lvling elemental?Follow

Played enchanment shaman till lvl 70 then swaped to elemental for raiding. From my point of view for a elemental shaman to lvl from low is a bit harder then enchanment. There are few point to share... any guru out there can correct me if i m wrong.

1. not many elemental gear for shaman in game and u can only get it in higher lvl.
2. not many +spell dmg n crit during lower level.
3. easier to get leather gear with melee stats like agi or AP so that u can kill the mob faster.. leather have more armor then cloth so u can last a bit longer in beating.
4. elemental shaman dmg beside the standard LB is the spell crit that give u more dmg and save mana with the right talent.. so with not many +spell dmg and spell crit gear in lower lvl... the mob will get to u before u kill them... so it maybe hard if u have 1 ,2 or 3 mob on u.. especially shaman lack of CC ability.

But when u hit higher lvl with better gear u can 2-3 shot a mob with LB and ofcause with critical before the mob can reach u. So u will feel more fun by that time.

Just my POV... i maybe wrong ..so take it as a reading :) cheers

Itemization is nowhere near the problem in leveling elemental.

The main problem is mana efficiency. You can very easily find "of the Eagle" leather that will give you a decent mana pool to sling LBs with, and the int will even give you a decent amount of spell crit on top of your Call of Thunder talent which should be maxed by level 25.

The major problem is that mana spring totem just doesn't cut it for keeping your mana up and you don't get water shield until level 62.

Yes, you can level elemental if you want to. It won't be painfully slow like leveling a holy priest or resto druid, but it won't be nearly as fast as leveling enhance with a big 2h weapon.

If you are going to level elemental, I would recommend this talent sequence:

10-14: 5/5 Convection
15-19: 5/5 Concussion
20-24: 5/5 Call of Thunder
25: 1/1 Elemental Mastery (this talent could be taken before CoT if you want)
26-29: 4/5 Reverberation
30-34: 5/5 Unrelenting Storm (useful while leveling)
35: 1/1 Elemental Fury (might as well make those spell crits count)
36-38: 3/3 Elemental Precision (spell hit GOOD)
39-43: 5/5 Lightning Mastery
44: Elemental Mastery
45-49: Lightning Overload
50: Totem of Wrath (more crit AND spell hit, very nice)
51-55: Tidal Focus
56-60: Totemic Focus
61-63: Nature's Guidance (more spell hit GOODER!!!)
64: Totemic Mastery
65: 1/2 Imp Reincarnation
66-70: Tidal Mastery (more spell crit)

When you get to 70 you will respec the exact same spec EXCEPT:
Take 2 points out of Unrelenting Storm (you will be at 3/5) and put them into Storm Reach.

It should be noted that "of the Eagle" gear is bad for leveling. Apart from minor gains through Unrelenting Storm, it only provides minimal Spellcrit. "of the Eagle" gear is horrible compared to +dmg or +spellcrit alternatives

That's the main reason Elemental sucks early on. Enhancement has plentiful "of the Tiger/Bear" gear, whereas +dmg/+nature/+spellcrit gear is virtually nonexistant (although the itemization pass probably improved things by a good deal.)

The other side is that it really doesn't mature as a tree until 39+ when you can get Lightning Mastery, EM, and the Spellhit talent.

Basically:
1-38 = Don't bother with Elemental
39-60 = It's viable but slightly slower than Enhancement
60+ = It's probably better than Enhancement, due to the abundance of +dmg gear and the fact that the spec dishes out ridiculously good ranged damage.

Quite so.


Not really. The state of Elemental doesn't really change (see also: improve) until you get Water Shield. That is the single biggest thing that turns Elemental into a viable leveling build instead of a drag. You are still a drink-machine until 62.


No, it's not... It's often lauded because it's different than Enhancement by Elemental Enthusiasts, but Enhancement is still your single best/fastest leveling option until 70. Elemental is by every means viable after Water Shield, but it still doesn't edge Enhancement out.

That said, I'm not disagreeing with the idea that you should play what's fun for you, but trust me when I say from experience that you'll have a lot more fun once you reach the point that you actually get to have fun with it post-62. I would still strongly, strongly, strongly recommend you level Enhancement until you get Water Shield. I can not emphasize that enough.

Gee, I just hit 60 and I have been Elemenatal all the way! Too bad I didn't read here first.<g>

I am going after +dmg and +spell crit along with +int and +stamina. Much of my gear is quest and chest drops with a couple of purchases thrown in. Even so, I am still just shy of 10% spell crit. That is a pretty important number I think.

I am pretty poor at melee where I mainly throw shocks in and totems and lightning shield as I swing away. I can usually take out two mobs at once and with a pot and heals I have done three but I don't perticularly like it.<g>

Instead of melee would it be better just to keep spamming LB's?

Mycharacter is Wunhunglo on Kargath but I can't seem to figure out how to do the Armory link without it causing an error. Sorry.

Any comments on talent trees or equipment are welcome.

Thanks.

Edited, Mar 24th 2008 3:24pm by medeardorff

Edited, Mar 24th 2008 3:26pm by medeardorff

To clarify, you should desire to kill the mob as quickly as possible, not to let it hit you for Water Shield charges (though that will happen anyway). Killing the mob 2 seconds quicker is 340 mana worth of drinking (480 for 65+ water), so it's certainly worth it to burn through your mana at a reasonable rate when killing mobs.

All that matters (and what Enhancement Enthusiasts sometimes lose sight of) is your overall killing rate over the long run. If killing things faster means drinking a little more often by burning mana rather than letting things hit you, so be it.

Uh... ok? There's also the issue that Elemental Shaman have zero pushback res, so it's not like it's just as simple as continuing to spam LB when the mob's in your face. You'd be surprised in how many cases it's just as fast or almost as fast to Shock, melee, and let Searing Totem fire (which I forgot to mention) as it is to just keep spamming LB. Especially when you've got more than one mob beating on you.

In any case, there's no rotation that's just going to work perfectly for you 100% of the time. You're going to have to figure this out at your own discretion.

That's my rotation. LB, Shock, Melee with Stoneskin and Searing (I think?) - at lvl 16 it's all that works and I don't see it changing any time soon so I'm glad I kind of 'guessed' at enhancement for this alt.

Sure is fun though, this Shamanistic lark. :o)

Regardless of whether you decide to melee or LB, you're going to Shock and have Searing (or TOW) down.

Basically unless you're fighting a DW or Cat mob (rare), multiple mobs (rare unless you ***** up), or a mob that's down to less than ~5% hp (where LB = overkill, which is wasted mana), you shouldn't melee.

Mobs get to that ~5% threshold with low-moderate frequency, so it's not unheard of to melee as Elemental, but it's a big step down in DPS.

EDIT - Some additional pushback comments:
Just using two hits from killing mobs on my lunch break I realized just how silly it is to melee unless you're in that ~5% range. Assuming a 1.0 attack rate (which is fast for a mob), that's about two 0.2 sec pushbacks per LB cast:

My melee hit for 191 damage every 1.4sec. 136dps. (45+148 from flametongue)
My LB hit for 1390 every 2 sec. 695dps.
With Pushback:
2 hits: 1390 every 2.4 sec. 579dps.
3 hits: 1390 every 2.6 sec is 535dps...
10 hits: 1390 every 4 sec is 348dps...
(notice how it's still almost twice the DPS of the melee attack?)

So there's a huge DPS difference between meleeing and LBing, and while leveling you really shouldn't melee unless you're avoiding overkill. Even during my lunch break there was one mob hit to 4% life which I finished off with my mace.

Edited, Mar 26th 2008 1:14pm by Axehilt

If you have LO, you should lead with a LB, pop EM, and then Chain-Lightning.

If you get an LO proc while EM is active, the LO proc will crit. So it's almost always best to EM your 2nd spell instead of the 1st (unless the mobs are moving and won't all be hit by the CL if you delay EM+CL til the 2nd cast; as is often the case in PVP)

Here's why meleeing is a bad idea:
Let's take my above numbers and assume I get hit an average of 3 times per LB cast which gives me 535dps casting, 136dps meleeing.

Searing/Shocks are constants. Whether you're casting or meleeing as elemental, they'll add the similar DPS*. So they're factored out of the comparison. (*actually somewhat less for the casting shaman because he has to fit them in between casts)

1. Let's say a mob has 5000 hitpoints.
2. Melee will kill it in 36.7 secs, using zero mana.
3. Casting will kill it in 9.3 secs, using 1079 mana.
4. Drinking for 9 seconds recovers 1080 mana.

Basically in 18.3 seconds, the casting shaman has killed a mob and ended up with more mana than the meleeing shaman who takes 36.7 seconds to kill it.

The ratio of melee damage to spell damage is a little different earlier in the leveling process because at 70 caster weapon DPS is capped at 41.7dps...but not be an extreme enough margin (particularly lvl 60+) to make meleeing a better idea.

If you're not using LBs, you basically miss out on most of elemental's power and you may as well go heavy Enhancement with points into the reduced cooldown on shocks. That way you'll at least maximize your melee DPS if that's the majority of the damage you're using.

Here's why Intellect/ManaPool are not particularly helpful for a leveling shaman:
Intellect is basically only useful for the minimal spellcrit it adds, and for Unrelenting Storm (which is useful, but not to the extent that you'll value +Int over Dmg/Spellcrit).

A shaman with twice the mana pool drinks half as frequently, but twice as long! So you basically don't save any time by having a larger mana pool. You only save the cost of water. The cost of water is inconsequential.

Edited, Mar 26th 2008 5:35pm by Axehilt

Edited, Mar 26th 2008 5:42pm by Axehilt

Interesting, but doesn't change the basic idea (plus my 2-sec calculation was way off; it's actually an average of 9 secs drinking time per kill, which results in a higher total killing time, but still significantly faster than meleeing.)

Ah. Interesting. I will remeber that. Thanks.