hellenkeller
01-05-2008, 11:17 AM
Warrior Shaman is not a popular combo like warrior druid because it suffers from a few significant holes that the warrior druid combo avoids. Namely, the shaman can only break a CC once with PvP trinket, making him extremely susceptible to double DPS teams and CC heavy teams. However, the shaman can really mess with enemy casters, due to grounding and tremor totem, and windfury amps up his warrior's damage, making gib kills a real possibility.
You will play long games as warr/sham, so the warrior needs to be good at keeping pets and other players off his shaman for drinking. The shaman needs great knowledge of his totems, when to pump his warrs dps, when to break CC or catch casts, and when to regen mana. The game is all about effective use of totems. You should bloodlust when the warrior has 5 sunders up, preferably when CC DRs for the opponent are on cooldown.
Warrior shaman wins games by messing up the opponent, plain and simple. As a general rule, you should beat other healer x combos because you can do big burst when the enemy healer is low on mana and options. Double DPS can be challenging, if you win 50% of your games against double DPS thats about what you can hope for.
Matchups:
Warrior Druid: This is easily the most common team on my battlegroup, nights with 5 games against warr/dru and 5 against every other combo are common. Fortunately, warrior shaman can go toe to toe with warrior druid due to a couple factors: Most warr/dru teams suck and play an overpowered combo, which makes them easy to outplay, and a shaman can mess with a druids head due to grounding totem eating cyclone and shock interrupting the druids CC. If you eat a few CCs at the start, it may discourage the druid from attempting more later in the match.
My favorite way to beat warrior druid is to make the druid shapeshift, and then kill the warrior. You do this by switching targets. The fight opens warr vs warr, because they NEED to come to you. The enemy warr has to come into your totems to fight because if he doesnt', you get the eyes and spot his druid. So you have a dps advantage from the getgo but.. you don't want to give the warr a ton of rage to beat on your shaman. I stack sunder on the warr to increase my long term DPS, but not increase his. When the druid pops out, I switch to him and try to force him into bear form or travel form. While sham warr cant burn mana, forcing shapeshifts effectively does that. You want to hit the softest target at all times unless you smell a kill. That means hitting the druid when he isnt in bear form, and hitting the warr when the dru is in bear form. Force the druid to lose his mana through shifting and healing thru MS on multiple targets and you will win. The shaman can purge heals on the warrior as well, negating the druids usefullness considerably.
Warrior Priest: you will always win because you can hit cloth harder than he can hit your shaman, or you. Keep hamstring on the enemy warrior if its convenient, but just beat the heck out of the priest while your shaman stays up. Priest wont be manaburning with a warrior destroying him
warrior pally: This is a difficult combo because the enemy warrior will kill your shaman before you kill the paladin in a DPS race. If the warrior is hitting you, thats fine, you will win with windfury in the long run, but they usually go for the sham. You need to be hitting the pally because giving rage to the other warrior will make your shaman die that much faster. However, you need to stay in range of your shaman's totems, and the fight is a loss if you get seperated from your shaman. You beat a paladin by killing the paladin through intense lock down of his spells. shock---pummel---shock--warstomp/intercept/intimidating shout--shock---pummel is the kind of rotation you need to win. This is an insane amount of lockout and with bloodlusted windfury you will get the pally to bubble or die, if bubble is already down. I like bloodlusting after hes bubbled once, but a good pally wont let you get him down unless you blow your CDs. So stay close to your shaman, sneakily demo shout the enemy warrior, and perfect communicatin to interrupt the paladin and you will steal some wins.
Warlock-Priest: easy combo. DPS the heck out of the priest and you will win, assuming the warrior has great gear. Stack sunder at the start, purge pain suppression. Shaman needs to LOS the locks mana drain, the priest wont be mana burning with a warrior on him full time
warlock pally: another fairly easy combo. DPS the lock while keeping hamstring on the pet. You can win by just dpsing the lock or by killing the pet, but its easier when you kill the pet because it gives your shaman free reign to kite and drink. Quick purge on BOP will shorten the inevitable win, a lock pally team cant outdps a bloodlusted warrior shaman team if both teams have equal gear.
warlock druid: This combo can be a bitch, hardest on nagrand arena. I try to kill the pet in this combo because if the shaman cant drink its usually a loss. In ruins of lordaeron, I play it like warrior druid: I hit the druid when hes in caster or travel form, and the lock when the druid goes bear. Stacking sunders before bloodlust is essential, but you need to wait for diminishing returns to be up on cyclone and roots, or to have your pvp trinket ready. The druid can really lock down the warrior here, and the best defense is a good offense: if you pressure the druid to heal someone, he isn't CCing and youre getting closer to a win
Hunter priest: THis setup, as most do from my perspective, comes down to the skill of your shaman, and is dictated by the adjustments he makes to the hunter and priest's strategy. If the hunter is using the AOE frost trap, you as the warrior need to hit whatever you can, because hitting something is better than futilely attacking the priest. If you have a choice of targets, you want the priest. Some say you need to kill the pet, but if the pet is the only thing on the shaman, he will not go oom with water shield. My shaman hides a bit of PvE gear as well which increases his mana longetivity. You will lose this game if the priest has free reign to mana burn. The best defense is a good offense- attack that priest so he has to focus on living and not locking down my shaman.
If the hunter uses single target icetraps, the game gets slightly trickier but easier to win when the coordination is down. Your shaman needs to eat the ice traps instead of the warrior. If this happens, the CC on the warrior is non-existant and you have a nice clothie to feast on. However, if the shaman misses and the warr gets trapped, he is exposed to mana burn, viper sting, and a host of other mana burning abilities. This combo will not burst you down, as long as your shaman's mana stays up, your team will whittle away at them and win.
Hunter druid: I have only played 3 games against this combo at the S3 2k bracket, but we won all of them. Our first game was our worst as we figured out what to do, and took around 20 minutes to win. This combo rests on the warrior's skill at using his cooldowns. The shaman will be kiting the hunter pet and the hunter for most of the match, while the warrior will be getting CCed by the druid and attempting to hit the hunter. The druid burns his mana with CC and about 5 minutes in, he will be low. Regardless of how low on mana he is, if you do it properly you can take a hunter down. My shaman bloodlusts early in the fight to put the druid's mana on the low side, but the win comes a few minutes later. Make sure death wish, dps trinket, and pvp trinket are up. Wait for the druid to cyclone or root you three times, putting it on diminishing returns. Once one of those is on DR, use your full rage bar and go to town on the hunter. Max rank WF totem should be down, pop your dps trinket and death wish. You want your shaman to eat the hunters ice trap, and you need to be really quick trinketing the CC the druid puts on you. An auto swing, MS and WW will take a dent out of the hunter's HP, so when the druid tries to CC you and you instantly break it, he will be healing a 40% hunter. You will kill this hunter because the druids HOTs won't keep him up. Your shaman can earth shock regrowth if he trinkets the ice trap as well, and at that point its gg. You cant beat that team (or lose) by haphazardly using your cooldowns. Set them up for big burst and use the Diminishing returns window to blow him up.
Rogue shadow priest:
Lock rogue:
You will play long games as warr/sham, so the warrior needs to be good at keeping pets and other players off his shaman for drinking. The shaman needs great knowledge of his totems, when to pump his warrs dps, when to break CC or catch casts, and when to regen mana. The game is all about effective use of totems. You should bloodlust when the warrior has 5 sunders up, preferably when CC DRs for the opponent are on cooldown.
Warrior shaman wins games by messing up the opponent, plain and simple. As a general rule, you should beat other healer x combos because you can do big burst when the enemy healer is low on mana and options. Double DPS can be challenging, if you win 50% of your games against double DPS thats about what you can hope for.
Matchups:
Warrior Druid: This is easily the most common team on my battlegroup, nights with 5 games against warr/dru and 5 against every other combo are common. Fortunately, warrior shaman can go toe to toe with warrior druid due to a couple factors: Most warr/dru teams suck and play an overpowered combo, which makes them easy to outplay, and a shaman can mess with a druids head due to grounding totem eating cyclone and shock interrupting the druids CC. If you eat a few CCs at the start, it may discourage the druid from attempting more later in the match.
My favorite way to beat warrior druid is to make the druid shapeshift, and then kill the warrior. You do this by switching targets. The fight opens warr vs warr, because they NEED to come to you. The enemy warr has to come into your totems to fight because if he doesnt', you get the eyes and spot his druid. So you have a dps advantage from the getgo but.. you don't want to give the warr a ton of rage to beat on your shaman. I stack sunder on the warr to increase my long term DPS, but not increase his. When the druid pops out, I switch to him and try to force him into bear form or travel form. While sham warr cant burn mana, forcing shapeshifts effectively does that. You want to hit the softest target at all times unless you smell a kill. That means hitting the druid when he isnt in bear form, and hitting the warr when the dru is in bear form. Force the druid to lose his mana through shifting and healing thru MS on multiple targets and you will win. The shaman can purge heals on the warrior as well, negating the druids usefullness considerably.
Warrior Priest: you will always win because you can hit cloth harder than he can hit your shaman, or you. Keep hamstring on the enemy warrior if its convenient, but just beat the heck out of the priest while your shaman stays up. Priest wont be manaburning with a warrior destroying him
warrior pally: This is a difficult combo because the enemy warrior will kill your shaman before you kill the paladin in a DPS race. If the warrior is hitting you, thats fine, you will win with windfury in the long run, but they usually go for the sham. You need to be hitting the pally because giving rage to the other warrior will make your shaman die that much faster. However, you need to stay in range of your shaman's totems, and the fight is a loss if you get seperated from your shaman. You beat a paladin by killing the paladin through intense lock down of his spells. shock---pummel---shock--warstomp/intercept/intimidating shout--shock---pummel is the kind of rotation you need to win. This is an insane amount of lockout and with bloodlusted windfury you will get the pally to bubble or die, if bubble is already down. I like bloodlusting after hes bubbled once, but a good pally wont let you get him down unless you blow your CDs. So stay close to your shaman, sneakily demo shout the enemy warrior, and perfect communicatin to interrupt the paladin and you will steal some wins.
Warlock-Priest: easy combo. DPS the heck out of the priest and you will win, assuming the warrior has great gear. Stack sunder at the start, purge pain suppression. Shaman needs to LOS the locks mana drain, the priest wont be mana burning with a warrior on him full time
warlock pally: another fairly easy combo. DPS the lock while keeping hamstring on the pet. You can win by just dpsing the lock or by killing the pet, but its easier when you kill the pet because it gives your shaman free reign to kite and drink. Quick purge on BOP will shorten the inevitable win, a lock pally team cant outdps a bloodlusted warrior shaman team if both teams have equal gear.
warlock druid: This combo can be a bitch, hardest on nagrand arena. I try to kill the pet in this combo because if the shaman cant drink its usually a loss. In ruins of lordaeron, I play it like warrior druid: I hit the druid when hes in caster or travel form, and the lock when the druid goes bear. Stacking sunders before bloodlust is essential, but you need to wait for diminishing returns to be up on cyclone and roots, or to have your pvp trinket ready. The druid can really lock down the warrior here, and the best defense is a good offense: if you pressure the druid to heal someone, he isn't CCing and youre getting closer to a win
Hunter priest: THis setup, as most do from my perspective, comes down to the skill of your shaman, and is dictated by the adjustments he makes to the hunter and priest's strategy. If the hunter is using the AOE frost trap, you as the warrior need to hit whatever you can, because hitting something is better than futilely attacking the priest. If you have a choice of targets, you want the priest. Some say you need to kill the pet, but if the pet is the only thing on the shaman, he will not go oom with water shield. My shaman hides a bit of PvE gear as well which increases his mana longetivity. You will lose this game if the priest has free reign to mana burn. The best defense is a good offense- attack that priest so he has to focus on living and not locking down my shaman.
If the hunter uses single target icetraps, the game gets slightly trickier but easier to win when the coordination is down. Your shaman needs to eat the ice traps instead of the warrior. If this happens, the CC on the warrior is non-existant and you have a nice clothie to feast on. However, if the shaman misses and the warr gets trapped, he is exposed to mana burn, viper sting, and a host of other mana burning abilities. This combo will not burst you down, as long as your shaman's mana stays up, your team will whittle away at them and win.
Hunter druid: I have only played 3 games against this combo at the S3 2k bracket, but we won all of them. Our first game was our worst as we figured out what to do, and took around 20 minutes to win. This combo rests on the warrior's skill at using his cooldowns. The shaman will be kiting the hunter pet and the hunter for most of the match, while the warrior will be getting CCed by the druid and attempting to hit the hunter. The druid burns his mana with CC and about 5 minutes in, he will be low. Regardless of how low on mana he is, if you do it properly you can take a hunter down. My shaman bloodlusts early in the fight to put the druid's mana on the low side, but the win comes a few minutes later. Make sure death wish, dps trinket, and pvp trinket are up. Wait for the druid to cyclone or root you three times, putting it on diminishing returns. Once one of those is on DR, use your full rage bar and go to town on the hunter. Max rank WF totem should be down, pop your dps trinket and death wish. You want your shaman to eat the hunters ice trap, and you need to be really quick trinketing the CC the druid puts on you. An auto swing, MS and WW will take a dent out of the hunter's HP, so when the druid tries to CC you and you instantly break it, he will be healing a 40% hunter. You will kill this hunter because the druids HOTs won't keep him up. Your shaman can earth shock regrowth if he trinkets the ice trap as well, and at that point its gg. You cant beat that team (or lose) by haphazardly using your cooldowns. Set them up for big burst and use the Diminishing returns window to blow him up.
Rogue shadow priest:
Lock rogue: