0. Resto shaman views from a top 5 5v5 team 05/08/2007 11:31:30 AM PDT
Yes, there are resto shamans on top 5 5v5 teams.
I see a lot of stupid people post on this forum that makes me want to post and clarify what I think resto shamans bring to a 5v5 that helps, and what I think needs to be improved, along with a few things i've noticed in my arena endeavors. My team is at 2305 right now, and we run a static setup with me as the resto shaman, along with a warrior, warlock, hunter and paladin.
THE BOTTOM LINE FOR THOSE THAT DONT WANT TO READ THE WHOLE THING: In 5v5 arena, resto shaman have some weaknesses, but these weaknesses are erased when you play with good players, mainly in the area of CC susceptibility. The other weaknesses are the person playing the shaman, not knowing how to do their job effectively. Read some tips and see if you are doing these things, they do a world of good. Shaman bring a large amount of DPS to a group even if they are not the ones doing it, a nice addition to a 5v5 looking for a quality secondary healer/offensive dispeller.
What is good:
Bloodlust/Heroism - A unique buff that for 40 seconds, if not purged, makes the paladin you run with an absolute healing machine. This in itself helps negate a lot of early spike damage. When grouped with casters, allows quick CC and your DPS(mainly warrior) to build rage quickly. A great spell with definate 5v5 viability that makes a group want a shaman.
Windfury - This totem alone is what some teams base their team off of (team cheese, 2 paladins 2 warriors and a shaman). Makes an ordinary warrior extraordinary when combined with bloodlust/heroism.
Earth shock - If you are using higher than rank 1 you are doing it wrong. Shortest cooldown interrupt in the game that should be used to interrupt other people's CC's, or late game heals. Having a healer with an additional interrupt in a 5v5 team is certainly a welcome edition.
Tremor - Yes sometimes you get feared out of its range, but as it stands it is an AoE fear removal that allows the team's paladin to focus on doing other things rather than spam cleanse fear, as well as keeping the paladin out of fear after he/she has bubbled. Would be nice if the totem had more HP.
Purge - This is what makes or breaks how good a shaman is in 5v5 in my opinion. When you bring large DPS boosts to your group your secondary role is purging the other team, mostly getting blessing of freedom off quickly (I play with a hunter so this is a large concern). Being able to rely on your paladin to heal a lot of the time frees up a lot of time to purge your opponents into oblivion. Don't forget to purge hunters, their rapid fire is purgeable! Getting inner fire off priests also makes them an easier target.
Grounding totem - Sometimes with absolute perfect timing you will absorb a PoM'd spell with this, most of the time it is just ice lanced. The mechanic is rather buggy due to arena lag, often absorbing multiple purges or dots before the totem effect is used. Annoying as hell against other casters that don't ice lance it seeing multiple immunes.
What I think needs to be improved:
CC susceptibility - This is a larger problem in 2v2 and 3v3 but even in 5v5 if our trinket got us out of polymorph I would be so pleased. Most of the issues I see on this board stem from playing with poor paladins that will not cleanse your frost novas, or what have you. This is a group game, the paladin makes up for the deficiences of the shaman.
Mana tide - This is a unique ability for the shaman, the change making it pulse a large blue radiating aura saying "kill me" is retarded and is a huge nerf. Mages can conjure water for an entire team and drink whenever out of combat, but our totem has 5hp and has to be placed out of line of site to have any effect whatsoever against a smart team.
Arena longevity - Our heals are not cheap, so once we blow through our mana and mana tide we are pretty much throwing up water shield and trying to get hit. Paladins last so much longer than shamans in terms of mana pool, but the same can be said for priests and druids.
General Shaman tips - Things that a lot of healers, not necessarily shamans, should be doing in arenas to help the team win tight games.
USE LINE OF SIGHT- This is the biggest thing I would stress as a healer. Using the pillars to your advantage in a 5v5 prevents you from having to waste your shocks on CC's if you are watching your opponents. Simply moving out of line of sight of a mana burn, polymorph, shadow bolt, or fear is the best interrupt you can have, and as a class that has no way of breaking CC other than a stun with the PvP trinket it is your best tool. If you stand in the middle of the field healing and purging you are a BAD shaman.
Fake heals - As a shaman I am often not the target of counterspell in 5v5, the paladin is, but when I am learning to fake your heals is vital. You can often bait a mage to blow his counterspell by juking your heals, forcing him to try to catch you in a tree and fail.A
Drop your mana tide early - Drop this when you get to about half mana, not when you are close to running out, so you can continue healing and purging without having to wait for the totem to tick. Alert your team to where the totem is so they can reap the benefits of it.
Focus your interrupts on CC - The weakness of the shaman is being crowd controlled, therefore using your shocks/grounding on cyclone, fear and polymorph are IMO the best uses.
If you get focused, switch your shield! - This is somewhat minor, but if teams focus me I switch from my mazthoril shield to my gladiator shield, giving me additional armor and stamina. Often resto shamans are left alone in 5v5 in my experience, but this is somewhat helpful.
Gear balance - I run with around 10.2k hp/9k mana unbuffed at the moment and frankly as resto, its a bit much considering how little I get focused. Making sure you have a mana pool of at least 9k is nice, because the majority of your time will be spent purging (or failing to purge) blessings and other spells. Keeping your hp above 9k is a plus.
Make sure to redrop your totems! - This is something I see a lot, people will have their tremors/windfury totems whacked by other teams or forget to redrop windfury after dropping a grounding. Get totemtimers or a similar mod to watch when your totems are destroyed to stay on top of things.
Overall, I really do feel like enhancement and elemental are certainly getting hit hard with nerfs, but the cry that shamans are useless in 5v5 arena in my opinion is just a false statement, as long as your shaman plays smart and knows his limitations.
2v2 and 3v3 however, are a different story :p
Hopefully this was helpful to someone. I'll probably look this over later to see if I left anything out. Feel free to leave comments or questions i'll try to answer them
Rorixx
4. Re: Resto shaman views from a top 5 5v5 team 05/08/2007 11:44:38 AM PDT
The pt ur missing is that resto is the only viable pvp spec....everyone knows resto does very well in arena compared to the other specs, my 5v5 team runs 2 resto shams often. and Im only speccd ele for farming if ppl are armory farming.
10. Re: Resto shaman views from a top 5 5v5 team 05/08/2007 11:50:47 AM PDT
I agree elemental shams fit in well in a tri-healer setup, they do add some nice burst to the group.
As far as 2v2 goes, if you are running with a 3 minute mage i'd definately say go elemental, the 2 of you can blow someone up.
Shaman are not main healers, even specced resto I feel that is a misconception. I've seen teams run with druid main healers before without a paladin, but in the current iteration of the game running 5v5 without a paladin is just placing you at a disadvantage.
16. Re: Resto shaman views from a top 5 5v5 team 05/08/2007 12:03:52 PM PDT
I just joined a 3v3 team yesterday, as enhancement. We went 6-2. The two can be attributed to my being new to arenas. Enhance is viable in the arena with good group compisition and itemization.
The trick is not drawing attention to yourself until they all start focus firing the person that's built to take damage. In our case it's the demonology lock.
17. Re: Resto shaman views from a top 5 5v5 team 05/08/2007 12:05:16 PM PDT
I dropped resto because you're a gimped paladin that has to spend 3k mana on buffs/purges before casting 1 heal. Elemental works better because you can spend that mana and your team won't die because of it, but I need to work on my game since I am still pretty new to it.
shaman dps is more efficient than healing. go figure
19. Re: Resto shaman views from a top 5 5v5 team 05/08/2007 12:08:25 PM PDT
Q u o t e: I dropped resto because you're a gimped paladin that has to spend 3k mana on buffs/purges before casting 1 heal. Elemental works better because you can spend that mana and your team won't die because of it, but I need to work on my game since I am still pretty new to it.
shaman dps is more efficient than healing. go figure
I somewhat agree with you. But Elemental longevity is pretty bad. If your opponents can last through the NS+CL+EM burst train, you're going to go OOM fast.
We run a 2 healer + 3 non-mana dependant DPS team. At the higher ratings, mana becomes much more of an issue and bursting someone down is usually rare (since teams at higher ratings have lots of Resilience / Stamina).
