Return of Mosg

[Ellay]

I'm still super torn on both. I swapped over a dk to be 1 Druid 4x dk and somehow I feel internally awful for it. Like I am shunning the class that defined me.
I did do a lfr last night and there was an enhance shaman pulling amazing dps. Hs rotation was the norm. I wish I saved his parses but checking his armory his ilvl was 487 with two badass weapons... So... Maybe enhance shames with amazing gear will stomp?
If I had the time on my hands that I did back in the day I would play both and be content but Ij barely have the for one set.
For Pve I would love love love to use 4x enhance shaman and a tank Druid and just off heal heroics that would be ideal. I think that can work but for pvp they just don't have a great gap closer..

[Shodokan]

I'm still super torn on both. I swapped over a dk to be 1 Druid 4x dk and somehow I feel internally awful for it. Like I am shunning the class that defined me.
I did do a lfr last night and there was an enhance shaman pulling amazing dps. Hs rotation was the norm. I wish I saved his parses but checking his armory his ilvl was 487 with two badass weapons... So... Maybe enhance shames with amazing gear will stomp?
If I had the time on my hands that I did back in the day I would play both and be content but Ij barely have the for one set.
For Pve I would love love love to use 4x enhance shaman and a tank Druid and just off heal heroics that would be ideal. I think that can work but for pvp they just don't have a great gap closer..

All melee classes innately scale with gear more so than casters. Melee REQUIRE gear to do well in PVE and in PVP. Theres a reason KFC with t2 stomps people where as KFC with t1 can be laughable to someone with gear.

They do have a gap closer... just a really shitty one and it is talented.

[heyaz]

I'm still super torn on both. I swapped over a dk to be 1 Druid 4x dk and somehow I feel internally awful for it. Like I am shunning the class that defined me.
I did do a lfr last night and there was an enhance shaman pulling amazing dps. Hs rotation was the norm. I wish I saved his parses but checking his armory his ilvl was 487 with two badass weapons... So... Maybe enhance shames with amazing gear will stomp?
If I had the time on my hands that I did back in the day I would play both and be content but Ij barely have the for one set.
For Pve I would love love love to use 4x enhance shaman and a tank Druid and just off heal heroics that would be ideal. I think that can work but for pvp they just don't have a great gap closer..

Maybe you could just have a separate PVE team? Even if it's just swapping the shaman back in with your DKs.
Someone pulling great DPS in LFR using a PVE rotation doesn't really reflect multiboxing pvp or pvp in general, where enhancement shaman are just limited.

4x enhance with a good rotation can do well in heroics with a tank and no healer. I know a guy who runs 1x warrior 4x enhance and blasted through most of the heroics in a night with little preparation.

You could always maintain both teams anyway, with a little more effort. Capping 5s not too tough, and running LFR all at the same time makes it easy. I play my DKs 80% of the time, shaman 20% of the time and it didn't take much more effort to keep my entire 10 box group geared for whenever I may want to use them.

[Mosg2]

I looked again at the PvP blog post and realized that I misread earlier--They're not just lowering the rating requirement for the T2 weapons et al, they're removing them all together. There's no longer really a "goal rating" that you want to hit in order to access anything--It just comes down to whichever team you have more fun playing. I like it.

With that in mind, I'm definitely leaning towards the DKs.

[heyaz]

I looked again at the PvP blog post and realized that I misread earlier--They're not just lowering the rating requirement for the T2 weapons et al, they're removing them all together. There's no longer really a "goal rating" that you want to hit in order to access anything--It just comes down to whichever team you have more fun playing. I like it.

With that in mind, I'm definitely leaning towards the DKs.

Yeah it's nice to know that eventually, you can get the elite gear (they're treating it like another tier of PVE gear, as it were), no matter what rating you have. In which case that coveted 2.2k rating, at least for multiboxers, may no longer dictate what comp you play (i.e. a comp with a much better chance in 5v5 yet overall less utility in pvp than another).

The rating will still play a significant factor in how quickly you acquire the elite gear, and expect the top players to have it in <8 weeks while it takes an eternity for players with no rating >1500 to get it.

The conquest requirement is 27000 to purchase the elite gear. I started getting as much conquest as I could (close to cap) on my DKs since late october or early november and I think I only Just passed 27000 points. My Shaman were in arenas (lol 3v3 elemental) beginning of october, they missed a few weeks here and there, but they also just passed 27k.

If you cap 1800 every week (assuming you can't do RBGs - but you could always spend an entire night queueing around the 900mmr rating and hope for a lucky win), you're looking at 15+ weeks, nearly 4 months before you can upgrade. So like... July.

That's why you'd wanna push rating. That and titles, and cosmetic gear or whatever. May be interesting to see how the new team rating inflation affects point you can acquire... wonder if you can just play a lot, be 2000 ish and have a good cap, while the good teams are closer to 3000 or higher.

I'm still not entirely clear on all the outrage about 2.2k rating if there is going to be a team inflation. If they keep going up, and 2800 or 3000 is the new 2.2k, who the hell cares about 2.2k anymore? If they keep the achieves the same and it works like they say, everyone and their mother will be an arena master.

[Ellay]

With all of that in mind. I tried out 4 DK's and having 1 Shaman in the comp is equally important. So I am back to 1 Druid / 3 DK / 1 Shaman. It's powerful and enjoyable and when I swap over to PvE it's extremely powerful having 6/8 group buffs. After all my theory crafting I feel at ease and hope to start expanding on it so others can enjoy it
in a nutshell Mogs, throw in a enhance shaman just for fun!

[heyaz]

Did you ever really conclude if the shaman benefits you in PVP at all? Compared to having a DK in its place.
Wonder if in the upcoming gear reset I could try enhance on one or more shaman.

[Ellay]

Trying not to hijack mogs thread too much just giving experience here.

I've done about 60 5's games this season and its been mostly with junky gear while my opponents out gear me.
The shaman brings about 1.5-2k dps more per character from the buff. They pump out in arenas roughly 22-25k each in current gear and the mastery buff itself feels like it adds 5% more damage. On a good game the shaman will do 18-20k and a bad game 12k. This is how I mark their performance. Also to note the Shaman is ALWAYS, targeted first. So he is getting stun locked etc while the dk's go to town. This actually isn't terrible since the shaman mitigates more damage blowing active cd's than a dk does its a weird benefit.
So the dps loss the shaman has is made up for in the amount if gives the others. Additionally the shaman gives the healing Druid 10% more spell power on top of the mastery buff which adds about 2k spell power and 6% more effectiveness on my heals through mastery. Netting my regrowrth spam an additional 10-14k heal per cast while in pvp mode.
additionally a healing stream totem is dropped or healing wave.
Plastic but not least solar beam is and can be a game changing opener. 4 second targeted aoe silence really sets the tone.

Lsing the extra double grip makes the death grip rotation a little more spread out I did enjoy a never ending grip practically every 3 seconds. You can also perform an aoe stun via asphyxiate on 4 targets instead of 3. And doing two separate double remorseless winters really adds to the cc.

At this pint I'm back in the 1x Shaman boat and if I can further tune/hone the dps/burst if may be another reversal where I get 3 shaman and a dk. The opening burst power on the shaman is really what wins the game and right now I am not dropping targets as fast as I would like to be. They literally have to flop as soon as you hit them with the insane amount of "outs" every class in this game has for the,selves and others and I still need to learn all of the abilities. I sat there trying to burn down a warrior today while a monk literally made him immune to damage.

So lets have a class merge! Give me the dk's with the shaman 3 minute burst and we'll call it a day.

[Chivalrous]

Ellay my enhance hit 478 iLevel and I tweaked her rotation and she did 78k DPS overall in HoF. I was driving from tank/healer most of the time. We just gotta keep gearing up and tweaking macros I think. It's getting better.

[Ellay]

78k is pretty badass. I should be able to upgrade my weapons to ilvl 478 and can maybe get some gear from the ah to get close to that. If we can replicate those numbers things may turn out pretty interesting for pvp