So what's the general spell usage and strategy when leveling up as elemental in Outland? I've respecced an alt of mine now that he's 60, picked up a few of the mail casting pieces from the quests in Hellfire along with a few random AH greens to fill in some gaps. He's still got a few leftover pieces from his enh days. So far, I'm just spamming LB like mad praying for crits and the mob dies before he kills me. If I get an add, it's usually a race between their poundings and the amount of health a potion gives me. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Here's the thing though. I'm fairly ok until the mob runs into melee range with me. If I get a lucky crit in there, the mob is going to die by the next LB that I cast through the pushback. However, if I don't crit, the pushback from getting hit causes me to take so much damage while trying to get the next 2 or 3 LBs that need to hit to kill. I've now put rank1 frost shock on a hotkey to hit the mob and get a bit of distance which helps but still usually only gets me enough time to get one more lightning bolt off. What's everyone's strategy to deal with spell pushback on their elemental shammy? I guess I'm just too used to being able to freeze an enemy in place with a mage that I'm not sure what to do with the shaman to counter it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited February 2008
Even with the mob beating on you, causing a lot of pushback, you shouldn't be anywhere near dying. Maybe you've just got shit for gear?
Like I said, this alt just turned 60 and is only geared in the first set of elemental gear from HFP and a few AH greens to fill in the gaps in gear that I haven't picked up yet. He's sitting about like 10% spell crit and 150 spell damage. So basically the situation will get better as I gear him up huh?
Generally what I've done, leveling elemental, is this, for pulls that I can control:
LB, LB, Frost shock (max rank), run for roughly 1/2 FS's duration, lb, FS, repeat last 3 steps until dead.
I'm a bit overgeared right now (120ish nature damage at level 50, woo) in the damage department, but usually a mob doesn't survive to make me frost shock a second time. Contingent on crits and overload, sometimes they don't even need a frost shock.
However, Hellfire Peninsula is by far the hardest zone in outland, at level. It's kind of the ooooo look outland is haerd kind of zone - I've noticed this on both of my toons that have gone through, but didn't really think about it until someone else pointed it out as they leveled. If you look at how far away mobs aggro on you there, it's really disproportionate, and they hit scarily hard, or at least unusually hard.
Liquid GhostDO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered Userregular
edited February 2008
So according to the patch notes, Nature's Swiftness and Elemental Mastery now share a ten second cooldown, which I suppose is there to further cut down on the "out of control" shaman burst DPS in arenas. In turn, Ghost Wolf had its cast time reduced by one second. I'm assuming that this means Imp. Ghost Wolf makes the skill instant. A shame it's just deep enough in Enhancement to ensure that your usual Ele/Resto or plain Resto PvP shaman isn't going to sacrifice better things to get it.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, there's a Restoration spec that drops five or so points into Enhancement, but I'm not sure what you'd need to cannibalize from the other trees, which are already tightly allocated, and just how much of a benefit instant GW would bring over whatever it is you're throwing away in order to have it.
Ghostwolf can be cast while in combat which makes it nice if you really need to run away. Outside of that I really don't see why people would want a decreased cast time for it; rather I didn't put points in that talent while leveling but do other shaman?
I'd really like it to be turned into a talent titled 'Spirit of the Wolf' that does something with agility and spirit. I'd hope they could make healing gear with spirit useful as I really don't see why a shaman would want spirit. It might even provide a bit more synergy between the enhancement and restoration tree (aside from Ancestral Knowledge and Mental Quickness).
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Liquid GhostDO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered Userregular
edited February 2008
I guess the change allows for a bit more leeway when it comes to escaping from melee or chasing down a flag carrier, but unless it removes snares or does anything besides increase movement speed, which can be countered with ease, I'm not seeing, say, a Restoration shaman give up Guardian Totems or whatever.
Regardless of that, my own shaman will enjoy it, since he's Enhancement and I never got around to re-specing out of the talent.
Isn't Imp Ghostwolf only 2 more points than you'd spend in enh as resto anyway? Also instant cast makes me happy.
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Liquid GhostDO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered Userregular
edited February 2008
It's only two, sure, but those two may be better spent elsewhere, especially if you're spread out fairly thinly and you've stuck with only what you absolutely must have. Taking points out of any of that for an instant cast on a form of travel that can be shut down extremely easily, even before you shift, doesn't seem like it'd be worth the sacrifice.
I figure I'll give it a shot, though, and see how things work out. Enough feedback will be flooding in within the next couple of weeks, anyway.
I really like the idea of ghost wolf being instant and it removing root/polymorph/movement impairing effects like a druid shape shifting does. I think this would seriously even things out when it comes to healing in arenas. I'm a resto shaman and it's so frustrating that we can be CCed so easily.
With this, a resto shaman would have to decide whether he would want Eye Of The Storm (no casting interruption after victim of critical strike) or the option of being harder to CC. I'd like this a lot and feel it's a fair trade off.
wait, ghost wolf just got an instant, it still doesn't remove roots/snares, or does it?
that being said, jes that would be awesome. leveling enhancenent shammy, the thing that annoys me the most is snares/roots against heavy hitting casters. I can imagine this is much much worse in pvp when people KNOW what they're doing (and I remember how effective CoEx is against shammys when I'm on my lock :P)
Kalgan is still chatting on the WoWhineplay Shaman board. He's pretty much shot down any hopes of a shaman CC. He's making the bizarre argument that Shaman aren't the only class without one...
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Kalgan is still chatting on the WoWhineplay Shaman board. He's pretty much shot down any hopes of a shaman CC. He's making the bizarre argument that Shaman aren't the only class without one...
Paladins have pretty pathetic CC.
Certainly no better than Shaman's Frost Shock/Earth Shock. And do Shaman get Earthbind totem or is that an NPC only totem?
Kalgan is still chatting on the WoWhineplay Shaman board. He's pretty much shot down any hopes of a shaman CC. He's making the bizarre argument that Shaman aren't the only class without one...
Paladins have pretty pathetic CC.
Certainly no better than Shaman's Frost Shock/Earth Shock. And do Shaman get Earthbind totem or is that an NPC only totem?
Shaman get Earthbind, but it's not always much help because most of the time you get hamstrung/wingclipped/frostbolted/whatever other snare here or stunned anyway.
Edit: If you're thinking about Earthgrab (the one with the roots that grab you) i'm pretty sure that's npc only.
Kalgan is still chatting on the WoWhineplay Shaman board. He's pretty much shot down any hopes of a shaman CC. He's making the bizarre argument that Shaman aren't the only class without one...
Paladins have pretty pathetic CC.
Certainly no better than Shaman's Frost Shock/Earth Shock. And do Shaman get Earthbind totem or is that an NPC only totem?
Yeah, that's a whole lot of nonsense. Pallies get one stun (a goodun, tho), one snare, and a potential incapacitate, if they spec into it. But they also get a heckuva alot of snare/CC immunity.
Shammies get... two snares and tremor totem.
Priests get a really lousy fear, and MC, but they can dispel some snares on themselves. So they are slightly better off. (and chastise, lol).
I always feel when fighting shammies is that it isnt the lack of CC which sucks, it's that once you have a CC on them they have no way out.
that'sthe way I felt when I played shaman. Fuck magic, just toss a net on us and we'll never find our way out. I mean every class has a way to either close a gap, or get out of a snare or hold or what have you.
So, how crazy was this burst damage, and was it good enough that we'd start seeing shamans on these tournaments they have for the professional players? I'm not sure what they're called, but they usually post the results/info on the main wow website, and it's usually all the same teams. I don't remember seeing a shaman on any of the teams roster.
CC wise, the game has way too much, but that's the route blizzard choose and they need to give everybody a fair shot, imo.
Also - purge was a targeted dispel in WC3, right? (removed friendly harmful/removed hostile beneficial)
Purge in WC3 was a targeted dispel on enemies only(I think) and it also reduced their movement speed by 70% I think.
yeah, but they seperated those two functions out, purge for an offensive dispel, frostshock for the attack + snare. It would be kinda silly to make an offensive dispel also a snare or an attack. Blizzard would never combine a dispel with an attack, even if it weren't spammable.
Anything at 3.0 or over is fine, you aren't going to be permanently flurried while leveling anyway, so most of your swings with a 3.0 weapon will be outside of the cooldown.
Is it conceivable to be a main healer for 5-man dungeons all the way from Deadmines through Outland? What (beyond the obvious speccing resto and collecting +int gear) do I need to keep in mind? What's the best combination of totems to use?
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Is it conceivable to be a main healer for 5-man dungeons all the way from Deadmines through Outland? What (beyond the obvious speccing resto and collecting +int gear) do I need to keep in mind? What's the best combination of totems to use?
Shouldn't have any problems. I hope you have a reliable and consistent group to run instances with though, because if you have to level solo with a resto spec you will quickly begin to hate yourself.
As far as totems, Str of Earth is always good, mana spring is always good. Shouldn't need any fire totems ever until resists start to matter. That leaves your air slot, which will be between windfury and grace of air. Hunters always want GoA, Warriors always want WF, and I've found rogues split but usually prefer WF.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited February 2008
Water Shield for DW Enhancement Shamans is huge. Prior to Water Shield at Level 62 I had to equip a bunch of +Int gear to allow my feeble Mana supply to last an entire fight, but now as long as I remember to keep the Big Blue Ball flying it's rare to finish a combat without mana bar at full. Which in turn allows me to equip all that neato Hunter +Agility, +Crit, +Stam gear and perform much butt-kicking.
My strenuous recommendation is to plan your Enhancement Talent Tree to not include +Mana abilities past level 61. You won't need them, trust me.
So, how crazy was this burst damage, and was it good enough that we'd start seeing shamans on these tournaments they have for the professional players? I'm not sure what they're called, but they usually post the results/info on the main wow website, and it's usually all the same teams. I don't remember seeing a shaman on any of the teams roster.
CC wise, the game has way too much, but that's the route blizzard choose and they need to give everybody a fair shot, imo.
Also - purge was a targeted dispel in WC3, right? (removed friendly harmful/removed hostile beneficial)
Sorry for the late response, but the EM - CL - NS/LB [macro] ES combo was between 6 and 8k over 4 seconds or so. 8k with very, very generous crits. PI boosted that, obviously. Usually, I'd ignore that high risk combo and go straight LB [wait for crit] EM/NS/3400 CL [macro] + ES. If you're close to a melee you could drop a nova totem as well, but usually you'd miss or they'd kill it. When it did hit it was nasty.
Of course, if a mage caught you during that opening CL, or you were silenced in any other way (pummeled kicked silencing shot spell lock ES etc), your burst suddenly wasn't as bursty. Or you could be CCed.
Which happened all the time. At the 1900 bracket I was afraid to even consider exposing my nature tree.
So in reality, about half of a warriors health in an absolutely perfect situation where you are blazing spells off, completely untouched.
Many other abilities are strong in WoW. There was no legitimate reason for this nerf. Kalgan stated that the idea was to rebalance the elemental shaman without "one-dimensional burst damage," which, unfortunately, is all that build really had.
I've done some PTR testing and enhancement has really been improved. I don't know if it will cut the mustard in PvP, but for PvE I was a farming machine, literally never running out of mana.
Resto might become god's gift, depending on what they do with ghost wolf. Instacast is nice, but if it breaks snares, it'll be unreal. I'll be speccing 0/7/54 or 0/9/52 immediately. That won't happen though.
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LB, LB, Frost shock (max rank), run for roughly 1/2 FS's duration, lb, FS, repeat last 3 steps until dead.
I'm a bit overgeared right now (120ish nature damage at level 50, woo) in the damage department, but usually a mob doesn't survive to make me frost shock a second time. Contingent on crits and overload, sometimes they don't even need a frost shock.
However, Hellfire Peninsula is by far the hardest zone in outland, at level. It's kind of the ooooo look outland is haerd kind of zone - I've noticed this on both of my toons that have gone through, but didn't really think about it until someone else pointed it out as they leveled. If you look at how far away mobs aggro on you there, it's really disproportionate, and they hit scarily hard, or at least unusually hard.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, there's a Restoration spec that drops five or so points into Enhancement, but I'm not sure what you'd need to cannibalize from the other trees, which are already tightly allocated, and just how much of a benefit instant GW would bring over whatever it is you're throwing away in order to have it.
I'd really like it to be turned into a talent titled 'Spirit of the Wolf' that does something with agility and spirit. I'd hope they could make healing gear with spirit useful as I really don't see why a shaman would want spirit. It might even provide a bit more synergy between the enhancement and restoration tree (aside from Ancestral Knowledge and Mental Quickness).
Regardless of that, my own shaman will enjoy it, since he's Enhancement and I never got around to re-specing out of the talent.
I figure I'll give it a shot, though, and see how things work out. Enough feedback will be flooding in within the next couple of weeks, anyway.
But when you have over 10k MP unbuffed without it, burn it in a fire.
With this, a resto shaman would have to decide whether he would want Eye Of The Storm (no casting interruption after victim of critical strike) or the option of being harder to CC. I'd like this a lot and feel it's a fair trade off.
that being said, jes that would be awesome. leveling enhancenent shammy, the thing that annoys me the most is snares/roots against heavy hitting casters. I can imagine this is much much worse in pvp when people KNOW what they're doing (and I remember how effective CoEx is against shammys when I'm on my lock :P)
Paladins have pretty pathetic CC.
Certainly no better than Shaman's Frost Shock/Earth Shock. And do Shaman get Earthbind totem or is that an NPC only totem?
Shaman get Earthbind, but it's not always much help because most of the time you get hamstrung/wingclipped/frostbolted/whatever other snare here or stunned anyway.
Edit: If you're thinking about Earthgrab (the one with the roots that grab you) i'm pretty sure that's npc only.
Yeah, that's a whole lot of nonsense. Pallies get one stun (a goodun, tho), one snare, and a potential incapacitate, if they spec into it. But they also get a heckuva alot of snare/CC immunity.
Shammies get... two snares and tremor totem.
Priests get a really lousy fear, and MC, but they can dispel some snares on themselves. So they are slightly better off. (and chastise, lol).
Edit: Nonsense from the CM guy, I mean.
CC wise, the game has way too much, but that's the route blizzard choose and they need to give everybody a fair shot, imo.
Also - purge was a targeted dispel in WC3, right? (removed friendly harmful/removed hostile beneficial)
yeah, but they seperated those two functions out, purge for an offensive dispel, frostshock for the attack + snare. It would be kinda silly to make an offensive dispel also a snare or an attack. Blizzard would never combine a dispel with an attack, even if it weren't spammable.
He was being snarky. So yes.
hot dickings!
Is it conceivable to be a main healer for 5-man dungeons all the way from Deadmines through Outland? What (beyond the obvious speccing resto and collecting +int gear) do I need to keep in mind? What's the best combination of totems to use?
-So sayeth the wise Alaundo
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Shouldn't have any problems. I hope you have a reliable and consistent group to run instances with though, because if you have to level solo with a resto spec you will quickly begin to hate yourself.
As far as totems, Str of Earth is always good, mana spring is always good. Shouldn't need any fire totems ever until resists start to matter. That leaves your air slot, which will be between windfury and grace of air. Hunters always want GoA, Warriors always want WF, and I've found rogues split but usually prefer WF.
My strenuous recommendation is to plan your Enhancement Talent Tree to not include +Mana abilities past level 61. You won't need them, trust me.
Sorry for the late response, but the EM - CL - NS/LB [macro] ES combo was between 6 and 8k over 4 seconds or so. 8k with very, very generous crits. PI boosted that, obviously. Usually, I'd ignore that high risk combo and go straight LB [wait for crit] EM/NS/3400 CL [macro] + ES. If you're close to a melee you could drop a nova totem as well, but usually you'd miss or they'd kill it. When it did hit it was nasty.
Of course, if a mage caught you during that opening CL, or you were silenced in any other way (pummeled kicked silencing shot spell lock ES etc), your burst suddenly wasn't as bursty. Or you could be CCed.
Which happened all the time. At the 1900 bracket I was afraid to even consider exposing my nature tree.
So in reality, about half of a warriors health in an absolutely perfect situation where you are blazing spells off, completely untouched.
Many other abilities are strong in WoW. There was no legitimate reason for this nerf. Kalgan stated that the idea was to rebalance the elemental shaman without "one-dimensional burst damage," which, unfortunately, is all that build really had.
I've done some PTR testing and enhancement has really been improved. I don't know if it will cut the mustard in PvP, but for PvE I was a farming machine, literally never running out of mana.
Resto might become god's gift, depending on what they do with ghost wolf. Instacast is nice, but if it breaks snares, it'll be unreal. I'll be speccing 0/7/54 or 0/9/52 immediately. That won't happen though.
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