Shaman is hella easy to level with.
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I prefer more mobile Specs. Balance feels like a dream to level with. Just moonfire everything while you run, drop a sunfire when they’re clumped and dump Starfalls on everything. Infinite mobility, all instant cast, instant flight form and you can interact with quest objectives in flight form. Elemental feels WAY, way clunkier and slower.
That’s not to say it’s bad, but.
Affliction also feels really strong. Same reason as balance, it’s almost all instant. You just run through throwing up Corr, CoA, maybe drop a vile taint if you have 10 mobs clumped, burning rush being healed off by siphon life and leech. At i528 Affliction just melts through mobs on beta. It’s level 77 or 78 before things start living even 10sec.
This is kind of what i was getting at. Lock, druid, hunter, even mage feels more fluid. Elemental feels stiff.
How good a spec feels for leveling, in my opinion, depends on:
- How much damage I can do entirely while running
- Instant cast options
- Mobility (movement speed, sprints, teleports etc)
- Self-sustain
Elemental does very little damage while moving. Spirit Walker’s Grace is cool, but not up enough. Maybe 25% uptime with good CDR? Flame shock is a 6sec CD and not killing anything. Ghost Wolf is cool, but the 30% movement speed is way behind a lot of other options. Self sustain is high.
So I’d consider it solid. But how do you tag 10 mobs while you’re running? Frost shock everything once then capacitor them all together and blast them down? Yuck. Tons of specs have better options.
I’d give Ele a solid 5/10.
It’s ironic because boomkin is one of the worst specs to level in until near end game. You simply don’t have enough punch in your spells until then. A significant number of players level as bear for this very reason. Bear is infinitely faster than doom chicken.
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Granted, my Boomie is only like i519, but on beta I was deleting stuff straight up until 77-78. Moonfires, a sunfire when some mobs were grouped and one or two starfalls and everything just absolutely melted. I think it was my fastest 70-80 at around 4 hours 15min, but I did have a 5% exp buff by then.
See this…
OP literally specifies leveling in The War Within. 70-80. Everyone should be, at minimum, i480-i500 due to the pre-patch gear thrown at you.
How does an i500 Ele stack up against an i500 Arcane Mage, Windwalker, Ret Paladin, Afflic/Demo Lock or Boomie? Poorly, imo. Vengeance and Havoc will both likely have an easier time. Ele is often very turret-y, and like I said, Spirit Walker’s isn’t up nearly enough to compensate for that.
Now if we’re talking leveling 1-80, sure. Tank specs are widely considered the best due to being able to pull 20 equal level mobs without dying and instant dungeon queues. A lot of speedrunners use Windwalker though.
And bear is still much faster than boomkin, such is life.
Yeah, Lunar Guardian will be great. Can keep running, pulling with Moonfire, and just thrash down entire packs with great sustain. Like I said above:
But this thread is about Elemental, and I used my boomie to emphasize some of my issues with Ele leveling. In any event, 70-80 only takes about 5 hours. It will be lightning quick even on Ele.
Well, I started an elemental shaman 2 days ago roughly and dinged 61 or 62 today. I’m not sure the time I’ve actually played but it’s prob around 24 hours.
Personally I find ele shaman easy and fun to level. I can take on elite mobs solo without too much difficulty. I was doing some content which suggested 5 players solo as well, which, to me, shows that the class must be somewhat good at what it does.
Mobility is limited, but it hardly matters. Drop a few chain lightnings and pop earthquake for multiple mobs and watch them all die. Earth shock makes short work of just about anything for Single target 
The only thing I’d say about shaman that’s been a bit of a drag is lack of mobility. You don’t need it for just levelling, but in dungeons I certainly notice it impacts me much more. I still do fine, but still noticeable when you have to dodge a bunch of AOEs and such.
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Ele feels really good in TWW leveling.
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Both ele and enhance are two of the best levelling specs between their high damage, self sustain, CC and situational cds.
It’s one of the stronger specs. If you don’t like it now you won’t ever
Based on what?
As compared to which specs?
What makes you say this?
I leveled 70-80 Elemental/Farseer… its ok… kind of boring but it can take down mobs pretty quick and you get more defensive stuff from it.
Elemental/Stormbringer is what I use for dungeons… its so much fun, as usual there are plenty of things to be improved on but the class fantasy and wow factor really shines at times with that spec.
I have not tried Enhancement yet , gotta wait for some weapons I guess.
I am really hoping we get the rumored tank spec with a future patch this expansion though.
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Right so this is what I’m doing and id say a few things:
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I can kill stuff with ease. That was never my complaint really (not since i came back in BFA at least) it just feels clunky. Thr extra LvB charge helps a lot but it doesnt solve the problem. If Flame Shock had 3 charges id be in easy street. In fact i think we should all lobby for that.
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I think elementals Farseer (FS) iteration is close to perfect. It isnt perfect but qe are getting there. The random, short-duration pets such as the two traditional elementals, the stormbringer elemental, the lesser elementals, and the amcestors are exactly what i want. I eont judge ancestors on mechanics yet because im not capped but my current impression is that they should proc more often (maybe they will). What i will judge is that they look terrible. We need glyphs asap.
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Why dont you level with Stormbringer? I think that looks cooler, but as i said i like the random pet procs im getting with FS. Stormbringers talents didnt grab me so im waiting until cap to swap. But id love to hear why you dont use SB in the open world.
Update on Enhancement… further up I gave my quick opinions of Ele leveling…
Enhancement/Stormbringer is quiet fun.
Tempest is terrific and procs far far far more than it does with Elemental. They really need to figure out how to get that to proc more for that spec… maybe with ilevel increases it will later.
Back to enhancement, for questing I am really enjoying it, its fast paced and quite explosive at times.
My only gripes are that I feel so much more squishy than I do as Ele… considerably so… I really don’t know why that it… maybe its the shield…
The loss of the little bit extended melee range we previously had is quite annoying in dungeons.
The button bloat on all the specs is getting really out of control…
I do find myself taking sub optimal talents just because it will not add another button to my bars…
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What?? Lol. I switched to enhance at lvl 73. Ele needs to much haste to generate maelstrom now.
As enh I had nonstop procs and buttons to push. If you are hard casting your doing something wrong. Also, I played totemic which felt amazing to me. Super fun and not squishy.
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Does totemic do something to make it tankier? I havent tried Enhancement in TWW and i havent used Totemic on any spec.