stupid shaman ideas

[rk47]

I've just hit 65 .
After playing Enchant DW Spec from 1-62, and then Resto 62-64. I decided to give Elemental a spin.
The recent free cast on crit patch was awesome and it got me thinking, maybe I should really ditch everything including mail armour all for the sake of crit?

In my eyes, spell crits give me: dps, effeciency and even gives me decent heal bombs when I'm needed to heal in a pinch.
Oh, btw, here's my planned spec:  41/0/20
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents.html?5500014500001535105100000000000000000000005032300205000000000

It's not a PVP build, it's more focused on PVE Grind & Instance runs.

SO back to topic:
In my eyes, spell crits give me: dps, effeciency and even gives me decent heal bombs when I'm needed to heal in a pinch.

My questions are:
How do I control my aggro? I haven't taken this guy on an instance run so far, but it's pretty scary seeing bolt critting...triggering an overload...which crits too followed by another crit from the supposedly 2nd bolt I cast after the 1st one? Do I downgear my crit % a bit?

Seeing Ancestral Healing description got me thinking, whenever a heal crit. ANY heal spell crit...it boosts my tank armour by 15% ....so would it be silly of me to just spam the odd lvl 1 lesser heal wave after 2-3 Lightning bolts during raid? (This is my pathetic attempt to reduce aggro btw: Stop bolting, n heal a bit)

Would it be stupid sacrifcing mail armour for better stat leather / cloth?
The tradeoff to +Spell Crit seems to be stamina in most green items...which leaves me with 3800+ HP at lvl 65. Is this bad? I'm staring at 19% Crit rate though.

[WindupAtheist]

Roll a mage.

[Shrike]

Or a boomkin. At least then you'd have root.

I saw this same sort of reasoning when I played my fury warrior. Wear mail and leather for crit% or whathave you. Bad idea. You want that armor. You have no way to keep things at range. Ugly things are going to get in your face and beat on you. Wear your mail. There's a LOT out there with elemental stats. Crit can be a little hard to come by, but all the crit in the world won't help if you get steamrolled the first time something with blood in it's eye gets to melee range of you. Clothies get hit HARD. There's a big difference between 35% mitigation and 15%.

Of course, some will say that in raids it won't matter, and they're generally correct, but I still felt uncomfortable in downgraded armor types. Even on raids I had a lot of "squeaker" moments when I'd pull aggro or catch some nasty cleaves. If I'd have been wearing leather or mail I'd have been toast. When not on raids (most of my time), I still was doing things that had me on my own and I'd get beat on--a lot. More armor is always a good thing. I don't see it being any different on a shaman (but I AM still enhance...).

[Shavnir]

Tidal focus over improved healing wave?

[rk47]

Hmm

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents.html?5500014500001535105000000000000000000000052030300205010000000

I don't really aim to be the main healer, just the off healer..when needed.

So I changed a few things. During solo grinds...I hardly used the 41 talent totem of wrath +3% Spell Crit, since Searing Totem would do more dmg. I decided to grab Nature's Swiftness to help healing in a pinch, insta cast Healing Wave with trinket turned on would hopefully be enough to save a dying tank.

40/0/21 is it. Tidal focus is the synergy I'm aiming for to maximise my Elemental dps, cause whenever I crit it's a free spell chain lightning on next cast. or whatever damage I wanted to toss out. It's a good deal imo. 5%+ crit on heal is also awesome with my plan of spamming the odd lvl 1 lesser heal wave to buff 15% of tank armour. (have not tested). Crit means DPS & Effeciency. So I really wanted to have more. I thought Totem of Wrath 3% Crit for 1 Talent point would be great...but can't really justify losing my searing totem dps when soloing...but I have not tested it during raids...so I'm not very sure.

http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/index.php?module=see&l=uk&code=56a5bd24dc48a74676285b1f523d0b47

[Shavnir]

I would be hesitant with Healing Grace and Nature's Guidance over Healing Focus but that mostly depends on what situations you will be doing with this spec.

With the abundance of random adds and AOEs having 'faster' (while under fire) heals sounds like it would be very helpful to me, but admittedly giving up threat reduction would kind of suck.  As for the spell and melee hit that can be mitigated some with gear, but I know how hard it is to find enough spellhit gear to max out for +3 level targets these days (I'm maybe 3/4ths of the way there, but I've made a couple +dmg sacrifices).

When soloing or what have you don't forget you can always NS + Lightning or whatever. ;)

[Morfiend]

My friend is a kick ass Elemental shaman, and this is how he does his Resto tree. Your ele tree looks decent.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents.html?5500014500001535105000000000000000000000005230050005010000000

Basically improved healing wave is no good. You want to be using your quicker heal, and downranking. Also, you want the Crit chance to spells, not the hit chance.

Enjoy.

[MrHat]

My friend is a kick ass Elemental shaman, and this is how he does his Resto tree. Your ele tree looks decent.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents.html?5500014500001535105000000000000000000000005230050005010000000

Basically improved healing wave is no good. You want to be using your quicker heal, and downranking. Also, you want the Crit chance to spells, not the hit chance.

Enjoy.

That's true as an offhealer.

[Morfiend]

Yeah, but thats all a Full ele shaman will be is an off healer. A ele shaman just doesnt have the mana pool or heal size to Main heal a heroic, or possibly even one of the level 70 5 mans.

[rk47]

 make stoneclaw pulse = stun & aggro for 3 sec ?
Or...
Ice shield = Ice trap effect when hit.30 second freeze effect. Breaks on hit. 30 second cooldown.
Replace Lightning Shield Mastery Talent on Enchantment Tree with
Elemental Shield Mastery
Lightning Shield does 10/20/30% more dmg  <----Solo DPS Option & PVP
Water Shield gives 10/20/30% more mana Reduce aggro when hit?<----this should be our new aggro management? Non talent W-Shield have added effect of reduced aggro?
Ice Shield cooldown reduced by 2/4/6 seconds <----CC Option for PVP?
Earth shield heals for 5/10/15% more <---Some love for resto shamans.

Comments? I'm just bored I guess. And seeing nothing attractive on Enchant aside from +5% Mana total when re-speccing to Elemental is a bit strange.

[Rasix]

Couldn't add this to any of the old shaman threads?

Edit: Did it for you.  Try harder next time.

[Kail]

Somewhat off topic:

My shaman just hit 62, and he's my highest character (stop laughing) so I'm kind of reluctant to reroll, but he seems to be getting the crap kicked out of him pretty badly. Mostly what he does is solo questing, but I sometimes run him through 5-mans.  He's 41 enhancement, the rest (13?) in restoration.  He originally had awful gear, and at first I thought that was the problem, but now he's run a few quests and upgraded almost everything since hitting outland and he's still having trouble.  I can win most of the time against even con mobs, but I end up having to burn through close to half my mana on most fights, which has me quaffing an unholy volume of water.

So, what I'm wondering is, am I doing something wrong, or is this how Shamans are supposed to be played?  My Druid can generally go through two or three even cons before he has to pop a single heal, and my Warlock almost never gets hit at all (they're only in their late thirties/early forties, though), but my Shaman is getting pummeled.  I thought that enhancement looked like the most efficient tree for soloing, but if I'm still having to constantly throw out shocks and heals every couple of seconds, would respeccing to elemental or restoration be better?

[SurfD]

what is your gear like? and do you have shamanistic rage / dualwielding yet?

My shaman is 64, with rather good gear. dual wielding 2 of the Thrallmar rep 1h axes and popping shamanistic rage whenever it was up usually let me chew through even or +1 / +2 cons pretty easily.  granted, i probbaly dont have as much mana issues as a strait outland geared shaman.  I have a number of blue / epic pieces from pre expantion 20 man stuff with good int or mp5, that had Str for attack power.   I dislike most of the outlands green gear since it seems to skimp either on Stam or Int and go more for +ag / +ap.

Might also depend on what you are killing.  I absolutely HATE hellboars / ravagers, since due to the mele damage shield they have (think thorns) i do nearly as much damage to myself as they do to me.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/?#character-sheet.xml?r=Tichondrius&n=Incarna

Got a nice boe blue helm for level 65 too.

Also, i should mention that i havent played her for a while, so im not sure how the recent change to winfury chain proccing will have effected her.  I used to run with WF on main hand, WF one rank lower on offhand, but i might change offhand to Rockbiter or flametongue

[Kail]

Ooh, right, I forgot I can do that Armory stuff:

Malhoof

Except that the weapon I normally use is a Heart Fire Warhammer.

I do have both dual wielding and shamanistic rage, but my two-handers seem to be better than the one-handed greens I've been getting, so mostly I've been using two handed weapons.  Shamanistic rage doesn't seem to be making much of a difference when I use it, either (partly because I keep having to heal right in the middle of it).  My gear isn't great (shoulders and boots, especially), but I don't see much better available yet.  It just seems like I'm taking an awful lot of damage, and as a result spending an awful lot of time in combat throwing healing waves on myself.

[rk47]

it goes downhill for Enchant shammy in Outlands...the mobs hit harder and have more HP. Sometimes they have a stun ability that drags on a fight.
I re-specced to Elemental shammy and never looked back. I wasn't happy with the instance performance either, the amount of aggro a lucky windfury generate will kill the shaman almost everytime. We don't have any aggro reduction ability, coupled with random factor of Windfury, I rather do 2 sec 1k dmg Lightning Bolt and able to off heal when needed.

[SurfD]

i would say, if you are planning on sticking with enhancement, that you need to a: get a bit more stam and +ap gear, and b: definately go with dualwielding 2 relatively fast weapons.  The thrallmar rep ones i am using are pretty much perfect, but some of the 1 handed quest daggers work just as well.  The key being that stormstrike benefits more from 2 weapons then 1 weapon, and that Shamanistic rage is a Per hit based chance, so 2 fast weapons = way more chances for SR procs when it is runing = much more mana returned (and since SR returns mana as a percentage of your AP, more ab = better)

[Rasix]

I'm really starting to dislike my shaman now that I'm almost done leveling my druild.  Feral spec makes enhancement look pathetic.  Feral kills just as fast, has crazy survivability, and doesn't leak mana.  Shamanistic rage is nice, but it's just a bandaid for a class/spec problem.  The 40 point talent really should have been another melee attack.

I'll likely go to either elemental or *ack* resto just so I have a healer when people in the guild need one. At least my feral druid can control his aggro, tank, and do DPS that isn't purely based on a 20% success rate diceroll. Ugg, the caster gear has barely been upgrades for what I've been getting as I level. I still have most of my T2 as non-enhance gear.

I'm not even going to take him out PVPing. If his survivability is this poor just PVEing, I can't imagine being anything more than an easily swatted away shock troop. 

   I was happier with this spec before I leveled a druid. 

As for your issue: you simply need to go dual wield and pump your crit %/AP.  Your crit % is really far, far too low to get any sort of decent production out of enhance.

[MrHat]

heh Rasix, that almost made me cancel my account just now.  I'm having some, uh, issues with WoW at the moment.

Hitting the wall and all that. 

[Rasix]

heh Rasix, that almost made me cancel my account just now.  I'm having some, uh, issues with WoW at the moment.

Hitting the wall and all that. 

Sorry about that.  I'm still enjoying myself in the game, except that my guild has seemed to have vanished.  My realm seems to be low pop, so my options are very limited if this guild falls apart (the two founders quit due to IRL issues) since other casual guilds seem to have already dissolved.

I'm just kind of bitter that my friend ended up being right about shaman.  The class, IMO, has not scaled well to 70.  Why would you pick a shaman over any other class (I'll admit, I don't know much about how elemental performs in 5 man instances)? I suppose the various specs have good raid synergy, but seem to be poor if left on their own. I have no desires to raid.

Gah, ohh well.  Back to my druid.  ><

[Miasma]

I miss the old official forum Horde Shaman VS Alliance Paladin are overpowered threads.  Now that the Alliance have Shaman and can plainly see Paladins are more useful they have pretty much shut the hell up.  I see tonnes of belf Paladins running around but a Draenei Shaman is a very rare sight.  I imagine Blizzard will get around to buffing Shaman at some point.

[Phred]

   I was happier with this spec before I leveled a druid. 

Druids really got a good going over in the expansion dispite all the subsequent nerfs. You wouldn't feel this way if you had tried to level a druid pre-2.0 changes. My druid went from one of my least played alts to my favorite Now all we need is that kind of reimagining for a few other weak classes and for them to survive the subsequent nerfs.

[Nonentity]

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents.html?5500011503021535100000000000000000000000050032251005010000000

This is the build I use for PvE and PvP elemental, while still retaining enough of a healing build to throw on +healing gear. Finished Karazhan and Gruul's Lair so far with this build, no real problems (did both Healing and Elemental on both).

It's basically a modification of the below build - http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents.html?5500014500001535105000000000000000000000005230050005010000000 - but with the following changes:

- From 4 points in improved shock to 1 point. It is utterly and completely not worth it to max out this talent - a shaman's main damage now is going to come from crits, which is lightning bolt and chain lightning. You want to have the slight edge on insta-cast timers, hence the 1 point.

- Those three points were re-allocated to Eye of the Storm. 100% chance of no interrupted spellcast when crit is absolutely necessary for pvp for getting heals off.

- Lightning Overload. I took the 5 points out of there, because the chance isn't that high, and could be re-allocated to things that give a better overall well-balanced build.

- 5 out of tidal focus, 5 into improved healing wave - At higher levels, with all the mana over 5 you have from blessings and whatnot, mana efficiency isn't a problem, but making sure you get heals off as soon as possible is. Being able to get them off as fast as possible is important.

- 2 out of improved reincarnation, 2 into totemic focus - Reincarnation is used so rarely in PvP, and in PvE, you usually have a warlock. Points are better spent reducing slightly the mana cost of totems, which are used constantly.

- Totemic Mastery - having a 40 yard range is absolutely necessary, in both PvP and PvE. Paladin auras by default are 40 yards, shamans are 30 yards.

- 2 points in nature's guidance - If you're going to be doing Elemental damage in PvE, you want as little opportunity to get resisted as possible.

[Merusk]

I miss the old official forum Horde Shaman VS Alliance Paladin are overpowered threads.  Now that the Alliance have Shaman and can plainly see Paladins are more useful they have pretty much shut the hell up.  I see tonnes of belf Paladins running around but a Draenei Shaman is a very rare sight.  I imagine Blizzard will get around to buffing Shaman at some point.

Funny, I see the exact opposite on my server.  Tons of Shaman but very vew B. Elf Pallies.

Then, you also have to remember that the casuals will take a long time levelling-up chars as it's going to be a secondary character.  Most of the Shaman are in their 40s and 50s these days. (with my 2-days /played just hitting 32).   

I'd be interested in seeing the distribution on one of the newer servers.  Time to go find wowcensus again..

[MrHat]

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents.html?5500011503021535100000000000000000000000050032251005010000000

This is the build I use for PvE and PvP elemental, while still retaining enough of a healing build to throw on +healing gear. Finished Karazhan and Gruul's Lair so far with this build, no real problems (did both Healing and Elemental on both).

It's basically a modification of the below build - http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents.html?5500014500001535105000000000000000000000005230050005010000000 - but with the following changes:

- From 4 points in improved shock to 1 point. It is utterly and completely not worth it to max out this talent - a shaman's main damage now is going to come from crits, which is lightning bolt and chain lightning. You want to have the slight edge on insta-cast timers, hence the 1 point.

- Those three points were re-allocated to Eye of the Storm. 100% chance of no interrupted spellcast when crit is absolutely necessary for pvp for getting heals off.

- Lightning Overload. I took the 5 points out of there, because the chance isn't that high, and could be re-allocated to things that give a better overall well-balanced build.

- 5 out of tidal focus, 5 into improved healing wave - At higher levels, with all the mana over 5 you have from blessings and whatnot, mana efficiency isn't a problem, but making sure you get heals off as soon as possible is. Being able to get them off as fast as possible is important.

- 2 out of improved reincarnation, 2 into totemic focus - Reincarnation is used so rarely in PvP, and in PvE, you usually have a warlock. Points are better spent reducing slightly the mana cost of totems, which are used constantly.

- Totemic Mastery - having a 40 yard range is absolutely necessary, in both PvP and PvE. Paladin auras by default are 40 yards, shamans are 30 yards.

- 2 points in nature's guidance - If you're going to be doing Elemental damage in PvE, you want as little opportunity to get resisted as possible.

Non- good build, it's what I would've done if I hadn't fucked my ass with 2 weapons at once.  I was an elemental PVP shaman before TBC came out, should've stuck with it.

Why so much +hit though?

[Nonentity]

Non- good build, it's what I would've done if I hadn't fucked my ass with 2 weapons at once.  I was an elemental PVP shaman before TBC came out, should've stuck with it.

Why so much +hit though?

I stack the +hit in talents, so I don't need to worry about +hit for my PvE gear at all, I can just stack +crit on my gear (stam heavy for pvp, and int/mp5 on my pve).