Going to Arena, build opins please..Follow

Points of contention:

Imp. GW pretty much sucks outside of 2v2, and even there it's not all it's cracked up to be. Even with an instant shift (and even if you have Tougness too), you are just not going to get away from anyone unless they get lazy and forget to apply a snare to you or you get extremely lucky. You take it for that one-in-ten chance that you're going to get away from someone in 2v2 and the one-in-a-hundred chance you'll get away in 3v3, but in 5v5 it's a pipe dream. Not only do you have more people to deal with, but as an Elemental Shaman you're probably going to be the opposing team's primary target at least 75% of the time.

Not taking Nature's Swiftness is mortally crippling your ability to deliver burst damage and knock off a member of the other team.

Unrelenting Storm is... pointless. 5v5's are not going to last long enough for you to run out of mana, and if you have then you've already lost or won, because you've probably been mana-drained (though even more likely is that if your team is losing you're already dead) or you've used it to kill two or three members of the other team. Either way, Unrelenting Storm will solve neither problem.

You won't be doing much healing except maybe to buy yourself or a teammate a few more precious seconds. So you won't be casting Healing Wave, just some quick Lesser Healing Waves. Though if you're doing either your team is probably losing. Either way, Tidal Focus is better than Improved Healing Wave, and... Ancestral Healing isn't bad, but it's better to max Totemic Focus so Fire Nova Totem costs substantially less.


Take them both, talent points allowing. Trust me.

In general, Elemental/sub-Enhance builds do not work. Or at least they're a lot crappier than Elemental/Resto builds. And for an Elemental/sub-Resto build, Focused Mind outweighs Lightning Overload so much I can't really express it in mundane words, especially since you'll be picking up Tidal Mastery on the way to compensate.

Something more along the lines of this is going to serve you far better. You could switch points from Reverberation into Concussion if you wanted to, but I think you'll find that the decreased cooldown on Shocks is going to be far more useful and damaging than an extra 3% damage. Also, you could take one point out of Elemental Shields and use that to top off Reverberation, but I prefer to have the extra crit resistance over the last .2 seconds myself. Whatever works for you.

If you're one of those junkies that really can't live without Lightning Overload, then go with something like this. You'll do more damage in situations where you're left unmolested to sit there and fire off an average of five Lightning Bolts at a target, but I think you'll find those moments few and far between outside of BG fusterclucks.

One more note: If you find yourself missing too often, you can skip Healing Grace and throw the points in Nature's Guidance and... probably 1/3 Ancestral Healing. But Healing Grace is always nice to have, for Heroism/Bloodlust if nothing else.

Edited, Jul 28th 2008 10:33am by Gaudion

Thanks guys, rate ups on both. Just the info I was looking for.
Looking over Gaudion's 2nd option and jmfmb's build, decided to take advice and drop GW, then run a bit of a mishmash around with a combo of the builds for my playstyle.
Ended up with this atm:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents.html?tal=5203015503021005125000000000000000000000035005011005010000000
Will give it an initial go to see how it works out and modify as necessary.
Thanks again,
Oz

Edited, Jul 28th 2008 8:32pm by OzoneSSX

Looks much better although I would agree the points lacking in healing focus do more or less undo the points placed in Imp Healing Wave. Shorter healing wave may be nice but without push back resistance it will take longer to use it then when you don't have points in it against anything that is hitting you often (rogues and hunter with pets)

Although eye of the storm does help quite a bit, have fun.