Ele + Ret Arena Strats

[grimmjaw]

Hey fellow shamans! Leonhart here. I'm wondering if some people with ele ret combos have any advice or strategies. we are having problems downing the druid priest teams. DPS teams we rock but them darn healers are getting away. any advice for this combo? we are 1400 and strong but are hitting a plateau. Any help or advice would be great. I really want to be that ele sham on the server with the red deadly gear and furious!

druids seems to always get away with 2-4k left
priests same thing
war/mages are pretty tough any thoughts?
unholy/pally is ccrazy how can a shaman fight an unholy? i can take rets but NO WAY unholy

[Boombjørn]

Hello there, first of all, I play Shaman DK combo, so I'm not in the same position as you, but as a fellow Shaman, with the same general abilities as you, I have some idea's that might benefit your setup.

First of all... We have a lot of luck lately with burning down priests. The general idea as a Shaman is to keep the shield and HOT's of the Priest. So start of by purging the priest, so you later on don't accidently purge spirit buffs and other crap, instead of the shield'n'HOTs. After that, unleash your dps, and spampurge, while you keep down Tremor and Grounding for incoming Cyclones and fears. Another thing is to make a macro for interrupting you focus target, and target the Druid. Mainly interrupt Cyclones. Being Cycloned can lose you the game.

Same thing about Mage warrior, keep those sheep’s shocked and Grounded. Shocking Mages in the Arcane three, is generally a good idea. I'm not sure whether you should go for killing of the Warrior or Mage, I'd say try to burn down the warrior, since your setup has alot of magical damage, and keep the mage stunned, Repentanced, hexed, etc. with shocks in between.

Unholy/Pala is a bitch, since it's a very good counter to double dps teams. keep Disease cleansing totem up, and try to push bubble on the pala, while you shock he's heals. go defensive while he's bubble, and heal up, then try and burn him down again. purging the Freedom on him, is very important, while you use your own Freedom wisely, to not get turtled by the DK.

That's all the help I can offer you, hope some of it works. Just remember, purging and interrupting, can be far more important than doing dps, against many setups.


Boombjørn

[Jaska]

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=112887

This is a great Ele/Ret video, from the Shaman's PoV, might help you.

[Boombjørn]

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=112887

This is a great Ele/Ret video, from the Shaman's PoV, might help you.

Yeah, that's a realy nice vid.!

[grimmjaw]

wow Boombjørn thats some sweet advice. but i was hoping u can explain more about the purges and shocks. why is earth and windshock on the same cooldown? should i keep thunderstorm glyph or go somethin else? i hav stoneclaw and lb glyph. what macros help you the most? purge is somthing i really don't understnad. i mean should i just bind priest remove all buffs than dps down? we hav trouble with healing teams and unholy dk's since they are OP.

im really taking pvp serious and any more detailed advice would be awsome.
you can email sjcivic87@aol.com
maybe we can swap ideas and strats.
im stuck at 1400 with ret-ele and seem to hav hit a plateau.

[Shazarn]

wow Boombjørn thats some sweet advice. but i was hoping u can explain more about the purges and shocks. why is earth and windshock on the same cooldown? should i keep thunderstorm glyph or go somethin else? i hav stoneclaw and lb glyph. what macros help you the most? purge is somthing i really don't understnad. i mean should i just bind priest remove all buffs than dps down? we hav trouble with healing teams and unholy dk's since they are OP.

I play Enh/Ret and we got to 1509 before being FotM'd back down to 1450s this week
Earth and Windshock are on the same cooldown as shocks are one of the few class spells that are properly balanced. Our shocks are a choice, a serious decision, do i interrupt that guy or do i line up a huge lava burst? It is one of the few abilities that fits blizz's gain/sacrifice spell motif when they get off their arses and do something about it


*note* sheep means hex
When we come up against healer teams, unless its a druid (or pally or priest in some cases) we repentance/hex the healer (repentance first then line up a hex as soon as the repent goes in) and burst the effing hell out of the other dps, if its priest rogue, we do the same but wait for the rogue to come out to hex (repentance is great as it forces a cool down burn early, we had a guy trinket repent, HoF the stun only to be locked out for 10 secs by my hex
As for priests, Enh's are the best source of leet dps against them but any shaman can be a hell of a nightmare for one due to purge. The trick is to remove his buffs then lockout the quick heal he tries to cast (especially a penance) before massive burst, as an interrupt to a priest's heal or penance will lockout both holy and discipline spells for 2 secs, throw a hammer of justice in there and that priest is toast. Sheep the dps in this case if you want to go for the priest burn. We find usually that if we get the partner down far enough (2-5k range) we can usually retlol him down before the priest can seriously heal him back up
Be careful of priests though as they will mana burn your arse, which i know is a pain, to deal with, especially as a caster.
However there is no sure fire lol win strategy, every team will be different and you have to make those calls quickly. A few general rules of thumb to make your life a bit easier.
-If a healer has a high mana pool (~20k) hes usually in raid gear, therefore squishy (takes alot of damage, little to no resilience) same goes for dk/warrior health pools except low hp suggests pve gear (~20-22k)
-If there's an opposing shaman, that's usually your best bet for a focus burn target, you should well know by now that a shaman being beaten on by a ret and a spell caster will die quickly ;P
-Blessing of protection (melee bubble on other players) can be purged, mind you as an elemental thats not too much of an issue for you but im sure that your buddy will appreciate it
-Have your ret setup a macro to cast Blessing of Protection on you, that way you can quickly say bubble or some code word to get an instant melee bubble on you
-If warlock, then tremor and grounding totem instantly, before you even get a spell off, and make sure to keep refreshing it as most good locks will have some sort of tremor stomping macro for their pet. Its also useful to have a tremor down when focusing a priest as that nullifies one of their best get off me buttons
-Use purge liberally, especially on paladins, especially on holy paladins, purging beacon of light, righteous fury and any buffs on them, it will take around 3-4k mana for them to put them back on, and their own time not healing if they're that stupid



there's a good macro i can give for your team

#showtooltip
/clearfocus [target=focus, dead]
/clearfocus [mod:alt]
/stopmacro [mod:alt]
/stopmacro [target=focus, dead]
/target focus
/focus
/cast Repentance
/targetlasttarget

copy that straight into a macro for your ret and you will need to replace repentance with hex
What that does is the target you have targeted will become your focus on the first button press
every button press after that will try to cast hex on your focus target which is really useful when trying to burn a healer. you can keep the healer targeted for a quick interrupt if need be whilst hexing his buddy
I also recommend using this macro with the addon Gladius (its a window that shows your opponents names, health, mana, any CC or effects such as bloodlust on them and if they have used their trinket or not yet, it also allows you to target them anywhere). click on the dude to be hex'd name and hit this macro, gladius should see this as a CC attempt and will auto switch your target to his partner( or something like that, i could never figure it out lol) has won us alot of matches that macro. your ret buddy will love it too as its a fire and forget repentance on the run

also for your ret:
/target (your name here with out the parentheses)
/cast Blessing of Protection

makes it easier to bubble you

hope something in there helps
Rayln

[Dokb]

This is good advice, but I usually use this macro for HoP/HoF/HoSac on my partner :

/cast [target=(name of partner without parenthesis)] Hand of whatever

This way you don't loose your current target.

And as a paladin, I also have a cleanse macro for my mate. This way you don't need to target anything else than your current dps target.