I am really enjoying myself at 26, right now I might have gimped myself a little though. I have 7 pts in Enhancement the mana pool and improved Ghost wolf talents, and then the first available talents in restoration. Reducing casting time on that one heal and reducing mana costs on heals.
I enjoy healing in PvP and instances so I will probably end up mostly focused on resto talents.
I am really enjoying myself at 26, right now I might have gimped myself a little though. I have 7 pts in Enhancement the mana pool and improved Ghost wolf talents, and then the first available talents in restoration. Reducing casting time on that one heal and reducing mana costs on heals.
I enjoy healing in PvP and instances so I will probably end up mostly focused on resto talents.
Don't worry too much about messing up. If you spend a lot of time soloing, you'll probably want to go all-enhancement, just because there's so many talents deep in the tree that you'll want as soon as freaking possible. Especially dual-weild and stormstrike. And elemental weapons. And flurry. And . . . well yeah.
Don't know that you'd want to play a shaman for healing in instances. Pally druid or priest might be better suited.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
So...shaman guildie of mine is determined to stay Enhancement but sticking to 2handers. He said he's building up to 30/31/0, which is basically doing DPS non-stop until he runs out of mana, at which point he is fucked. He does decent in instances but I still top him out in overall dmg with my Dual Wielding spec.
We've been able to point out his major flaws: burning mana crazy fast, tends to pick up aggro as the fight drags on, DPS fluctuates with his mana and hits/misses, and overall having to get hybrid gear (+crit/AP/+spell dmg).
I mean, ideally it would be sick for PvP (he was rank 13 back in the day) but he's hurting on the gear issue (has the PvP epic set and most of the HWL weapons still). He doesn't like dual wielding.
So yeah, thought I'd throw this out here and see what ya'll think.
Those three points in enhance totems would be better spent on imp lightning shield.
EDIT: Likewise, he should put points in reverberation
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
I am really enjoying myself at 26, right now I might have gimped myself a little though. I have 7 pts in Enhancement the mana pool and improved Ghost wolf talents, and then the first available talents in restoration. Reducing casting time on that one heal and reducing mana costs on heals.
I enjoy healing in PvP and instances so I will probably end up mostly focused on resto talents.
Don't worry too much about messing up. If you spend a lot of time soloing, you'll probably want to go all-enhancement, just because there's so many talents deep in the tree that you'll want as soon as freaking possible. Especially dual-weild and stormstrike. And elemental weapons. And flurry. And . . . well yeah.
Don't know that you'd want to play a shaman for healing in instances. Pally druid or priest might be better suited.
As a level 68 resto shaman, I can tell you that healing in instances is just fine. I've been main healer for every instance I have access to at this point. With proper gear, Earth Shield is just absurd. I'm talking 600+ health on a normal ES heal, and 900+ on a crit.
Anyway, question for you level 66+ shaman. Have you guys noticed the elementals spawning with only a percentage of their health? I swear I've seen my earth ele spawn with 40% health, and I just summoned him in town with no one around just to make sure. He spawned at 74% health. Bug or working as intended?
EDIT: Also, Mark of Vindication. Chance on spell hit to restore mana. Does this work with healing spells? I'm assuming not, but..
Hmm, it appears that the threat reduction from spirit weapons may not be working at all, and that the constant "buffs" of unleashed rage may be generating a lot of threat as well.
And of course, since we're more likely to get a Blizzard post in these forums than the shaman ones, we'll never know if this shit gets fixed.
Anyway, question for you level 66+ shaman. Have you guys noticed the elementals spawning with only a percentage of their health? I swear I've seen my earth ele spawn with 40% health, and I just summoned him in town with no one around just to make sure. He spawned at 74% health. Bug or working as intended?
Do those pets scale at all? This sounds like the general pet change that was put in recently. Initially, pet scaling was causing them(my experience was with warlock pets) to be summoned at less than full, but in a more recent patch this was changed so that they're summoned at less than max health or mana, but they immediately regen up to full. My the totem pet isn't regenning correctly?
The elemental isn't as useless as I had thought it would be.
On any boss fight, usually 1st and 3rd in an instance I drop him. He is an aggro whore so he's great for keeping adds busy. Plus when I am healing it is nice to be able to put some dps as well.
He has also saved my ass on more than one occasion with multiple adds out in the world. In addition he is HUGE. As a tauren, dropping him in pvp is hilarious because click targetters can't see me if I hang out inside or behind him. Used him yesterday on some people at XR. Was me (67) and a warrior (62) against four alliance all 58-63. Ghostwolf'd in, warrior charged lock, dropped earthboy, magma and went to town on the hunter. They were gone so fast it was amazing.
Stoneclaw is *useful* now which actually kinda sucks. I had gotten used to keeping improved SoE down all the time on packs... but it's kinda nice to drop at the caster's feet since it can hold a mob for 3-7 seconds if its taunt lands.
I'm also surprised I haven't upgraded more gear along the way. My druid is close to all new pieces throughout (approaching 63) but the shaman only has 4 (in dps, healing is pretty much all new) and a ton of new trinkets.
That build made my stomach turn just that little bit.
If you're sure that you want to go enh (UR 4 and 5 stack to hilarious effect) then you're going to want at least a little in resto(whether you're going to pvp or pve). Ele + enh tend not to work beyond ancestral knowledge. http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GZxVbdVMsVuqox0et
I have a similar build in mind, but I put 3 points into Imp Lightning Shield instead of Ghost wolf and 2-handers. I will be duel-wielding, do i really need 2 handers? is it really not worth putting points into lightning shield?
I am new to shamans, so i could use some advice. I am currently level 26, almost 27.
Anyway, question for you level 66+ shaman. Have you guys noticed the elementals spawning with only a percentage of their health? I swear I've seen my earth ele spawn with 40% health, and I just summoned him in town with no one around just to make sure. He spawned at 74% health. Bug or working as intended?
Do those pets scale at all? This sounds like the general pet change that was put in recently. Initially, pet scaling was causing them(my experience was with warlock pets) to be summoned at less than full, but in a more recent patch this was changed so that they're summoned at less than max health or mana, but they immediately regen up to full. My the totem pet isn't regenning correctly?
The pet doesn't instantly regen health, no. He's more than happy to charge in with whatever % it spawned him with.
Anyway, question for you level 66+ shaman. Have you guys noticed the elementals spawning with only a percentage of their health? I swear I've seen my earth ele spawn with 40% health, and I just summoned him in town with no one around just to make sure. He spawned at 74% health. Bug or working as intended?
Do those pets scale at all? This sounds like the general pet change that was put in recently. Initially, pet scaling was causing them(my experience was with warlock pets) to be summoned at less than full, but in a more recent patch this was changed so that they're summoned at less than max health or mana, but they immediately regen up to full. My the totem pet isn't regenning correctly?
The pet doesn't instantly regen health, no. He's more than happy to charge in with whatever % it spawned him with.
I think its a bug, because after one patch my (60) Locks pets were being summoned with less than full health, and blizz fixed it saying it was a bug. m sure this will be fixed as a bug also.
Alright, having read all the gushing about how effective a good Paladin can be in both PvP and PvE, I want to play a Shaman, not a Paladin. However, I don't know shit about Shamans and my main is Alliance faction so I've never played alongside Shamans.
What advice and "must-do" stuff can you share with a person who is about to start playing a Shaman? I plan on going Resto/Enhance. I want to be an asset as a healer, but also be able to fend off aggro and the inevitable "Rogue cheap shot's you." situations.
tl;dr - What makes a good Shaman good, what are some inspirational stories you can share to make me look forward to something.
Alright, having read all the gushing about how effective a good Paladin can be in both PvP and PvE, I want to play a Shaman, not a Paladin. However, I don't know shit about Shamans and my main is Alliance faction so I've never played alongside Shamans.
What advice and "must-do" stuff can you share with a person who is about to start playing a Shaman? I plan on going Resto/Enhance. I want to be an asset as a healer, but also be able to fend off aggro and the inevitable "Rogue cheap shot's you." situations.
tl;dr - What makes a good Shaman good, what are some inspirational stories you can share to make me look forward to something.
I won't give advice on the class as I never played one that far, but make sure you know what level the totem quests are so you don't have to backtrack to get them if you leave your starting zone too fast. I heard of a Draenei shaman that went to the Human lands at level 1 and had to back track for his totems slowing his leveling down.
Alright, having read all the gushing about how effective a good Paladin can be in both PvP and PvE, I want to play a Shaman, not a Paladin. However, I don't know shit about Shamans and my main is Alliance faction so I've never played alongside Shamans.
What advice and "must-do" stuff can you share with a person who is about to start playing a Shaman? I plan on going Resto/Enhance. I want to be an asset as a healer, but also be able to fend off aggro and the inevitable "Rogue cheap shot's you." situations.
tl;dr - What makes a good Shaman good, what are some inspirational stories you can share to make me look forward to something.
I won't give advice on the class as I never played one that far, but make sure you know what level the totem quests are so you don't have to backtrack to get them if you leave your starting zone too fast. I heard of a Draenei shaman that went to the Human lands at level 1 and had to back track for his totems slowing his leveling down.
That bitch in Stormwind doesn't even bother mentioning the fact that there are quests to do back at the Exodar.
Quick Rule of Thumb, when you learn a new ability of an element you haven't done a quest for, you need to go back to do the quest. (Or, just go check back at 5ish, 10, 20 and 30)
Did my first pvp since the expansion yesterday at 67 in Eye of The Storm. I'm still what I consider a suicide pvp spec, full on enhancement, with all the rest thrown into restoration. No instant heals, no heals on crit, basically kill them first or die. I was pleasantly surprised that rogues my level, even blowing cooldowns, could not dps me down in a stunlock with or without a shield thanks to the huge amounts of stamina we have. Now this is in group pvp, in duels they probably could dps me down with ease.
Spent a fair amount of one match running around with another dual weild shaman and we were both tossing totems and heals at each other. The destruction we wrought was beautiful. If both of us ran up to someone, SS+ES they were practically dead before they knew what happened.
The spec still sucks for survivability, but that's okay, half the fun in playing this particular spec in pvp is the life fast, die fast aspect.
PS: Even with a shield shaman can't tank Durn. 4800 melee crit, with 6.3k armor. Ouch.
I have a shaman.. he's got some totems.. once you start getting a reasonable collection of totems, what is the typical combat cycle for grinding?
I have always been inclined to open up with ranged lightning bolts, and then go into earth shock/melee/totems when in range.. but I find my totems aren't all that useful, and I burn my mana.
Is it better to skip lightning all together and just rush in with all my totems down? Or keep ranging the mob as long as possible?
I have a shaman.. he's got some totems.. once you start getting a reasonable collection of totems, what is the typical combat cycle for grinding?
I have always been inclined to open up with ranged lightning bolts, and then go into earth shock/melee/totems when in range.. but I find my totems aren't all that useful, and I burn my mana.
Is it better to skip lightning all together and just rush in with all my totems down? Or keep ranging the mob as long as possible?
Here's my experience from leveling my 60+ shaman:
Generally, you want to save your totems for long fights, fights with adds, or in places where the mobs are close enough together that you can reasonably fight in the same place to get the full duration out of each totem.
Under any of those conditions, I usually drop my highest Strength of Earth, Grace of Air and Mana Stream totem. At lower levels, I used to drop the single target fire DD totem, Searing I think it's called, but with the horrible targeting it has its more apt to pull an add than actually hit your intended target. Also, the Stoneclaw Totem is great for tanking adds or multiple pulls, just be sure to drop it quickly in the beginning or it won't grab aggro.
As for pulling, I just use a Rank 1 shock instead of any Lightning spell, since unless your elementally specced their casting speeds are real slow and they're pretty mana inefficient. Most of the time I'd find the mob moves out of range before the casting time finished and I'd rather save the mana for healing. Enhancement leveling is all about conserving mana, since shamans don't really have any way to regen large amounts without drinking.
Of course if your elemental specced, then burning the mob down before it gets to you is the name of the game.
Save 45 Thrallmar tokens and use them to get the Totem and class trinket from Zangarmarsh.
Totally worth the 2 hour grind for me.
I know I am late to the party but... details?
Zangarmarsh PvP is shit but it uses the same Thrallmar Honor Token. So repeat that quest and grind up to 45 at Hellfire Penninsula then go talk to the faction flag carrying dude in Zangarmarsh (as indicated by the flags on the map).
The trinket is proving kinda nice, aside from putting me at 1080 AP unbuffed, it manages to proc on Lightning Shield damage and a friend said he saw it proc off Frostbrand (I have yet to prove this).
The totem is better than my +Lesser Healing Wave and +mana Water Shield totem.
I have a shaman.. he's got some totems.. once you start getting a reasonable collection of totems, what is the typical combat cycle for grinding?
I have always been inclined to open up with ranged lightning bolts, and then go into earth shock/melee/totems when in range.. but I find my totems aren't all that useful, and I burn my mana.
Is it better to skip lightning all together and just rush in with all my totems down? Or keep ranging the mob as long as possible?
Here's my experience from leveling my 60+ shaman:
Generally, you want to save your totems for long fights, fights with adds, or in places where the mobs are close enough together that you can reasonably fight in the same place to get the full duration out of each totem.
Under any of those conditions, I usually drop my highest Strength of Earth, Grace of Air and Mana Stream totem. At lower levels, I used to drop the single target fire DD totem, Searing I think it's called, but with the horrible targeting it has its more apt to pull an add than actually hit your intended target. Also, the Stoneclaw Totem is great for tanking adds or multiple pulls, just be sure to drop it quickly in the beginning or it won't grab aggro.
As for pulling, I just use a Rank 1 shock instead of any Lightning spell, since unless your elementally specced their casting speeds are real slow and they're pretty mana inefficient. Most of the time I'd find the mob moves out of range before the casting time finished and I'd rather save the mana for healing. Enhancement leveling is all about conserving mana, since shamans don't really have any way to regen large amounts without drinking.
Of course if your elemental specced, then burning the mob down before it gets to you is the name of the game.
If you look at the damage-per-mana for shaman spells in general, the lightning bolts and lightning shield comes out better than shocks. Also the Searing totem is pretty good if it stays for most of its duration. When I was low-level I usually put lightning-shield up, pulled with a bolt or two, dropped the searing totem and maybe an earthshield, then melee'd the rest of the fight to get my mana back up for the next pull.
Now that I'm a dual-weilder with stormstrike and whatnot, I usually put my shield up, pull with a bolt, SS as fast as possible, and just melee the whole fight, putting my shield back up and SSing again as needed. I use shocks more for emergency situations, and totems more for long-fights and multiples.
When grinding ( current build) I generally hit ss until I get a crit and let auto attack down the mobs. Sure, it sounds boring, but it works well enough I don't have too worry too much about downtime. PvP is a blast with SS, and SR makes questing fast as hell due to downtime being negligible.
Alright, having read all the gushing about how effective a good Paladin can be in both PvP and PvE, I want to play a Shaman, not a Paladin. However, I don't know shit about Shamans and my main is Alliance faction so I've never played alongside Shamans.
What advice and "must-do" stuff can you share with a person who is about to start playing a Shaman? I plan on going Resto/Enhance. I want to be an asset as a healer, but also be able to fend off aggro and the inevitable "Rogue cheap shot's you." situations.
tl;dr - What makes a good Shaman good, what are some inspirational stories you can share to make me look forward to something.
Totem quests aside, I hope you are not new to doing class quests, I hope you’re asking about knowledge of playing the class. If you are, then here’s my advice.
For leveling go up enhancement first as it greatly improves your soloing ability. It also allows you to fight the longest without drinking of all the specs. Do not use shocks while grinding. Its temping, and I know your shock finger will become a nervous tick while you’re killing things but fight the urge. Bind earth shock rank 1 to your keyboard the moment you get it. All future ranks of earth shock should be in addition to rank 1. Rank 1 is your interrupt button and you should get used to interrupting every possible chance you get.
Soon as you get grounding totem get used to fighting with it on the ground. It’s a steep learning curve, training yourself to always have a grounding totem out seems useless at first when you’re leveling. But the first time you get sheeped and pyroblasted and the mage doesn’t notice the grounding totem you’ll thank yourself.
Remember to take your totems with you when you’re instancing. And I don’t mean in your inventory, I mean don’t leave totems on the ground when your group moves, otherwise you’ll agro pats and what not. Never use fire totems when you group with a mage, for obvious reasons.
You mentioned you want to go up resto tree as well so you can be a good healer. That’s fine, but you wont need to go up that tree until you’re done with enhancement, your healing will be more than fine. I recommend you grab a set of healing gear, this is probably more important than speccing for resto until much later in the game.
Bindings are very important for a shaman because you have so many buttons. Personally, I tried to avoid clicking on buttons with the mouse entirely. Its just gets too overwhelming. So how do you deal with all the totems you ask? Its going to be a personal choice for you, I’d play around with different organizations and/or mods to help with it. What worked for me? I setup one key per totem school. For example F is fire totem 1, Ctrl F with fire totem 2, shift F, etc… I dunno, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. It helped me when I started putting the buttons on bars I hid off my screen as well. Forced me to memorize the keybindings as my only method of using the totems and it kept a lot of the clutter off my screen.
Rogue cheapshots. Well you shouldn’t have to worry about this too much, most of the game shaman are overpowered in pvp. In fact shaman can out DPS nearly every class from 1-50 as long as the shaman has mana. Once you get windfury it changes a little because your dps is proc dependant. Just get used to getting your ass kicked because you can and will go entire fights without one windfury. It will piss you off, you will swear loudly. But in those moments of frustration try to remember that time the rogue was instant killed by a triple windfury crit followed by a shock the moment his cheapshot wore off. Have a private giggle about it and go resurrect.
Instances- you can afk to take out the trash, you can miss a heal and have to res, you can even screw up off tanking. But if you join an instance group and forget to bring any Ankhs they will hate you and call you a newb. I mean it.
Ok I’ve rambled enough. Take my advice for what it is, my humble opinions. Good luck. It’s a great time leveling a shaman.
Bigzug on
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If your instancing dont use attack totems unless they are aoeing.
If you have several melee in the party (ie rogue, warrior, paladin, etc) use a Flametounge totem.
Windfury vs. Flametounge: Totem wise I would like to say keep your wind totem slot not bound to windfury. Its good but I think Grace of Air, Grounding totem, Windwall Totem are all better in the long run.
Hey, I just got to lv 60, and I was wondering about a build.
At first, I thought I would main spec in Resto, but I'm not too good at healing and don't care for it too much, so I thought I would go with a dps build. Anyhow, would this be a good PvE build? I appreciate the help.
Hey, I just got to lv 60, and I was wondering about a build.
At first, I thought I would main spec in Resto, but I'm not too good at healing and don't care for it too much, so I thought I would go with a dps build. Anyhow, would this be a good PvE build? I appreciate the help.
Mines almost exactly the same, only I took Imp. Ghost Wolf over Imp. LS so I could get away from pesky mobs that knock me off my mount.
I posted some updated Shaman builds on the talent build thread. One of them is incomplete with 3 spare points. I know, it was intentional.
Anyways, at lv 68, my Shaman has 1100 AP unbuffed now. Still rockin' the HWL 1h mace and offhanding that claw weapon from Ring of Blood. Hitting 1k-1300 WF crits easily and getting 2500-3500 Windfury bombs in groups. Just got two really sweet rare quality upgrades for my head and legs. Now I need that Cobrahide Legpatch thingo for them.
IAnyways, at lv 68, my Shaman has 1100 AP unbuffed now.
1100 unbuffed? That seems really high. What are you wearing? Enchants?
For the cobrahide stuff if your shaman can skin go and get the scales yourself. Then head back to nagrand and farm the airs. Most LWs will make them for free to get the skillup... otherwise you are paying 100g+.
My Shaman is too stubborn to drop Mining or Engineering (I have a glimmer of hope Blizzard adds some better stuff).
I'm at work, so I'll have to repost info of my gear and stuff.
You could keep engineering and drop mining then just get any stuff you need from the AH.
Nah, I'm the "raid miner" and I help people get the mats for shit. Or used to anyways. I see no reason why I shouldn't be once we start hitting up 20+ raids.
So as an aspiring draenei shaman with prospects of getting into a fairly good guild with a couple of buddies of mine should I be able to level at a fairly constant pace I'm interested in the best typical talent tree for leveling/grinding. Not only that but the quickest way to burn down mobs with the least mana consumption. Not really min/maxing but just so I don't have to drink after every 3rd or 4th mob. I've got the few points I do have in enhancement, opting for the 2h mace and axe skill, improved ghost wolf, the 5% crit, and the enhance strength of earth/grace of air totem. Am I on the right track or not. I'm not looking for a detailed spec just some pointers.
The general idea is that enhancement is the best for levelling. 5% mana or extra blocking is your call, neither one's bad or essential. Most people then get Thundering Strikes, 2-handers, Flurry, Spirit Weapons, Elemental Weapons, Weapon Mastery, Storm-strike, Dual Wield, Unleashed Rage, and Shamanistic Rage. The rest of the points are more up to your preferance. The idea is to maximize your melee damage, since it costs no mana whatsoever.
Oh yeah, I guess I don't have 1100 AP unbuffed. It looked like 1100 when I woke up this morning, I guess it was 1010, now it's 1016 due to me getting a slightly better belt. Anyways, here we go, level 68 with some above-average gear:
Liquid GhostDO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered Userregular
edited February 2007
I went from DWing Grunt's Waraxes to sticking the Mag'hari Fury Brand in my MH and OHing one of the axes. I still have three points to go until my unarmed is maxed out, which has never caused problems before, but I'm having a difficult time hitting anything in the Outlands with my main hand. I'm literally getting dodged, blocked, and parried as if I only had about 100 weapon skill. It's really irritating, especially since I lost maybe one or two hit at most by replacing one of the Waraxes with my new weapon.
I don't know what the deal is, but any yellow mob, two levels above or below me, is beating my ass now, because my OH hits are predictably shit and my MH just never connects. It's incredibly frustrating, especially considering how long it's taking for me to increase my weapon skill by even one point. As a result, I'm assuming that this might not be the problem. If that's not doing it, though, I have no idea what is.
Recap has me clocked at 12% miss rate on all melee attacks. It rarely happens but yeah, I'll have a mob or two that I don't get to land more than a few hits.
Worst thing is when SS and the follow up shock misses or is resisted.
Posts
I enjoy healing in PvP and instances so I will probably end up mostly focused on resto talents.
Don't worry too much about messing up. If you spend a lot of time soloing, you'll probably want to go all-enhancement, just because there's so many talents deep in the tree that you'll want as soon as freaking possible. Especially dual-weild and stormstrike. And elemental weapons. And flurry. And . . . well yeah.
Don't know that you'd want to play a shaman for healing in instances. Pally druid or priest might be better suited.
Those three points in enhance totems would be better spent on imp lightning shield.
EDIT: Likewise, he should put points in reverberation
Anyway, question for you level 66+ shaman. Have you guys noticed the elementals spawning with only a percentage of their health? I swear I've seen my earth ele spawn with 40% health, and I just summoned him in town with no one around just to make sure. He spawned at 74% health. Bug or working as intended?
EDIT: Also, Mark of Vindication. Chance on spell hit to restore mana. Does this work with healing spells? I'm assuming not, but..
The Earth one is immune to Poisons and Nature spells, that I've seen. Used him well in Underbog.
Don't have the fire one, just yet.
And of course, since we're more likely to get a Blizzard post in these forums than the shaman ones, we'll never know if this shit gets fixed.
Do those pets scale at all? This sounds like the general pet change that was put in recently. Initially, pet scaling was causing them(my experience was with warlock pets) to be summoned at less than full, but in a more recent patch this was changed so that they're summoned at less than max health or mana, but they immediately regen up to full. My the totem pet isn't regenning correctly?
On any boss fight, usually 1st and 3rd in an instance I drop him. He is an aggro whore so he's great for keeping adds busy. Plus when I am healing it is nice to be able to put some dps as well.
He has also saved my ass on more than one occasion with multiple adds out in the world. In addition he is HUGE. As a tauren, dropping him in pvp is hilarious because click targetters can't see me if I hang out inside or behind him. Used him yesterday on some people at XR. Was me (67) and a warrior (62) against four alliance all 58-63. Ghostwolf'd in, warrior charged lock, dropped earthboy, magma and went to town on the hunter. They were gone so fast it was amazing.
Stoneclaw is *useful* now which actually kinda sucks. I had gotten used to keeping improved SoE down all the time on packs... but it's kinda nice to drop at the caster's feet since it can hold a mob for 3-7 seconds if its taunt lands.
I'm also surprised I haven't upgraded more gear along the way. My druid is close to all new pieces throughout (approaching 63) but the shaman only has 4 (in dps, healing is pretty much all new) and a ton of new trinkets.
Totally worth the 2 hour grind for me.
I have a similar build in mind, but I put 3 points into Imp Lightning Shield instead of Ghost wolf and 2-handers. I will be duel-wielding, do i really need 2 handers? is it really not worth putting points into lightning shield?
I am new to shamans, so i could use some advice. I am currently level 26, almost 27.
I think its a bug, because after one patch my (60) Locks pets were being summoned with less than full health, and blizz fixed it saying it was a bug. m sure this will be fixed as a bug also.
What advice and "must-do" stuff can you share with a person who is about to start playing a Shaman? I plan on going Resto/Enhance. I want to be an asset as a healer, but also be able to fend off aggro and the inevitable "Rogue cheap shot's you." situations.
tl;dr - What makes a good Shaman good, what are some inspirational stories you can share to make me look forward to something.
I won't give advice on the class as I never played one that far, but make sure you know what level the totem quests are so you don't have to backtrack to get them if you leave your starting zone too fast. I heard of a Draenei shaman that went to the Human lands at level 1 and had to back track for his totems slowing his leveling down.
Bing 60 Warrior
Wymond 40 Rogue
Elemental is pretty bad for levelling beyond Clearcast.
Eye of the storm is lovely. Stunlocks are sad
I look forward to getting to try out 70's pvp with the increased stamina values. Indirect rogue nerf, go!
That bitch in Stormwind doesn't even bother mentioning the fact that there are quests to do back at the Exodar.
Quick Rule of Thumb, when you learn a new ability of an element you haven't done a quest for, you need to go back to do the quest. (Or, just go check back at 5ish, 10, 20 and 30)
Spent a fair amount of one match running around with another dual weild shaman and we were both tossing totems and heals at each other. The destruction we wrought was beautiful. If both of us ran up to someone, SS+ES they were practically dead before they knew what happened.
The spec still sucks for survivability, but that's okay, half the fun in playing this particular spec in pvp is the life fast, die fast aspect.
PS: Even with a shield shaman can't tank Durn. 4800 melee crit, with 6.3k armor. Ouch.
I have a shaman.. he's got some totems.. once you start getting a reasonable collection of totems, what is the typical combat cycle for grinding?
I have always been inclined to open up with ranged lightning bolts, and then go into earth shock/melee/totems when in range.. but I find my totems aren't all that useful, and I burn my mana.
Is it better to skip lightning all together and just rush in with all my totems down? Or keep ranging the mob as long as possible?
Here's my experience from leveling my 60+ shaman:
Generally, you want to save your totems for long fights, fights with adds, or in places where the mobs are close enough together that you can reasonably fight in the same place to get the full duration out of each totem.
Under any of those conditions, I usually drop my highest Strength of Earth, Grace of Air and Mana Stream totem. At lower levels, I used to drop the single target fire DD totem, Searing I think it's called, but with the horrible targeting it has its more apt to pull an add than actually hit your intended target. Also, the Stoneclaw Totem is great for tanking adds or multiple pulls, just be sure to drop it quickly in the beginning or it won't grab aggro.
As for pulling, I just use a Rank 1 shock instead of any Lightning spell, since unless your elementally specced their casting speeds are real slow and they're pretty mana inefficient. Most of the time I'd find the mob moves out of range before the casting time finished and I'd rather save the mana for healing. Enhancement leveling is all about conserving mana, since shamans don't really have any way to regen large amounts without drinking.
Of course if your elemental specced, then burning the mob down before it gets to you is the name of the game.
I know I am late to the party but... details?
Zangarmarsh PvP is shit but it uses the same Thrallmar Honor Token. So repeat that quest and grind up to 45 at Hellfire Penninsula then go talk to the faction flag carrying dude in Zangarmarsh (as indicated by the flags on the map).
The trinket is proving kinda nice, aside from putting me at 1080 AP unbuffed, it manages to proc on Lightning Shield damage and a friend said he saw it proc off Frostbrand (I have yet to prove this).
The totem is better than my +Lesser Healing Wave and +mana Water Shield totem.
EDIT: Found the items on Thott:
Mark of Vindication
Totem of Impact
If you look at the damage-per-mana for shaman spells in general, the lightning bolts and lightning shield comes out better than shocks. Also the Searing totem is pretty good if it stays for most of its duration. When I was low-level I usually put lightning-shield up, pulled with a bolt or two, dropped the searing totem and maybe an earthshield, then melee'd the rest of the fight to get my mana back up for the next pull.
Now that I'm a dual-weilder with stormstrike and whatnot, I usually put my shield up, pull with a bolt, SS as fast as possible, and just melee the whole fight, putting my shield back up and SSing again as needed. I use shocks more for emergency situations, and totems more for long-fights and multiples.
Totem quests aside, I hope you are not new to doing class quests, I hope you’re asking about knowledge of playing the class. If you are, then here’s my advice.
For leveling go up enhancement first as it greatly improves your soloing ability. It also allows you to fight the longest without drinking of all the specs. Do not use shocks while grinding. Its temping, and I know your shock finger will become a nervous tick while you’re killing things but fight the urge. Bind earth shock rank 1 to your keyboard the moment you get it. All future ranks of earth shock should be in addition to rank 1. Rank 1 is your interrupt button and you should get used to interrupting every possible chance you get.
Soon as you get grounding totem get used to fighting with it on the ground. It’s a steep learning curve, training yourself to always have a grounding totem out seems useless at first when you’re leveling. But the first time you get sheeped and pyroblasted and the mage doesn’t notice the grounding totem you’ll thank yourself.
Remember to take your totems with you when you’re instancing. And I don’t mean in your inventory, I mean don’t leave totems on the ground when your group moves, otherwise you’ll agro pats and what not. Never use fire totems when you group with a mage, for obvious reasons.
You mentioned you want to go up resto tree as well so you can be a good healer. That’s fine, but you wont need to go up that tree until you’re done with enhancement, your healing will be more than fine. I recommend you grab a set of healing gear, this is probably more important than speccing for resto until much later in the game.
Bindings are very important for a shaman because you have so many buttons. Personally, I tried to avoid clicking on buttons with the mouse entirely. Its just gets too overwhelming. So how do you deal with all the totems you ask? Its going to be a personal choice for you, I’d play around with different organizations and/or mods to help with it. What worked for me? I setup one key per totem school. For example F is fire totem 1, Ctrl F with fire totem 2, shift F, etc… I dunno, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. It helped me when I started putting the buttons on bars I hid off my screen as well. Forced me to memorize the keybindings as my only method of using the totems and it kept a lot of the clutter off my screen.
Rogue cheapshots. Well you shouldn’t have to worry about this too much, most of the game shaman are overpowered in pvp. In fact shaman can out DPS nearly every class from 1-50 as long as the shaman has mana. Once you get windfury it changes a little because your dps is proc dependant. Just get used to getting your ass kicked because you can and will go entire fights without one windfury. It will piss you off, you will swear loudly. But in those moments of frustration try to remember that time the rogue was instant killed by a triple windfury crit followed by a shock the moment his cheapshot wore off. Have a private giggle about it and go resurrect.
Instances- you can afk to take out the trash, you can miss a heal and have to res, you can even screw up off tanking. But if you join an instance group and forget to bring any Ankhs they will hate you and call you a newb. I mean it.
Ok I’ve rambled enough. Take my advice for what it is, my humble opinions. Good luck. It’s a great time leveling a shaman.
If your instancing dont use attack totems unless they are aoeing.
If you have several melee in the party (ie rogue, warrior, paladin, etc) use a Flametounge totem.
Windfury vs. Flametounge: Totem wise I would like to say keep your wind totem slot not bound to windfury. Its good but I think Grace of Air, Grounding totem, Windwall Totem are all better in the long run.
At first, I thought I would main spec in Resto, but I'm not too good at healing and don't care for it too much, so I thought I would go with a dps build. Anyhow, would this be a good PvE build? I appreciate the help.
Steam: pazython
Anyways, at lv 68, my Shaman has 1100 AP unbuffed now. Still rockin' the HWL 1h mace and offhanding that claw weapon from Ring of Blood. Hitting 1k-1300 WF crits easily and getting 2500-3500 Windfury bombs in groups. Just got two really sweet rare quality upgrades for my head and legs. Now I need that Cobrahide Legpatch thingo for them.
1100 unbuffed? That seems really high. What are you wearing? Enchants?
For the cobrahide stuff if your shaman can skin go and get the scales yourself. Then head back to nagrand and farm the airs. Most LWs will make them for free to get the skillup... otherwise you are paying 100g+.
I'm at work, so I'll have to repost info of my gear and stuff.
Nah, I'm the "raid miner" and I help people get the mats for shit. Or used to anyways. I see no reason why I shouldn't be once we start hitting up 20+ raids.
The two upgrades I recently got from guildies were:
Headdress of Inner Rage
Scales of the Beast
I don't know what the deal is, but any yellow mob, two levels above or below me, is beating my ass now, because my OH hits are predictably shit and my MH just never connects. It's incredibly frustrating, especially considering how long it's taking for me to increase my weapon skill by even one point. As a result, I'm assuming that this might not be the problem. If that's not doing it, though, I have no idea what is.
Worst thing is when SS and the follow up shock misses or is resisted.