With spellpower being rolled in to one this build looks increasingly sweet for pvp. You get 14% crit from talents alone, curse dispel, manatide, natures guidance for survivability and best of all you get earth shield that will heal for shitloads.
From ele you can get every goodie up to lighting mastery for quick casting spells and have elemental fury.

Was thinking something like this Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft switch out filler for personal preference.

In my current lev 70 elemental gear i would have something like 2400+ healing (counted spelldmg plus the 1.8 healing coefficient) and 300 haste. Earthshield would provide massive healing and my single target heals would be on par with a pure resto spec. 1.24s cast lesser healing waves and 2.04s cast Healing waves, all with 100% pushback resistance.
I would also maintain a 1.7s cast lighitng bolt backed up with natures swiftness for an instant cast burst combo.
Now that lava burst will be affected by ele talents i will probably even be able to get a couple of fls/lvb combos off when my nature school get kicked.

Any thoughts on this?

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Upcoming Shaman Changes
FYI: It doesn't affect this build, but Elemental Fury and Call of Thunder are switching places.

In response to your question though, IMHO, Toughness is an absolute requirement for any shaman in 2s or 3s. While many things are changing in wotlk, we're still shorthanded in survivability and defensive play talents. Thunderstorm and hex are steps in the right direction, but for any defensive play in 2s or 3s, toughness will still be a requirement.

First, you're going to have to make some tradeoffs in the resto tree to only put 41 points in. In your build you're missing focused mind, which is an amazing talent. You're also going to miss out on tidal waves and ancestral awakening, which puts you probably 10-15% worse off in raw heals vs. a resto sham, and even more behind on crits. Not to mention spirit link.

Second and more importantly, you're missing improved ghost wolf, which is hugely important even without toughness.

I think it's an interesting idea, and could definitely work in comps where a dedicated healer isn't really needed and you're more of a utility player - 2s setups with a rogue/mage/lock, 3s with another healer. Something like that.

If you want to be good at 2s as a Shaman (and I'm guessing this won't change), you need to be able to get focused and still survive/be useful. Without toughness, improved ghostwolf, focused mind, or even any of the deep elemental survivability talents it's hard to see that being the case.

Stick a muti poison spamming rogue (I predict every other 2s or 3s match will have one) on this fictional shaman and its unlikely he'll be able to cast more than 1 spell with a cast time.

For the upcoming 3.0.2 patch will spirit link help any in 2v2 or 3v3 arena play? Or will toughness still be necessary to do well?

I haven't really figured out how pvp balance is going to be affected by 3.0.2, but my gut feeling is that the anti-CC capabilities of spirit link will probably outweigh the benefits of toughness.

It's going to be a balance decision later on with Spirit Link. As it stands now, it seems way to overpowered in 2s and 3s. But they can always make it so the Split Damage doesn't break CC, just like they did with Reflective Shield.

If they did make split damage not break CC, then that would eliminate one of the best features about it. But Blessing of Sacrifice DOES break CC and I would like to think Spirit Link works more like that then Reflective Shield.

Even though it's 51 talent point, don't you think it's rather "too good" if it makes a whole team immune to most forms off CC for a no cooldown, undispelable spell, that in addition has 50% damage mitigation? ^^

Well, you do have a point there. So its safe to assume that it wont, due to sap, blind and poly all being damage sensitive.

But even as usefull as toughness is, Spirit link will provide invaluable defense against burst and I think it could turn the tide against Rogue/Mage or other 2dps burst teams.

The only reason I was asking if it would, is it would finally provide a hard counter to that team for shaman, since we seem to be pretty vulnerable to it.

Blizzard took care of this concern for us by taking away the one ability that would make us viable again. Guess we'll have to stick with being 4th rate healers in PvP.

But yes, it did make us very tough to CC, which was nice. Cyclone still took us out of the picture though, so I don't see the reason for the nerf.

More and more I see inspiration from paladins in the resto tree.

Anyone have ideas on ideal level 70 builds come 3.0?

For level 80 PvP, it seems to me like shamans will still be one of the first classes to be targeted for focus fire. With that in mind, I've come up with an elemental build that tries to maximize survivability without sacrificing too much dps:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It's pretty much only going to be great for pvp if you're targeted early, but that seems pretty likely to me. Thoughts?

This would be the ele / healer version, but I don't think it as nearly as much survivability:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I think that the problem is just here. We have not to sacrifice out talents and dps to survive. I mean, ok some talents is a must to survive more but I think that blizz have to give us some way to survive spending talents for our main spec.

The changes made to Shaman for WotLK will make them into the new defacto "best single healer in smaller brackets" by a very wide margin.

Seeing what has happened to Resto Druid in Beta testing 80 Arena on Murmur, I do not see them being widely played, because the skill set required for Druids to be played into high ratings changed dramatically.

A Resto Shaman with the new Riptide, and Snare dispelling Earth Bind totem*** is a more difficult class to master than the Lifebloom spam of the previous seasons resto druid in terms of playstyle, but because of the power the Shaman brings in Bloodlust, Totems and now an instant cast heal on the move, and permanent Bear form levels of armor, they provide a much more forgiving solution to losing the power and mobility of the Resto druid in small group play. Resto Shaman will be the new kings of small bracket, and cleave will be one of the strongest styles of play with combos like Bladestorm Warrior , Ret Paladin, Resto Shaman, absolutely destroying people with burst and the ability to become immune to snares by various cooldowns that can only be lived through with immunities or near immunities(Iceblock, Bubble, Evasion/Vanish).

The interesting thing is, they keep buffing Resto Shaman. Another interesting fact is watching all the former Gladiators of recent seasons reroll their Resto Druids into Resto Shaman, that should be a clear sign of things to come for the new season of Arena.

Your time is now Resto Shamans.


***(I Realize now that the dispell portion of the Earthbind Totem is in the Enhancement tree and deep)

Actually, that's a 40 point enhancement talent.

Improved Ghost Wolf for LOS abuse is too good to pass up, as is riptide. Interesting build for someone who wants to solo and do 5 mans though, but as already has been said earthbind (or improved variations) do not affect friendly teams in a dispelling way I think that would be way too overpowered to add to it or even suggest it.

Imp. Ghost wolf should help some with snares and general improved mobility though.

There's a polite way to point out an error and a douchey way. You're currently acting like a douche.

Obviously the poster was ill informed, as resto shaman will not have snare-clearing earthbind totem. However, the rest of his post was reasonable. Shaman are getting much stronger in small scale pvp as healers. Riptide, decurse, windshock, earthliving, physical totems, and the hastened cast time talent really step them up. Are they the best 2s healer? Who knows. They are stronger than they were, but their relative strength will only be certain after the next arena season starts and we see how they perform. As a long time elemental shaman, I'm probably going to pvp as resto, if that tells you anything.

Maybe I'm missing something, but is the awesome thing about Wind Shock merely that it's cheaper then Earth Shock? I get the impression people think Earth Shock doesn't interrupt anymore.

Wind Shock isn't on the GCD, which is pretty nice for an interrupt.

Sorry that I had made an error regarding Shaman Totem Earthbind, perhaps you can jump down my throat some more and disregard everything I said other than that.

Thanks for pointing that out.

I don't play a Shaman, or play with one other than a friend who is Enhancement, so I mistook that the Earthbind buff was a talented thing.

And yes, Resto Shaman will be easily the best 2v2 and 3v3 and perhaps 5v5 Healer, bar-none. At present, no other class comes close to what they bring to the table, even ignoring my statement about Earthbind, Earthbind without the Snare removal is still a powerful tool, Bloodlust is entirely broken with teams that feature Melee. Just imagine Resto Sham, Mut Rogue, Ret Paladin in 3v3, just an absolutely brutal comp.

Pretty much all the top Gladiator Resto Druids who do tournament play are rerolling to Resto Shaman for Wrath.