1. #1

    Leveling a shaman - requesting quick inputs

    I have leveled (at least to level 80) all the classes except shamans.
    I have never played them and I blame myself for listening to the "shamans-are-weakest" band wagoners from the wow official forums.
    Having said that, I am at a point in my WOW life where I would like to complete my wow experience by leveling the so-far missed class aka the shaman.

    I won't ask "how fun is that class ?" cos I know "fun" varies from person to person .
    I am addicted to healing so naturally I have decided to get caster-mail-heirlooms for ele/resto spec for leveling/dungeons.

    What I am interested are your inputs to these following questions

    a) How viable is ele leveling ?.
    When I say "viable" I mean does it take a long time to kill a quest mob ?.
    Is it super-fast like a hunter or warlock ,or as bad as prot pally on single target ?

    b) Do note my main spec will be resto only and I will use ele spec only for doing dailies.
    So can I use the same resto gear in ele spec for dailies ?.

    Thanks for your time

  2. #2
    a) Leveling an Ele in heirlooms is just as easy as any other class. Just chainpull away. Burst potential is quite high for Ele (at least at higher levels) so the mobs die pretty quickly.

    b) For questing/5mans you can absolutely use your healing gear to dps. For more ambitious gaming that doesn't work as well since as Resto, you would mainly focus on stacking spirit wich means wasting thousands of secondary stat points when switching to Ele. But for daylies, that really doesn't matter.

    Have fun levelling

  3. #3
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by sauron123 View Post
    I have leveled (at least to level 80) all the classes except shamans.
    I have never played them and I blame myself for listening to the "shamans-are-weakest" band wagoners from the wow official forums.
    Having said that, I am at a point in my WOW life where I would like to complete my wow experience by leveling the so-far missed class aka the shaman.

    I won't ask "how fun is that class ?" cos I know "fun" varies from person to person .
    I am addicted to healing so naturally I have decided to get caster-mail-heirlooms for ele/resto spec for leveling/dungeons.

    What I am interested are your inputs to these following questions

    a) How viable is ele leveling ?.
    When I say "viable" I mean does it take a long time to kill a quest mob ?.
    Is it super-fast like a hunter or warlock ,or as bad as prot pally on single target ?

    b) Do note my main spec will be resto only and I will use ele spec only for doing dailies.
    So can I use the same resto gear in ele spec for dailies ?.

    Thanks for your time
    Welcome to the most wonderful class in the game and, obviously, your new main.

    Elemental is perfectly viable for leveling. With heirlooms everything dies before you bat an eyelash at it anyway. The only rough stretch is 88-89 when monster HP soars and your Haste and Mastery take a nosedive. It's rectified quickly though as soon as you net a set of LFR gear and mobs will be dying in one LvB and an EB/LB follow-up. Of all my toons (and I have 6 at 90 now), my Elemental Shaman (although also being the best geared toon) grinds as smoothly as my Hunter. I can't pull a pack of 10+ mobs reliably, but where do you find 10+ gathered anyway. Pull 5, glyph Chain Lightning, pop Ancestral Guidance if you're unsure, and blast away.

    Resto and Ele gear largely overlap as you'll want the spirit gear to get hit capped. In the current tier there are not all that many mail caster items without spirit on them anyway. Even if you're playing in your Resto gear with Resto gems and a Resto reforge, you're still going to be doing dailies just fine.

  4. #4
    The Unstoppable Force Puupi's Avatar
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    a) ele kills stuff pretty fast while leveling. the differences between ele and other casters come in two things:
    1. aoe pulling. ele is bad at that, you cant easily run around and tag mobs (like shadowpriest/lock/mage/boomkin with dots). flame shock is on 6sec cd and requires you to face the mob (so you can't dot them when they are running behind you).
    2. proximity. the thing is, when you pull a mob with flame shock (yes, that's what you cast first, always) he runs at you at full speed. he will reach you, he will hit you. you got high armor and good single target heals so it's no problem, just different from other casters - say a frost mage, the mobs can barely move when you attack them and IF they reach you, you can just frost nova and blink away.

    b) you can share the same gear with ele and resto. there are just two slight problems with that.
    1. you will most likely have too much spirit (at lvl 90 in raid gear), meaning you have way way way too much hit. if you have, say 12k spirit in resto gear, that will mean you have around 25-30% hit as ele.
    2. beyond the spirit problem lies another issue with the itemization. stat priorities. haste and mastery are the best stats for ele, crit being the worthless. as resto, you will have tons of spirit, then crit, some mastery, and close to no haste. this means your secondary stats are way off for ele.

    still, doing daily quests in that gear is super easy.

    PS: my shift-button is being a bit clunky, so no capitals
    Last edited by Puupi; 2013-02-13 at 03:50 PM.
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  5. #5
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by sauron123 View Post
    a) How viable is ele leveling ?.
    When I say "viable" I mean does it take a long time to kill a quest mob ?.
    Is it super-fast like a hunter or warlock ,or as bad as prot pally on single target ?
    It's viable and pretty fast. There's a lot of burst potential for single-target damage in the spec, but it's not as good as some others for AoE chain-pulls; mages and warlocks tend to AoE chain-pull because their either have mobility while AoEing to avoid getting hit, or the self-healing to get through it, Elemental only really has that if you pop your Ancestral Guidance talent, but there aren't really any cases where you need to resort to that and thus are going to struggle as Elemental. If you're planning on questing or doing dungeons, Elemental is just fine. Highly mobile when doing single target, and basically infinite mana once you hit level 20 and get Rolling Thunder.

    b) Do note my main spec will be resto only and I will use ele spec only for doing dailies.
    So can I use the same resto gear in ele spec for dailies ?.
    For the most part, yes. The big difference in gear priority is the same as any hybrid caster; for DPS you want a certain amount of Spirit for hit rating, and as a healer you want a certain amount (usually more) for regen. That's something that's really only going to pop up at level cap, though, and it's usually not too hard to grab a few different pieces to optimize each set. It can be as simple as swapping out a regen trinket for a DPS trinket.


  6. #6
    Mechagnome
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    i leveled my shaman as enhance because i really dislike ranged questing, but it felt extremely fragile from 89-90 (maybe form 88 as well) i needed to be using shamanistic rage or stone bulwark totem on almost every pull. but the worst thing about shaman questing is the lack of aoe capabilities. im used to questing as a warlock with demo tank glyph which is aoe godmode, i can easily pull 10 mobs at a time, 15 with a cooldown or health stone and i feel like i have been spoilt

    but since i am MS resto as well, i do dailies as ele now simply because there is a 20 ilvl disparity between my INT gear and my AGI gear. with chain lightning you can kill 3 mobs at a time easy enough, but more than that youll struggle i think.

  7. #7
    Bloodsail Admiral zenga's Avatar
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    The past posts and the next bunch of incoming posts in a nutshell: ele is perfectly viable to level and resto gear is perfectly viable to do dailies as ele.

  8. #8
    Ele is great up till level 88ish.

    Then the Dread Wastes mobs become a nightmare. Most classes will face this sudden spike in mob dmg and health, but for some reason the elemental shammy was *especially* fragile. It didn't help that some quests sent you to the middle of the bugs where there are SO MANY everywhere. You can't kite, can't cc more than 1 (hex). I died a fair bit in that area.

  9. #9
    The Unstoppable Force Puupi's Avatar
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    I didn't have any problems with surviving when I leveled in Dread Wastes. I think my damage was just pathetic the final two levels. But damage taken wasn't that high. The problem I had was that mobs were around 400k health, lava burst critted like 60k or something, then I needed to cast like 8x 2.2 sec Lightning Bolts to finish that mob off, and all that time he was standing at my feet whacking me and adding pushback. I don't remember dieing much though.
    Quote Originally Posted by derpkitteh View Post
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  10. #10
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    I really didn't have any challenges in Dread Wastes as Elemental that I didn't have on my monk or druid. If anything, my Shaman was a little easier than either.


  11. #11
    Your talent choice will also have an impact on your leveling and will make it much easier, the talents I would recommend for leveling would be:

    Astral Shift
    Earthgrab Totem
    Totemic Projection
    Ancestral Swiftness (mainly for the passive haste once you get to higher lvls and your haste starts dropping)
    Ancestral Guidance
    Primal Elementalist ( Mainly because having a Primal Earth Elemental tank as a last resort if you do get in a tight spot is a great option)

    enjoy lvling !

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Devious009 View Post
    Your talent choice will also have an impact on your leveling and will make it much easier, the talents I would recommend for leveling would be:

    Astral Shift
    Earthgrab Totem
    Totemic Projection
    Ancestral Swiftness (mainly for the passive haste once you get to higher lvls and your haste starts dropping)
    Ancestral Guidance
    Primal Elementalist ( Mainly because having a Primal Earth Elemental tank as a last resort if you do get in a tight spot is a great option)

    enjoy lvling !
    I would recommend Stone Bulwark over AS since it's half the cd and more than suffcient damage absorbtion for questing. Bulwark + Healing Stream makes a potentially rough multi-mob pull smooth sailing.

    I didn't try it, but I have read that Conductivity is exceptional for questing/leveling since you can pull several mobs together, CL them down while standing in your Healing Rain and pretty much end the fight with full health and near full mana.

    Also, Primal Elementalist is a 90 talent, so it has no impact until next time the level cap increases.

    Also adding to the "you can use resto gear in ele spec for questing at 90" count. Just get some dedicated dps trinkets and you'll be fine.

  13. #13
    Deleted
    Enha sham much better then ele on low level for my option.

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