elementalFollow

Ok ive read this about ehnhanc shamen resto shamen but not alot of elemental...
is it hard to level elemetal shamen i herd people tell me go enhance.. tell 60 then go resto or ele....is ele even good......ive respec my shamen 4x and im getting broke lol seeing the diffrence.....so can someone link me anything usefull or help me fig this out......I just want to have fun and do dmg and not worry about getting my *** kicked on a pvp server....
please excuse my spelling

It's not hard to level elemental but there are things to consider. For one getting gear is a little more difficult as you won't see a lot of '+spell damage' gear until higher levels. The other thing is down time. Because you are elemental your attacks are all spells. Spells = mana. And Shamans have a low mana pool so you will find yourself sitting down a lot to resupply your mana pool. And a elemental Shaman with no mana is a dead Shaman.

This is the reason most people say to level enhancement. With enhancement your attack is all melee and there for not directly tied to your mana. This means more kills with less drinking. And there is lots of gear for a enhancement Shaman from 10-70 so getting the right gear and extra damage is easier.

As for is elemental good? absolutely. In fact I would say it's our strongest 'damage' specs for PvP. Especially once you start getting gear. But it is more oriented to PvP as apposed to PvE. It's a lot more difficult to bring down a elemental shaman in PvP than an Enhancement one. However if you can get close you can do just as much damage as Enhancement as you would with elemental, it's just getting close that gets tricky.

Elemental = Strong PvP, Strong PvE but lots of drinking / downtime.
Enhancement = Weaker PvP, Strong PvE with little to no downtime.
Restoration = Strong PvP, Weaker PvE long kills.

All 3 specs are very strong in groups and instances.

And before I get attacked, Enhancement can be strong in pvp but compared to elemental it is the weaker choice.

wow guys thanx for the help......ok i understand now thanx for replying

That's more what I was getting at. Sure you can load yourself up with a whole set of rank intellect gear but then what about your stamina, spell crit, and spell damage. It's easy to just pimp out one stat, it's trying to balance them all that gets harder. Personally having a mana pool that lasts a couple minutes of continuous casting isn't going to do you much good if your stamina is so low anybody can kill you in a couple hits. And continously casting isn't going to do you much good if you don't have the damage behind it to back it up.

So while I do agree with you that mana regen is a large part of the problem the costs of our spells compared to the total mana is also part of the problem. There needs to be something that gives us either more of a reduction in mana cost, or something that can regen the mana, or something that has a chance to restore mana. I mean you look at resto tree you get mana tide totem. That sucker can replenish probably almost your entire mana pool (and the parties), A mage has that spell that increases mana regen for a short time, Pallys have the chance to restore mana on casting heals, Locks have lifetap, etc. Every class that I can think of has some way to restore there mana or reduce how fast it goes down. I think they need to implement something like this for elemental shamans.

So I guess your right in saying it's mana regen that kicks us in the butts. But I think the two are linked. Because of the fact that we don't have mana regen or anything resembling it the size of our mana pool becomes crucial. And without loading up on intellect gear like you mentioned it is in fact small. You can fix this by loading up on gear yes but you could put that argument to any stat.

So yes at 70 you can load up on gear and get a decent mana pool because what else do you have to do. While leveling this isn't necessarily the case. While leveling mana pool can become lot more of an issue and cause a lot more downtime. And seeing as how the thread was talking about leveling in elemental and not just end game spec, I feel my statement is still valid that our mana pool can become an issue and in earlier stages it is very small compared to the cost of the casting.

I'm leveling elemental right now. I've already leveled a rogue to 70 and a war to 51 and I'm tired of melee, hence why I don't want to lvl using the acknowledged leveling spec, enhancement.

You can still find some leather caster gear at lower lvls (e.g. Guardian armor set around lvl 30). LW affords a few pieces of gear here and there on the way to 70.

Furthermore, if you can't find a leather piece that has Int., a couple pieces of cloth won't hurt. It is possible to change your playing style to clothie caster tactics, i.e. kiting.

If you start at max distance you can toss a couple lightning bolts and a shock by the time they get to you, have earthbind and searing totems down and hit them with a frost shock if you've got it. Kiting is not the most elegant form of combat, but it can work if done right. Use terrain and take advantage of areas with poor pathing (where a mob zig-zag's to you, or will start to run the long way around an obstacle).