World of Warcraft®

Here's the thing about convection, Allukaa

10% isn't that much, but whatever, that's not the point. Sure, it'll make you go for 2 more minutes, but the issue remains. What happens after you go oom? You're fcked. All convection managed to do was last for 2 more minutes before you went oom. Plus, Acuity is more helpful anyways, the more damage you do, the less you have to cast (crits = double damage). And either way, I went into Acuity mainly because it also affects your heals, and all shamans know that unless your heals actually crit, they're so useless and pathetic. 6.4k mana for a crappy heal that during that 1.5 second cast time ( little less with haste ), you already took more damage than you healed; therefore, heals are only decent when they crit.

01/28/2012 09:22 PMPosted by Zakluliz

It is so amusing to hear how everyone says "with the right comp" you can do well in arena . what a mind job you have had played on you. Why is it ok for every other class to be albe to fit in where ever but we need to "Fit In" give me a break. You sheep go on and keep believing you will see soon enough. We are at the back of the Bus and we are gonna stay there!!!!!!!

No one has ever said that Elemental is easy, yes it is a bloody hard spec to get to a high bracket, but it is not impossible. Yes, Elemental is not the best in PvP, it lacks any defensive cooldown, our hex is on a cool down compared to the no cool down polymorph, it has to be played near perfectly to get anywhere. But for goodness sake it is still possible to get high ratings, look at the RBG leaderboard, at least 2 elementals are 2600+ and are higher than some classes who are considered overpowered.

And Comp configuration does help a tonne, because some classes work better with others and some work with many others. Just because we require more skill does not mean we are out of the race entirely. If you can't handle Elemental PvP and it's demands to constantly be on your game and having a fair amount of skill, then don't play it, simple.

Frankly I'm sick of Elementals complaining that we aren't viable when we are, it is just harder to get there. Mind you I don't like Mages or Rogues, but the feeling you get when you beat skilled one's fair and square as a "back of the bus" spec is more rewarding then playing one.

I can understand the frustration, I find myself constantly frustrated about our lack of defensive cooldowns, and I hope to God they stop nerfing a class that surely does not need it. However for this expansion we will not be seeing a defensive or most likely any buffs, so deal with it.

01/28/2012 09:22 PMPosted by Zakluliz

It is so amusing to hear how everyone says "with the right comp" you can do well in arena . what a mind job you have had played on you.

^This. Although it could be said that many classes can have a "bad comp," so few have only a meager handful that are merely decent or, with great luck, good.

4.3 - Damage Scaling = Rogues with more burst than Ele Shams and Ele Shams with no control or defense

Other than addressing mobility Blizzard hasn't fixed any of these things.
They have nerfed Tremor, Grounding, Purge, and Healing Surge.
They gave us a bump up in damage, even though we still don't have the damage or burst that many specs bring to PvP and our output cooldown is on a longer cooldown than those specs.

^And this, because it's so true.

I actually wrote a long rant, exceeded the character count, so deleted all of it.

Here's the thing about convection, Allukaa

10% isn't that much, but whatever, that's not the point. Sure, it'll make you go for 2 more minutes, but the issue remains. What happens after you go oom? You're fcked. All convection managed to do was last for 2 more minutes before you went oom. Plus, Acuity is more helpful anyways, the more damage you do, the less you have to cast (crits = double damage). And either way, I went into Acuity mainly because it also affects your heals, and all shamans know that unless your heals actually crit, they're so useless and pathetic. 6.4k mana for a crappy heal that during that 1.5 second cast time ( little less with haste ), you already took more damage than you healed; therefore, heals are only decent when they crit.

I can respect that then, I've noticed with the more gear you get the mana does last a tad longer so that also helps. Frankly I don't know why Blizz believes we need so many nerfs, we were never game breaking with a better healing surge or with Astral Shift. It's annoying, but there really isn't much we can do, especially when they don't even read these forums :/

Living Action Potion

Living Action Potion

Doesn't really work when in arena and RBGs :P Which I think is the main topic here.

At present, our damage output vs. our incoming damage mitigation are a little like "finding the right Arena comp."

I.e., if we can find the right moment, with our CDs still up and no rogue, druid, or frost mage keeping us locked down, or ...anything else, then we can burst like crazy. So GOOD! Random BGs with confusion and half the enemy team being noobs can allow us to spam CL for MEGA MONDO MASTERY ARCS OF VENGEANCE! Yay.

All the rest of the time....well we have learned to hope for those sweet moments when the RNG gods seem to have remembered us. There is even a little skill involved in finding those right moments—or creating a team that will help us to create those right moments. Perhaps "those right moments" are quite like "the right Arena comp," so we can do something about it, although our options are often limited.

There are even signs that some upcoming changes in MoP will bring improvements: Astral Shift as an option in T2 may well be better than the current Divine Shield pallys get, because although its duration is shorter by 2 sec and it only reduces damage by 50%, it's on a 2 min CD.

However, there are signs that some things might remain the same:

Frozen Power & Earthgrab Totem are roots. Enemy casters can still sling spells at you, heal themselves, silence or interrupt you, while rooted. God forbid Blizzard ever give us a stun of any kind, or a disorient, or a fear-type effect. And besides all that, EGT only roots an enemy one time; he is only slowed with every successive tick of the totem. And it has 5 HP.

Windwalk Totem and Tranquil Mind Totem will prevent movement impairing effects or silence effects, but you can only choose one in your tree at a time. And they last 6 secs only, w/ a CD of 1 min. Good luck w/ the RNG gods or the mind reading, because neither tooltip says anything about removing those effects already on your party; so, you'll have to know what is going to be cast by the enemy before you drop them. Be off just a smidgen, and they will be a waste. Be sure that all the other players in the game who PvP seriously will come to expect them, juke you, then wait 6 sec to cast their interrupts, silences, or AoE roots, slows, yadda yadda.** (Edit: Preventing interruption will be good for TMT; however I doubt that it'll prevent Death Grip, stuns, disorients, and so many other effectual "interrupts.")

And so far, Reverberation isn't on the list of abilities we'll get. So all shocks 1 sec longer CD and a 15 sec CD for Wind Shear. I'm praying to whatever gods might exist that this will be worked out, that Blizzard just wants to decide how they can change it for Ele and Enh without changing it for Resto; but I'm starting to think, nope, they really do want to nerf WS because all the other players able to Control us so easily are "annoyed" by it.

And so forth, always.

**Edit: And you know, you really must know that addons will not only announce that WWT and TMT will have been dropped, but provide counters counting down 6-5-4-3-2-1....Always seems to be a trend of announcing new abilities that sound cool in principle, get us worked up and excited, then turn out to be clunky or at least far less useful. 31-point EQ for example; or, Fire Nova leaping from enemies who have our one, single, only DoT.

There's still no greater feeling than T-storming an entire group of folks off a cliff side.

I think I understand why people say elemental isn't viable, and I have to agree. You can be the biggest badass, yet you still get owned by some crappy dk. You can grounding his strangulate or death grip, kite him perfectly, yet somehow you manage to to kill him with only 5k hp left. You play your class right and still it's such a struggle, namely, you rely on your opponent's failures in order to succeed. [I'm not saying I don't enjoy the struggle, but it's really depressing when you do everything right yet get facerolled by mediocre players with no skill]

This is what I mean : I own most rogues, but that just means it's THEM who suck. It's not so much that I'm really good, but it's that they don't know how to play. In effect, the "main" reason elemental is viable, is because people screw up. Anybody understand what I mean? lol kinda got lost in what I was typing...

Maybe it's just me being modest and humble :S

It's not that I'm really good, it's just that others are bad.

Another issue : It doesn't help one tad bit that thunderstorm and earthbind totem are terrible.
[Yes, yes.. come along DK.. ima thunderstorm all up in yo face and send you half way across Antarctica]

LARDAZ CASTS THUNDERSTORM, CYA NEVER PUNK!--- Oh. You're still right beside me. Hi... Friends? =)

Oh hi rogu----

[Release Spirit]

It's real fun dying in 10 seconds. I can't WAIT till rogues get their legendaries.

The real question is why you cant properly and formally greet the Rogue in under 10 seconds. Why are you trying to prolong these pleasantries? A simple "Hello, fine sir of the shadows" would most likely suffice.

Hope this helps!

If you win against a Subtlety Togue as Elemental, they're doing something horribly wrong.
If you win against an Unholy DK as Elemental, they're doing something horribly wrong.
Rest is eh.
If they have the right type of healer backing them up it is a whole other matter entirely ofc...

A well played rogue can solo two well played elemental shamans at once. People use the 1v1 balance argument, but what happens when it's 2v1, or even 3v1 and the shamans still lose? There is a real issue here, and has been for a while.

Just take solace in the fact that we are not alone. There are a number of class/specs that have just a hard a time as we do, and will continue to.

Or, rather than explaining the same tired situation that has been in place since... forever, I'll just sum it up as this:

Rogues make up a much more significant population of subscribers than elemental and enhance shamans do. They make ActiBlizz more money. The end.

The only "easy" class for an elemental shaman is a Ret paladin, and that's really only when you're in an open field. With LOS the fight might be a little tough if the ret paladin isn't such a noob.

01/29/2012 04:34 PMPosted by Lardaz

The only "easy" class for an elemental shaman is a Ret paladin, and that's really only when you're in an open field. With LOS the fight might be a little tough if the ret paladin isn't such a noob.

Oh I don't know. I have a very, very simple time against hunters and arcane mages: The one because it has a very high skill cap and the other because it's so easy to shut them down if they don't get a jump on you first.

Again, that hunter is doing something wrong, shouldn't really be an easy fight considering the amount of damage they do. It's awesome when mages/hunters/dks/rogues ice block, deterrence, ams, cloak AFTER you already casted EM - Lava burst and yet null the damage.

Can't speak for arcane mages, there are literally 0 of them.

Rets on the other hand are so easily kitable, and all you gotta do is purge freedom and wings and grounding hammer of justice.

Complete newb question:

Doesn't major and minor glyphing your Thunderstorm help a lot with mana issues?

it is true that shaman pvp has become resto or bust. (an exception ive seen, enhance/ret unkillable in 2's, to much healing)

i feel that without going resto its nearly impossible to land a decent comp

the glyph for lightning bolt while moving was a good start, but i think if we wer eto revisit the stun from our old nova totem we could stand a better chance

We can heal and dps without switching stances or forms, (shadowform, moonkin form etc) and we have mail armor and a shield, giving much more armor than the other casters, and have great burst damage.

This looks good on paper, but since we can bring damage and healing to a group, we cant bring much CC.

We get armor instead of defensive cooldowns. Worst trade off ever. Especially now that melee classes will pierce through almost all of it (Find weakness, Colossus smash)

We have great burst damage, but we rely so heavily on hard-casting, that a rogue can keep us locked down in nearly infinite loops while doing probably better burst then we would be free casting.

Yeah... Except we can't bring healing to the group. Compare spriest heals vs ele heals, you will see the difference. I think their heals are cheaper in mana too. still, what I mean is that we can't really bring healing to the group, we start healing, and we go oom. And like I've already said, unless your heals crit, they're nothing but a howling blast.