WoW Shaman Guide
Overview:
Shamans are spiritual leaders that can call on the elements for power. They are a hybrid class that is a combination of warrior, healer, and mage, making them a good all around class, although they typically won’t be the best at any one thing. Depending on the talents that they choose they can fulfill a number of different purposes. Only draenei, orcs, trolls and tauren can become shamans. They can use cloth, leather or mail armor and shields, and their weapons options include axes, daggers, fist weapons, maces, and staves.
Click Here for the Ultimate Shaman Guide
Special Abilities:
One of the abilities unique to shaman is the use of totems, which they obtain through quests. These represent the power of the elements (earth, air, water, and fire), and can be used in order to buff players, cause damage, or heal players. Only one spell using the totem of each element may be used at the same time, and the shaman must have the totem with them in order to be able to use the corresponding spells. They can be destroyed however, and they can’t be moved (though they can be replaced), so they need to be carefully placed for maximum benefit. Earth spells tend to enhance offense/defense, and slow and taunt enemies. Fire spells usually deal damage. Water spells are used for restoration. Air spells are used for defensive/offensive enhancement similar to the earth spells. The totem spells only work within the 30 to 50 yard radius of the totem’s range.
The other special ability of shamans is the spells they can use (mostly elemental) in order to deal direct damage, heal, or create weapons buffs. These include heals, melee weapons, ranged spells, and short range shocks.
Talents: Elemental, Enhancement, and Restoration
Elemental Shaman
Those who choose this talent gain skills that allow them to cause damage from afar using elemental spells, usually due to improvements in offensive spells and offensive totems. The casting time and mana cost of spells are decreased while the damage and chance for critical strikes. Those who want to spend a lot of time dealing damage in PvP usually chose this talent tree. Useful talents include elemental focus, elemental mastery, elemental fury, elemental oath, thunderstorm, totem of wrath, and ancestral knowledge.
Enhancement Shaman
The enhancement talent tree is focused on causing damage, especially up close in melee situations. Melee skills are improved and enhancement totems are added to the shaman’s arsenal. This is the easiest talent tree to use for leveling, and it has the highest damage potential of the shaman talent trees. Useful talents include shamanistic focus, dual wield, stormstrike, thundering strikes, elemental focus, windfury weapon, feral spirit, and elemental fury.
Restoration Shaman
A restoration shaman focuses on improving healing skills and adding restoration tokens so that they can better resurrect allies and themselves (through reincarnation). This is done through increasing effectiveness while reducing the time it takes to cast the spells and the amount of mana this costs. Useful talents include nature’s swiftness, improved chain heal, nature’s blessing, mana tide, ancestral knowledge, earth shield, and improved shields.
Leveling Tips:
Download the Fastest Leveling Guide for Shamans
While shamans cannot be tanks they can however be healers or DPS. As with most classes that can be a healer it is recommended that you start out your character out with that spec. This will help you greatly in leveling. Using the random dungeon generator to get groups will be your fastest source of experience. Even if it gets old after a while shamans can easily do solo quests without fear.
If you plan on raiding with your shaman at higher levels you may want to consider changing up your healing talent tree a little bit. Shamans have a unique opportunity to spec more into either tank heals or raid heals. Most people will agree that shamans do over all make better raid healers than tank healers.
While leveling your shaman you may want to pick up dual spec. This will allow you to get fast groups by having one talent tree for healing but still allow you to do some considerable damage while soloing. It also is handy for trying to gear both specs as well.
Many shamans will find that the Decurse add-on is essential to their game play. This add-on will blink when you need to remove curses from people. If you are healing you may not have time to check everyone so this add-on makes it much easier. Combine the Decurse add-on with the Heal Bot add-on and you will have major healing skills. When you are a healer any help goes a long ways.
If you should decided to go DPS you may be surprised at your options for a guild at end game. Many DPS shamans do not do the same amount of damage as other ranged DPS classes. You will find much more success as being a healer if you decided to raid at end game.
 |
Want to Level Your Shaman FAST? Want More Gold?If so, I strongly recommend that you check out The Ultimate World of Warcraft Guide. This essential guide features a 100% in-game leveling guide add on for Horde and Alliance, a 500g+/hour gold guide, talent and gear guides for every class, profession guides, PvP guides, and more. |