Taken the plungeFollow

Ive played shaman for a lil while now (lvl 39) but am by no means an expert so take this as just advise and not what im telling you to do:

First thing you will want to do is decide what you like doing. Being a mage you might be tired of standing back and blasting things with spells. Then again you may love it and never want to leave that life style. If so the Elemental Talent Tree is for you. It will boost your damage, range, and mana efficiency of your range spells.

On the other hand, if you are tired of standing in the back lines and blasting and would like to jump right into the fray, Enhancement is where your talent points should go. This will give you the ability to equip 2-handed axes and maces as well as duel weild. This tree is a must for any melee based shaman.

If you are looking to take a back up role and keep your fellow group members in tip-top shape you, my friend, are staring at the Restoration Tree. This is vastly improve your healing capabilities as well as their mana efficiency. With this you will be doing a lot of grouping and people will love you for it.

The easiest, as most shaman will agree, is to level up using the Enhancement talent tree. Personally, this is what I did and im never looking back. I will most likely respec at level 58 like everyone else but until then im full enchancement. But try them out. With a level 70 mage you probably have a few gold that u can burn by trying out new talent trees. Find one that fits your play style.

Totems at an early age are very limited and very unpotent. I remember not using them much myself until I obtained the higher level ones. I'm not recommending that you do this however. I regret not using them because, as you know, good totem placement is key. This is a skill that should be practiced when at lower levels when the reprocustions are not so great, and NOT practiced in an instance when your group is yelling at you to drop your totems.

Shamans really start to shine when they get windfury. That is if you are melee. If you are specced into a different talent tree besides enhancement I cant help you much. If you do, however, decide to go Enhancement wait til you get windfury before you make any decissions about the melee capabilities of the class.

I'm not very expericenced at posting in these boards but I hope this answered some of your questions.

Edited, Apr 6th 2007 9:40am by Serevixx

comonly it is normal for folks to level using Enhacment builds, it is deffentely the "Fastest" way to level. enhancment builds focus on your swinging dammage(no mana cost) and using your mana to heal yourself, this recudes downtime and speeds up leveling. It comes at a cost though this is a very solo build, you generaly will not have suffecent MP to heal a party in a istnace(well not mail healer), that is unless you go out of your way to get gear to heal with (you want mana in this gear)


Well as a hybrid, you will not do anything "Like the Best of them" That is not to say that you will not excel at them, just that somebody else can usualy do it better. For example if you spec elemental, you will be capapble of Burst dammage to make a mage jelous(just not for very long) if you spec Enhancment, a rogue or well geared fury warrior will almost always out dammage you, or if you spec resto a priest will outheal you, but unlike the 4 classes I mentiond, a shaman can do them all(just not as well). This leaves you as group spackle, you fill the gaps, hold a mob for a while if you have to, do some pickup healing, and just whap stuff. Shaman do not have a definded role, even a enhcamcent shaman may be asked to heal on some encounters(and a good one dose not need to be asked, they rise to the occation) and even a resto shaman may find them selves on the front like beating mobs with Windfurry.


That depends on level, and situation, yet thats not the important part, it is all about positioning. you never realy want to drop a AoE totem inside a host of mobs, generaly you want to stay outside the mobs, setup a lil safe ground then pull the mob to you. As you level up and pick a spec, the totems you use will change. then some totems are just plain situational, like the fire and ice resestance totems. stone claw and earthbind are good escape tools, while healing stream dose a ok job of post mitigating dammage(it is not a good healer spell, but works to reduce the healing burdon). Relay what you use is defined by your party and your prefrence, the trick is droping them in good spots, then pulling the mobs to you.


Like most classes 40-45, at this point you have most of your core skills and only have new ranks to learn of them. A shamans power comes from the elements and by level 40, you have masterd them, realy though, Windfury is the one that makes a shaman so deadly(or it did when I was leveling)

I have a lvl 56 Shaman it has been a fun char to play,but can be a bit frustrating at times. Be prepaired to be kicked from groups in instances because most people have no idea what a shaman can do. One thing I do in instances is Always lay down windfury and magma totems.Your tanks will love you.
The windfury will add hugh buffs to damage and magma sets them on fire plus makes it much easier to tell friend from foe. This really comes in handy in dark places.I am a enchantment Shaman which is more fun for me,it gives you more melee power.One thing I really do not like about the Shaman is the lack of MANA!!!! It takes much longer to lvl than my pally,warrior,and mage because of the down time waiting to regen my frigging MANNA!!! its cool to have a char
that everyone else does'nt have and can do so many things. Have fun and by the way bring LOTS OF WATER!!!
Bittles