Classic Shamans

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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So, I’m super hyped about finally getting around to playing a shaman in classic - I was ‘stuck’ on alliance for the 4 years I played live and never got around to trying out the horde (other than a 29 twink warrior abusing whirlwind weapon and retaliation in wsg, those were the days…)

I mained a druid from launch through WOTLK, through good and bad - this time around I’m going shaman for sure. They keep the nature focus I always loved about the druid, but take it from a different angle, so it should be fun.

That said, I pretty much dont remember anything about shamans from the original other than that they were a pain to fight on my druid =P I’ve been going over all of their abilities on classic.wowhead, but I’d like to hear from some players who are more experienced with shamans - what specs did you enjoy most, what crafting/gathering specializations did you prefer, etc.

Soak me up some of that shammy knowledge

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I killed 3 boars with them during the Stress Test. My man, they are fantastic.

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Keep up totems.
Pretend you’re useful. Chain Heal looks pretty. That works best.
If (when) a priest outheals you, claim they were cheesing meters and it was your buffs that kept everyone alive. The only person who has to believe it is the raid leader.
Chain Lightning one shots people in PvP.
Drop Stoneclaw Totem when being chased by a melee. They’re stupid and will hit it even though it does nothing to them.

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I personally played mostly Enhancement or Restoration with skinning/leatherworking.

LW is great for crafting shaman gear, though Engineering is the standard PVP profession for all characters if you want to focus on that.

All three trees of shaman are great, though. No matter what you spec, you should still remember that you’re a support class and use totems/healing as necessary. When leveling, remember to keep efficiency in mind, and pull mobs to your existing totems instead of dropping new ones every time.

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Yea, I’m most likely going to end up resto at endgame, and swap between that and enhancement - I planned on enhancement for leveling though. Always loved healing endgame with my druid, even if everyone thought I was just an innervate bot, at least until I was able to start tanking as feral in TBC.

I’ve got two people that I’ll likely be leveling with, but neither one is likely to play a healer, so I’ll probably fill that role on the way up to level cap anyways. Totems will be a new twist for me, but given that i’ve played other mmo’s as engineers/“bunker-builder” type characters I dont have a problem focusing on stationary support abilities.

I definitely want to try more pvp this time around, but my primary focus is always endgame pve. At least, from what I’ve read, shamans had several totems that were invaluable to raid groups, on top of having pretty decent heals (Stronger heals than druids, perhaps?) and self-revive as a nice crutch.

Still working out the profession though, I was leaning towards herbalism/alchemy - you think leatherworking would be a better option?

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Try out 0/30/21 at some point (30 enhancement, 21 resto). Great for farming, PVP ability, and still maintains very strong healing. It was probably my favorite spec in Vanilla.

Absolutely right. I don’t know if it’s stronger than druids; hard to say. Druids have more efficient big single-target heals, but no one can match Chain Heal for AoE healing power. Shaman also have a better fast heal, but druids have HoTs. (I’m not entirely sure it’s valuable to try to figure out who’s better anyway :stuck_out_tongue: You’d have to start by defining ‘better’ and then in any different situation you’d just have to start all over, you know?)

Depends what you want to do! Alchemy is a fine profession, you’ll create consumables which are always useful. Leatherworking will make you gear, which is only sometimes useful but will last longer when it is. If you want to make sure you can keep up with gear, go leatherworking; if you want to make sure you can keep up with consumables, go alchemy. You’re going to end up feeling good about either choice.

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be prepared for an epic journy across the continents when you want that healing stream totem <3 lol

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Call of Water is the price we pay for Ghost Wolf :frowning:

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Not sure I understand that reference, I assume healing stream totem came from a quest on the other continent?

IIRC, druids had to do that kind of thing for aquatic form too.

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The quest involved both continents. The harder part was in Ashenvale (at least hard if you went to do it as soon as the quest became available) but you did have to make a trek to Tarren Mill in Hillsbrad which was a long but relatively easy journey.

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I know dual wielding wasnt a thing until later, but could shamans use fist weapons in classic or did that come around with the DW addition?

Also, any opinions on which race to go with? My plan was to go orc, easier to get the wolf mount to match my ghost wolf. Did shamans have the summonable spirit wolves in classic?

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OP says he played a druid. Druids had to do quests that took you back and forth to both continents.

Shamans can use fist weapons in their main hand but not off hand, just like how druids used to be.
Spirit wolves were not in classic. Troll is generally the better race for elemental and resto because of the haste from berserking. Orc is good for enhance and in pvp because of the AP racial and the stun resist. Some people have said that the pet racial works for totems but I’ve never seen any mention of that until the past couple weeks so I would go with them not benefitting from the pet racial.

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For what it’s worth, I also do not remember totems being affected by the pet racial (or any other pet effects).

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Shaman have so many fun builds for PvP.

For PvE they are a bit more limited.