Warrior vs. Shaman

[Artega]

So, in preparation for the expansion, I've leveled both a Shaman and Warrior to 49 (both Tauren), and will be keeping them there for some time (seeing as how I run with other twinks and other friends), wanting to avoid the current Lv.60 PvP orgy and the Outland mobbing that's inevitably going to take place as the PvE guilds on our server rush to reach Level 70 and begin the PvE grind all over again (whee?)

Because of this, I've had time to observe the major differences in playstyles, and think about where each class could use some help, and where they might be too strong. Obviously, Blizzard balances for the endgame, but since neither class has any game-changing abilities at 41 points (Earth Shield comes closest, but it's not a significant gamestyle change from what I've heard), I think it's possible to make valid points about class strengths and weaknesses at this point.

Some background: I've played Warriors since the first open beta (and a few combined hours in the closed beta through a friend's account) and am thus naturally better at the class, and definitely biased in their favor; I love the Rage system, despise the Mana system, and prefer beating someone's face in with a hammer to frying them with a spell, turning them into a pincushion with a bow, or shoving a dagger in between their sixth and seventh vertebrae. That aside, I'm trying to stay objective here:)



My Shaman is Level 49 and has very good gear; she wears an epic (Stonerender Gauntlets with +40 Armor), an epic-quality BOE rare (Braincage with +8 Stamina), and has the best possible BOP rares from various instances, including BRD (which, with the three friends I've been leveling with, we did legitly:))

Being part of a nonofficial team (that is, we don't always run together), she's often with at least one other person with equal or better gear (there are several full twinks), so my experience with her in 1v1 combat is relatively limited.

She's almost full Restoration, 33 points, with the other 7 into Enhancement for utility abilities. Major talents include Improved Healing Wave, Nature's Swiftness, full Purification and Healing Way, full Focused Mind, Totemic Mastery, and Improved Ghost Wolf, with Shield Specialization being the pre-requisite. I've found that this build gives her exceptional healing ability (I often pre-stack Healing Way with rank1 Healing Wave on our major tank before we run into combat, since I can quite easily heal through Mortal Strike with a full Healing Way buff active), as well as solid melee abilities (through spellpower-enhanced Flametongue Weapon) and a high degree of mobility with Improved Ghost Wolf. She can also nuke efficiently due primarily to her gear, which affords her a modest amount of spellpower and a significant mana pool.

By far, her primary strength is her versatility. I can use a wide variety of totems to buff and protect party members (Tremor, Grounding, and Poison Cleansing are bound to the same three keys I use for my Warrior's stances), which makes her effective in both melee and caster groups. Because of Purification and healpower on her gear, she heals efficiently and powerfully, and can dispel potentially devastating debuffs like Crippling and Mind-Numbing Poison. Resistance totems help protect from Mages, and Windfury Totem provides a significant buff to our Warriors, though even the 30 yard range is often insufficient, and I find myself recasting it frequently (especially since I drop a grounding totem every time the cooldown is up to help prevent a sheep from landing.) With a 40 yard range, Tremor Totem is extremely effective at negating Seduce and Fear effects, though I wish I could have it pulse a couple seconds more often. She's not relagated to solely healing, however; I often throw rank1 shocks as needed (Frost Shock to slow the melee class trying to chew up a clothie, a flame shock to prevent a rogue from using vanish as a means of escape, an earth shock to interrupt the sheep or seduce), and Purge almost compulsively.

However, she has some significant weaknesses; like my Warriors, she's victim to stuns, slows, and roots, and given her primary role as healer, is even more vulnerable to sheep effects (whereas it's not necessarily a bad thing for my warrior to be sheeped, meaning that a healer or nuker is not sheeped, it's bad for my shaman to be sheeped), and makes me wish my trinket could counter such effects. Unlike my Warrior, she does not have a massive HP pool or armor reduction to rely on (though, with 3060 HP and the ability to heal through most damage, she doesn't die too easily), and isn't as capable in melee combat; while Flametongue can add up fairly quickly, anything except for standard autoattack eats precious mana that could be much better used healing teammates or dispelling enemies. Additionally, she has no form of CC besides War Stomp (which is, of course, a racial ability and not a class ability), which is definitely noticeable when being focused by an opposing organized team; our priests can use their AOE fear (which is trinketable, but it DOES make those rogues blow their 5-minute cooldown, whereas nothing I can do does), our mages can use frost nova and root to buy them a little more time, and our warlocks can seduce, AE fear, or Death Coil people away from them. I, on the other hand, have to healtank them until my teammates can kill them, which eats precious mana.

I think the class is altogether balanced at this point, but I wish I had some non-class-specific way of escaping forms of CC (my warrior, being an engineer, supplies our other engineers with minor and major recombobulators, which helps), specifically the PvP trinket being changed to remove fear, polymorph, and stun effects.



My Warrior is also Level 49, and has even better gear, though I've skipped the highest-end enchants to save money for more important things. He uses a Thrash Blade (with a weapon chain, natch) and an epic shield (Wall of the Dead), and has several high-end BOE rares, including Wyrmslayer Spaulders, Hydralick Armor, and Plated Fist of Hakoo. Like my Shaman, he has the epic Warsong gauntlets (my Shaman has the cloth version since I value spellpower more than AP on her, of course), and pieces from AB and overall PvP.

He's Protection, 0/5/35, with highlights including Concussion Blow, Improved Shield Bash, One-Handed Weapon Specialization, Shield Slam, Focused Rage, and Improved Sunder Armor. Chain Thrash procs notwithstanding (and it's plain sick when it procs itself; things just die when that happens), he relies on Shield Slam for the majority of his damage, and thus focuses on Strength over Agility when applicable. With Sunder costing a mere 9 Rage, everything I fight has a minimum of two Sunders (cloth gets two, leather gets three, mail gets three, and plate gets a full five) since it maximizes both my damage and the damage of my teammates (he runs with the same people, natch.) While I find it endlessly amusing, he does not have Improved Revenge, since I can't really find a way of fitting it into my build without sacrificing more useful talents elsewhere.

Being Protection, his strengths are fairly obvious: with even only one healer he is effectively immune to death. With 4126 HP and 57.16% reduction (and a Block value of 43), he's more or less impervious to physical damage (Hunters, which my Shaman loathes, are nothing to my Warrior), and with his array of stuns and interrupts, he's lethal to spellcasters as well. With healer support, there's nothing he can't do, and the only thing I could want would be the Mortal Strike debuff:)

However, without healer support, he's extremely limited. While he still takes a very long time to kill, he's incredibly reliant on consumables for survival, and is extremely vulnerable to roots, snares, and other forms of CC. While I can break fear with Berserker Rage, it's on a 30 second cooldown, and isn't much use if I get caught unaware, since I'm often found turtling in Defensive Stance with several classes busily trying to beat me into a scrapheap. I'm actually pleased when I eat a Seduce or Sheep, since it means I was apparently enough of a threat to warrant getting it over a priest or other healer. It's a drastic playstyle shift from my shaman, since I often spend my time trying to avoid attention with her.

Being an engineer, I'm often able to make up for my lacks with the various trinkets and consumables it provides me with, but without an effective trinket-management tool like TrinketMenu, it'd be overwhelming. Between my Netomatic, Shrink Ray, Mithril Dragonling, Dragon Gun, and Mortar, I have a lot of trinkets to cycle through, not to mention passive trinkets like the Rune of Duty, Rune of the Guard Captain, and the ubiquitous Insignia. On top of this, both forms of Recombobulators are trinkets, as well as the Flame Reflector, Ice Reflector, and Shadow Reflector (I do not have any of the three, but I believe the Flame and Ice versions are available for use as early as level 47.) Moreover, I go through healing, free action, and swiftness potions like candy, and while I can farm the materials for the potions quite easily (with my shaman being an accomplish weeder, fisherman, and chef, along with the fact that healing potions can be bought from the accessories quartermaster for a mere 9s+1h each), it becomes tedious after a time, and it also cuts into my profits, since the materials used for these potions sell quite well due to their usefulness.

Overall, it seems the Shaman is better for a sort of solo play; while healing others is hardly a solo style of play, she doesn't become exponentially more powerful with the improvement of her team, unlike my warrior. While my shaman's healing and damage capabilities only slightly improve with someone crosshealing her and supporting her, my warrior becomes a veritable freight train with a team supporting him.

You can find profiles for both characters over at CTProfiles; my warrior's can be found here, while my shaman's can be found here. Note that the weaponskills for both characters are at maximum in the profiles, but they're likely a few below maximum in-game. Likewise, professions for both are not 300, but are high enough for the bracket that it doesn't matter:)

[deets]

Artega, interesting post. I've lurked here for years and thought I'd chime in. My shaman was a hardcore twink for some time in 49 cap. I eventually levelled him out with some friends when we killed the 49 cap bg's on our server after a couple of months (this was before cross-realm bg's). However, prior to that Cho'Gall had a pretty active 49 bracket with many twinks on both sides. The 49 cap comparison is interesting, but I think you'd benefit by exploring the other talent trees. I had a 50g respec fee by the time I left 49 cap as in each bracket I played around with builds pretty extensively. Cap shaman are naturally one dimensional but you have the advantage of having many viable builds. However, I'd argue that deeper than 21 in resto is not one of them unless you went to 24 with the anti silence/interrupt talent. Until you have access to earth shield I would strongly recommend trying non-resto based builds for a change of pace unless you truly want to focus on healing. Even then, going that deep is debatable. Healing way strikes me as situational, what is the honest ratio of lhw to hw when the heals you cast really matter in keeping the fc up? Purification isn't bad, but also it provides just a marginal benefit. Nevertheless the choice in talents comes down to playstyle.

From my own experience in all the lower caps as well as at 60, an offensive shaman out disrupting casters is more effective than a healer in terms of ultimate success. It can work either way, but the shaman at 49 has a greater ability to completely disrupt healers and caster dps than any other class. In any bracket being a dedicated healer as a shaman is going to be frustrating and not terribly effective in organized pvp. You don't have any ability to buy yourself space and time. Priests have fear, pallies have bubble, druids have shift/travel/root etc. Furthermore our trinket doesn't dispell crowd control. This doesn't mean don't heal, it just means that we're not well suited to a dedicated healing role in my opinion. Sure I'll help keep people alive and flash out the flag carrier, but I'm not going to be sitting in the back feeding ashkandi's healing. I let the priests do that. Anyway, this is just a suggestion to try something else. Here's some tips to get a more balanced feel for other dimensions of shaman prior to 60 where the game completely changes.

The first step: get a glowing brightwood staff and put 22 int on it. You now have one of the highest if not highest dps weapon available in 49 cap with killer stats. This will work for whatever build you use and they are quite cheap these days.

A fun build to try initially for a change of pace would be something like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=uE0zEf0oVoZx0b 33 elemental 7 enhance for imp gw

With elemental mastery and all of the good elemental talents you have wicked magic dps, with the brightwood you add on top of it very strong melee dps. Put windfury on there and you can drop cloth quickly. Use ghost wolf for flag running and for kiting. Have a shield and a decent hard hitting 1h on item rack to switch to for rogues and warriors. I assure you this build is beastly in 49 cap with a decent hp/mana pool. I think I remember running around with something like 3400 life and 4000ish mana. You can kill anything quickly and put down pesky druid flag carriers with ease. I'm quite certain that no other class in 49 cap is capable of the burst dps of this build with the brightwood. Add in warstomp and fast ghost wolf and it is plainly unfair. While you don't have the anti-interrupt talent in lhw, it is still fast and you should have the mana pool to flash heal whoever you like for quite some time. Using this build may seem frustrating at first as you don't have a nature's swiftness in your back pocket as an emergency button and you will have a hard time healing through focus fire. However in this bracket it's easily possible to have enough stamina to survive a rogue's initial barrage, heal and begin to kite just because damage hasn't scaled like it does in the 60 bracket. My problem with this build was that my character became known on my server and the focus firing became so bad that often it seemed the alliance wsg objective was not to cap but to keep him in the graveyard. That leads to my next suggestion:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GZxVf0cZxf0t0Lo 0/18/21
Here you're focusing on your survivability, ability to heal and withstand focus fire as well as deal out quite a bit of dps from enhance either with a 2h or with a 1h and shield. With the big mana pool you can still shock to your heart's content. Swap out your caster wsg rings for the melee ones, keep focusing on the eagle, and look for a few items that give crit and AP. You will mow through enemies with ease, though not kill quite as quickly. However, you will have quite good survivability and damage combined.

I wouldn't recommend any of the stormstrike builds I tried until they fix the bug where it cannot proc wf. I believe it's fixed on the latest test build but it hasn't made it live yet.

Anyway, just some opinions here from someone that has done the twink pvp game as a shaman extensively. I think you're missing out on a lot of the class by focusing on healing so early.

[Artega]

I'd disagree that the Shammy is the best interrupter at this stage; I think that belongs to a Protection Warrior. A Protection Warrior can utterly shut down a Paladin for a nearly indefinite timeframe, has the HP to absorb an unholy amount of damage (since the game isn't quite as absurd as it is at 60), and between stuns, snares, and a powerful spell interrupt/silence effect, I can usually make any caster start crying when I show up:)

I'll probably give the Elemental build you mentioned a shot, though I think I'll take a point out of Reverb and toss it into Storm Reach.

Not like my team really needs another healer when we already have a full Holy Priest:)

(Note: Lightwell combined with Defiler's Talisman is pretty damn sexy.)

[Watto44]

Nice write-up Artega. I have little to add, other than the fact that in one-on-one, shamans are little gods in this bracket. The only things that can really come close to beating you 1v1 are very well twinked rogues who blow a bunch of cooldowns (ie., all of them) or a very well geared shadowpriest. (Note: I haven't played my shaman since 2.0, so things may have changed. Also, my shaman was an engineering junky which trivialised hunters.)

I do agree with deets about specs though. I'm not convinced that restoration is the best spec for a 49 shaman, even if you are healing focused. A slightly more offensive focused spec can help significantly when the assist train hits you. My theory was always that I was doing to drop, so I might as well take a clothy or two down with me. If I managed to kite/survive the train, great! Pop a mana pot, throw some heals around. If not, at least I burnt a healer's mana/cooldowns and maybe knocked them out of the fight. That approach probably has a lot to do with my mentality, but I certainly got a lot of miles out of it.:)

To throw another spec into the mix, here's the one I used: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hAbzLzZxVrzV0s Not particularly flash, but it suited me just fine.:)I can't remember much of my gear, but I had 3k HP, 3k mana, a decent two-hander, average attack power, but almost no +damage/healing. From a healing perspective, I almost always had to sink a mana pot to heal through longer group encounters, although I was usually okay for anything under three-on-three.

[Artega]

I've been using Deet's Elemental spec (I dropped Fire Nova for Storm Reach, though) and I've been having a lot of fun with it. Haven't had time to farm up a Glowing Brightwood Staff with +22 INT, though, so I've been using Charstone Dirk with Gizlock's Buckler.

Had a blast scaling the wall on the Horde base in Warsong Gulch last night. Apparently, due to poor terrain design, you can scale the wall on the outdoor stretch and bombard people from up there. Spellcasters and Hunters with reach talents can hit back, but melee classes can't do jack. It's an exploit, so I don't do it often, but the bastards were turtling anyway, so I felt it was okay that time. It was worth it to watch the rogues and paladins just kinda standing there, crying.

It should also be noted that it's possible to hop over the tunnel gate on the Horde side and reach the Alliance base before the gates go down. I reported this one (and the previous one) to a GM, so hopefully they'll be hotfixed soon. I'll miss my wall bombardment, but oh well:)