I think I’m about finalized on my choice of character for Classic, and I’m thinking shaman. I’d like to heal when I do dungeons during the leveling process. If I’m going with a build that focuses on also being effective in the open world while questing, how negatively will that impact my ability to be a healer in dungeons?
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You will be fine if you are prepared, Mana pots, water etc…In classic all specs get healing spells the higher level you get the harder it will be to heal as an off spec though. Doing lvl 60 dungeons as enhancement might be a challenge.
Enhancement is nice for solo leveling. Hold on to gear that is useful for healing as it will help you fulfill that role in dungeons.
You don’t need to spec Resto to heal leveling dungeons. Assuming your groups are not terrible.
I’ve seriously been considering a shaman too. But I keep thinking that enhance had lost a bit by 1.12 and ele/resto might not be my cup of tea for levelling.
Might not help in your case, but I think I will try a shaman as first alt. By then I will have some gold to spend on boosting gear, and have a guild and network to heal dungeons with.
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I am also going to be a shaman, enhancement that keeps the best healing gear I can find to heal dungeons too. It can be done, I did it the forst time around and most people never even asked or cared what my spec was. Just keep them alive ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
I generally like my secondary spec to use the same stats as my primary. Just helps ease the gearing burden. And consumables. However enhancement might benefit reasonably from intellect I’m not sure.
lvl as enh / 1h + Shield .
save gear with Intel for more of a mana pool and I guess throw 3 talent points into healing tree to help reduce mana for both while lvling and dung healing. The shield + dagger will help you out a lot in dps.
2h is fun but its faster with a dagger and shield with flametongue and your fav totem, searing.
The only real significant difference you’d see specing into resto early on is the 0.5 seconds off healing wave. You can heal early dungeons regardless of where your talents go.
I’m leveling as enhancement in Classic currently and half the reason I decided to do that was so I could get 2 seconds off my ghost wolf cast. You have a lot of running around to do.
edit: In early dungeons you don’t even necessarily have to have strict roles where one person is the healer or even one person as the tank. One of my WC runs the warrior was the lowest level and myself and a priest had much better weapons so he couldn’t hold aggro that well. The priest and I shared healing and were the top DPS at the same time and had aggro on stuff half the time.
Elemental is what you want.
Extremely effective at world pvp with grounding, tremor and earth bind totems.
Can provide AoE with improved fire nova totems and sapper charges.
Lighting/Chain lightning artillery to nuke groups of people at range.
Can heal very effectively with ele-resto, as +nature spell damage and high mana /spell crit also apply to heals.
Fastest shaman spec to level with after level 40 stacking SP.
Can effectively heal dungeons with their caster gear, and can optionally do very high dps assuming you have a lot of waters between pulls / bosses.
Prior to 40, its often recommended you go enhance with a 2h axe or staff. Around level 30 is when you get all your “good” spells such as Windfury ,2 buff purge, chain lightning, air totems, etc. mid to late 30’s is also where melee really starts to slow down and spell casting speeds up (partly due to the greater availability of sp on gear and elemental talents).
Enhance is a newb trap after level ~45 just by game mechanics and nerfed WF in 1.12.
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You’re speaking about Killtime. While that is the fastest killtime, your downtime is ridiculously high compared to RB + Grounding+ Enhancement w/ 2h. It has been shown to be the most efficient means of leveling as a shaman
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for the first 40 levels it isn’t. RNG WF PROCING has a hell of a down time and doesn’t proc as much with a dagger + FT.
Edit: because I was being a crumbly biscuit
RB = Rockbiter
And yes, you need me to link you to the theorycrafting page? I wasn’t talking about WF anywhere in my post. I also said WITH A 2H.
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sorry chief.
When it comes to weapons, you will want to start out using a fast Dagger (anything below 1.9 speed will work) and Flametongue, plus a shield of course. If you get a really good 2h weapon though, feel free to use it and Rockbiter.
Once you hit 30 and get Windfury, you have the option of using 2h and Windfury, or continuing with daggers and Flametongue. People will claim that Windfury is better than Flametongue, or Flametongue is better than Windfury, but in my experience, it all boils down to whatever weapon you have. If your best weapon is a 2h, use Windfury. If your best weapon is a dagger, use Flametongue. On a PvP server though, you’ll definitely want the extra survivability of a shield, so go with Flametongue the whole way.
For 2h weapon speed, you don’t want to go over 3.4; Windfury is not PPM-based, it is just a flat 20% chance to proc on every hit. So if you use a super slow weapon, you’re going to have a really low Windfury proc chance, overall. Anything between 2.8 and 3.4 speed is fine. In PvP, you want a really slow weapon so you can potentially 2shot clothies; in leveling, you want a faster weapon for more consistent WF procs.
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You can heal any dungeon as enhance at least into your 40s and likely your early 50s, with brd being potentially a bigger deal.
Luckily, by that time, you could also be ele /resto which is healer enough for even raids.
For leveling 2h/Rockbiter/earthbind kiting is the best… With 1h builds wanting windfury at 30 and using flame tongue or rock biter pre 30.
Elemental builds don’t get good before 40 when they get their cat time reduction on lightning bolt… Even then, pserver data is a bit wrong, since pserver data has ele using a sit to force yourself to get crit thing for 100%spell push back immunity, which won’t work like that in Classic.
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I now see what you meant. Well played, sir, right-o!
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This information is not accurate.
2h + Rockbiter + Earthbind kiting is always more damage dealt and less damage taken than 1h/shield facetanking.
After 30, you NEVER want to use windfury with a 2hander for leveling because it tends to “waste” damage on overkill. You still either use 2h/rockbiter/earthbind as the most efficient method… OR you can use 1h/Windfury/shield if you face tank mobs… Windfury will ALWAYS be more efficient than Flame tongue for a 1h.
Which is exactly why you want the slowest possible weapon you can get… The weapon damage range proccing free extra attacks will mean that the slower weapon (assuming equal weapon dps) will always outdamage the faster weapon via gaining more per extra hit.
The only exception to wanting the slowest weapon possible is 1hander leveling post 30 with windfury, where having a fast weapon is still ideal because less margin for damage spillover/overkill, which reduces efficiency.
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faster dps dagger + flame = more hits within over time + procs from flame.
2h Fatster ^ same concept + 2 additional hits from WF Proc (3 hits total)
shield blocks in vanilla were a thing and would take less damage. with SH being active would give more damage as well.
Faster 2h just means you’re taking damage out of the extra attacks… it’s still proccing at the same rate.
Example weapon 1 does 100 per hit, weapon 2 does 50 per hit but swings twice as fast…
They both will windfury proc 20% of their swings… but weapon “1” in this case is getting 100 damage more per proc. You ALWAYS want a slower weapon for windfury…
EXCEPT (as I pointed out above) when leveling post 30 with a 1h… in which case faster is preferable to avoid damage spillover from windfury proccing at 50% or below and overkilling the mob.
Which reduces less damage than just avoiding the hits outright via earthbind kiting… and is substantially less overall damage than just using a 2hander…
As for “SH”… I’m not sure what you where refencing… Searing Totem would be down in either case as it’s one of the largest sources of damage while leveling… Str of Earth totem doesn’t make up for the damage loss of 2h/rockbiter or the damage reduction/efficiency gains of earhtbind kiting… Stoneskin totem adds no damage (which puts it way behind a 2h/rockbiter) and is less damage reduction than earthbind kiting with 2h… and Shield Spec talent also adds no damage (which puts it way behind 2h/rockbiter) and is less damage reduction than earthbind kiting with a 2h.
2h/earthbind kiting is just a massive boost overall… You get the damage benefit of the 2hander, while getting 50+% “damage” reduction via the mob not being able to hit you save when your swing timer is back active. This also heavily favors the slowest 2h weapon you can possibly find (via limiting damage taken by limiting mob opportunities to attack), and further limits damage taken over the 1h/shield builds by simply ending the fights faster via the higher output…
The only real detriment to it is that it’s “high effort” to do, where the 1h/shield method can be done almost AFK after the initial pull.
Hi, OP.
To answer your question: Yes, you can heal all leveling dungeons without speccing for Resto at all.
As far as leveling techniques, honestly, it just doesn’t make that much of a difference as long as you remember a few key things.
1 - Healing is expensive. Try to minimize it when possible.
2 - Shocks are expensive. Try to minimize them when possible.
3 - Totems are incredibly efficient, but only if they last for a long time. Pull new targets to your totem nest, don’t run around dropping new totems for each mob.
4 - Lightning Shield is also extremely mana-efficient. Keep it up whenever you’re being hit.
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Absolutely correct. Enhance was pretty awesome early on but once you get to 40ish, elemental with your shield was much better to level with. Once I hit 40 or 41 in vanilla I switched to elemental and felt much more useful for my group/raid.
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