Leveling an alt Shaman...Enhance or Elemental ?

[sherck]

Title says it all...what do you think?

Keep in mind, I have cloth BoA PvP Shoulders / PvE Chest / SP Mace (with + 29 SP enchant) at the moment so that would lead me to probably choose Elemental.

But what are the pros of going Enhance for leveling even if I don't end up wearing the BoA gear / earn the BoA gear down the road once my current Priest is decked out ?

Cheers,

[Shoju]

Here is the thing.

With elemental, you can use the cloth stuff, + the mace, + the spellpower trinkets (provide mana on kill) all from level 1.


For enchance, you have 40 levels of 2h'er/1h + shield. Then you can get a pair of the OP heirloom maces.

I would personally go Ele if you already have the cloth stuff. You can use Inscription for easy off hands up until 60 ish if shields are scarce.

[Grehn|Skipjack]

Elemental, with Heirlooms, is essentially invincible. I've solo'd everything on my Ele shaman up to level 41. The problem with that is it's really boring. Fights go: Water Shield, LB, LB, LB, LB, Water Shield, Next mob. Enhancement has a few more buttons to push once you get Stormstrike and Lava Lash, and really gets interesting with Maelstrom. Having done both, I'd do Enh again, personally.

[8bit]

I had the mail heirlooms and weapons when I leveled my shaman, but I found enhancement to be nearly invincible and with nearly zero downtime. Both specs are going to be horrendously boring until 40 (FS/LB spam vs. auto attack/ES spam).

[Grehn|Skipjack]

I'd say Elemental continues to be boring far beyond 40. I can't imagine pressing more than LB and Water Shield until Lava Burst at 75.

[Nikachelle]

I did enhancement from the get go. 2H till 40. It wasn't that painful if I'm honest.

[Spectrum]

I leveled as elemental. I loved the boom factor, however it's a bit boring/slow at earlier levels.

There's a point where you get Totem of Wrath and start getting outlands skills where your DPS will skyrocket. Suddenly stuff is dying in two casts if you get lucky, maybe 3-4 if not, and they won't live to get next to you anyway.

It's reasonably interesting with CL/LB (did they nerf CL to not be worth using on cooldown?) until you get Lava Burst, at which point it really gets fun. LB, FS, LavB, CL = dead mob. 6k crits at 75 is fun too.

[Epimer]

(did they nerf CL to not be worth using on cooldown?)

I don't know how it pans out while levelling, but certainly when raiding CL can have a place in some "rotations". It's one of those things which can be a dps increase if used correctly (and I'm behind on what is correct use these days - using it immediately after LvB springs to mind) or can cause you to lose dps/run into mana issues if used recklessly. I imagine that it, like a lot of Ele things, is probably haste/character dependent.

[Levantine]

Chain Lightning is more hassle than it's worth to use while levelling. The proc chance for Lightning Overload is split across it's jumps, and the increased mana cost means that if you're not careful you'll be oom and have to drink. So not worth it when LB spam is more than enough.

[Jasari]

I can't speak for 1-60 because I RAF'd mine that far through RFC/SM/Strath. But 60-80 was a breeze as enhance. From my experience melee is almost always a faster than caster, at least based on my paladin, warlock, priest, shaman, and druid.

[Kiorken]

What I did, just from my expierence, is from 1-75, was enhancement. After gettting Lava Burst, I saw why most DPS Shaman are now Elemental. Lava Burst is insane. I still like using Elemental now.

Very few things live after a Lava Burst, and you can always just follow up with a Lightning Bolt.

Although, until then, you should stay enhance. So if you can grind out the BoA stuff for enhance, do it. Once you hit 75, you can just get groups for instances til 80, while questing, if you want to go elemental.

[Koatanga]

I went enhancement the entire way. There wasn't an elite quest I couldn't solo. Piece of cake.

However, the goal of the toon was to create a healer, and there is much more overlap in healing/elemental gear than there is in healing/enhance gear. Made for messy bags.

But still, if I couldn't kill something in enhance gear, I'd just swap to healer gear (still in ehnance spec, and still using enhance weapons). I'd lose about 25% damage, but had the ability to completely heal myself instantly on every maelstrom proc.

[Spectrum]

I went enhancement the entire way. There wasn't an elite quest I couldn't solo. Piece of cake.

However, the goal of the toon was to create a healer, and there is much more overlap in healing/elemental gear than there is in healing/enhance gear. Made for messy bags.

But still, if I couldn't kill something in enhance gear, I'd just swap to healer gear (still in ehnance spec, and still using enhance weapons). I'd lose about 25% damage, but had the ability to completely heal myself instantly on every maelstrom proc.

That's a nice point. Increasing your spellpower like that should make for some great healing waves.

One thing I've noticed from these posts is that if you ask which of two DPS specs level faster you can probably find two people on Maintankadin who used each spec and leveled really fast. I think there are two factors to that. First is that most people on maintankadin are heavy optimizers and so they were probably leveling very fast compared to the average person. The second is that there really is very little difference in the effectiveness of leveling in the two specs.

[sherck]

First is that most people on maintankadin are heavy optimizers and so they were probably leveling very fast compared to the average person. The second is that there really is very little difference in the effectiveness of leveling in the two specs.

Both excellent points.

One more related question. I am creating this Alt to be Resto (because I am making a healer from all four classes for some strange reason) so the DPS spec will be my "off-spec" for raiding once I reach max level.

And I had planned to go Elemental since the gear sharing with Resto can be pretty high when compared to the gear sharing between Resto and Enhance (which is about.....zero).

Right now, is Enhance DPS acceptable for raid DPS?

I did a melee type toon with my Pally. I have done a ranged type toon with my Priest. I don't know that I prefer one style of another.

Thanks in advance,

TL:DR Is Enhance DPS acception for raiding today?

[Shyrtandros]

This is something I am currently debating on myself. I have a lvl 36 shammy from WAAAAY back before WoTLK and I am planning on moving it to another server to play with a real life friend.

I have been debating mostly on the usefulness of the BOA items. I have all the t9 I need on my main so I can farm up 200 badges or w/e to buy him the goodies.

Does anyone know if the 2maces w/ shoulders, chest, haste trink for enhancement BETTER than going w/ the caster wep, chest, shoulders, and SP trink?

Generally does 1 have more survivability/ Downtime??