[Guide] Random Resto Shaman PvP Tips & Tricks

All of those are my personal preferences. Knowledgeable shamans should feel free to discuss concisely and add information.

1. Use wind shear 1,2,3 macros (Check edit on post below)

2. To be able to fakecast easier, use this macro. /stopcasting /cast Riptide . You can easily fakecast and you won't waste time because after fakecasting you can riptide and then try again.

3.Unbind space to use it as target or focus wind shear

4. Unbind S. I personally use S to target p1 and Shift+S to target p2. More ideas on how to bind target macros here: http://arena-tournament.com/forum/vi...hp?f=29&t=4603

5. Try to get used to using focus purge. Not a huge deal if you use target purge though.

6.Earth shock does the most damage out of your shocks. I often use it to assist with damage.(Check edit on post below)

7. When interrupted, you may not be able to use any spells such as lightning bolt,lhw,hw,riptide but you will be able to frost shock and use totems.

8.Use stoneclaw only for the shield and immediatly switch to another totem. It could be stoneskin,tremor,earthbind or strength totem.

9. Bind wrath of air totem/windfury and use it when grounding totem is on CD. Helps you and your partners a lot with damage/healing.

10. Use grounding only to ground certain spells. Don't use it randomly. Save it for hex,polymorph,hoj,deep freeze,cyclone,grip,strangulate etc.



11. If a priest is running after you, spamming tremor won't help at all. It ticks every 3 seconds so if you spam it he can fear you and kill the tremor afterwards. You can frost shock him, ghost wolf away, put an earthbind (because he'll dispel himself). Even if he gets a fear you wasted 4s of his time and in that time your partners could do a lot of pressure.

12.Try to put the tremor behind a wall. Keep in mind all totems have 30 yard range. That includes cleansing and mana tide.

13. After you ground a polymorph and shear the second one you must find a way to los his next cast and in 3-4s you can go back out to shear more casts.

14. I prefer to keep my tidal force out of my instant heal macro. If I am in a good position and I have to overheal I pop it at start(talking about 3s)

15. If you play versus a comp that has no dispel but they have a rogue you can use tremor and bloodlust to get into combat easily. I do not recommend using bloodlust for getting into combat for obvious reasons. You can easily use riptide,earth shield etc.



16.I like buffing water walking and water breathing before the game starts. One of the buffs disappears when the player gets in combat but they just serve as trash buffs.

17. Make sure to dispel beacon when playing vs a holy paladin.

18. You don't always have to hex. Trying to get a hex when your team is getting too much pressure often ends badly. Sometimes you may have to hex a dps just to reduce damage incoming. If you are going to do that, make sure he has trinket used so you can actually reduce damage. If there is a mage or Rshaman,Rdudu in the enemy team, be careful with Hex. If you are going to hex make sure you use it when they are receiving a lot of pressure and one of their partners is at 30-40%. This way the hexed target will most likely trinket and won't wait for dispel. Or if the target at low hp is mage/rsham/rdruid if he tries to dispel he is wasting GCD and he might die.

19. After shearing arcane spell(mages) or shaman(anything but lava burst) you can cast 1 hw(if tidal waves is up) or 1 lhw and you won't get interrupted.

20. If you are playing at blade's edge and you are the main target of TSG try to position yourself at the big pillar. If you haven't noticed, the pillars closer to the end of the bridge are smaller therefore you can't kite a lot.


Feel free to comment and propose other tips and tricks. I do not consider myself great but I hope with the help of some of you we can help players who want to improve. Thank you.

6. Apparently, Frost shock does more damage than Earth shock and I was wrong.

1.Wind shear 1,2,3
I am not sure if it is really vital to use wind shear 1,2,3 macros in 3v3. If you are new at the class and you are still making your binds I can't recommend it enough but if you playing rsham for years and you are used to switching focus or whatever and you don't think it's a problem you can keep it that way. Personally, I will continue to use target and focus wind shear only. I know it's not good versus spell cleaves but I am going to quit soon so it doesn't matter a lot.

For 2v2 I think it's pretty important if you want to get really high(top 5). If you don't have them every time you play vs caster teams you will be very confused and you will perform badly. I only have one focus hex macro so it's very confusing for me to wind shear effectively because it involves so much switching of focus (thank god /focus mouseover)

21.

When you face a TSG or any team with double mdps that may switch on you, you can hide behind pillar and show yourself for two sec when your parts have 50-60%. The DK will be spamming focus strang or grip you can try to ground that. You can also riptide yourself for the tidal waves buff and go out for 1 cast of Healing wave and then you can hide again. They will be forced to stay on your parts and you can pray they get a kill. It won't work always though but it's not a bad idea for some occasions.

22. Sometimes when possible you can put the grounding totem far behind you so casts at your partners
don't get grounded by your grounding. Basically you save the grounding totem for yourself.


23. Don't be afraid to switch pillars. Try to stay away from the action but in such range to make yourself able to dispel and shear. Sometimes switching pillar can save the game. Example: I did not switch my pillar vs disc fire(mage) arms today and they killed me very easily with their stuns and blanket cs. My partners were hunt and dk and couldnt peel at all. Another example is when your team rushes and you stay back. You should go to a nearby pillar(on nagrand f.e) so you can be close enough to heal and purge.


N E W
15.03.2017

23. I just had to lose 50 rate in solo q to remind myself of something very important. I already talked about positioning but I think I should write this down. When playing solo q, do not think your partners will have good positioning. Most of the times it's better to move with them in case they get bursted while they are out of your line of sight.
Had a lot of arenas in which my partners los me and they will continue to do it. What you can do, is make sure your positioning is good enough so if they fail, they can still survive.

Example: Playing in nagrand arena, I have safe range from my pillar and I'm healing my hunter part as we play but he decides to go to the other side of the nearby pillar. Hunter + Warlock are bursting my partner hurtner and he does detterence at 4k hp, I pop all cds he bounces back to 8-9k(still receiving dmg while I pop all heals), and as soon as I try to heal him out of enemy's sight I get interrupted by warlock's pet and he eventually dies. Had a lot of arenas like these and you should really have that in mind.

Feel free to give suggestions for more edits.

Remember that PvP doesn't have a script. Doing what I just wrote won't always win you the game. You must adjust to the situation and think what play is most effective.

24. You can ground Death Grip on Icecrown but you can't ground death grip on blackrock. It took me some time to realize. This means that you cant avoid grip and if you are going to show yourself to heal parts(nagrand f.e) you must keep a riptide on you at least. You can also keep up the stoneclaw shield and put ES on you as soon as you are gripped if you think they will switch on you.

love these tips, keep em comming

I will do my best, thank you.

added thoughts on grounding

I have more ideas but I do not see the point of taking the time to write them. If I managed to help at least one person it was worth it. If someone wants to talk to me and have a discussion you can find me in-game on Ebitda or Lunix (both characters are in Icecrown)

bump
bumpbump

P.S It's been a while since I wrote this but I would like to add that Rshamans should play agressive often. Hugging walls doesnt always work well and you must learn to recognize when you have to be agressive and when to hug pillar. F.e if playing prot pal/rsham vs WP(war pal) you'll have to be agressive almost all of the time. Even if you play with a ret you'll have to support heavily as much as possible but you must also know better than going in the middle of the arena for no reason.

Bump because some people have been asking me about this. Around christmas I’ll add tips on how to play with prot pal in 2v2 and i’ll maybe edit some of the information above

Bumpy bump hope someone finds this useful

Ty for guide.

Thanks thats all I need in return

Good stuff. I've been playing ret/rsham for years now (only 2's, currently on Blackrock ladder) and I can add some additional tips. I'm not a top-tier player by any means but for the general shaman-players I think I can add some value here.

1. Get Blessing of Wisdom from the ret (or prot), this allows you to use Healing Stream Totem instead of Mana Spring (except when facing hunter,rogue because then you need Cleansing). Healing Stream costs almost no mana and can heal a lot over time, many games against warr/pal for example, it sometimes does about ~20% of my healing. And that for almost no mana! I think most people underestimate this totem but it can be really useful.

2. Speaking of totems, you NEED seperate keybinds for these: Stoneclaw, Earthbind, Tremor, Grounding, Healing Stream/Cleansing (I use the same key for either and decide which one to use during the beginning of a game). It's also useful, but less important, to bind Magma Totem and buff totems (Strength of Earth, Windfury).

3. In 3's this would be really hard, but in 2's, I have macros for all my spells and never have to change my target (except against hunters and locks because they have a pet). That means:
-Hex current target
-Hex focus
-Purge current target
-Purge focus
-Wind Shear current target
-Wind Shear focus
-Frost Shock current target
-Frost Shock focus

-Earth Shield
-Earth Shield (target=my 2's partner)
-Riptide (target=my 2's partner)
etc etc, also for NS + HW and gift of the naaru, dispel and LHW and HW

This way I never have to change my target, saves a lot of time targeting and this allows me to sometimes play faster than opponents.

4. Sometimes you can lure players into using their interrupt for Lava Burst. This won't work against good players but sometimes players will use their interrupt against Lava Burst, allowing you to cast nature spells.

5. If you Shear a Mage's Poly, immediately cast Hex on him. He won't be able to CS. If he's standing close to a pillar, you can use Shear + Earthbind, then you cast hex. The Earthbind slows him so it's harder for him to quickly go around the corner (out of LoS).

6. For ret/rsham, I use Solace instead of Bauble and 5/5 resto pvp set. There is the possibility of using 2/5 pve set to get the 20% cast speed increase after using Riptide, but the loss of resilience is not worth it imo. Maybe in 3's or other setups it's better, but not for us (probably applies to prot/resto as well.) Bauble is also not that useful in 2's for our comp: it's good against DK's, but DK's are generally the easiest to play against. Using bauble against MS classes is just... pretty weak imo. It's useful against locks though, but.... the spell power from solace is always really nice. Against warrs, solace is better imo. It also comes down to personal preference.

7. If your ret/prot is attacking hpal, you can 'hump' him with frost shock/earthbind and ghost wolf, keep him slowed and spam purge, don't use wind shear. Let him waste time trying to fake cast. If he fineshes one cast it's not a disaster, but he will get confident that you won't shear him and then suddenly you can surprise him anytime you want. It's a mind game you are playing. First, give him the impression that he can freecast, let him finish a heal or two. After that, you can use shear right before his cast finishes to confuse him.
With ES/Riptide + healing stream totem + sacred shield, there is a lot of passive survivability without having to cast anything. Keep those buffs on the players that's being attacked (by a warr for example) and you get a lot of time applying pressure with the above mentioned humping strat. Keep an eye on you and your partner's health though, don't let it drop too low depending on the situation.

8. If you have the time, dispel the warlock curse.

9. If your partner gets Scatter Shot'd by a hunter, wait a few seconds and then place Grounding Totem. You can Ground the Freezing Trap. A good disc partner of the hunter will cast dispel to remove this Grounding but if you time it correctly (and get a little lucky) then you can Ground the trap.

10. If an opponent disc/shaman is spamming dispels on you, put ES on yourself. It's very inefficient for them to dispel all the stacks, and it applies additional dispel protection.

11. If you notice a mage suddenly puts you in a nova root, put ES on yourself immediately. If he deep freezes you, this gives you a lot more survivability and you probably won't have to trinket this depending on what the other players are doing of course. You could also use Grounding in this case to try and Ground the Deep Freeze, but Grounding is often on CD against Mages.

12. Against Feral Druids, always try to purge Predator's Swiftness buff.

13. LHW is more mana efficient than riptide. If the game turns into a mana fight, use as much LHW instead of Riptide, especially if you expect the Riptide buffs are getting dispelled.

14. Earthbind drops in front of you, on the right. It has a pretty big range this way. You can change where your character is facing so that the player you want to slow is on your right front. Then you can slow him instantly from a pretty big range.

15. When playing against Rogues, always fake-cast the LHW/HW, even if he is not standing next to you. Since he can shadow step + kick. When a Rogue shadowstep + kicks you (whether you fake-cast it or not), immediately use Earthbind Totem. This would nullify the movement speed buff he gets after shadow stepping, and he needs more time to get back on your partner. So when you get focus-shadow stepped, immediately drop Earthbind.

16. Use the meta gem with 18 stamina and 15% stun reduction. That's almost one second off Kidney Shot and HoJ! It also really, really helps against the constant warr charges/intercepts.

17. Sometimes you can use the Stoneclaw Shield pre-emptively. The absorb buff on you lasts 15 seconds, and Stoneclaw has a 21 second CD. That means 6 seconds downtime if you used it without absorbing anything. If your partner gets sapped, immediately use Stoneclaw. Don't ES yourself rightaway, because they may sap you immediately after and then go for your mate anyway.

18. Use the interrupt bar addon. I also use xperl for party frames to see ES/Riptide buffs. Always play with voice chat, without voice chat this game is really hard.

That's all I can think off for now...

Its all pretty solid advice. Thanks. I already covered some of this. The most important thing to remember is that A) there’s more than 1 way to do it and B) it all depends on the situation and you get a feel for that after playing for a long time. Sometimes doing the irrational thing wins the game.
I’ll play more this september when I’m back home in Bulgaria hence I might update some things. I’ll have my pc again and more free time despite having uni assignments. Once again, it would be nice if you tell people your exp so they can get an idea how people at your rate play.

bumpy bump because people are talking about rshams again.