*INTRO
Hello to all of you perspective shaman! To start off this post is not so i can appear to know a lot more than all the other people playing the shaman class, because I don't. On the contrary it is to help people figure out more about the shaman they play and what their role is in a raid. I won't give you tons of boring numbers and stat sheets but i will give you links to this information and to the sites I used to get to know the class a bit better upon reaching 70. The following will be a quick list on some basic things you should know, and can use as a resource. If you have questions feel free to ask me, and also feel free to check over things to make sure I'm right. My internet was down while I wrote this up so my resource was my memory. This is a work in progess.
*GENERAL
Before I go into details on the specific specs i want to first cover some general guidlines regardless of spec.
1) Shaman are one of the strongest buff classes in the game. Totems, enhancement effects, and Bloodlust make you capable of greatly increasing the abilities of others in your party.
2) Shaman are a support class- regardless of spec you should always do what will benifit the party most, not yourself! If you are elemental spec and you for some reason find yourself grouped with the rogue/dps warr group because there is no enhance shaman, drop WF totem and not WoA. If you are enhancement and the only place for you is with the casters, drop WoA. While this may not help you on the meters, you have to come to terms with the fact that you are not supposed to top the meters. You are there because unlike primary dps classes you can make them BETTER, what dps you do is icing on the cake.
3) Interupts are a big part of your support regardless of class. As resto or enhancement a good suggestion is to get spellhit gloves, socket with spellhit, and enchant them spell hit as well. Keep them in your bag for when you need them to make sure those interupts stick, while only losing stats on your gloves.
4) WaterShield should be on your toon 100% of the time (unless Earthshield is required). Keep it refreshed because it costs 0 mana to cast and 50 mp5 is heavenly.
*RESTO
This will be the first spec I will give you an overview of because i have had the most experience with it compared to the other 3. As a resto shaman you will be responsible for healing your group and raid as well as keeping track of other problems. Here are some quick tips so you dont suck
#Chain Heal and you#
This spell is the most potent heal in the game endgame. As one t6 sham told me in my old guild, chain heal is what prayer of mending wants to be when it grows up. Don't believe me, look at guilds in sunwell plateu where there are at least 3-5 resto shaman in the raid.
Chainheal is a smart heal, by which i mean that the next 2 jumps always hit the person with the lowest health. So you dont have to worry about those 2 because they will always do the right thing so to speak. CH should be your primary healing spell, the other spells are meant for you to use only when necessary.
There is a bug in the chainheal mechanic that goes unoticed by most. If you are the second person to be hit by chain heal then it stops there and does not continue to a third jump. A way to fix this is when the group is taking damage target yourself first so that all 3 jumps occur. Then you can continue with others as the primary target because you will not be the person with lowest health(hopefully).
#Downranking is your Friend#
As a new resto shaman you may find yourself constantly out of mana, and 95% of the time this is due to using the max rank of a healing spell. For chainheal use rank 3 to spam, while using rank 4 and 5 only when the extra boost is needed. A side note is that rank 3 chainheal actually costs less than LHW so it is more manaefficient.
The same goes for healing wave. Keep ranks 8, 10, and 12 on your bar.
#Earthshield- Say hello to my Little Friend#
Your 41 point spell is a very nice addition to your abilities. It scales with +healing, threat and credit for the heal is given to the person affected by it, and it gives 30% chance to avoid interuption while casting. The primary place for this is a tank, but can be used on a mage or lock about to pull threat while casting aoe, or yourself to get 100% chance to avoid interuption while healing your party through AoE.
If you have a +healing on use trinket then use that before you cast it. ES healing is based on your healing when you cast, so even after the trinket expires the benifit to ES remains.
*Enhancement
This is the melee spec for a shaman, and is extremely benificial to a melee group of almost any type.
#WF- Burst Damage at its Finest#
Windfury is at the heart and soul of enhance shaman. As you know it gives an extra 2 hits with your weapon and a nice added AP tacked on to them. Assuming you are dualwielding, and if you are not please do not play a shaman, then WF should be applied to both weapons.
Furthermore, both your MH and OH should be as SLOW as possible. First off this is because the WF calculation benifits a slower weapon more. Second, a fast OH can be detrimental to your DPS. The WF buff has around a 3 sec hidden cooldown so it can in essence proc off either your MH or your OH. Your offhand always hits for a fraction of your MH damage so when your OH procs WF you have wasted damage. A fast offhand gives your offhand more chances to proc WF thus locking you out of proccing with the higherdamage main hand.So a slow OH helps prevent this as well as increasing the damage of your stormstrike.
#Stormstrikes and Shocks#
Stormstrike is your talented ability that instantly hits with both weapons. This ability should be used every time the CD is up. Remember that slower weapons= more damage from this ability.
A side affect of this ability is increased nature damage from nature damage. Most shaman assume this means Earthshock will yield high dps. On the contrary a much better rotation is Flameshock,ES,Flameshock, etc. Regardlesss of the percent increase it is always better dps to use FS than any other shock. However if the FS dot is on the target then feel free to use ES.
Another way to look at shocks is when you are on interupt duty. Once again, helping the raid is more important than personal dps so save those Cooldowns for when its needed.
#Don't Just Sit There- DO SOMETHING#
This leaves the average enhancement shaman with quite a bit of time between CD's as the two abilities discussed Above are on cooldown.You could in theory sit there and do nothing but autoattack (which oftentimes is all you have to do). But this time can also be spent to further help your raid succeed. Check to make sure there arent any poisons or diseases ticking away on your friends. Check to make sure you have the right totems down. Use your class to its fullest!
#Shamanistic Rage- Mana Regen FTW#
This gem of a talent is Blizzards way of keeping your mana bar full. It gives your attacks a chance on hit to restore mana equal to 30% of your attack power. On the average boss fight I suggest using it whenever your mana is low. Another nifty affect is it reduces damage taken by around 30%. Saving it till a nasty AoE effect can keep you alive.
*Elemental
Finally we have the dps caster version of the shaman. As an elemental shaman one needs to know a couple basic rules.
First up is the range rule. As an elemental shaman (or any ranged dps) your range is your friend. This is more or less how you survive. Another unique part of elemental shamans is the talented spell hit. Talented correctly a shaman (with 41 point totem) has 12% talented hit. This means you only need 4% hit to get capped or about 50 hit rating.
#To Shock or not to Shock#
For an elemental shaman using shocks is actually not recomended. Primarily due to the fact you have to get close to use them (this doesnt apply when interupts are needed). Also shocks severely infringe on your mana efficiency, with little actual increase in dps. If you do use them flameshock is the highest dps of the three so use it.
#Fire totems#
A good elemental shaman, since he/she is there to buff the group, should always go for the 41 point talent to increase spell hit/crit of your party by 3%. This also means that using any other fire totem is a loss of dps. Also the range of your fire totems fall into the same problem as shocks meaning you have to jump close to the boss to even have them affect the target.
#How to Pew Pew like a Pro#
There are several different setups of spell rotations. The first is 3 lightning bolts and 1 chainlightning. CL has a higher damage per cast even if used on a single target. However if there is ever a remote chance of breaking CC avoid this spell. The other downside to using chainlightning is the mana inefficiency. If you find yourself running low on mana, just pew pew with lighning bolts.
Any other method of dps is often hurtful in dps, using shocks one can go with 5LB/2CL/1FS but this is extremely mana intensive and without a spriest you can expect to quickly be oom, and being oom very easily lowers your dps.
My suggestion, stick with 3LB/1CL when mana is a plenty, and go to *infinity sign* LB when you are sweating about the minute till your pot cooldown.
Links to Get more indepth info (stat weights, crazy number crunching etc.)
Resto
Link
Enhance
Link
Ele
Link
Hello to all of you perspective shaman! To start off this post is not so i can appear to know a lot more than all the other people playing the shaman class, because I don't. On the contrary it is to help people figure out more about the shaman they play and what their role is in a raid. I won't give you tons of boring numbers and stat sheets but i will give you links to this information and to the sites I used to get to know the class a bit better upon reaching 70. The following will be a quick list on some basic things you should know, and can use as a resource. If you have questions feel free to ask me, and also feel free to check over things to make sure I'm right. My internet was down while I wrote this up so my resource was my memory. This is a work in progess.
*GENERAL
Before I go into details on the specific specs i want to first cover some general guidlines regardless of spec.
1) Shaman are one of the strongest buff classes in the game. Totems, enhancement effects, and Bloodlust make you capable of greatly increasing the abilities of others in your party.
2) Shaman are a support class- regardless of spec you should always do what will benifit the party most, not yourself! If you are elemental spec and you for some reason find yourself grouped with the rogue/dps warr group because there is no enhance shaman, drop WF totem and not WoA. If you are enhancement and the only place for you is with the casters, drop WoA. While this may not help you on the meters, you have to come to terms with the fact that you are not supposed to top the meters. You are there because unlike primary dps classes you can make them BETTER, what dps you do is icing on the cake.
3) Interupts are a big part of your support regardless of class. As resto or enhancement a good suggestion is to get spellhit gloves, socket with spellhit, and enchant them spell hit as well. Keep them in your bag for when you need them to make sure those interupts stick, while only losing stats on your gloves.
4) WaterShield should be on your toon 100% of the time (unless Earthshield is required). Keep it refreshed because it costs 0 mana to cast and 50 mp5 is heavenly.
*RESTO
This will be the first spec I will give you an overview of because i have had the most experience with it compared to the other 3. As a resto shaman you will be responsible for healing your group and raid as well as keeping track of other problems. Here are some quick tips so you dont suck
#Chain Heal and you#
This spell is the most potent heal in the game endgame. As one t6 sham told me in my old guild, chain heal is what prayer of mending wants to be when it grows up. Don't believe me, look at guilds in sunwell plateu where there are at least 3-5 resto shaman in the raid.
Chainheal is a smart heal, by which i mean that the next 2 jumps always hit the person with the lowest health. So you dont have to worry about those 2 because they will always do the right thing so to speak. CH should be your primary healing spell, the other spells are meant for you to use only when necessary.
There is a bug in the chainheal mechanic that goes unoticed by most. If you are the second person to be hit by chain heal then it stops there and does not continue to a third jump. A way to fix this is when the group is taking damage target yourself first so that all 3 jumps occur. Then you can continue with others as the primary target because you will not be the person with lowest health(hopefully).
#Downranking is your Friend#
As a new resto shaman you may find yourself constantly out of mana, and 95% of the time this is due to using the max rank of a healing spell. For chainheal use rank 3 to spam, while using rank 4 and 5 only when the extra boost is needed. A side note is that rank 3 chainheal actually costs less than LHW so it is more manaefficient.
The same goes for healing wave. Keep ranks 8, 10, and 12 on your bar.
#Earthshield- Say hello to my Little Friend#
Your 41 point spell is a very nice addition to your abilities. It scales with +healing, threat and credit for the heal is given to the person affected by it, and it gives 30% chance to avoid interuption while casting. The primary place for this is a tank, but can be used on a mage or lock about to pull threat while casting aoe, or yourself to get 100% chance to avoid interuption while healing your party through AoE.
If you have a +healing on use trinket then use that before you cast it. ES healing is based on your healing when you cast, so even after the trinket expires the benifit to ES remains.
*Enhancement
This is the melee spec for a shaman, and is extremely benificial to a melee group of almost any type.
#WF- Burst Damage at its Finest#
Windfury is at the heart and soul of enhance shaman. As you know it gives an extra 2 hits with your weapon and a nice added AP tacked on to them. Assuming you are dualwielding, and if you are not please do not play a shaman, then WF should be applied to both weapons.
Furthermore, both your MH and OH should be as SLOW as possible. First off this is because the WF calculation benifits a slower weapon more. Second, a fast OH can be detrimental to your DPS. The WF buff has around a 3 sec hidden cooldown so it can in essence proc off either your MH or your OH. Your offhand always hits for a fraction of your MH damage so when your OH procs WF you have wasted damage. A fast offhand gives your offhand more chances to proc WF thus locking you out of proccing with the higherdamage main hand.So a slow OH helps prevent this as well as increasing the damage of your stormstrike.
#Stormstrikes and Shocks#
Stormstrike is your talented ability that instantly hits with both weapons. This ability should be used every time the CD is up. Remember that slower weapons= more damage from this ability.
A side affect of this ability is increased nature damage from nature damage. Most shaman assume this means Earthshock will yield high dps. On the contrary a much better rotation is Flameshock,ES,Flameshock, etc. Regardlesss of the percent increase it is always better dps to use FS than any other shock. However if the FS dot is on the target then feel free to use ES.
Another way to look at shocks is when you are on interupt duty. Once again, helping the raid is more important than personal dps so save those Cooldowns for when its needed.
#Don't Just Sit There- DO SOMETHING#
This leaves the average enhancement shaman with quite a bit of time between CD's as the two abilities discussed Above are on cooldown.You could in theory sit there and do nothing but autoattack (which oftentimes is all you have to do). But this time can also be spent to further help your raid succeed. Check to make sure there arent any poisons or diseases ticking away on your friends. Check to make sure you have the right totems down. Use your class to its fullest!
#Shamanistic Rage- Mana Regen FTW#
This gem of a talent is Blizzards way of keeping your mana bar full. It gives your attacks a chance on hit to restore mana equal to 30% of your attack power. On the average boss fight I suggest using it whenever your mana is low. Another nifty affect is it reduces damage taken by around 30%. Saving it till a nasty AoE effect can keep you alive.
*Elemental
Finally we have the dps caster version of the shaman. As an elemental shaman one needs to know a couple basic rules.
First up is the range rule. As an elemental shaman (or any ranged dps) your range is your friend. This is more or less how you survive. Another unique part of elemental shamans is the talented spell hit. Talented correctly a shaman (with 41 point totem) has 12% talented hit. This means you only need 4% hit to get capped or about 50 hit rating.
#To Shock or not to Shock#
For an elemental shaman using shocks is actually not recomended. Primarily due to the fact you have to get close to use them (this doesnt apply when interupts are needed). Also shocks severely infringe on your mana efficiency, with little actual increase in dps. If you do use them flameshock is the highest dps of the three so use it.
#Fire totems#
A good elemental shaman, since he/she is there to buff the group, should always go for the 41 point talent to increase spell hit/crit of your party by 3%. This also means that using any other fire totem is a loss of dps. Also the range of your fire totems fall into the same problem as shocks meaning you have to jump close to the boss to even have them affect the target.
#How to Pew Pew like a Pro#
There are several different setups of spell rotations. The first is 3 lightning bolts and 1 chainlightning. CL has a higher damage per cast even if used on a single target. However if there is ever a remote chance of breaking CC avoid this spell. The other downside to using chainlightning is the mana inefficiency. If you find yourself running low on mana, just pew pew with lighning bolts.
Any other method of dps is often hurtful in dps, using shocks one can go with 5LB/2CL/1FS but this is extremely mana intensive and without a spriest you can expect to quickly be oom, and being oom very easily lowers your dps.
My suggestion, stick with 3LB/1CL when mana is a plenty, and go to *infinity sign* LB when you are sweating about the minute till your pot cooldown.
Links to Get more indepth info (stat weights, crazy number crunching etc.)
Resto
Link
Enhance
Link
Ele
Link
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