Outside of your very few offensive (burst) abilities to increase damage... your damage is consistent and normally not enough to force healers to oom in the time it takes them to kill you after you've AMS'd. In 5's you basically need to AMS offensively a majority of the time or to avoid ring of frost (which is instant now so that isn't really all that possible). As multiple dks in arena if they have a single frost mage and any other burst class you can be killed before your paladin can trinket/bubble to heal you.

With shaman you get an instantgib and possibly a second instant gib if you aren't CC'd fast enough or they do it at the wrong time in which case you win.

Dk's in general right now aren't all that strong and require specific compositions to do well. They are not a class that can be stacked to become more effective right now. Dk's for the group get nothing other than silence + grip + AOE freeze which you can easily get out of.

Shaman get grounding totem for anti-cc (need ams/lichborne for this), get anti-fear (lichborne) that can be done round-robin which makes fears useless, AOE damage increase, AOE freedom, Heals, Two forms of CC (stun, hex).

DK burst being on 1 sec GCD per ability can be a big deal since oblit hits so hard... but if they get bop'd and have a bunch of things on them even glyphed it will be hard to get it off (unlike shaman with double purge).

Shaman have more survivability as a GROUP, on an individual basis because of pet sac you have more on the dk (but you will die in 5 seconds anyway).

If you plan on doing bgs either works, dks are stronger IMO because of the cleave damage but the increase in damage to that skill over time will not be proportional to the amount of health you will see in later seasons where as enhance shaman's 1 shot really isn't going to change.

Shaman are also one of the only offhealers that make a difference now because of the glyph for maelstrom weapon.


Like i've said before and will continue to say... if you want to do really well in arena play a multi-class comp with control, burst and play with other people... if you want to play yourself with no one to help then do bgs on dks+hpal IMO.