New Shamman HelpFollow

Good morning all,

I have a few not very high level characters and decided to give Draenai (Sorry about spelling) a try. I created a Shaman as I had also not tried that before and levelled up to 10 yesterday evening.

I am really enjoying playing the Shaman and learning how to use it's spells and totems. My issue comes with speccing her. As I have mentioned I levelled to 10 last night and got my first talent point. I am really not sure what I should put this into. I was wondering whether anyone could offer me any advice.

Thank you all in advance.

For fastest leveling go enhance or elemental, though enhance is probably a bit faster due to less mana dependency. you can level resto, but it will be a lot slower than the other two.

Just a general overview, enhance is melee based, and thrives when you get windfury. Elemental is more of a caster or "battle-mage" since you have mail armor+shield and rely on spellcasting. Restoration is a healer spec and will make you extremely hard to kill.


Overall just pick the spec you enjoy most and level with it.


*Damn typos...


Edited, Jan 25th 2008 6:49pm by borzan

No. It's still far easier to level Enhancement and carry around a spare set of gear for healing than it is to level Elemental before you get Water Shield. I've tried it.

Yes. Or roll a Warlock or a Mage.


No, you don't. You get 10% off your base costs, which is a pittance until the end of the game, and a minute amount of extra MP/5 around level 40. Elemental's "mana conservation" is based entirely on spell crit, and you won't be able to stack any notable amount of it until the end of the game.

You have two options when leveling Elemental: you can be an OOM machine with tons of downtime because you will be drinking constantly, or you can do absolutely pitiful damage. Your call.

In addition to that, there is zero rare instance gear for you until Outland. No caster mail at all. You'll be wearing cloth and leather (mostly cloth though, caster leather is almost as rare as the mail is) until 58-60, which kind of sucks when armor is our only defense.


Again, you're just talking out of your... rear. I'm sure it sounds nice in your inner monologue, but the "all specs for all classes are created equal for all aspects of the game" view is naive and just plain false.


Less thinking, more experience. Then you can give advice on the matter and not a moment before.

So you've leveled two Shaman to 70, Enhancement both times... I'm curious how this leads you to believe that you've leveled "mostly ele" and that you're justified in calling Elemental a viable leveling spec from 1-70. Could you be more specific on what "mostly ele" details for you? From the way you're talking, it sounds like you were around at least 40 both times before you respecced, which is not leveling 1-70 as "mostly ele".


I've also leveled two Shaman. The one I leveled to 40 as Elemental I quit playing because I didn't want to melee either but leveling as Elemental was way too painful. The second time I bit the bullet and just leveled Enhancement. It was still painful until 40 (this was before the 2.3 buff to Enhancement), but immeasurably less so. And it was also immeasurably faster. I can only imagine how much faster and easier it is now with Shamanistic Rage at 20.


You don't have to like what I have to say, but that doesn't make it wrong.

Rogues that want to be Assassination or Subtlety still level Combat. Warriors that want to tank still level Arms or Fury. Druids level Feral. Priests that want to heal still level Shadow. Are you noticing a pattern here?

There's no reason not to level with your class' fastest leveling spec. You'll spend far more time from 60-70+ in Outland than you will leveling from 1-58. You're only making it that much harder on yourself and making it take that much longer to play what you really want to by refusing to do so.


Immaterial. Melee classes get all the AP and crit they need from str and agi until Outland, which is readily available on numerous pieces of rare leather and mail in dungeons. Conversely, int does not translate directly into more spell damage. You get a little bit of spell crit out of it, but certainly not enough to villify your crit-reliant mana efficiency.


Right. Which would mean you're in Outland... which means you'll have Water Shield in four or five levels tops (assuming you go at 58)... so... why are we not waiting until Outland and Water Shield again?

So... Shaman have two different leveling trees because that makes statistical sense to you? Mmm... really. That's an interesting take on it.


I guess in the end we're just going to have to agree to disagree. If nothing else, I think it's quite obvious that we both have vastly different definitions on what is an effective leveling spec.

Well, I guess I'll just recommend to the OP to believe whichever PoV makes you happy and go for it. If you want to level 1-70 as Elemental, give it a try... and if you hate it as much as I did, you can switch to Enhancement and then switch back later on.

Just don't tell me about it. Because I will say, "I told you so."