PvP stratFollow

It depends what you're fighting really. It also depends greatly on how you spend your talent point, there's a big difference between the spec lines here.

Note that this is all my opinion, and 'THE LAW'.

Elemental:
Elemental is usually all about boosting your shocks. Making them more efficient and on a shorter cooldown. Most Shaman will usually take enough Elemental to get the ClearCasting Talent.

Elemental Mastery is the 'ultimate' of this path, which give you incredible burst damage via auto-critical hit.

Enhancement:
That one is all about your melee damage. IMO, this one is the lesser of the 3 path for pvp. Simply put, being Enancement specced won't make you outmelee rogues and warrior. And even without it, you'll still outmelee everybody else due to your weaponbuff.

So it's a non-factor really. There's something to be said about some of the individual talent (Improved Ghost Wolf, Improved Lightning shield), but it's 'Ultimate', Stormstrike, sucks really really bad.

Enhancement is the best pve solo path tho.

Restoration:
While not the best pvp path in itself, it does offer a couple nice goodies. Nature's Swiftness and Improved Lesser Healing Wave come to mind. Those make you able to heal yourself even when being pounded on and Nature's Switfness can also be used for offense purpose.

Restoration is the best path for 'group' shaman tho. The healing and totem buff it gives you make you a good healer and a welcome member to any instance party.


That being said, I'm a level 50 Shaman with the following split:
Elemental 16 (all shock talent + clearcasting)
Enhancement 7 (for Improved Ghost Wolf)
Restoration 18 (working my way up to NS)

I'll probably respec and mess around once I reach 60, but that's what I got now. I obviously use a shield.

Always have a weapon buff up - I use Rockbitter.

Always have Lightning Shield up - It's an awesome spell and our bast mana:damage ratio ability.

I'll mention shock a lot in there and lightning spell very little. That's because the casting time on lightning makes it highly situational and you won't be able to use it every fight. If you have the drop on someone, opening with lightning and following with a shock right away might be worth it.

Here's my strategy breakdown against each class:


Warriors:

Kite them. Use Frost Shock and Earthbind Totem. Searing Totem is also good to whittle their health down. I don't advise Fire Nova Totem, it's a terrible mana waste against a single target and burst damage just isn't that effective on Warriors.

You don't want to get close to them until they are severly battered. The main problem is that once you're in close combat, they will hamstring you and you won't be able to get away. They will then interupt you healing and it will go downhill from there.

I know that our Shock are not super efficient as far as nuke goes, but if I spend my whole mana pool on shocks, I can do well over 3000damage (without Critical Hit) - most Warrior my level have 3500-4000, so I can easily melee what's left of their hp afterward - if there's something left.

Rogues:

First, if a Rogue gets the drop on you - Escape. Don't bother fighting back, they'll just tear you apart with their dps and combo points. Try and snare them and run away - Improved Ghost Wolf and Swiftness potion are god send here.

Fighting a Rogue is similar to a warrior, except that they have less hp (so your nukes damage them more) but can kill you in seconds if they start hitting you. One of the other issue with them is 'Vanish', which allows them to simply disapear in the middle of a fight, get the pressure off themselves and attack again.

Best thing I've found is to use Earth Bind totem to snare them and use Fire Shock to prevent their Stealth. If they attack the EarthBind, you might have to use a Frost Shock or a Swiftness potion to keep your distance.

The good thing is that if they strike your earth bind, they untarget you and lose any combo point! ^_^. Aside from that, nuke them to hell. Use Fire Nova if you can pull it off.

Hunters:

If you can get within Shock Range, you can easily kill those. A good frost shock to slow them down and you just nuke and melee them. Most Hunter have very low health (even at level 50, most I see are just over 2000hp, sometime 1900hp).

They do have tools to keep you at bay (i.e. Wingclip), but since we have our own snares, we can usually keep up with them anyway.

Hunters are very situational fighters, they need range and distance, and if they have it, they usually win - against every class. If you see a Hunter Mark pop on to of your head and you don't even know where the hunter is - RUN. ;p

Oh yeah, and don't get tricked by Feign Death, that's just humiliating.

Warlocks:

Those guys can be a major pain or very easy to beat. Ignore the pet and use earth shock to stop their spells. Grounding Totem is a must, to both stop Fear and absorb their DoT.

An important thing here is to use Purge, you can severly cut down their armor with 1 purge.

If you're into playing dirty, Restorative Elixir are the banes of Warlock - imagine, the guy pop 1k Mana of DoT on you, you drink 1 potion and it's all gone.

Warlock often have health stones, which is on a different timer then potion, meaning they can last a long time, making their DoT all the more effective, it's extremely important that you stop as many of those as possible (if you don't use elixir).

Mages:

Those guys are cake for Shaman. Grounding Totem can take care of Polymorph and Earth Shock totally mess up their game plan as well as deal hefty damage to their small hp.

Since they have low armor and hp, you'll want to melee them. Drop an Earth Bind totem when you get close because they'll probably Frost Nova to root you and run... not much to be done there, but at least with Earthbind they won't get very far.

The smart one will blink out of your earthbind range and start nuking you... you more or less have to take it while frost nova wear off. Heal yourself and drop Grounding Totem as soon as possible.

Priests:

I've never had a 'fair' fight against a priest. By this I mean that even the one that are the same level as me usually run rather then fight. Which mean I just snare them and pummel them while they try to get away. Hardly a fair estimate of what priests can do, I'm sure.

I would think a similar strategy to Mage would apply, but I haven't gotten to test it yet. I hear Shadow specced priests are the bane of shamans and that might well be so... just haven't fought one yet.

Druids:

I practically pity them. They're like us, but not as good. This class needs a lot of love.

We can outmelee and out nuke them. We can catch up to their movement form. They can outheal us, but not by a significant enough margin to make a difference in pvp.

Their cat form is a joke and while the bear form is quite the bruiser, they lose the ability to heal and thus, simply can't match us in that form either.

Purge, Earth Shock, Grounding Totem, Earth bind - it's ovah.

Paladins:

Our evil and twisted twin. Like looking at an horror house's deforming mirror.

Paladin are pretty easy to beat once you have the hang of it. There's just not that much they can do, they have the versatility and the subtility of a brick. They also have it's sturdiness however.

Paladin are currently bugged, their dps is way higher then it should be when using a certain seal - which in turn means most paladin uses it. They should be even easier to handle once the bug is fixed.

We can normally out melee them, our weapon buff are stronger then their. You can kite them, but their healing and high hp makes that relatively innfective. Meleeing and Earth Shocking their heals seems to be the way to go.

The good thing is that we can heal as well, the only way they have to 'stop' our healing is with their stun, which is on a 1 minute timer. You can usually sneak in heal in betweens.

Purge is a must, to get rid of those pesky seals. They can't purge us, so lightning shield and weaponbuff away.

Your best tool against them is first aid. When they pop their bubble up, use a bandage. It will regain your hp and your mp (due to no casting) while the paladin drain himself of mana.



Well, that was long...


Edited, Fri Feb 4 13:06:37 2005 by Tyrandor

I would as well actually... I'd love to get other player's strategy.

So more or less the same thing then.

Didn't write anything on druid tho?