Shaman Class Guide: Index: 1.0 - So I herd u liek shamans Shamans are indeed an interesting class, one of the more hybridized classes infact, meaning they depend more upon a mixture of abilities, than almost any other except for say paladin or druid. Shamans present the interesting bonus of being able to summon totems, essentially little buffing posts that provide something similar to a paladin's aura except in a limited range around the totem itself rather than the shaman, the upside is that you can have 4 of different elements going at the same time. Obviously the ability to not only have 4 different totems out, each giving some rather nice buffs, but also the ability to heal, melee, and throw out some nasty damage spells, makes Shamans pretty fun sometimes. Utilizing all of theses to an effective degree will take some time, experience, and personal skill, but any good shaman will find it rather easy and instinctive eventually. The downside is obviously the fact that, 1: Totems can't move, meaning you have to replace them... alot, 2: Lots of our spells costs lots of mana, and we don't exactly get infinite mana pools, this especially counts on moving the totems, and 3: Mail armor doesn't mean much against enraged warriors or empowered spellcasters, it looks spiffy but thats about it most of the time. One thing I should make clear is that Shamans are probably my favorite class in the game, one tiny notch above warriors even, my first 60, and now 70, was a shaman, despite my recent playtime focused upon warriors, mages, and rogues, I still have a special place in my heart for shamans. This entire guide is written from the perspective of an avid shaman player, this'll be why I possess certain "annoyances" with the class, not due to how it plays, but simply due to a couple problems it has from big ol' blizzard's "balancing." 2.0 - Variations on the norm Shamans are indeed a versatile class, master of none, capable of all, at least the line goes something like that. Honestly depending on whether you go down the elemental, enhancement, or restoration tree, will really decide what you're good at. An enhancement or restoration shaman is truly laughable at using his elemental spells for anything except the debuffs, unless you happen to like running out of mana exceedingly fast and getting pounded into the ground even faster. Likewise an elemental shaman spamming heals or attempting to melee won't even do half as well as a shaman specced specifically for such pursuits, obviously it *is* possible, it simply isn't viable on anything except say... normal mobs, players will rip you apart. Another thing, depending on your spec you're either going to be chugging water or heals like crazy, water for the elemental and resto specced players, heals for the enhancement. Due to our new avaliability of talent points at level 70, ten extra infact, we can now to a certain extent become viable in two tree's, some of the most obvious talent selections being thing such as elemental or enhancement paired up with restoration, or perhaps a healing focused shaman branching off into enhancement for a bit more grinding ability. Either way it gives us a few more choices. 3.0 - Leveling as a shaman Leveling as a shaman is somewhere in the medium category, not as bad as some but not even close to as good as others. As with all classes this can be heavily sped up, especially in the 10-50 or so category, by completely decking yourself out in blues and purples, not the easiest thing to do depending on your current monetary supply levels. Personally I've tried three different main builds as well as a few strange ones, the three main ones are focused on each of our talent trees, elemental, enhancement, and restoration, the others are my own weird hybrid "thingies" that should never again be mentioned. You might have heard certain rumor's about specific builds, things such as "restoration makes me so mana-efficient with healing that it's the fastest!" and "Elemental is sooo cool becuz I shoot lots of lightning bolts for krewl damage" etc. Obviously I exagerate the lines a bit, well maybe not, regardless I personally find enhancement to be the easiest build whether you're doing it the hard way or gearing yourself like crazy, the ability to greatly improve your melee DPS with each weapon upgrade and additionally boost your healing a bit at later levels with some points in restoration makes the most grind-efficient build possible to a shaman, however elemental is still viable. Elemental leveling is different from enhancement, my melee shaman whacks away at things using rank 1 earthshock to interrupt casters and lesser healing wave for some HP in-between fights, practically never resting. This is different from my elemental shaman who drops a mob in about 5-8 seconds, repeats this 2-5 times, and then sits down to drink/eat to full before repeating again. At the maximum potential I found enhancements rythym and speed to be a bit faster and better but for those elemental fans it *is* possible to level quite adequately as a damage caster. Note: Restoration is horrible for leveling except as a supporting tree for either enhancement or elemental, do not use it as your main build. 4.0 - Outland Outland is for shamans, much like it is for warriors, something of an easy grind compared to what you've endured from 1-60, as I mentioned above, shamans aren't the fastest grinders in the game, thus we get somewhat left in the dust when forced to grind for an acceptable leveling pace. This is where outland comes in, all the sudden everything you do is supported by quest XP, kill ten boars(or whatever it is,) gain 10-20k quest XP, it really helps. Another thing we gain unlike warriors is that Outland seems to actually possess gear for shamans, thus we aren't left deprived of any upgrades and therefore can enjoy gaining a good amount of stats/damage every few levels. Outland is also more open to elemental shaman leveling than Azeroth, due to the lack of grinding required elemental can almost match if not at times surpass enhancement/resto shamans in leveling speed, this can be a nice build to try out at this point. Finally, for the first time I began experiencing dungeons and the like that are actually solo-healable by restoration shamans, unlike the dungeons of old where you pretty much required a good paladin or priest, this makes shamans much more group viable compared to before, even without the absolute top of the line gear. 5.0 - Raiding Raiding as a shaman has stayed much the same, we heal-bot, now I have actually seen some elemental shamans going raiding, but it's definitely a rarity, overall we take the same role we took pre-BC, heal, heal, heal. Restoration builds, totem dropping, buffing, etc, not much has changed in that regard except for that nifty buff Heroism as well as a few other nice things we gain as 41-point talents or 60+ spells. Some might say that shamans are a bit weak compared to other healers/buffers, especially paladins, some people would be to a certain degree correct. Despite the ways we have improved due to 60-70 we've also further weakened in our roles compared to paladins, heck, they even manage to out-do priests and druids at times, also given that the alliance/horde exclusive classes are no-longer exclusive we aren't as able to be the answer to a paladin anymore, this could explain our relative weakness in comparison. Finally, check out the gear guide at the bottom for a good selection of starter restoration shaman gear, it should allow you to get into Karazhan at least, and all is avaliable in 5-mans/quests pretty much. 6.0 Pee-vee-pee Well, finally the big bad PvP, sadly to say shaman's suck compared to pretty much everyone else in this regard. Unlike druids we lack a bear form/effective defense against big hitters, unlike paladins we lack plate/invulnerability/a bunch of stuff, and unlike priests we lack shield/fear/a bunch of stuff, so really we happen to be the worst combat healers. Now, I'm not going to say it's impossible, but realisticly you're going to get torn apart by the opposition before you can do much good, it's a sad fate for a shaman facing any half-way decent team/players. In arena's this only makes the problem worse, due to organized 2v2,3v3, or 5v5 teams assist-training one target at a time you're not going to stay up very fast whatsoever. The only fun I've grasped out of PvP has been an elemental build, basically running in and doing my "fire ze nukes" routine before being slaughtered a few seconds later. Generally you can take down one or two people, maybe even more, if you time it right but after that all bets are off. Basically my advice for PvP is try and stay out of sight, the instant you get targeted you're probably going to go down pretty fast, avoid combat unless it's in your favour pretty much. 7.0 Gear Guide This is aimed at restoration shamans wanting to start raiding such as Karazhan and heroic 5-mans etc. At a later time I may add and enhancement/elemental gear guide but for now it's just the restoration build oriented gear. Helm: Metallic Headband of Simm'onz - Quest Reward Neck: Necklace of Resplendent Hope - Drop(Old Hillsbrad) Back: Lifegiving Cloak - World Drop BoE Shoulders: Mantle of the Sea Wolf - Drop(Heroic Mana Tombs) Chest: Void Slayer's Tunic - Quest Reward Wrist: Primal Surge Bracers - Drop(Black Morass) Hands: Fathomheart Gauntlets - Drop(Steamvault) Belt: Stillwater Girdle - Drop(Heroic Mana Tombs) Legs: Oceansong Kilt - Drop(Heroic Ramparts) Boots: Auchenai Boots - Quest Reward Rings: Spiritualist's Mark of the Sha'tar - Quest Reward Trinkets: Scarab of the Infinite Cycle- Drop(Black Morass) Weapons: Lightsworn Hammer - Drop(Shattered Halls) Shield: Crystal Pulse Shield - World Drop BoE | |
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Class Guide Shamen
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