WF still does more damage by a pretty good margin, but the gap is smaller now. Before end game, there are certain situations where using a fast OH with FT is better, but not usually.
I think the 2.6 or slower is the goal, but slightly faster weapons are ok while working towards that goal (2.4, 2.2, etc).
I'm currently using the 1.9 speed Thrallmar axe, because my other option may have been 2.5 or 2.6 but it was at least 4, maybe 5 dps lower with worse stats.
I'm pretty sure, that according to the EJ forums, at the endgame, two of the very best slow weapons with windfury is only very slightly(like 1 or 2%) more dps, given a decent amount of haste, than a very fast offhand with flametongue. So despite the lack of haste, it seems not unreasonable that if it allows you to equip a weapon with quite a bit more dps or stats, that a fast offhand would be better. Of course, I only brought this up again because of Mirarant's implication that rather than slower always being better, you want both weapons to be very close in speed.
Anyways, this all might be moot because I have a feeling that I chose one of the other rewards because I didn't carefully check the tooltips and that mace looked like a 2hander to me
You'll want to have the OH slower than MH if you can't match the speeds, mostly to prevent OH eating WFs.
In any case, early TBC weapon itemisation for enhancement is truly horrible and like someone said buying 2 greens from the AH is your best bet until you get to around 66.
WF still does more damage by a pretty good margin, but the gap is smaller now. Before end game, there are certain situations where using a fast OH with FT is better, but not usually.
I think the 2.6 or slower is the goal, but slightly faster weapons are ok while working towards that goal (2.4, 2.2, etc).
I'm currently using the 1.9 speed Thrallmar axe, because my other option may have been 2.5 or 2.6 but it was at least 4, maybe 5 dps lower with worse stats.
I'm pretty sure, that according to the EJ forums, at the endgame, two of the very best slow weapons with windfury is only very slightly(like 1 or 2%) more dps, given a decent amount of haste, than a very fast offhand with flametongue. So despite the lack of haste, it seems not unreasonable that if it allows you to equip a weapon with quite a bit more dps or stats, that a fast offhand would be better. Of course, I only brought this up again because of Mirarant's implication that rather than slower always being better, you want both weapons to be very close in speed.
Anyways, this all might be moot because I have a feeling that I chose one of the other rewards because I didn't carefully check the tooltips and that mace looked like a 2hander to me
I dunno about 1.9...some simulator's I used said a 2.6 weapon produced more DPS than a faster weapon that was 20+ DPS higher. I didn't do alot of in-game testing, but what I did seemed to bear that out. I think I was testing a 2.6 green mace vs the blue thrallmar rep weapon.
I haven't checked the EJ stuff in a few weeks, but with enough AP I could see a fast OH with FT reaching those levels I guess.
Things I love so far:
I love being a Draenei Shaman, its way more interesting from a lore perspective then being Random Orc #421955.
Training 2H Weapons at a Weapon Master.
That 11 point talent that replaced 2H Weapons. I can imagen that being up allot once I get DW and some better gear.
Things I'm not lovin' so far:
Draenei Shaman's Ghost Wolf doesn't have any kind of visual difference. Give the damn thing some face tentacles or something at least! Maybe that glowy thing over its head like when I use Gift of the Naru. Maybe make it blue, or purple?
The damn Call of Water quest. I don't care what you say, this one totally felt longer then the Horde counterpart.
Thats about it. Im just about done with all the quests in the blood isles, just need to find people to do the group quests I have and thats it I think.
I've got my 57 shaman ready to grind the snot out of stuff when I enter Outlands. My only question is should I re-talent into restoration and healbot my way to 70 or stay Enhancement and just quest till I'm blue in the face? Or will people not care that I am Enhancement and let me heal instances if I have decent healing gear?
Enhancement levelling(at least at 62 with water shield) is really pretty amazing. Despite the greater ease with which you would find complete instance groups as resto, I would not recommend it.
So a friend of mine quit playing and had a Draenei Shaman that had just dinged 70, outfitted in quest greens and one dungeon blue (Beast Lord Mantle). I took over his account because I just love Shaman in general, and the one I'd worked my ass off on after BC came out was sold by a so-called friend of mine I let play him while I took a break.
Anyway, long story short I got into a guild with Kara on farm, but in a rebuilding stage because of a split. In two weeks, I've outfitted him with what you see here.
Now, my question is, at what point do I just say "That's too much fucking leather."? No mail has dropped whatsoever except for the items for the T4 stuff, and everything I've been given has been an amazing upgrade from where I was. I never get hit because our tank's awesome, so I'm thinking that it's not too important, but sometimes I feel like a bit of a scrub. God I'm having a blast, though.
So a friend of mine quit playing and had a Draenei Shaman that had just dinged 70, outfitted in quest greens and one dungeon blue (Beast Lord Mantle). I took over his account because I just love Shaman in general, and the one I'd worked my ass off on after BC came out was sold by a so-called friend of mine I let play him while I took a break.
Anyway, long story short I got into a guild with Kara on farm, but in a rebuilding stage because of a split. In two weeks, I've outfitted him with what you see here.
Now, my question is, at what point do I just say "That's too much fucking leather."? No mail has dropped whatsoever except for the items for the T4 stuff, and everything I've been given has been an amazing upgrade from where I was. I never get hit because our tank's awesome, so I'm thinking that it's not too important, but sometimes I feel like a bit of a scrub. God I'm having a blast, though.
Now I've never raided as or with an enhancement shaman, but all of your plus hit has me at odds. From talents alone your special, yellow attacks, shouldn't be missing against PvE boss mobs, so the other plus hit is just icing. I feel as though turning some of the plus hit into AP or mana over 5 would be good for you and your raid. While white hits are important I think your Windfury and Shocks account for well more than half your damage on a boss and as such boosting AP or plus to magic damage would increase your dps in the end perhaps? Again never raided with an enhancement shaman so take this post with a grain of salt.
Yeah, my +hit is kind of overkill, honestly, but I haven't seen anything else drop. I'm going to switch out Romulo's Poison Vial for something else pretty soon. Once my guild gets settled and we start hitting stuff beyond Kara, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to itemize better, but as of right now I literally haven't seen anything else drop at all, so I'm taking what I can get. It's a hell of a lot better than where I was, using a Wolf Hewer's Axe in my MH and a green level 68 fist weapon in my OH.
Anyway, long story short I got into a guild with Kara on farm, but in a rebuilding stage because of a split. In two weeks, I've outfitted him with what you see here.
So a friend of mine quit playing and had a Draenei Shaman that had just dinged 70, outfitted in quest greens and one dungeon blue (Beast Lord Mantle). I took over his account because I just love Shaman in general, and the one I'd worked my ass off on after BC came out was sold by a so-called friend of mine I let play him while I took a break.
Anyway, long story short I got into a guild with Kara on farm, but in a rebuilding stage because of a split. In two weeks, I've outfitted him with what you see here.
Now, my question is, at what point do I just say "That's too much fucking leather."? No mail has dropped whatsoever except for the items for the T4 stuff, and everything I've been given has been an amazing upgrade from where I was. I never get hit because our tank's awesome, so I'm thinking that it's not too important, but sometimes I feel like a bit of a scrub. God I'm having a blast, though.
Now I've never raided as or with an enhancement shaman, but all of your plus hit has me at odds. From talents alone your special, yellow attacks, shouldn't be missing against PvE boss mobs, so the other plus hit is just icing. I feel as though turning some of the plus hit into AP or mana over 5 would be good for you and your raid. While white hits are important I think your Windfury and Shocks account for well more than half your damage on a boss and as such boosting AP or plus to magic damage would increase your dps in the end perhaps? Again never raided with an enhancement shaman so take this post with a grain of salt.
Howdy. I haven't posted in a while but I figured that I would respond here. Enhance keeps getting better and I'm glad some more people are enjoying it. Some things to remember as basic guidelines:
1. If your non-enhance talents are resto for the hit, you only need roughly 110-120 hit rating to be optimal.
2. Certain stats scale better than others in a raid situation (namely strength, as it is 1:2 for AP values and increases with kings, unlike pure AP.) In general you want to shoot for 23+ crit rating to keep a large SR up-time for your melee group and then start piling on the str.
3. Leather is not a sin. In fact, I am only missing one or two items (point system be damned) from end-game and they will leave me with maybe one mail piece. Leather is typically better designed for pure DPS stats, often times benefitting shamans more than rogues as lots of pieces will have straight AP and strength on the same piece, giving you more bang for your buck. I'm still itching to kill my t5 helm with a Visage of Sargeras.
4. Int and MP5 are totally useless, and as such most mail pieces (including t5 and parts of the PVP sets) are worthless to us. If you PvP as enhancement that's a whole other fish, but you have to wear the gear for resilience. T6 pieces are fairly clogged up with mp5 and Int, chewing up the item budget for more useful stats. With all the new mana conservation talents, I really have to try hard to even get past half mana before SR is back up. This includes twisting air totems and the proper 3s stormstriking with shocks on cooldown.
5. Slow/slow weapon setup is always better than Slow/fast, fast/fast, and fast/slow.
I'm sure I've rambled too much but if you want to hear some more enhance stuff shoot me a PM and I can link you to some heavy mathcraft or discuss gear choices etc.
Sintor on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]Sintor/LY9444 - MH3/US (Search by name works, just case sensitive!)
SO. I'm going back to WoW in a few days. I've got a 55 or so Tauren Shaman who is facing revival. I haven't played in over a year, since before the expansion was out.
What shit is different now? I'm wondering about talent specialization mostly. He was mostly elemental with some enh, zero resto. I play(ed) on a PvP server. I hear a lot of people speaking about Enh being good for leveling - that is essentially par for the course of what I remember.
I would prefer to keep elemental as my main talent tree if that is an option that doesn't suck. I imagine all the gear on him (i dont even remember what the hell I had) is going to be garbage now with the new expansion plus a year+ worth of new shit in the game so I'm going to have to consider that when i start off.
Im obviously gonna research sites and stuff, but I figured here might be a good place for info as well.
Al_wat on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
SO. I'm going back to WoW in a few days. I've got a 55 or so Tauren Shaman who is facing revival. I haven't played in over a year, since before the expansion was out.
What shit is different now? I'm wondering about talent specialization mostly. He was mostly elemental with some enh, zero resto. I play(ed) on a PvP server. I hear a lot of people speaking about Enh being good for leveling - that is essentially par for the course of what I remember.
I would prefer to keep elemental as my main talent tree if that is an option that doesn't suck. I imagine all the gear on him (i dont even remember what the hell I had) is going to be garbage now with the new expansion plus a year+ worth of new shit in the game so I'm going to have to consider that when i start off.
Im obviously gonna research sites and stuff, but I figured here might be a good place for info as well.
get to level 58 as soon as possible, don't worry about gear at all, once you're 58, head to the Blasted Lands and go through the Dark Portal, and never look back until level 70.
Every piece of gear you're wearing will be replaced by level 61-62 at the absolute latest.
SO. I'm going back to WoW in a few days. I've got a 55 or so Tauren Shaman who is facing revival. I haven't played in over a year, since before the expansion was out.
What shit is different now? I'm wondering about talent specialization mostly. He was mostly elemental with some enh, zero resto. I play(ed) on a PvP server. I hear a lot of people speaking about Enh being good for leveling - that is essentially par for the course of what I remember.
I would prefer to keep elemental as my main talent tree if that is an option that doesn't suck. I imagine all the gear on him (i dont even remember what the hell I had) is going to be garbage now with the new expansion plus a year+ worth of new shit in the game so I'm going to have to consider that when i start off.
Im obviously gonna research sites and stuff, but I figured here might be a good place for info as well.
It only kind of sucks. The problem with elemental is mostly that you can't damage elementals, an enemy you'll be seeing often in Outlands. Elemental is amazing at Seventy, though, especially for PVP. So if you're Enhance while you're leveling, I wouldn't worry about it too much - you'll be Elemental once again soon enough. Leveling elemental is doable, though, but you'll also be spending a lot of money water. That's not a huge deal, though.
But, to be honest, I think you should level how you want to. I leveled as Resto, and I still hit seventy. Other ways may be a bit faster, but being Resto made the grind somewhat tolerable for me, since I could switch things up and do instances to break the grind up a bit. So, really, it's up to you. Either way, you'll hit seventy.
Beck on
Lucas's Franklin Badge reflected the lightning back!
So what is the common weapon buff people run with these days. Before I took a break a few months back it was highest rank of WF on mainhand, lower rank on offhand. Is that still the case, or what? I actually started running a frostbrand in ZF so I didn't have to keep earthbind down to prevent runners, and could instead use the str buff.
EWom on
Whether they find a life there or not, I think Jupiter should be called an enemy planet.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited January 2008
Windfury + Windfury is what people use because it's simply the best. I think they fixed the reason why people were using lower rank on offhand, though.
Slower weapons give enhance shamans using WF/WF (and you are aren't you?) the most DPS.
A fast 1.8 dagger with a weapon DPS more than 30 points more than some scrub green 2.6 mace is STILL a DPS loss, due to windfury mechanics. The exact numbers I'm not sure, but I've had faster weapons at least 25 base DPS higher that cause character DPS to drop. The mechanic is that busted.
Slow a weapon as possible in both hands as enhance.
Bigity on
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Zen VulgarityWhat a lovely day for teaSecret British ThreadRegistered Userregular
edited January 2008
I can't WF/WF yet since I don't have the totem.
And if that's thew case, does Flurry matter since it would screw with the weapon speed?
This is my first character in two years, by the way, so I'm struggling to shove everything back into my head.
The relevant bit here:
Windfury Weapon was corrected in the 2.1 patch link Windfury on the main and off hands. At some point prior to that, a hidden/internal 3 second cooldown had been added to Windfury Weapon. As a result, OH procs now (correctly) trigger the cooldown on the MH. Despite this set back to shaman DPS (net loss of about 10-15% DPS for enhancement shaman), Windfury Weapon is still the best weapon imbue to use – even the developers admitted to as much in an IRC chat, when they said they have no intention to scale the other weapon imbues to match the power of Windfury. [
And:
Do not use WF Totem instead of WF Weapon on your MH. While you may ~think~ it will help you avoid the WF cooldown problem, the totem isn't providing anywhere near the benefit you'll get from the weapon imbue.
WF Totem has the following issues: no elemental weapons bonus (40% multiple), only one extra attack (200% multiple), lesser AP bonus (scalar). Each MH WF Totem hit would be 100% extra damage or so compared to a normal attack, and has only one chance of proc'ing flurry, any weapon procs, and UR. Each MH WF imbue hit would be 280% extra damage or so compare to a normal attack, and has 2 chances of proc'ing those things.
In a very very simplified way of looking at it, you'd have to proc MH WF 2.8 as many times using the totem as you do using the imbue, for it to be worth it.
Weapon Speeds play an important role in maximizing DPS from Windfury procs. The goal is to chain WF procs every 3 seconds, as soon as each cooldown ends. Both the OH and the MH need to be as slow as possible to achieve this(they do not need to be matched in speed, just as slow as you can get it). The idea is to reduce the number of swings made during the time that windfury is on cooldown. Since the cooldown is 3 seconds, weapons speeds are preferred to be close to that speed, generally this means 2.6 - 2.8 under current itemization. The idea is that a faster weapon would proc a WF, and then strike again within the cooldown window, which means that windfury would exit cooldown and your weapon would still be on some significant portion of its swing timer, unable to proc another WF.
Many shaman will correctly use a slow MH weapon but use a fast OH such as a dagger, generally because its easier to find fast OHs than slow ones. This combination however means that your OH is much more likely to be the first one to hit outside of a WF cooldown and will "steal" the potential chance to proc, placing your main hand on lockdown. In order to maximize the potential for MH procs the OH needs to be as slow as possible.
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Zen VulgarityWhat a lovely day for teaSecret British ThreadRegistered Userregular
You want Flurry up regardless. There was some talk for a time about weapon speed being increased so much through flurry and haste that it would actually reduce DPS, but IIRC, it's been proven that it doesn't.
Also, while the hidden timer is a part of the slow/slow weapon issue, some of it is that Windfury strikes are not normalized, and so benefit from slower weapon speeds. I don't think the bonus is reduced by flurry or other haste buffs.
You want Flurry up regardless. There was some talk for a time about weapon speed being increased so much through flurry and haste that it would actually reduce DPS, but IIRC, it's been proven that it doesn't.
Also, while the hidden timer is a part of the slow/slow weapon issue, some of it is that Windfury strikes are not normalized, and so benefit from slower weapon speeds. I don't think the bonus is reduced by flurry or other haste buffs.
nope, weapon damage stays the same, and is not affected by haste. so a weap that does 300-400 damage a swing at 2.6 speed base still does 300-400 damage even if you have the swing time hasted and flurried down to 1.0 speed.
Hit 1600 DPS as elemental with an Oomkin in my group last night. Yes! Off-specs activate, form of: synergy!
I am leveling so stuck with Enhance right now (can't stand drinking) but Ele looks like a great spec for 70, our shamans are always playing with different raid specs (and I as a rogue keep whispering the word "enhance") but the Ele one does great damage.
You don't really have to drink, Lightning Bolt costs like 2 mana and Water Shield is OP. My Shaman probably drinks after 30 mobs. The only thing that sucks is nature immune mobs, frost shock kite w/ searing totem, go!
You don't really have to drink, Lightning Bolt costs like 2 mana and Water Shield is OP. My Shaman probably drinks after 30 mobs. The only thing that sucks is nature immune mobs, frost shock kite w/ searing totem, go!
This is a levelling shaman with mediocre gear? I would be very surprised if elemental shaman didnt drink at least a fair amount more than enhancement, and I probably don't go more than 20 mobs without drinking there, partly because I want to be able to actually use skills sometimes.
But I would just hate doing solo pve without pushback protection on a caster.
You don't really have to drink, Lightning Bolt costs like 2 mana and Water Shield is OP. My Shaman probably drinks after 30 mobs. The only thing that sucks is nature immune mobs, frost shock kite w/ searing totem, go!
This is a levelling shaman with mediocre gear? I would be very surprised if elemental shaman didnt drink at least a fair amount more than enhancement, and I probably don't go more than 20 mobs without drinking there, partly because I want to be able to actually use skills sometimes.
But I would just hate doing solo pve without pushback protection on a caster.
Yes, my Shaman is 66 and just gear from quests I've done solo plus a Blade of Trapped Knowledge I bought at AH for 40g. You don't really notice the pushback when most things die before they get to you and lightning bolt is a 2 second cast. It only really sucks vs. more than one dual wielding mob, and even then you're likely to get crit for Eye of the Storm.
edit: With water shield I have 75 m/5, 2 lightning bolts in 4 secs costs 468 mana IF you don't get a clearcast proc, and that 75 m/5 jumps considerably when you count any hits you take with water shield on. I barely drink at all unless in an instance.
editx2: Also there's earthbind and frost shock if you really don't feel like being meleed.
Posts
I'm currently using the 1.9 speed Thrallmar axe, because my other option may have been 2.5 or 2.6 but it was at least 4, maybe 5 dps lower with worse stats.
I'm pretty sure, that according to the EJ forums, at the endgame, two of the very best slow weapons with windfury is only very slightly(like 1 or 2%) more dps, given a decent amount of haste, than a very fast offhand with flametongue. So despite the lack of haste, it seems not unreasonable that if it allows you to equip a weapon with quite a bit more dps or stats, that a fast offhand would be better. Of course, I only brought this up again because of Mirarant's implication that rather than slower always being better, you want both weapons to be very close in speed.
Anyways, this all might be moot because I have a feeling that I chose one of the other rewards because I didn't carefully check the tooltips and that mace looked like a 2hander to me
In any case, early TBC weapon itemisation for enhancement is truly horrible and like someone said buying 2 greens from the AH is your best bet until you get to around 66.
I dunno about 1.9...some simulator's I used said a 2.6 weapon produced more DPS than a faster weapon that was 20+ DPS higher. I didn't do alot of in-game testing, but what I did seemed to bear that out. I think I was testing a 2.6 green mace vs the blue thrallmar rep weapon.
I haven't checked the EJ stuff in a few weeks, but with enough AP I could see a fast OH with FT reaching those levels I guess.
I love being a Draenei Shaman, its way more interesting from a lore perspective then being Random Orc #421955.
Training 2H Weapons at a Weapon Master.
That 11 point talent that replaced 2H Weapons. I can imagen that being up allot once I get DW and some better gear.
Things I'm not lovin' so far:
Draenei Shaman's Ghost Wolf doesn't have any kind of visual difference. Give the damn thing some face tentacles or something at least! Maybe that glowy thing over its head like when I use Gift of the Naru. Maybe make it blue, or purple?
The damn Call of Water quest. I don't care what you say, this one totally felt longer then the Horde counterpart.
Thats about it. Im just about done with all the quests in the blood isles, just need to find people to do the group quests I have and thats it I think.
I'm reasonably certain that's not even possible.
Anyway, long story short I got into a guild with Kara on farm, but in a rebuilding stage because of a split. In two weeks, I've outfitted him with what you see here.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Terokkar&n=Celilthis
Now, my question is, at what point do I just say "That's too much fucking leather."? No mail has dropped whatsoever except for the items for the T4 stuff, and everything I've been given has been an amazing upgrade from where I was. I never get hit because our tank's awesome, so I'm thinking that it's not too important, but sometimes I feel like a bit of a scrub. God I'm having a blast, though.
Now I've never raided as or with an enhancement shaman, but all of your plus hit has me at odds. From talents alone your special, yellow attacks, shouldn't be missing against PvE boss mobs, so the other plus hit is just icing. I feel as though turning some of the plus hit into AP or mana over 5 would be good for you and your raid. While white hits are important I think your Windfury and Shocks account for well more than half your damage on a boss and as such boosting AP or plus to magic damage would increase your dps in the end perhaps? Again never raided with an enhancement shaman so take this post with a grain of salt.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31031
Reward from a solo questline. Get rid of that worthless thing you're carrying around.
Howdy. I haven't posted in a while but I figured that I would respond here. Enhance keeps getting better and I'm glad some more people are enjoying it. Some things to remember as basic guidelines:
1. If your non-enhance talents are resto for the hit, you only need roughly 110-120 hit rating to be optimal.
2. Certain stats scale better than others in a raid situation (namely strength, as it is 1:2 for AP values and increases with kings, unlike pure AP.) In general you want to shoot for 23+ crit rating to keep a large SR up-time for your melee group and then start piling on the str.
3. Leather is not a sin. In fact, I am only missing one or two items (point system be damned) from end-game and they will leave me with maybe one mail piece. Leather is typically better designed for pure DPS stats, often times benefitting shamans more than rogues as lots of pieces will have straight AP and strength on the same piece, giving you more bang for your buck. I'm still itching to kill my t5 helm with a Visage of Sargeras.
4. Int and MP5 are totally useless, and as such most mail pieces (including t5 and parts of the PVP sets) are worthless to us. If you PvP as enhancement that's a whole other fish, but you have to wear the gear for resilience. T6 pieces are fairly clogged up with mp5 and Int, chewing up the item budget for more useful stats. With all the new mana conservation talents, I really have to try hard to even get past half mana before SR is back up. This includes twisting air totems and the proper 3s stormstriking with shocks on cooldown.
5. Slow/slow weapon setup is always better than Slow/fast, fast/fast, and fast/slow.
I'm sure I've rambled too much but if you want to hear some more enhance stuff shoot me a PM and I can link you to some heavy mathcraft or discuss gear choices etc.
What shit is different now? I'm wondering about talent specialization mostly. He was mostly elemental with some enh, zero resto. I play(ed) on a PvP server. I hear a lot of people speaking about Enh being good for leveling - that is essentially par for the course of what I remember.
I would prefer to keep elemental as my main talent tree if that is an option that doesn't suck. I imagine all the gear on him (i dont even remember what the hell I had) is going to be garbage now with the new expansion plus a year+ worth of new shit in the game so I'm going to have to consider that when i start off.
Im obviously gonna research sites and stuff, but I figured here might be a good place for info as well.
get to level 58 as soon as possible, don't worry about gear at all, once you're 58, head to the Blasted Lands and go through the Dark Portal, and never look back until level 70.
Every piece of gear you're wearing will be replaced by level 61-62 at the absolute latest.
It only kind of sucks. The problem with elemental is mostly that you can't damage elementals, an enemy you'll be seeing often in Outlands. Elemental is amazing at Seventy, though, especially for PVP. So if you're Enhance while you're leveling, I wouldn't worry about it too much - you'll be Elemental once again soon enough. Leveling elemental is doable, though, but you'll also be spending a lot of money water. That's not a huge deal, though.
But, to be honest, I think you should level how you want to. I leveled as Resto, and I still hit seventy. Other ways may be a bit faster, but being Resto made the grind somewhat tolerable for me, since I could switch things up and do instances to break the grind up a bit. So, really, it's up to you. Either way, you'll hit seventy.
As for the gear, I figure I'll go by what you said there, Dhalphir.
I never played Alliance back in the day.... and now that they can be shamans its going to be interesting seeing what its like to fight against them.
and you won't need to do instances to get it.
its more like...hey, go kill five boars. Done? heres a staff of total pwnage
nice
My two buddies are starting new characters so now I have to think of a new guy to make in addition to using my existing shammy....
hmm
Not nearly as terrifying as it once was. Those days are gone :-(
Massive Crystal Cavern!
A fast 1.8 dagger with a weapon DPS more than 30 points more than some scrub green 2.6 mace is STILL a DPS loss, due to windfury mechanics. The exact numbers I'm not sure, but I've had faster weapons at least 25 base DPS higher that cause character DPS to drop. The mechanic is that busted.
Slow a weapon as possible in both hands as enhance.
And if that's thew case, does Flurry matter since it would screw with the weapon speed?
This is my first character in two years, by the way, so I'm struggling to shove everything back into my head.
Me.
Actually, I'm level 30. I don't know why my level 20 stuff shows up for me.
The weapon imbue is what you want. The totem is awful compared to the imbue.
Let me refer you to the enhancement bible:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13297-enhance_shaman_collected_works_theorycraft_vol_i/
The relevant bit here:
Windfury Weapon was corrected in the 2.1 patch link Windfury on the main and off hands. At some point prior to that, a hidden/internal 3 second cooldown had been added to Windfury Weapon. As a result, OH procs now (correctly) trigger the cooldown on the MH. Despite this set back to shaman DPS (net loss of about 10-15% DPS for enhancement shaman), Windfury Weapon is still the best weapon imbue to use – even the developers admitted to as much in an IRC chat, when they said they have no intention to scale the other weapon imbues to match the power of Windfury. [
And:
Do not use WF Totem instead of WF Weapon on your MH. While you may ~think~ it will help you avoid the WF cooldown problem, the totem isn't providing anywhere near the benefit you'll get from the weapon imbue.
WF Totem has the following issues: no elemental weapons bonus (40% multiple), only one extra attack (200% multiple), lesser AP bonus (scalar). Each MH WF Totem hit would be 100% extra damage or so compared to a normal attack, and has only one chance of proc'ing flurry, any weapon procs, and UR. Each MH WF imbue hit would be 280% extra damage or so compare to a normal attack, and has 2 chances of proc'ing those things.
In a very very simplified way of looking at it, you'd have to proc MH WF 2.8 as many times using the totem as you do using the imbue, for it to be worth it.
Weapon Speeds play an important role in maximizing DPS from Windfury procs. The goal is to chain WF procs every 3 seconds, as soon as each cooldown ends. Both the OH and the MH need to be as slow as possible to achieve this(they do not need to be matched in speed, just as slow as you can get it). The idea is to reduce the number of swings made during the time that windfury is on cooldown. Since the cooldown is 3 seconds, weapons speeds are preferred to be close to that speed, generally this means 2.6 - 2.8 under current itemization. The idea is that a faster weapon would proc a WF, and then strike again within the cooldown window, which means that windfury would exit cooldown and your weapon would still be on some significant portion of its swing timer, unable to proc another WF.
Many shaman will correctly use a slow MH weapon but use a fast OH such as a dagger, generally because its easier to find fast OHs than slow ones. This combination however means that your OH is much more likely to be the first one to hit outside of a WF cooldown and will "steal" the potential chance to proc, placing your main hand on lockdown. In order to maximize the potential for MH procs the OH needs to be as slow as possible.
What about Flurry?
Also, while the hidden timer is a part of the slow/slow weapon issue, some of it is that Windfury strikes are not normalized, and so benefit from slower weapon speeds. I don't think the bonus is reduced by flurry or other haste buffs.
Massive Crystal Cavern!
nope, weapon damage stays the same, and is not affected by haste. so a weap that does 300-400 damage a swing at 2.6 speed base still does 300-400 damage even if you have the swing time hasted and flurried down to 1.0 speed.
I am leveling so stuck with Enhance right now (can't stand drinking) but Ele looks like a great spec for 70, our shamans are always playing with different raid specs (and I as a rogue keep whispering the word "enhance") but the Ele one does great damage.
This is a levelling shaman with mediocre gear? I would be very surprised if elemental shaman didnt drink at least a fair amount more than enhancement, and I probably don't go more than 20 mobs without drinking there, partly because I want to be able to actually use skills sometimes.
But I would just hate doing solo pve without pushback protection on a caster.
Yes, my Shaman is 66 and just gear from quests I've done solo plus a Blade of Trapped Knowledge I bought at AH for 40g. You don't really notice the pushback when most things die before they get to you and lightning bolt is a 2 second cast. It only really sucks vs. more than one dual wielding mob, and even then you're likely to get crit for Eye of the Storm.
edit: With water shield I have 75 m/5, 2 lightning bolts in 4 secs costs 468 mana IF you don't get a clearcast proc, and that 75 m/5 jumps considerably when you count any hits you take with water shield on. I barely drink at all unless in an instance.
editx2: Also there's earthbind and frost shock if you really don't feel like being meleed.