a double feral druid team, or another team with a feral. I'm just having a hell of a time dealing with their damage and balancing that and focus fire. As I get more resilience to manage their bleeds, I think it'll be a ton easier - not saying easy, but better than it is now.

[remanz]

Good stuff, that clarifies the "smoke" problem for me. I was having a bit of doubt due to the smoke bomb for shamans.

As I also mentioned in another thread.

Feral is broken. It almost counts as 2 persons. When you focus burst him, you better kill him quickly. Or he comes back with that 40k Mangle in bear.

[Alemi]

Good stuff, that clarifies the "smoke" problem for me. I was having a bit of doubt due to the smoke bomb for shamans.

As I also mentioned in another thread.

Feral is broken. It almost counts as 2 persons. When you focus burst him, you better kill him quickly. Or he comes back with that 40k Mangle in bear.

And if you keep attacking him in bear he'll barkskin/survival instincts/frenzied regen while you feed him rage while attacking him.

[Kromtor]

sounds good so far.
i bet when everybody's in resilience gear though it's going to be a whole different game, they'll be able to heal through it and it'll be a question of who oom's first. if people end up doing endurance/drain teams and there's no GCD kills it won't be good for boxers.

edit:
i used to be in retaliation but i left cause there was so little 5v5 activity. i went to shadowburn which is marginally better, but if you really want good 5v5 you have to go to bloodlust which is west coast with shitty pings for us east coasters.

[Mercbeast]

So long as you don't run into a BE DK multi-box group you should be ok