If you had to choose between these three specs to main as in TBC, which would you choose and why?
For solo play, shadow, for group play elemental. I like brining totems to the group, and asking everyone else feel stronger. Shadow is a lot of fun in solo play though, even in arenas i would rather play shadow than elemental.
Personally don’t like balance so there’s that.
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For me personally, it would be shadow. Only because I mainly do pvp with the rare raid here and there. If I was a pve only player I’d go elemental for sure. Boomkin I really have never had an interest in. The only reason I played boomkin was when I was playing a resto druid main and just felt like dpsing in a raid every once in a while.
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Elemental hands down. While all 3 are wanted in raids people forget meta and reality aren’t always the same thing. Sure you want 3 resto shaman… but not every raid group will get 3. But you’ll always want 5 shamans even if it means taking 2 enhance or 2 elementals it doesn’t matter. Lust/hero is just that good.
So I’d go ele knowing I’m just as wanted as the other 2 but in reality could also get in groups even if they have one already. Whereas you really wouldn’t want more than 1 boomkin and unless you have arcane mages probably wouldn’t want more than 1 spriest either.
Just my opinion but yeah… plus I could always swap resto for ez raid spots.
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Balance because bird form. Also, balance druids get to tank in gruuls lair.
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For PvP, I’d make an argument Shadow > Balance > Elemental. However, PvP comes in a variety of forms and it’s a fairly complex discussion depending on what exactly you want to do in PvP - I know if I’m in the open world, Druid has a ton of qualitative advantages for escaping encounters you really don’t want to participate in.
For PvE, I’d argue Elemental >> Shadow > Balance.
Elemental is strong in 5-man, 10-man and 25-man content. There’s at least one guaranteed raid spot and potentially two. They bring effective interrupts and effective AE, as well as being one of the strongest buffing specs around. About the only reason someone isn’t going to immediately snap up an Elemental Shaman for their group is if they’ve already got a Shaman.
Shadow Priests get at least one guaranteed raid spot in a 25-man. However, they’re relatively weak outside of that. They’ve got some situational CC, but no AE. Their single target dps is relatively low even in ideal situations and atrocious when you’re not fighting high health enemies due to the DoT-centric nature of their rotation. They’re one of the weakest solo specs as well, often getting out-performed by Holy Priests in the open world.
Balance Druids don’t necessarily have a raid spot at all. While they bring some nice buffs/debuffs, it’s questionable whether the value of these effects bridge the difference between their relatively low dps and the dps of pure dps specs. Their CC is even more situational than Shadow Priests and their AE is only marginally better.
However, in phase one, Shadow Priests and Balance Druids will seem a lot more powerful than they are (while Elemental Shaman will seem less) simply due to gearing. Shadoweave and Spellfire are enormously powerful sets that have no counterpart for Elemental Shaman.
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Thanks for the responses, guys! I was mostly bouncing back and forth between leveling this guy up to 70, or leveling my new draenei shaman up to 70. I think I will just focus on the shaman and put this guy in 2nd place for 70, with my 14 druid probably benched indefinitely.
I main Boomie. It’s my favorite spec in TBC. I can respec Rdruid to own arenas, stay Restokin for world farming, heroics, battlegrounds and respec deep Balance to nuke some raid bosses and bring great utility to the group. It’s just my favorite all-around experience because I feel powerful in literally every aspect of the game, all on one class, and more or less on one spec.
Elemental is great, too. They do incredible heroic DPS, battleground damage, they farm quests and world materials well and in the first phase of the expansion their raid DPS is actually pretty good too. The life gets harder in arena, which is very important to me. Elemental is very frustrating to play in 2vs2 and although there are 3vs3 teams that are viable with elemental, you’re definitely off-meta. In 5vs5 Elemental is extremely strong, but I find that a meme bracket.
If your interests lie more outside of rated PvP, then Elemental is a great choice.
Spriests are awesome, too.
Elemental shaman is great in all content EXCEPT for 2v2 and 3v3.
Elemental shaman is dumpster tier in 2v2 which makes me, a pvp focused player, very sad.
But luckily even though 5v5 isn’t considered the “competitive” bracket, it IS the bracket that awards the most arena points each week so any serious pvper will NEED to have a good 5s team to farm gear quickly.
Shaman in general is arguably REQUIRED in a 5s team, and with resto being a rather weak healer for pvp, especially when focused and enhancement being easily dealt with, elemental really shines in the 5s format.
Shadow is more fun in pvp and will definitely be more rare so more wanted in raids.
Elemental has the best aesthetics and the only thing that really matters in this game is how cool you look standing around SW/Org.
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