ZeroWashu

Elemental is far easier to level than enhancement. Why? Because mail makes for lousy damage mitigation. Enhancement is in melee ALL the time. Elemental only when there are a few extra mobs and they are not handled well.

I have taken one shaman to 70 as elemental, I am now doing a enhancement shaman, currently at 62 (Tokimi on Eitrigg)

Fact is, without the priest in the box (as in a level 70 1200+ unbuffed healer) in tow she is damn annoying. Can lose upwards of a third of her health versus single equal level mobs. Mail armor is only good for 29% damage reduction, which can you say is next to nothing out there?


Back to how does elemental play.

You spam lightning bolts. The biggest problem I had with my elemental was mana conservation till 62, water shield helps any spec shaman immensely. After 62 it became push back, especially in Nagrand and beyond where mobs all seem to have some kind of never fail interrupt.

If your going to process multiple mobs and can set it up put a earthbind totem between you and them. A fire totem is good if you plan on multiple mobs over a short period of time. Don't forget to have stoneclaw hotkeyed incase you get too many and need to distract one. Frankly stoneclaw is one of my favorite totems - makes it easier to put off adds.

So, Lightning bolt to kill, keep your weapon skills up and use flametongue on it and melee if very low on mob health else burn it with a LB. Shocks, frost shock is good for runners if not using earthbind totems.

 

comatose

I found elemental to be really painful when solo leveling. LB spam with a mob hitting you can mean 4-5 second casts on rogue/fury warrior type mobs, and even worse if there is 2 or more. Mobs with interupts are a complete nightmare, locking you out of all damaging spells other than frost shock.

Kiting with frost shock and earthbind is pretty slow and uses alot of mana. Not forgetting you basically cant do any earth/air elemental quests on your own (immune to nature damage).

I really wanted to be elemental all the way from 1-70, and as a result picked up mostly caster quest rewards, but found life much easier everytime i specced back to enhancement (even with poor melee gear).

Of course if you are planning on doing all of your quests in a group then ignore the above, as its really fun to play.




(wrong thread for this, but the best armor you can get early on at 70 is the s1/soon to be s2 gear, most of it is better than anything in kara)

 

Esajin

Actually one of the best levelling/grinding priest build around is the "spirit priest", discipline down to imp divine spirit, holy down to spirit of redemption/spirit guidance and shadow down to spirit tap. 23/26/5 is the staple, available at 63.

Gear is made of any kind of loot/quest reward with both +spirit and +spell damage. The gameplay is simple, make a use trinkets/cast smite macro and mash the button. The thing is to maximize the combat time during spirit tap to minimize downtime. The improved range helps by a large amount to chain-pull, and helps with making downtime inexistent. It's a very effective "grinding build" because it's based on a virtuous circle: when you're under spirit tap,
_your mana regen while casting is much, much higher
_your damage per second is higher, meaning you kill faster and spend less mana.

In other words, it's based on the principle that: "the faster you pull, the less mana you consume, the more mana you regen and the faster you kill", so the objective is to never let the spirit tap buff fade away.
That is a perfect example of a grinding build. As for downtime, once you reach "a certain balance between spirit and damage", the mana bar stops going down, and the only downtime becomes PVP action (more often than not, a corpse run. This is a very weak pvp build, because spirit & resilience were separated at birth). This "certain balance" is hard to grasp, because it's not dependent on stats alone but rather on how aggressive you play. I went through a trial & error to determine it each time I'd get a new piece of gear. Generally speaking, more aggressive players get a bit more return on spirit, and players who like to take their time will get a bit more return from spellpower or crit% (or even another build!).

From 65 on, thanks to Surge of Light, the build can AOE-grind in theory. In practical you need to find out how much damage you're going to have to soak for the time it takes to kill N mobs. For instance on my priest I could holy nova three mobs of same level at level 67. Right now, at 70 on my poorly geared priest, I can do at least 6 without a problem (actually, I do that every morning for the ship bombing daily). The tactic is simple: shield, renew, prayer of mending, gather the mobs, pop the shadowfiend, hit inner focus and spam max rank holy nova while keeping a unique target which will be the recipient for any and all surges of light procs. Once this target dies (first), spirit tap kicks in and lets you finish all the others. It works rather well for the odd AOE situation in mundane instances, too.

Speaking of instances, pre-70, you should be ready to pick healing spots, because you've got pretty much the best healing/questing hybrid build in the game (that's my opinion). Always keep an eye open for available killing blows, it will speed up your runs tremendously.

One thing to note on the other hand, is that the build is simply not good before 63, and becomes totally awesome at 65. Does it qualify as a "levelling build"? Pre-outlands, nope. But I'm 100% sure it is (will be), for 65-70(70-80).

 

oldmandennis

On enhance vs elemental, I think that elemental does a better job chaining through mobs, but enhance is better when things go a bit wrong. LB are a pain to get off if you pull more then one mob, and chaining combat due to runners or patrols can leave an elemental with no mana, and thus quite useless. Even if enhance takes a fair bit of damage every pull, a quick HW will put you most of the way back up.

 

ZeroWashu

Well the secret of course is to not kite. If your kiting your reaching. As such you will go slower than someone who is dealing with mobs (preferably quest mobs) that they can process quickly.

It usually isn't hard except in caves/buildings to get full range on lightning bolts. Most of the time in outlands I rarely met a mob in melee unless jumped, resists, or just bad setup.

 

Abbichum

My Gf and I are leveling 2 new characters together. Shaman(me) and warrior(gf) I'll be enhancement i guess, but my general knowledge of warriors are restricted to lvl 70 more or less. what talent spec would suit her the best?

 

Draegan

I leveled from 60-70 as an elemental shaman. It's tough early on as you're getting gear, but it's fine once you get some spell damage. 3-4 Bolts and they die. You shouldn't have any issues.

Looking for a guild.

 

Draz

I beleive if you scroll up on this page, or the one before it, they talk about Leveling specs and which one ends up best. I beleive for leveling speed, dual wield wins. But almost all 3 types (2h fury, 2h arms, dualwield fury) are viable leveling builds.

 

zoombini

My gf and I levelled the same chars - I went enhancement from 1-63, then switched to resto (we died a lot less afterwards) She levelled fury the entire way.

 

ZeroWashu

One important note about warriors, you do not need to be Fury to successfully dual wield. Yeah there are bonuses in the Fury tree for dual wielding, including a bonus to hit for "white damage" but my warrior is Protection and I dual wield a lot while leveling. Using a good outfit swapping plug in I can go back and forth between dual wielding and sword and board.

50+ I lived off of Devastate spam, five hits and it crits so nice. Stayed in berserker stance too. With a companion always around you can really deviate from what people consider optimal to what you find easiest to play

 

glowacks

I generally stayed in Battle Stance; I suppose that it was pre-WW change though, and there were no 'zerker stance abilities that appealed to me compared to Overpower. 3% crit is ok, but the extra damage is far too annoying combined with switching to Battle to Overpower.

Even with Whirlwind hitting with both weapons, between HS and Devastate spam I'm not sure I'd have enough rage to consider WWing ever. I suppose giving up HS and using it to WW might be better DPS though. And with the expertise change (assuming you have Defiance), mobs will be dodging a bit less than when I was playing my prot warrior to make OP not as much a concern.

 

ZeroWashu

I know, the easy route to leveling a Priest is Shadow. I have done that already. I dipped into Smiting for a few levels as switching forms while helping others level got old before finally ending up Holy once at 70.

However for my next Priest, I have two accounts and need one on both, I would like to level without relying on Shadowform. I do not mind picking up a few talents in that tree. So, what would ya'll recommend as a progression in talents.

If I went Holy I would simply work towards a Smite build. Having two accounts should make this less of a downer than normal but it should be sufficient on its own for the times I just don't feel like running two at once.

 

Rockstar

I'd say Spirit Tap first, since the reduction in downtime is useful at the easiest opportunity, then from 14 onwards you need to build your way into Holy to pick up the smite talents.

For example: Holy Spec 5/5, Divine Fury 5/5, Imp Renew, Filling Points before Searing Light, Holy Reach and work from there.

Alternatively, you can spec 5/x/5 and rely on wands so you're already out the FSR rule when Spirit Tap procs, letting you spam a few more spells initially and bubble (I used to downrank bubble to avoid pushback), renew will be your real bread and butter regen tool. If you go down the 5/x/5 route it may be worth putting an additional two points into imp. SW:P - however you do need to sacrifice the mid-tier decent smite talents until later on in your levelling in order to do this.

Completely up to you, there's more than one way to skin a cat.

 

glowacks

Spirit Tap is an absolute must for soloing. I leveled my priest without it, but I mainly healed dungeons and groups so I just went with a straight-up healing build. If you plan on killing mobs, getting a chunk of mana for free every kill is huge. Unfortunately, it does mean your mana efficiency goes to shit if you're killing lower level stuff for whatever reason. I realized this trying to clear low level dungeons for DE fodder.

Wand Spec is very useful early on; your spammable spells are very low in mana efficiency compared to normal nuking classes. The crafted wands are comparable (or better!) DPS to Smite pre-Divine Fury at the same level, and there's normally some on the AH because they're easy to skill Enchanting with. Wanding should always be a decent chunk of your damage; as well as not wasting mana on over-kill spells, wanding helps kick in full spirit regen (which you'll be stacking due to Spirit Tap).

Improved Shadow Word Pain is very useful when you fight more than one mob at once. SWP is a very efficient dot, and this talent will let you get more out of it - as long as you are letting it run its course. As much as you'll fight one mob normally, the number of runners and patrols might mean having 2 more ticks of SWP saving you corpse runs.

The only talents I would recommend in Holy would be everything in the first tier, Divine Fury, and Searing Light. You'll do most your healing with Renew, and having interruptions when you do need a direct heal will likely mean your death, while the latter 2 are the main DPS talents. Beyond that, there's nothing compared with the mana efficiency you get in Discipline. Inner Focus, Meditation, Mental Agility, plus (imp) Divine Spirit are large helps grinding, and the holy tree focuses more on healing and a bit more on damage. Surge of Light is garbage for leveling imo; it's a "raiding" talent for those with 30% crit. However, I admit I've never taken it so I have no personal experience.

On the other hand, my experience with Reflective Shield made me fall in love with it, yet I've not seen anyone else ever suggest it for grinding. With it, PWS becomes a decently efficient "dot" compared to other sources of damage you have, as well as providing immunity to pushback from damage and damage prevention. While I don't know if its actually worth the talent points, it seemed absolutely amazing from the instant I read the description.

 

ZeroWashu

Wands, wasn't there a recent change to make items adhere to a player's level and not an items level? Was this done for just resistance checking or damage as well?

I am probably going to go Spirit Tap 5/5, Wands 5/5. I will respec to SoL at either 36 or 41, 41 would be if I were to keep Spirit Tap.

 

psiphre

I have a priest that was meant for disenchanting who I just recently dusted off and decided to level to 70. When I put him away he was 35 and Holy spec'd because at the time I was duoing with a friend of mine (a hunter). When I logged back in and tried to get back to the grind, the first thing I did was respec into shadow (something like this) and used that for the next painful levels until I hit shadow form (This build) at 40. the next 18 levels were very, very easy as shadow. Vampiric Touch looked very lackluster at the time so I started putting points in Disc until I hit outland (my 58 spec was this) and the difficulty and density of the mobs shot way, way up. Shadow wasn't doing as much good anymore. I was dropping out of shadowform to heal after every or every other fight, drinking more often, etc, but I stuck with it until 60.

So, having had some good experiences with a paladin protection AOE grinding build, I fell in love with reflective shield (damage reflection is the most broken pve mechanic, imho), respec'd to mostly disc/some holy/spirit tap (here) and have since been filling down into the Holy tree to get some of the more fun stuff. At 64 I just picked up Holy Nova again, which I missed, but isn't a game stopper until much later.
The reason why this build really shines is the combination of Meditation, Spirit tap and Reflective Shield. I can kill things just as fast as I was able to in Shadow form but without worrying about pushback or losing time in MF because I've always got PW:S up. I always have PW:S up because it's got a triple purpose at this point: preventing pushback, keeping my HP up and doing damage to whatever I'm fighting (and unlike paladin damage reflection, it does reflect spell damage as well). And with Spirit Tap I can just start casting on the next guy knowing that my mana is regenerating at 160% of what it would be resting.

On top of that, while I'm questing I can also be sitting in LFG, ready to fill either a healing or DPS role in an instance for a break from tedium.

That all being said, if I had to do it all over again, I would do this:
10-14 5/5 wand spec.
15-19 5/5 spirit tap
20-21 2/2 imp. SW:P
22-24 3/5 shadow focus
25 mind flay
26-27 2/5 backfill shadow focus
28-29 2/2 imp. psychic scream
30-34 5/5 shadow weaving
35 vampiric embrace
36-37 imp. vampiric embrace
38-39 2/3 focused mind
40-44 5/5 Darkness
45 shadow form
46-50 5/5 shadow power
51-53 3/3 imp. pw:s
54-55: imp. pw:f
56-58 3/3 meditation
Any legacy 5-man can be healed by a shadow priest wearing healing gear if there are no other healers available so i advocate sticking with shadow all the way to outlands. The first few quests around hellfire are easy enough to do as shadow (some don't even require actually fighting the things you're killing), so at 59 respec to this 35/10/5 build and get comfortable with smite DPS and healing instances.

My path through outland is going to (partially has already) look something like this:
60-62 imp. renew
63 holy nova
64 1/3 inspiration
65-66 2/2 searing light
67-69 3/3 imp. healing

when you get the last talent point at 70 you're not leveling anymore so at that point either respec into a cookie cutter healing or manabattery build for raiding; or stick the last point in spirit of redempion and get the bonus to spirit for grinding rep, etc.

 

Nubtar

Concerning shaman leveling -

I found that elemental/enhancement (similar to Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft) was horribly inefficient previous to the water shield changes, but makes a nice dps build in the 60s after the change. Enhance/resto is still more efficient, but once you get water shield you won't have much downtime with either build. They are probably close in leveling performance, but enhance/elemental seems to pack a bit more action and fun.

Edit: normally your crit rate during leveling is fairly low, so I've always seen a fair amount of clearcast (elemental side) procs - in any case it's only one point.

 

Stretchx3

Also does anyone know the best way to level a shaman 1-30. I tried a long time ago an di remember it being a pain. I know that it speeds up when you get windfury then dual wield, but which way is best to go for the early levels, and what cast sequence should i use?

 

Aranan

I'm in the process of leveling a shaman as elemental just to compare it to the enhancement shaman I leveled a while ago. I would stress that for the first 30 or so levels, the spec of a shaman does not make a large difference as to what they do. I would suggest doing your best to keep your weapon upgraded every few levels, pulling with a lightning bolt or two (or three), casting lightning shield as soon as the bolt spam is done, and meleeing mobs down from there. Your goal is to keep your spellcasting as bursty as possible to take advantage of mana regen otuside of the 5SR. Any spells other than lightning bolt weren't very mana efficient when I compared them, so I didn't use them. Lightning shield came close so I used it.

I do have an unrelated question, though. I'm looking at making a paladin and have no clue about which seal/judgements I should be using. Are there any pointers for this? I'd feel kind of stupid asking in the ret thread about something as basic as "hur what are seals ".

 

zoombini

Seal of command is supposedly the one you use until seal of blood. You can judge crusader beforehand to increase the damage, but I've got a mid-20's pally and i typically don't waste the mana.

I'm currently taking a "bottom's up" approach to levelling (i.e. i have 9 chars - the lowest one gets played until unrested, then 2nd lowest, etc.) and I have to say that it's extremely weird to move from a mage (kill 2 things quickly, then drink) to a paladin (kill things slooooowly, drink after 5-6) to a druid (stealth, kill quick, HoT, stealth - never need to drink). Doing level 24 on 4 characters in a row really helps point out how much of an advantage some classes have over others.

 

Aranan

Well, this guy will be alliance, so I guess its SoC all the way.

 

Rane

You'll get eased into the system fairly gently and most of it makes sense if you just read the descriptions on the abilities. As a sidenote, I would recommend trying a protection build around 30-35-ish instead of ret-soc-snoozing through. The one thing I liked about my druid was the fact I can hit stuff and it's fairly interactive - you will find a ret-soc paladin to be the opposite of that spectrum until about level 50 when you get Crusader Strike and even then it'd be the same as hitting Mangle every 6 seconds, and Mangle only.

Prot leveling is like pulling a pack of level ~60 mobs as a level 70 feral druid in bearform and wearing them down with Swipe, only faster, if I keep up with comparing it to a druid. It's a very different and fun playstyle and allows a bit more interaction (seal of light/wisdom juggling) plus, basically, you get to hit more buttons along the way.