For DPS shammiesFollow

Enhancement does more damage if GEARED properly, chants/gems/inscriptions in most raids. However, fights like Gruuls, Alar, Prince, etc. where melee jobs are hauling *** in and out of harm's way give the advantage to the Elemental spec. I guess the inverse is true for Voidreaver and the like...

Honestly, I've never been out damaged by anyone of equal gear in my raids outside of a very well played BM hunter. Armory available upon request.

For PvP, Heads-up the Enhancement shammy probably has the advantage given that we can stop a Lightning Bolt or Chain bolt with a well time shock, then close the distance. Only thing that stops a fist weapon is the elemental shaman's face.

If you are talking battlegrounds, it comes down to spacing and numbers. Groups of enemies at say, a flag? I'd rather be tossing bolts from afar and critting chain lightning like a power transformer. If its 1-2 enemies at a time, gimme my Vanirs' and WF any day.

You are absolutely correct, jmfmb. And this is kind of the biggest area where the bias tries to run away with the facts.

Any class can DPS in a raid, easily matching or exceeding an Elemental's output (depending on skill and gear) while providing some fringe benefits. Even the oft scorned Ret Pallies. But there is nothing that an Elemental Shaman can do--not ToW, not Mana Spring, not WoA to casters--that provides as big of a benefit to the raid as a whole as giving tanks an Enhancement's melee buffs, and more specifically giving WF to Warriors. Beyond that, the buffs provided to other melees far outweigh the DPS of those given to casters from an Elemental's totems, with some classes being almost entirely reliant on an Enhancement Shaman's presence (Arms Warriors, Ret Pallies).

That's not to say that Elementals don't have their place when raiding, but you ask any progression guild if given the choice of one DPS Shaman which one they'd rather take... and if they are not deserted of their mental faculties, they should answer Enhancement every time.

ya it is a shame you mention ZA 10 mans are in my oppinion the only place where an elemental actually fits in well which for me at least is a bit of a drag but then again I like ZA a lot more then some of the other raids anyway (probably because I love ZG so much back in the day)

Hopefully our dps will be competitive enough in WotLK to have raids continue bringing elemental shaman or maybe we will get lucky and blizzard will give us a scaling buff for our party will have to just wait and see. Basically WoA is same for elemental and resto and resto can improve there mana spring totem T oW is no where near as beneficial as WF.

A simple way to make ToW worth it in WoLK is to increase all Nature Fire and Frost damage by a percent and keep the crit and hit on it.

Let me fix this for you:

2v2: Enhancement > Elemental.
3v3: Enhancement > Elemental.
5v5: Elemental > Enhancement.

PvE: Enhancement > Elemental.

And any raid without an enhancement shaman is generally fail.

A competent Enhancement Shaman is +10% AP, +90 AGI and a better WF bonus than you get out of a Resto Shaman, and also benefits from melee buffs that are otherwise wasted on the Resto Shaman (BS, LotP, whatever). It's a pretty huge boost, and their damage is on pretty high if not Combat Rogue/Fury Warrior level.

EDIT: With that said, Elemental Shaman require a pretty strict 3v3 composition but Priest, Ele Shaman, Warrior is actually kind of obscene. We screwed around with a bit last year, and most games ended up with the Ele Shaman surviving the incoming burst while the Priest burned the hell out of the other team or them ignoring the Shaman and trying to kill the Priest, at which point we obliterated their entire team with some LB spam.

Priest, Ele Sham, Paladin would be an interesting combination to try sometime, I think... hm.

Edited, Jul 15th 2008 1:29pm by RPZip

Recently did a elemental and enhancement shaman with a disc priest 3s and it actually went really well me as back up heals, The enhancement shaman dealt the bulk of the damage while I spot healed purged and waited to strike with well timed elemental mastery Chain lightning and also shocking when I could. Disc priests are just amazing to have as well.

Throwing in my two cents on this topic. Buddy in my guild is quite the insane shammie. As an Enh shammie I have seen him go into the middle of a battle in the middle of Kara or some other bout of insanity like that and absolutely destroy everything around him and end up amongst the top numbers in the damage lists. Everyone loves the totems he drops, and everyone seems to get by that shred easier. Now the guild loves to make sure there is an Enh shammie running around just for the stupidity that they can accomplish when they go howling commando. When I asked my buddy for help on how to get to where he is on the damage charts, he said the one thing that helps any build these days for any class. EQUIPMENT. Whether you are enh or ele, you will own the damage charts in your category if you have the top of the line equipment. It is useless to compare builds these days cause any build kitted out correctly will do some insane things in the heat of battle. He said that as an enh shammie he had horrendous times getting geared out cause most people wanted Ele or Resto type shammies. So he went into PvP and sure he lost enough times, but he geared out well enough in the long run to own the daylights out of runs. At the end of the day the real question is not which one is better, it's a question of play style. Do you want to blow the crap out of stuff, or do you want to get all close and personal with the badguy. Chose one and then kit it out to the nines, and you will own on the damage lists for that build. These days it's not about the skill, it's about the kit that wins.