Team just dinged 80 - Where to begin?

[Slats]

Hey guys,

The stickied instance guide for WOTLK is heavily broken due to the forum merge. :(

My team has just hit 80. I have 4 Elemental Shamans with horrid gear. They have random PVP Epics from levelling in AV and a bunch of greens and blues from 70-71. My tank is a Prot Pally who is in a mix of ToC10/Uld10/Uld25/Naxx25 gear.

I can put out about 1.8 - 1.9k DPS on them and I want to start gearing them up but I'm a bit of a loss as what to do first. I did a Violet Hold on normal mode and completely rolled it no problems - had a few mana problems but my Pally is reasonable geared out so I made my way through it.

I then tried it on Heroic. Handled all the trash fine having some mana problems and then got the boss that does the orbs. Blew Bloodlust and got him to 25% before I got blown up as I didn't try moving at all.

So here are my questions - if anyone can help me out with any of them that would be great - even simple linking me to your characters that have the info:

* What is considered the standard Ele Shaman boxing spec for PvE?
* What is considered the standard Ele Shaman boxing spec for PvP?
* Which Heroics are considered the most boxer friendly and 'easiest' to farm for badges at the beginning?
* What totems do you all drop? Currently using:

FIRE: 1x Wrath / 3x Searing
WATER: 4x Healing Stream
AIR: 1x Wrath Of Air, 1x Windfury, 2x Grounding
EARTH: 1x Strength, 1x Armor, 1x Tremor, 1x Earthbind

I have another totem set which pretty much drops similar but drops Wrath and Magma to AoE things down.

Any help or just pointing me in the right direction on a fwe things would be great. I probably need decent specs/glpyhs and some rough plan on my gear and after just hitting 80 its all feeling a bit daunting.

Cheers,

Slats

[bartholomeo]

I'm in the same spot as u are now.

Unable to do heroics due to bad gear, but normal instances are not really a challenge.

My plan is this : do daily's for a while, gather the gold to buy 4x titansteel mace ( the spell dmg one ), and run ToC to get my guys geared up to do heroics.
U can also do pvp until u get a few decent items. Leveling up professions so u can craft stuff is also an option, but that takes alot of time and gold to get it where u need it to be.

I will now continue questing in icecrown to get gear upgrades, getting revered/ exalted with factions so i can purchace better quality items.

[stoat]

UK and Gundrak and the easiest heroics, they should be doable if you shamans can do 2k dps. H VH can be kind of rough when you first start off due to the forced nature of the encounters, in UK and Gundrak you can take it nice and slow.

If you drink you can probably do HVH too. The orb boss will require kiting when you don't have the dps to blow him up in <20s (sometimes he almost kills me when I stand still and I am 5 man gear capped), every other boss in there should be pretty trivial.

[Eggy]

If I were to start over again, I would spend a day running ToC with pugs with my tank. Fortunatly I didnt have to as my friends just pulled me through ToC+HC on my tank and shammys when I hit 80, but the few runs we did enabled me to do pretty much any HC on my own.

[Kalros]

I too run the Prot Pally, 4x Elemental Shaman combo. You can check my guys out in the armory. Pay no attention to the Shamen's secondary spec. I have them spec'd for the Less-Rabi achievement at the moment, but will be going back to their PvP specs soon.

The first Heroics I did were Utgarde Keep and Drak'Tharon Keep (skipping Novos until I had read several good strategies). Alegedly Gundrak is one of the first Heroics that boxers can take down, but I put that one off until later.

Check the Instances area in the Wiki from this site for some good strats for SOME of the Northrend Instances. Do searches in the forums (check the field "Search Title Only" or you'll get 1000000000 hits no matter what you search for, and will be mocked for not searching the forums before asking a question ........................ but I digress).

If you need any specific info, let me know.

[wowphreak]

If yeh can do over 1k dps go to what instance yeh know really well, its all about execution, once yeh get over 1k dps.

When the orbs come out yeh cant just stand there and take it unless everyone is geared.

When I started doing heriocs I did UK, gund and dtk but that was because I knew those really well at the time.

[bartholomeo]

Gundrak easy hu,
Maybe its my crappy tactics, but that very first snake boss is a tough one. 10% is my best try. After that the entire team dies due to his poison.

[Greythan]

ToC on normal with team. Join PuGs on heroic with solo toons.

Gundrak and UK. Work out strats for first two bosses in those instances, then work out strats for next boss, etc.

[Shonkey]

Slats,

I would suggest you run Dailys and use that cash to Buy BoE gear so you can do the Heroics. So much good gear on the AH that you can get in order to increase your dps.

To answer some of your questions.

* What is considered the standard Ele Shaman boxing spec for PvE?

http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t20914-shaman_elemental/

* What is considered the standard Ele Shaman boxing spec for PvP?

http://elitistjerks.com/f79/t39578-elemental_pvp_specs/

* Which Heroics are considered the most boxer friendly and 'easiest' to farm for badges at the beginning?

Imo this is the order for easiest to hardest. (Number represents the badges)

Utgarde Keep: Utgarde Keep (3)
Gundrak (5)
Drak'Tharon Keep (4)
Violet Hold (3)
Azjol-Nerub: Azjol-Nerub (3)
Caverns of Time: The Culling of Stratholme (5)
The Nexus: The Nexus (5)
Utgarde Keep: Utgarde Pinnacle (4)
Azjol-Nerub: Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom (5)
The Nexus: The Oculus (4)
Ulduar: Halls of Lightning (4)
Ulduar: Halls of Stone (4)
Trial of the Champion (3)

* What totems do you all drop? Currently using:
(I run 3 Shamans / 1 Priest)

FIRE: 1x Wrath / 2x Searing
WATER: 2x Mana Stream
AIR: 1x Wrath Of Air, 1x Windfury, 1x Grounding
EARTH: 1x Strength, 1x Armor, 1x Tremor

Link to my toons in case this helps
Tank
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Aman%27Thul&n=Shonkey
Shamans
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Aman%27Thul&n=Zebina
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Aman%27Thul&n=Xylina
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Aman%27Thul&n=Yihana
Priest
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Aman%27Thul&n=Veristine

[David]

I couldn`t clear any heroic when I dinged 80 on my paladin + 4 elementals. I went and respecced one resto and I cleared them all in a row. A resto shaman makes your live so much easier.

To start I gemmed/enchanted him in intellect to boost his mana untill he got better gear. Having a big mana pool helps when the shamans ain`t high dps yet.

[Coltimar]

@bart yeah, it's your tactics. Leave your shaman on the steps. Make sure you have Nature Resistance totem down. If you don't use healbot on your tank for cleansing you should use something. You can drop the poison cleansing totems but it's much easier to have the pally do it. When the adds come to your dps Thunderstorm them back 2 or 3 times, then bring out your earth elementals. By this time you should have the boss almost down.

[Rocky Rhode]

My thoughts come from a mixed team perspective; however they are relevant to any fresh 80 team. ToC is a god send to boxers looking to gear up for heroics; although its an 80-normal instance, it drops lvl 200 epics.

My team came fresh out of AV leveling each wearing green/blue mixture with 2-each 213 level PvP. I followed the recommendations given in these forums regarding positioning near the wooden doors; then smashing the 1, 2 & 4 keys till my fingers bleed.

When your team is fresh 80, the composition of the 3-champions is very critical to your success; any time I saw the rogue I ran out and reset. The dot he puts on the tank along with the poison clouds makes it too difficult with crappy gear. My mixed team found the Warrior, Mage, & Hunter to be the easiest; the Shaman, Hunter, Rogue to be the hardest. My suggestion; unless you are flush with gold would be to farm this instance until you have all the drops; run dailies to augment your gear with BoE/Crafted items that do not drop, gem & enchant your purples.

Just my 2 coppers…

((Finally dropped Black Knight normal 9/27/09; Paladin was sole survivor))

[Simulacra]

For me the easiest instances for badge farming were (in this order):
HGrundrak
HDTK
HHoL
HUK
so I just ran those over and over, there some good gear in there for shammies, the pants/wrists in HDTK are just as good/better as the rep ones or anything you get on the ah at level 200.

When I had the cash I kitted out the team in Revenent Chest/Boots/Titansteel Guardians/Deathchill cloaks and enchanted. I always do HGrundrak - 30mins for 5 badges is too good to knock back. For me it's a time thing, my instance max is 45mins and all the above can be done in that time. If you just farm those its around 16 badges of conquest per day, although I'd probably drop HUK as the cost benefit is a bit low.

Also HUP is good for 2 quick badges before Skadi. Plus of course there's great gear to be had in WG

standard totem set - I swap1 healing for a cleanse in Grundrak
all my shammies are specced to use totem of wrath, they all throw it down for the buff and then throw down this set

withthose
f:totem of wrath
a:grounding
w:healing
e:strength of earth

younot
f:searing
a:wrath of air
w:healing
e:tremor

shoez
f:searing
a:nature resist
w:healing
e:tremor

gettinin
f:searing
a:grounding
w:healing
e:stoneskin

I don't worry about mana at all, they all seem to finish encounters at 90% mana as they have a blessing of wisdom on them, a few +mp5 and I added thunderstorm to their rotation (thx Ooga!) Be interesting to see how they hold up in long boss fights.