Elemental PvP, how do i deal with Rogues/Deathknights?

[Lolsteroids]

First off;

Over 3 years i've done mostly PvE, on diffrent characters(Hunter, Paladin).

I have recently leveled my Shaman, and enjoy playing Elemental. But since my playtime is now limited, i try to get more into PvP. Mainly Battlegrounds, since i get raped in Arena no matter what.

My gear is bad. I have about 200 Resilliance. My playstyle.. I try my best and feel like i'm improving.

To the point; In battlegrounds, i've always had problems versus melee. Since my gear is rather bad, i get cut down in -litteraly- seconds.

Over time i learned how to deal with Retribution. Kiting them around proved to work, though i do need some luck on purging HoF.
Against warriors i keep getting better.

But i get completely destroyed by Rogues and Deathknights. I feel like there is nothing i can do, at all.

Rogue;
If i manage to survive the initial burst from the rogue(Which is happening more often, now i'm starting to build resilliance.) i just can't get away from him. Crippling is hard to get rid off, since other poison has stacked. When i Thunderstorm they seem to be back at me before i can get any cast off.
I understand that i will live longer when i get more resilliance, but right now i can't do anything offensive to a rogue. All i can do is be defensive. Thunderstorm to get him away, try to earthbind-root him, spam Lesser Healing Wave to keep my HP up. So even with more resilliance; will i get enough time to actually damage the opposing rogue?

Death Knight;
One of the issues here might be that i don't know how this class really works. I know they use runes and Runic Power. That's about it.
Anyway; I just can't get away from these guys, and i get completely facerolled when i'm in melee range. My best bet is Grounding Death Grip, then Frostshock/Earthbind/Thunderstorm to keep the DK at a distance. However, Chains of Ice keeps me in place and no matter what i try the DK always gets to me and i see my HP drop to 0 before i can do something.

I would like to ask other Elemental Shamans how they deal with said classes, or maybe a Rogue/DK can give me some insight about their weak points, because i'm lost at the moment.

Thanks in advance.

[Lakerdas]

Well i have been playing shaman a lot in arenas at TBC, well it might not be the same now, but i have developed many techniques to escape/survive and eventually get the chance to beat counter-classes like rogues and dks. These things i am going to propose have benn quite theory based and not so much based on testing since i am focusing more on pveing with my dk and i dont have that much time to pvp with my shaman like i did.

First off, you ll have 100% to roll engineering if you want to pvp as elemental shaman, rocket boots are a great tool for shamans since they have almost no ways to escape or gain some distance from their melee enemies. Against a rogue every action must be executed carefully since there are only 2-3 things apon your sleeve against them and all of them can be countered. A rogue will try to use cds as quickly as possible to burst you down, without cds like CoS and Sprint a rogue is really unlikely he will kill you (supposing you have good pvp gear). At tbc a skill that helped a lot was NS and HW ( maybe combined with a battlemaster trinket)to help you survive the phase when the rogue's poped CoS and sprint. Geared enough you should survive the stunlocks with the help of astral shift, after that the first things you should do is putting down poison cleansing, earthbind, or frostshock the rogue to slow him ( now that the earthbind roots its more valuable than before so i'd suggest keeping it for when the rogue Sprints) then spam yourself with cure poison and keep running; with repeated frostshocks and cleanses you should be able to get a distance and manage to cast a few LHW to keep your hp up. most probably at that point the rogue will use sprint or cos or maybe both at the same time (if they are not so good rogues) if they do so its a good time to use rocket boots to gain some ridiculusly big distance in a split second and just survive till cos is off, when cos is off immidiately do flameshock and elemental mastery+lavaburst that will ripp off a big portion of the rogues hp. If the rogue vanishes you must immidiately heal yourself up and put down poison cleansing cause he is going to come up again with a stunlock combo, but at that point you will have a very good chance to use thunderstorm + frost shock , or earthbind +hex to root him down and avoid getting him do a second vanish and pass 1-2 more spells ( lavabursts more likely ) or heal yourself up. Always keep the insignia for the blind-restealth every rogue does, and never EVER underestimate the burst a rogue can do without his cds. All those things require an awful lot of practice to achieve the perfect timing and/or counter an enemy rogue's gameplay. However, its unlikely you will ever be able to beat a rogue that posseses very much skill in PvP, no matter how good you are yourself (as elemental always), rogues have always been my worst nightmare in Tbc, together with locks, but locks now are a bit changed so i dont have that much of a clue about them.

About deathknights, playing a deathknight myself i know the most valuable card the DK has is the geathgrip when the fight is about kiting him. As you mentioned yourself the most important thing while facing a dk is to time the grounding to misdirect the deathgrip, if you do this, your chances of winning are about 50% up. If you get gripped you will never get away no matter what you do unless you insignia-rocketboots, thunderstorm+frostshock or earthbind-root; all of those can be countered by anti-magic shell and insignias, and if the DK is unholy he can use the ghoul to stun you and get the time to reach you so you have to be extremely careful to use the combos above only at teh OH-SHit moments when you miss the Grip grounding or see the dk coming right at you. the most probable thing a DK will do is to use anti-magic shell when gets near you to avoid getting rooted, thats a great chance to use thunderstorm, it may not do a big portion of dmg but the knockback still works on antimagic shell . Its essential to let them touch you the least possible time because , as you said, the dks can simply faceroll you.

Anyways all these things may not be helpfull and most probably they where something you had in your mind too. Its all matter of A LOT , A L O T of practice, A LOT MORE than you think :P

[failrogue]

If you are in PvE gear, just prep yourself mentally, i play a DK and rogue (the hard PvP classes, i know.) and shamans are my free HK's unless they have alot of PvP gear.

What works as ele is this against most rogues with two caveats

I assume you mean BG's so there are no partners helping you

And with the BG, comes bad-average- and good rogues so we assume they are average.

When a rogue opens up on you, they will use Cheap shot. When its at about 2 seconds left thunderstorm, drop and earth bind totem, switch to ghostwolf, and run a bit, Turn, frost shock, heal once, run some more, if they have used CloS now, just get a good distance, repop earthbind and place a flame shock and pop your instant LB. that should deal a good amount, you dont have a thunderstorm so if he gets too close your earthbind will be your only help. Always keep poisons off you, and keep either frost shock on him to allow for a chance to escape, or flame shock to prevent him from vanishing and reopening. (I have often been frost shocked then gotten up after vanishing and curbstomping him in the second cheap shot.) keeping yourself healed is going to be tough, so worry more about killing him quickly, if you can get a reasonable distance and unload a couple shots into him, your burst is great, assuming no CloS. But best of luck to you in this area, again, it's alot of luck on your behalf, as we rogues have a few tools to retain an advantage while fighting you guys :P

As a DK, i dunno, i don't PvP much on him, i just know i suck so i rely on AMS, Strangulate, and ghoul stun to keep shamans locked down, just don't LB during AMS, watch out for mind freeze, getting locked out sucks, and predict the stangulate/ ghoul stuns for when you are low Hp. I always silence a target, then run in and go BOOM (fill in assorted high damaging attacks here.) and watch them take alot of damage while they are vulnerable.

I doubt i helped, but do i at least get an "E" for effort?

[Carbunkle]

You dont kill them, they kill you if its 1v1, if you have buddies with you then you kill them :P

[Lolsteroids]

Thanks a lot for the constructive replies.

@Lakerdas;
I guess i need a lot more practise then, but i'm working on that!
About Engineering, the Rocket Boots sound like a big help, but i'm not sure if i want to reroll to a diffrent profession, since this character is the only Herbalism/Alchemist combo i have. Maybe if i really get hooked on PvP i'll give it a go.

@DKroguelol;

When a rogue opens up on you, they will use Cheap shot. When its at about 2 seconds left thunderstorm, drop and earth bind totem, switch to ghostwolf, and run a bit, Turn, frost shock, heal once, run some more,

That is my problem exactly. By the time there is 2 seconds left on CS and i've used Thunderstorm there is most likely poisons on me, which give me a hard time getting away. I can start cleansing it, but that gives the rogue time to catch up.


Edit; Major fail from my part.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hVI0q...uAo0xgco:IkbVc When adding my Glyphs i realised that i have totally forgot about the Stoneclaw Glyph. Guess i should swap the Lightning Bolt one for that?

So dumb >.<

[rathok]

First off;

Over 3 years i've done mostly PvE, on diffrent characters(Hunter, Paladin).

I have recently leveled my Shaman, and enjoy playing Elemental. But since my playtime is now limited, i try to get more into PvP. Mainly Battlegrounds, since i get raped in Arena no matter what.

My gear is bad. I have about 200 Resilliance. My playstyle.. I try my best and feel like i'm improving.

To the point; In battlegrounds, i've always had problems versus melee. Since my gear is rather bad, i get cut down in -litteraly- seconds.

Over time i learned how to deal with Retribution. Kiting them around proved to work, though i do need some luck on purging HoF.
Against warriors i keep getting better.

But i get completely destroyed by Rogues and Deathknights. I feel like there is nothing i can do, at all.

Rogue;
If i manage to survive the initial burst from the rogue(Which is happening more often, now i'm starting to build resilliance.) i just can't get away from him. Crippling is hard to get rid off, since other poison has stacked. When i Thunderstorm they seem to be back at me before i can get any cast off.
I understand that i will live longer when i get more resilliance, but right now i can't do anything offensive to a rogue. All i can do is be defensive. Thunderstorm to get him away, try to earthbind-root him, spam Lesser Healing Wave to keep my HP up. So even with more resilliance; will i get enough time to actually damage the opposing rogue?

Death Knight;
One of the issues here might be that i don't know how this class really works. I know they use runes and Runic Power. That's about it.
Anyway; I just can't get away from these guys, and i get completely facerolled when i'm in melee range. My best bet is Grounding Death Grip, then Frostshock/Earthbind/Thunderstorm to keep the DK at a distance. However, Chains of Ice keeps me in place and no matter what i try the DK always gets to me and i see my HP drop to 0 before i can do something.

I would like to ask other Elemental Shamans how they deal with said classes, or maybe a Rogue/DK can give me some insight about their weak points, because i'm lost at the moment.

Thanks in advance.

Fix: Dual-spec resto.

Seriously though, there isn't much you can do. Best advice is just to play with a Pally and call for freedoms. DKs on the other hand... you just have to use grounding totem carefully. If you can absorb a COI or grip with that thing then your golden.

Personally i only play as ele in SOTA and EOTS (gogo free kills @ the flag!) and in arena I play with a ret pally so... i have freedom (which is being fixed in 3.2). Until 3.2 you're going to just have to be tricky or play with a pally for HOF.

[Eyetotem]

Ghost Wolf: Can now be learned at level 16. While in this form, snaring effects may not bring the shaman below base normal run speed.

Should fix a lot of your problems.

[k-shaman]

My gear is bad. I have about 200 Resilliance.

This is why rogues and death knights kill you.

Nearing 1k you'll notice even the most well geared rogues can't break 50% of your hp before their stunlock is over.