Shamans 4.3?

[death]

how do people find them performing, thinking of coming back to Mboxing my shamans (will need to lvl my 5th to 85) :P

[Bollwerk]

Depends on the scenario and if you are Elemental or not. I haven't done a 40 man BG yet, but I suspect Elementals might do a bit better with our AE buffs. However, with the buffs to melee in 4.3, I've seen some reports that casters are getting just wrecked by melee.

[remanz]

I think just sum it up to be "not enough bad players for us to stomp over". Losing give no conquest points, so most people just quit arena all together. + PVP gear not that attractive anymore since LFR is so easy. And ++ 5 v 5 is a dead bracket. Monday night in bloodlust battle group, I get an average 5min wait time for queue. and face the same teams over and over, arena just ain't what it used to be.

[Nikita]

Ques on Ravencrest EU is allways around 1-3 min. And you might meet a team twice, but nothing more than that.

[valkry]

For a class that was already a zerg target by melee, we get owned even more by melee. Thx blizz for buffing pvp due to pve lacking, thx

[smalltanker]

Resurrecting this thread a bit.

I went 8 wins for 15 losses in 5s this week as 5 elementals. I am as geared as I can be from regular honor grind and fully gemmed up on my elementals, so most of my team is iLevel 388 and sitting around 4500 resil, 134K+ health. And I do get wrecked by melees. My biggest issues are probably rogues and feral druids that stealth up.

But considering I am still working my set up I am sitting at 787 rating and there are quite a few teams I think elementals can destroy with out losing a toon.

So I normally drop my totems and I am currently favoring 5 healstreams, 5 grounding, 1 earthbind, 1 stoneskin, 3 stoneclaw, 4 searing and a magma to start things off and get my buffs folling. After that I drop 5 x healing rains on my spot and by this time I generally have my first target in range that gets the full fury that an elemental shaman x 5 can put out in arena. Blood DKs, Hunters, Retadins, etc... will generally be almost instant killed on the first salvo... after the initial I will generally shift to a chainlightning spam if the enemy team is stupid enough to stand together. I have thunderstorm x 5 on roundrobin and same for temor totems. I will if I can drop another healing rain x (how ever many shammys are left) and go hunting.

I think I would probably do better with a healbot along for the ride but the 5 x healstreams are hitting me for nearly 800 HPs each tick and healing rain for 1500 HPs with the occassional crit. that adds up to quite a bit of heal power. So melee still wrecking us but we could be alot worse.

[sethlan]

Smalltanker: thats awesome, btw i also i play 5x elemental shamans - question do you q up with all 5 people to do bg's? to get honor points? btw you go haste or mastery? I'm also working on 5x arcane mages team, I think it would totally own 5v5 arenas.

Also Small, what do you think about 5x Ench shamans in arenas?

[Ualaa]

Sethlan
The 40-man BG's (AV and IoC) are great to gear up in.
As a 5-man unit, you're only 12.5% of the entire team, which having in one place is not detrimental to your team.
Both of these are a PvE race to win, with incidental PvP going on.

If you're undergeared in the 15-man's (EotS or AB), that's 33% of the team in one place and probably not doing terribly well.
These can be won, once you have a decent level of pvp gearing.

The 10-man BG's are very hard to win as a 5-boxer; you have 50% of the team in one place always.
A 4-boxer has more success in the smaller BG's, as 4-toons can still blow people up and that lets the team be more flexible in where everyone goes.

I personally run AV almost exclusively, but will do IoC (on its weekend) if I'm gearing up, and if my team is geared will add (EotS & AB) on their weekend too.
I personally don't like SotA, nor the 10-man BG's; have never won one, as a 5-boxer.



Smalltanker
As a drastic change of pace, and in no small part due to watching Cyberus's video in The Commons, I've run my 5x Druids as Resto for the honor grind.
Initially, 1x melee would consistently take out my (quest geared, 0 Res) team.
They're almost fully geared now (have the 4.1 PvP Trinket, otherwise full 4.3 Honor gear).

As 5x casters (Resto Druids), melee aren't that much of a pain anymore.
I essentially Rejuvenate x5 whoever is attacked, and then Swiftmend x5 (for Efflorescence) and Wild Growth if necessary.
That will usually outheal 3-4 players focusing on the one toon.

It's important for me to get my 10x dots up on as many opponents as possible, and as quickly as possible.
5x Moonfire and 5x Insect Swarm does deplete their health gradually, while just healing myself eventually results in a loss.

The big cooldowns are:
- Tranquility (round-robin, frequently overlap them... starting the second when the first is half done).
- Tree Form (defensive) - I'd use this when fighting the end-boss, especially if horde run in to make it more difficult.
- Tree Form (offensive) - Wrath in half the cast time, doing 30% more damage can blow up fully geared pvp opponents in 3-4 seconds, and undergeared players fall to the second volley.

Important to note, you're running Elemental not Resto.
I'm running healer spec, and not Boomkin.
Not a perfect comparison.

My team performs very well with others around me.
And not nearly as well on my own.
Any 5x melee boxer destroys me, 100% of the time, and usually very quickly.

[sethlan]

Uallaa: AV and IoC are my favorite, I'm only sitting in S10 on my shamans. (old gear) I would like to grab S11 from honor points, what I did just Q up with 3x for 10s and 15s, bg's and kept rotating them to get the honor gear by the time I did that new patch hit :-/ I really wanna do 5v5's arenas.

[Nikita]

Im gonna be the first to say this, elemental shamans are in the weak spot this season. Against caster comps you stand a chance, but against melee cleaves or teams with a rogue/druid you are fucked! All DMG is through the roof, and against all these teams with major big defensive CDs you are pretty useless once you and your healers CDs are up. Thinking about throwing in the towel this season.