Shaman survival

[Deleted]

Roots and snares are not CC...they are movement impairs.

Yes, they are CC. Just ask f.ex. any warrior that gets stuck in ice cast by mage. They can't do anything.

Also, explain to me how cathing up to our target is survivability? Why the hell does it matter if you can catch up to that druid if you can't survive his warrior teammate beating your brains out?

You're pulling a druid just to try to prove you're right. But what if the other person is f.ex. mage? You can get free of the ice, catch up that mage and beat him to a bloody pulp. That IS a survivability talent. Also, as said, you can get free of such situation and run behind a pillar or similar and heal up. It can be used either for offensive or defensive action.

We get Shamanistic Rage...which by all means is extremely weaker than Astral Shift in a PvP setting for survivability.

Indeed, astral shift is better than shamanistic rage in that regard. Shamanistic rage however restores mana to you which astral shift doesn't. And have you noticed that if you get silenced by a mage you can still continue fighting but an ele shaman who gets silenced can do only 2 things: try to hit something with 1-hander and do about as much damage as a 2-year old, or cast frost shock/flame shock which both have quite a long CD and do little damage.

"Cannot be used while stunned." Now what?

Use it before or after the stun, just like everyone else.

Drop stoneskin...no wait drop stoneclaw to help other totems stay alive...no wait earthbind to help catch your target...crap a lock drop tremor instead! Yea out defensive totems aren't all that great either.

Applies to elemental shamans and resto shamans just as well.

[Gomexus]

Yes, they are CC. Just ask f.ex. any warrior that gets stuck in ice cast by mage. They can't do anything.

Intercept? Switch to defensive and spell reflect? They at least have more options than trinketing. Yes we will be able to break snares and roots VERY often in comparison, but don't act like they have no way to get out of roots...and snares do not matter since they can snare just as good if not better.

You're pulling a druid just to try to prove you're right. But what if the other person is f.ex. mage? You can get free of the ice, catch up that mage and beat him to a bloody pulp. That IS a survivability talent. Also, as said, you can get free of such situation and run behind a pillar or similar and heal up. It can be used either for offensive or defensive action.

How long do you actually expect to stay on top of a mage? Imagine fighting a frost mage right now...then take into account everytime you get snared/nova'd you use GW to break it...then add up the 400+ mana you spend to break said snare's/roots. You will not be able to stay on a mage long enough to "beat him to a bloody pulp".

Also pls see my definition of "survivability" because apparently you still think dealing dmg is survivability. No one has ever complained about our damage output...but our damage output is overshadowed by our lack of survivability...you deal 0 dmg while dead.

Running behind a pillar to heal up is hardly ever an option due to Enhancement being the #1 choice of focus every time we enter a BG/Arena. Even if you do run behind a pillar to heal and get away with it...how much good is it going to do to be oom and at full health? When you do show your face again you will just get slaughtered again. We're either Focused and burned down...or CC'd till our team is dead.

Indeed, astral shift is better than shamanistic rage in that regard. Shamanistic rage however restores mana to you which astral shift doesn't. And have you noticed that if you get silenced by a mage you can still continue fighting but an ele shaman who gets silenced can do only 2 things: try to hit something with 1-hander and do about as much damage as a 2-year old, or cast frost shock/flame shock which both have quite a long CD and do little damage.

When enhancement gets silenced all we can do is Stormstrike...and if a mage silenced us then how exactly do you propose we use our amazing GW/Spec Trans. to catch up to them? Elemental on the other hand will be able to stand there and take 30% less damage for the duration, while still being able to Lavaburst/Flame/Frost shock after the initial 4sec all silence wears off. If you're going to argue WotLK then don't forget LavaBurst it's a very huge step up from the single school dps Elemental has suffered from in the past.

I won't go into the full details on why enhancement is the least defensive spec before and after WotLK (as of now), but all you have to do is look around in a BG. Enhancement can top dmg meters in almost every match if well geared and played...but simultaneously they will be topping or damn near the top in Deaths. We do ALOT of damage and if left unchecked we can wreck a whole team; we do however die faster than any other class/spec in similar pvp gear.

Use it before or after the stun, just like everyone else.

Good rogues know its coming and will blind and wait for combat to drop...or will vanish and wait for rage to drop and stunlock all over, even then it doesn't help beat a rogue...Enhancement is not built to withstand high amounts of melee damage. We have Grounding and ES to help mitigate magic damage, but next to nothing to help fend off melee/physical. After WotLK they will just dismantle you and laugh while you get pummeled. Even better they will just walk up to you and hit evasion and go afk while "Unfair Advantage"** beats your face in.

**See upcoming rogue changes on MMO front page: Unfair Advantage: Whenever you dodge an attack you strike back for 50/100% of your main hand weapon’s damage.

Applies to elemental shamans and resto shamans just as well.

Yep, I was just showing how ridiculously crap our "defensive" totems are.

Survivability is being able to absorb and/or escape incoming damage. Healing spells do not count as survivability, breaking CC/Snares/Roots is not survivability. Grounding Totem is survivability, as well as Shamanistic Rage and anticipation.

[Deleted]

Survivability is being able to absorb and/or escape incoming damage.

That's called "damage mitigation". All abilities that allow you to survive longer, including escape and healing, are survival skills/talents. You're mixing things here. But lets say survivability was as you say then ele shamans have only 1 survivability talent: astral shift. Thunderstorm does not in any way let them absorb or mitigate incoming damage. It's an escape ability just as much as GW breaking snares and roots -> allows you to get to a better spot, out of LoS and buy yourself some more time.

[Raptorg]

u mean "unless someone dispells his ES and keep him locked so he cant heal himspelf" ?if they are so ubeatable, why dont they rule 2v2 and 3v3 brackets instead of druids?

shammies can't move, but they ARE amazing in 2v2

i play a warrior+druid set up, and i cannot win against warrior+shammy set ups, the shammy just keeps on stomping that windfury totem, even if my druid moonfires them, they keep coming, and while i'm ragestarved on the shammy, the warrior is beating on my druid, forcing me to charge over to him and save his ass


shammies are powerful in 2v2s.. druids just have more mobility, which is a lot more useful against set ups with rogues and warlocks

for example, a warlock/shammy set up is one i win very easily against, rogues are slightly more difficult but it works as well

and in 3v3 a warrior/ret pally/shammy set up can hurt a lot, or even a warrior/enhance or ele shammy/healer set up is quite dangerous(especially against set ups with disc priests)

the problem with shammies is, although they're powerful, they start to lack against set ups where their armor won't save them, this is also why the druid or disc priests becomes better, their incoming damage is always quite constant since their armor isn't high(although druids DO have an edge with bear form against melee)

overall, it just depends, against melee dps teams resto shammies are very strong, against casters, they're slightly weaker, they still do good against warlocks(kill pet and shammy can heal like there's no tomorrow)

[Gomexus]

That's called "damage mitigation". All abilities that allow you to survive longer, including escape and healing, are survival skills/talents. You're mixing things here. But lets say survivability was as you say then ele shamans have only 1 survivability talent: astral shift. Thunderstorm does not in any way let them absorb or mitigate incoming damage. It's an escape ability just as much as GW breaking snares and roots -> allows you to get to a better spot, out of LoS and buy yourself some more time.

Your post is called "semantics".

I don't know how else to word it but I did not mean "escape combat" I meant more along the lines of "damage is on the way to the shaman...what do you do?" like dodge/parry/take 30% less because SR is up. I didn't mean "cheese it around the pillar and heal".

I'm not mixing anything...I refuse to type out a list of how every other class in the game has a better chance of surviving incoming damage, it's just a fact. Whether they survive magic based or physical based...ranged or melee...in any event every other class has some way of dealing with incoming damage above and beyond enhancement shaman.

Thunderstorm does not directly reduce dmg or shield you or anything like that. What it does do is interrupt spellcasting...it also helps avoid at least 2-3k+ damage that a rogue/war can deal by tossing them back and making them get to you. Anything that makes it that much harder to burn someone down, that much harder to get to them and stay on them, or away from them. No one walks into a 2v2 and says "ok burn the pally till he is dead ignore his teammate completely"...it's just not gonna happen. It does however happen with Enhancement, regardless of our teammate. Even a Healer+Dps can burn us down faster than our healer can keep us up.

You said it best so I will re-iterate it:

buy yourself some more time

Like I said...wtf do you do with all this time you are buying? You go oom trying to heal up and as soon as you are done you run back out and get blasted again...this is of course assuming you even lasted long enough to get away in the first place. That mage isn't running away...he is kiting. And while you are pillar humping over there no one should even care because you are not only blowing your whole mana bar...you are also CCing yourself for at least 10secs if not longer...GJ.

I am not talking about rogue/druid-cheese-around-the-corner-and-drink survival, please understand that. I am talking about "oh snap double melee lemme hit evasion", or "oh crap double melee lemme go bear in between my hots", or "oh crap bubble!", or "oh crap fear/shield"...wtf do we have? "Oh crap...15secs?" our only form of survival is 15 secs long...and in the end doesn't add up to half of what everyone else gets. Some get an on demand increased "mitigation"...or an on demand absorb...some get complete immunity...some get re-active abilities that heal when stunned. We get 15 seconds of 30% less dmg, let me show ya how crap that is...

War's:

Average S2-S3 warrior has somewhere around 11k armor unbuffed with no shield...
Average S2-S3 shaman has somewhere around 6.5-7k armor unbuffed with no shield...

That's a 13-14% physical damage reduction difference...thats almost half of the "defensive" portion of Shamanistic Rage against melee...
Warriors also have a larger base hp pool and are itemized to be slightly more focused on stamina than shaman are...
They have interrupts, silences, hp restoring talents that are passive, a sure fire way to get to/catch up to a target and CC immunities/breaks other than roots/snares.

Rogue's:

If you can't figure out by now that a rogue is way more defensive than an Enhancement shaman then just quit posting about survival altogether.

Ret Paladins:

Plate+Bubble+Cleanse for magic based removal...CC removal...snare/root immunity. 15% movement speed through talents.

Those are the other three melee class/spec's. If you seriously want to compare Enhancement Survivability then you have to compare it to the survivability of the other class/spec's that are restricted to melee range for 90+% of their damage.

If you are a mage and you see a War...a Rogue...a Ret Pally...and an Enh shaman...which one will you focus? How about as a lock? hunter? priest? other shaman? etc? I can't think of any reason not to focus the shaman...you are obviously going to die with those four coming at you...chances are better to go shaman because why...

He's the easiest to kill omfg!

Breaking snares and roots will not remove us from the "first to die" priority list.

[Sarevokcz]

shammies can't move, but they ARE amazing in 2v2

i play a warrior+druid set up, and i cannot win against warrior+shammy set ups, the shammy just keeps on stomping that windfury totem, even if my druid moonfires them, they keep coming, and while i'm ragestarved on the shammy, the warrior is beating on my druid, forcing me to charge over to him and save his ass


shammies are powerful in 2v2s.. druids just have more mobility, which is a lot more useful against set ups with rogues and warlocks

for example, a warlock/shammy set up is one i win very easily against, rogues are slightly more difficult but it works as well

and in 3v3 a warrior/ret pally/shammy set up can hurt a lot, or even a warrior/enhance or ele shammy/healer set up is quite dangerous(especially against set ups with disc priests)

the problem with shammies is, although they're powerful, they start to lack against set ups where their armor won't save them, this is also why the druid or disc priests becomes better, their incoming damage is always quite constant since their armor isn't high(although druids DO have an edge with bear form against melee)

overall, it just depends, against melee dps teams resto shammies are very strong, against casters, they're slightly weaker, they still do good against warlocks(kill pet and shammy can heal like there's no tomorrow)

i thought u play warlock also

anyway, i saw top 100 charts 2v2, like 8 shamans (1 neha god how did he managed that) and like 85 druids, overall, shamans arent that strong i guess, its just relatively good counter to warr/druid which is prolly the most played 2v2 setup

[Slavemaker]

Hello there folks....i'm not playing beta and my friends don't have shamans..so i have a question for those of u that do...is it easier for a shaman to survive in pvp now?

This isn't beta... its live... but this shows what a skilled elemental shaman can do in 1v1's.... Sort of.

http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=87733

[Sarevokcz]

whoa, 2/3 of those mages and rogues dont have a clue how to properly use counterspell or gouge/kick, also those mages prolly dont know what rank 1 FB is, but i admit, several fights were played very well. also i was hoping for more lock/discipriest/bmhunter/warrior fights

[Wildhearted]

enhance shamans are mushroom, give them plate lol, as feral druid they go down in a few seconds no matter how good gear they have