I am really sick of being useless at PvPFollow

I was under the assumption that "these days" enhancement shammies ARE welcome in raids, no?

Still my shammy is one of my most loved toons, no matter what everybody says. They are just fun to play with the many many options we have and that is what WoW is for me... play time.

Edit: woops! It just showed the OP to me, so I thought there was no input yet. Didn't read up that means so if something said is doubled, excusez-moi!

Edited, Mar 18th 2008 5:30am by Immunios

If you think druids and their HoTs are OP, meet Mr. Disc priest and get a clue.

Pardon me for asking, i'm kinda new to shammies, previously raided with a pally healer and decided that some pewpew in my life would be fun. I was wondering, doesn't ghost wolf get over the whole mobility issue? what more with instant castability in 2.4, can't shammies simple ghost wolf, get close and burst, and when targets try to escape, simply ghost wolf again and chase? So far i've never heard that shammies don't deal enough damage in pvp, all the complaints i've heard are about their kitability and lack of CC. then again, i probably have no idea what i'm talking about.



They're the least played class in wow, so i'm not surprised.

The funny thing is I have the same gripes about no CC as everyone else does with my Shaman, but now that I've played thru some end-game content instances and gotten a ton of honor in 70 battlegrounds I have to say my annoyance has dissipated a bit.

First off, I should disclose that my main toon is a Tauren Shaman spec'd Enhancement. When I dinged 70 and did my first bg, I was pissed. No lie. From probably the 39 bracket up on the Reckoning battlegroup I would place in the top 5 in # of KBs, # of Deaths =P and Damage Dealt, usually 1st or 2nd for the Horde side. In the 70 bracket, early on, I would be lucky if I survived the first 10 secs of a battle. I was literaly reduced to Lightning Bolt monkey, as Enhance mind you, til a clothie would get to 50% and then I could melee for the occasional kill. And 1 v 1 encounters, pfft forget that. Insta-Death.

Now here's what changed. First off, for the Enhancement spec, luckily, the PvP bg gear is like first freaking rate stuff. So after my first AV weekend I had 3 pieces of the S1, which made a tremendous difference. Once I had 4/5 pieces socketed properly and enchanted thats when I was able to run Kara, and with a little luck picked up a weapon upgrade, Fool's Bane, and a nice ring.

Presto. Gear-wise I wasn't perfect but instantly I was surviving encounters longer, critting for sick WF damage and topping the BG charts again.

But the main thing that changed from early-70 to geared 70, was the way I approached things.

A few BG tips for us Shamans out there:

1) Be a Purge spammer. Seriously, for battlegrounds nothing can turn a battle like the plunging stats of your opposition, so if you can remove a buff(s), you better freaking do it. Sometimes that last purge means the difference between surviving the encounter and being spit on by that pink haired female gnome.

2) Download a few mods like Xperl and Totemtimers if you haven't already. Also design 2 macros that have /castsequence then whatever totems you prefer for an offensive encounter or defending a spot or node. IE: Grace of Air, Searing, Strength of Earth for Offensive. Xperl has a range finder, for knowing when your shocks are in range, and Totemtimers allows you to see how long a totem is up for and warns when they expire or are hit like the Grounding Totem.

3) Know thy enemy. This is probably the easiest thing to learn, yet the hardest to master. My Xperl setup has the name of the class I'm fighting rather than the symbol for the simple reason of processing info faster concerning what class I'm up against which dictates how I approach the fight. If I'm attacking a Warlock, I damn sure want to make certain I toss that Tremor Totem and possibly a Grounding or Stoneclaw depending on which pet is out.

Mage = Grounding, Searing, PURGE shield then Grace

Paladin = PURGE on closing, Grounding, Searing, Mana, Strength

Warlock = PURGE the armor buff, Tremor, Grounding, Searing

Rogue = Trinket, Earthbind, Flameshock (prevents Stealth), Grace, Searing

Warrior = Grace, Searing, Healing, Strength

Shaman = Grounding, Earthbind, Searing, after Grounding is gone drop Grace

Priest = Tremor Totem, Searing, PURGE, PURGE, PURGE

Druid = If its resto and you are alone just Earthshock it and go kill something else, otherwise: Earthbind, Grace or Grounding if Boomkin, Mana, Searing

Hunter = Earthbind, Grace, Searing

4) Use all of your tools. 20 min CDs on elementals should be decreased IMO if they want to make us more PvP and PvE preferred, but I drop an elemental at any flag almost the instant the CD is up in Battlegrounds, why not? It's 2 mins of extra damage, distraction and it clutters up your oppponents targeting like all those totems do.

5) Finally, expect to die. You will. Alot. We don't have an escape button like other classes, so my goal in any fight win or lose, is make sure those muthafudgers know I was there.

I tried pvp for the first time about a week and a half ago and i loved it!
I can take on rogues easily and most am able to take others off guard. I purge any and all buffs i see on people that are fighting against us and within range.
generally, i just frost shock+earthbind if their are running. then go up and stormstrike and earthshock. generally, there is another person with me grinding them down but boy does that frost shock and earthbind make a difference, especially against mounted passer byers. By the time the realize they cant get away and have to fight, they are down to below 85%.

But then again. I was lvl 49. I hit 50 on sunday and don't think i will be pvping anytime soon. Compared to most of what i've seen for the last tier points in talent trees, enhance as well as elemental don't seem to measure up.
unstable affliction, shadowstep, shadowfury, VT, (to name a few) all with relatively small to no cooldowns while ours we get a totem that allows 3% more crit even tho its a casting spec and (like some1 up there in this post has said) get shut down alot as elemental anyway. Enhance gets a buff that gives us 30% less damage taken and a chance to get a percentage of our mana bak from our attack power. By no means is this a bad thing to have, but compared to others tier points, it doesn't seem to measure up.

just my 2 cents.

Yardstick, care so share some of your strategies?
I would love to know how to handle being Ganked in world pvp for such 1v1 situations. Or when I'm solo defending a node in BGs.

From my personal experience (as Ele spec), as my resilience gets better, I can survive long, sometimes enough to let the rogues run out of energy, toss a heal and wait for the cavalry to arrive (in BGs).

Rest of the time, the key is to stay 'hidden' and behind and spam LB and CL. If you are up against opponents worth their salt, they WILL switch target and come for u, especially warriors (zoom...) So normally I try to make that that LB and CL counts. LB 1st, Ele Mastery, CL. That will make the LB and CL hit at about the same time. If you are lucky and your opponents are too preoccupied, that's good. They'll die fast with you are the artillery supporting your front line.

As for Enh Spec, in BGs, there are situations where they'll be damm powerful. i.e. when opponents HAVE to approach of stay near an area (e.g. trying to cap a flag or tower). When I was still enh spec, I give up in world pvp. Just die fast and get ready to collect corpse.

Enh shammy is actually the only class I fear getting up on my priest in any pvp situation.

Disc spec with 444 resilience and ~1500 healing. Spam purge annihilates priests.

I rarely see an enh shammy in the 1700+ brackets in arena, but that will likely change next patch.

For me, it's a moot point really. I was resto for a long time pre-BC in order to raid, and now I find the healbot role incredibly boring. However, if I were to be resto again, i would much rather have a resto druid than a shaman. Yes we can spam chain heal, and we are good burst healers, but the fact that our 41 point resto talent is lawl-dispel-arcane-shot-huntard dispellable is really frustrating.

If Earthshield gets dispelled, it should dump all charges at once, this would be a decent deterrant to actually dispelling it.

kompera pretty much nailed the problem on the head. every non-pure dps class has the same problem. druids get it easiest, because feral happens to be the tank and dps tree rolled into one, so they can go as either without having to respec. warriors, paladins, shaman, priests....they kinda get screwed, as well as balance druids for that matter. a dps warrior, paladin, shammy or priest is taking up a slot likely filled by a mage, hunter, rogue, or warlock. with the exception of the priest on some mobs (mind control) no one brings CC over what the mage, hunter, rogue or warlock bring.

the best solution at that point is to try and make your own groups. theres an old old joke from final fantasy XI about the dark knight class from the original japanese players. dark knights (or drks, abbreviated) were said to have the "auto leader" job ability, because there were so many classes capable of filling the damage role that the only way a drk would get a party would be to start one, and then fill it with players.

dps in WoW usually has the same problem. more people want to dps; no one (relatively speaking) really wants to tank or heal. but tanking and healing is just a bit more necessary than dps.

so it becomes a question of whats important to you. if you REALLY want a group, and they need a healer, you can opt to fill that role. if you dont feel like doing that, you can wait, and hope to get in a group (or start your own) as a dps. its kinda the curse and blessing of being a hybrid; you have the option to do many things, but a lot of the time you need to make a compromise between what you want to do and whats needed if you want to actually do something in a group.

the rub of it all is, a lot of the suggestions given to buff shaman viability in various aspects of the game are REALLY unnecessary. ultimately, shaman (and other hybrids) are much more viable than DPS classes are because shaman can fill multiple roles (dps or heals). a dps class has, at best, dps + crowd control to bring to the table, and youre not going to get thru an at-level instance on crowd conrol alone. you can, in most situations, make do with an off-spec healer however, as long as that healer knows how to heal and is geared for it.

Chain heal isn't as effective in pvp as lesser healing wave is. Which basically takes away our group healing for pvp.

You've got that all bass-ackwards.

Misconceptions, player preference, and discrimination do not dictate arena representation at higher ratings. Raw, unadulterated effectiveness does.

Most of the people (I would be willing to say nearly all) that play the Shaman class do so because they favor the class. People that pick classes based on effectiveness and care about winning more than anything else--known as power-gamers--do not roll Shaman. If Shaman talents and abilities were given a complete revision to make them more effective than, say, Warriors or Rogues if you're Enhancement, or Mages or Warlocks if you're Elemental, I guarantee you the Shaman population would see an increase in players and in representation at 1800+ as a result.

I have to say I'm surprised this thread is still going!

I'm done with this class for now. 2.4 was a MAJOR disappointment for me. Our idiot lead Developer, Kalgan said that 2.4 would make shamans (particularly enhancement) viable for 2v2 arena. Guess what, no chance.

Instant GW...helps a bit. But anyone with any clue knows to purge it, or arcane shot it and you're snared again.

I'm sick and tired of being cheapshotted, gouged, blinded, kidney shotted, CC'd to death by rogues. Even when you do trinket the blind, you're already 1/2 dead by that point. I have 10K health and 11K armor with my sield on (which I always macro on when rogues attack me) 350+ resiliance and undergeared rogues still kick my enhancement *** while I stand there "you can't do that while stunned" over and over.

I can't get a group for a heroic as enhancement. Go ahead, try it, I dare you. If you're not resto, you don't get heroic groups, period. I'm not re-gearing resto, it would make months and months of welfare epic grinding for nothing.

I got kicked off my arena team, as I can buff the group, but a mage ended up taking my spot as their damage is higher, plus they can CC a healer. Not that I was not playing my role well or not dropping WF like I was supposed to, I was just always viewed as a liability. I get targeted in arena first each and every time. My survivablility in arena is about 20 seconds. Enough time to drop totems and pop SR and Bloodlust, that's about it.

I'm not freaking rerolling, I do not have the time or patience to grind another toon to 70 when I have 1 month+ played on my shaman. Now that GTA IV is here, with warhammer and AOC coming out, I'll not be returning unless we get some serious consideration and fixes on WoTLK...which we won't.

Cheers, good luck.

Edited, May 4th 2008 4:20pm by Taurrus