So, you want to PvP as a DPS spec?Follow

This ought to have gone at the TOP of your post.

I do consider this your opinion, and my opinion of your opinion hasnt changed. While I appreciate your attempt to add a resource to this board, its brevity and lack of genuine depth begins to resemble vanity press.

I will say one thing, since I am no longer dealing in opinions with you people, as you seem unable to stick to a single line of inquiry; the Shaman underrepresentation far exceeds their unpopularity as a class. In terms of simple percentages, there STILL ought to be a lot more Shaman than there are, and there arent. Taking the evidence (ie; not opinion) presented, I still have yet to hear a non-rhetorical, non-opinion explanation from anyone as to why this might be.

You can talk about your opinions all you like, this is a discussion forum, but until you present a genuine potential explanation for the evidence presented, it is pure intellectual ************ on your part.

~sin

Your sarcasm fails, because that's exactly what he's saying and exactly what a DPS shammy should do. Like it or not, that's what shammy PvP is. Some of us have learned to except that fact - I try and tank the opposing team, debuff up enemies, keep my teammates dispelled and alive until they can kill one of the enemies. I am NOT there as the primary source damage. I am the distraction who knows when to put out some burst when needed. Suck it up, QQ moar, Theo is spot-on with what shammies do in serious PvP.

EDIT: Well, I suppose that's not exactly what shammy DPS PvP is. You need to put out damage as well, but your primary role is group buffs, offensive dispels, and probably locking down a caster with shocks.

Edited, May 20th 2008 12:43am by lsfreak

I'm just going to put in my two-cents before I leave this thread.

In my experience with arena. As Resto I don't really have any troubles with dying. If i get into it 1v1 with someone the only classes I have any problems with would be rogues stun lock and poisons of course) and Spriests (mana drainage FTL). But as elemental I lose a huge amount of survivabilty w/o having earth shield. I can't really do anything to anyone if I have a rogue/warrior bashing my face in, interupting, knocking back my casts. And getting away from said rogue/warrior isn't very easy. You see rogues have poisons and tend to use slow poison or w/e. It tends to stay on me and another gets put right back on after I cure it. A warrior can hamstring me which lasts longer than "FROST SHAWK!" and lolbind totem can be one shot. So if they do get in range and another team mate of his starts to attack me. Even in my arena gear I'll be dead soon. But this is the part where theo is going to say something like "The healer is going to heal you and it will be okay, k?" Not exactly. When the healer is focus healing me, he isn't healing anyone else. and there are 3 other people on our team that are fighting 2 others that have a healer on both of those two. While the opponents attacking me will not need many heals. A couple small ones here and there since I'm basically throwing shocks on them.

So eventually it comes down to if I can stay alive. Because when I die the team loser it's highest output of damage. And it comes down to a 5v4 scenario, and when it comes down to it. Just based on the fact that we're down a member (myself) odds are in the other teams favor. Chances are unless my team can backpack the fact that I'm dead and manage a teabag worthy win, we're going to lose.

That about sums up my experience in 3v3 and 5v5 as elemental. 5v5 was much easier but the above tends to happen a lot. 2v2 is another story. I played 3 games. Never again...

Who is the shaman on a 1850 arena team?

Theo is not an 1850 rated Shaman, he plays a Rogue. His perspective is based on watching what other Shaman do in Arena, not playing one himself in the higher brackets.

Theo, my personal suggestion to you is do what I did; make a few good Shaman buddies and convince them to let you play their account for a week. I played a 2.1k rated Shaman (remember nobody is saying it's impossible with mostly S3 gear and I was still horrified by the arena experience. You might think they're 'desirable', but for the actual player (this being a game designed for enjoyment) it is a really boring and crappy experience.

In any case, the issue of massive underrepresentation persists unaddressed. Never mind eh.

How about, rather than constantly addressing each other and disagreeing on the viability of a DPS-spec shaman in high-end Arena, focus on getting DPS shamans who come to this forum to do the best that they can, as broken as they might or might not be, in the arena?

Let's concern ourselves with how we get as far as we can, instead of the issue of how far we can get.

Edited, May 21st 2008 3:56pm by Raglu

Wow I don't read these forums much. Glad I don't, the defeatist mind set makes my brain hurt. Theo wrote a good guide on 3v3 and mostly 5v5 as an enhancement shaman. Where is your own shamans writing guides? I don't care about the drama here, or your forum overlord. If I come here as a new shaman I want advice on how to play, not crying and drama. This is a better shaman guide written by a shaman alt. Why don't you mains step up to the plate and write a better guide? Maybe if you did this thread wouldn't be necessary.

But the guy wrote a good guide that makes alot of sense.



My main is a mage, and I cast a whole lot of sheeps and defensive novas. Part of my job is being a very good CC'er. It's tough juggling CC and damage when your sheep target is baiting you and ducking behind pillars, but it's an important job that has to be done, and done at the right times. I still have to pump massive damage while keeping CC up. If I'm going to die, I do my best to help the team as much as I can before dying. Geting a last sheep off against a player with no DR timer can be huge. I also tell myself as a mage, don't die without ice blocking twice. Do it out of LOS of priests when possible, make them work for a mass dispell.

Some of the 5v5 makeups Theo suggests scare the crap out of me as a mage. Triple melee with imp expose armor up on me and a priest to mass dispell my ice block? My 10k health and 420 resilience will keep me up for all of 8 seconds through double heals before I go down.



I haven't seen the drama/argument threads here, I really don't care. You guys just blindly followed your forum overlords role and **** all over this guide for no reason, as an outsider to the shaman forums you have no idea how sad it makes you all look.




Grats on....account sharing?

Edited, May 21st 2008 5:43pm by mikelolol

It's so easy to say this sort of thing and entirely ignore why there were detractors to the posting of this guide. You may notice I said "I appreciate your attempt to add content", and I do, there certainly arent enough guides posted here and while it is a nice attempt at doing so it doesnt address any particular issues raised, it simply re-iterates points made in another thread but this time with bullet points.

Now the 'techniques' described in this guide still do not address the class concerns, and do actually more or less boil down to casting your buffs and Purging. This is a bit galling for the other posters as the point was that merely casting your buffs and purging (you're rarely able to cause damage due to thrice-repeated inability to close distance/avoid shutdowns) is no real fun. If you're not a Shaman this doesnt matter, because you're not playing that class, you can see the group-benefits but not the player experience.

Nobody has ever said that DPS Shamans have zero potential in arena, except for a few clearly over-reactionary posters. There is a world of grayscales between 'Shaman are fine stop QQ' and 'Shaman suck cant do nothing' whines. My point, and Gaudion's too, was that the class is on the shade of gray that needs some adjustment to give it more of a role than a buffbot and purge machine, due to that role being absolutely no fun for a DPS class/spec.

Alas, I regret that the misunderstanding persists between relatively educated and expressive individuals, I guess if people are expecting flames that's all they end up seeing.

The most annoying thing is that this has become, as all internet discussions seem to, polarised between two equally ludicrous extremes so that nobody can be correct anymore. Shamans are not fine. Shamans do not suck. The truth is in between but we have apparently given up on finding it.

Actually, it was more your misguided "Enhancement PvP" post, that had very little information that wasn't already known, and provided to real strategy as to what team comps to look for and how you play the class in said comp.

While yes, mobility is a factor in a shaman's detriment in arena, it's less so in 5v5, and that was my point. Enhancement shamans nearly have to be a focus target, or you need some way to CC them so they can't put pressure on your healers and DPS.

Good enhancement shamans will have a "/cast [focus=harm, exists] Earthshock" macro so that they can interrupt casts on a healer while they stick to a target that's being focused by a warrior/rogue. The point of the warrior is to keep MS and hamstring up, and the job of the rogue is to get EA up asap.

Ergo, no kiting worries, because everyone's moving at the same speed. Generally you're going to pick a lock/priest to focus down first, because they have some of the most detrimental effects to cast on your team.


And how high have your teams gotten? I'm not asking this to be demeaning, I'm asking for curiosity.

If you're 2k rated and saying that, then alright. If you're still in the 1500-1700s, though, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you haven't run into any geared enhancement shamans.

The reason--as I've reiterated a plethora of times--that DPS shamans get bursted down is two-fold:

First and foremost, they're an offensive dispeller. Nearly every 5v5 team has a paladin on it, and have that shaman free to walk around negates that benefit. It also happens to negate Blessing of Sac, Blessing of Freedom, etc. Priests are focus targets for much the same reason, in addition to Mana Burn.

The second reason is damage output. Shamans, if left alone on a target, can put out incredible numbers. The main reason that it's hard to see is because often shaman damage isn't used appropriately. Damage in arena is only worthwhile when there is a healing debuff up; that's a truth, and it's hard to debate that unless we're talking about catching someone overextended, and thus won't be receiving any healing at all. When a DPS shaman is on a warrior/rogue/hunter's target, the healer has to focus his attention on that one target. The advantage to this is that you can set up a switch target.

My team uses it all the time. We burst a target til BoP (sometimes our hunter can dispel it, other times they've still got too many buffs up), then switch to a secondary burst target. It's a common strategy used, as it tests a healer's target switching and healing. Sometimes on 4 DPS setups you can even throw an Earthshock/Blind on the healer as you get your second burst target low and then it's either bubble or watch your teammate die. After bubble is up, it's a simple process to switch DPS to their healer, kick/pummel/earthshock him down, and you win.

I consider myself an arena player. I PvE on the side to keep from getting bored when I'm not playing arena, and because my guild needed competent DPS. Hence, I find any discussion of arena interesting, and to hear a whole class with a defeatist attitude, I started to do research. I looked into the viability of enhancement and elemental in PvP, even though I had a good grasp of elemental's PvP viability, it being much more common in arena than enhancement.

It was one of my favorite classes when I first started playing; My three original toons were a rogue (duh), hunter, and a shaman. My shaman was my third 60. I had a blast with TUF back then. I was sad to hear how enhancement fared in S1 and S2. Now that it's making a comeback, it's like shamans already have a preconceived notion that enhancement automatically is equivalent to going into the arena naked and just throwing up Bloodlust and dropping totems.

I've laid out basic strategy. Granted, I'm much more interested in the enhancement side of the class, as I'm a rogue, and enhancement pairs well with the rogue class in 5s, but I'm still working on gathering the knowledge to form my own opinions rather than just taking a few disillusioned shaman's opinions of the class when they haven't even seriously tried to PvP.

Because let me ask you this: how many of you have dropped professions to gain one trinket for PvP? Or a set of goggles? I've done both to increase my gear--and thus odds of winning--for arena. It's paid off. I PvPed so much that I was ready to reroll to avoid more AV. I've bought roughly 30 AV tabards in the past few months now, I've played so much AV and had so many extra marks.

I'm not saying no one here is as dedicated to PvP as I am, I'm just asking if anyone puts as much work into getting better as I do on my rogue. I'd like to have a chat with people that have put that much work into their shamans, because they must have more insight into the class than most of the overlords of the shaman forums, otherwise said overlords would have written a PvP guide.

I am in no way trying to flame, and I wish that people could see that. I'm not insisting blindly that enhancement is as viable as resto, nor elemental. All I'm saying is that with the right gear and comp(s), it's still a viable choice.

And this is relevant to the thread how?

Speak for yourself, it's fun as hell. You can only DPS so much before it gets boring. Having to keep up with who has what buffs and debuffs, who's focusing who, in order to know what to dispel or CC and when, and then knowing when to switch over to trying to burst, and so on, is so far the funnest thing I've run into besides downing a new boss for the first time (bonus points if it's first attempt as well).

Though coming up against those druid/enhance shammy/warrior teams in full S3 with Sunwell fillins sometimes ruins it >.>

Edited, May 23rd 2008 5:25pm by lsfreak

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