How viable is actually Rshaman in PvP?

Greetings!
As the title says, I really wonder how strong is actually Rshaman in PvP in WoTLK? I have heard from many good players that it's such a bad class in general that it's not a good idea to play that class since every other healer is greater than what Rshamans have to bring as a healer in PvP 2s/3s. And I can already understand why when you dont have a reliable cc nor magic dispell ability. Am I wrong on this, please I really need some insight on this.
What are your thoughts on this? Please let me know your thoughts on this, would be really appreciated.
Thank you.

Grain of salt, 1400rshaman here, 1800 experience. RShaman here feels super lackluster. BGs I feel okay when there's other healers and I can play a support-healer but a dedicated healer in 2s/3s is super painful. I don't have enough armor to survive the insanely geared melee here and against a semi coherent opposing healer there's often no way to put out enough pressure to get a kill. Druids roll hots forever and have a lot of defensive cooldowns (and cyclone spam), priests all mana burn you to death, paladins take no damage and have infinite mana. Most times against double-dps it's a coinflip on if I can survive the initial surge after blowing every cooldown or not to pull out a victory afterwards.

Not a fan. Great healer for BGs, awesome for PvE, but 2s/3s (for me) have not been great. I haven't even attempted 5s. Sounds like a nightmare.

Id like to add with my opinion on Rsham in the PVP bracket. I main Rsham and have for years, this class is extremely viable in PVP, although the skill-cap is exceptionally high. Like other healing classes, a Rsham is a class that ultimately requires a large understanding of the PVP mechanics of wow in order to play.

Please note: My opinion is not bias to other healing classes, as I do also play disc priest at 2K+ as well.

first point to note when playing an Rsham is that the majority of your heals come from casts and not instant casts, its important to know that if you want to rock an Rsham you will need to work on your fake casting. The fact that most of your heals have a cast time is critical to note, as that is how your play style needs to be orientated.

I can get carried away and go really deep into the class, however I will just explain the differences between an Rsham and other healers and the advantages.

- Totems, exceptionally underrated. absorbing GAME BREAKING cc every couple of seconds with grounding totem.
- Stoneclaw totem, drop it when youve been interrupted, a beautiful way to mitigate damage while locked out of a school of school of magic. most healing classes wish they could do that.
- Earthbind totem, almost 100% uptime, causing movement impairing on your enemies, WITH AOE, affecting multiple targets at one time!!! Its literally overpowered.
- Resistance totems, giving 130 resistance on frost, fire and nature spells, combine this with a druid buff and you have caused almost any caster in those fields of magic to suffer and with you resisting a HUGE range of spells passively, mitigating damage and cc throughout an arena fight for eg.
- Earthshield, when proccing and critting it heals your friendly target for 4-7k+, with a very very short ICD (internal cooldown), combined with healing stream totem and your heals over time from Riptide, while youre CCd, your friend can continue to pressure without worrying about playing defensive. You might have very few large cooldowns to assist your partner if he is running low on HP like a priest of paladin have, but your ability for sustainable healing is far superior to any other healing class.
- A totem that passively can remove seduction and fears, with 100% uptime, another feature other healing classes wish they had.
- Also cleansing totem, removing poisons on every time it ticks, so overpowered, nothing in the entire game or world of warcraft can compare.
Interruptions, another INSANE ability that controls any fight, a nightmare for casters in general, and other healers dread shamans being good at interrupting with wind shear on every cooldown. Its game-breaking, without question.
Shamans also have an infinite mana supply, if you are full MP5 geared, with bauble and water shield up, with your mana stream totem up, your MP5 regeneration rate is far superior to a paladin, its just important to note that you need to crit on lesser healing wave casts and abuse the mana regen you get when an enemy hits you with water shield up to capitalize on how OP your mana supply truly is.
Shamans also have a 1.2 cast time on a heal that can outheal any form of incoming damage, meaning, it's easy to catch up and not fall behind on heals, even when you have Mortal strike/Aimed shot or wound poison up.
There are many aspects as to why a Rsham is actually the dominant healing class, but it really is more skill capped that any other healing class, without question.

There is no good guide on this class for our patch for 3.3.5, but I guarantee you if you can grasp the concept of most of your healing coming from casting, you will automatically adjust your gameplay, to start healing sooner to mitigate incoming damage, and also to start treating your earth shield as a "priests bubble" or paladins sacred shield. The idea is, the earth shield will without question reset its ICD when its been placed onto a new target, proccing and healing your partner for eg, in this way it's like a bubble.

As you can see, I am already getting carried away, there is a lot of insight about this class I could give.

To answer your question, Rsham is dominant over all other healing classes, but it does require a very deep understanding on the game and all other classes in order to play.

I would without question, suggest playing Rsham in the PVP bracket. hehe.

Very intresting insights you've given Me Traton! Thank you a lot for it!
Just a few questions from all your points you've brought up. Firstly, stoneclaw totem, how much value does it actually give? It feels as if 2-3 abilities from enemies is enough to remove the absorb effect of the stoneclaw totem. Secondly how do you actually get value from earthbind totem if I wanna run around a pillar and peel myself from incoming danger when someone can just kill it instantly without getting the slow effect at all? And the same thought about cleansing totem, for example if I face a rogue in 2s/3s, I have a hard time believing that he wont kill it immediatly right when he sees that totem being out which in the end gives me no value if someone just kills it off and that I have to re-apply it over and over again.

Great, Im glad I could help in some way. Well, stoneclaw does not absorb much realistically. Although, it plays as a shield for your totems aswell. Its important to note, you have to be very totem concious at all times. Rsham, or shaman in general is a very skill capped class and it requires a much high level of mental agility and awareness, not to scare you away from the class as a whole, although it really does require a completely different playstyle to almost all healing classes. That is usually the case as to why people tend to drift away from Rsham and suggest playing another class.

Cleansing totem and tremor totem both dont have cooldowns, which is ultimately a benefit to you, ofcourse Im sure you are referring to being in a stunlock for example and the priest or rogue or mage destroying your totems while youre locked out and unable to replace a totem, this however is truthfully more revolved around your partner in arena, the class you choose to play with needs to have support, or alternatively if you play with a warrior for eg, he will have to be quite decent to understand there are a few things he needs to do to mitigate incoming damage at the start of a game. This all boils down to skillcap. In the grand scheme of things though, the class you choose to play with needs to be enjoyable, and my suggestion is if youre curious still, go onto blackrock and create all healing classes, there you start with 5.5k gs, although you dont get the feel of the class as if it were BIS, but you will have a very good idea of which suites the way you play and stops you from hating the idea if playing pvp hehe.

Once again I have run off of topic, so to quickly answer your questions, Tremor needs to be strategically placed at all times, if you place it on the opposite side of a pillar for example, a priest or whoever would need to destroy it would have to go that distance to remove it before being able to fear etc. If you practise it enough, you will grasp it. Cleansing totem, also similar, also note, stoneclaw gives your totems a bubble, this absorb makes your totems very durable and stops them from going down with one hit, forcing enemies to waste valuable time and Global cooldowns to remove them. PVP is all about GCDs.

Get yourself an addon called Koko Totem timer, its brilliant for tracking totems and when they are destroyed, also get an addon called Needtoknow, and set it up that you will have an icon pop up in the middle of your screen in any placement you prefer so how you when a grounding totem has been absorbed or destroyed. Also to note, when they destroy a grounding totem, ensure you note the time it takes for you to have another grounding totem available, that way you can avoid line of sigh of the enemy for a few seconds, once it is available to place down again you can reveal yourelf and start casting in their LOS once again.

I do feel that I am going all over the place with this, although I am hoping it is helpful nonetheless.

Thanks for the info! Just as a last question, which has bothered me as a healer in general doing solo que or any bracket really for that matter, how much gear should I have minimum before going in solo queue/3s? I get complelty blown up in a few globals if they have a dk/warr in their team just heading straight for me and bursting me with shadowmournes. Especially on my Disc priest where I have 6 wrathful off-pieces, gemmed and everything to literally almost perfection, I just really can't see any light out of the tunnel I am in currently, am I wrong to believe that the damage is extremly overtuned currently?
Thank you for your responses, I really do appreciate them.
Kind regards
Coldspirit

Soloque is a pain with shaman, cause nearly everyone play with u like u were hpala, leave you do death with nearly 0 defensive or interrupt.
If u want soloQ then only hpala or disci, druid/rsham are walking corpses with most teams.

Shaman is super fun at battlegrounds, maybe best of all healers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Traton

[...]and the priest or rogue or mage destroying your totems while youre locked out and unable to replace a totem

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You can't get locked out of using totems.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Traton

[...] go onto blackrock and create all healing classes, there you start with 5.5k gs, although you dont get the feel of the class as if it were BIS, but you will have a very good idea of which suites the way you play and stops you from hating the idea if playing pvp hehe.

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On a 5.5 rshaman he'll die in the opener while spamhealing himself. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Traton

- Also cleansing totem, removing poisons on every time it ticks, so overpowered, nothing in the entire game or world of warcraft can compare.

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This one was quite awesome but it just got heavily nerfed recently and it doesn't tick when you drop it anymore for some reason. Not that it helped much when a smourne warr was raping you.

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Originally Posted by Fiutolog

Soloque is a pain with shaman, cause nearly everyone play with u like u were hpala, leave you do death with nearly 0 defensive or interrupt.
If u want soloQ then only hpala or disci, druid/rsham are walking corpses with most teams.

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This. I went from full rele to t2 weps through solo queue this season after not playing for a couple of years and it was... interesting. Be prepared to get teamed up with the likes of hunt/protret or dk/warr that'll hide behind you while you get rushed by the enemy dk/warr and then get called a tärd by 1500 tards playing fotm classes.


So basically, resto shaman can be pretty fun when you're playing with decent teammates and aren't facing melee cleaves 24/7. But realistically, while you can outheal everything, all your good heals are hardcasts, you don't have any good defensives, it's hard to find the globals for purging, your cc isn't great and you don't have magic dispel - which most of the time makes you worse than other healers.

I quit a few years ago but at the time I was one of the top rated rshams in the server (2.5k solo q, r4 rivalcrown and 2.5k 2v2 with unholy dk partner, at the time top 3).

If you want to break top 10 consistently, other healers are easier. None of the strongest comps for 3.3.5a need resto shamans so it is extremely difficult to dominate PvP with a Rsham. It can be achieved and I never found it particularly difficult to break into top 20 but for top 10 you need to take the game seriously and for top 5 you need to be borderline obsessed.

Ultimately, as others pointed out you need to be great at the game and you can't really afford to make any mistakes. Gear plays a huge part, especially for Solo Q. You need different sets for different comps and I even used to have macros to change main wep and shield depending on who their target is (e.g. running on 1100-1200 resil but when they switch on me, I got 1400). Other than that the same typical stuff apply - you need to understand the game, positioning, fakecasting etc. None of that changes. And you need to be good with people because almost everyone can replace you and play a better comp. If you play 3s with retri / mm and they get sick of you, they can easily replace you with some random disc.

Most Rshams don't understand the game well enough and cant tell when you need to be offensive and when to play defensive. Discs and Rshams have that in common. The only brutal counter to Rshams are Arms Warriors. In all of my years of playing, I never learned (if possible) how to survive them for long periods of time. Sure, you can kite and stuff but eventually you'll die. That's a big problem in 2s and 3s because your partner cant let you 1v1 arms warriors because you'll die. Also, lots of arms warriors have scripts to interrupt or apply that 75% healing reduce at 0.1 of your cast. Not impossible to fakecast but again, you need to be skillcapped.

Let me know if you have any questions. A few years ago I made a guide and some tips and tricks for PvP - I will bump it now and you can read it in the Shaman section.