Sick of feeling like a punching bag in pvp

[Asher13]

Deterrence reflect that shit. It's really satisfying. They only do it once. Same with chaos bolt.

[CHRONICGODX]

please post pvp experience in greater detail than "8 years."

[paror]

40% pvp power here, still not hitting much 50k crits max brah. My advice just reroll spec and if you cant stand it reroll class it's what I did for serious pvp, I am gearing my shaman to resto now when I am not rbg/arena-ing on my mage.

[Shamatastic]

Something seems wrong here. I'm resto as well and mine hit for more than that. Prolly would have something to do with how geared the person you're fighting is vs your own stats. PVP punching bag ftl.

[Imhotep]

Elitist 1500 heroes trying to shut down the OP

Get fucked or contribute


I was serious about chilling out
- Endus

[LyskaWF]

Elitist 1500 heroes trying to shut down the OP

Get fucked or contribute


I was serious about chilling out
- Endus

He says without contributing.

inb4 Endus edit

[nezgral]

2600 ele shaman in 3s here, I decided to cancel my sub because i'm tired of this bullshit game. It will never be fixed, get used to it. I already hit 2200 as ele this season and was going to wait for 5.1 nerfs to roll around before we pushed glad, but it's really not worth it anymore, it feels like a vein is going to pop in my head every time I step inside an arena as ele.

[Makail]

Both DPS specs of Shaman are in a pretty bad place defensive-wise right now. Far to easy to just focus and face-roll them down. We need a deterrent like a defensive immunity (bubble, block, deterrence) or a "hit-me-you-die" button (think something like a 10 sec ability that removes the delay between Lightning Shield orbs proccing and scales their damage based on cast time or damage of the attack received).

Both specs also suffer from the ability to be completely locked down during their burst. The ultimate fix would be a blanket immunity to CC during Ascendance, but this seems unlikely (and overpowered). Perhaps immunity to specific forms of CC? Elemental gains Silence, Interrupt, and Stun Immunity. Enhance gains Disarm and Stun immunity.

[Deleted]

2600 ele shaman in 3s here, I decided to cancel my sub because i'm tired of this bullshit game. It will never be fixed, get used to it. I already hit 2200 as ele this season and was going to wait for 5.1 nerfs to roll around before we pushed glad, but it's really not worth it anymore, it feels like a vein is going to pop in my head every time I step inside an arena as ele.

sure you cancelled your sub

[Makail]

That's the wrong way to balance things, just because other classes have a bunch of ways to handle a situation doesn't mean you need them too. Those other classes should have their toolkit looked at and have things tweaked or even removed.

So instead of tweaking our abilities you remove or change the abilities of every other class? So in your mind they should change the following abilities:
Ice Block, Dispersion, Bubble, Hand of Protection, Cloak of Shadows, Evasion, AMS, Dark Bargain, all forms of Disarm, all forms of Silence.

All these abilities represent a 100% or nearly 100% reduction to a form of damage and I'm sure there are others that I've missed. So we need to change them say.. Disarm now only reduces melee damage dealt by 40%. Evasion now reduces melee damage taken by 30%. Dark Bargain now reduces damage taken by 40%. Ice Block damage by 40%. Cloak of Shadows reduces spell damage taken by 40%. And so on till all other abilities are damage reduction instead of 100% walls.

... or you could just give the classes that don't have a way to counter stupid amounts of burst damage an ability that allows them to.

[Endus]

... or you could just give the classes that don't have a way to counter stupid amounts of burst damage an ability that allows them to.

Your entire argument is still predicated on the idea that because one, or a few, classes have something that does X, every class needs an ability that does X. That's not class balance, that's class homogenization, where the only differences between classes are cosmetic. It's not a very interesting system.

Classes are like equations. It doesn't matter if Shaman are "X+Y*Z" and paladins are "a-b/c". That doesn't mean Shaman need an a, b, or c variable. For them to be balanced, their result has to be the same. As long as X+Y*Z = a-b/c, everything is fine. Picking one variable and complaining that that's the issue doesn't work in practice, because that argument explicitly ignores the greater context both classes exist within, which affects the value and need of the abilities in question.

[Imhotep]

He says without contributing.

inb4 Endus edit

I'll contribute my dick in your mouth


You won't be contributing anything for a few days, for that.

[Makail]

because one, or a few

Those abilities represent more than "one" or "a few" of the classes. In fact they represent the majority of classes that have higher success rates in a high-level PvP scenario.

[shell]

Those abilities represent more than "one" or "a few" of the classes. In fact they represent the majority of classes that have higher success rates in a high-level PvP scenario.

The issue I see here is that you seem to be equating those abilities that you mentioned-Ice Block, Dispersion, Bubble, etc.- with sucess in high level pvp. Its not those individual abilities that make those particular classes successful, it's the combination of all their tools. Arcane Mages have Ice Block but they're not successful in arena; all rogues have Cloak of Shadows but no one was complaining about combat/assassination rogues being op in the last expansion.

It's the entire toolkit that makes those classes successful, it's not just one thing.

I do the same exact thing that you're doing, and think "if I just had what those other classes have, I would be so much better." And I'll probably continue to do that, but it just doesn't work that way. Its easy to make one-to-one comparisons but doing that is not factoring in the other abilities that make those classes good.

And aside from that, I'm not sure that we can boil our issues down to survivability. For instance, a lot of people want the old astral shift to make a return, largely IMO, because its an ability that they remember from a time when they were successful. But was it the ability that made shamans successful or was it the damage that we were dishing out? From everything that I've been told, our defenses really weren't that great even with astral shift. I think that speaks volumes about the direction that we should be trying to move towards. Increased damage, an ability that allows us to free cast for a short period of time, and a way to use frost shock are good ways to increase our survivability in an indirect way, even with the tools we have now.

[Endus]

The issue I see here is that you seem to be equating those abilities that you mentioned-Ice Block, Dispersion, Bubble, etc.- with sucess in high level pvp. Its not those individual abilities that make those particular classes successful, it's the combination of all their tools. Arcane Mages have Ice Block but they're not successful in arena; all rogues have Cloak of Shadows but no one was complaining about combat/assassination rogues being op in the last expansion.

It's the entire toolkit that makes those classes successful, it's not just one thing.

Exactly.

I've had no real issues with Elemental survivability, in my arena games. It's lightyears better than it was in Cataclysm, when it was my major complaint. Does this mean I think Elemental is fine? Heck no. But my main issues are 1> it's too easy to get shut down during Ascendance, as it has no CC/interrupt immunity component and leaves us vulnerable to chain interrupts/CC, and somewhat related 2> our sustained DPS is too low; in PvE, a well-timed Ascendance grants the full benefit of its burst and evens out our performance, but the aforementioned issue means it's unreliable at best in PvP, and outside of Ascendance our damage lacks controllable burst; you can stack an Elemental Blast, Lava Surge proc, and Fulmination for ~120k damage or so, but getting any higher than that requires Overload/Echo procs, which you can't control. Also I'd like to see the ability to use Frost Shock without losing so much damage; it should be a tradeoff of damage for CC, but right now the tradeoff is so high we don't bother with the slow.

Not survivability. Survivability is pretty decent. At least, workable if I have the reliable burst DPS to be a threat.

And aside from that, I'm not sure that we can boil our issues down to survivability. For instance, a lot of people want the old astral shift to make a return, largely IMO, because its an ability that they remember from a time when they were successful. But was it the ability that made shamans successful or was it the damage that we were dishing out? From everything that I've been told, our defenses really weren't that great even with astral shift. I think that speaks volumes about the direction that we should be trying to move towards. Increased damage, an ability that allows us to free cast for a short period of time, and a way to use frost shock are good ways to increase our survivability in an indirect way, even with the tools we have now.

Astral Shift and, additionally, Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem were absolutely godawful defenses. Astral Shift relied on them CCing you in some specific way; only stuns/fears/silences triggered it. If they didn't, you got no damage reduction. If they stunned you and burst your partner, it was of no benefit. If you popped your trinket to break it, you lost the benefit. Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem was only a 16.5k shield that didn't scale with gear or level; that was less than a single attack for most of Cataclysm. The ONLY reason people are wistful about these is because, at the time, they were the ONLY defensive tools we had. They were never good, and the current stuff is better.

[zenga]

I've had no real issues with Elemental survivability, in my arena games. It's lightyears better than it was in Cataclysm, when it was my major complaint.

Can you specify what kind of arena games these exactly are: comp/rating/bracket? And give us roughly an idea of how many games played?

[Endus]

Can you specify what kind of arena games these exactly are: comp/rating/bracket? And give us roughly an idea of how many games played?

Low rating 2s with a druid, who was either boomkin or resto (resto generally worked better), and not enough. I didn't specify because I'd mentioned it earlier, I thought, because I have in one of these threads at least.

Yes, I'm a PvP noob and my rating is crap. I can actually stand PvP in MoP, though, as opposed to Cata/WotLK, where I just got frustrated too often. I'm blaming more deaths on me screwing up than on my spec being "meh". I'm not trying to claim I'm speaking for all Shaman everywhere, just sharing my personal experiences. And besides; people were right when they pointed out that my PvP theorycraft was all napkin theory and no actual practice. So I'm trying to correct that. But, like anyone, I've got to start at the bottom; I couldn't jump into PvP and be 2300 rated that week. My partner's more interested in capping Conquest than pushing rating, so it'll take a bit before my rating gets to where it should be. But it'll get there this season.

So while I'm facing bads, I'm not exactly awesome myself, is my point. That, and while I am seeing issues, they're not related to survivability, at least not directly (the other alternative would be to leave our damage where it is but buff our survivability a fair bit, but I'd find that less "fun").

[Deleted]

I got 15% pvp power and im doing 40k critts in pvp

[Deleted]

Welcome to the shaman class

[HeedmySpeed]

We will forever be burdened by Resto spec, Blizzards golden child.

If there's something wrong with Resto in PVP or PVE, Blizzard is on that shit like a crackhead on.. well, crack.

Our DPS specs are left in the shitter (PvE only) and even then we aren't topping damage meters as often as Mages or Spriests.