2000 requires a cookie cutter team, which is beyond lame.
I play on a 2200 3v3 team with an enhancement shaman, doesn't really get any less cookie cutter than that. I also have an odd outlast team in 3's with my druid that has no mana burn/drain whatsoever (resto druid, war, paladin) that's at 2100. Yes, cookie cutter teams makes it easier, but it's really not impossible given some hard work and a deep understanding of how the game works. Failing that, just find a team that can prey on a popular combo, and stop queueing when you meet the scissors to your paper, dodging teams that can beat you is a tried and true method of high rated douches everywhere.
I'm ret spec. Hitting 2000 will be impossible. No one plays the classes that work well with this spec (warlocks, shadow priests, shaman (I'm alliance).
Hitting 1850? It'll be hard, but doable. Though I'm not really sure I'll be able to form a good team, for the reasons listed above.
Cookie cutter for paladins is Holy. I grabbed a bunch of random friends and hit 1900 with them in that spec. Its so overpowered it makes me sick.
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
Rogue, and I'm partnered with a Holy Paladin in 2v2.
You should be able to smash caster/caster teams, spriest+warlock especially so. That said, if you're having problems against ~1800 war/healer teams (which you probably will) just dodge them, stop queueing when you start seeing them, try again an hour later, and continue eating cloth. I do encourage playing against teams that counter yours, but if it's frustrating and all you really want is rating... well then dodge away!
We typically chew up caster teams and even caster/warrior teams, but every so often we'll get a team that's 100-150 rating points higher than us and we get worked (or vice versa and we get a whole 8 points for the encounter).
"I also have an odd outlast team in 3's with my druid that has no mana burn/drain whatsoever (resto druid, war, paladin) that's at 2100."
That's really not that odd. It's a pretty popular outlast team simply because played well all of those classes are very hard to kill when paired with a healer.
Kudos on the enh shammy team though, that takes some balls. And skill.
The upcoming change for Season 3 sounds fair. I mean, you can still get the other four pieces of the set without a rating... it's just that the shoulders are really *the* stand-out piece on any sets. Remember the whole "Rank 13 Shoulders guy" joke?
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My main problem is that, unless they shift the value/cost of the shoulders, they're also the second cheapest thing to buy, after the gloves.
Thus, unless you're already packing some S2 and aren't really looking at the gloves and shoulders off the hop, you'll have a bit of a climb to go from cheap gloves to one of the most expensive pieces.
Although I suppose it likely won't be much of an issue, given that by now people have had over half a year to get teams going and start building up a point base.
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First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Requirements for items should be a number of games played above a certain rating. A number that isn't an outrageous requirement on its own, but would be acquired by the time people in that bracket have already gotten a piece or two of the non-shoulders-and-weapons items.
The problem is that an 1850 / 2000 rating will become harder and harder to achieve as time goes by, which is in stark contrast to raiding, which becomes easier and easier as time goes by (between nerfs and propagation of strategies).
EDIT: I agree with Blizzard and that they should put a minimum rating but 2000 for the shoulders seems a bit much. Getting to 1850 for the weapon shouldn't be that difficult. I wonder if they will put a minimum rating requirement for any of the other pieces.
Requirements for items should be a number of games played above a certain rating. A number that isn't an outrageous requirement on its own, but would be acquired by the time people in that bracket have already gotten a piece or two of the non-shoulders-and-weapons items.
That's a bad idea because the best way to get arena points is to play very few games and not lose. The team on my server that had the most wins last season finished at like 1820. The team with the fewest losses in the top 30 ended up 3rd. Having played a much much smaller amount of games than the 2 teams above them.
Requirements for items should be a number of games played above a certain rating. A number that isn't an outrageous requirement on its own, but would be acquired by the time people in that bracket have already gotten a piece or two of the non-shoulders-and-weapons items.
That's a bad idea because the best way to get arena points is to play very few games and not lose. The team on my server that had the most wins last season finished at like 1820. The team with the fewest losses in the top 30 ended up 3rd. Having played a much much smaller amount of games than the 2 teams above them.
Most of those ridiculously low loss count teams are rerolled. Lots of top-end teams on BG9 have been rerolling to soak up more gladiator spots (jackasses) and end up with stupid win/loss ratios because of it. I mean it's not like a 2400 team is going to lose to anything below 2k.
Requirements for items should be a number of games played above a certain rating. A number that isn't an outrageous requirement on its own, but would be acquired by the time people in that bracket have already gotten a piece or two of the non-shoulders-and-weapons items.
That's a bad idea because the best way to get arena points is to play very few games and not lose. The team on my server that had the most wins last season finished at like 1820. The team with the fewest losses in the top 30 ended up 3rd. Having played a much much smaller amount of games than the 2 teams above them.
Most of those ridiculously low loss count teams are rerolled. Lots of top-end teams on BG9 have been rerolling to soak up more gladiator spots (jackasses) and end up with stupid win/loss ratios because of it. I mean it's not like a 2400 team is going to lose to anything below 2k.
Oh don't get me wrong there are a lot of re-rolls. But not all of them are. I know of a 2v2 team that went something like 73-3 and wasn't a reroll. They were a new team that came in in the middle of the season, both of the players were well geared and probably had good 2v2s previously but they didn't get up to 2.2 and then decide they want a better win ratio.
Hey, Ryokaze, can you tell me how your team with the Enhance Shaman works? I keep hearing they're horrible in PvP. I'm rerolling Horde to hang out with some real life friends, and I'm mainly interested in the arenas. My main was a 48 druid, but Shaman are a blast to play. Got any pointers? You can PM me if that's easier.
Hey, Ryokaze, can you tell me how your team with the Enhance Shaman works? I keep hearing they're horrible in PvP. I'm rerolling Horde to hang out with some real life friends, and I'm mainly interested in the arenas. My main was a 48 druid, but Shaman are a blast to play. Got any pointers? You can PM me if that's easier.
If I'm going to write something like this, I'm damned well going to force it down everybody else's throats too
First, you'll want to take a look at the team Here. You'll notice that we've played around with quite a few different matrices, and of special note to you will be Mauro's gear, of all the classes, enhance shaman are one of the most dependant on gear to succeed.
The most important part of trying to use an enhancement shaman is to make sure you play to their strengths (such as they are.) You've got fast interrupts, ridiculous sustained and burst damage, and are the only class with an offensive dispel that doesn't lose dps for spamming it. Not a real bad start, but you have to have classes that complement those skills, and cover the shaman's total lack of CC and weakness to CC.
We've found that having a healer in 3's with our enhance shaman team often does more harm than good, a healer gives the opposing team a focus for counterspells and other CC's, and a disturbingly large portion of the time, one of us (being squishy) would die without ever getting a heal. And thus was the rise of our 3 dps setup. Both of our successful 3 dps setups rely a lot on taking advantage of synergies, our third is either an elemental shaman or a shadow priest, both of which get amplified damage from one of us. A 20% bonus on an ele shaman's burst is enough to end someone very quickly, we've had him get bursts in the 11k range with LO procs, it's really pretty brutal along with the high sustained dps from dots and enhance melee.
The other important thing we've learned in terms of enhancement shaman, is that you have to use LoS as your substitute for charge. We've had some excellent success by using long range warlock dots to annoy people into coming close enough to eat a face full of melee without having our shaman have to mount across the whole field to accomplish anything. We also make extensive use of Curse of Exhaustion offensively, until frost shock gets off diminishing returns, that's the only way to allow a shaman to use tremor while chasing someone, you have to have a second snare.
Of note is that we also tried using a melee (one of the top rogues on our server) in our setup as well, and it was absolutely horrible, two melee, especially enhancement shaman, need far too much support to compete well.
So, for the TL;DR version
Abuse LoS to close distance. Sometimes you don't need healers. Use synergies. Extra melee is bad in 3's.
Thanks, man. I'm pretty excited about the new changes. The shamanistic rage change should allow some resistance to MS or the ability to actually get out there, operating word there is "should".
Another important thing to remember is to go out there looking like an elem shammy if you can. Shield and all that stuff on, because if a team sees a enh shammy they go down first.
And as mentioned you want to get a nice bad ass class that normally has a hard time if focused on. Like a shadow priest or a UA lock. That way they have to chose one of you to dps and another to ignore and allow to blow their team up.
Thanks, man. I'm pretty excited about the new changes. The shamanistic rage change should allow some resistance to MS or the ability to actually get out there, operating word there is "should".
I really wouldn't count on SR for much of anything. At this point many, many classes have an offensive dispel, and you can bet your ass that SR is going to get a "Giant angry shaman PURGE ME" graphic as soon as the change goes live. So long as the opposing team contains a: Shaman, priest, hunter, warlock, or mage, you can pretty much gaurantee SR will get dispelled or stolen immediately.
Ok, quick question about professions/weapons. I've frequently seen it been said that having a two-hander is better for PvP, but I still see alot of shaman using two weapons. Wouldn't it be better for me to save the four points from dual-wielding and invest them in that Elemental talent that raises melee crit chance by 9% every time you get a magic crit? I'm mostly thinking that with the number of low-level shocks I'd be throwing out, it'd be worthwhile. The cons are two-hander and low spell crit, but the bonuses sound like a decent trade.
The thing about professions is I don't know if Engineering is useful for Arena. I'd like to throw around some big badass Blacksmithing maces, but I won't be doing much raiding. I figured Engineering'd just be more fun to tool around with anyway. The rocket launcher's 50 stamina isn't really a joke plus the epic Engi helm is pretty snazzy.
Ok, quick question about professions/weapons. I've frequently seen it been said that having a two-hander is better for PvP, but I still see alot of shaman using two weapons. Wouldn't it be better for me to save the four points from dual-wielding and invest them in that Elemental talent that raises melee crit chance by 9% every time you get a magic crit? I'm mostly thinking that with the number of low-level shocks I'd be throwing out, it'd be worthwhile. The cons are two-hander and low spell crit, but the bonuses sound like a decent trade.
The thing about professions is I don't know if Engineering is useful for Arena. I'd like to throw around some big badass Blacksmithing maces, but I won't be doing much raiding. I figured Engineering'd just be more fun to tool around with anyway. The rocket launcher's 50 stamina isn't really a joke plus the epic Engi helm is pretty snazzy.
Regarding a two hander for pvp: No, no. A million times no. It's fine for running around popping noobs in battlegrounds, but with the advent of resilience and inflated stamina values, the already rare chance of triple wtf windfury crits to finish someone in a single swing is... pretty much eliminated. The people citing jousting and low melee time in general as a good reason to use two handers are pretty delusional as well, every other class has better snares than a shaman, they get to choose the time and place to joust. Furthermore, the damage of dual wield becomes superior once you get *two* swings in. It's pretty unlikely that you're only going to be on a target for less than 2.6 seconds every single time.
Photobucket is websensed, but I have a video of my fiance's shaman killing a defensive warrior with a two hander (deep thunder) and dual wield (dragonstrike+MG mainhand.) The two hander duel is twice as long. I'm sure you could find some other videos of dual wield vs. two hand as well. For shocks, in arena play there is a 0% chance that you're going to crit a shock against opponents that are remotely well geared. Enhance gets no spell crit, and most opponents even in the 1600 rating range are wearing more than 5% resilience, which more than overcomes base spell crit.
Regarding engineering, the only long term use item you're going to get out of it is the invulnerability belt. The hats are nice and all, but not really well suited for pvp unless you can get away with much lower sta/resilience (which you can't, as an enhance shaman.) The trinkets are fine for a while, but eventually you're going to put something more dynamic in those spots, and the clickies on them are useless for arenas.
Thanks, man. I'm pretty excited about the new changes. The shamanistic rage change should allow some resistance to MS or the ability to actually get out there, operating word there is "should".
I really wouldn't count on SR for much of anything. At this point many, many classes have an offensive dispel, and you can bet your ass that SR is going to get a "Giant angry shaman PURGE ME" graphic as soon as the change goes live. So long as the opposing team contains a: Shaman, priest, hunter, warlock, or mage, you can pretty much gaurantee SR will get dispelled or stolen immediately.
You'll own warriors in duels with SR though.
In an ideal world, yeah. But as a holy priest I can safely say that I'm not sitting there twiddling my thumbs waiting for something to dispel. Usually fitting that GCD in between all the other crap that needs to be dispelled, and healing, and mana burning, and keeping yourself alive, and not getting yourself silenced.. Yeah, stuff doesn't get instantly dispelled. Not reliably, anyway.
In an ideal world, yeah. But as a holy priest I can safely say that I'm not sitting there twiddling my thumbs waiting for something to dispel. Usually fitting that GCD in between all the other crap that needs to be dispelled, and healing, and mana burning, and keeping yourself alive, and not getting yourself silenced.. Yeah, stuff doesn't get instantly dispelled. Not reliably, anyway.
Same thing with Earth Shield. Rarely is it actually purged or stolen more than once. I'm more afraid of a warlock purging it with their bullshit pet than any other class.
Eh, I'm mostly hoping it'll have dispel resistance or be undispellable with the changes, like the Beast Within for Hunters. Speaking of which, I am absolutely mortified by the new Arcane Shot dispelling stuff.
Posts
I'm ret spec. Hitting 2000 will be impossible. No one plays the classes that work well with this spec (warlocks, shadow priests, shaman (I'm alliance).
Hitting 1850? It'll be hard, but doable. Though I'm not really sure I'll be able to form a good team, for the reasons listed above.
Cookie cutter for paladins is Holy. I grabbed a bunch of random friends and hit 1900 with them in that spec. Its so overpowered it makes me sick.
But yeah, war/healer teams are no fun.
That's really not that odd. It's a pretty popular outlast team simply because played well all of those classes are very hard to kill when paired with a healer.
Kudos on the enh shammy team though, that takes some balls. And skill.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Thus, unless you're already packing some S2 and aren't really looking at the gloves and shoulders off the hop, you'll have a bit of a climb to go from cheap gloves to one of the most expensive pieces.
Although I suppose it likely won't be much of an issue, given that by now people have had over half a year to get teams going and start building up a point base.
https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1778033729&pageNo=1&sid=1#10
EDIT: I agree with Blizzard and that they should put a minimum rating but 2000 for the shoulders seems a bit much. Getting to 1850 for the weapon shouldn't be that difficult. I wonder if they will put a minimum rating requirement for any of the other pieces.
That's a bad idea because the best way to get arena points is to play very few games and not lose. The team on my server that had the most wins last season finished at like 1820. The team with the fewest losses in the top 30 ended up 3rd. Having played a much much smaller amount of games than the 2 teams above them.
Most of those ridiculously low loss count teams are rerolled. Lots of top-end teams on BG9 have been rerolling to soak up more gladiator spots (jackasses) and end up with stupid win/loss ratios because of it. I mean it's not like a 2400 team is going to lose to anything below 2k.
Oh don't get me wrong there are a lot of re-rolls. But not all of them are. I know of a 2v2 team that went something like 73-3 and wasn't a reroll. They were a new team that came in in the middle of the season, both of the players were well geared and probably had good 2v2s previously but they didn't get up to 2.2 and then decide they want a better win ratio.
Uh, pretty much everyone got fucked. 2000 is way harder to hit than 1900 is.
Just as perspective: there's like a grand total of *one* 2000 rated 5v5 on my server. There's like ten 1900 rated ones.
If I'm going to write something like this, I'm damned well going to force it down everybody else's throats too
First, you'll want to take a look at the team Here. You'll notice that we've played around with quite a few different matrices, and of special note to you will be Mauro's gear, of all the classes, enhance shaman are one of the most dependant on gear to succeed.
The most important part of trying to use an enhancement shaman is to make sure you play to their strengths (such as they are.) You've got fast interrupts, ridiculous sustained and burst damage, and are the only class with an offensive dispel that doesn't lose dps for spamming it. Not a real bad start, but you have to have classes that complement those skills, and cover the shaman's total lack of CC and weakness to CC.
We've found that having a healer in 3's with our enhance shaman team often does more harm than good, a healer gives the opposing team a focus for counterspells and other CC's, and a disturbingly large portion of the time, one of us (being squishy) would die without ever getting a heal. And thus was the rise of our 3 dps setup. Both of our successful 3 dps setups rely a lot on taking advantage of synergies, our third is either an elemental shaman or a shadow priest, both of which get amplified damage from one of us. A 20% bonus on an ele shaman's burst is enough to end someone very quickly, we've had him get bursts in the 11k range with LO procs, it's really pretty brutal along with the high sustained dps from dots and enhance melee.
The other important thing we've learned in terms of enhancement shaman, is that you have to use LoS as your substitute for charge. We've had some excellent success by using long range warlock dots to annoy people into coming close enough to eat a face full of melee without having our shaman have to mount across the whole field to accomplish anything. We also make extensive use of Curse of Exhaustion offensively, until frost shock gets off diminishing returns, that's the only way to allow a shaman to use tremor while chasing someone, you have to have a second snare.
Of note is that we also tried using a melee (one of the top rogues on our server) in our setup as well, and it was absolutely horrible, two melee, especially enhancement shaman, need far too much support to compete well.
So, for the TL;DR version
Abuse LoS to close distance. Sometimes you don't need healers. Use synergies. Extra melee is bad in 3's.
And as mentioned you want to get a nice bad ass class that normally has a hard time if focused on. Like a shadow priest or a UA lock. That way they have to chose one of you to dps and another to ignore and allow to blow their team up.
I really wouldn't count on SR for much of anything. At this point many, many classes have an offensive dispel, and you can bet your ass that SR is going to get a "Giant angry shaman PURGE ME" graphic as soon as the change goes live. So long as the opposing team contains a: Shaman, priest, hunter, warlock, or mage, you can pretty much gaurantee SR will get dispelled or stolen immediately.
You'll own warriors in duels with SR though.
The thing about professions is I don't know if Engineering is useful for Arena. I'd like to throw around some big badass Blacksmithing maces, but I won't be doing much raiding. I figured Engineering'd just be more fun to tool around with anyway. The rocket launcher's 50 stamina isn't really a joke plus the epic Engi helm is pretty snazzy.
Regarding a two hander for pvp: No, no. A million times no. It's fine for running around popping noobs in battlegrounds, but with the advent of resilience and inflated stamina values, the already rare chance of triple wtf windfury crits to finish someone in a single swing is... pretty much eliminated. The people citing jousting and low melee time in general as a good reason to use two handers are pretty delusional as well, every other class has better snares than a shaman, they get to choose the time and place to joust. Furthermore, the damage of dual wield becomes superior once you get *two* swings in. It's pretty unlikely that you're only going to be on a target for less than 2.6 seconds every single time.
Photobucket is websensed, but I have a video of my fiance's shaman killing a defensive warrior with a two hander (deep thunder) and dual wield (dragonstrike+MG mainhand.) The two hander duel is twice as long. I'm sure you could find some other videos of dual wield vs. two hand as well. For shocks, in arena play there is a 0% chance that you're going to crit a shock against opponents that are remotely well geared. Enhance gets no spell crit, and most opponents even in the 1600 rating range are wearing more than 5% resilience, which more than overcomes base spell crit.
Regarding engineering, the only long term use item you're going to get out of it is the invulnerability belt. The hats are nice and all, but not really well suited for pvp unless you can get away with much lower sta/resilience (which you can't, as an enhance shaman.) The trinkets are fine for a while, but eventually you're going to put something more dynamic in those spots, and the clickies on them are useless for arenas.
In an ideal world, yeah. But as a holy priest I can safely say that I'm not sitting there twiddling my thumbs waiting for something to dispel. Usually fitting that GCD in between all the other crap that needs to be dispelled, and healing, and mana burning, and keeping yourself alive, and not getting yourself silenced.. Yeah, stuff doesn't get instantly dispelled. Not reliably, anyway.
Same thing with Earth Shield. Rarely is it actually purged or stolen more than once. I'm more afraid of a warlock purging it with their bullshit pet than any other class.
Sham rage is going to be a very nice buff.
Massive Crystal Cavern!