What the hell happened to Ele?

[Deleted]

Can't agree with you. Leveled my shaman in heroic DS gear, which is much worse than 432 and I had no problems at all. Didn't have any problems with 3-4 mobs either, chain lightning and ancestral guidance is your friend.

[Deleted]

I didn't have any issues leveling, even quite often pulling multiple dread waste mobs with CL.

Tbh, I'd prefer a more threatening game while leveling, it's such a joke right now to level. Anyone remember Defias Pillagers in westfall back in vanilla and TBC and scarlet invokers in plaguelands? *shudders* Those were some scary mobs to level, pulled more than one with no escape cooldown? Pretty much dead already.

Imo, much stronger mobs with more experience per mob would be the way to go.

[Prag]

I must be doing something very wrong then. I guess I need some advice/help.

Armory:us.battle.net/wow/en/character/mugthol/Stigsham/simple

As I mentioned, I keep FS up and Searing/Magma down at all times. I use HST on cd. If my stats look odd, it's due to being mainly Resto.

Any tips? You've all been great in responding and I appreciate your time.

[Adramalech]

I really don't know what to tell you, I leveled my elemental quite effortlessly. I don't wanna be "that guy" who points fingers and says you're doing something wrong, but I just find your difficulty odd.

[JKim]

Shouldn't really be hard at all. I mean leveling 88-90 any classes get hit pretty hard. Just use flame shock - lava burst - ele blast - lightning bolt. Low mana and many mobs? Ancestral guidance and chain lightning.

[Kesandri]

Any tips? You've all been great in responding and I appreciate your time.

Use the conductivity talent (like someone mentioned), and if you are doing any sort of group aoe'ing, aggro the mobs, throw down a healing rain and chain away, unless said mobs can stun/silence you, you will be virtually undestructable!
I personally liked that talent while leveling, I know tide and guidance are good, the fact is you can always cast healing rain whenever.

If my stats look odd, it's due to being mainly Resto.

Well dont, get yourself focused as elemental, you will still heal 5 mans fine, aim for as much haste as u can get and you will have no problem (tho this isnt always the case at max level!)
This is a little bit like me gearing/reforging my frost mage for pure crit! It wont do bugger all damage and will cause me more work

As far as everything else is concerned, when you go to pull just make sure you do so from max range, if your struggling with the rotation/movement of killing things as ele then you need every small advantage you can get.

I know its my main but I personally had no problem leveling mine, and definatly did not find it more work to level than the other 4 chars I have done so far, in fact I feel the shammy has one of the better toolkits for leveling in the game.

[pkm]

I must be doing something very wrong then. I guess I need some advice/help.

Armory:us.battle.net/wow/en/character/mugthol/Stigsham/simple

As I mentioned, I keep FS up and Searing/Magma down at all times. I use HST on cd. If my stats look odd, it's due to being mainly Resto.

Any tips? You've all been great in responding and I appreciate your time.

I prefer nature's guardian myself. Stone bulwark is more for raids. 2nd and 3rd tier doesn't matter much. But 4th tier go with ancestral swiftness. It's a nice passive haste bonus. EoE is best at 90 with a mastery build. T5, conductivity for multiple mob pulls. Gear is fine your 89 anyway doesn't matter now.

[Deleted]

Shouldn't really be hard at all. I mean leveling 88-90 any classes get hit pretty hard. Just use flame shock - lava burst - ele blast - lightning bolt. Low mana and many mobs? Ancestral guidance and chain lightning.

Elemental blast is lvl 90 talent.
Also I prefer hardcast a bolt at start if I don't have aggro yet, then flame shock and lava burst.
Didn't have any issues like you described. Leveled 5 90s already now and couple more on their way. Sure my dk can pull half the zone he's in since he's blood, and my hunter pet can take on a ton as well while I keep MD'ing to him. My mage and oomkin didn't seem better/worse off than my ele shaman though.

[Sprinky]

As others said you are maybe doing something wrong. Id even go as far as to say my ele is leveled easier than my ret pala and BM hunter. I found that it was quicker for me to single target mobs where possible though as the burst from flame shock, lava burst, Lightning bolt was usually enough to kill mobs outright. Knock anything back that gets close to you, earth elemental if you get in trouble.

[Volitar]

Having your ranged slow tied to all your damage (Flameshock and thus Lava Burst crits) its retarded. Even tho its still easy Ele leveling in the worst of the worst.

[Deleted]

Also remember that Ele probably got the most flashy spells which make players want to target them. Also you compare a ranged class to melee classes - it's always finnier to try kill ranged classes over melee.

[Eruionmel]

Oh! Something I totally forgot to mention that I haven't seen anyone else say. If you do feel like you need to cast a healing surge (and trust me, I used it a lot in dread wastes), always wait until you have clearcasting active. And you can always guarantee clearcasting after a lavaburst. When I was getting slammed by a couple mobs and was struggling, I'd just wait for the next LvB and then immediately healing surge twice after (you get two stacks of clearcasting per crit). Clearcasting increases your single target healing by 50% and drops the mana cost by 25%, which is amazing for getting yourself up quickly. I honestly started using healing surge any time I was below about 70% health because it was basically just a GCD and with clearcasting I could spend almost no mana and never die.

[Cairm]

. Attempted to fix the problem by doing regular dungeons for better gear; didn't meet the ilevel to queue up.

I think I might have found your problem!

I had no trouble doing 85-90. The questing was a dull as it always was. Going from a hub to another. Following the story zone to zone.

[Deleted]

I remember 88-89 to be especially brutal. Lava burst crits don't really make much of a dent in mobs anymore, and Lightning Bolt already hits like the wet noodle it is.

Compared to leveling my Warrior, Hunter or Rogue to 90, my Shaman, Moonkin and Priest were a pain in the ass.

I think in the end I happened to team up with some random Prot Paladin and I went CLed myself to 90.

[Amsden]

I just aoed everything and had very few problems, hardly used my totems except for magma totem. And Single target stuff was cake.

[Unclekreepy]

what? ... my ele shaman was probably one of the easiest of all my 5 90s ... I usually nuked stuff before it could even get to me.


Ele has insane burst but horrible on fights over 2 mins.

[Deathgoose]

I felt the same way on my Elemental Shammy as I was finishing up my Klaxxi grind at 90. Was pretty much forced to single target kill everything or I'd get mauled. (He's basically a fresh 90 with only a ~454-ish iLvL for reference)

Then I realized I had been overlooking a very useful tool or two when farming packs of mobs.

I took the talent that let's your healing rain heal you for a % of your LB/CL damage, but had been completely overlooking it's use.

Then, as a test, I went to a place in the Dread March where there was a pack of 9 mantid 90's (A leader and 8 minions, all with the full 393k HP for a standard level 90, not those weak little mini-90's)

Anyways, I would drop my AoE fire totem, CL the lead bug once to get them coming to me, cast healing rain centered on myself, which about when they would get on me, then I would just commence chain lightning spam.

I killed all 9 90's mobs and was at full life and mana, looted, then went on to the next pack. Then kicked myself in the butt for having overlooked such a potent combination all of that time.

[Vulcanasm]

I think this must be the root of my problem. I'm used to pulling groups of mobs and AOE'ing. I interrupt and Capacitator, but I still end up killing them off slowly because I spend most of the time casting Surge or HST/HTT.

That's the part I don't understand. This feels similar to the leveling experience as Ele in BC, whereas Wrath and Cata were "pull all in sight and AOE down". I guess some classes got to keep that.

I think I agree with happyzod. Elemental has the worst AOE capacity of any DPS spec I've played. You can do OK if you glyph chain lightning *and* there aren't knockbacks or interrupts *and* nothing instagibs your capacitor or magma totem, but that's already too many conditionals to level comfortably.

I don't use Healing Tide as Elemental. I find it absurdly good for Restoration, but I like Ascendance + Ancestral Guidance much, much better. I can save the day without lapsing into partial healbot. Try it in raid finder, for example: macro them to one button, along with any other short-cast buffs that don't share duration lockouts (Engineering gloves, Fire elemental totem, etc). Then watch the heal meters on a fight with a lot of splash damage (e.g. Elegon, Garalon). It's one of the most elegant and versatile cooldown combinations I've seen. I've used it that way since the moment I could, and I would have hated leveling without it.

[Magic Sausage]

Anyone else read the first part as alcoholic and not realize it was altoholic till like 5 minutes later...

Haha yep did the exact same thing

[Prag]

I appreciate the input all. I definitely overlooked Conductivity and wish I hadn't. It's a really useful talent - thank you to those that suggested it. I don't know what it is about Dread Wastes mobs, but to echo a few posts here, that is definitely where the pain began. I could nuke a single target down, sure, but the collection quests require like 20-30 kills sometimes and patience took a backseat.

And I apologize if "altoholic" made you all think I had a drinking problem. Though I might, it's certainly not the fault of my leveling experience.