Memri/Daara 2400 Shaman/DK Video + Interview

WotLK videos have been somewhat hit or miss lately. There have been a couple of releases from a handful of players that are at the top of their respective class lists on SK-100, but a surprising amount of them have been less than impressive. Athene's "Best Paladin in the entire ******* universe" video's have been on the What's Hot this Month list on WCM for what feels like...months now. You could ***** about it for hours, but I'll leave it at things could be better.

After a couple of people approached me about playing Priest for their teams, one of my old season 2 teammates, Memri, forwarded his partners Shaman/DK 2v2 video to me. While it hasn't quite hit WCM yet, it's one of the cleanest, non-overproduced videos I've seen yet. Him and Daara do an excellent job at keeping **** simple.

Instead of giving some half-assed overview of the video, I'll just tell you that it's a great Shaman perspective that actually includes *gasp* offensive play! To some, it may or may not be a demonstration of startling differences between BG's (and players for that matter), but in my opinion there is an undeniably different level of play here than previous/most Shaman and DK videos, all mistakes considered. in terms of viewability from the PoV given, the UI is free of distracting clutter, there's great commentary that applies to 1500 level players as well as 2k+, and all opponents are of respectable ratings.

Armory Links:

Daara

Siqi (Aka Memri)

Video Links: Stream, Filefront with 2HD 2 Regular

Since I've personally been kind of disappointed in the Shaman I've been able to get interviews with over the past couple of weeks (Don't ask me why I released them if I was unhappy with them, it was ******* dumb), I decided to shoot the **** with Daara and Memri a little bit to see what they had to offer, and things turned out well. I hope you enjoy it.

Note: I tried to keep this slightly shorter based on feedback of interviews being too long sometimes. I'd appreciate feedback on this as well. In addition, I'll have updates on characters and teams I've joined on Friday.

With so many teams running DK paladin, what made you decided to go shaman/DK and what do you see as potential shortcomings, as well as benefits with shaman over paladins?

Daara(Shaman): Since I was playing with a Rogue partner before, I'll say that DK's are just superior in almost every fight. Rogues are a pain to keep alive and heal. There was just no chance at beating a good dk/pally as rogue/shaman, and hunter/paladin was virtually impossible. I had little time to drink, and we couldn't pressure a paladin the same as we can as DK/Shaman.

Decursing and tremor offer a lot more than a Paladin can, and offensive dispels and the new grounding totem are also great. Also, with water shield, unless a Warlock is ok with giving me like a passive 800mp5, they will have a lot more trouble keeping me in combat.

Memri (DK): Well the main reason I wanted to use shaman is because of the recent surge of Warlock/healer teams. Shamans are superior to paladins vs. locks because of tremor totem and water shield. Restoration shaman can also put out a lot more offensive pressure than paladins can.

A lot of people would mention hex, but I think holy paladins with their stun are better than hex since it's instant and on a 45 sec CD.

On the negative side, shaman don't have any outs against Rogue/Mage like a paladin does with bubble. You pretty much die instantly. If you see the video, there's one rogue mage clip where daara says ground ap / pom, and thats funny because if you dont ground ap/pom you pretty much die instantly.

Daara: If I didn't ground it I was dead. Good thing arcane burst and rogue damage is nerfed. Fix fury warrior damage and we're good to go.

Any other comps that give you problems? How do you do against DK/Paladins?

Daara: I would assume Affix would give us a really hard time. Other than that, the one Rogue/Priest in the vid we ran into, Plex, gives us a hard time too.

DK/Paladin,Memri rapes paladins.

Memri: To be honest, it's easier to kill a pally than a good shammy on a DK.

Daara: I don't think [shaman] are better at tanking them, it's just that paladins think they can tank anything with instant casts.

Memri: Nah, from what I can tell from playing against many different shammie/pallies, shaman have a couple advantages.

One is the disease cleansing totem does a really good job because it cleanses without using a GCD on the shaman. And then if they're good with grounding, it makes it really difficult for DK's to chain something like Mind Freeze > strangulate. Pallies are just predictable, they spam holy shock every 6 seconds and run around with sacred shield. They can't stop your interrupts.

Daara: Yeah, grounding a mind freeze gives you free heals until it's up again pretty much.

How do you each feel about your respective 3.1 class changes?

Memri: Oh man I LOVE the garg change in 3.1 since I already go so far into unholy. It doesn't matter that they made it a 51 pointer, the buffed damage is huge. With the buff, I don't think there will be any problems at all with DK dps or killing capabilities in arena. One thing I'd like to see is AMZ being useful again though, I'm pretty sure most DK's have already made tons of suggestions for it, like making it ground targettable etc.

Dk's are pretty close to that sweet point right now. They're easy to CC, not god-mode in survivability anymore, and have just enough dps to kill but arent quite unbearable. With the garg buff, DK damage might be too high again, but they haven't revealed all the 3.1 changes yet, so we don't know what all is getting buffed/nerfed.

Daara: They are doing little to nothing to increase the survivability of enhancement and elemental shaman. Enhance still has the worst mana regen of any hybrid melee.

One thing that bothers me is that they're making divine plea undispellable while mana tide remains at 5 hp, 1000 if you drop a stoneclaw. 25% mana --> 1 minute, 25% mana --> 5 minutes and dies instantly on any direct attack. I've resorted to the stupidest things to protect the damn totem.

Drop mana tide, turn 90 degrees clockwise, drop a earth totem, turn 90 degrees clockwise, drop a fire totem, turn 90 degrees clockwise, drop an air totem. Should I really have to resort to such stupid things just to get some use out of a 31 point talent? I'd gladly take a -50% healing debuff to make mana tide unkillable - It's not hard to tell your teammate to play defensive for a few seconds.

One thing I do believe would help all 3 shaman specs would be to move Astral Shift (tier 9 ele) to tier 2 elemental.  And replace Atral Shift with another survival talent. If that happened I would have no complaints left about the class. Oh, and totem stomping macros need to go.

I also think they need to lower the cooldown on Shamanistic rage for enhance. Maybe to 1 minute, because when you get trained as an enhance you pop it defensively and eventually go oom. You sit around and do nothing until you get a water shield proc, just auto attacking.

What do you suggest as a way to fix that?

Daara: Change the name of the totems. Daara's Tremor Totem

Memri: One funny story, Daara played one game as enhancement this season and he died instantly within 2 seconds of arena starting. Went back to resto the next game.

Daara: =( I called for a bop -.-. Enhance just dies too easy. Whats that mage talent that makes it when you get interrupted you can't be interrupted for like 10 seconds? It's somewhere in fire. Ele is just terrible when trained, and could use something like that.

Memri: Nah, you're so wrong. Ele is fine. You haven't played against Glorbin yet.

Daara: No, it's damage is just dumb atm. That's the only reason it's fine. From what I've run into, ele shaman are cake. Pretty sure the only thing this one shaman got off was flame shock.

Memri: Well he's pretty bad then. Wait till you play against a good ele shaman like glorbin or Nennx. They can do A LOT. I think not a lot of people have tried ele yet since the patch. I think it's really good. They also aren't that weak to being trained, you just need to play with teammates that are even more dangerous if left alone, like Priest/Hunter.

Daara: Well hunter anything is dangerous. I like watching live streams against hunter teams, you see the hunter stand in one spot the whole game.

Memri: Yes fix hunters please.

Daara, how do you feel about Hex? Also, many Shaman have relied heavily on addons since as far back as early BC, and have crashed and burned when they weren't available. Even when watching most recent Shaman videos, you'll see a screen cluttered with mods. I noticed your UI is free of pretty much any addon, how do you feel about this in relation to Shaman?

Daara: Save for the range, I like it the way it is now. They should increase it, as well as shocks, to 30 yards. And PVP gloves should give + 5 range to both.

As for addons, personally I think they're a crutch. Let's say a sponsor appoaches you about a deal.  Most players have so many addons it makes it a pain to watch their videos.  When you get to a tournament you'll have use of none of the things you've be reliant on.  You'll have nothing telling you that the paladin over there just popped divine plea. Playing without addons increases your awareness everywhere.

Memri what do you think separates good DK's from Bad? As well as Unholy and Frost builds?

Memri: Well, it's really really easy to tell a good dk from an average/bad one by a couple of things.

First, the use of big cooldowns such as ghoul stun, strangulate and death grip. Next is pet micro and defensive cooldowns such as icebound fortitude, AMS and actually using frost presence. I find it funny that so many DK's never even use frost presence and just die.

Blood is kind of gimmicky right now. It relies completely on overpowered dancing rune weapon for burst kills. Blood Dk's very much like a Warrior or Rogue without MS right now until they pop their DRW and burst something down. Since giving them MS would be a horrible way to make them viable, I think a talent that reduces their strangulate cooldown would be a nice way to bring the tree together. After nerfing DRW of course. It will give them more opportunities to set up kills with mind freeze to strangulate combos and less reliance on a gimmicky 51 point talent.

Frost is very good with a team that can set up CC chains for kills and they have the best ruinic power dump via frost strike.

Daara: yea if you watch the video you'll see the damage the blood dk puts out. I don't see too many blood DK's, but when they pop their cooldowns I have to pop mine too. I don't think the damage is too hard to deal with, but if it were a 2dps team I might think differently.