groups that LoS your shamans

[Mokoi]

So, i was doing arenas.. and I went up against this team, 2 elemental shamans, 1 holy pally 1 Hunter 1 warrior. lots of ranged DPS.

They got smoked the first time, on lordaeron and we got 20 pts.

we got them a few more times, all losses.

They figured out that i could only really DPS one target effectively at a time, and so they would try and surround me (opposite poles in nagrand or opposite sides of bridge in BE) and they would send one DPS in at a time to throw a bolt or multishot, the warrior would charge in every once in a while and then defensive stance reflect jump off bridge etc.'

wtf can you do against this? you cant realistically split your DPS and you cant sit there and take the odd hit every second by a different person. have you guys come up against this kind of stuff before? it seems like all arenas are built where you can LoS someone easily within the range of any ranged DPS (36y) so if you can split your team up, or even just stay behind one pillar, you can easily just toss one or two bolts at me and almost never take significant damage. problem is, pressure is all on me to keep myself alive and in mana, while they can use 2 guys to harass me while 3 of them drink if they need to..

I could kill one, easily just i WIN him, but then they have LoS anywhere they like to res. if i sit on the corpse, they have tons of places to be pricks and i have only one effective harasser.

how do you beat this team, they seem fairly horrible.. and they were in almost full s4 too.. against my s3.

[Vyndree]

You can't kill them, and they can't kill you with one person either.

I just refresh my totems, or let a few random attacks proc water shield, and wait for them to get bored. You waste more mana/cooldowns trying to hit them when they're just going to run away. Shoot to kill or don't shoot at all.

If you resolve yourself to be the impossibly patient opponent, they'll eventually get frustrated and a) make a mistake -- jump on them with burst damage and take one out, or b) decide that their tactic "isn't working" and do something more stupid.

Personally? If I know someone is going to just LoS/Pillarhump, just purge spam them or throw a bunch of cheap flame shocks and watch their healers rush to overheal them. They waste mana rebuffing, while you get to laugh at their paranoia.

Of course, if they're full s4 they could just be playing with you. I haven't seen anyone with anything more than s4 helm.

[Mokoi]

yeah that sounds good in theory, but.. if they are only attacking with ranged opponents, and they are staying max range so you can only get MAYBE one volley of LB off at them, before they run around or out of your range again, you cant kill one. cant. Specially this team with 2 heroisms and 2 grounding totems. when they are attacking from 2 sides, they can easily dodge all your assaults by just attacking whatever I am not facing. they can keep one guy on you and force you to stay in combat, while they can easily set one of their guys aside and let him drink. if you DO manage to kill one of their ranged, its going to be at their ressers feet, which means that they can easily res them, unless you decide to charge the corpse, which usually ends up with epic phail all over it..

the fact that they are in at least 3 pc s4 was just nailing the coffin for us, as we couldnt take them down when they were in rat scavenge be sneaky mode.

[Vyndree]

Did you take a look at Ellay's video on proper positioning?

You shouldn't even be trying to throw "just one lightning bolt volley" if you know that "just one lightning bolt volley" is not going to kill your target. Moving your team to a better location if it doesn't look like you can just wait through the dps they're throwing one-by-one is probably your best bet.

[Mokoi]

Yeah, i understand the positioning argument, but if you look at the arenas, and the range of hunter and elemental shaman, there is nowhere to go, where they are not within 5y of a LoS refuge, and even if you are totally in the open, they just walk away from you if YOU get in range..

so, what you get is.. 3 DPS ranging you, you target one, start casting, and then that one moves away, and the other 2 continue DPS. you switch targets, and that one moves away, the old one comes back and you once again have 2 DPS hitting you.

IF i move away, and backup, they simply move forward. if I move behind a LoS of my own, they meerly split up and take me the same way from 2 sides, there is NO easy los where you can always atatck them without being ranged or LoS in return.

[Alemi]

IF i move away, and backup, they simply move forward. if I move behind a LoS of my own, they meerly split up and take me the same way from 2 sides, there is NO easy los where you can always atatck them without being ranged or LoS in return.

In Nagrand, stand near the first pillar against ranged teams, and if they start coming from the other side of the pillar, drop some searing totems and earthbinds that will keep them in combat and stop their drinking. If they're splitting up, that's a good thing as eventually one group will make a mistake and their whole team will have to rush in. Against the team you're referring to, they only have 1 AOE fear which trinket can remove, so sacrificing a few tremors for a few earthbinds = priceless in this scenario. Reground for the elemental shaman, and wait for them to make a mistake. Flame shock and purge are your friends. I faced a setup similiar to this today, elemental shaman, warrior, marks hunter, sl/sl lock, holy pally. The warrior ran in for the first charge, i knew he was going to pop spell reflect and intervene out so I threw 1 volley at him and then switched to their hunter and took out the pet. Warrior came in a 2nd time, in which I had dropped 2 earthbinds, frost shocked him and then went to town. Dropped him, moved to camp his body to stop the rezzes (in which he died next to the opposite pillar). Then it was playing the LOS game with the hunter and lock, regrounding and stopping some rezzes. Had to wait for the right moment for the hunter to move away from his team (which took him out of the shaman's grounding range) and then ns/em/cl and got him down. I play with a holy priest so he was able to fear out the pally and you see how this goes.

Blade's Edge is a lot harder, but basically against a ranged team I never move to the center of the bridge. Staying to one side and force them across the center. If you stay at the end of the bridge, they can't pillar screw you. The biggest mistake I made here to start was jumping down to stop rezzes when dps was up, and I had to convince my partner that sometimes it's better to let them rezz someone than give up our position on top and leave the safety of totems. This was particularly true for people who jump off the bridge right before that last lightning bolt kills them.

Otherwise, Vyndree is right, you waste a lot of mana trying to cast on them rather than let them get bored. If they want to LOS me, I let them. I purge and shock - but I will not move from my position. And the teams I'm playing now are 3/5 S4 and 2/5 S3, so they're not exactly pushovers - just hit 1674 which puts us in the top 80 on my battlegroup.

[Boylston]

Vyndree is absolutely right, be patient and don't blow mana unless you know there's a chance you'll kill someone.

The OP's frustration is also justified. Against really good teams that chain-LoS you, I lose quite often... Getting better, but I still lose a lot.

Wait for them to make the first mistake.