There’s without question a lot of great discussion going on in the other Shaman thread with regards to Enhancement but I’m hoping to generate some new discussion with regards to the other two specs, the overlap they share and the balance required for 10 & 25 man raids.

In broad terms, Shamans have roughly three choices before them, ‘Elemental + Nature’s Swiftness’, ‘Elemental + Mana Tide’ and ‘Earth Shield’.


Choice #1 - Elemental + Nature’s Swiftness

Though it’s yet to be ‘field’ proven how viable an Elemental Shaman can be in terms of raw damage output, it appears that they have the majority of the tools required to be a solid contributor with the only question mark being mana regen; perhaps it is Blizzard’s intention that this potential shortcoming is made up by their very strong DPS.

With that said, in terms of healing performance, how does this build stack up against a pure Restoration Shaman and what sacrifices are they forced to make.

The first is obvious of course, Earth Shield. Earth Shield is, in my opinion, a brilliantly designed talent in that it’s very nice to have but isn’t necessarily something that’s absolutely required. It’s very mana efficient, it’s propensity to overheal is very small, it’s increased threat for the tank and it also functions as a free chunk of healing at the start of any given fight when applied with trinkets/racials and allowed to regen back to full.

So can a healing Shaman cope without having this spell in their toolbox? On an individual basis, I think the answer is yes, though they no longer have the ability to ‘heal and forget’, it has no impact on any of the other heals they use. On a raid-wide basis, if there’s not at least one Earth Shield available for the main tank, then I believe the importance of having it shifts much more in its favour.

Another standout talent that is forced by the wayside is Purification; simple to quantify, having Purification makes you a 10% better healer than another Shaman without it.

The remaining standout talent, in my opinion, is Improved Chain Heal. Without question, Chain Heal is the Shamans niche spell and a very good one at that. With the subtle but significant change in its mechanic a while back, Shamans saw the spell explode into awesomeness. It’s incredibly efficient, scales amazingly well with +healing and quite simply heals who you want, when you want; this talent serves to make what is already very good, 20% better.

The other good talents in the tree that you’re forced to drop include Healing Way, Restorative Totems, Mana Tide Totem and Nature’s Blessing.

Healing Way is a tricky talent in that if nobody on the raid has it and you’re charged with single target healing, you can miss it dearly, if however more than one person has it or you’re spot healing the raid, its value nearly drops off the map.

Restorative Totems definitely falls in the nice to have column but in the grand scheme of things is unlikely to affect the course of the encounter. Mana Tide Totem is something I would file under really nice to have and possibly affecting the course of the encounter but its effect is fortunately/unfortunately dampened due to the abundance of mana consumables.

Last is Nature’s Blessing, an obviously excellent talent, I’m sure many feel qualifies as standout but in terms of pure healing I believe that Unrelenting Storm is its functional equal and thus is negated.


Choice #2 - Elemental + Mana Tide (30/0/31)

So the change with this spec over the previous one is that we’re now able to pick up two really nice to have talents and one standout talent, keeping in mind we’re still missing Earth Shield, Improved Chain Heal and to potentially lesser affect, Healing Way. So what do we have to sacrifice in Elemental to pick up those Restoration talents?

If in the previous spec you spent the whole 40 points in Elemental (as there is wiggle room due to Lightning Overload being sub par), the key talents you’re likely to have given up include Elemental Mastery, Elemental Precision, 1-2 points in Unrelenting Storm (dependant on whether you kept 5/5 Reverberation) and the balance of four points which could have been spent on Call of Flame, Storm Reach, Lightning Overload or perhaps you picked up the more damage oriented talents in Restoration such as Nature’s Guidance or the fifth point in Tidal Mastery.

In any of those cases, the biggest hit to your ability to deal damage is without question Elemental Precision. 6% hit is not something easily replaced with via gear and if/when it is, is done at the expense of lost +damage and/or mana regen. We also lose the passive 10% threat reduction rolled into the talent which puts us at an even further disadvantage to Warlocks/Mages given that we have no active threat reducing abilities.

The remaining bunch of talents that would have to be forfeited are much less consequential and although the extended range granted by Storm Reach may be a boon for certain encounters, previous experience has shown such encounters to be the exception and not the rule. Elemental Mastery might be worth mentioning on the basis that it’s a brilliant PvP talent but it loses much of its lustre when it comes to sustained DPS.


Choice #3 – Earth Shield

At the other end of the spectrum is the full Restoration Shaman, being privy to the remaining talents in the tree, this build is undoubtedly a healing force and should be included in every raid setup. So what are we having to sacrifice in Elemental to go the distance?

As it’s been already stated, we lose Elemental Precision and a mix of other ‘nice to haves’ which puts us at a disadvantage relative to other damage classes but not one that’s insurmountable. By taking the next step we’re able to reasonably ignore losing Unrelenting Storm since we’ve picked up Nature’s Blessing but the same cannot be said for the loss of Elemental Fury and Lightning Mastery.

With Shamans easily obtaining crit rates for their lightning in excess of 20%, losing Elemental Fury represents a drop in damage output by at least 10%. The showstopper however lies with Lightning Mastery and its ability to increase our damage per second by no less than 50% and transform our lightning into the best scaling nukes in the game. Roughly stated, picking up Earth Shield cuts our ability to do magic damage nearly in half (~56%).


Conclusion

The big question is this, after including the token Restoration Shaman (with Healing Way and Earth Shield), can a Shaman with a split spec or even one that’s bias towards Elemental fill the role as fulltime healer when called upon?

I personally believe the answer to be yes and see a lot of parallels to the pre-expansion Fury/Arms warrior who spent some points in Protection which effectively allowed them to play dual roles with a click of item rack; even without item rack Shaman can be reasonably successful in either role thanks to the statistical overlap they share.

With all that said, I’m very curious to see if people feel the same way or perhaps feel I’ve put too little weight on the Restoration talents or too much on the Elemental talents.

As an aside, points worth considering beyond the raid environment include performance in the arena and five man groups.

In ordinary PvP, a Shaman with Earth Shield is borderline unkillable, can that advantage expect to be maintained at the highest level of arena combat facing Priests and rival Shaman? Can a Shaman without the benefit of Healing Way and Earth Shield expect to solo heal the same instances a Priest or even Druid could solo heal?

Shaman with an Ele + Resto build over a Resto/Ele build can indeed be a solid solo healer. In fact they have questionably better longevity than pure Resto shaman. However, for high end things (kara, heroics, gruul's lair, etc) you need to be a full on resto healer to shine in that respect.

There's a pretty straight correlation to this in the Enhancement tree as well.
- If you choose to take a full Enhancement build you essentially sacrifice everything below the third tier of Resto in order to get pure DPS class numbers. In this type of a build you aren't much more than a spot healer, but in a properly stacked group you can potentially contribute more DPS than an additional pure DPS class would have.
- It's possible to do a 0/31/30 build that hits on a lot of the strong building blocks of both trees (Weapon Mastery, Stormstrike, Healing Way, Purification), but as Ogun put it, it's pretty half-assed. You have the ability to do a reasonable amount of melee damage with a two-handed weapon and heal a single target quite well, but you give up both the AP buff and the much more important mana regeneration ability to keep fueling your DPS. It is however a very flexible build where you can drastically shift roles by changing your current gear.
- Taking Earth Shield means you can't go a lot deeper than just getting Two Handed Axes/Maces and Enhancing Totems and are relegated to pretty mediocre white melee damage. You are however an incredibly beastly healer that can solo heal a group extremely well.

Ordinarily I am a big believer in the power of the flexible hybrid, but both 41+ Enhancement and 41+ Resto are leaps and bounds better than their job than a 31/30 mix. It is both a blessing and a curse that we have such powerful 41 point talents in both trees. I liked 31/30, but I didn't really do any of the level 70 instances in beta.

Earth Shield's huge vulnerability is that it can be dispelled and it is far too expensive to recast it if it's only getting one or two charges. This makes it a iffy PVP tool but a fantastic PVE tool. You can indeed solo heal without Earth Shield and without Purification, but trying to do so without Healing Way hurts a lot. Purification beats out Healing Way if you are abusing Chain Heal, but in situations where the tank is taking the majority of the damage Healing Way is unbeatable and it's a better investment in the 31/30 build if you have to choose between them.

I've been recently considering these choices myself, alternating between Mana Tide and Nature's Swiftness. However, I'd bring up a third point which maybe should not be dismissed out of hand. Actually getting Totem of Wrath. Totem of Wrath lasts 2 minutes, with no cooldown. This means it's essentially another 3% spell hit and spell crit perminantly. Which means with the correct talent lay out in resto(3/3 Nature's Guidance and 4/5 Tidal Mastery) you can end up with a perminant 9% spell hit and 13% spell crit on top of Elemental Mastery. Thats a very large base. Dabbling in CTProfile shows we can get upwards of 30% spell crit. With Lightning bolts great scaling, is this a build that should be looked into?

Also, as a way of a physical damage dealer thinking of going spell casting, how exactly does Spell hit work and what are the upper limits on it?

My mage numbers are flaky, but I think:
1% spell hit = 1% less resist due to level, the last 1% of a mob's resistance can't be regained from spell hit.
Even level mobs have 6% to resist.
+3 mobs (aka bosses) have 17%? to resist. It's either 16 or 17% hit but I think it's 17% with 16% of that being recoverable from spell hit.

The problem of Totem of Wrath is the opportunity cost of NOT having down Searing Totem. Assuming you have 3/3 call of flame (and reverberation is just a way to go OOM faster in raids, so points are better off in call of flame than reverberation IMO), searing totem with a reasonable crit-rate is approaching 100DPS at a negligible mana cost. Above that if Curse of Elements is available.

Totem of Wrath at 3% crit was mathematically inferior to searing totem even in a group with 4 fire mages with rolling ignite possibilities. At 3% crit and 3% hit (and with no spell crit mechanics as abuseable as ignite), you still need either a group stacked towards casters with crit damage bonuses (ie. not affliction locks, not shadow priests) or a fire-immune mob to make Totem of Wrath come out on top.

I could say "make Totem of Wrath an earth totem" and it would become worth discussing, but deep elemental as a whole needs an overhaul and a philosophy, and hopefully goes a bit further than just making totem of wrath into an earth totem and tweaking the proc rate on lightning overload.

I like reverberation, as it really helps with earth shock when having to interrupt casters and everything. Yeah searing totem is a good deal of dps, however if you are in a full caster group, totem of wrath helps out the whole raid a lot more then searing totem.

Unfortunately not. There's a big leap going form +2 levels higher to +3 levels higher on a mob :

If the target is +1 level compared to you: 95%
+2 levels: 94%
+3 levels: 83% if the target is a mob, 87% if the target is a player.
+4 levels: mob: 72% player: 80%
+5 levels: mob: 61% player: 73%

That's what I said! 17% resist = 83% to hit :)

I was referring to the "every level the mobs get 6% resist rate" bit... :) Resist rates for mobs 1 level and 2 levels higher are much lower, and then suddenly at +3 levels it jumps up by 11%.

I said even level mobs, meaning the same level as the player, not every level ;)

In reference to the original poster, I examined the same question recently with regard to 5-man and small-group content. More specifically, I weighed the merits of following three hybrid elemental/restoration builds:

31+/0/21+ Elemental Mastery with NS, 31/0/30 Elemental Mastery with Purification, and 30/0/31 Mana Tide with Lightning Mastery

*Note: In all three builds there are points that can be redistributed according to preference. Reverberation <-> Call of Flame, Totemic Focus <-> Tidal Focus <-> Improved Reincarnation, etc.

The first of these builds is a flavor of the elemental build you proposed. It couples strong elemental damage and consistency with some healing augmentation. This build would struggle with solo-healing in the level 70 5-mans, but it would be excellent as a secondary healer and primary DPS. In particular, it nets the most +spell hit and +lightning crit.

The second build trades Elemental Precision and extra points in Unrelenting Storm for full Purification. While this makes it less effective at pure DPS, it would make solo-healing more viable.

The third build shifts even more toward group support over DPS, sacrificing both +spell hit talents. In return, it acquires Mana Tide and Restorative Totems. The former provides a significant increase in group longevity on difficult pulls or bosses (assuming that potions are also used), while the latter dramatically improves the benefits of healing stream.

Depending on playstyle, other options along this spectrum are possible. As suggested above, Purification or Nature's Guidance could be swapped for Healing Way. However, I think that any of these builds is very viable for small-group content or, ultimately, as an elemental addition in a raid. Lightning Mastery is the cornerstone of an elemental shaman, but after acquiring it points can readily be distributed into restoration to allow for a broader skill-set.

My raid-oriented (but also very PvP viable) elemental/resto build would be this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GEczy0MqAoZZxcbt0Lo

Honestly, I'm really curious to see how elemental shaman viability pans out once people really get the gear for it together. The only problem I have with the concept is sustainability -- you pretty much need a shadow priest to have any kind of longevity (another reason ToW isn't that great), and the high-end elemental gear doesn't really offer anything in the way of regen.

Also, as someone who leveled elemental and then stayed elemental (37/0/24 at 70 initially) for a while, and solo-healed 5-mans with that spec, I have to say that Resto makes a huge difference It's all about Purification and Imp Chain Heal much moreso than Earth Shield. For 5-mans, the extra mp5 is nice (I think I had 180-190 mp5 in 8/9 Earthshatter as Elemental) to be sure, but for anything beyond that (Kara, 25-mans), what you really need is volume. I need to be able to crit HWs for 6k+, and to have Chain Heals that can do 3500+ to their target, in order to keep up with the raw damage output on many fights. This is especially true with Chain Heal since it gets two multipliers via talents.

This is rather interesting to me as someone who has to decide whether there is a spot for some type of elemental shaman in a raid after a resto and ench shaman. Do elemental shamans find that they can DPS through fights in kara and/or the starting 25 man raids without running OOM? I'm really more interested in the dps possibilities of elemental, while an elemental shaman may be "good enough" to heal a 5 man, if they would be expected to heal essentially all the time in raids because of mana issues and not enough dps then I don't see why not be resto.

And I'd have to highly disagree with this idea that you give up all healing as an enchancement shaman. A simple calculation would show that you gain a huge amount of mana per SR cast if you use fast weapons. To make a really simplistic rough calculation:

assume 200 mana gained per SR proc (I gain about this much with BoM+BS+SoE (no trinket) at lvl 62 so this is rather low for a raid-equipped and buffed shaman), and 35% proc chance (which I believe is the agreed upon number). For simplicity assume flurry is up at all times, no misses, but don't count WF procs or SS (which both proc SR). Using 1.3 speed daggers their speed with flurry would be 1 sec delay. Then

200 mana *0.35 (proc rate) *30*2 (number of attacks from both weapons in 30 secs)=4200 mana gained every 2 mins at the price of doing damage 30 secs (i.e. you cannot heal for those 30 secs without loosing alot of mana regen, this is the one big functional problem of playing a healer this way).

All the assumptions made actually make this number quite a bit lower then what it would be in reality. Just going to a more realistic amount of AP for a raid buffed shaman, let's say 2K, would give you 300 mana per proc, i.e. 7300 mana. And I'm pretty sure WF procs+SS procs more then make up for any flurry dowtime and misses (which won't be many for a well geared shaman with +9 to hit from talents).

In short fights where mana limits are not an issue an enchancement shaman would be fairly bad. In any long fight, the ability to regen somewhere around 7K mana every 2 mins should make you a pretty good healer -> even if all your +healing is from weapon switch and you have only 20 points in resto.

Not to muck up the Ele vs Resto thread, but on the subject of healing, how significant is it that [Ceremonial Kris] is available as an offhand for DW (Until such time as they change it anyway)? That is a potential extra 194 + 81 (enchant) = 275 Healing available only to enhancement.