Being the only elemental shaman in the guild, and now with our only spriest having just moved to Cali and likely not raiding much until he gets settled, I've only rarely had the opportunity to run in the same group with him.

The jump in power and sustainability for me though, the first time I did have the opportunity, was nothing short of mind-blowing.

No wonder every elem shaman here swears by them!

It's much tougher going without one. Especially now 2.1 where I'm predictably, like many others, LOM more often and chugging even more potions just to resemble keeping up. Heroics demand significantly more drinking pauses too, and more potion use than before - again, all predicted.

Going to have to keep looking for 1-2 more spriests... been looking already but they've been few and far between the past month. Their impact to a caster group, and it seems especially to an elemental shaman, isn't just significant, it's enormous.

Just going to note here I've been having some excellent success with using 4 Tier 4(all but chest) as Elemental.

I did gruul and mag the other night with no shadow priest in my group and didn't need to use a potion or drum the entire fight. I finished the fight with half my mana bar and #3 on the damage meter on Mag

15 seconds of 54 mana lightning bolts is sick, even with an 11% proc rate on crits.

Replacing Windshear Boots with Hurricane Boots was a big part of keeping my DPS maximized since I could wear the T4 pants without going too far over hit-cap(only .2%)

EZ - is there a reason you are passing on 1% crit to get -.2s on shocks?

Do you think the t4 4pc set bonus is a bug which will be fixed?

It's ironic that a bugged set bonus is sustaining elemental viability, although it makes elementals rather dependant on T4.

But that said, the fact he wasn't potting may be a little OP.

We usually have 2 shadow priest in our raid, so I'm lucky enough to have one in my group most of the time. While grouped with a shadow priest, the nerf doesn't hit me very hard. I usually cast less cls in between my lbs, depending on the fight, but that's about it. If I land in a group with no shadow priest, then I really feel the difference. Before the patch I still had no mana problems while casting lb, but now I tend to run oom rather quickly, even with pots.
Maybe I should get the t4 pants for the 4 t4 bonus, if it doesn't get nerfed for a while, it might make a difference in such cases. I'm actually surprised that they haven't changed the bonus or fixed the bug, if it has such a big impact on our sustainability.

Yeah, I spend a good 200-400g a week in respec costs, and made a little mistake that cost me a crit for the next 2 days :P~

When I go PVP again and back to PVE it should be corrected (=

What would you wear if you had infinite mana Ezareth? Hire more shadowpriests!

I really can't complain much about the itemization of the current gear I am wearing with the exception of the pants.

I never get to use a shadowpriest sadly, I put them in my healer groups.

The only time I put a shadowpriest with the healers is on fights where I know they'll be going all out and simply can't keep up. This was basically in pre-2.1 250% Hydross NR where they tossed mana conservation out the window. Every other fight, you're better off giving shadowpriests to your elemental shaman, fire mages, BM hunters and destruction locks. Tell your healers to use more super mana potions... =)

edit: The reasoning behind this has been played out in a few threads, but in short, shadowpriests' marginal performance impact on fire mages, elemental shaman and BM hunters are vastly greater than to a priest or paladin. Chances are good that if your priest has more mana, they'll just overheal more. Only when the damage is coming in so fast that they don't have the mana to keep up should you give them the spriest. If you're rolling with 8 skilled healers, it shouldn't happen.

I hate to bump a week old thread, but I have a pretty (I think) simple question about elemental shaman itemization and this seems like the most appropriate place to ask.

Recently we've been discussing enhancement shaman itemization in our guild, and come to the conclusion (or been slowly herded there by our enhancement shaman - take your pick) that +hit itemization is sorely lacking on most mail loot, so they should get to roll on some leather stuff as well.


How similar is the situation with elemental itemization and leather/cloth caster dps loot? My impression as a raid leader from having observed drop rates is that there's not too much mail dps caster loot out there. Should I be letting our elemental shaman snag leather and cloth loot too? It's sort of a moot point for leather, because we've got no moonkin...but what about cloth?

If it helps (not sure why it would), we generally have 1-2 shadowpriests per raid, and generally I stick him and fire mages/warlocks/hunters in with them. We're just entering SSC (Hydross at 30% last night, hopefully kill him tonight!) with Gruul, Mags, and Kara all on farm.

Mana is really not an issue for me, I put myself in a group with our top Shadow Priest and our 3 top Mages. I'm basically guaranteed a Shadow Priest any time I want, though I find I run OOM quick if he dies. If you check my Armory you'll see my gear isn't great...I'm a couple crit and ~120 spell damage away from where I want to be, because we needed more ranged DPS immediately. Thus, my gear is kind of a rush job. The remaining upgrades (Hurricane boots, a freaking weapon, maybe T4 helm) are all things I have easy access to, but never drop. One of those things where I've killed Prince dozens of times and seen one dagger, no helmet token. Still, while maxing out your gear is obviously important, it's not as important as it is for the primary DPS classes. You're in the raid for your damage + your buffs, and the buffs don't change with gear (ignoring 2-piece T4).

Even with my gear disadvantage I come in 5th-6th on longer more intensive fights like Al'ar and Leotheras. I use a /stopcasting macro to speed up my LB spam, and for a while I was using a CL every 3 bolts to increase damage (since mana wasn't an issue). But ultimately it didn't make a huge difference and is utterly unsustainable if my Shadow Priest isn't nuking all-out, so fights like Al'ar or Lurker with a lot of movement and switching between targets makes it unwise.

I've tried a lot of different buff combos for raiding. The best performance i've gotten so far is use Superior Wizard Oil, Adept's Elixir and Elixir of Major Mageblood. Its 9 mp5 less that the resto flask but the 24 crit/dmg from the adept's more than makes up for it. I finally landed my 4 piece tier4 and man does that proc own. Its a shame they're fixing it in the patch. Well I assume thats what the note about procs, and %based costs meant. I hope I'm wrong.

I seem to be rather lucky, in the fact that I always get a shadowpriest in my group, partly because its a neccesity and also because there are mages/destro-locks in my group also. Thankfully the guild shadow priests are really well geared, and our tanks good so all out nuking from them allows me to use chain lightning on CD for all but the longest of fights. I do have just over 41% crit raid-buffed, which helps my mana efficiency a lot. Its a shame that CL doesnt make as big a difference as the huge amount of additional mana it requires to keep in rotation. I am using quartz and a /stopcasting macro on the majority of my spells, I am also very careful positioning myself for the minimum running around required for each fight, also using dotimer to regain mana and replace totems just before they expire. It seems the only cap on my damage is now my gear, which can be frustrating, as ~880dps fully buffed is the ceiling on my damage output at the moment. Anyone else experiencing the same thing? As far as I am concerned Elemental is extremely viable for raiding, as my damage, and the damage buff that I provide for my group is definately worth it. It may be tough raiding without a shadow priest, or with poor gear, however whatever situation you are in, in regards to your raid set-up or your gear, the buffs you provide will outweigh any damage loss you may have due to lack of mana, as I assume that gear problems or a lack of shadow priest will affect the other ranged dps classes in your guild/raid, and you should still be able to hold your own and buff your group at the same time.

We have 2 shadow priests in most of our raids, so I'm usually lucky enough to be in the caster group with shadow priest. This gives me enough mana to spam lb for quite a long time, and if I see that I have enough mana, I use the 3lb 1cl rotation. I sometimes run dry if I overdo it and I'm unlucky with crits, but doing decent dps is not a problem. A bigger problem is that we sometimes don't have enough paladins for a bos, and then I usually have to be very careful not to overnuke.

About the itemization: The problem is not that there are no items for an Ele-Shaman, but that there are very few. Usually there is only one specific item for a slot that makes sense. This leads to very boring itemization, unless we move to leather or cloth. But how could Blizzard change that? A raid usually has one Ele-Shaman, some raids have none, some have 2. But if there were loads of Mail-Caster-Items, most would just get disenchanted (like those feral items that seemed to drop all the time back in aq40), since nobody would need them.
An alternative would be to implement more craftable boe items, like the belts from SSC/TK. If there were a bunch of craftable boe items that require nether vortex, Blizzard could implement lots of recipes that are interesting to at most one or two raid members, but since they aren't drops, we don't have the problem that they get disenchanted. Maybe even add one or two recipes for bop items per raid tier that are a little bit better than the boe/drop alternative, sort of a reward for having a crafting profession (lvling a crafting profession is expensive, and keeps you from learning a gathering profession, so there should be some sort of reward in form of better items, as long as there are decent alternatives).
Blizzard already does this to a certain extent, however, I think they should take it a bit further.

You could always steal the clothie caster loots!

Ok, I just wanted to grab some more opinions about gearing for my shaman. Right now my boots are the weakest link in my gear and I'm looking to fix that. Hurricane Boots would be my prime choice but unfortunately there are only two guilds in The Eye/SSC on my server and it looks like they aren't willing to sell me a drop it if happens.

I've found the pattern on the alliance AH, but it's going for 1400g. Is that worth the outlay and the pain of getting cash over ac side and then transferring the pattern back horde side, or are http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32792 going to be an acceptable substitution?

Well, best in game that are attainable for non-progression guilds. There is still http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32242 out there, but they are a bit of a ways away for me.

I guess in the end I'd probably rather just put vitality on the pvp boots and keep the gold.

Whoops, thought that read +Healing on the Boots of Oceanic Fury.

Edit- Doesn't look like the Veteran's Mail Sabatons are unique. You could get a pair with Vitality and another with Boar's Speed (or 12 Stamina) so you have a pair for PvE and PvP.

Eh, I'm only pvping right now to fill that gap in my gear. Battlegrounds are kinda boring, and shaman + non 5man I'm just not interested in.