A quick Q for the Shammy expertsFollow

I am currently having fun with Enhancement, but wouldn't mind trying something different, so I would like your opinion on whether respeccing to elemental when I hit outlands is a good idea or not.

A few things I would like to know is:
Would I have decent survivability?
Would my dps be good enough early on to help me quest solo and get into instances?

And thanks in advance for any informative posts.

No. You'll be able to grind mobs fine and your armor/shield will allow you to take a hit or two more than most DPS in instances, but if you're on a PvP server than that is perhaps the biggest reason NOT to level Elemental in Outlands. Elemental has no way to keep people off of them and no spell pushback (outside of having the PvP-oriented talent Eye of the Storm, but that requires you to get crit) until four Gladiator pieces at 70, so you can expect to be an easy HK for just about anyone that decides to attack you. Enhancement is far from fine in this reguard as well, but it's slightly better off than Elemental.


Yes. Elemental quests perfectly fine (though still slower than Enhancement) and does very good damage in instances once your gear gets up to speed, though like all Shaman you'll sometimes find yourself getting passed over for DPS with CC. Nothing you can do about that no matter how you spec though.

this is strictly pve server pov.

I would wholeheartedly reccomend going elemental upon entering outlands, grab yourself a few greens with spl dmg/spell crit and int on them and you will be laughing.
Keep mana spring down ,and away you go. FYI elemental DPS is insane. i was top damage on EVERY instance i did pre70. With the correct rotation of LB and Flame Shock, and watchin Omen ;) you will be destroying things.

Plus, once you get Water Shield, you will have no downtime, i found that i could kill 10-20 mobs before needing to drink.

If it's an alt and you have some spare cash/mats , definitely get Mystic Spellthread on your legs and 40dmg on weapon, it all adds up quickly.

Also, as elemental your gear is perfectly viable for healing too, and you will be able to main heal all the way through to sethekk without respeccing :) plus i cant count the number of times ive saved a wipe by cutting off dps and becoming healer. Ele is just immense amounts of fun !!!

I don't really know if there's a nice way to say this, so I'm just going to go ahead and say it the only way I know how: Bullsh*t.


Enhancement gear is not scarce at all. It's a common misconception that I think comes from the then initial quests in Outlands. At least on the Alliance side, all of the one-handed weapons you have access to in that first round of quests are all fast daggers or swords, which we can't use. However, there is no shortage of Enhancement-oriented mail/leather throughout HFP or anywhere else. Once you can get yourself a pair of suitable Outlands one-handers you'll be off like a rocket.

The bottom line is that there is still absolutely no reason to level Elemental over Enhancement unless you just happen to like Elemental better.

Edited, Jun 30th 2008 1:12pm by Gaudion

lol, so my personal experiences are bullsh*t as you put it ? i'd quite like to know exactly what is bullsh*t ? that i could kill 10-20 mobs ? cos its damn easy. That i could main heal without respeccing? thats pretty common knowledge and done by many people.

Instead of rubbishing someone's personal experience, wiith no foundations, maybe you would like to offer some actual help to the OP..

Bottom line is there is still no reason to level enhancement over elemental unless you like it better (seewhutididthar)

First, play the shamy you like to play. Either that be enchance, resto or element.

Starting in Outland will get you some nice gear for either of those, but as Gaudion said







Ina 25 man, theres room for shamies. Put a enchance in a melee grp and it rocks. Put an elemental in a caster grp and watch all that spell dps go high as well. The 3% increase from ToW to hit and crit do make a lot of diff thats why an elemantal with ToW learned needs only 54 spell hit instead of the regular 100+. But yea, others should be hit capped on their own.



Elemental shamy can main heal some instances, i've seen it done even in reg MgT (but it was once in a life time) with just some gear switching. The reason is with all the spell dmg we get, we also get the pretty much same healing. So with a healing of 600+ you can main heal SOME of the instances.


In 5 mans, theres less spots so a resto will take priority over the other 2 and a cc class over them as well, but as dps goes, both enchance and element can dish it out like pros.


In my own experience. I've level my shamy as resto up to 60 (yea i know wasn't the smartest choice, but he made it there). When i entered Outlands my resto was getting pretty much owned by mobs :( so i switched to enchance. Was ok, but for me, something was still missing and died a lot. So for fun i went element and stayed like that since then and i do love my elemental.

I leveled 1-70 as Elemental. Coming from Enhancement might make it a little different than my experience having done it from the beginning but it's pretty straight forward.

Get into spell range, toss 3 lightning bolts, finish up with a shock/melee.

I wasn't taking 10-20 mobs before drinking, especially not before water shield, but I reason that I got about the same amount of mobs down before drinking that I would have had I been enhance and had to heal away all that face beating I was taking while tearing them up. So, somewhere in the 4-6 mobs, then drink, rinse, repeat.( I didn't level a shammy 1-70 as enhance to test this, I'm not that asinine, but I did level my shammy from 1-70 as elemental in 12 days played so I wouldn't say it was slow, maybe could have made it a day faster on enhance if all they say is true? lol)

Rewards are pretty common for both specs, so that's not a reason to switch one way or the other. As, and I hate to say it, Gaudion says, enhance is probably the slightly safer spec for a pvp server shaman, although due to our still lack of cc and snare breaks, if you're leveling shammy on a pvp server and you're hitting outlands, you don't need me to tell you you're gonna get ganked more frequently than the druid you see across the way.

About the healing thing. I did indeed heal up to sethekk. Sometimes, depending on the gear of the tank I'd have to throw on an additional healing piece or two, but I found that it wasn't too terribly hard to heal them, just like being feral as a druid and throwing on a healy set. It's just like everything else, no matter your spec, if the group is good, you'll succeed, if not, u can be superman and still fail.

In the end, it still ends up just being that you should play what you enjoy, you'll always find a way to enjoy it.

Edit: Btw, I appreciate your sig Gaudion. I also got a good laugh out of reading the title to this post and then looking and seeing you as last post as I would have automatically assumed you'd be.

Edited, Jul 4th 2008 1:00pm by Galenmoon

enhancement I would say is a better grinding choice since gear is more abundant and mana is not necessary to9 kill things, but generally mana will still be used regardless. When I was leveling my shaman way back when I remeber even using Lightning Bolts quite often, I liked getting in 2 before the enemy engaged because it seemed to help since as it was mentioned a enhancement shaman must heal, but if they have taken some damage before they engage me i need to heal less.

Either spec your going to want to bring with you lots of water for solo atleast until you get shamanistic rage. in the end though I say level as you like and have fun just because most agree one way is better doesn't make another way impossible or bad, this game is about having fun.

If you'd paid attention you'd have noted that I said it was viable to put on a healing off-set and heal an instance. Hatefiend claimed he could do it without switching out his Elemental gear, which is why I called shenanigans. Unless maybe you're spending a ton of gold to fully enchant your leveling gear, which he apparently does, but most people generally don't.

Whatever guys, enhancement is the best shaman leveling spec hands-down. Anyone who believes otherwise is either ignorant, or stupid. Elemental cannot sustain mana like enhancement can. Every 2 minutes an enhance shammy hits the SR recharge button and tops up the mana bar. Stormstrike and focus shocks are far more mana efficient than LB/CL, shock spam as elemental.

As for rating Gaudion down...Hatefiend was pretty much making unsubstantiated claims. So he can kill 10-20 mobs without drinking...great, he must be the most fantastic elemental shammy ever, because that totally contradicts my own levelling experience and most other people. I found I could kill about 3~5 mobs as ele, then had to drink.

I can farm with my enhancement shammy without EVER having to drink with watershield and careful use of SR and only shocking when focus is up. I guarantee you if you cannot level/farm better with enhancement than you can with elemental...then you're doing it wrong!

if you guys can't play nice then just hush, pure and simple play your shaman as you wish don't get mad cause most agree enhancement is the better leveling spec. If your more comfortable as ele or even resto by all means play as you wish.

Taurrus Resto does get you groups better but while leveling odds are you wont be doing a heroic, and even with a guild helping your going to have to solo a lot still, every time I log on an alt I can never find anyone to do lower level instances with me, just not a lot of lowbies around like pre bc. You could level resto, and if that's how you want to by all means, but you can also probably get a enhancement shaman to 70 in 10 days by just soloing. I do not mean to say resto is a poor choice, but in my honest opinion enhancement is the superior leveling spec, and even has no problem healing a long the way if you put together a decent healing set and upgrade it when you can. But also just cause I think enhancement is best grind spec doesn't mean player's should not spec how they wish, ele resto hybrid just have fun.

Edited, Jul 14th 2008 7:38am by jmfmb