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I did some Warsong last night with my alliance Mage.  Though my PvP experience is very limited, I totally owned everybody that I got into a 1-1 conflict with... except for... you guessed it!  I don't come close to beating Shamans.

I know most of the people here are Horde, but does anybody have some insight into how to beat a Shaman?

Mortal Strike?

Sell them to a cattle farm.

Get the sheep off... burn them to death.

To get the sheep off you have 2 problems: Earthshock and Grounding totem. If the shaman is good they will earthshock you as soon as your hands go blue and drop a grounding totem. To deal with the earthshock you will need them to be silenced as brute-forcing a polymorph through it can get messy, especially if they are Tauren. Now your task is to get the silence off. If you don't see an air totem down (this is the one with transparent electric blue around it), then just silence. If not, lead with fireblast (level 1 preferred) to kill it off, THEN silence. One they are silenced and sheeped you need to go into the usual arcane/fire opener of AP->fireball->PoM-Pyroblast->Fireblast->IAoE spam with one exception. A smart shaman will spam grounding totem while sheeped, which will eat up your pyroblast. To combat that you go AP->fireball->CS->PoM-Pyroblast->Fireblast->IAoE spam so they are silenced before they even get out of sheep.

Now victory depends on how much +damage gear you have, how many crits you got, and how much life they have. I have pretty damn good gear, it's all top tier blues and an MC epic which leaves me with 4k HP and I can be killed in this manner by mages in my guild who are also decked out. I'm sure it scales relatively well with gear levels. If he uses a potion you will most likely lose.

I have never in my life been killed by a mage who didn't get the sheep off. I have never been killed by any mage but an arcane/fire mage. I have never lost to a mage when I've had pots available and been allowed to use them. Keep that in mind when you fight them - it's all about the burn.

EDIT: Spelling.

That is my usual strategy.  But sometimes they are an orc, and it gets foiled.

I own shamans, but I'm a warrior with Mortal Strike. Typically, I charge them, immediately hamstring them, howling shout, and then MS, MS, execute.

For a mage I couldn't say.

Calanthus pretty much nailed all the important points, plus apparently has the background of being an actual mage.

When I originally designed my post, it was going to open with a discussion of just why the alliance despises Shamans in the context of their abilities and how well they tend to translate in a CTF environment.  However, after reading that over for proofreading, plus reading Paelos' comment about how the key to winning with the warrior is with Mortal Strike, as a non-Mortal Strike tank-ish build, I now just want to punch myself in the nads over and over and weep about my impotence with respect to PVP.

Orcs can go in the sausage. No one will be the wiser.

It's funny because in PvE mortal strike is really stupid. You get the same effect from Heroic except its non-instant. However, the 50% healing reduction it adds in PvP makes it totally necessary to destroying any healing class and/or cloth-wearers. With that nifty polearm you get in Alterac, I can crit on my MS now for 1200 on cloth wearers, and they simply can't heal that fast enough.

Yeah, I don't doubt that. The big problem with the protection tree is that its mitigation is based almost exclusively on melee damage.  While that helps you survive the rogue ganks a big easier, it brings nothing to the table versus all the ranged elemental damage you're more likely to see in the battlegrounds. Really, the key to surviving is to have a good healer of any stripe next to you.  If you're solo, you're pretty much dead.  Or you get into that situation where you're helping a priest not die, and he rewards your loyalty by running off in shadowform to go mind flay the horde while your HP slowly drain away. Yes, I know, the reverse is true where you heal a poor warrior, and the mobs all gang up on you while the healed up warrior runs off to jack the horde.

The other major problem is the inability to handle kiting. Intercept and Charge are one way to handle things, but on the other hand, in group PVP situations, what you've really done is separate yourself from the pack, into a sea of angry opponents. Unless your opponent is at the same time running away, this is a virtual death warrant.

What's fairly frustrating is that for all the talk about how damage dealing Warriors can get, with the exception of mortal strike, there's no good way to channel rage into instant damage. The only other to skills that apply off the top of my head are Overpower (which means you have to be dodged first), and maxed-out talent Slam, which.. just no. That lack of damage on demand, coupled with the fact that must be done at melee range, plus the fact that you have no real damage mitigation, is just a brutal way to go. You end up almost becoming a more crit-heavy Paladin, without the self healing/shields.

Well I don't know a good strat for a mage to beat a shaman but I do know I was not having any problems taking shaman out with my hunter. Shaman are tricky and if played right are a major pain but thankfully most people cannot play them to their full effectivness. Most are one trick ponies and if you can beat their one trick you should be able to roll them.


kaid

That one trick being earthbind.

Nah, generally it's frost shock.  I've seen most of 'em are melee specc'd that spam rank 1 frost shock to get into melee range then attempt to grind ya.  Or if it's against a pally or warrior, high level frost shock kite to win.

They are tough.

Their totems have no hp to speak of - so you need a fast attack weapon (wand, dagger, insta cast damage spell) to quickly take them out.  Otherwise, you waste a lot of time attacking the totems with overpowered slow attack weapons.

Keep them moving (fear or attacks outside their casting range etc.).  Their totems are based on a stationary strategy.

speaking as a rogue and a warlock...

If you're a non-affliction spec warlock or the shaman has engineering, you'll lose. Otherwise kite with curse of exhaustion and let the dots eat them... just stay the heck out of shock range and throw nightfall-proc shadowbolts whenever possible, shadowburn too if you have the shards. The key is to force him to use his NS (instant) heal; if you have omg gosu reflexes, you can dispel the nature's swiftness buff with your felhunter before he casts the heal, but don't count on it. If he tries to get away, keep in mind that ghost wolf is a dispellable, interruptable spell. If the felhunter's devour magic is down, use amplified curse of exhaustion to get enough time to dispel it. You can also try the fear + mana drain deal, but blacksmith shaman will just break and immune, others will spam tremor totems meaning your fear will last 2 seconds at most. Speaking of totems, you need to have your pet attack and kill earthbind and grounding (and mana tide, if you see it), ignore everything else (no point in killing tremor, the shaman can spam it at 75 mana a pop). You MUST use the pet to do this, you cannot afford to waste 2-3 global cooldowns (thx autowand code) or waste a shard with shadowburn (your only instant damage spell) to nuke a totem. Don't be afraid to sic the felhunter on the shaman, 160 resists to all means the shaman will have to melee. If he melees the pet, you've already won, just let loose with whatever nuke you want. If he frost shocks you, have the felhunter devour it (Servitude mod helps), and immediately follow up with a fear; you have a 5-second window of no interruptions. When he gets loh / lom and starts a big heal, spell lock, shadowburn, death coil, immolate, dead.
If the shaman has engineering: Watch your entire strategy fly out the window when a shaman mezzes you with a bomb and moves in for the 3-hit kill with a windfuried arcanite reaper. kek.
If you're not affliction: Just lay down and die. Oh yeah, and forget the succubus. She's WAY too fragile, dies in at most 3 hits. Maybe if you have tier 9 epic gear, you can one-shot shaman with a 6k soulfire crit or whatever, but until then it's better to play it safe imo. Destruction spec is a joke vs shaman, they can heal it faster and once you're oom you're screwed. Soul Link.... um, Purge. nuff said. <3

If you're a rogue, you need tons of HP to survive the flameshock and frost shock spam you'll be getting in yer face along with the windfury-d arcanite reaper. Mind Numbing Poison and Wound Poison (hah) helps, but Crippling Poison is gold. Twin crippling means even a poison cleansing totem won't be able to keep up with it. Save your blind for the inevitable warstomp + ghost wolf. If you have improved kick, use it for a surprise silence when he's at 10% hp and burst damage him to death before he can heal. As a rogue totems are a pain since you can't switch targets without losing combo points and they're immune to AOE; blade flurry is a good way to deal with them if you're combat specced. A smart shaman will use a nova totem after you vanish to flush you right out. You can also try to stunlock-gank them if you're a dagger build with shanker+ and are willing to burn prep if things go south (remember, he only needs 0.5 seconds to cast an NS big heal, NS doesn't have global cooldown attached)

In general, shaman are a freakin' pita. Especially in WSG. Ugh.


-- Z.

... with a talent that reduces it to 1 second cast time.

Re killing their totems: all the totems that matter in PvP have just 5 hitpoints.

1 second casting time is still a casting time, plus the "arcane" animation is easy to catch. You can warstomp before wolf to make it pretty much uninterruptable though. I agree, however, that you're better off dispelling wolf and saving your 30 sec cooldown spell lock for the inevitable big heal.

Totems do have 5 hp, but they're immune to every aoe (exceptions: rogue blade flurry, warrior sweeping strikes / cleave). The only way to kill 'em fast enough is to sic a pet on them or use a rank 1 instanuke (moonfire works well). Some classes are screwed when it comes to killing totems though... heck, even mages have to waste a fireblast. Wanding the totems used to work until the last patch, but now autofire basically stuns you for 2 seconds, yay for global cooldown!


-- Z.

As a frost mage you gotta wear them down.  You're much more mana efficient then they are but those instacast disruptions really kill you.  Get way out of range of them with blink and kite nuke.  Time that counterspell to knock  the long cast heal they will cast.  I end up using both ice  barriers (it being fucking dispellable...bullshit)  and ice blocks and even then i'm lucky to beat them because of those damn shocks because i'm trying to frost bolt them to death to save mana.
Make sure to get frost ward up also.  And try to pull them away from thier totems instead of killing them.  What is the range on them 10yards I think?
I tend to save my instants for the end when the are low on mana.  I'll use 1 to take some damage off them at the start and make them go abit on the defensive but it burns too much mana.
Try to nova them...blink out of range and frost bolt frost bolt...time that counter for the heal and insta them to death.
If you need to evoc near the end...wait till they are out of mana and sheep them...no matter if they go back to full health, you'll be at full mana and they will be drained.  Then it's just kiting a warrrior.
Sounds easy in theory but for me it's pure luck if I beat them regularly.

But I don't think you'll  need to worry about so much about shamans for much longer.  The start of what I think will be some nice nerfs are coming thier way in the next patch.  The first being that druids will now shed frost shock when they hit travel form the way they were supposed to as reported by Cay in a thread this week.
Bout damn time too.
Now we just need to nerf shadowpriests and things will start to resemble balance.

Druids shedding Frost shock appon shapeshift isn't a nerf, its fixing a skill to work the way it was intended.  Druids not shedding snares appon shifting was a bug.

As for shadow priests, it already happend, its called a trinket.

I know it's a bug.

I'm just trying to poke at the Shamans that are going to slowly lose godmode.

That trinket hurt more classes then the shadowpriest, while leaving out nerfs to say the rogue stun or sap.  Shadowpriests are way overpowered but it seems noone wants to nerf priests probably because both sides can play them.  Whereas shamans do not have an equal for alliance.  No pallys are not equal.
And most shadowpriests are just useless in BG.  I was watching my buddy in, and there is a shadowpriest I happen to have in my friends list.
He is bitching about how the Horde are actually healing thier giant and keeping him alive.
He's doing this bitching while in shadowform, as was pointed out to him in the chat.

You should try playing a shadowpriest before you whine so much.

They are rediculously overpowered in 1v1, but in GvG you become fairly worthless esp on the Alliance side.  I'm not going to bother with why, because you will argue against me and at some point I will reveal that I haven't even touched WoW in 3 months but I had a Dwarf Shadowpriest at 60 and I've kept up on most of the changes so I'm still pretty goddamn certain that Shadowpriest is far from overpowered in GvG.

There's 2 kinds of shamans: the 31+ Elemental shamans that will WTF pwn you and the tri-spec shamans that will outlast you. 1v1, there's not much advice I can give you except hope you get the sheep off and then follow up with lucky crits and a well-timed silence.  In GvG, defensive paladins are the win.

If the shaman has engineering, you are dead.

Bombs have the same range as your nukes and can stun and mez you. Net gun can root you for 10 sec [and if it backfires, likely you'll be at melee range with the shm]

Oh, and have I mentioned the shadow / fire / ice damage reflectors? If they mash the trinket button as they are sheeped, your fireball / pompyro / whatever will kill YOU.


-- Z.

With most shamans, the one-trick-pony issue is a big thing.

The most effective capacity shamans have is the ability to switch on the fly to adapt to whatever was just leveled against them; if a shaman doesn't know how to adapt in a matter of seconds, they'll be thrown off by a slight reappropriation of strategy.

But there's so much a shaman can do in response to so many things you can do to them, that it's really quite useless to try to theorycraft the subject.

If a shaman is lazy enough to keep their totems within striking range of a melee hit, then by all means, blast them away. But the biggest deal with totems is wondering if they are worth the distraction.

Myself, I have put down worthless totems often in an attempt to get people to de-target me or otherwise waste even a mere three seconds "destroying my vital totems." So many people assume so much about the totems, that I'm able to use them as a faux achilles heel. I also make it a point to space the totems, so people who want to jank them have to get to them. Any time wasted is life lost, especially where and when the shaman shock timer is involved.

Since the grounding totem applies spell protection instantaneously, it is best used when planted immediately following visual spellcasting observation, making targeting it to get the spell through a cumbersome and disadvantageous process. I typically fare better when a spellcasting opponent is busy dinking with totem flushing.

Even worse is when I put down a dummy wind totem for someone to destroy, thinking it to be the grounding totem. Watch for when people are doing this; they'll put down a cheap level 1 totem that does nothing worthwhile, yet looks exactly like a grounding totem. This will be swapped it in response to casting.

Also, when using counterspell, beware of dummy heal casts using the hearthstone.

The only typical break period for getting a cast off on a shaman requires the expending of the grounding totem in the last 15 seconds along with the observed use of an earthshock in the last 5 to 6 seconds. This is the time to sheep.

Sheep is so risky without silence though. The first one will be eaten by an ES. The next will be eaten by a grounding totem. The next one by an ES. If they're Tauren the next will be eaten by a stomp (maybe by a bomb if they are engy). The next one will be eaten by an ES. Now grounding totem is up again. You're looking at 7 attempts where the only way you're gonna get a polymorph off is if the shaman messes up or you get lucky. You've also copped 2k in pure shock damage... with the addition of melee you really should be dead by now. Get the silence off and sheep is automatic, so there's no reason not to. You can always resheep to wait for the CS cooldown.

With the right macros, as well, a warstomp (2 second stun, no global) can be followed by a free uninterruptable lesser healing wave (1.5 second cast).

> Shamans: how do you destroy them?

Click on delete, and type "DELETE" into the box.

Yea shaman is really strong in 1on1, only marginaly behind druid. Mages can beat them though but it does require some work. First of all you don't have to click totems, you set up a macro. Macros in WoW are allowed to do infinite ammount of targeting but can only do 1 action. So set up a totem killing macro which automatical targets, kills and then switch back to the shaman. Secondly you have to do yourself a favor and get a UI mod called spell alert. It writes out in the middle of the screen "Joe is casting Lesser Healing Wave" as soon as Joe the shaman starts to cast Lesser Healing Wave ( you can call this cheat best you want, it's still legal by blizzards standards).

I don't know this for certain since I've never seen a mage use it, but technicaly Detect Magic should put grounding on cooldown, meaning sheeping would be a hell of a lot easier. Also totems has a really low area of effect and shamans doesn't run faster than you do so nothing prevents you from runing/blinking for a second. There's an trinket from MC which is god sent for fire mages using pom combo, it's called Talisman of Ephermal Power and is +175 mana free dmg on a 90 second cooldown.

Frost mages will have to do things a tad diffrent. The good ones I've seen stand at max range and kite with frost bolt and blizzard ( -70% run speed ). Even if it's supossed to be on dimminishing returns I've never actually seen people geting immune to it. I've played lvl 60 mages in both EU test server phases A LOT ( I kind of wish I would've goten a mage instead of shaman to 60 :/ ). When the shaman use healing ( always coming in the form of Lesser Healing Wave ) mage CS ( HS trick won't work if you have spell alert ). After CS they blink into melee range for fire blast -> frost nova -> CoC -> AE, Talisman of Ephermal Power is quite handy here as well I would belive. I've seen a lot of mages being very succesful with above strategy. If they fuck up somewhere they have no problem through the use of Frost Nova + blink and Ice Block for dispelling.

Also I know all this raving about windfury goodness and how it insta keels all casters with Reaper etc. It's a weapon buff with 20% proc rate which when it procs on slow weapons gives nasty burst dmg. On a reaper that's like on average 1 proc every 18 seconds. 18 seconds of whacking is a hell of a lot more than it would take for a rogue or warrior for example.

If you're a warlock which is planning on fearing a shaman it's handy to know that tremor totem is a pulsating totem. It pulses once when it's put down and then it waits for a couple of seconds before it pulses again ( I would guess at 5 seconds ). So if you see him puting down the totem let the fear land and then kill the totem, with the pet as pointed out earlier if that's the best way according to warlocks.

Discussing engineering is pretty irrelevant as well since it's a 2 way thing. Warriors uses engineering to kill shamans by staying in range, casters use engineering to stay at range vs shamans etc. The only class this doesn't work vs is frost mages which can dispell everything with ice block and blink away from nets.

Careful. Like I've mentioned, there are a lot of circumstances where the cooldown is not worth hitting a totem.

Also, minus the first tremor/grounding put up before a fight so as to allow for next cooldown on grounding, tremor totems are usually put down in response to observed casting, forcing a cancel on the present spell for a hit on the totem.

It isn't worth it, as hitting the player is faster than bothering with a recast on a totem and achieves the exact same effect.

Also, typically, grounding is the secondary cast interrupt mechanism behind earthshock.

Yea I agree, but I mean more like those times when you actually want to hit the totem it's nice to have the targeting automatic instead of having to click around with the mouse. Also a macro can't be fooled by the "rank 1 agility totem" trick.

Shadowpriests have been nerfed enough.  They were nerfed in beta, and the first 3 patches all had nerfs to the class.

Hunters and shaman are about on equal terms with shadow priests, and an epic geared rogue/warrior can rape a shadow priest.  Even a good pom/pyro/imp cs mage has a good chance of taking them down.

I repeat, fearing a shaman does not work. You have 2 interrupts (earth shock, grounding -- no, I can't use my pet to kill grounding before fear is cast if I'm facing a competent shaman and if I interrupt casting to take it down via wand, I've just lost MORE time than just having it immune my fear in the first place) and tremor totem pulses a HELL lot more often than 5 seconds. I can take the one on the ground down after I cast the spell (they'll plant as I'm casting), if I stop to kill it it's as good as a grounding totem. However, by the time I take it out, the shaman will have already broken fear and can now plant another, not to mention my fear will be on diminishing returns. I might've just gotten unlucky with my 600 ping, but I doubt it. :p

There's a TremorMovie.wmv around the net that demonstrates it... basically an orc warlock dueling a tauren shaman, with the shaman doing nothing but spamming tremor totems. Not a single fear sticks for more than two seconds, most of them break WITHIN one second. Add the crazy fear-rubberbanding since the last patch, and you get fear only usable as a means of pseudo-cc in battlegrounds (I never plan for it to stick for more than 3 seconds, and it never does, thank you wotf / tremor). Taking down totems with wands is not possible anymore either. I have a 1.2 speed wand, but with autowand, I'll spend 2 seconds wanding a totem while you can recast one in 1 second. Yay.

About windfury, I used to fear the reaper™, but nowadays it's weaksauce compared to MC stuff or pvp rewards. Unstoppable Force (from alterac valley) is where it's at. More damage than a reaper, slightly faster (meaning more w-fury procs by your calculations, btw isn't windfury a proc-per-minute instead of 20%? I sure as hell see it proc more often than 20%... probably it's just observational bias tho') and the stun+knockback effect absolutely rapes everyone. Or try a Flurry Axe with windfury.. not much damage, true (it's a level 40 epic after all), but you can proc windfury off the flurry effect, making a caster's life hell. Or how about getting a Malown's Slam go all windfury on you, getting 3 stun proc chances right away. (the proc chance doesn't change with WF, remember) Etc.

I -have- beaten shaman in the past, but they all sucked. They tried to frost shock me when I had my felhunter out, actually cast lightning bolt (wtf?!), tried to kite ME (wtf^2), earth shocked me randomly instead of waiting for a spell, trying to catch me on foot instead of wolfing when I was kiting them with curse of exhaustion, etc.

Edit: Wow, I suck at the internets.


-- Z.

The pulse time of tremor totem is 2 seconds I believe, every tick in other words. One thing you guys might want to try is to make a macro for killing tremor totem with an instacast. From soloing fearing enemies you will ALWAYS be feared for the full duration because they will fear you and then kill your tremor totem right away. Like alot of the other things in the game, I believe tremor totem wont break fear instantly due to sync, there's a tiny little spot where if it ticks the server isn't properly aware of the fear and so ignores it. That gives you a guaranteed window where you can destroy the totem as it wont take it off right away. I'm not sure if the macro can hit within the guaranteed window, and I'm not sure if warlocks have a throwaway instant, but this is just an idea you might want to try. :P

That's the problem, we don't have a throwaway instant... the only instant DD we have [totems are immune to dots] is Shadowburn, which is a 11 point talent, eats a soulshard and is on a 15 sec timer. Mages are in a similar situation, they can pretty much only use fireblast to zing the totem.

However, I also realized today that message boards are hard. Especially hitting 'quote' vs 'modify'. Wow, I suck.


-- Z.

It's true, but I myself have only ever used grounding in one specific manner.

I drop one in response to the cast I want to interrupt.

(Not counting, if it is allowed, the dropping of a grounding totem at least 15 seconds prior to the duel start, for a free refresh)

Even if the mage interrupts their cast to pop the totem and begin recasting? The effort is only more time wasting as Earthshock only takes five seconds to recast. It's best just to let totem/ES absorb two spells. The limited and extremely hard to manage open point is when both ES and Grounding timers are on cooldown.

Some pretty durned skilled mages are constantly practicing against me, trying to figure out a Shaman achilles heel. The macros will get you by some tricks, but it still seems like an unfair fight. As long as I adapt realtime to what the mage is doing, I win soundly - two days ago I pulled a straight 40 out of 40, although a lot of shaman will have more limited, straightforward applications of their duel strategy that are capably counterstrategied.

Also, and not like yer going to run into many of these, punish shaman who do not use purge. Drink a nature resistance potion.

Warriors just got more hosed against Shaman. Duel starting you in combat = no introductory charge = less rage.

Rogues still have an issue with free action potion being an I Win button, and a good shaman can consistantly beat even the most skilled rogues at level 60.

Oh well, I guess this is how we knew it'd work when Blizzard deflected the issue by saying "Well, the game isn't balanced for 1v1"

Man if the game was half as fun as Theorycraft is I would so be playing still...

I dont believe that 18sec per windfury proc either unless there was a nerf I missed which is possible, I've tried to stay on top of the changes but some patches I've only read the priest and pally tweaks closely.

There's also a known (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-bugs&t=45437&p=1&tmp=1#post45437) bug (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?ForumName=wow-bugs&ThreadID=44747) with earthshock and similar interrupts like counterspell that send a huge spam of ACTIONBAR_UPDATE_COOLDOWN events to the client, freezing those with lesser computers (like me) for 2-4 sec. It's real fun when an earthshock acts as a 4-second stun, let me tell you. Oh, and this is not getting fixed until 1.7 (1+ month from now).


<3,

-- Z.

18 sec / windfury is the average if we're talking about Arcanite Reaper. And as an actual shaman I've experienced that it's pretty much the case. Thing is most oponents don't remember that time when you're whacking away not procing, they remember the times when you proc like crazy. It IS 20%, the description says so, and after watching my tauren swing his weapon quite a few times I feel pretty safe to say that it actually is 20%.

One thing which is pretty intresting though is procs seems to be affected by the oponents defense skill vs your weapon skill. For example if I come across a lowbie I'm almost guaranteed to proc like a mofo. Same goes for whacking away at criters, proc every swing. And it's the other way around when you fight very high mobs, on Molten Destroyers ( lvl 63 ) in MC it feels like it never procs.  So I'm guessing that 20% is when your weapon skill is the same as your oponents defense skill.

Is that not just because you're succesfully hitting more ?

I believe those proc rates and for others like it are at that listed percentage against something of your level. If the target is higher or lower your milage will vary.

kaid

It'd be cool to know the average 60vs60 proc times on Hand of Edward the Odd.

Slightly OT, but where the 'eck does the Hand of EtO drop? The druids in my guild have been in a frenzy ever since they saw some pally with it...


-- Z.

It looks to be a random world drop:

http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=2243
http://www.thottbot.com/?i=21012

Figures... I thought it was a BoP instance-only drop like the sunrazor. Ah well.


-- Z.

A random world drop = IT CAN BE URS FOR THE LOW LOW PRICE OF MONEYS ON EBAY.

And holy crikey, it's a deadly piece of kit. Over the time it takes to melee a single battle, you get 2 or 3 free chain lightnings/healing waves, about.

/start aside

Druids with the Hand on PVP servers make baby jesus cry. If you're on a pvp server please point out to them that they will be mince-meat if they spend too long in caster form, and in bear form they don't benefit from weapon procs. The only Hand to drop on our server went to a druid and he wishes he sold it instead of equipped it because it's not very good for him. On a PvE server... yeah some druids put on OoC and whack at mobs for free spells, and this would be nice for 'em.

/end aside

Ok, we've been doing a bonanza of mage/shaman fights.

The imbalance is clear and powerful, but patterns are pretty established at this point in time.

Mage is going to get off a sheep if they've learned the ES/grounding timers well. This puts any shaman without NS at some risk (triple-tree is still better than ele spec against mages), but there's still an issue of duel disparity. Also, fear spell reflection. Trinkets are nasty.

The priority of the mage is going to be to try to get out of the range of shocks at all times. If one is super-cool enough to keep track of earthbind totem cooldown, they can appropriately time a frost nova and a blink.

Don't blink behind the opponent; if your opponent is a decent fighter, they know easily how to re-face and interrupt spellcasting easy. Blink to range, use it to keep distance.

Since shocks are centered around spell interrupt, the earthbind totem is going to be used often. It will be dropped whenever the mage is within melee range. It will also be dropped in response to a frost nova fly-by, to prevent a run out of shock range. Perhaps if the shaman's feeling gutsy, you'll get an odd frost shock, but I rarely ever do this.

Melee range happens. Both grounding and ES interrupt spells on the fly as the shaman runs, where the mage must be holding still to attempt spells. Don't panic when this happens, expect it and learn how best to deal with the confrontation. Correct use of blink and frost noval are critical at this point, and a failed frost nova can spell doooooom, as can a well-timed windfury proc.

Get sheep off and bandage. Poke totems with wands in this period. If a shaman sees the inevetable sheep coming, they'll do various things, like drop a fireball spittin' totem. Get rid of any red totems you see before you start bandaging, as it sucks to have a searing totem whack you within seconds of your bandage. This also offers an opportunity to get rid of resistance totems which are otherwise not worth concentrating on.

Frost mages seem to do better, as they have the most ability to get and keep a shaman at range long enough to wear them down, but so far as of yet it appears that any situation like this that will throw a match to the mage has to be the result of avoidable shaman error. Also, given the complete lack of benefit from armor class, a versatile shaman will pull out a powerful 2h staff/axe/mace to maximize the DPS in a mage fight.

Factors involving the start of the duel matter too. Does the duel start at a fixed range? Is it 20? 30? Does the shaman pre-place totems, such as the handy 10y-spaced grounding with the 15 second cooldown expired? This gives the shaman three consecutive interrupts.

The worst way for a mage to have the duel start is if the shaman is allowed the liberty to waltz around, drop whatever totems he fancies, then sits at 10y or at point blank. We experimented by starting matches with no totems dropped until the battle began and with a fair-seeming starting distance between mage and shaman. We did allow the battle to be started with wf and lightning shield, though, just as most classes will 'buff up' before a duel. The Lightning Shield is convenient in that it's free added damage against the mage over the course of the duel.

If the shaman starts with totems pre-dropped, begin the match by running and blinking away past the distance of the originally placed totems. If the shaman is at range for shocks and/or earthbind, blink immediately away from them (behind, likely) and just keep running until you have decent timer on the next blink. Then work the anti-spell timers for your first chance at a sheep, which will take practice. Then bandage away damage, and then the fight begins with the opening situation now favorable to the mage.

Arduous.

Man, druids have it much easier against grounding, because they can always blast off a l1 moonfire to clear grounding from the target. Mages are somewhat lacking in the 'poke' spell department, so it's a clear liability. Also, being purged naked of all buffs at the drop of a hat is a terrible liability, but not so much as the liability to Druids being unable to utilize Regeneration on account of Purge. Or, for that matter, Shaman tremor-spam fear protection against priests and warlocks.

After 1.6, shaman can obliterate any non-druid caster at will.

The reason? Grounding totem is broken. Instead of absorbing one spell every 10 seconds, it absorbs AN INFINITE NUMBER OF SPELLS as long as they don't do direct damage. A fight vs a competent shaman now goes like
*cast a spell from surprise, successfully* *start spell with casting time* *earthshock* *grounding totem* *try instacasts* immune immune immune immune immune immune dead. Fun. :P They said they'll fix this, so expect a fix in 2 months I guess.

(the first person that says "wand the totem" gets a shadowbolt in the face, yo.  :evil:)

Edited to help the content / whining ratio: My guild's been thinking about rolling horde on the pvp-rp server whenever it comes out. Do you guys think an all-troll guild would be viable? In pve (up to ubrs) and pvp (solo, group, wsg, av). If not, which class do you think we'd be missing most, warlocks or druids? Thankyas.


-- Z.

You'd miss Warstomp/WotF/Stun Resist more than druids or warlocks.  Each one is extremely valuable on a PvP server.

It's not broken in the "my fucking character isn't working", it's broken in the "holy crap, this is easy, I'm rolling a Shammy" sort of way. So, given that people are able to get a PvE content advantage out of it, it will be hotfixed very very soon. They don't give a rats arse about Shammies owning you or whatnot. If you PvP you are expected to roll the FOTM class, not bitch about balance.

Prediction: Shaman will be buffed and Hunters nerfed until you Elf retards start playing Horde in reasonable numbers.

Which makes all us Dwarf hunters cry.