Are elemental shamans fun?

[tomsmith]

I was hoping to level an alt I have as resto but eventually raid as ele. I have heard from an enhancement shaman in my guild that elemental is incredibly boring. Does this have any truth to it or is he just biased?

[XenofeX]

Yeah, palying an ele is like playing a retri pally, 12222111221113111112

I run an enhacement too, and the rotation is far away complex and funny I just PVP with ele, and it's so boring killing Vandar or the other alliance boss in conq island whose name i can´t remember.

I also guess how in hell a mage pve can be funny :S

[Oscooter]

Ele is fun, very simple rotation, but very fun if you like seeing large numbers.

[Teslatroll]

You can't define fun as such.

But I do enjoy playing my elemental shaman. Try it out. Maybe you will like it.

[boneschaman]

I like my elemental.
Playing him since 2007.

[Bigjay]

Of my four toons it's the least fun for me. It's a very basic rotation and is very similar to a warlock's destro spec if you ever played that.

[Altore]

If you enjoy throwing people off cliffs, elemental is the spec for you!

[Hevesker]

Yeah, palying an ele is like playing a retri pally, 12222111221113111112

ffs, retards trying to be funny

[tomsmith]

Did you read the rest of post? Totally incoherent. Maybe English is his 2nd language?

But anyway, would you say it is in fact more complex than a ret pally?

[Whoopzz]

Ele is fun for PvP. Run run run NUKE.


And whoever said it's like a ret paladin, it's not, Ret is much more complex believe it or not.

[Gilian]

Yes. If you want to do your best dps then it's not boring at all.

The best way to find out is to try it. And don't listen to idiots who say elemental shamans, retribution paladins and mages are boring and easy. Like enhancement is hard...

[twinkleblur]

elemental can be fun...ur entire rotation is litterally LB,CL.FC,LB...for both single target and AoE
you can run in and drop a magma totem but then you also run into....mobs that silence you close up,mobs that explode on death,etc...

[Esrgoode]

I like my elemental offspec.

Bad raid.. easy farm boss's suddenly gained new ability "wipe raid" where he turns the rest of your raid to morons who wont step out th green goo.. then never fear.. after the raid fest is over join AB and chortle everytime you send someone flying at the LM..

It never gets old.. however make sure you make a /wave /kiss or simular macro.. nothing like rubbing it in to make you log off feeling fine

[Laftaf]

After leveling and early raiding as enh, then switching to Resto with an ele OS. I have to say that ele is the least fun of them all for me. Ele is fun for pvp, yeah. But for raiding gets incredibly repetitive.

As far as top dps, I'll often see a skilled enh out dps an ele. and if the fight has a lot of movement, your dps will suffer greatly

[kilgreth]

I'm not saying that Elemental is hard but if you think it's 121212122211222 then you're pretty bad or just very misinformed. In PVE, if you're not a ToW bot then you're working in dps totems. This can be Magma Totem if you're in a heavy AoE situation, Fire Elemental or Searing Totem for single target dps. Keeping up the AoE rotation of Magma, Fire Nova, multple target Flame Shocks, Chain Lightning, Thunderstorm, Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt can be quite fun.

If you are the ToW bot then placement of your totems are key (to make use of Fire Nova) to doing decent dps in a raid situation since most fights anymore have some sort of adds. The normal rotation if you're actually able to stand still is quite simple with Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt (and Chain Lightning if you're like me). Also keep in mind that we are one of the best at interupts and snares. Oh, and we have healing buttons which actually come in quite handy if you are an elemental shaman that isn't "too good" to use them.

I love my elemental shaman. It's a blast to play! Hopefully this is enough info for you to decide.

[Chitzu]

If you're going to get into Complex rotations, then you shouldn't speak of Elemental shamans being easy.

Arcane Mage: AB-AB-AB-AB-AM-AB-AB-AB-AB-AM <insert random CD's>
Mutilate Rogue: Mutilate-Mutilate-Evenom-Mutilate-Mutilate-Evenom <Insert Hunger of Blood and CD's randomly.>

yeh... i could go on there for a while, there's no such timing for these speccs where it comes down to if you're going to do 2k DPS more or 2K DPS which Elemental shamans is all about pretty much; The timing.

People not used to Elemental shamans, people that doesn't see if you can cast another LB or not before the LvB is up, using CD's at the wrong times (i.e, using too many haste CD's and going below 1 sec LB cast).. all these is something that mostly applies to Elemental shamans, if not; it's things that makes our DPS fall way behind compared to others if they would've done the same thing.

Anyhow, i've been playing as Elemental for a long time now and i can't say that it has came to the point where it's boring, i'm daily reading about Elemental shamans and posting calculations and whatnot, staying on top; i belive that playing as an Elemental shaman will get boring unless you go into depth about them.

There's so many ways to improve your DPS as Elemental, for example: Get rid of unnecessary movements (will hurt your DPS as Elemental more then any other caster), Do you use Fire nova while moving if you got totems close to the boss? Time dropping Searing totem so you doesn't do it when LvB CD comes up to not overlay it = DPS loss, Do you time your LvB's good? Clipping any Flame shocks? Renewing Flame Shock too early? Do you know if you should use CL or not in your rotation (this is another part when Timing and Haste comes into account)? CD usage of course, do you use them correctly and in the correct order? do you use them at the best possible time?

As you can see, there's a lot of things that can be improved, and it takes time to read up on it and actually get it all sorted out, there's so many fail Elemental shamans out there that it's not even funny.

Elemental Shamans is easy to be decent at, but it's way more complex to be good at it.

[Miggy]

ffs, retards trying to be funny

Seen something like this in another thread somewhere, ret pallies are a bit touchy aren't they? ;D

[Deathanistic]

To put it simply, the elemental rotation doesn't have a lot of buttons, but it requires a lot of knowledge of the class and your toons gear to be used effectively.

I'd say in order to be competitive it requires you to research, run numbers, have knowledge, and then periodically throw it all out and start all over. To be good you will have to be smart, there's no easy faceroll to victory here.

This even carries over to gear. Ele gear is few and far between, you have to be smart about how you gear and willing to piss people off rolling on cloth or even staffs if it's an overall DPS upgrade for you. You have to be willing to look like a half retarded mage and balance your stats.

Essentially the buttons are easy, but you have to do your home work. Ele shaman is the easiest class to suck at because Blizz doesn't give us a lot to work with. You doing your homework will be the factor to allow you to get good numbers and overcome the Blizz handicaps.

[Palatrino]

Yeah, palying an ele is like playing a retri pally, 12222111221113111112

Sigh. Just stop posting on mmo, for the server's sake.
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To keep to the topic, yes and no. It's just what you like, it's fairly easy to play. Atleast atm it's fun PvP.
It's impossible to say "yeah it's fun" - it's personal. Try it out yourself

[Bling]

I currently have an 80 paladin, shaman, warrior, druid, warlock, and death knight. Ya I know, I play a lot, most of them started as profession alts to make lots of gold. Of those I've gotten pretty good gear now on all of them with 5K+ gs sets on my pally, shaman, and warrior.

Although my paladin is my main which I raid as as Ret. I do enjoy my shaman though and it is my #2 alt. I have also managed to get my shaman 4 pc elem T10. Because my shaman is an alt and not committed to a raiding guild spot I like to flip between elem and enhance now and then, although I am primarily elem.

I have found now that over time I can get much better dps out of my enhance shaman with less gear, although I have to try a lot harder to do so. If you have a ret paladin, you will find enhance very similar, enhance's skill cap is a slightly higher due to having to watch maelstrom weapon procs, although its not much of an issue if you use an addon like shockandawe. Elemental on the otherhand is like a toned down destro lock when dpsing, though with a lot more group utility.

If you are looking to pump out as much damage as possible and top meters, enhancement is probably the way to go. Although as enhance I have a lot less gear than my elem shaman, I can put out close to the same dps when I'm on my A game. You do have to be on your toes though to top dps as a enhance shaman, if your feeling lazy your dps will suffer. In the meanwhile, elem shaman still can put out reasonable dps, but they do have rather simple dps rotations, probably the easiest of all the classes I've played. If you have your skills hotkeyed you can probably keep your dps going without even looking at the screen on a simple fight like patchwerk, something I've yet been able to find with other classes. Although it takes quite awhile to burn the rotation into your head to be able to do that.

As for the global cooldown reason for elem being "not simple" almost every class has to deal with that, honestly I'd say an enhance shaman or ret paladin suffers more from being off on his global priorities than an elem shaman, not getting off that maelstrom weapon proc fast enough can hurt just as much as putting in a lightning bolt when you should have lava bursted.

Overall though if your gonna always be main spec'd resto, I would go ahead and give elemental a try. Its still a fun spec and come cataclysm will be sharing resto gear, making it far easier to get OS gear for. Although Elemental can be boring, that's mostly when your just raid dpsing for a few hours. For your basic questing and pvp, etc you probably won't get very bored. If your an elitist who has to top the meters every chance he gets, enhance might be the spec for you though, players that can bring their A game and hit every global perfectly can melt faces as enhance.