OMG what have i done....

[Mikki]

So. Time to reroll again. [4th alt. Bored with Heroics already on my other chars]

I gather the badges needed for the Caster (I always prefer caster/Healer in PvE] Hierlooms and off i set. Once i hit level 10 i do some homework and find out that Enhancement!! is far quicker in leveling. GUTTED. 80 badges down the drain and I cant be arse to run the heroics to get more badges.

SOOOO. It it THAT much quicker that Ele for leveling? Will I be gimped majorly by using these two hierlooms and Melee gear in all otehr slots and going Enhance?

AND - I have the shoulder Heirlooms on my DK from hwne i leveled him (mail/plate) will they be useable on my Shaman?

All input greatly accepted.

Mikki

[autodidact31]

My mate is leveling his shaman as elemental, at level 60 we were pulling packs of over 10 mobs (granted im a rogue, so he was basically doing all the work) and he would finish up on full health and mana
earthbind, thunderstorm, chain lightning, GG

[Deleted]

Melee is imho always faster than caster at the beginning, the gap will close between 40-70.
U won't be that gimped with 2 casteritems, just not the non+ultra.

I am interested in your source for 'Enh is much faster to lvl with'-thingy
I wouldn't bother to play enh. given you want to play ele or heal at 80.

[aztek]

I am leveling a shaman right now, he is enhancement with full heirloom set (2*1h mace, shoulder, chest and trinkets). And yes, he rapes stuff. Don't even need to shield twist anymore since I got 2/2 Imp SS + Shamanistic Rage, I literally just never stop. Twoshotting anything in 2-3 sec from WF procs. Casters are gimped due to mana problems and lower damage output (given you get less spelldamage in Vanila gear, once you go outland as it was said this gap closes).

And, to be honest, you are not really gimping your damage that badly. Intellect gives AP, also the SP buffs Earth Shock and Lightning shield, so ye, just go enhancement you will be fine.

[Mikki]

I am leveling a shaman right now, he is enhancement with full heirloom set (2*1h mace, shoulder, chest and trinkets). And yes, he rapes stuff. Don't even need to shield twist anymore since I got 2/2 Imp SS + Shamanistic Rage, I literally just never stop. Twoshotting anything in 2-3 sec from WF procs. Casters are gimped due to mana problems and lower damage output (given you get less spelldamage in Vanila gear, once you go outland as it was said this gap closes).

And, to be honest, you are not really gimping your damage that badly. Intellect gives AP, also the SP buffs Earth Shock and Lightning shield, so ye, just go enhancement you will be fine.

Nice 1, Sounds good to me.

[Dareos]

I must say that you choose an awesome title for your post. It defines your exact problem in very few, but catchy words

Good luck with your shaman!

[BicycleMafioso]

Elemental is way faster than enhancement, if you factor in how long time you need to keep slow weapons and alternate gear.


Regardless, elemental will ALWAYS be faster the first 40levels. And you'd have to get enhancementgear at the same time.

Then, enhance is faster to lv60~.

After, it's equal again.

If the elemental has heirloom-items, I GAIN more mana by killing mobs (who die in 2-3 LBs at most, and I get more than one LB worth of mana back from trinkets, not to mention Watershield if they reach me)

[Muezick]

In the past most of whats said is true.

the major exception here is, they added slow weapons to the heirloom list.

so hance might actually be faster now. with those weapons.

I strongly doubt it, but it's worth it to check, when I leveled my shaman I did so as elemental for the first 60-ish levels

then went from 60-75 as hance, basically spamming ghostwolves on every cooldown, I still did less overall dps as hance than ele while leveling, but there are more group quests worth doing in outland then azeroth and ghost wolves is a very very OP cooldown. Healing, movement speed, and extra damage? plus they tank things and seem damn near impervious to damage.

then at 75 you get lava burst and elemental once again becomes way way to good to ignore in favor of hance, so i swapped back.

[Chmur]

I leveled my shammy as elemental since beginning, tired from ret pally and warrior leveling, I just had to go as caster. It is sometimes slower, sometimes faster than enhancement. Dunno how with all the heirloom gear, guess all the mp5 and trinket speeds things up, as well as proper enchants, so yeah.

The difference is marginal and really, few levels is enh ahead, few levels is elemental, but no big deal. It's not like there is something like 24 game hours difference or something. As well, if you go elemental and dualspec to resto (target spec was resto/elemental on 80) at lvl 40, you have no problems getting into TBC and WotLK instances and you don't have to maintain 2 sets of gear while leveling. If you choose hybrid resto-ele spec as your offspec, you are pretty much capable of soloing ANYTHING.

Personaly, I loved elemental leveling and enjoyed every minute of it. Just remember to carry enough drinks all the time and drink often, not when you reach 0 mana. The time spent drinking is the same, but it definitely feels passing more quickly

[monkeysnarf]

If you've got the 2 caster mail heirloom pieces, it's not that big of a deal. You can just use those 2 and the rest enhance gear and level up just fine. The plate item will not work for you at all.

I've leveled up a shaman, feral druid and DK to 80 so far and am working on a 51 rogue and 69 mage. By far it's easier to level as melee. It's just easier to pick who and where you fight.

[john879]

I have to say I have lvl'd two shamans horde/alliance and I tried it both ways, and honestly I would have to say(like previously posted) enhan is the way to go from 40 on. You can do enchan all the the way but it seems that to 40 ele is easier. Then again you could go like a guildie of mine and lvl resto from 1-80. He says he loved it. He could heal all the runs he wanted to all the while questing and aoe grinding with ease.

[k-shaman]

AND - I have the shoulder Heirlooms on my DK from hwne i leveled him (mail/plate) will they be useable on my Shaman?

Really? Those shoulders will be mail until 40, when shaman can only use leather. When your shaman gets mail, those shoulders will be plate.

And enh is perfectly fine for leveling, considering most of the shaman community did it before the crazy nerfs to the experience.

[Vampiricdemise]

It all depends on what you would like to do for your leveling speed and type. Pewpew spells? Go elemental. Want to roll stuff into the ground? Go Enhancement. Either spec is actually viable for leveling.

I rerolled during BC for my shaman so I didn't have the luxury of nice leveling items but I found elemental for the first 45 levels very nice. Granted I wore cloth and had a crappy shield and weapon for a long time but I couldn't get better stuff for enhancement either. It's around that level is where enhancement picks up real quickly for leveling because of the needed dual-wielding and stormstrike.

If you do go for enhancement, try and get a leveling partner with you even with the heirloom items. A friend and I leveled an enhancement/ret together and it took us about 2 weeks to get to 60 mildly leveling together as well.

[kabshiel]

Elemental isn't terrible to level, but enhancement is probably faster and easier just because there's less downtime. The gap narrows a lot once you hit Outland and actual caster gear starts showing up. I think enhancement always wins though just because they have a much easier time soloing group quests (spirit wolves are way overpowered).

[Fen]

The main issue with leveling elemental is spell power gear from 1-58. However, until you learn DW and SS from enhancement, you're basically auto attacking everything. Because of this, I went elemental until 41 and grabbed both DW and SS. From there, I went elemental at 58 when SP gear started showing up. Things really pick up at 75 though when you get Lava Burst.

[Bling]

I have leveled 3 shamans to 80 now. And Enhancement blows Elemental out of the water until 75 if you do it right. My first shaman was a Tauren that I raided somewhat at 60 that had a mix of T2/High Warlord gear. 2nd shaman was a Draenei who I leveled up to have on the same server as my alliance main at the time, a human pally. Recently I grew bored of alliance and decided to level up an Orc Shaman on a server a couple of my old college fraternity brothers play on.

As far as leveling I leveled my first shaman as enhancement back in the early days of wow as enhancement way before it was anything resembling what it is now. Went Elemental/Resto at 60 and then leveled to 80 over the next 2 xpacs as elemental(while geared). The Draenei shaman I leveled completely as elemental. The 3rd, my orc I leveled up as enhancement. Let me tell you my enhancement shaman didn't have a single BoA and leveled way faster than my previous shamans. Even at 60+ when my Tauren had full epics and my orc had blues/greens the orc enhancement shaman leveled almost 3 times faster than my Tauren epic'd elem did. Not to mention the only quest in all of outlands I couldn't solo as enhancement was Durn. Every other group quest I was able to solo, Cho'war, the 2 massive demons at the demon forge camps in nagrand, Tuskar, basicly all of them. I couldn't even come close to doing that as epic'd out elemental. Tell you the truth as a guy with 8 level 80 characters, the others being a paladin, DK, warrior, Druid, and warlock. The enhancement shaman was the easiest and fastest to level I think.

At 75 though I do recommend going elemental cause lava burst can rape things. Most normal mobs die in 3 hits once your 75+.

The main reason why enhancement really owns 60+ is feral spirits. Basicly you can pop them and attack elite almost boss level mobs and not even see your health hardly even go down while you blow them up. Not to mention if you health does drop maelstrom weapon can give you instant healing waves to keep up on those elite mobs.

Overall, you won't be upset leveling as elemental, but honestly you will find enhancement faster, especially 40+ when you get duel wield and stormstrike. After you get those you will feel godlike.

[Roamingstorm]

So. Time to reroll again. [4th alt. Bored with Heroics already on my other chars]

I gather the badges needed for the Caster (I always prefer caster/Healer in PvE] Hierlooms and off i set. Once i hit level 10 i do some homework and find out that Enhancement!! is far quicker in leveling. GUTTED. 80 badges down the drain and I cant be arse to run the heroics to get more badges.

SOOOO. It it THAT much quicker that Ele for leveling? Will I be gimped majorly by using these two hierlooms and Melee gear in all otehr slots and going Enhance?

AND - I have the shoulder Heirlooms on my DK from hwne i leveled him (mail/plate) will they be useable on my Shaman?

All input greatly accepted.

Mikki

Alright...

So, grinding as elemental, especially with the Heirloom gear is doable. The main question is, is it quicker then Enhancement?

I've grinded to 70 (80 being my main as he is elemental) each spec of shaman. Yes I have three shaman, and no I didn't see Dual Specs coming in BC.

In my opinion Enhancement is the way to go if you want a quick, easy, leveling build. Gear is easy to come by, down time is slim to none, damage is pretty good.

Elemental, just has a lot of down time, and sadly due to the low amount of crit you'll have at such low Lvs it pretty much throws what makes Ele mana efficient out the window. BUT, the fact now you have water shield open up at 20, REALLY can help out a lot.

So here's the final scoop.

Elemental is good for PvE, but sadly doesn't shine till the higher Lvs, by all means go for it in Outlands, but avoid it in Azeroth. The downtime will be greater, and gear will definitely be a pain to come by in Azeroth as well. The changes though to water shield can greatly increase efficiency while also having BoA items. I say go for it, I'm at the moment leveling my 4th shaman to be a twink either Ele or Enh, and currently leveling him as Ele, so far with BoA gear it has been nicer then compared to back in the day going OOM after killing one or two mobs.

Hope this helps.

[peppermint21]

so you lvl a toon to 80 then heroics and roll another toon to 80 and do heroics... see the pattern here?

fuck that.

[Drunkenfinn]

As some have allready stated... If you have the best heirlooms for either spec it oughta be something like this:

1-40: Elemental. First 20lvls might be a bit harder but once you get Water Shield @lvl20 it gets better

40-60: Enhancement is a tad bit faster here cause of the lack of good caster-loot in the old world. Getting SS and DW at 40 really makes Enh shine!

60-75: Pretty much equal. I lvled as Ele from 60 to 80 and had no downtime at all and could solo allmost all groupquests... Ele is really good for single-target kiting! Also, Mail caster-gear becomes available at this point which makes Ele more viable!

75-80: Ele gets faster at killing mobs since you get Lava Burst which basicly allows you to 2-3shot mobs. Have fun!

I hope I helped :P Basicly it doesnt really matter that much which you level as. I suggest you go with Elemental if thats what you're gonna play at 80... Gets you used to the playstyle and you wont be totally clueless once you finally reach 80.

[monkeysnarf]

I don't know about going elemental at level 75. I mean if all you're doing is grinding mobs and doing easy quests I suppose it's fine. If you do quest in ice crown and want to solo the group quests, you're going to want to go enhance.