Coming off of a mage, I got a few questions about ele shamans and their utility stuff

[Keyblader]

So I am still trying to figure out if I want to play my mage or shaman next expac, and coming off a pure "dps class" I've never had to worry about much raid utility outside of timewarp and counterspell.

I have been checking out several kill videos of ele shamans to check out UI's and I noticed that many of them only have a couple spells on their bars. Usually limited to Flame/earth shock, fire elemental, lava burst, lightning bolt, chain lightning, elemental blast, searing/magma totem, ascension, ancestral guidance and maybe earth quake and tremor totem.

But Shamans have TONS of other things like all their heals, and healing totems etc.

I'm looking for feedback on what I can expect coming off a purely dps class to a hybrid class. How often are these utility spells mandatory, or just backup plans. When playing elemental, or even enhance, are you expected to throw out heals besides ancestral guidance during tense fights, such as maybe healing rain or chain heal?

It just comes off a little overwhelming how much utility the class has opposed to a mage where all I have to worry about is damaging, popping time warp and occasionally throwing out a counterspell. I think I'd always feel a little guilty playing a shaman and someone dies and I never bothered to heal haha.

Any kind of insight to this topic would be awesome and put my mind at ease.

[Roamingstorm]

Well, after reading what you posted here's what I'll say.

Elemental rotation is pretty straight forward, it's not that difficult to get into. Also a perk when ever you need to AoE and watch Chainlightning go crazy. Now with that being said while we don't have a HUGE rotation, there are other abilities such as you said with totems.

As for off healing, it's hit or miss. Obviously in a raid when you're doing the role of DPS your raid is going to want you to DPS, now this isn't to say if you see someone, or yourself about to bite it to just let it happen. Rarely have I ever had to off heal unless a healer bit it and the boss is close to dying and I'll focus on keeping a tank up. Now for totems healing, it's incredibly underwhelming especially when WoD hits and both Enh/Ele will lose Healing Tide. Now there are some perks in some fights, in my opinion, of using Rushing Streams + Glyph of Healing Stream which pretty much gives 10% damage reduction to fire/frost/nature. (Obviously some fights in raids this is useful.) To sum things up people won't expect you to off heal unless someone probably calls out for it.

I would like to add in PvP it's a bit different. While I may not be hardcore into it like I used to be, it is very rewarding to protect a flag carrier or save them on the brink of death by pumping out heals on them and saving the day. I honestly find in PvP I off heal more to keep people alive.

TL;DR version people won't expect you to off heal, but be prepared for people to question if you have a Restoration off spec.

[Nebria]

during raids you could find the need to use hst, htt and ag.
hs I use rarely, often just to give myself a heal when I need one and got none from the healers. (malkorok low shield, health stone cd)
hr I drop never really. but could be useful in some stacking moments and if you use conductivity which you shouldn't^^).
ch has no need really.

the only fight where my heal besides from ag and htt is needed is immerseus.
but without clearcasting buff by crit of offensive spells our heal is really low and costs a lot of mana.

but roamingstorm summed it up, you are there for dealing damage.
usually htt and ag are enough you need as offheal.

by the way it also depends if you raid 25 or 10 man.
in 10 man it is possible that your heal is much more needed in some situations.
anyway you should ask your healers when you should use htt and ag so that they can add it to their cd planning.

[Deleted]

The utility you provide as elemental is usually quite situational. Realistically, you aren't going to need Chain Heal or Healing Rain anywhere, but it's always worth binding Healing Surge to something in case you need to quickly heal yourself and don't have a healthstone available (i.e. out of range of healers when kiting Thok).

The raid utilities you will definitely want to bind are Ancestral Guidance, Healing Tide Totem and Stormlash Totem.

Situationally, Tremor Totem, Capacitor Totem, Earthgrab/bind Totem and Windwalk Totem have their uses in Siege of Orgrimmar, but generally not all at the same time. For this reason I tend to use the same few keybinds for some of these but switch the totems around as I need them. For instance, Windwalk Totem is great for Spoils (For Brewmaster Spirit's Keg Smash), but on Garrosh I change that bind to Tremor (For I2's Crushing Fear). It's definitely worth slowly acclimatising yourself to all of these, and if you're comfortable with the amount of keybinds they'll take up then bind them all separately so you can guarantee you know you're able to use them together if they're required in future instances.

Personal utilities you'll want to bind include Stone Bulwark/Astral Shift, Call of the Elements/Totemic Projection, Shamanistic Rage and Spiritwalker's Grace (although for a newer player, I'd recommend macroing this one into Ascendance but saving a keybind for it, and then separating the two once you're comfortable using it separately)

And of course the things you'd be used to, such as Hex (Polymorph), Heroism/Bloodlust (Time Warp) and Wind Shear (Counterspell). Oh, and Thunderstorm too.

Accept my apologies if any of this is patronising, I'm really not sure how comfortable you are or how much you know about shaman, but that pretty much covers all of the utilities you'll be using. Anything missing would just be regular rotation or cooldowns, and the rotation is definitely very simple to get to grips with

[Keyblader]

These are pretty much the exact answers I was looking for, it makes a lot more sense now to me I think.

[Deleted]

To be honest, I think you missed to mention a lot of mages' raid utility in your first post.

At least in our guild, I am mainly the "off heal bitch" and offer a stun, slow/root and ranged kick.

Our Mages however also have important raid utilities! Slows and a "root" with ring of frost (mines on siegecrafter), also an even better single target stun, even better ranged kick, greater invis / block for dealing with special mechanics (mines on jugg, this aim ability on Klaxxi), Double-Blink for kiting Thok.

And on top, their potential damage is higher than that of shamans.

Could be different in other guilds, but mages bring and have to use a lot of their class utilities.

Biggest problem in our guild though: Their damage could be higher.

[Teriz]

Actually, Mages bring quite a bit of utility themselves. They're also usually in the top echelon of DPS in nearly every expansion.

Off the top of my head, Mages bring Time Warp (equivalent to Blood Lust), Refreshments, Portals, and Arcane Brilliance. In WoD they're getting another raid CD (I have no idea why) called Amplify Magic;

Amplify Magic:
Amplify the effects of helpful magic, increasing all healing received by 12% for all party and raid members within 100 yards. Lasts 6 sec.

I could see Amplify Magic being a very sought after raid buff. Again, I have no idea why they thought Mages need another raid CD.

[Deleted]

Actually, Mages bring quite a bit of utility themselves. They're also usually in the top echelon of DPS in nearly every expansion.

Off the top of my head, Mages bring Time Warp (equivalent to Blood Lust), Refreshments, Portals, and Arcane Brilliance. In WoD they're getting another raid CD (I have no idea why) called Amplify Magic;



I could see Amplify Magic being a very sought after raid buff. Again, I have no idea why they thought Mages need another raid CD.

I am shocked that you don't know why Teriz u displayed multiple times that you are very resourceful guy > let me help you out since i probably won't get this chance again:
Various classes bring various abilities that provide utility to parties and raids. We talked about one type of utility in the Buffs and Debuffs section, above. However, there are other types of raid utility, and it’s been in need of more attention. In general, raid utility, especially raid-wide defensive cooldowns, had grown too strong. So many classes and specializations had defensive cooldowns that we had to make raid damage extremely high, as raids would be stacking or chaining together multiple cooldowns. We'd like to return to a system where it's the healers who heal through the scary moments, not the damage dealers, for example.

To do so, we’ve established a new baseline level of raid utility that a specialization should bring, and brought everyone to that new standard by reducing the effects of some abilities, or removing some abilities altogether.

That is statement from blizz it was on mm champ a few weeks back.

[Deleted]

@Frika

And how is this blue post explaining why mages need "Amplify magic"???

In contrast, the blue post is entirely contravening the idea of giving mages this new raid cooldown.

As it is stated in the blue post, there are too many raidwide defensive cooldowns. For that reason, both shaman dps specs lost healing tide totem.

Then, why give mages a new raidwide defensive cooldown on top of timewarp and most probably (as always) superior dmg over elementals.

Well, I have no intention to direct this topic in the wrong direction and discuss mage changes in WoD, but Teriz point seems completely legit.