i literally just get ridden until death. astral shift does nothing, rogues/dks/warriors feel unkiteable, and i play with healers who dont press buttons and do 300k healing per round.
how am i supposed to actually live long enough to kill anything
You have to rely on your healer. Make sure they know you’re going to be focused, run at least 30% vers, when you get trained really hard go to GW for 20% reduction, astral shift and drop healing stream totem. I use the GW pvp talent to give my healer some relief while I’m running around.
You can use your totem while in GW with affinity, sometimes give you the distance you need. Peel for healer any chance you get. I switched to Kultiran for the little heal we get for taking damage and the extra knock back and stun with haymaker.
Anything else just gotta be pumping damage and trust your healer, if they aren’t healing you won’t win no matter the spec.
I prefer to stay out of ghost wolf for the most part so i can be actively contributing and building MSW stacks.
There’s alot of tools you can use to survive if you employ your full kit.
Static field totem + totemic projection can be used to move people away from you or towards you depending on whether you want to kite or close.
MSW stacks can be saved and used for heals unless you are close to killing somone and if you run healing talents that buff your heals and make sure to prep the heals with the modifiers, you can heal pretty well at least at the start of the match before dampening ramps.
If you run the resto part of the tree, then earth shield, healing stream, swirling currents, and ancestral guidance provide alot of extra healing power.
Ancestral guidance can be combined with your burst damage to give alot of healing and it also buffs your heals.
If you run thunderstorm, you can knock enemies off you while you are stunned which can disrupt them enough to survive stuns alot of the time.
Lightning lasso can be used defensively to disrupt an opponent during their burst or while they are immune to your melee attacks like during die by the sword, evasion, FoF, etc. Lightning lasso can be a great peeling tool for your teammates too.
Earthgrab and earthbind can also be used for either kiting or closing.
And cap totem can be used defensively as well as offensively.
Feral lunge is another tool that can be used to kite for example by leaping to the healer when the melee are pounding on you.
Then there’s grounding which, if used effectively, can help your healer avoid CC which will help keep you alive so long as you don’t line your healer. Or can be used to disrupt really lethal windows of caster opponents.
That’s a few things that you can do anyway.
Bottom line is, the kit has alot of tools that can keep you and your team alive if you remember to use them all and learn to use them at the right times.