Really that useless?Follow

What type of pvp do you want to do? I've had fun with my shammy in the chaos of BGs, they're very powerful when working in teams. Haven't made it to arena level but I believe the QQ there, not the best 1 on 1 class.

Do you want the honest answer?

Shaman are currently the WORST class in the game for PvP...

Some may argue diffently, but those who have played a shaman pre-BC know better. Elemental is awesome until you're noticed and everyone will focus fire on you.
Enhance is awesome against...well nothing really, we can't escape, we can't close distance, and we can't break stunlock other than trinkets. Resto is just prolonging the inevitable.

I love playing as a Shaman. When a class underestimates me, I'll 2 shot them. Elemental has so much burst damage, and that's why every class will come after us. Left to do the damage, we'll rock any class, and fast.

I get it! That's funny! Har har har.

Your point being?

Anyone who claims they're two-shotting people at 70 is either full of it or not playing the same game we are. Even in the best case scenario that's not possible. Unless he's ganking level 20's...

Still not happening to people in PvP gear.

Everything would have to proc and crit, and the combined total chance of that happening is somewhere around 1.4% if I remember correctly. And even then it still wouldn't be enough. This was gone over in another thread not too long ago.

Don't underestimate Shaman, that's all I'm getting across. I can two shot some people, but yeah, stuff's gotta proc. And when it does, it's nice. We're not useless in the sense that we can overpower every class that comes for us, but if we're able to sit back or even get a small amount of back up, it's very easy to have your way with another class.

For the second time, no, you can't. Unless you're attacking pre-70 people or people still in blues and greens, you're not two-shotting anyone. Against an opponent in PvP gear, Chain Lightning, our most damaging spell, is going to crit for like 2000-2500. So 2250 (average crit) + 1125 (LO proc and average crit) + 2000 (LB average crit) + 1000 (LO proc and average crit) = 6375. That won't kill me, and I've only got 7700 life at the moment because I'm not even in full S1 yet. People in full PvP gear are going to be sporting 10k life easy. Even two of your top-end crits with full procs are not going to reach 10k. You can add a shock crit onto that and it's still not going to be 10k.

Try again.

I'm not arguing with you, fool.

I dunno. The guy's right in a "stuff's gotta proc" sense.

My mage has 6.5k hitpoints (limited PVP gear; just the staff)

My shaman's lightning bolts often crit for ~3k nowadays. It's not hard to see that with a LO proc and two crits I can two-shot a non-PVP-geared 70.

(note: Not trying to argue that this makes shamans strong in PVP...)

Edited, Feb 17th 2008 1:00am by Axehilt

You're retarded.

If you want to argue that these numbers are useless because they don't work against players with high resilience, fine. But don't say it can't be done or it has a crazy low chance against poorly geared players, because that's not true.

The reason you're retarded is you assume everything has to proc to kill my mage. It doesn't. My mage isn't horribly geared, he's just not amazingly geared for PVP. A sizable portion of BG PVPers are geared the same way!

After crunching numbers my lightning bolts crit for 3.1k and have a 34.x% chance to crit against my mage (including resilience reductions, trinket, bloodfury, TOW, and wrath)

(the two assumptions were (a) 5% dmg talent applies after +dmg and (b) WOWWiki's coefficient page is correct that we have 79.4% coefficient)

Basically I'd have a 13.6% chance of two-shotting my mage (.34*.4) because I only need one crit and one LO proc (out of two LO proc chances) to kill him. If you save EM for the 2nd bolt the chance raises slightly to 14.0% because at that point you only need two *LO procs in a row to kill the mage (.2*.2=0.4% added to your existing chance) (*the first LO proc will crit from EM)

14% is a reasonable chance to say that you can two-shot someone in PVP.

Again, I'm not trying to say shamans are good in PVP, just that I think your numbers were incredibly inaccurate. That said, I frequently do find myself at the top of damage dealt and killing blows in the AVs I dabble in. But it's just dabbling, as on the whole I find WOW's PVP to be fairly unenjoyable (even on my mage, which is a strong PVP class imo)

I haven't two-shotted anyone in BGs. But it's not uncommong to 3-shot them (earthshock in addition to the two LBs)

The math on my LBs was mostly to put it in more hard math than merely fixating on a crit or two and saying "Oh yeah I crit for 3.5k all the time!"



That's the chance for two LOs. I don't need two LOs to two-shot my mage! I just need 1crit + 1LO or 2LOs (if I EM the 2nd LB).

We can make up any sort of "iceblock" counters you want, but the entire point of this is the potential does exist and it's not ridiculously small (14% is reasonable). The sooner you concede this mathematically-proven point, the sooner we can get on with agreeing that it almost never happens in real world PVP due to a variety of counters existing.

Mostly because compared to my specific shaman vs. mage example your math was off by an order of magnitude, so it felt like you were using statistics as a bludgeon to support your argument, where it should've been applied more logically.

You'd have had my total agreement if you took my 14% chance of two-shotting, multiplied it by the actual percentage of PUG BGers with sub-6.7k health and low resil, and came away with the incredibly low chance of actually achieving a two-shot in real world situations.

Edited, Feb 18th 2008 2:44am by Axehilt