Douja and Flexx Represent at MLG Dallas; Thoughts on the Shaman Class

I thought I'd use tonight's entry to talk about shaman's role in PvP and how it's improved within the context of MLG along with my personal thoughts on general shaman stuff, since as of now, of the top teams are fNatic's RLS and eMg's BM Hunter/Enhancement Shaman/Paladin (sometimes priest) are represented.

One thing I've always felt about the shaman class since TBC introduced arenas is that shamans, while weaker than other classes at the pure roles, had the unique distinction of being one of the few classes that had all three specs viable in arena, consistently.

Though resto is unarguably the most used spec, elemental and enhancement have found their niche roles in 3v3 and 5v5 for pretty much every season. This is different than say, a priest who can't really spec holy for arenas. I'm sure like myself, the shaman community is elated to have shaman comps do well on LAN play, whether as cleave in Season 3 or 4 (enhancement) or Shadow Play (resto). After watching eMg and fNatic do so well over the past two days, I'm positive that many PvP shamans are inspired for season 7.

On Enhancement Shaman:
A while ago Ming wrote an article where he talked about the power of enhancement shaman and (overall) his words were met with a mixture of skepticism and curiosity. Retribution Paladins, Death Knights, Rogues, Feral Druids did a lot more damage and had more survivability, on top of not being able to only do the majority of their burst damage when Feral Spirit was activated. The buffs to shaman in 3.2 were largely aimed at restoration shaman in the view of many, since that was where the majority of the talent changers were.

However, with Wind Shock taken off the shock cooldown, Hex being affected by Maelstrom Weapon for the potential of instant hexes as well as the ghost wolf change, the spec once again sees a rise in popularity. Whether or not it sees the rampant use of the spec in PvP like in the level 60 days remains to be seen. eMg's been doing well with their "RMP killer", taking down AAA 3-2 and Complexity 5-0. They've even done well against other cleave comp.

I didn't know that eMg would be running with an enhancement shaman until 4 days ago but I wasn't too surprised. Even though BlizzCon saw no shaman teams with Team EG taking third place in the regionals, shaman like Snerp had no trouble having success with the spec even before the patch.

I played enhancement for 4-5 weeks while my 3s team was rotating specs to get past the MMR wall we'd hit after elemental didn't work out so well before the latest patch. Our team went up 200 points as a result. I learned a number of things about the spec while playing it:

1. Being rooted really, really sucks.
2. You can easily kite melee all day long if your healer is crowd controlled or silenced.
3. You don't really need to switch to 1h/shield to survive because of this.
4. Mages and warlocks are easy to deal with.
5. Tremor totem and Earth Bind totem being in the same school is pretty inconvenient, but is easily enough worked around.
6. Rogues still wreck you 1v1 and there's little you can do about it.

The first item on the list is something that even Flexx has a problem with. Here's how JP McDaniel saw it: "I only did 28k" said Flexx. "What happened?" replied Twixz. Flexx responds "I was in a nova all game". On the other side of the table Venruki smiled and said "that's right" and nodded his head.

It'll be exciting watching this team tomorrow. Even though it's technically a cleave using the relatively faceroll method of blowing all of your cooldowns at the very beginning of the match and training the mage, I personally find it a bit more exciting than watching RMP mirrors, which is about as exciting as watching a Sagat mirror match.

On Restoration Shaman:
Playing this spec, but the SK-100 heroes like Lickerzz, Douja, Kollektiv, Daara (but not Remay) make me look like I just picked up the game yesterday. Watching Douja play in MLG and do well as RLS in 3.2 is perhaps as inspiring. However, the the whole "tunnel vision the shaman" strategy has the potential to bring the shaman player's morale crashing down. Even with the buffs given to us in 3.2, it would seem our most glaring problems that affect us most in 3v3 have barely been addressed. But then there's Douja, frost shock kiting a rogue like it's child play, and any of those silly thoughts are simply thrown to the wind. Our mana efficiency still sucks, but that's cool, the new ghost wolf is pretty OP when done right.

I almost miss the old, lightening fast lesser healing waves, though. The 40% or so increased crit on heals is nice but I admit, it took me a little getting used to. Faking was something that I've never found difficult but in seasons 5 and 6 (pre-3.2) it's something that wasn't generally necessary between Bloodlust, Tidal Waves, and my troll racial berserking ability. But it hasn't been too much of a bother, watching Kollektiv and Douja playing the spec makes it all seem easy.

There's a debate on what to use for RLS and other 3v3 comps (I ran Boomkin, Resto, Hunter for a while lol): Do we use healing Wave spec with the Ringmail set (now with 25% more MP5) or Lesser Healing Wave spec with a high amount of crit. You can use the same glyphs and gemming with either spec. (Though I find using Glyph of Healing Wave instead of Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave is really nice for making sure you stay topped off so you're always prepared for fast switches.)

Personally, since I play elemental quite a bit, I lean more towards the Mail crit set since I don't have to get 2 sets of gear for both specs, allowing me more time for getting enhancement gear. The healing throughput is pretty insane because of all the crits which work very well with improved water shield and the Lesser Healing Wave glyph.

I have a particular way of gemming for the mail set, since I have to use it for two specs I like to focus on spell power first and defensive stats second. Which gem I use specifically depends on what comp I'm playing and who I'm playing with. Some players are more aggressive/defensive than others so this tells me how they will be when it comes to peels. (The ideal is that they're the total package but you work with what you have sometimes.)

Red: Spell Power
Blue: Spell Penetration, SP/Stamina, Resil/Stamina,
Yellow: Resilience, Sta/Resil, SP/Resil

I could dedicate an entire article itself on gemming/gearing/speccing alone rather than just a short article where I gloss over concepts with broad strokes. I've been elated to see the shaman teams do so well so I'm in a Ming-like theorycrafting state today. I hope they continue to do well. After all, if Paladins can have their first LAN victory why can't we?

P.S.: For more shaman info, I recommend Douja's latest article on fNatic's website here. It has useful information for newbies to the shaman class as well as some little things for veterans of the class from one of the best.

P.S.S.:Here is your enhancement shaman moment of zen: