So, 5x Elemental Shamans Instancing...

[Millz]

Has anyone had any success with these yet? I'm still leveling mine at the minute, 72/73, but I can't even get past the first few pulls of trash in Nexus/Utgarde Keep. Starting to think this team is going to be fairly pointless at 80.

I've got a level 80 warrior tank as my main, so may switch a shaman with warrior, and spec another shaman to resto.. However i'd really like to play 5 shamans as the team.

[Kicksome]

You're going to need a tank if you want to run heroics in my experience. I'm sure at some point someone will clear a heroic or two with 5x shaman, but it might be a lot more trouble than it's worth until you totally outgear the instances. I'm sure a few heroic bosses can be taken out with 5x shamans right now though. But most hit like trucks. Not to mention trash can crit for 8-10K easy.

[emesis]

It's pretty tough with 5 shammies even on non-heroic in my experience. I didn't really have any problems with trash in Nexus or UK with 5 shammies, with 5 healing stream totems, stoneclaw, and rotating Thunderstorms. But bosses are really tough without a true tank, since Earth Elementals haven't scaled at all.

At 73, I was able to take down the void boss in Nexus and the first two bosses in UK with 5-shammies, but not go much farther. It was trivial by comparison with my DK added into the group to complete those instances.

Myself, Ive stopped running instances. I'm gonna bring my 5 shammies (at 76) up to 80, get some daily gold gathering going (still don't have my epic mounts), then finish my second team which includes both a pally + DK for tanking (currently at 73).

I'm thinking DK/3 shammies/boomkin for my main heroic farming group.

[Halo]

I think a tank is all you need. The shammies obviously don't have any damage mitigation to speak of so go down fast if one of them becomes the 'tank' A pali tank is easy to integrate into your team. You can either micromanage it if you like, or just spam a castrandom macro. (I prefer the former most of the time).

I have not gone with a dedicated healer. My reasoning is that 4 lesser healing waves + healing stream totems seem to be sufficient to keep the pali topped off. He can always bubble in an "oh-shit" situation, and because the damage he takes decreases as his health gets lower, it's really a no brainer. Since the healing is spread among 4 toons, none of them has to worry about aggro from healing and I don't have to worry about my dedicated healer getting CC'd. I can throw a 4x chain heal in there to deal with AoE if needed. I doubt it would work in arena, but for PvE instances, it's been fine. I have given some thought to subbing a boomkin in for one ele shammie for the buff and the instant HoT, as others have done.

[GKar]

Honestly I think even the "tank + 4 shaman" days are limited.

Nothing stacks anymore, so diversifying your group is of much greater importance. I've recently added a Warlock to my team (see signature).

Curse of Elements and Bloodpact are what I was after, along with all the other goodies a 'Lock brings to the team.

I was going to swap in a Hunter as well, but a Hunter brings *nothing* to the table for my group makeup. A Balance Druid though... still thinking about that one. ;)

A BM hunter will give you 3% more damage for the party with ferocious inspiration. A survival hunter will give you replenishment. Though balance druid would probably be an amazing addition to your team.

[GKar]

Ferocious Inspiration Rank 3
When your pet scores a critical hit, all party and raid members have all damage increased by 3% for 10 sec.

Interesting.

When did they change this from just an AP buff? 3.0?

Not sure exactly when, but I think it's been like that well before 3.0. What used to be broken was when it would stack, my 4 BM team would have a 12% damage buff for the party.

[puppychow]

A lot of classes provide great utility, and imo grounding totem isnt really worth much anymore in heroics. I run a pally+mage+3 shamans, and frankly I might replace one of the ele shamans if patch 3.08 doesn't up their DPS a bit. my mage, in basically equivalent gear, does 20-50% more dmg than my shamans. Now that I've spec'd one resto I rarely need to use all the shamans to heal as well. And of course free food + teleports + int buff is great, and if you spec frost you do +10% caster dmg buff plus replenishment when water elemental is up. The downside is that on hard bosses my mage dies. A lot! A complete lack of a heal button can be a big issue sometimes.

I thought about a hunter, but my concern would be that in the hard instances the pet wouldn't live long. Other option is boomkin for extra crit and 10% dmg buff, plus their ability to heal in a clutch is great.

[mphuie]

Honestly I think even the "tank + 4 shaman" days are limited.

Nothing stacks anymore, so diversifying your group is of much greater importance. I've recently added a Warlock to my team (see signature).

Curse of Elements and Bloodpact are what I was after, along with all the other goodies a 'Lock brings to the team.

I was going to swap in a Hunter as well, but a Hunter brings *nothing* to the table for my group makeup. A Balance Druid though... still thinking about that one. ;)

I have pretty much all 5 man content on farm with a tank + 4 shaman. In normal 5 man's I have almost no downtime with 4x mana spring. Draktheron and Gundrak on farm in under 25 minutes. Oculus is a pain (for any multiboxer- controlling vehicles sucks).

I wouldn't mind a balance druid for Earth and Moon though :)

It will only get better in 3.0.8 when ele Shammies get an "up to" 20% buff (depending on gear)

[Millz]

Hmm. I think i'll stick with the 5 shamans for now and get them all to 80, then switch in my warrior to tank once i get there. Shamans are at 73.5 now anyway so pointless dropping 1 at this stage.

Paladin may have been a better tank for a mutliboxer, but i used to raid with a warrior so know how to play it well.

At least i can always go and PvP with the 5 shamans i suppose !

[Shockzilla]

Has anyone had any success with these yet? I'm still leveling mine at the minute, 72/73, but I can't even get past the first few pulls of trash in Nexus/Utgarde Keep. Starting to think this team is going to be fairly pointless at 80.

I've got a level 80 warrior tank as my main, so may switch a shaman with warrior, and spec another shaman to resto.. However i'd really like to play 5 shamans as the team.



Had the same problem. Most people told me that i was doing something terrible wrong. So i watched some multibox movies, checked everything, ... it still didnt work.

My shams had the green northrend questgear... thats not good enough to run nexus. For example, the melee mobs at the begin of the instance hit really hard for a sham 70-72 in quest gear. They dont get knocked back, some people advised me to rotate thunderstorm. So i think that most people forget that they are in S3 or maybe S4 when they enter wotl; or at least S2 honor gear. The nexus multibox video that I have seen was made by a shaman in full S3 gear ,well he had no problem with nexus.

Best thing what you can do is...

Gear up... someone posted a guide here with all the elemental gear in wotl, incl better questgear than you probably have right now. (Forgot the name of the post)

Swap a shaman for a tankadin, or maybe your warrior, but aoe tanking as pally is really easy(compared to other classes). Youll be playing 5vs5 with a real healer anyway if you want to make a chance, so that leaves you with 4 shamans. PVE will be much easier, really. If you dont want to reroll, there are enough tanks that want to do instances with a boxer... they usually like it more then going with a real pug group once they have seen what a multiboxer does.

I know how frustrating it is, really... but this solved alot for me. btw sorry for the crappy english, im from belgium. :)

[Kaynin]

The reason 5x elemental shamans won't work well anymore is that earth elementals did not scale to 80. =(

[Varmon]

5x Shaman WOTLK Heroics? Yeah, get a tank. WOTLK Normal modes? No problem! You should be able to handle most without any problems, I can tell you that gear is also a complete no issue as I had CRAP at the time (you could argue that I still have crap). I leveled up basically just running instances... doing UK (70-72)/Nexus(72-74)/Ahn'Kat(74-75)/Gundrak(75-78)/Halls of Stone(78-80). Now granted, some of the final bosses I wasn't able to kill at the time which is fine as you can just reset the instance and re-run for more XP and most of the bosses were very easy and killable....clearing trash was always pretty fast too....gundrak and UK were phat xp per hour.

So, If you are wiping on trash my first question would be how are you handling the pulls? For big pulls just open up with all your stoneclaws down (not always needed TBH) and drop a nova so it hits just after the melee reaches you...then start your thunderstorm rotation (I like to have an earthbind down as well so the mobs are all snared when they walk back). If your doing it right, your avoiding pretty much all incoming damage...the faster you can do damage, the fewer cooldowns you can get by using

Actually have a video here FWIW of me doing some UK trash and some bosses back when I was level 70-72, no editing or anything (heck, didnt even edit out some vent chatter....lol) ....its just a quicky and dirty video capture I did to show some of my buddies how silly shaman are

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XyGs2HW_wA

hth

[Niley]

who needs Earth and Moon when You have Dk tank, clutch heals with 4 shamans are really nice too, also 4xfire/earth elementals, grounding, and plenty of other buffs that they bring.
Did a small test, no heroism/bloodlust used, on a dummy and as far as dps goes, shammies are more then fine for heroics.
heres my test(im boreddddddd) Dk was jsut keeping ebon plague up, she usually does somewhere around 1700ish
with cl:
http://www.hdimage.org/images/osyo1i5juzid5kgdvpb_ocrnhot122408121501.jpg

just lb/LvB spam on single target

http://www.hdimage.org/images/zzylek3ds5vo71w044td_ocrnhot122408121710.jpg


So I wouldn't say that the days of tank/shamans are anywhere close to being over.

[Niley]

who needs Earth and Moon when You have Dk tank, clutch heals with 4 shamans are really nice too, also 4xfire/earth elementals, grounding, and plenty of other buffs that they bring.
Did a small test, no heroism/bloodlust used, on a dummy and as far as dps goes, shammies are more then fine for heroics.
heres my test(im boreddddddd) Dk was jsut keeping ebon plague up, she usually does somewhere around 1700ish
with cl:
http://www.hdimage.org/images/osyo1i5juzid5kgdvpb_ocrnhot122408121501.jpg

just lb/LvB spam on single target

http://www.hdimage.org/images/zzylek3ds5vo71w044td_ocrnhot122408121710.jpg


So I wouldn't say that the days of tank/shamans are anywhere close to being over.

I can't help but point out your tanking a target dummy in those pics. :D

I had to apply ep for 13% spell damage debuff :(

on most bosses when I have hero up, my dps is very similar or higher, I did about the same damage on those tests as a health pool of heroic end boss.

[puppychow]

To be fair though Niley you are lucky in that you are in a raiding guild that allows all of your shamans to raid, most people I don't think really have that - your shamans probably greatly outgear the majority of us. An elemental shaman with 1300 spell damage (unbuffed) is vastly different in heroics than an elemental shaman with 2200 spell damage, at the lower end of the gear spectrum other classes tend to perform better than ele shamans right now.

[Niley]

To be fair though Niley you are lucky in that you are in a raiding guild that allows all of your shamans to raid, most people I don't think really have that - your shamans probably greatly outgear the majority of us. An elemental shaman with 1300 spell damage (unbuffed) is vastly different in heroics than an elemental shaman with 2200 spell damage, at the lower end of the gear spectrum other classes tend to perform better than ele shamans right now.

Im only raiding on one shaman, hes been my main since day one of tbc, he replaced my beloved hunter. I also try to organize alt naxx/malygos 10 runs whenever i can, and i just use one toon to tank them(my dk). My 3 shamans are in regular heroic/quest/boe stuff.