Druids
Druids are quite possibly a shaman’s hardest match up. Like us, druids are hybrids, meaning they have a tool to counter everything we can throw at them. Luckily, we have tools to counter everything they can throw back. This means that shaman vs. druid fights can last a long time. Unless they’re noob druids who think they’re mages and stay in caster form the whole time, use a 1hander and a shield. I notice a ton of Alliance druids like to fight this way (wtf?).
I recommend using windfury on your weapon, as it offers better burst damage, which can end a PvP fight very quickly. Rockbiter is an acceptable substitute if you prefer more consistent pwnage. If you have a lot of prep-time, buff both of your weapons and have your weapon switch macro ready. However, make sure you’ll have time to drink before the fight starts if you go this route.
A good druid will start in either cat form or bear form. I’ll go over tactics to use against each form and then general anti-druid tactics.
Cat Form: Sometimes druids will start the fight in cat form. This allows them to get the jump on you, and potentially do some nice starting damage. If the druid is sneaking around in cat form, drop an earthbind totem and jump up and down, spinning your detection radius every which way. This lets you cover the most ground with it and increases your chance to spot the druid before he begins his attack. If you spot the druid, go all out burst dps. Use endgame earthshocks and try to hold him in that form with a warstomp. A WF proc could end the duel this way. If he gets the jump on you, accept the damage with a grain of salt and try to start beating on him in cat form as soon as you can. You’ll do way more damage to him than he to you if he stays in cat form.
Bear Form: Whenever a good druid starts taking damage, he’ll try to heal in caster form and then switch to bear form. Bear form is a beast (zing), because it has hella armor and HPs. Jump around the big lug in melee range, hoping to the spirits you get a few WF procs. Remember, melee classes cannot hit you if you’re behind them. Even if it’s only a few misses, the dps hit can be substantial. 100% damage avoidance is always worth the trouble. I find that you’ll generally do about as much relative damage to him while he’s in that form as he will to you. Whenever you get below 40% health, heal (always lesser healing wave in PvP), but try to get a little distance first to prevent him from bashing (stunning) you. If he does bash to prevent your healing, use your Nature’s Swiftness heal to show him up.
Caster Form: Always go nuts on the druid when he shifts to caster form. This is when he’s most vulnerable. If you buffed your 2hander as well as your one hander, switch to it to beat the stuffing out of the noob. Whenever a druid shifts into caster, use a rank 1 earthshock or a well-timed earthshock to interrupt his inevitable heal. If, when the druid shifts to caster form, you see a big burst of green leaves, this means he’s about to use Nature’s Swiftness and get an insta-cast 2k heal off. ALWAYS try to purge NS. You’ll make the druid cry. Also, 2 of the druid’s more help heals are HoTs (heals over time), and you can purge those off to minimize their healing. Remember this when they shift back into bear form from caster form.
Finally, it is important to always purge the druid near the start of the fight. Druids should start with Mark of the Wild, a substantial stat and armor buff, and knocking that off at the start can make the fight much less painful. Other than that, stick to your guns, remember what the tree-huggers are capable of, and fight your way through. Show those nature-loving hippies that the spirits of our ancestors pwn their peace and balance loving elders any day of the week.
Hunters
I regret to say I haven’t fought very many of these guys. Luckily, the fights I’ve had have all be fairly easy. As the bulk of their damage is physical, use a 1hander and a shield.
Hunters are basically kiter extraordinaires. It’s what they’re best at. They’ll be using a series of dazes and possibly some debuffs to keep you away from them. They’re strongest at the start of the fight, and if you can close the distance you’ll probably win. If you’re ever low on health and the hunter’s far from you, for flurry’s sake use your NS heal. They can do amazing crit damage from range. I wouldn’t allow myself to drop below 40% health.
A key tactic to keep in mind versus hunters is to always ignore their pet. It may look scary, but it doesn’t really do much damage. If they have a life sap pet, ie one that’s healing the owner while it’s beating on you, feel free to take it out while you’re closing the distance with the hunter. Simply run towards the hunter, jump and with your mouse switch angles to get a few whacks on the pet, and then As soon as you get within 20 yards, frost shock the noob. Close the distance and go all out dps; use endgame earthshocks and continue to Frost Shock so long as diminishing returns haven’t crept in. I’d recommend only using Frost Shock every 15 seconds to keep full snare duration when you need it. With Diminishing Returns, you cannot let the hunter get away from you again. warstomp as soon as you get close enough, and beat the crap out of the hunter.
When you’re in melee with a hunter, he’ll probably wingclip you. This is a snare they can only use in melee range. Simply drop an earthbind totem to mitigate this effect.
A last note about hunter pertains to GvG. Hunters are commonly the scouts of a group, using track humanoid to locate targets for their groups. While in Ghost Wolf form, you show up as a beast, not a humanoid. You can use this to escape their tracking abilities. The same can be said for druids.
Mages
Mages are powerful adversaries, but they don’t have anything we can’t counter. There are two general types of mages with some variations on both. There are Fire Mages, who do a lot of damage very quickly, but burn out (har har) for several seconds afterward, and there are Frost Mages, who rely heavily on snares and roots. Generally speaking, Frost Mages play more offensively, getting right in your face to play with cone of cold and the like, while Fire Mages work on getting as much distance from you as possible, and then nuking your beefy rump into oblivion.
Most mage fights open with them a ways away, “threatening” to nuke you. Always use a 2hander with windfury against mages, as a single proc will end the fight and the bonus armor from your shield won’t really help at all. Drop a grounding totem right when the fight starts. This will probably eat their polymorph (the spell that leaves you hungry for grass and fearing the farmer’s shears). If the mage is smart, he’ll run out of range of the totem and either stand there and wait for you or blast it with a wand. Both leave the shaman in a bit of a predicament. Use the time the mage is running out of grounding range to purge all his buffs away.
If your grounding totem eats their poly, charge and endgame earthshock to prevent them from frost nova-ing. Then try to get another grounding totem down right next to them to further prevent casting. It is very important that the mage is either freshly earthshocked or your have a grounding totem down when you get into melee range. Frost Nova can let the mage get enough distance to destroy you otherwise. It is also important to remember that mages can blink forward a certain distance. Warstomps should help you minimize the impact of this ability. If you juggle warstomps, earthshocks, and grounding totems properly, you should be able to prevent them from casting for the most part. Just remember, if you can melee the mage for longer than a few seconds, the mage will die. Feel relatively free to do as much damage with your mana as you want against mages, burst DPS while in melee range is crucial to winning. Just always keep enough to throw up a couple heals if times turn bad.
When to heal? Against Ice Mages, use NS + healing wave whenever you’re around 50% HPs. Against fire mages, use NS + Healing Wave after they break poly with their first huge fireball. This is their most painful damaging spell and if you heal it off you don’t have to worry about all that damage coming back too quickly. Never ever use a healing spell with a casting time while not under the protection of a grounding totem. If you get silenced while healing, the mage will probably win. Do not wait until you are in the red to heal; such will result in a shaman immediately joining his ancestors.
Rogues
Rogues are nearly impossible to beat without NS and warstomp. Rogues will normally play this fun little ballet game with you, stunning then running behind, stunning then running behind. Rogues will also try to stun-lock you from the start of the match, and try to drop your HP before you ever get a chance to fight back. If you’re tauren and your timers are up, you shouldn’t have too big a problem.
Always use a 1hander and a shield against rogues. This cuts their damage in half, and many will curse you for it. Another important consideration in rogue fights is snares and dots. You always want to try and keep both debuffs on a rogue;, you just have to figure out which is more appropriate when. Snares destroy their maneuverability, while dots (flame shock) prevent them from vanishing or bandaging. Remember, as with fighting any melee class, always try to stay behind them. Even if just a few swings are missed, so long as yours are landing you get the edge.
In most rogue fights, the rogue will begin in stealth. Jump around and spin in hopes of detecting him, but don’t be surprised if you fail. NEVER EVER use a magma totem to try and un-stealth a rogue. This is a gross waste of mana that will probably be needed for DPS and heals later on. If you try to un-stealth a rogue with totems, you’ve already lost.
If you detect the rogue, use endgame Flame Shocks to get the rogue out of stealth and sting him. Go all out dps, and pray for a WF proc. After the initial Flame Shock, use earthbind to snare and use endgame earthshocks for damage. If you detect the rogue before getting stun-locked, you’ll win.
In 4/5 Rogue matches, the rogue will get his stun-lock off. Stun-lock is the condition resulting when the rogue pops out of stealth behind you with a stun, tears into your rear with godly physical dps, and makes you wonder what you did to piss off the Blizzard devs. It never ceases to amaze me that you can take a lightning bolt in the face, have your skin burst into flames via ignite, have the very shadows pop out of your surroundings to eat you, or be thrown 20 ft, and slink away with nothing but some HP loss, while if you get poked in the kidney, by the spirits it’s gonna hurt and you’re gonna stand there for a few seconds while the rogue continues to rip you apart. You basically have 2 options. If you survive the stun-lock, you can either warstomp and heal or NS and heal. I recommend using NS + healing wave, allowing you to warstomp and damage the rogue or saving your warstomp for another emergency heal.
Once you get the basic anti-rogue strategies down, the only ones that’ll really give you trouble are the tag-teams and those with really good weapons. However, this is one class we’re quite well prepared to defeat.
Shaman
Shaman duels are some of the most challenging/fun fights you can have. It is purely your shaman skill versus his shaman skill. I highly recommend dueling shamans sometime; you’ll inevitably learn more about your class and how far you can push your abilities.
Against shamans, always use a 1hander and shield. Keep windfury up. The bulk of a shaman’s damage is physical, so you’ll want to keep your armor up to mitigate as much damage as possible. These fights tend to be long, so the stats on a shield and 1hander may be useful in tipping the scale in your favor.
At the start of the fight, purge the offending shaman’s lightning shield away. It’s amazing how often shamans forget to do this. Get into melee and go at it. I recommend dropping an earthbind totem to make their maneuvers more difficult.
The most important strategies to remember against other shaman are to always heal behind your grounding totem, always interrupt their casting-timed heals, and always try to purge off their NS. I’ve been accused of cheating by other shamans for timing my purge just in time to eat up their NS. These fights take awhile, and if your opponent’s purging off your lightning shield don’t bother to put it back on; you’ll just be wasting mana.
These fights take while, but they’re a lot of fun. As with any melee fight, try to stay behind your enemy while keeping him in front of you. Jumping and turning are useful in this respect.
Paladins
Another long fight. Shaman vs. Paladin matches are some of the most epic encounters in the game. Ah, the clash of the embodiment of the Alliance versus the embodiment of the Horde. Who can resist?
These fights take a LONG time. It’s very rare that a shaman can kill a paladin outright. Both classes have middle of the road dps, with shamans having a slight edge offensively and paladins having a slight edge defensively. Use a 1hander and a shield with windfury and try to keep a grounding totem down for much of the fight to eat their hammer of justice. Also, I recommend being equipped with a stack of bandages for a paladin fight. Remember to use your mana for heals, not damage. Rank 1 earth and frost shocks will suffice when you need their effects.
Start off by purging off the paladin’s seal. Seals are buffs unique to the paladin class that can stun you, heal him, or add greatly to his dps. Never let him have his seal. Always purge it off. This is a wonderful situation for the shaman, because our purge costs less relative mana than their seals, and our mana pools are normally slightly larger. This essentially means you have to fight his mana bar.
Paladins take a lot of abuse, and they have two full health heals they can use in a fight where their timers are up. They have a 10 second invulnerability shield they can use and heal up inside, and they have lay on hands, which heals them entirely at the cost of their remaining mana. We can prevent neither of these abilities, so just keep hopping behind him and stabbing him with your one-hander. When he uses his 10 second invulnerability shield, bandage up for a free heal that costs no mana. This is pretty much the number one way to make a paladin player die inside.
Sometimes, paladins desperate to increase their dps will burn mana on consecrate, an AoE magic damage spell that radiates from the paladin. Simply back out of range and heal when they do this. Do not give them a dps edge.
If you want to be sneaky and try to end the fight quickly, get inside the paladin’s head. As with many healing classes, paladins like to let themselves get low before popping their shields or heals. Fake them out. Allow them to get in the red with a consistent strategy and then warstomp. Earth shock them to hell while their stun and laugh at them for allowing themselves to lose too many HP before healing.
Priests
Priest isa very strange class. They’re the most necessary PvE class, yet they retain PvP abilities that other classes can only dream of. Priests have a lot of buffs and a lot of escape abilities, but if you concentrate and effectively counter all their little tricks, shamans can carry the day quite well. Always use a 2hander with windfury against priests, as their damage is entirely magical.
The general priest strategy is to hit you with shadow word pain, a shadow damage DoT, and a shadow resistance debuff. Whenever you get close, your opponent will use psychic scream or shield, or both. Watch his mana usage closely. PWS and their debuff cost them a lot of relative mana, and if you heal off the damage you’ll be fine.
At the very start of the fight, drop a grounding totem. This may eat their DoT, immediately giving you the advantage. A good priest will attempt to get out of range of your grounding totem, while repeatedly trying to DoT or debuff you from farther out. Purge them while they run around outside your totems range. Purge them a lot. Priests have a lot of buffs, and it’ll take more than one purge to get them all.
Once they’re purged, you’ll probably be DoTed. Have no fear, your heals are more mana efficient than their DoTs, so if that’s the only trick they use you’ll be fine. Sadly for us, it’ll rarely be the only trick they use.
As you close the distance to the priest, be absolutely sure to drop a tremor totem. The priest needs you in melee range to psychic scream, thus CCing you while you take oodles of damage from the DoTs. Drop a tremor totem right as your coming within range. If you get feared, the pulse should break you out of it.
If you get an extended fear, you’ll probably lose the match. The damage will be too difficult to heal off and your opponent will mana burn you while you’re terrified. The good news is, like mages, priests will die after a couple of seconds in melee range. You can purge their shield, earth shock their heals, and warstomp them to oblivion. Stay close, but always stay under grounding and tremor totems. If you’re a little whacky, feel free to try and drop them with high damage shocks, but I tend to let my mace to the talking.
Good luck. A good priest will give you a helluva run for your money. However, we got the tools to counter them. You just have to time your abilities well and know what to use when.
Warriors
Sorry warriors, we got this one down. Warriors are fairly easy to defeat, but a good warrior can be quite a pain. Most warriors use mortal strike, a 31 point talent on their most useful talent tree (Arms). This’ll be the only way they can defeat you if they play their cards right.
I hope by this point it goes without saying: use a 1handed weapon and a shield. Warriors get all of their dps from physical damage, so you want your armor up. Don’t forget your weapon buff.
As soon as you see the warrior, purge him. This will put him in combat and take away his charge (if you’re fast enough). Next, frost shock him and kite until diminishing returns kick in. If he intercepts to break the kite, warstomp, earthbind, and back off until you can no longer kite. When diminishing returns are in full effect, allow him to close and begin jumping behind him for back shots. Use earthbind to make his maneuvering more difficult.
Watch his rage, and never ever let yourself get below 50% health. A warrior can execute you when you’re at 20% health, often ending the fight. You also want to keep enough life to counter his Mortal Strike if he uses it. Mortal strike does hella damage and reduces your heals to 50% efficiency. Your only real hope against it is waiting it out at distance. If you see this debuff, warstomp and back off. You may even want to use ghost wolf and earthbind during the warstomp stun. Never get low and try not to engage in melee until he’s around half health. I’ve never run into a warrior that gave me much difficulty.
Warlocks
Warlocks are severly underpowered right now. They have all the weaknesses of a cloth class while receiving none of the damage benefits of a mage or CC/escape benefits of a priest. As such you should never have too much difficulty defeating them. Always use a 2hander with windfury attached.
Warlocks generally come in three flavors, one for each respective talent tree. Affliction warlocks function by widdling you down with DoTs, Destruction warlocks act a lot like mages w/o frost nova or polymorph, and Demonology warlocks have a nice pet-damage link that can keep them standing slightly longer than their comrades.
You’ll get hit by three DoTs right from the start: Corruption (weak shadow DoT), Curse of Agony (A curse that does more damage as you get low on health), and Immolate (a semi-strong fire DoT). Next, they’ll probably try to cast fear on you. You can either drop a grounding totem to eat the fear (you don’t have to be close, their fear isn’t like a priests, it’s single target and takes time to cast), or drop a tremor totem to break it. Their hands will get all shadowy when casting their fear, which is your signal to earthshock.
Heal off the damage from the DoTs when they wear off. Drop totems to eat damage or fears. For the most part you can ignore their pet. If you notice that the lock is taking little damage form you attacks, purge him or kill his pet. Demonology warlocks have soul link, a spell that sends 50% of the damage they take to their pet. Every buff/shield they get is purge-able, and warstomp will hold them in place long enough for a windfury to go off, likely ending the fight.
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