Totem Talk: So I'm levelling an enhancement shaman again...
by Matthew Rossi 
Sep 6th 2007 at 9:30AM
Totem Talk is written by a shaman for shamans. What does that mean? Well, it means that Matthew Rossi is currently healing with a level 70 resto shammy, and is leveling up a 47 enhancement shaman as well. In fact, the only reason he stopped playing said shaman to write this column is out of his deep sense of commitment to you. Oh, and they shut down the servers for a couple of hours. But mostly deep commitment to you.
I hated my first shaman so much I left him at level 16 for five months.
It was hard to figure out for me. I was so used to warriors that I couldn't wrap my head around how to play a mana-using class, especially one that lacked all the abilities I'd grown so used to and dependent on. I tried a mage, a warlock, a hunter and a shaman, and none of them really worked for me. So I gave up on the shaman, and went and rolled up a new tauren warrior and leveled him up post haste so that I could join in on the fun reindeer games on my new horde server. (The server's not horde, but I was horde on it.) Every so often I would try another character... I made a druid and a priest but didn't get that far with them... but in the end, once I hit 60 and with the expansion looming, I decided to go back and give the shaman another try and I discovered the spec that changed everything for me.
Enhancement. Say it with me. Enhancement. To make things better. And boy, in my case, enhancement delivered all the better I could possibly have needed. A lot of folks make a typographical error and call them enchantment shamans, and in my case that's apt, because the first time I saw a windfury crit I was indeed enchanted. Rapt, even. One moment I was fighting a hyena outside of Gadgetzan and the next... I wasn't. It fell down. Fell down and went boom, even. I'd had that happen to me in battlegrounds, mind you, but I'd never really imagined that I could do it to others.
I admit now, trying to go elemental was a mistake for me. It's an excellent spec, but it's a caster spec. And I, my friends, am not a caster. I am melee in my heart, and so, I needed a melee spec to level. And with dual wielding, weapon enchants like windfury and rockbiter, and totems like grace of air and strength of earth, the enhancement shaman is a melee spec that makes other melee better to boot. How, I ask you, how can you go wrong with enhancement?
Well, you can pull threat for one thing.
My first run with the new Draenei shaman in Scarlet Monastery, I pulled threat constantly. This is after having already taken one shaman to 70, mind you, and him enhancement from 35 to 70 or so. Sure, he's resto now and heals most of the time, but I still remember enough that you'd think I'd be able to throttle back. Except that enhancement doesn't have a throttle. Your damage and threat come from weapon enhancements that either add damage (like rockbiter and flametongue) or proc, windfury being the chief example of a random proc. The effect of two extra attacks with extra attack power. Which can crit, and which you have no control over at all. Combine this with an overall shock-happy aspect that always takes me a couple of levels to get over and you have a lot of burst damage with no real means to slow it down.
Okay, fine, I could and did stop throwing so many shocks around, especially once I got stormstrike. And that did help a bit. But if my run in Maraudon recently taught me anything, it's that I can still pull aggro without much effort, just by getting lucky a couple of times with WF.
Another downside to a heavy enhancement spec is mana efficiency. Specifically, the lack of it. Dropping all four totems will take you down a significant fraction of your mana bar, especially if you're geared for agility and attack power: it can be hard to find int, agi, and AP on gear as you level, especially if you also make stamina a priority. Around level 40 you can hit Scarlet Monastery and grab a lot of good mail for an enhancement shammy, mail with strength, stamina and crit on it, but it's not really shaman mail at all, it's good blues for a warrior or paladin who hasn't quite graduated to plate yet. As a result, it's not really designed to help your mana pool very much. And as you head into the late 40's/early 50's, you'll be torn between AP, crit and mana on your gear. The end result of all this is that you will often find yourself stopping to drink after a pull or two (if you can get lucky and arrange to fight on the same spot for the duration of your totems, anyway). Mana is the limiter on shaman melee dps, and mana is what makes it so bursty... a few stormstrikes and earth shocks and you're almost out of gas, while rogues and warriors are just getting started. The lesson here is don't neglect your mana pool and it is a lesson I myself forget to keep to heart often.
With these caveats in mind, I still recommend enhancement as a leveling build. I have a great time playing my new shaman just as I did playing my first. Now, I do enjoy healing, and the next Totem Talk is going to be dedicated to resto and healing in five mans and beyond (including how hard it can be to do sustained MT healing on a boss fight without mana spring or mana tide) but I don't really find a restoration spec to be tremendous fun to level with. You cannot heal a mob to death, after all. Your mileage may vary, and that's cool, I don't pretend that my preferences are universal.
To try and help the lowbie shaman levelling up, here are some good pieces of gear to look for in the 20's. First off there's the Troll's Bane Leggings, a BoE item you can equip at level 25. They have nice agility, stamina and a little spirit (which, admittedly, is not all that great for shamans) and since they're BoE you won't have to fight Hunters, Rogues and Druids for them. At level 27 you can take the quest Warsong Supplies (if you're horde) and get the Warsong Boots, another great item you won't have to fight anyone over. To be fair to our alliance friends, here's an item only they can get, the Tunic of Westfall from the Deadmines questline The Defias Brotherhood. You can get that one even before level 20 and it'll last you a while.
I'd love to go more in depth here, and I'm sure I'll come back to enhancement... I'd love to talk more about raiding as an enhancement shaman, for example, and I always want to talk about running Scarlet Monastery over and over and over and over and over again until I dreaded the very idea of killing Herod again knowing he would drop Ravager for the ten billionth time instead of the pants. But Restoration and Elemental both deserve some love from this column before I come back to it, so expect those in the next few weeks. I promise, we'll start beating on things around here again soon.
Filed under: Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Draenei, Leveling, Classes, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Buuty Sep 6th 2007 9:37AM
I miss my Enhancement Shammy, Rootsman on Balnazzar - PvP. He was so much fun to play, but I knew no on eon the server after my firend left, and it was already a low-pop server, so I left him and rerolled on another server. I miss him so...
Drayna Sep 6th 2007 10:31AM
I remember as I was leveling my Dranei shaman that before I hit my 40s, I had made crit percentage. I had over 20% as I remember and with Windfury on, I was a killer. Then the 40s hit and I got the gear from SM, and I cried. My shaman had sta and str, but she could no longer crit all the time. Granted I pulled aggro...a lot, but at that level, there wasn't much concern. You can offtank a lot in those levels. And even after that, you could offtank pretty much on mobs the group doesn't want to deal with (Frost Shock to pull a mob off the healer FTW).
Once I got into BC and went into HP, I realized all too soon that even though I could relatively offtank, I died much much faster. I couldn't offtank anymore. I had some friends who laughed at me since I was trying to offtank, but hey it used to work before. Since then I've had to respec to enhance+resto for at least more heals.
What I believe is currently wrong then with enhancement is we have to hold back our full dps potential. We go all out in pvp, we can kill quite easily. We go all out in pve, the group can die.
Kiros Sep 6th 2007 10:33AM
I currently have a 31 Enhancement Shaman. I got windfury @ 30 as you know and man...I've been missing so much! It's such a great spell! I jumped into a BG at 31 to see how I'd do and I actually managed to kill a 39 mage with a few swings...I can't wait to see how much of a beast I'll be @ 39. Go Enchantmen shaman! Enchant our dreams.
Zghuk Sep 6th 2007 10:34AM
just transfer?
bonse Sep 6th 2007 11:18AM
@2 holding back your full dps potential is the 'skill' part of all dps classes, anyone can spam frostbolt or whatever, but it takes skill to keep your dps high enough but your threat low enough. Shaman dont have an aggro dump, thats true, but nor do locks or warriors, mages only got one recently, druids have to turn to catform to use one, which for a moonkin is usually easier to just use a staff to regain some mana and hope the tank can get it back. The problem with enhancement shaman isnt that they 'cant go all out in pve' because 'the group will die' as that pretty much applies to everyone, the problem is that the threat is very much less controllable or predictable.
A fury warrior getting close to threat limit will hold back on the specials, since a warriors threat regardless to spec is modified up on most specials, so falling back to autoattack even only briefly will stunt the TPS, and the seriously high dps execute is only available at the stage of the fight when a plate wearer drawing aggro isnt a huge problem *or* in the case of a boss the tank will likely have enough threat to cope, so with shamans threat coming from weapon ehnacements, autoattack is not much of a threat reduction, add to that you never know when you will get a WF to proc and crit, you can't reliably throttle back without stopping completely.
How do you make a major portion of the threat generation predictable and controllable without losing the flavour of enhancement shamans? I dont know, I know i would love it if they gave ghost wolf an additonal bonus of reducing threat reasonably quickly, so in a boss fight, still near the beginning, shaman hits close to the threat limit and just switches to ghost wolf, sits there for 5 secs and has lost most threat. I dont know how that would effect group play, class balance etc etc, but its an idea, yes your sitting there for 5secs doing nothing, but its better than 30
phx1253 Sep 6th 2007 11:40AM
I only have leveled 1 shammy in my ENTIRE time playing and they are so fun.. Pre-20's you want to do deadmines/WC (the armor of the fang is nice) and have someone craft you a Deviate Scale Belt. Also you might want to do for the quest Blackfathom Villainy to get your Arctic Buckler out of BFD.
The Warsong Boots quest you can get at 20 and should be done as soon as you can get it, you will be wearing those boots well into your 30's (get them enchanted asap). Then as soon as you hit 25 you need to run (not walk) to get the "Rig Wars!" quest in org (Gnomer run) and the bop shield isnt bad either. They will net you the "Triprunner Dungarees" and slap a Heavy armor kit on them. Those pants you will be wearing to 40.
You will want to do RFK to get your Swinetusk Shank and A Vengeful Fate quest for (Marbled Buckler). At 35 have a jc craft you a Truesilver Commander ring. At that point you should be running SM pretty hard to get all the mail out of there, but the most important is the Gauntlets of Divinity. If you can afford it, get the +15 strength enchant on them. They drop in cath, with a 15% rate so be preped for quite a few runs. After you have everyting out of sm, I suggest RFD. You have to farm tuten'kesh for his Silky Spider Cape (throw +120 armor enchant on it if you can) After that, your on your own.
Silverfire Sep 6th 2007 11:35AM
With regard to the lack of mana efficiency, I recommend simply not dropping totems unless you really need to. I'll use Strength of Earth if I'm not going to be moving for 3-5 fights, or Grounding totem if I fight a caster, but that's just about all I'll do. I tend to save my mana for Lightning Shield and post-combat heals. Can go many, many fights without drinking currently.
I realize that blowing more mana to kill faster can be a good thing, but it's just not my style!
aerosaucer Sep 6th 2007 11:38AM
Why do I see people saying shaman should be getting agility on their gear?
Aren't enhancement shaman just like warriors: we want strength and crit percentage instead of agility?
Shaman get no attack power from agility, so you are just gimping your dps by stacking agility on purpose. You are just getting a gimped crit boost and some dodge and armor that you won't need if your target is already dead (which he would be if you had the same ivalue of crit or strength instead of agility)
(though I understand how tough it is to gear an enhance shammy, and you end up wearing a lot of rogue and hunter gear just because there are few/no alternatives. But don't do it on purpose.)
Matthew Rossi Sep 6th 2007 11:49AM
@7 -
Yes, you're quite correct that Strength and Crit would be preferable to Agi on gear, but in practice you'll end up with AP and Agi instead. In your 20's you can grab rogue leather with Str and Agi, and in your late 30's you can stockpile the Scarlet Monastery mail, which is really the last golden age of mail with Str and Crit, unfortunately.
Blizz seems to itemize their mail so that it can be good for Hunters (who want AP and Agi) as well as Enhancement. But yes, just deliberately stacking Agi to the exclusion of all else would be silly.
Talitha Sep 6th 2007 11:50AM
@5 Locks do have an aggro dump (Soulshatter). They also have alot of talents to keep aggro down. Although I do agree with everything else you said.
phx1253 Sep 6th 2007 11:49AM
Oh, almost forgot, at 25 you will want to have a LW craft you a pair of Barbaric Bracers and get +str on them. (if your on DarkIron I put a pair on the ah every weekend with +5 str enchant already on them) And dont forget the escort quest in rfd to get the +10 stam ring. This should replace the ring you get from a quest reward in sfk thats +8 stam +3 str. (low 20's)
anonymoose Sep 6th 2007 11:59AM
I'm leveling a shammy to be resto at 70, but she is currently enhancement for the leveling process. Since I don't actually consider myself much of a melee person, and my main is a heal priest--I think I have a different perspective on pulling agro and what I should be doing with it.
For starters, I already have a threat meter installed because I raid on my main. I have tended to group with other alts, who also have threat meters installed. This helps a great deal for the learning curve about how to manage threat. I hold to the basics of letting my tank have first tap on mobs so there is no conflict over trying to get something off me.
That's not to say I haven't pulled agro--I have. I think it's what you do once you have the agro that makes the difference. Do you stay there and go all out trying to top dps meters? Well yeah, you probably will have to use ankh as your agro reset in that case.
Usually in instances I avoid using frost shock, which generates higher levels of threat and can make it harder for a tank to pull a mob off me. I will use frost shock to pull something off a clothie. If I've used frost shock to taunt off a clothie or earth shock to silence a caster, I will then run right to my tank and say or type "Taunt". If I'm in vent I might explain more about what I'm doing. The average decent tank knows what to do, and will pick up that mob because I am pulling back the dps to let them do it.
That practice right there has allowed me to off tank for short time periods, without forcing healers to pay an overabundance of attention to me (interpretation: healers do not have to choose between healing the tank or me), since I'm all too happy to give up the mob who is on me--but I know I can take the beating better than a priest can.
As an aside, when running with a pally tank in particular, I always drop windfury, even if the majority of the group could benefit from GoA. While I apologize to the rest of the group for the lack of GoA, windfury allows the pally to generate much higher levels of threat.
As for mana efficiency, I've found enchanting to be fantastic, as it has allowed me to enchant various pieces of gear with intellect (or strength when I wanted to boost my AP, or stamina for extra survivability). Someone else mentioned they don't drop all 4 totems for their own basic combat--I try to do the same. In groups I do try to drop at least 3 totems since I figure a large part of the shammy class is group utility. If I'm not dropping totems I'm not maxxing my usefulness to the group.
The 41 point talent, combined with AP trinkets and something like Crusader on weapons can provide nice returns on mana while in combat. I don't know how useful Crusader will be as I get higher in level (only 64 now), but when I've activated a trinket, the 41 point talent, and stormstrike and Crusader procs...the mana bar climbs very quickly!
While it's fun dual wielding axes and using stormstrike...I can hardly wait to go resto. The times I've been able to spec full resto have been amazingly fun.
mugginns Sep 6th 2007 12:57PM
it's kind of funny that the only people saying shamans are fun is before 60 ;)
Gorehorn Sep 6th 2007 1:16PM
@5 from me too.
Actually, Druids now have threat reduction for their spells too in the form of the "Subtlety" talent which was changed to affect all spells recently.
And to comment on your idea for threat reduction via Ghost Wolf, I don't see why you need Ghost Wolf for that to work. Turning auto-attack off should help with threat all by itself, allowing the tank to reestablish some lead on the aggro-list.
Angus Sep 6th 2007 1:50PM
@#14: Why should we turn off autoattack just to deal with threat. We don't do as much damage as "pure" classes, and they don't want us to. Yet when we go into an instance we are also forced to stop doing damage to let the tank increase threat. Other classes can simply pull an aggro dump tool and as they are about to they can dump threat and within a few seconds continue to build it, while having a huge ceiling on it.
All Shaman need an aggro dump. That simple. The passive threat reduction for enhance is pretty much worthless. It only lowers auto-attack threat. The new changes to enhance shaman are going to make them have a TON more threat as they will now be using shocks more and those shocks will be doing more damage. That damage reduction is pretty much worthless in PVP and in PvE it should rarely come into play. Worse is the fact that regening mana with SR makes you gain even more aggro.
The class needs work. It's still considered a levelling spec by the Devs.
blacksack Sep 6th 2007 3:06PM
You nailed it on the head... threat. Threat threat threat. The mana thing, IMO, is solved at lvl 50 with Shamanistic Rage. I had no mana issues once I learned to use that. It's a great talent for leveling and boss fights.
As #5 said, all classes face the problem of throttling, but they have a way to reduce or drop threat once it's an issue. Enhancement shamans have no way to keep threat in check. You basically have to lay off stormstrike and shocks... what other class is asked to do that much?
Resto FTW. I'm there and loving it. Just blows that I can't enjoy my enhancement build.
Gorehorn Sep 6th 2007 4:23PM
@15: I can completely understand where you're coming from, but you have to agree bonse's original post boiled down to "stop attacking for x seconds for threat loss", which is mainly what I wanted to point out. This is already a possibility, and it probably is the worst one imaginable. What would be other ones?
- One could adjust the threat reduction of Spirit Weapons to 20-25% and/or have it apply to Windfury and other extra attacks (if it doesn't now, which may be a bug). (Possible at any time)
- Give Shamans something along the lines of a "Reverse Righteous Fury", a long lasting buff, that reduces threat caused and is trainable at a certain level or as a talent (probably not, as Tranquil Air Totem works almost like that)
- Give Enhancement Shamans an additional Shock as a talent that reduces threat (maybe "Wind Shock"?), along the lines of Feint. (Nice possibility, I think, but there's a great danger it could end up FAR down the tree as a new talent for WotLK)
Playing a feral druid, which went from "meh" to "great" with BC, I support any cause for Enhancement-viability wholeheartedly, but it may end up in the new talent-trees for the X-Pack and therefore some time away.
konchu Sep 6th 2007 8:57PM
I am playing elemental on my shaman know but I understand there is a challange to threat on enhancement especially when you are a walking slot machine of death just with a couple of lucky crit Windfuries.
But as someone who has played other DPS and healer specs(Rogue/Druid) even with tools to help agro they are not always 100% neccessary if you pace your self which is also mana/energy/rage efficient as well it can help.
As people have said being sparing on shocks can help a little no one wants to just step out of the fight and be doing nothing at all. I wonder if keeping a secondary weapon enchanted with more consistant damage like flametougue or rockbiter and watching the damage meter and swaping weapons when it starts to look too close would be a good solution.
bonse Sep 12th 2007 9:20AM
Sorry about dredging such an old topic up, I wanted to answer a few things but have been ill recently and no where near a keyboard :(
I'm the bloke that made the post #5 that keeps getting referred to. Mostly it was a kneejerk reaction to my reading yet another post that roughly translates to "I demand enhancement shamans be immune to threat mechanics because i don't understand them, and i don't see why i cant just hit everything as hard as i can and if the tank cant keep aggro its because he sucks and if we all die its the healers fault, i don't have to think about any of that", I mean seriously, we have a problem, and those posts really aren't helping our cause. By the end of my post i had realised all i had done was a counter whine, if i wasnt part of the solution etc etc, so i looked at ways of fixing the percieved problem rather than complain about it. It wasnt long, I pretty much typed it out as i thought of it, I wasnt expecting it to be taken seriously, just a message in a bottle, but even though i knew this as i wrote it, there did seem to be a seed of something there. I am totally surprised by how many people seem to have read it all the way through, and it does seem to have been remembered, already i have had an email from a friend about my 'ghostwolf idea' which is odd as the only wow character i have called bonse hasnt been used since december 29th 2004 and its not a name i use elsewhere..
A few points were made as to 'whys' that i couldn't reply to but here goes....why ghost wolf? no reason really, all i did was look at the mage's invisibility spell and added it to a suitable skill shamans already have, generally suggesting an addition or alteration to a current skill with suitable reasoning (both for mechanics AND lore) will be more likely thought about than just demanding a new feign death vanish invisibility skill
thanks for pointing out about soul shatter btw :) I had delibrately not ventured into the passive threat reduction talents as my main point wasnt that shaman generate too much threat, but that it was difficult to predict, pretty much every one else can sit at the 90-110% threat mark and even with crits maintain it without thinking outside of timing/shot rotation and the various threat dumps if applicable, shaman on the other hand can go from 90-130% very quickly and unexpectedly, forcing them to sit further down at 70%ish seriously crimping what they can do, and if there's one thing i know its that no one likes being in a fight where they are limited to autoattack.
My thought was that a shaman could autoattack with enhanced weapons and suitable totems out and very quickly draw aggro even without shocks. If, just before that happened they could spend a few seconds de-threating (inventive use of game terminology FTW) they could then go at it again, like a hunter feigning before drawing. Anyone who has watched a hunter do this has noticed the immense improvement in it's DPS, and also how much they seem to be enjoying sitting right on that threshold, but always in control of it. Its that CONTROL that shaman lack, I just spent about 2 minutes thinking of a way forward that fitted the shaman background and needs, I'm pretty sure someone can spend longer with better knowlege of mechanics and lore and come up with something better.
to sum up the same way i summed up my first point, better to sit out for 5 seconds than 30. and in reality, if the cooldown is sufficient, it could be more like 3 including gcd to be low enough to start again in most fights, 5secs being almost completely reduced, in reality, that 3secs is roughly the same as a fury warrior falling back on autoattack. Like I said, just a note posted to a church door
bonse Sep 12th 2007 9:32AM
doh, not church door, message in bottle, dammit, hate comment inconsistency :)
#17 good post, yes you have to stop attacking for x seconds, but its 'actively' reducing threat rather than letting everyone else go up. ideally you'll want to be down from 100% to 15% of tanks threat within 3 seconds.
#18 walking-slot-machine-of-death
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