Seen that post about retribution paladins and all the responses it got so figured I’d make this one. And hopefully get some good information out of it for me and others that are interested.
So from the research I have done myself I have come to the conclusion that elemental shaman is not optimal for a few reasons and at the start before AQ not even viable.
This is due to a few reasons. The first being mana, as one would suspect being a hybrid mana is a rough problem to beat. My solution would be to downrank your spells but how much would that hurt your dps?
The second point is and this is another big one nature spells don’t have a curse, that alone is a 10% damage reduction compared to every other caster off the bat, not only is it a 10% damage reduction but you also don’t get the spell resistance reduction. Which means unless your guild has thunderfury you need 75 spell penetration just to be on par with every other caster. The spell penetration problem can be fixed with AQ40 gear which thankfully has quite a few spell penetration pieces to choose from. Thankfully shaman is a caster that has a spel hit talent so you don’t need as much hit.
The third issue, unlike balance / feral / enhance / shadow you quite frankly do not bring any thing useful that a Resto Shaman doesn’t bring to the table which is a big flaw in elementals arsenal.
Now let’s say you’re one of the lucky few who was able to get the spell penetration needed, had all consumables ready to hopefully help with your mana issues, had your lightning bolt rank (I believe it was 11) book, played reasonable well, down ranking etc had your 3 piece t2.5 for that extra needed damage.
Do you believe elemental shaman could be viable or better yet optimal or close to optimal in a raid environment?
Won’t ever be close to optimal because of the issues you listed. You can downrank spells but that means you’re doing a fraction of the other casters’ dps. Spriest can downrank because it doesn’t affect their utility, you can’t do the same as ele.
That being said Elemental shamans are absolute monsters in pvp even if they suck in pve.
So say a 3 minutes fight where the shaman somehow doesn’t go oom and is able to maintain rank 11 lightning bolt throughout the fight. Do you think the shaman may be able to catch up to say a warlock? Or possibly even beat them?
I mean it is a long shot, and would definitely require the shaman to be flasked along with every other consumable, wizard oil, dark tunes, mana potions, etc which in itself is about 150g+ gold per raid but I guess it comes with the territory.
I don’t remember which guild. On Patchwork they put a geared a elemental shaman in a group with 4 resto shaman for the mana tides, (he may have got innervates too) His DPS was amazing, and he was near the top.
I doubt you’ll ever get innervates (lol), but if your geared, trying to get in a group with resto shamans should do wonders.
Having another shaman is never a bad thing and your dps isn’t that bad. What holds elemental shamans back is the lack of regen and the lack of a warlock curse to reduce resist. Luckily it isn’t all that bad especially because lightning bolt is such a cheap spell. Like everything else, if you aren’t a mage, rogue, or warrior you aren’t going to be topping the e-peen charts in a min/max setting.
elemental shamans do pretty good with very gear… until they go oom
this is because talented lightning bolt has a spell damage coefficient of 6/7ths of 100%, with a cast time of 2 seconds
the talent that reduces its cast time reduces it by 1 second instead of by half a second
all non-instant spells with a cast time of 1.5 seconds or longer, by default, have a spell damage coefficient equal to 1/7th per .5 seconds of cast time
so frostbolt, with its 3 second cast time, has a 6/7ths of 100% spell damage coefficient, and searing pain, with its 1.5 second cast time, has half as much benefit from spell damage, at 3/7ths of 100%
anyway, because of the superior less cast time talent that lightning bolt gets, it effectively gets more spell damage coefficient per second than spells from other classes get, making them do really good in naxx gear
except they can’t wear tier gear(only so many offset pieces exist), so warlocks, backed by curse of shadows+imp. shadow bolt+shadow weaving, and mages backed by improved scorch+curse of elements+ignite, should still easily outdps them, and without going oom as soon
also, there was no r11 lightning bolt, and unlike mages and warlocks, there is no new lightning bolt rank from AQ books
In a hypothetical infinite-mana situation, elemental shaman DPS is more than competitive.
It’s just that the infinite-mana situation is only ever possible in raid situations where the content is being killed so quickly it’s not a real challenge.
It is, however, quite good in 5-mans and PVP, and worst case in a raid you’re still providing another group with totems.
Honestly, it entirely depends on how raids and such are phased into the game.
With the amount of knowledge we have about the game having 40 “optimal” players is overkill and the raids were designed around not all players being optimal anyway.
So I guess no one should plan on classic firsties with an elemental shaman.
At the end of the day, if you want to play as an Elemental Shaman then by all means, go for it. People will want to group with other people who are playing the game. If you are playing the game, then you definitely have an edge over a better build that is not being played. Simple as that.
I played an elemental shaman in vanilla, and it was my only character for around 18 months. I raided all content with it, including the first boss in NAXX. MC and BWL were tough. I used a shield and one handed weapon and would mix in melee with spells, both offensive and heals. Whenever the main tank got to 50% I would chain heal until he was above 75%. If I saw a trash mob beating on a cloth wearer, I would earth shock it, then melee/cast until it was defeated. No need for the tank to bother with it… I did not run out of mana too often, due to mixing in melee. That’s a hybrid, to me. Fully raid buffed I had 8K mana, and hit 10k with a flask! That’s huge for vanilla… I also had over 4K armor… but I do not recall my hp… I enjoyed my Shaman.
For anyone wondering about non-popular pve specs, I think it’s imporant to keep in mind that raids back in vanilla took 40 people, and that is A LOT of people. It is not going to be easy for a lot of guilds to fill up their raid spots if they are too picky. It’s actually going to be very challenging for guilds to have a 40 roster of consistent raiders, I mean it’s even hard for a lot of guilds today to get 20 consistent raiders to run mythic raids. And I don’t think the classic wow player base will be anywhere near as big as original vanilla was.
I think as long as you are not trying to be in the top 1%, any guild will gladly take you into their raid as long as you show up prepared and are reliable. At the end of the day, they won’t have a choice because they need the bodies.
Mages and priests can use wands to conserve mana while still doing damage, priests even get a talent making wands better.
With ele shaman that isn’t an option.
If you’re casting you’re bursting, and if you’re not bursting you’re not casting.
Which is why they have to drink like a parched sailor in the desert.
I would guess that playing elemental in raids is very possible but I also think it will require a lot dictation and commitment on the part of the player to prove themselves and earn their spot in a raid.
I dont believe DPS players down rank their spells unless it is with something like frost bolt where they are looking to spam frost bolt to get the slow effect and I dont think this is something used often in the PvE environment.
To address the mana problems there are options like using mana pots on CD, Demonic or dark runes, and other consumables that give mana regen. There are also CDs that other players can give a group or you could try to get in a group with healers that will be getting mana tide and you could ask for innervate. There are items that you can equip on longer fights like Darkmoon card: Blue dragon and other items with high amounts of MP5 to give you more sustain that you would want to use on longer fights but unequip on shorter fights for more throughput.
Spell hit and spell penetration are different things. I believe spell penetration is about the spell resistance of the target and more spell hit reduces the chance that your spells will “miss” the target but being hit capped doesnt mean that your spells cant be resisted.
Given that elemental shaman doesnt seem to bring anything to the table that enhance or resto shaman doesnt also bring to the table, I would say you would have more of an uphill battle getting in to some raids if the guild is looking to more min/max but I would bet there are guilds out there would gladly take an elemental shaman to fill a dps slot because not everyone is looking for the most “viable” or “optimal” thing and maybe the raid just needs more shamans.
Maybe there is a hybrid elemental / resto spec you could go with? But maybe some people would lose their minds if the “resto shaman” didnt have mana tide.
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