wow grumblings

[ysobel]

World of Warcraft is by its very nature a group game; and yet it is possible to play a lot of the non-max-level game solo. You can't do everything, but you can go in and kill shit and not have to deal with people.

Once you get to max level, though, a lot of the fun stuff can only be done in group settings. Which not only requires interaction with other people, but requires a completely different play style.

I have totally fallen in love with playing my shaman (and wish for a number of reasons that she'd been the one I leveled first). She's specced Enhancement, which is for one thing primarily melee (which I seem to gravitate towards, as opposed to spellcasting) and for another thing completely awesome; between Stormstrike, Maelstrom Weapon, and the Spirit Wolves, I just get way too much glee out of playing.

It is perhaps worth noting that these are all fairly high in the Enh talent tree. Stormstrike you can't get until at least level 40 (or 41 if you go for dual wielding first). Feral Spirit, which is the one with puppies spirit wolves, is the 51-point talent, so not available until level 60, and Maelstrom Weapon is only the tier before.

It is also worth noting that these are the sort of abilities that are awesome for solo play. Not so awesome for group play.

Further, there is the thing where shamans can heal, particularly if Resto-specced. You can have two specs -- for shamans, this is often one for healing and one for doing damage, and the active one depends on the makeup of the current party -- but healing is, of course, a spellcasting profession. (Of course, I mean, hitting people over the head to cure them *sounds* fun, but...)

And theoretically, there's no reason why I couldn't be Enh+Resto. Do the fun stuff for damage times, and healing stuff for healing times. But it's utterly ridiculous. Doing that would mean maintaining two different gear sets, one for melee stuff and one for healing/spellcasting stuff, which is annoying and time consuming and expensive. And after all, shamans have a perfectly good spellcasting dps option (Ele), and it makes way more sense to maintain gear that works for both damage and healing.

... except that the shamaning bits that I fell in love with are all in the Enhancement tree.

If I go Ele/resto, I lose that. It'll be like playing a completely different character. One I don't know how to play, and one that may not be any fun.

Sigh.

(okay, yes, I know I don't have to worry about that for another nine levels, and even then, if I thoroughly hate ele I can switch back to enh. but.)

Comments

[helens78]

*pets!* I love elemental/resto -- but all my characters are casters. :) Do what feels right to you, and don't worry about how hard it may be to gear for both; unless you run with a heck of a lot of shamans, there's not going to be a lot of competition for spellpower mail. :)

[ysobel]

I tried ele for a bit I think mid-40s somewhere) and found it horrible; not only was there significantly more downtime, because I ran out of mana after each fight (which is also why my mage is stalled right now), but things took like four times longer to die.

Then again, the irony of wanting to stay enh is that the reason I got frustrated with my first 80, a rogue, was that she was (squishy) melee dps, and the only thing that's changing really is the squishiness level. I wanted to be able to do ranged dps. Which is still possible with enh, but it's mainly built around melee.

I'm pondering dual-speccing enh and ele so that I can play around a bit with ele before I get to 80 without losing enh fun (and then respeccing whichever one I don't choose to continue with), but there's a part of me that says I'd be better off saving up for epic flight and then doing dual-spec stuff after. >_>

</babble>

[helens78]

Elemental is a totally different ballgame after 75, since you'll get Lava Burst at that point, but it's also different after 60 when you can pick up Thunderstorm and never go OOM again. :) I think it's at its best around 75, and I am pretty sure it's not possible for me to go OOM as elemental (a nice change from resto, where I struggle profoundly), but it'll be a while yet before you're 75 if I read your post right (about 71 now?).

Your note about squishiness sounds familiar -- for the longest time, that was what I liked best about healing as a resto shammy, the fact that I wasn't squishy at all (as compared to my priest). Of course, I've recently been healing with my priest again, and the squishiness is a non-issue. ^_^

Woooo, epic flappy! Man, they're nice. :D

[ysobel]

Yeah, 71. :) And it sounds like I can probably stay enh for a while longer without feeling horribly guilty.

Re squishiness: there's a reason why my priest is still only 26. ;) (Well, several reasons, one being "too many alts I want to level".) But squishiness is a big problem when one plays solo a lot, and I think the only reason I made it on my rogue was because of stealth/vanish.

(and I am still wtfing at myself for having my shaman be a tailor; I think my reasoning at the time was something like "hey, bags!", but it's kind of ridiculous having a mail-wearing cloth-crafter.)

Woooo, epic flappy! Man, they're nice. :D

Yusss. :D Especially since I have an 80, so was able to get tome of CWF. Flying in early Northrend questing areas feels kind of cheating, but it also means epic flight is actually relevant. Normal flight is so *slow*...

[rho]

(Of course, I mean, hitting people over the head to cure them *sounds* fun, but...)

Warhammer Online has a melee healer. The only way to heal things was to go into melee and beat your enemies about the head with a giant hammer to build up your righteous fury, or something like that, which you'd then use to power your heals.

[helens78]

That. Is. Awesome. :D

[wyntarvox]

And on the other faction, there was a melee healer that had to run in and slice and dice enemies to build up blood essence to power its heals. Stupid amounts of fun.

Isa, I haven't played WoW in some time and I haven't kept up with changes, but I think at higher end gaming you'd wind up with different sets for healing and elemental DPS anyway. I know they were (are?) trying to homogenise spell casting gear, but I recall there still being enough differences that for optimal efficiency in either spec you'd have different gear specs.

What I'm saying is, if the only reason you're feeling pressured in to going Ele/Resto (rather than Enh/Resto) is because of the idea of maintaining two gear sets, it's possibly going to be an issue either way.

Like I said though, I haven't played in a long time (and I never played a high-end Shaman in Wrath), so I could be talking out my ass.

[helens78]

*waves hand back and forth in air* Sort of, depending on what your focus is for healing. Elemental shammy gear eschews crit (you are always critting based on talents and abilities, not gear), while it's okay for resto, and both want haste (and if you're me, you stack it as high as it will go ^_^).

Of course, this means that there's often one set of mail caster boots per tier of content, and if it happens to have crit on it, too bad for you! I recently hemmed and hawed over the only boots available right now because they're covered in crit and force me to give up a ton of haste, and, wow, I don't need crit. But if I keep giving up upgrades because they're not perfectly itemized, I end up wearing the same bracers I got in Naxx through all of Ulduar and well into ToC. Oh, wait, I did. >_<

TL;DR answer -- you would indeed end up doing that, if there were enough mail caster pieces available to provide differently-itemized gear. ^_^

[undomielregina]

But you still probably want to enchant the same piece differently for each spec! Because WoW is evil like that and there's spell hit to consider as Ele and not as Resto.

[helens78]

Oh, not so much -- if you're not raiding, you don't need much hit at all (you're basically covered as-is) and if you are raiding, it's pretty easy to pull together the hit you need (you can get fully half of it from one emblem-bought trinket). Although I did spend an embarrassing few months using a Grim Toll (and making all the melee despair because they'd turned it down over and over and over, hence how I got it) to shore up the difference...

(I should say, I'm optimized for resto and limp a bit for elemental, but it works just fine. My main is currently -- as of me typing this -- standing in ICC waiting for her 25-man to assemble. People are just now logging on to Vent. :) )

[undomielregina]

Cool. I quit back in August, so I'm a bit out of date in my knowledge and Shaman were never my strong suit. I know I used to carry 3 sets of gear as a warrior, including two full sets of tanking gear (because block didn't suck on Loatheb, never mind that I hadn't done him in months >.<), and my husband had 3 sets as a tree/boomkin. Nice to hear they've actually simplified it for somebody.

[undomielregina]

This was correct the last time I played, which was in 3.1 (Ulduar). Since the talents haven't been significantly overhauled, I suspect it's still similar. You're at least going to want to enchant differently on the two sets even if the items themselves are identical.

It's a little annoying and expensive (at least gold is easy to get in Wrath) but not that hard. I always carried a full three sets of gear -- usual tank set, block set and arms warrior set. The joys of being a prot war.

As always, though, this depends on how effective you want your off spec to be. You can muddle through fine with one set if you don't mind being a bit underpowered in the one you're not optimized for.

[asciident]

There's overlapping pieces, but it's true there's two sets. And Isa, Joss is resto/ele, I know what I'm talking about. :p