am i headed in the right direction?Follow

check out the armory and feel free to point out the many flaws that are most likely in my build.

How can you call Lightning Shield horrible damage per mana? Apart from Searing Totem it's the best mana efficient spell shamans have! Especially while leveling, it's a great talent to pick up (although the alternative +Dodge is also solid)

Imp Ghost Wolf is worth keeping for as long as you're leveling Enhancement. Instant 40% run speed buff lets you get around extremely easy and will not be replaced by an epic mount for moving shorter distances.

Certainly while leveling you won't want to replace it with Guardian Totems which isn't too great while leveling. Grounding totem is good while leveling, but reducing the cooldown on it doesn't add much benefit whereas insta-GW will reduce the time you spend running between mobs by a decent amount.

I'll admit, I haven't run the math on it (and I think they lowered the mana cost on it a while ago, didn't they? I haven't used it in a long time) but when I was leveling, trying to keep lightning shield up all the time basically just ran me out of mana constantly, without appreciably speeding up how fast I killed things. Hence, sitting and drinking constantly, really slowing down how fast I accomplished anything.

I had the talent when I was low level, it seemed like a good choice. Experience proved otherwise to me, and I've since avoided it like the plague. Granted, I have water shield now, so I don't even have lightning shield on my bars anymore.

Maybe now, with the lowered cost, it's not as bad, but I doubt it.

Okay...so I did some math. Talented, lightning shield at level 70 is 2.475 damage per mana. A shamanistic focused (because if you don't crit at least once per 6 seconds at 70 as enhancement, you've got other problems) flame shock is 3.985 damage per mana. A stormstrike enhanced, focused earth shock is 3.785 damage per mana. If you want to include it, a talented, stormstrike enhanced lightning shield at 70 should be 2.97 damage per mana, but that not only takes away stormstrike charges that could be used for earth shock, but it also is only likely to effect, at most, 2 of the charges from lightning shield.

Now, you could argue that without shamanistic focus, the damage per mana is more equal, and it is. But it's not very realistic to assume you won't have shamanistic focus up the majority of the time when shocking at 70.

I'll grant you, at lower levels (basically pre-dual wielding) when you don't have shamanistic focus up as often, lightning shield is somewhat better. I still contend that using it constantly will run you out of mana so fast, and not speed up killing enough, that you're better off not using it, however.


Well, I suppose. I usually find that mobs are close enough together that I don't really have much use for ghost wolf while moving between mobs. I guess that's largely a personal preference thing, though, and I'm very mana conservative. Making my run 2 or 3 seconds shorter isn't worth the mana to me.

Same deal with guardian totems. I just like it because it seems to leave me with fewer times when earth shock and grounding totem are both on cooldown, and I end up getting hit with a spell. I'll grant you, that problem isn't terribly common, but it happens often enough to annoy me, and lead me to want the points in Guardian Totems.

Edited, Mar 29th 2008 10:53am by Vaeliorin