How to PvP as a shammy?

Jumpy

I realised I have no idea.

I cant win a duel. I am always dead before I can finish off a heal, so thats out. I cant run fast enough to keep away even with an earthbind, so thats out. I cant hit hard enough to kill anyone in melee, plus my health is low.

I cant figure it out.

Priest was easy but I relied on the fear so much to get them away. Shammy has nothing like that.

Cullilingus

Depends really on your level/spec.. and what it is you're dueling, generally speaking though, try to earthshock casters, and use grounding totem to absorb spells, also, drop a tremor totem, to break fears etc..

Fighting melee is a pain as a shaman, as you'll generally either be stunned to death by a rogue, or overwhelmed by a warrior. Or just headwrecked by an invincible pally >.<
If you're elemental, try kiting them with frost shock, and use your pvp trinket if you have one, if they get a slow/stun off on you.

Oddly enough, stoneclaw totem works on pets, so that can give you a bit of an advantage against pet classes..

Anti

i love pvp'ing shammys. ITs so rare you find a good one, and i think the reason is they are a ****ign complicated char.

Dr_MaSoN

theres a vid about somewere of an elemental shammy dueling naked, guy is **** hot.


see if i can dig it out.

copeyhagen

i remember an old pre bc video of a shammy pvping in bgs and he was doin some very high crits.especially for pre bc.

ill have a look when im home.

go to youtube and search for wow pvp shammy, im sure there will be tonnes

Kiith

copeyhagen wrote: »

go to youtube and search for wow pvp shammy, im sure there will be tonnes

and 95% of them will be utter ****.

Cullilingus

Yep, this is true, a lot of pre TBC shaman PVP basically involved hoping for windfury procs and spamming frostshock. As this required zero skill, and was stupidly effective, it basially resulted in a influx of shamans who had no idea how to play the class.

There was a pvp video doing the rounds of a shaman with a hand of ragnaros one shotting people with windfury procs. Everyone thought he was the dogs bollox because of it

Wreck

Lol yeah I remember the hand of rag videos, they were so stupid. Shaman pvp is totally different now than it was pre tbc (more than most classes), so even watching skilled pre tbc vids is a bit of a waste of time.

Shamans of all specs are probably one of the weakest 1v1 classes imo. But they really come into their own in group pvp i.e. BGs, 3v3 and especially 5v5 arena.

Genghiz Cohen

Ahem:

General

* Specs to consider for PvP may be the Enhancement suicide spec (21/40/0), or Elemental (40/0/21 or 37/0/24 if you opt for Focused Mind. Enhancement is better for burst DPS, if you don't really care about living. Elemental is good for controlled DPS and great survivability; Nature's Swiftness is considered essential for any Elemental PvP spec. Resto spec gives a Shaman the best survivability, owing largely to the tree's 41st talent, Earth Shield. The damage output of a Resto shaman is close to nil, and one on one fights may grind into the minutes.
* A possible trick, if your opponent has a counterspell or interrupt ability and isn't paying close attention, is to trick them into thinking you're casting a heal when in actuality, you're using your hearthstone! (Make sure you don't actually hearth.) This was a neat trick pre-BC when only the cast animation (and not the casting bar) was visible.
* A good strategy with any casting class is to feign casting by starting a cast and either jumping or moving to interrupt it. It's very useful when used correctly and can have the opponent waste a silence or counterspell.
* You can cast your trinkets and buff yourself with Earth Shield/Lightning Shield and your shield will get a +healing/+spell damage bonus from your trinkets.
* A nice way to deal quick and easy damage with an Elemental shaman is to cast Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, then Earth Shock. By the time your bolt hits, your chain lightning will cast and instantly hit, and your earth shock will instantly hit as well. This deals a ton of damage and if they crit, you're almost guaranteed a killing blow.
* You can cast lightning bolt and then follow up with Purge once or twice right before the bolt hits. This removes any buffs the opponent may have leading to even more damage or taking away what might have saved your opponent.
* This may seem obvious but remember when to purge, dps or heal. While you're doing one thing, you're not doing the other two.
* In world PvP, it may be a good idea to pull a mob to you. This will help you get out of crowd controlling abilities which include polymorph and ice trap (because the mob will damage you, breaking the CC).
* GET RESILIENCE!! It is the best thing that a shaman can get. It increases your survivability by so much. The first thing you should get is the Medallion of the Horde/Medallion of the Alliance followed up by any Grand Marshal/High Warlord PvP gear, or the arena PvP sets.
* Don't be afraid to cast totems before a duel starts. They are our buffs. If your opponent has a problem with this, tell them to remove their buffs and then apply them in the duel.
* Cast Water Shield when low on mana. It is cost-free, and restores a decent amount each time you get hit. The damage you take can be negated by the mana you get back to cast a lesser healing wave.



And so on....

Funky

Some good info there but:

The damage output of a Resto shaman is close to nil, and one on one fights may grind into the minutes.

Resto shaman actually have pretty decent damage output, especially burst. You can play way more offensively than the other healers. Shouldn't be afraid to throw a chain lightning/lightning bolt (depending how much time you have to be casting) followed by an earthshock into the mix when healing/interrupts aren't necessary. It's a handy 2-3k+ damage that people don't expect from a healing spec.

Ivan

I can only assume that guide was written long before the change to +healing = spell damage.

And I didnt realise you were still playing funky. What server are you on these days? Still playing the shammy? I still owe you like 90g for my mount

Oh and Shammy survivability is a myth. Its varying degrees of 3-shottiness. Dying last as a shaman is a win, in my book. Rogues will stun lock you to death, so even that nastiest enhancement shaman will have a hard time doing much damage (though granted you dont really need to land much) and dont get me started about elemental. Resto is a different story.

Try arenajunkies.com for info on pvping as a shaman, its mainly centred around arenas but if you find a decent team with a shaman on it (hint check 3v3 or 5v5) and see what spec and gear they are using, might give you a good idea.

As for dueling, forget it. Nothing creates as many bad habits as dueling, especially when you arent especially skilled to begin with. Start in arenas or Battlegrounds if you must and work your way up from there to higher ranked arenas and, err... more arenas

Kiith

Does anyone have any advice in general for the Arena? I'm about to join a 3v3 team, with me (Holy Pally), a Shaman (enhancement i think) and an Arms Warrior. I'm going to get all my key bindings sorted and practise with them in normal bg's.

Also, only have the .5 pvp set, so i will need to get more there. Is resilience as important (or more so) for healers? Cause my armour and +healing drops quite a drop when i swap my gear for the .5 set.

Anti

Resi is very important in pvp i find. but with a few weeks of arenas you should have enough points to build up some nice gear.

Kiith

So assuming we got our asses handed to us most of the time, do you get arena points for losing?

Anti

Yup,

I was in a team for a week, won 3 out of 10 games and got 324 points.

Kiith

And can you do as many games as you want, or is the a daily limit?

Ivan

You can do as many as you want, but once you reach 10 games you dont gain anything extra from playing more unless you win.

BadCharlie

Ivan wrote: »

You can do as many as you want, but once you reach 10 games you dont gain anything extra from playing more unless you win.

I do arena each week but stop at 10 games.

So what your saying is if after my 10 games im on 1600 raiting. Then i play another 5 games and go down to 1500 raiting. Do i get my weekly points on the 1600 raiting or the 1500 ?

If its the 1600 then that's cool. Cause im always scared to not play the 11th game due to losing some raiting...

Ivan

No sorry, what I am saying is after your 10 games you dont gain any advantage over someone who played 10 games but ended up on the same rating as you, even if you played 20 games.

You gain points based on the rating you end on when the points are calculated. So if you played 10 games and ended on 1600 rating and then played 5 more games and go down to 1500 rating then you're weekly points are based on the 1500 rating.

Funky

Ivan wrote: »

And I didnt realise you were still playing funky. What server are you on these days? Still playing the shammy? I still owe you like 90g for my mount

Yea i'm still playing away, on Outland these days.. just pvping with my shaman, no raiding really!

How about you? Don't remember that 90g at all :P

Kiith

What would be a good combination of characters to have in a 3v3 team? Between us, we have a Paladin, Warlock, Shaman, Mage, Warrior and Druid all lvl70. We will probably go with the Pally, Shaman and Warrior, as these are our mains atm. Is this a good combination?

Funky

that works, any combination of enhance/resto/holy/ret specs should work other than enhance & ret together... ive been playing druid/shaman/warrior for a while and i love it, all the 2xrogue/druid teams going round are a joke to beat

Ivan

Paly/Shaman/Warrior is pretty sweet these days, especially if played right. Give some serious thought to a 3 dps team, Ret pala/Ele shaman and Arms warrior. 3 dps teams will destroy most 2 dps teams by simply annihalating one target in a matter of seconds.

Alternatively 2 dps 1 resto shaman. Holy paladin has lost alot of its edge lately and with the amount of melee running around in 3v3's, earthbind totem and pillar hugging makes you almost as effective as a druid at survivability.

Finally and strangely enough, arms warrior, holy paladin and resto/ele shaman work pretyt well together, as 2 healer teams (especially with a semi offensive and semi healing spec that shamans are capable of) are surprisingly under-rated. Being able to indefinitely keep a warrior alive with windfury, bloodlust and blessing of freedom makes for a pretty hard team to beat.

But the key is to experiment, play lots of games and decide what you enjoy playing.

And Funky, my wow career is a long and complicated story. Moved from Bladefist to Outland in the great exodus of 06. Was in meta until 07 when I rerolled a paladin at TBC launch on Hellscream to play with some work-mates. Did up to Leo as prot before moving to Terenas where I was prot into BT. Guild pretty much went on permanent AFK in Christmas of 07 and I've rerolled on Mazrigos, focused entirely on PvP.

Joined the Irish Guard on Terenas but havent really played a whole lot sadly, usually just log on for arena games these days and thats about it

Horsefumbler

Jumpy wrote: »

I realised I have no idea.

I cant win a duel. I am always dead before I can finish off a heal, so thats out. I cant run fast enough to keep away even with an earthbind, so thats out. I cant hit hard enough to kill anyone in melee, plus my health is low.

I cant figure it out.

Priest was easy but I relied on the fear so much to get them away. Shammy has nothing like that.

Ok I'm guessing you're quite newish to the game and probably enhancement(?). So rather than the general advice people wil give you I'm going to give you some tips you can use straight away which should result in you seeing a difference in 1v1 outcome.

WHEN FIGHTING MELEE CLASSES - EQUIP A SHIELD! This is something that so few enhancement shamans bother to do but it literally is the difference between winning and losing when fighting warriors and rogues. Against similar geared warriors if I go all out with spells and fire totems on a warrior and use shamanistic rage with a shield equiped chances are I'll win by simply doing more damage to him quicker than what he can do to me. You can't really escape from warriors, or at least not too easily and you cant out heal the dmg they do so your only chance for survival is to just attack them all out. Stormstrike, shocks, fire nova, lighteningsheild reapplications everything. Its basically the same for rogue but they have more defenses against your spell damage from clock of shadows and also they can keep you stunned for large durations of the fight. you'll probably want to drop some defenisve totems against them like poison cleanse and maybe Stoneskin; it reduces their white dmg by a reasonable amount.

Another small piece of advice about the grounding totem, you may already be doing this but as i said you saound newish so I thought i'd mention it, make sure you have it bound to a key thats close to wsad. When you do use this totem you need split second timing to drop it just as you see a caster about to finish a cast of a move. its best to do it like this as it means the caster has just wasted 2.5/3/watever seconds casting that spell on you and also if the spell is a projectile attack like frostbolt/fireball and the caster follows it up with an instant atackk like icelance/fireflast both spells will be absorbed by it. It's kind of a bug but its been in the mechanics forever so I cant see it changing.

Use all the moves at your disposal. All lot of shammies are lazy and dont bother dropping say windwall while fighting a hunter when the move is there to be used for just that situation. If the hunter hits you 10 times in a fight this totem will have saved you 1000 health and I'd imagine that a hunter will hit you a lot more than 10 times over there course of a fight if you got anywhere near 10k hit points. Just using that totem as an example.

gl