I am really sick of being useless at PvPFollow

Un. Be. Lievable. I'm sorry, guys... I really am at a loss for words. I just don't know what else there is to say at this point.

Edited, May 11th 2008 1:20pm by Gaudion

You should care about my ratings as a rogue, because I've experienced more of what good shamans can do than apparently anyone in this thread has.

Your analogy is completely idiotic, btw. If we were talking about killing bears and someone was saying it couldn't be done via a bear trap and I posted a video of someone doing it with a bear trap, then that would be what my argument is analogous of.

What Quor and I are saying is that there are countless shamans in the 1500-1900 bracket; it takes skill to get out of that bracket, something that evidently no shaman here has.

If one of you shamans can post your armory with a Rival or better title or 1900+ ratings, go for it. But until then, you really don't have much room to talk, since I've played against shamans that are way better than you.

Just because you're bad doesn't mean the class is.

Edited, May 11th 2008 10:16am by Theophany

What I don't understand is how someone who obviously has an ounce of intelligence on the rogue forums can completely lose all sense of reality when they visit the shaman forum. You have no idea if I am a good or bad pvper, just another assumption on your part.

According to your armory for the rogue in your sig, your ratings are not all that hot $hit either, so unless you PvP on another rogue, I don't know where you get off saying you're better than everyone else on the forum.

Pretty much at this point all I have to say about your post is thanks for playing, gg Theo.

This tread has pretty much become a circle-jerk for you and Quor anyways, so once you're finished back-slapping each other and telling everyone else how great you are, and how the class is fine, perhaps we'll listen.

Until then, enjoy!

The thing is, "high priority target" doesn't always translate into "threat" or "effective class". Sometimes the easiest thing to kill is... just... the easiest thing to kill, and 4v5 is always better than 5v5. Especially since they most certainly can do "insane burst", but you pretty much have to ignore them entirely in order for them to live long enough to do it, and that's just not justification for anything.


My God. Finally a direct, straightforward answer from one of the two of you. I'm in awe. I'm even giving you a rate-up for that.


Mages don't rape Warriors because of their damage. They rape Warriors because of their damage and their ability to control them like a passive-aggressive girlfriend. Having played both a Warrior and an Elemental Shaman, I'm personally inclined to give the advantage to the Warrior assuming equal gear/skill, but I'm not about to start ripping pages from you and Theo's playbooks, so I'm going to leave your skill unquestioned and we'll just file this one under "agree to disagree based on which side of the fence you're on".


The difference here is that all you have to do is add one healer and the Warrior ascends to the position of interchangable for top DPS in 2v2, interchangable for top DPS in 3v3, and, you guessed it, interchangeable for top DPS in 5v5. Add one person, from one of three classes, and you are the bee's knees.

Add one class to a DPS Shaman in 2v2 and they are still just a bad investment. Add one--and only one--specific class to a Resto Shaman and they have great potential in 2v2, but still play second-fiddle to Druids. Add any Shaman in 3v3 and you are passing on something much better unless you add two specific, non-interchangeable classes to a Resto Shaman. And finally, add four other people and a DPS Shaman finally becomes useful.

One of these is not like the other.


How many PvP sets do Warriors have, Quor? How many do Rogues have? Theo? Regardless of spec, Warriors (with the exception of Prot) and Rogues always do the same thing. The Shaman fills a completely different role and must wear an entirely seperate set of gear for each of its three specs. Changing specs, for a Shaman, is quite literally like rolling a new class.

A Shaman can not afford to spec and gear freely from Resto to Enhancement to Elemental and back again, which you and Theo seem to think is perfectly plausible. In this case, 1 + 1 + 1 does not add up to one solid, well-rounded class, but three different, highly-situational ones.


And this is where the fact that you have no investment or attatchment to the class comes back into play. You don't give a good God damn about Shaman as anything other than buff-bots for your Warrior, so why should you care that we'd like our preferred spec to be workeable without being accompanied by words such as "fodder", "liability", "second-fiddle", and "buff-bot"? The answer is, quite simply, you shouldn't. And you don't.

The Shaman's plight is perfectly reasonable, and let it be duly noted that I'm not claiming it to be any more so than Fury Warriors, Aff/Destro 'Locks, SV Hunters, Holy Priests, etc. The difference between you and me is that I don't go into all of those other class' forums and tell them all to shut the hell up in order to make myself feel better about... whatever it is, Quor, that makes you the way you are towards Shaman. You don't even want to acknowledge the fact that Shaman might have a problem with anything other than being too awesome all the time.

I actually empathize with and support those other classes in getting more spec options, including your Warriors and Theo's Rogues. Variety, after all, is the spice of life. No less so here in WoW than anywhere else.

Edited, May 12th 2008 4:26pm by Gaudion

true, elementals dont rape warriors because of just their damage; they do it as a function of their damage, their heals, and their high physical mitigation (highest next to a plate class + shield). thats not as good as what a mage has in 1v1, but its better than what a mage has if a dispeller is present, so it has its advantages and its drawbacks.

as for the fight itself, the elemental shaman that scare me are the ones that keep me out of zerker stance. i have to stay out of it or else they crush me with NS+CL and EM+ES. that alone is worth ~3k damage on a pvp-geared shammy, and thats assuming nothing crits. thats 1/4 of my life gone in under three seconds. with crits, we're talking a good 5k life gone. searing totem and periodic shocking, along with some minor dps from flametongue on a 1h is enough to whittle me down the rest of the way.

the best way ive seen to counter this is to utilize 1h+shield and try to turn their power against them with well-timed spell reflects. the problem is, the gimps my own dps by quite a bit, so if the shaman takes his time and plays the waiting game, he can come out on top. thanks to the gigantic neon sign that is the spell reflect icon combined with a mod such as NECB that shows buff timers (or, barring that, counting to five), its quite easy for a shaman to never be spell reflected. shield bash becomes a matter of whether or not i get pump faked; if i do, the shammy gets a free healing wave or nuke off. if i dont, then ive got about 4s with which to deal damage using my 2h before i need to swap back to 1h+shield. i can use zerker stance for a brief period during this time (which i usually employ to get an intercept stun for another 3s of "free" time) but immediately after that ive gotta get back in battle, or else risk the CL/ES combo i mentioned above.

truth be told, elemental shaman are one of my favorite 1v1 fights. if the shammy is good then its an intense chess game where hes trying to outmaneuver me and im trying to discern the true intentions behind his actions. we're both thinking 2-3 steps ahead of each other, trying to out-anticipate what the other is doing without completely ignoring the present. its quite fun.



first off, i wouldnt call it a plight. id call it more of a community-wide belief that happens to be skewed. secondly, ive said most (if not all) of the same things to the shaman in this forum as i have to the druids in the druid forum (of which i am a "big dog" if you will). they didnt like it any more than you guys did, but that doesnt mean im going to stop saying it; i firmly believe (and of course, i could be wrong, but my gut and outside points of view tell me im not) that shaman are, on the whole, fine in pvp. they are a group reliant class in order to reach their full potential, and that carries with it certain advantages and detriments. they dont have the synergy with other classes that warriors do, but thats because shaman wernt designed from the ground up to be group reliant (like warriors were). as such, the worst that could be said is that the class is going thru a period of growing pains.

as for problems with the shaman class, i dont see a lot of things that could be changed. one thing that would help a lot for both shaman and paladins is reducing their vulnerability to interrupts and (for shaman only) possibly giving them some kind of cooldown-based anti-cc maneuver (since paladins have a few of those already). nothing major, just something they can use on a 45s-ish cooldown that pops them out of any form of CC (not stuns or snares, since this isnt meant to be an inherent pvp trinket). however, most of the suggestions ive seen on this board, while interesting, are just grossly overpowered and/or completely unnecessary. now, i dont chime in on those (especially on DP's thread where it was purely a suggestion-based thing, and stated as such) but when i see what amounts to unjustified QQ coming from someone who doesnt want to take the time to better their characters, and then discover that a bunch of people have a very low opinion of the class they play that is very much at odds with what most high-rated people i know (myself included) think....then i gotta say something.



yeah, it does suck. like i said before; growing pains. warriors were designed from day one to be a group-reliant class. shaman are, more and more, becoming group reliant. but they were not designed from the ground up to be that way.

but just as blizzard finally addressed the issues that druids had sat on for a good two years, im confident that theyll address the shaman ones too. im pretty certain it wont take a complete overhaul of the class and its mechanics, but ya never know. im inclined to say that small-to-medium tweaks will be the name of the game, but nothing as drastic as completely new skill sets (before WotLK at least) or totally revamped talent trees.

and now i must work, so i shall return later (something which im sure you all eagerly await with the utmost excitement).

That's because there are roughly 20 Duelists on Draka; I know all of them.

To run into a lot of the Duelist shamans, you'd need to be doing arena in the 1800+ bracket.

Still waiting for someone other than Quor or myself to post their armory so we can see their team ratings, thus validating their opinion on shamans in arena.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Azgalor&n=Longinous

this is me as you can see i am in a very poor bracket all though I haven't arena in about 2 weeks and these where more for fun, I am missing out on a 5s team, one that would look at this would probably assume wow longinous needs to l2p...

Here is the problem I am not an idiot I know how to play,i know what to do to counter enemies I know what spells and buffs to look out for, i know how to kite ppl, and sure all this of me saying i know how to pvp may seem like jack **** to most of you because based on my rating i suck and must suck.

you may also want to tell me l2arena gear to move up if you have resil and stam you would be higher... i have about 460 resil (if you dont believe me I can show you later)

Shaman can excel in arena i am sure. but if and only if his team can control the feild and keep the shaman up long enough for him to BL them, yes I can **** someone up pretty nice with my burst dmg, **** ya my blood lust and wf totems and whatever the **** else i want to use to buff my group with can be awesome, but i need to live, i need to not be locked down, and i need my group to keep people the **** off of me long enough to manage this.

I love my shaman, in bgs i can do some nasty dmg to the enemy, generaly place top 5 in dmg and HKs, but in arenas where many groups will focus me down in seconds it can just be a pain.

Theo and Quor I am glad you get to experience higher end ratings of arena's, i am sure you know what your doing with your classes, but please just because you know a shaman that had a group carry them past the 2k bracket doesn't mean jack ****, and i say carry because thats what we need is a group to protect us in the arena just long enough for us to become ready to buff and make there efforts in protecting us throughout the fight worth there wild. shaman is easily locked down, we have little to no defensive abilities as a dps spec, our defense is our ability to heal, but when i have to start healing myself to keep alive it means i am seconds from death, if i have any melee on me they are not going to let that heal go off, and if they do what does it matter MS means i may aswell be stunned out of it, sure we where mail and even have a shield, still means nothing i drop pretty quickly regardless. oh and guess what if i am kicked out of my lightning spell i can't heal or intterrupt anything for as long as the duration last except maybe frost shock wich wont save me, we have no way to control the field to lean towards ourbenefit, sure we can do some snare abilities but they need to be reapplied often and are very limited.

Shaman in arena's requires a lot of a team effort, just being in a team does not cut it, warrior in a team all he requires is some heals he doesnt need the group protecting and holding his hand at every given second, shaman does. now you can argue and continue to argue all you want shaman is fine l2p whatever the hell it makes you sound ignorant, but there is no way 90% of shaman think we are deficient in arenas is wrong, we aren't just being a bunch of ******** we have excepted the truth, and trust me I love pvp I hope maybe a power shift happens or even if bliz through us a bone or two, but as is shaman is not on par with the other classes in arena, we just are not, we can excel no one disagrees we wont with a good group, but that doesnt mean because i have 4 people working well to keep me up and I buff them and woot we pwn are we an amazing class in arena, it means that 4 players worked hard to keep there shaman friend up long enough for his buffs to matter.

please lord please let this stupid thread die, because all it is, is a lot of dumb and alot of flashing of ego and a lot of bs, "top dawgs of shaman forum" shuddup. Rogue and warrior that seem to know what they are talking about in arena about all classes because they rolled classes that excel in arena shuddup... no one cares anymore, and whoever said it before i agree, draeneipally stop using the top dogs of shaman forum thing it sounds stupid...

BTW when did alla resort to post on your main or your full of **** ******** tactics this is where the semi smart people come to discuss...

(I apologize for the angry post and if i used a lot of vulgar language I assume will be replaced with odd random symbols, have a nice day)

Well the whole reason I asked to see an armory was because of the "I know how to PvP on my class, therefore I am master of all things shaman" holier than thou attitude. IDC if they have the greatest rogue/warrior of all time, if they're not rolling the class THEMSELVES in arena, then they wouldn't know what it's like to get blown away 1st target every time with a survival time of about 20 seconds. It's frustrating, it's boring and it makes you feel like a liability to your group. The prevalent attitude was one of "I have more PvP experience than you, even though it's an entirely different class that I pvp with, I will come here and tell you what's what." Hence the armory request, if you're not rolling a shaman in arena, I really don't care for what you have to say.

I did not roll this class to be a buff-bot bloodlust sacrificial pawn. I want some survivability and the ability for a DPS spec to be as PvP viable as the other classes. Out of the 9 classes, by and large shaman are the worst for PvP. If shaman are not in the worst state of affairs right now, then tell me, what class is? That is why most of the class are gleefully waiting some alternative to tide them over to WOTLK since Blizzard stated 2.4 was our last major fix patch until the expansion.

Basically anyone who disagreed with those 2 either do not know how to PvP...right, an entire forum of people, some of us rolling shamans pre-BC have no idea how to pvp effectively. At least SOME nuggets of truth slipped out in Quor's last post, kudos for that.

Is not geared for PvP...right. You can have all the resilience you want, hell you can hit the resilience cap, it still won't help when you're getting CC/snared/fearspammed/spamstring/kidneyshot/blind/gouge/frostnova/skillcoil...etc...etc...etc...

The shaman mantra should just be "Can't do that while stunned"

I'll say this. Shamans are not to be effed with. All classes have their downside and it is really up to the person playing. If you want to play something that takes no skill and you're just a killing machine then you need to play something other than WoW. If a class was that easy no one would play it.

You need to figure out how you like to fight. I like to smash faces, bump and run so I play a shammy and a pally on PvP servers. You might also think about your faction. If you're an adult you might like playing horde better since you'll be with folks who put some thought into what they're doing rather than pushing a few buttons.

Good luck to you.

Class Breakdown of 2000+ and 2200+ Teams

Shamans aren't the bottom in 2v2 OR 3v3.... but we're definitely WAY down there.

Things only look up for us in 5v5 (which is where our buffs give the most buffage). If all classes were equal at pvp, you'd see equal percentages, but you don't. When you have almost 3 times the number of rogues and warriors at 2000+ compared to shamans, I'd say that's fairly unbalanced.

Is it possible to get high ratings? yes, but obviously it isn't as easy for some classes as it is for others.