How to Improve Shaman in PVP

The biggest problem enhancement Shaman have in PVP is not our ability to deal damage, it isn't even really the ability to take damage. Its a lack of escapability and therefore a lack of survivability.

All other classes have ways to escape encounters, some from a single target others from multiple targets.

Paladin - The mighty bubble
Priest - Shield and Fear
Mage - Iceblock, dropping some frost and blinking.
Rogue - too many to count, vanish, gouge-n-run, sprint, CoS.
Hunter - Traps, Feign death fake-out
Druid - form switch / travel form
Warrior - Fear, switch target - intercept escape
Lock - Fear for days
Shaman - Frost shock / Earthbind totem?

I didn't include sheep or cyclone intentionally. While they can help you get out of a situation I just look at them differently than a "Holy Sh!t! Run away!" ability. For the arguements sake you can lump them in there as well though.

So Shaman basically have Frostshock and Earthbind. Earthbind totem can be nuked by whoever's killing you and they can be back on you without blinking an eye. Frostshock is good, provided you can put distance between yourself and the person(s) killing you before you're worm food. From experience in fighting those with equal gear to me I lose that fight a whole lot.

So I have a couple of suggestions on how to fix this. I don't think Shaman should have CC. (at least before the expansion) I do think we need some escapability / survivabilty as soon as possible, especially enhancement shaman.

1 - Shamanistic rage (This has been suggested elsewhere) should be non-dispellable and remove various debuffs ala CoS or druid shapeshifting. At first glance it may seem overpowered but considering this buff is useless in PVP right now due to it being gone from one click by an opponent and the fact that other classes have similar abilities in addition to other forms of survivabilty it really isn't all that bad.

2 - Add a spell - Blast of Air - 150 - 250 damage. (Less even if need be). Between a 30 sec - 1 min cooldown. Instant cast. Hits any opponent in a 5 yard radius with a blast of air, knocking them back 10 yards and taking minimal damage. (A dazed or slowed effect would be nice here but I think it could be a bit much)

Pro's - gives A shaman the chance to put distance between himself and opponents and therefore gives time to either get a heal off, cast frostshock and run, or generally do more than get burned down instantly.

Cons - People might worry about the knockback in places like the AV bridge or in EoTS at the flag. However the same type of problem exists with Priest MC, as a target can be MC'd and forced to jump off of whatever precipice the priest chooses.


Personally I think those dangers only add to the game, it would make opponents have to think about how to deal with shaman differently. Fighting a shaman in the arena on the bridge in BEM might be tricky if you get blown off and are now out of LoS to either heal or be healed. In AV it would actually take some smart folks to focus fire the shaman on the bridge before running across.

The hilarity of running in to the turtle at IBGY and watching bodies flying in the air would be priceless.

Hopefully my 6 readers check this out, I'd love to get some thoughts on this. I may even consider posting this on the cesspool that are the WoW forums.

New Layout

My first attempt at a new header and such.

I don't know why I chose Shadowmoon Valley but now looking at it, its a little Warlocky for lack of a better word.

I'm still undecided if I'm going to keep it or change it around a bit more.

I also updated my sig information, both are unbuffed wearing my melee they my healing healing set. Nothing spectacular but not too shabby either.

To the 6 of you that read this, feel free to give feedback on if you like it or not.

Going back in to Kara tonight, Aran / Chess / Prince if all goes well. If it goes really well maybe we'll have time for Illhoof or Netherspite.

Things that make me happy...

Purple Rain...........of Blood!

Yeah on our fourth attempt of the night (we had a 3% attempt, and a 9%) Prince finally croaked.

I still hate the fight though. The attempt we succeeded on I was virtually worthless. I ran away during an enfeeble and before I could run back an infernal dropped between me and Prince. So I was relegated to gimp healing and gimp lighting bolt duty. Eventually the infernal despawned and I ran back in ready to finish him off. The he cast shadownova and bounced me in to an infernal. I died just as I got out of the AoE. I then went to hit my self rez but wasn't paying close enough attention and released, so I didn't actually get to see him fall.

Its just such a stupid fight, especially if you're melee.

I was able to run back and get my badges which was good. Next time around I'll just slap my healing suit on and help out there my DPS just wasn't worth it. Too much running away and all the other crap, leave it to the casters.

Will post the stats soon.

Trying To Take Down Prince Tonight..

Wish us luck.

I hope we get him down, equally as important I hope we start on time.

Will have WWS and update tomorrow....

Aran Dead, and Prince = Stupid

So we got off to a late start and had to PuG a bunch of people. It kept getting pushed back as once we'd fill the group out a Pugger would leave and the cycle would start all over.

We worked our way up to Curator with a few deaths and stoppages along the way. We then had 2 wipes, 1 because someone aggro'd Curator while we were killing the adds, and another when we started to pull and our tank DC'd. I choose not to count those.

So, when we finally got a real attempt off, we destroyed him. it wasn't even close. We were killing flares so fast that as a melee I would be standing around for a few seconds waiting for the flare to pop up. There wasn't enough time to run and start DPS'ing Curator but it was still more time than I was used to.

We then move on to Aran and one shotted him. This was my first Aran kill and it was ugly. It ended with Aran and a rogue dueling eachother to the bitter end. One more shot and the rogue would have been toast. To add to the amazingness of it all, the rogue used kick once. Once in the entire encounter he bothered to interrupt Aran, the rest of the time he just didn't feel the need I guess. I have the Web Stats to prove this, I noticed this while the fight was going on but needed to see the stats to be absolutely sure. It just makes the victory even more improbable .

From there we rolled to Chess where I picked up a new neck piece, I can't link it while at work. Maybe I'll edit this when I get home.

We were so close to prince that we decided to give it a go....

PRINCE IS THE DUMBEST DAMN ENCOUNTER EVER CONCOCTED!

Its been stated before by many others, but I'll say it again. An encounter that is relatively easy aside from the luck based element that can severely screw you is just poor design. Not to mention it looks horrific. Kara is a great looking instance with many interesting boss encounters. Then comes Prince, the infernals drop and just stand there and let out that fart cloud every few seconds and look so ridiculous it isn't even funny. I just don't see how from a purely visual standpoint the designers who always throw in peoples faces how much time, care, and pride they put in to everything when people question them not being able to put out x-pacs on a yearly basis managed to approve this. Even more frightening when the game makes close to a billion dollars a year in revenue. (Simply inexcusable in my book) It looks like crap, it looks like an afterthought and whats worse is that its the FINAL BOSS of the instance?!!! I really just don't understand.

Well due to crappy infernal placement we didn't down him. It was getting late and we called it. We're going to go back Monday and we hope to have his head on a platter.

I just hope now that people see Kara team 2 can go up to or farther than team 1, people will want to join up more.

If we could have started on time both nights Kara would be obliterated.

My First Trip Out

Well, I was able to raid Kara last night as Enhancement. This is the first time I've done any kind of instance since accumulating my PVP gear. I had a few concerns.

1 - Since I haven't played enhancement in a PVE setting, my aggro would be all over the place.

2 - If I didn't heal someone they would be pissed (residual healer-itis)

3 - My DPS would blow chunks and all the time I spent trying to get the best gear I though possible would be for naught.

Things actually turned out pretty good. We had a paly for Salvation which was nice. I still was riding a fine line with the aggro meters but I only died once the entire instance and not from drawing aggro.

Our healing was top notch so no one even notice that I could heal.

My DPS was good. I think there are some things I can do to improve for sure, and I still have some upgrades coming but I was pleased overall.

Without further ado, I present the anonymous WWS report. We didn't get Curator because I had to bail unexpectedly. (I'm Parma btw)

http://wowwebstats.com/6fx2x3ou4hj3m

My DPS on Attumen kind of sucked because the offtank was just OK and I had to be really careful on Midnight. After the merge our resto druid refused to get on Attumens ass and kept getting charged so people were running around and such. Also this was the first 15 minutes or so in to the instance so I was being really cautious about pushing the aggro meters.

Moroes was better and my DPS was good. We had one shackle, a trap, and some paly fear as CC. Our DPS was good enough that things didn't really live long so not having more than one shackle wasn't really an issue.

Maiden was a joke. She was dead in what felt like seconds. Shamanistic rage cut down on the damage I was taking. I just kept twisting Grounding and WF totems to help eat her holy fires and basically just DPS'd the crap out of her.

Romulo and Julianne went down easy as well.

After that the plan was to move on to Curator before calling it a night. Unfortunately I had to go unexpectedly and I heard this morning that they didn't get him down. I feel bad but there was no choice, and besides we'll get him Thursday.

The only unfortunate thing I can say about the run was that we didn't get to start the run on time and we still needed to PuG like 3 - 4 people. Our core group from the old guild just isn't on and it stinks. If we had the people that were attending previously combined with the new guild we would have been set.

I think it will be better going forward though, once the run actually got off the ground and really started rolling, people realized that the weekday raiding team might not necessarily equal the "B" team. People can be very hesitant to commit to something if they think it won't work out and be just the opposite once the ball has started rolling. I think that will be the case here, or at least I hope. We have the second part of the run scheduled for Thursday. If we can start on time I see no reason that we couldn't down Curator, Aran, Chess, and one more at least.

Wish us luck!

Another long absence

Well, As you can see I haven't posted in forever.

After the Holiday break Kara stopped running on a regular basis. Our guild was just too small. As it was, we had to bring in 2 - 3 non guild members per run. When our small core stopped attending with regularity there was just no shot.

We have since merged with a new guild and are waiting to see how it all shakes down. They all seem nice and value the same things the previous guild did, the major difference being they have many many more members.

The one hiccup could be that they tend to raid on weekends. Our core group were almost exclusively weeknights. I hope that there are enough people that had wanted to go during the week but couldn't from the new guild that the two groups can come together and pull it off.

I'll keep you posted.

In addition I respecc'd out of Resto. At the end of it my healing was a tad below 1800, my mp5 was over 135 unbuffed and my mana was over 10k. I just got burned out on healing. Like nearly every other guild we were short on healers and if I didn't want to heal it basically meant the run didn't happen.

As it stands now when I put my healing set on I'm at 1599 healing and close to 120 mp5 unbuffed.

The second you start having to ask yourself, "Am I in this for me because I want to have fun, or am I in it just so I don't ruin someone elses good time only?" You're pretty much screwed. So I respecc'd elemental while I farmed PVP enhancement gear. PvP'ing as a shaman is hard enough, trying to pvp as enhancement when you don't have any pvp gear is just about as laughable as is humanly possible.

Thats an exstensive and entirely separate topic right there, but I'll sum it up in a couple of sentences and hope to delve in to it deeper in the near future. To sum up, Enhancement Shaman suck in PVP. Fighting an equally geared player of virtually any other class is highly highly difficult. We have no CC, we have no escapability. We have limited ways to break CC on ourselves, our ability to close on targets is dang near impossible (Frost shock and Earthbind ftwtf??), and we are easily focus fired in PVP and arenas. Huzzah! Is that a whine? Yes it is. Am I complaining about PVE ? nope. But in PVP we just don't get it done. Although pwning those new to PVP and undergeared is still satisfying it isn't the same.

So anywho, I farmed a bunch of gear from PVP so I can PVE. Basically aside from Tier gear there is no mail gear tailored for Enhancement shaman. There just ain't. Not in Kara, not in ZA, hardly anywhere. We derive our AP from Strength, good luck finding mail items with Int, Str, and Crit in Kara. You can't because they don't exist. In addition to this, we aren't terribly close to clearing Kara and moving on to 25 man content. So rather than make due with hunter or druid gear, I decided to go the PVP route, yes I lose some stat points due to an abundance of Stam and Resil but I still come out way on top when it comes to AP and Crit compared to someone at the same level of progression that neglects PVP.

Right now I have 8600 hp, 26% crit, and 1228 AP. Also keep in mind that because of my reward choices while leveling my trinkets suck. I'm working on getting the Bloodlust Brooch and The Darkmoon Card Crusade. If and when that happens you can basically tack on another 200 or so AP. Also, I'm rocking a bunch of green gems because I've been focusing on the PVP and enchants and money is tight. (Some stats may be off because I can't access armory at el worko)

Problem is, I haven't been able to see what kind of PVE numbers I can put out because we haven't been running Kara. Thats supposed to change tonight. I'll be running a webstats for tonights raid and will post results tomorrow.

So why didn't I post while all my Enhancement research and PVP adventures were going on? Well I'm lazy and because I need a new logo and sig I decided to hold off until I was ready for the big switch.

I hope to be back with more regularity (this is like the 5th post I've said this in) and that all my hard work wasn't for naught.