The Resto Shaman Dueling Guide

First off this is for High End PvP duels or 1v1's. If you don't have a large amount of resilience or stam you can't beat people who do =P (pretty simple concept). So a good start would be 300 res and 10k hp, 1v1's are about survivability, the more the better.




First things last:



General tips about spec/gear/totems are at the bottom, scroll down if you want to see that. For specific 1v1 run downs, the order is right \/ there. This is a long guide not for little sissy girls who can't read!



Classes: Wins/losses out of 10

Hunter : 8/2

Mage: 7/3

Warrior: 8/2

Rogue: 9/1

Warlock: 0/10

Shaman: 9/1 Ele 1/9 Enh

Druid: 3/7 Feral 10/0 Oomkin

Paladin: 9/1 Ret

Priest: 5/5 Shadow





The end in the begining:

All in all you heal them to death! Now remember these are just the
basics,get creative try new things, who knows. Those are just
general predictions, I'm sure there are plenty of cases where Zizek will
stomp you 9/10 or Xecks will win at least 3/10 and Hamchook might even
turn the tides and beat you 7/10. These are my ESTIMATES for most high
end resto shamy duels. Individual player skill may vary if you catch my
drift.



Please feel free to leave tips or ideas. Especially for healers and the
off specs(prot palys?). And even bash me if you want.



Class Breakdown:Wins/Losses*


_{(Assuming = Gear and Skill level)*}




Hunter : 8/2



Good hunters are a *****,they take forever to kill, and they will hassle you the whole time. Kiteing aside, snake traps - scorpid pet - viper sting is a deadly combo. You will need to dispel the scorpid poison, magma the snakes, and then get the viper. Make sure your on top of poisons it will quickly get ahead of you. Once you've got a handle on poisons try and close as much distance as you can, don't spam frost shock rather shock close in and drop earthbind, seperate DR ftw. As the fight progresses watch out for scatter-freezing trap combos, these lead to drinking/bandaging and if the hunter does it enough, he/she will win. However outlast their mana and the fight quickly becomes one sided.



The Specs:

Hunter specs don't vary to much. BM hunters will stun you, Survival hunters will Wryven sting you and Marksman hunters will silencging shot you. Even with all those the strats are all the same =P



The Summary:

Once a hunter is oom their dmg goes down the drain. Spam Poison Cleansing and use magma on snake traps. Just last until they are oom and avoid the scatter-trap-drinking combos and you've won.






Mage: 7/3



Mages are only hard if you can't fake heals, even then you can still survive most of the time. Stack healing way and maybe they will steal that instead of the ES, but if not just purge them. Once the mage feels to low on mana he will most likely run and drink/evocate, he may even poly you, don't go quitely but if you've run them oom once you can do it again =P.



The Specs:

Ice mages will go for a standard shatter combo, if you die to a shatter combo alone get some more HP. If you can, GW and run away when the pet is up >_< then come back afterwards. Purge Purge Purge. Ice armor will be a pain and you'll never kill them w/ Ice Barrier up. Expect lots and lots of ice lances. Your grounding will eat these over and over but at least it wastes a GCD. Avoid the CS and keep plugging away, Ice Mages refuse to die and they will keep trying, so you in turn have to keep trying.



AP mages will slowly wear you down so use low rank heals to stay topped off. Don't get caught at 50% hp trying to heal, if you get counter-spelled you might be burst down. Eventually they will get aggravated and just try to burst you down no matter what your HP is, drop grounding and FAKE HEALS. Avoid the burst and you've won.



Fire mages will go for straight damage. Don't underestimate them. Fireball - Blastwave - Fireblast- Dragon's Breath- Scorch - CS - Fireblast will hurt like a mofo. Fire has burst and sustained dmg, lucky for you not a lot of fire mages have 400 resilience. Again outlast the mana and you win, its much harder with fire mages, they have 2 interupts, Dragon's Breath is deadly, so stay alert.



The Summary:

Use resistance totems,they help, and use grounding even though it gets Ice lanced. Remember fake heals, stay topped off and just outlast the mana. Avoid Burst and you've won.(Eventually)





Warrior: 8/2



As long as they don't have a Stormherald you should be ok. This is not the outlast fight, warriors don't stop so you have to kill them before they kill you. Flame Shock Flame Shock Flame Shock. You won't be kiteing a good warrior so don't bother with frost and Flame shock does the most damage. Keep Earth shield up and fake the pummels. It's on a 6 second CD so use it to your advantage. Steady damage, but don't bother with LB you'll never get it off w/ a warrior in your face.



The Specs:

Well if you chose to duel a prot warrior sucks for you, you'll win, in 15 minutes... Now fury warriors may put out a lot of damage but w/o the MS effect and ES you'll never die unless your really bad. So this mostly applies to MS warriors but the rules are the same for the other two.



The Summary:

Wrath, Healing Stream, and Searing, all good totems for warriors. Stormheralds and Mace-stun, watch out. A chain of stuns can own you. Steady DPS with max Survivability. FAKE HEALS






Rogue: 9/1



Ahh rogues. Nothing is as fun as dueling a rogue. If you play your part right you will control these fights from start to finish. Break the stuns, keep ES up and keep moving. SPAM Poison Cleasning because you know they are spamming shiv.



The Specs:

The main difference is the opener. Mutilate rogues who open w/ a garotte have a much higher chance of stacking 3-5 poisons before you can even cast spells, this leads to a lot of extra damage because you can't get away fast enough. The more mana you waste on heals the less you can use to kill him. Combat rogues may open w/ garotte but w/o the poison talents the odds are in your favor, get away and get away fast. Now remember w/ Mutilate to turn and face them so all they can do is shiv, it seriously lowers the damage.



The Summary:

SPAM POISON CLEANSING. Kite and take them down from a distance, keep running circles around that earthbind. Frost and Flame shock w/ Searing totem down and it's in the bag, as long as you have the mana/spell dmg to kill him.






Warlock: 0/10



Well nothing is as fun as dueling a rogue, nothing is worse than dueling a warlock. Welcome to hell. A good Warlock regardless of spec is going to demolish you, get over it and beat up the bad ones. Remember Water Shield and R1 ES! And then pray your better than him because you are at a serious disadvantage.



The Specs:

Fel Guard locks, now these you have a chance against. W/o the dispel and interrupt you can play these like mages who fear. Just interrupt drains and wear them down, easily said but not done. You might melee a SL lock for 100-120 so keep on chugging. It will come down to, if your a better player and if he doesn't want it to bad.



Destro, a good destro lock may start the duel with immolates and incinerates but eventually he will be oom if he keeps this up. If he's trying that treat him like a fire mage. And pray he's to stupid to start draining.



Drain Spec Locks, ok prepare for the long haul. They are going to drain life spam until you interrupt, then they will switch to mana drain and get a few of those off w/o interrupts. Nothing you can do. If they feel like fearing you, you can either take it drop tremor and pray or shock it. Either way they are going to get a drain off. Eventually you will be oom and then they will start doing dmg. Sadly the drain spec has such bad DPS even with 0 mana you will live for several minutes by spaming water shield and using the lower rank heals. Eventually they will win by sheer force.



Affliction, the worst imo. Ton's of DoT dps, two fears and brutal drains. You will quickly fall behind on these. Drop totems and pray.



The Summary

Do your best, spam water shield, interrupt drains and hope someone comes along to help you.




Healers:



Ok healer vs healer fights last ridiculously long. I've seen 6-18 hour arena screenshots, and most of these wins are someone giving up, so unless your really bored try not to duel healers. My advice? Use water shield and get yourself a beer, you'll be here forever.



\/ These will be the off-specs \/




Shaman: 9/1 Ele 1/9 Enh



Elemental, treat these like mages who interrupt a lot more and have their own totems. Kill those and wear out the mana. Remember to fake heals, elemental shamans generally use max rank ES's so you may quickly fall behind in healing.You will always win the mana fight, just avoid the burst.



Enhancement, if he's got any amount of resilience and skill your pretty much done for. Between purgeing your ES,shocking your heals, and DWing its already over. Your best bet is to heal early then when he interrupts it Frostshock and run. A DW shaman will just tear you apart , you won't get the chance to heal <_>. Have fun.




Druid: 3/7 Feral 10/0 Oomkin



Feral droods, ugg. I hate feral, they NEVER DIE. It took me 30 minutes to kill some feral drood w/ 0 resilience... Do your best to conserve mana,keep searing and mana spring down. This is almost like dueling a healer, they will bash-cyclone-heal, so stay alert. Slow and steady and you MIGHT win.



Boomkins. /laugh. Wrath may be a 1 sec cast but w/o a silence or interrupt your in little danger of dieing to a giant chicken. Purge that intervate and you'll cut the duel time in half. Interrupt the cyclones and starfires and you got this.



Paladin: ?/10 Prot 9/1 Ret



Prot, lucky for me I've never dueled a prot paly w/ arena gear. I'm sure it would suck. Best advice w/o knowing, ES and purge?



Retadins, a good retadin will use rank 1 seals to fake you into wasting mana. Watch his mana if it cost about 50 mana, don't purge it =/. Ret doesn't do crazy damage as long as you purge the real seals and keep dropping grounding. Out last the mana and you win.



Priest: ?/10 Smite Spec 5/5 Shadow



Smite spec? I dueled ONE on test, and he was very good. But he played just like a shadow priest w/o dots =P



Shadow, these guys will either mana burn or go for damage. Avoid the burst and you win vs the dmg guys, the mana burners are harder. Stick to the rotation, ES, grounding, ES, eat one, ES, grounding, ES....Eventually you'll be oom but they won't have a lot of mana either. AVOID THE SHADOWFIEND. GW and run, frostshock and earthbind, keep away from that ****** as best you can. Once the shadowfiend is spent, its up to you not to die even though you probably have a lot less mana than the priest, a lucky hidden tide could win this one. Gl these fights are fun.





General Tips:



The spec:

Natures Guardian, if you skip this as resto you had better
raid 5 days a week in BT, NG is insane. After that the no brainers,
Healing Focus, NS, Tide, ES,Purification. Now if you PvP a lot and you
want a little more you can always spec 8/5/48. Elemental warding is
good, I don't like it but I never get focused on my arena teams so to
each his own.




The gear:

Max Res, Max hp. If you have spell damage with equivalent
resilience go for it. The elemental gear means you play more
aggressively but its mostly the same. If you saw Ming's dueling video
Geecee was the resto shaman w/ full elemental gear, it works for sure.




General tips:

Because my strategy is outlast I duel very
conservatively. I apply frostbrand to the weapon and wack away,
obviously this would take ~10 minutes alone, so I also use searing totem
and shocks. The only time I condone LB in a resto duel, is if the
retard hits your stoneclaw. It takes to long to cast and good opponents
will punish you for using it. Please use low rank heals, they are great
for topping off and in the long mana fights they will save you. Rank 1
Earth Shock and Water Shield!!! BIND THEM TO SOMETHING.




Totem Tips:

Now my favorite shaman dueling tip, which I have to thank
Devilzz of Bonechewer for showing me, if someone is after your totems,
punish them for it. Drop searing and earthbind, as soon as the GCD is
up from earthbind drop stoneclaw. With any luck they won't notice the
switch and they will attack it. It will make them think twice before
attacking totems and its funny as hell. Remember, if you have totemic
focus it's cheaper to drop poison cleansing totem than to use cure
poison. And lastly if searing totem is placed farther away from you
than your other totems melee will ignore it or chase it, either is good.





Finally:



Ya the end, Thanks for reading even if you just skimmed it. Remember, just one shaman, you don't have to do this to win but it works for me, call me a noob, blah blah blah... R1 ES and Water Shield! Remember just cause your resto doesn't mean you can't kill anything, it just means it'll take 5 minutes.