How to improve shamans in pvp

[Serai]

the problem with priests is that its a hybrid with only one pvp spec

you can see disc priests at 2.5 sure, but you sure as hell wont find a holy priest there
and shadow, wel i havent seen a shadow in arena in ages

[brokenmirror]

There's shadow priests in 2s that are 2.4k+.

It's sorta funny that you say priests only have one pvp spec and it's disc. Is it maybe because disc offers a lot of survivability? I'm sure shamans (which are hybrids too) would love to have a spec they could go into to have the survivability that disc priests have. We can't even survive one bloody melee hitting us.

We may have 'viable' pvp specs, but your 1 pvp spec is much better than any spec we can go into.

[manpeach91]

I agree somewhat with Alphabeat, and can originally add one word:

Cry.

Shaman have always cried the most when it came to PvP, you think just because you have three specs means that you should be able to PvP like ret paladins as all 3. Okay, other hybrids (namely paladins) have two or even three specs that they can faceroll PvP with, but most classes only have one. Be glad resto is at least somewhat decent and give up on enhance and elemental.

I was a fury warrior back in TBC and had an enhancement shaman friend who cried almost daily to me about how enhance was the worst PvP spec in the game. Trust me, buddy, I'm a fury warrior. I HAVE to respec arms to PvP, fury and prot are both trash. By the same logic, you HAVE to respec resto to PvP. That's just how the game works, sorry. Combat rogues still suck.

Again, be happy you have at least one spec, classes like warlocks have zero.

Edit: To clarify, I was on a 2v2 team with a paladin. I stayed fury, had no PvP gear anyway. We hovered around 1500 for an entire season. Should've respecced arms. err, I mean, BUFF FURY QQ

Blues have already said that they are going to be working on adding survivability to all shaman, re-work totems, and add more mobility as well. If you really want me to weed through the Q and A to find it I will.


Also, it's not like any of my suggestions are outlandish. If you think they are, then you obviously don't play a shaman. This isn't a "new earthquake spell that does 100000 damage" suggestion, this is stuff that's already in game that could be tweaked around to help shaman out with the problems that even blizzard knows are present.

[Majika]

the problem with priests is that its a hybrid with only one pvp spec

you can see disc priests at 2.5 sure, but you sure as hell wont find a holy priest there
and shadow, wel i havent seen a shadow in arena in ages

That's because most shadow priests gave up on trying to pvp when BC came out. :'(

I have an enhancment shaman and a shadow priest so I am no stranger to PvP frustration. I haven't pvp'd in years because both of them suck so much. I must admit tho that as bad as shamans are in pvp, shadow priests are even worse.

Majika

[Majika]

Here's some things that could easily be done to help shaman out in pvp:

1. Make each shock spell be on it's own CD. This wouldn't really affect pve, seeing as ele and enhance only use one one specific shock in their priority/rotation.

2. Make totem's castable while stunned.

3. Make windshock the only shock to interrupt. Give earthshock some new function aside from the damage. This allows enhance to keep damage up without fear of missing a crucial interrupt.

4. Instant GW and thunderstorm baseline ( which has been mentioned in a few other threads )

5. Make the stoneclaw glyph effect into an enhancement talent, somewhere in the first few tiers. Elemental and resto put their leftover points in enhance anyway, so it would be easy for everyone to get. Make the glyph then reduce the CD or increase the amount absorbed.

6. Make specific totem buffs attached to a specific totem school ( SoE - earth totems. ToW - fire totems, ect.. ). This way shamans can keep the benefits of their buffs without having to gimp themselves when using totems other than buffing ones.

What do you think?

1. Each shock having its own cooldown would be a problem as long as they all do damage because any sane shammie in pvp will just spam them all sequentially.
1a. Remove the interrupt from earth shock. Let it just do heavy damage possibly with some minor side effect that I can't think of at the moment. Whatever minor buff it gets should be something that works for enhancemnet since this is their primary shock.
1b. Remove the damage frost shock. Let it slow attack speed and casting speed by some amount (slow by 25% maybe) in addition to slowing movement speed. This ups our survival and allows us to survive other melee.
1c. Wind shock. Let this be our interrupt. The threat-reduction thing is useless but it doesn't hurt to leave it there.
1d. Flame shock. Reduce or remove its damage. Let it keep its synergy with Lava Burst, but LvB no longer consumes the shock. Let the shock be a debuff that reduces armor and possibly energy resistances for its duration. Bake the lost Flame shock damage into Lava Burst itself so that elemental shamans don't lose out on damage.

With changes similar to these I think it would be ok to de-link the timers for the shocks because only one really does any damage and the others are specific utility shocks.

2. They don't all need to be castable while stunned. Glyphed Stoneclaw is the one that really needs to be castable while stunned (the stoneclaw bubble should also be added to the default totem or as you suggested in #5, made into an enhancement talent).

3. Already addressed, but I generally agree.

4. I agree with ghost wolf because that escape ability is useful to everyone. I don't see how making thunderstorm baseline matters much though.

5. Already addressed and I generally agree.

6. It sounds like Bliz is already considering something like this. I generally prefer Blizzard's idea that the buff totems be converted into actual buffs while the totems themselves be reserved for active attack/defense or utility purpose. I'd make Strength of Earth, Flametongue, Totem of Wrath and Wrath of Air and the resistance totems into pally-style buff spells or auras centered on the shaman. I'd ditch the windfury totem and bake its ability into the Unleashed Rage ability. I'd bake Stoneskin totem into Earth Shield (see below). The remaining totems generally do something active as opposed to being basically a static buff.

7. I propose this addition to your list: Fix the shields.
7a. Water Shield: works as normal but reduces/eliminates spell pushback.
7b. Lightning shield: works as normal but reduces the enemy's chance to hit you.
7c. Earth Shield: Increases the target's armor by the same amount as the Stoneskin Totem (does not stack with said totem).

Majika

[qsubt05]

shadowpriest maybe not so strong as disciple, but still pretty well playable in 2v2... look on some videos from wacraftmovies.com, with rogue can beat any other combo, just need practise.

shamans... restosham, no comment, he is fine. Ele is... again playable with rogue in 2v2 + ele is strong in largers teams than 2v2... and Enha.. is crap ;D, but still u have 2 spec which are strong in arenas

[rathok]

Why don't we just get an IWIN spell too? Realistically we just need totem stomping fixed, and our hp increased to make up for our inability to escape melee. They will never take every shock off the same cd, since that's a lot of instant spell damage that other classes wouldn't be able to deal with.

even with ...500? more health and no more totem-stomping macros i don't think that solves anything. All shocks on their own CD is CRAZY. IMO i think they could just do those 2 things and 1 other change that would improve our mobility (perhaps make imp EBT from deep enh basline or make imp GW baseline and move that talent to its place).

[BlueberrySham]

shadowpriest maybe not so strong as disciple, but still pretty well playable in 2v2... look on some videos from wacraftmovies.com, with rogue can beat any other combo, just need practise.

shamans... restosham, no comment, he is fine. Ele is... again playable with rogue in 2v2 + ele is strong in largers teams than 2v2... and Enha.. is crap ;D, but still u have 2 spec which are strong in arenas

The word "strong" is variable when applied to shaman in arena. Resto is strong in arguably all brackets. Elemental and Enhancement have an easier time surviving in 5v5, which most classes do. We have 1 variably strong spec for arena... resto.

[qsubt05]

The word "strong" is variable when applied to shaman in arena. Resto is strong in arguably all brackets. Elemental and Enhancement have an easier time surviving in 5v5, which most classes do. We have 1 variably strong spec for arena... resto.

no, no, again no. Its your dogma. shamans are lazy trying something else than easyiest way (resto) and shamans like crying on forum.

http://www.arenajunkies.com/rankings/2v2/Shaman/Rogue/
http://www.arenajunkies.com/rankings...haman/Warlock/
http://www.arenajunkies.com/rankings/2v2/Shaman/Mage/
look on top teams from these combos... ele beat resto..., ELE is viable in 2v2 too... viable = playable = best players can reach 2500+

http://www.arenajunkies.com/rankings/3v3/Shaman/ - top 3v3 teams shamans+random+random, ele>resto, sooo SHUT UP.

and for fun
http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=112775 retard+enha in 2v2, 2500+. Ok, its rare, but possible. when anyone can reach 2500+, co "average" enha+"average" retard can get 2050 EASY (with some practise + pvp skillz ofc)

[manpeach91]

1. Each shock having its own cooldown would be a problem as long as they all do damage because any sane shammie in pvp will just spam them all sequentially.
1a. Remove the interrupt from earth shock. Let it just do heavy damage possibly with some minor side effect that I can't think of at the moment. Whatever minor buff it gets should be something that works for enhancemnet since this is their primary shock.
1b. Remove the damage frost shock. Let it slow attack speed and casting speed by some amount (slow by 25% maybe) in addition to slowing movement speed. This ups our survival and allows us to survive other melee.
1c. Wind shock. Let this be our interrupt. The threat-reduction thing is useless but it doesn't hurt to leave it there.
1d. Flame shock. Reduce or remove its damage. Let it keep its synergy with Lava Burst, but LvB no longer consumes the shock. Let the shock be a debuff that reduces armor and possibly energy resistances for its duration. Bake the lost Flame shock damage into Lava Burst itself so that elemental shamans don't lose out on damage.

With changes similar to these I think it would be ok to de-link the timers for the shocks because only one really does any damage and the others are specific utility shocks.

2. They don't all need to be castable while stunned. Glyphed Stoneclaw is the one that really needs to be castable while stunned (the stoneclaw bubble should also be added to the default totem or as you suggested in #5, made into an enhancement talent).

3. Already addressed, but I generally agree.

4. I agree with ghost wolf because that escape ability is useful to everyone. I don't see how making thunderstorm baseline matters much though.

5. Already addressed and I generally agree.

6. It sounds like Bliz is already considering something like this. I generally prefer Blizzard's idea that the buff totems be converted into actual buffs while the totems themselves be reserved for active attack/defense or utility purpose. I'd make Strength of Earth, Flametongue, Totem of Wrath and Wrath of Air and the resistance totems into pally-style buff spells or auras centered on the shaman. I'd ditch the windfury totem and bake its ability into the Unleashed Rage ability. I'd bake Stoneskin totem into Earth Shield (see below). The remaining totems generally do something active as opposed to being basically a static buff.

7. I propose this addition to your list: Fix the shields.
7a. Water Shield: works as normal but reduces/eliminates spell pushback.
7b. Lightning shield: works as normal but reduces the enemy's chance to hit you.
7c. Earth Shield: Increases the target's armor by the same amount as the Stoneskin Totem (does not stack with said totem).

Majika

Thanks for some serious input in stead of " stop crying ". I didn't think spamming shocks would be a viable way to put out serious damage, but more as damage on the move spells. LvB and lightning bolt will always hit harder and ultimately be used to kill the target. But then again, if blizzard thinks that would be OP, your suggestions sound like a good alternative to me.

I like your shield ideas too, even though I don't think they would tack some crucial surviaviablity stuff onto easily de-spellable buffs, but who knows.

On your totem ideas, that could work too I guess. But then again, it would kind of move the focus of shaman away from totems, so i'm not sure if they'd do that.

[IhatePvE]

honestly, a stun that procs only after 10 seconds and only at a 50% chance together with it chained to a totem from which you can run away of is much to unreliable and thats the least the shaman needs

merging to many totem naturally results in overpowerdness, they would have to be put on a considerable cooldown and you would suffer all the more of players one-shotting them

Then change numbers...wtf i just tell u idea, not correct numbers...coz numbers can be balanced easy..

"merging to many totems" will result in same totem-killing things...only earth totem will have more then 5 hp and even then it can be oneshooted..

[IhatePvE]

and for fun
http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=112775 retard+enha in 2v2, 2500+. Ok, its rare, but possible. when anyone can reach 2500+, co "average" enha+"average" retard can get 2050 EASY (with some practise + pvp skillz ofc)

And for fun go and try to find retry who wanna play with ench....i wasted 3 weeks and only offers i has was done by pplz with with crappy gear...coz all others alredy got ther rogues-priests-etc and already over 1850-2k...

[Augrelle]

Sorry about my miss information about Spriests. Thought Spriests are like Enhancement shaman. For every Spriest, there is around 10-15 other spec priests.

Using the website that qsubt05 posted, shadow priests are that bad. Thought it is the same way with enhancement.


Thought I would also like to point out to qsubt05, using that website, Elemental only really does good in 5v5. People know this thought since we know that if you leave an elemental shaman alone, they can do some damage.

In 3v3, elemental has 30-40% while resto has 40-50%. Enhance has the last 10%

In 2v2, it is even worse. Resto has more controll over Ele and Enhance.

Also, when you are looking for JUST shaman, of course you will find lots of them. You are looking for teams with SHAMAN in them. No other teams would show up if you are looking for a Shaman+XXX combo. When you look at ALL the class, I only see teams with a shaman on it in 2s and 10 in 3v3.

So out of 300 people in the top 100 teams, there are 10 shamans. There should be about 25-35 in a balanced world.
So out of 200 people in the top 200 teams, there are 3 shamans. There should be around 15-25 in a balanced world.

Thought there is truely no say in it. Enhancement needs PvP buffs and Elemental + Resto needs some more survival. Both things blizzard said.