5 Enhancement Shamans

What do you guys think about 5 enhancement shaman? Assuming IWT is still available. I was trying to stay away from a traditional mixed team of 1 tank, 3 dps, 1 healer.

The main goal is to go through 5 man dungeons, and eventually PvP a bit. I doubt 5 enhance would be accepted into a raid environment.
Questing would likely generate gear easier, since they'd all be competing against all the same leather and weapons in a dungeon, but I was considering Skinning/Leatherworking to pump out some Leather/Mail gear as the group needs and running 5 mans regardless.

The strategy in dungeons would be:
-Stoneclaw x5 to grab initial aggro of each cluster of mobs, and nuke them 1 by 1. Same idea when AoE is needed, but with Magma/Nova Totems.
-Healing Stream from each character to keep rolling HoTs going (I hear each healing stream stacks, unlike Mana Spring Totem but my only reference is a TBC blog TwentyTotems). Do you guys know if Healing Stream can stack from multiple Shamans in the same party?
-Low rank Lesser Healing Waves from each Shaman for Bosses, and Chain Heal if desperate.

That's the general idea. Talents (Anticipation? Toughness? Earth's Grasp?) and weapons (2H? 1H/Shield /w Spell Power?) are just an afterthought right now.

This is another one of those comps like the druid/paladin thread. Could you clear some dungeon with 5 shamans? Probably but it would be extremely slow with shaman DPS. You'd have to constantly buy water for 5 characters and you'd be drinking a lot since shamans have no way to regenerate mana and their damage spells are very inefficient. Especially if you're geared for enhancement.

PvP-wise you'd definitely be better off going with elemental. Shamans have no way to break slows or roots so 5 enhance shamans will be useless against all of the mages and hunters around.

Healing stream does stack but the healing is barely noticeable. 5 Max rank healing streams would add up to around 70 HP per 2 seconds at level 60. To put that into context, one rank 6 flash of light (with blessing of light) heals for around 500 per 1.5 seconds before any +healing gear.

I did run 5 enhancement shammies in late vanilla before the talent tree changes. I had no issues clearing dungeons up through I think about level 50ish. When things started hitting harder, I just didn't have the dps to keep up with the incoming damage. Now, arguably, back then I didn't have the ISBoxer tools that I do now, so it would be better, just not sure how much easier. I seem to recall having problems with Scholomance. And nature resistant stuff was a right PITA. Otherwise, my clear speed was about the same as 5x Prot Paladins.

Thanks for the input guys. I must of been overthinking the Healing Stream stuff from other expansions then. Guess I'll think on it some more. Have either of you guys decided on a comp already?

Something I had completely forgotten about until I was looking through a list of vanilla consumables today is the restorative potion.

I'm not sure that the potion alone would make a team viable since they do have a 2 minute cooldown and I'm pretty sure it's purgeable but it might give us some more options. Any team without a mage or druid could use these to remove serious curses or for teams without a way of removing AoE fears.

The materials are super cheap so crafting a bunch of them shouldn't be a problem.

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Originally Posted by Curryman

What do you guys think about 5 enhancement shaman?

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since shaman tanks are a thing in vanilla you wont have much trouble with 5 enhnace, 1h shield or 2h depends on which dungeon, we dont really know all the exact numbers but shamans are quite tanky with anticipation and mail even without a shield ... since you will most likely get more 1h weapons anyway you can play around with using frost shock on the 2h shammys and max rank earth shock on the 1h shield shamans to maintain aggro on them. And yes healing stream stacks. One thing that is also to consider is that stormstrike debuff doesnt stack so you might want to rotate with stormstrike + 2x shocks. Build wise i would stay in the enhance tree and at lvl 53 respec enhance/resto for 3% hit on melee/spell. You can probably also play around with giving 1-2 shaman all the spellhit/crit gear and go 21/30/0 or ele/resto on them and let them eat all the stormstrike buffs. If you ignore mana reg problems inbetween fights you will certainly have a lot of fun with that comp anyway (maybe make good friends with mages).

Regarding aoe, if i remember correctly fire nova had a small aggro radius so if you drop them right after the pull with lightning bolt mobs should ignore them, I'm quite sure firenova totem intial aggro generate more aggro than a stoneclaw tick, the good thing is the aggro from its damage isn't shared with the shaman so they will proceed to hit stoneclaw until you attack them.

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Originally Posted by Curryman

I doubt 5 enhance would be accepted into a raid environment.

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for what? vanilla enhance is boring af in raids because it does no damage and in melee groups you spend 90% of your time with switching between wf and grace totem ... grind alterac exaltet and have dungeon bis gear, farm some free action potions, you'll oneshot t3 cloth with 1 lucky wf procc thats where the fun is

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Originally Posted by Kruschpakx4

since shaman tanks are a thing in vanilla you wont have much trouble with 5 enhnace, 1h shield or 2h depends on which dungeon, we dont really know all the exact numbers but shamans are quite tanky with anticipation and mail even without a shield ... since you will most likely get more 1h weapons anyway you can play around with using frost shock on the 2h shammys and max rank earth shock on the 1h shield shamans to maintain aggro on them. And yes healing stream stacks. One thing that is also to consider is that stormstrike debuff doesnt stack so you might want to rotate with stormstrike + 2x shocks. Build wise i would stay in the enhance tree and at lvl 53 respec enhance/resto for 3% hit on melee/spell. You can probably also play around with giving 1-2 shaman all the spellhit/crit gear and go 21/30/0 or ele/resto on them and let them eat all the stormstrike buffs. If you ignore mana reg problems inbetween fights you will certainly have a lot of fun with that comp anyway (maybe make good friends with mages).

Regarding aoe, if i remember correctly fire nova had a small aggro radius so if you drop them right after the pull with lightning bolt mobs should ignore them, I'm quite sure firenova totem intial aggro generate more aggro than a stoneclaw tick, the good thing is the aggro from its damage isn't shared with the shaman so they will proceed to hit stoneclaw until you attack them.

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Thanks for the insight. I was thinking about paying a mage to make water below the cost of vendor water, but it might be tough to find a mage that wants to sit and make 25 stacks haha. Yes regardless of the mana issues, it could be fun.

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Originally Posted by Kruschpakx4

for what? vanilla enhance is boring af in raids because it does no damage and in melee groups you spend 90% of your time with switching between wf and grace totem ... grind alterac exaltet and have dungeon bis gear, farm some free action potions, you'll oneshot t3 cloth with 1 lucky wf procc thats where the fun is

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Agreed, ignoring raiding entirely and focusing on some personal goals sounds like fun. I was mostly thinking multiboxing in raids in general (regardless of comp) might be tough for others to accommodate.

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Originally Posted by Kruschpakx4

since shaman tanks are a thing in vanilla

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Shamans can hold agro on one mob at a time by spamming earth shock every time it's up but they can't maintain threat on multiple adds. Every video you see with people trying to shaman tank involves them tanking one mob while the healer carries the party as everybody else just DPS's through the rest of the pack with no tank.

You also need a specific talent/gear setup to make shaman tanking viable once you get into the harder hitting dungeons and that setup is useless for everything else. It's no good in PvP, you can't heal with it and it does poor DPS.

I just don't see the point of trying to make shaman tanking a thing. Paladin tanking has issues too but at least paladins have the advantage of being heal with holy/prot and having awesome AE threat generation so you can AE clear dungeons fast with a good group. Druid and fury/prot warrior are both more survivable and do more damage than a shaman tank. There's just no advantage to it I can see. Especially as a boxer where you can choose your group composition.

I wouldn't bother with the actualy shaman tanking spec that is meant to substitude tanks in 5 mans, with the toolkit shamans have by default its already enough to grind through trash with 5 of them maybe not as fast as with paladins, mages or whatever but you can certainly clear dungeons at a slower pace.

I'm not so sure. Unless you outlevel or outgear dungeons significantly some of the mobs hit pretty hard.

Even with a paladin or druid while you're gearing up the mobs in all of the 55+ dungeons can drop your health super fast. Without the extra block value, parry and armor from the enhance tree you'll have a rough time. There's no way you'd be able to 5man DM:N or UBRS as an all shaman group with no CC.

Well, given that shamans have 5x grounding with 5x stoneclaw and with 5x searing plus some crazy weps such as hand of eddward the odd plus rings that can stun when hit and shield from aq (you remeber krush :) that can silence for 3 sec, then again chest piece that has 30% of absoring that school of magic 500 dmg with ofc plus some incredible trinkets and some other tricks you can do amazing stuff. Shaman is only class that can utlize all wep/shield/tricks that are simply god like. Imagine having 5x shield mage casts aoe >get's silenced instantly dead.

Imagine warrior rushing to you>hand of eddward the odd>>puff>insta CL. Pure chaos :)

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

There's no way you'd be able to 5man DM:N or UBRS as an all shaman group with no CC.

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you probably have to see it to believe it, but the limited utility of a single shaman turns out to be a form of cc if you have 5 of them. If I go DM north (i tested 5 enh a while ago on pserver and streamed it) the hardest trashpacks are 3 orgres consisting of 2 melees and a caster. If i predrop 5 groundings and place another 5 groundings midfight that caster is spending 20 seconds doing absolutely no damage. One of the two melees is spending 15 seconds on stoneclaw totems party because he got a slow swing timer and has a 50% chance to get stunned for 3/1,5/.75 sec, the limiting factor here is actually the lifetime of the totem. Meanwhile the mob i focus down gets pulled with two volleys of lightning bolts which eat about 30-40% of his hp before he gets into melee range. The gameplay is also easy to pull off since alot of the damage comes from auto attack and imbues, you have alot of time to play around with totems and heals between shocks and stormstrike.

Regarding heals, if you go full melee dps you will have little to no spellpower but lesser healing wave does around 880 base healing (flash of light got like 380 untalented) so while mana intense its amazing burst heal. So yeah you have to drink after every pack, but i can guarantee you unless you wear cloth and get oneshottet that you dont die at trash in DM:N.

So after all if you go for elemental later on I'd still use the enh spec to farm the gear in pve because it takes a while until you get enough mail spelldmg gear. Personally I go for a mage/priest combo first so whatever I play afterwards i can make food myself which is going to be amazing :)


edit: to round this up a little, I know that the mechanics I use will work but it comes down to 1 melee mob not being able to 1 shot me. Of course same goes for bosses.

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Originally Posted by Kruschpakx4

Personally I go for a mage/priest combo first so whatever I play afterwards i can make food myself which is going to be amazing :)

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And I'll be rolling 4x lock 1x priest alongside Krush so I only need water for priest, tho even that is not needed due to lifetap/drain life! Hype Hype!

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Originally Posted by Kruschpakx4

(i tested 5 enh a while ago on pserver and streamed it)

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Cool to hear you tried it already and thanks for the breakdown. Do you have any vods of that by chance?

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

And I'll be rolling 4x lock 1x priest alongside Krush so I only need water for priest, tho even that is not needed due to lifetap/drain life! Hype Hype!

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Are you going to try doing dungeons with that team or just levelling through quests? Thinking voidwalkers would have trouble with AoE threat or perhaps not with Suffering on round robin.

I dont save those runs and I couldn't share them here, but the conclusion that I made is that mechanics wise the comp is very interesting because no other setup offers that weird playstyle that works for some reason. Of course 4 warriors with windfury cleaving through pve is more effective in terms of items/(time spent).

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Originally Posted by Curryman

Are you going to try doing dungeons with that team or just levelling through quests? Thinking voidwalkers would have trouble with AoE threat or perhaps not with Suffering on round robin.

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While that may be true to certain degree, don't forget that as this comp I'll have access to but not limited :

15% stam from talents (I'll only miss 10% shadow mastery), I'll have access to Imp stamina buff as well as Priest Fortitude plus Shadow protection which pairs up with UD 10 shadow resistance. Then again, when it comes to trash: I have seduction plus banish plus shackle plus voidwalker tanking plus fear plus 4x coil (that is 12 sec of hard cc) and rng priest stun plus extra 15% dmg which equalizes the loss of shadow mastery for hp scaling (should end up roughly 6-7khp with bwl gear on a single lock). Then, there is a power world shield to negate some dmg. And, then there is 4x soul stone just in case of emergency plus healthstone plus health pots. You are looking at solid 10-15k hp of dmg before I even need to worry on a single lock.

For usual boss fight, the concept will be mostly to send all void walkers, put the coe/cos debuff plus armor reduction so void can get extra dmg. From there wait 10 sec or so to get inital aggro and pew pew.

While mostly at low levels, the dungeons will not be that successful later on I'll be able to steam roll through any content. Don't forget that in world pvp I don't need to face my target for dots and for shadowburn as well (as much as I recall that is). Plus, the engineering net is incredibly op on all 5x cuz I can simply root 5x people and let em rot. There are various concepts that I am loooking into with Kruscpak for teaming up so if anyone is up for it, once they announce the realms we will be rolling pvp realm,horde so you're more then welcome to join us.

One thing I forgot to mention is that ,one locks reach certain treshold they will simply stomp on everything (fel puppy + some items for stealth detection>rogues won't stand a chance. With that amount of health pool, it will take even Naxx warrior 4-7 hit to even dent you severly (4x puppy means 4x silence). Before any caster can do anything, they will get silenced for 10 sec minimum (by that time you're dead).

Still, remains to be seen what the world will be:)

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Originally Posted by Curryman

Are you going to try doing dungeons with that team or just levelling through quests? Thinking voidwalkers would have trouble with AoE threat or perhaps not with Suffering on round robin.

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A single voidwalker has trouble holding AE threat. 4 Voidwalkers can each focus on one mob and most packs are 3-4 elites. On single targets, they actually do a reasonable amount of threat if you give them a few seconds to cast a second torment before you start casting. You don't even have to assign a pet to tank non-elites because they'll be dead in like 2 seconds.

I set focus to a different mob on each warlock, send the pet in and then I have suffering, hellfire and prayer of healing on one hotkey. This uses the AE "taunt" to ensure all of your voidwalkers have some threat on everything before you start AoEing and even if the pets lose threat, you do so much damage with hellfire*4 that most stuff is dead in seconds (in earlier dungeons, at least.) I prefer the soul link build myself. 40% Physical damage reduction means even if my warlocks pull threat they can just tank through it.

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

While mostly at low levels, the dungeons will not be that successful later on I'll be able to steam roll through any content.

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It's actually the other way around. 4 Voidwalkers trivialize low level dungeons when you're comfortable with pet management. 15-50 dungeons are super easy. Once you get to UBRS, Dire Maul, Scholo, etc. it's much more difficult because your voidwalkers HP/armor don't scale at all with gear. Some of those mobs hit very hard and have a lot more HP. As your gear scales, you do significantly more damage while your pets threat stays the same as it was when you first hit 60 so you have to be a lot more careful about pulling agro.

Pet tanking means you have 4 targets to heal rather than a single tank -- as well as having to top off your warlocks HP from hellfire and lifetap. The most efficient way is just to generally spam downranked prayer of healing once you get enough gear to sustain it. Since you can lifetap to full mana on the warlocks and one prayer of healing is generally enough to put them back on full HP, you really only need to buy water on your priest which is pretty nice.

All in all, it's not as good as a proper tank but it's still a fun comp and it's great for world PvP. Players inevitably focus on your priest first, which is fine because when your priest dies you get 10 seconds of free, uninterruptable healing and then soul stone res. If you macro accept resurrect with a hotkey to round-robin cast soul stone on your priest you can generally reapply soul stone before it dies again and spirit has no cooldown so you get another 10 seconds of free healing every time. Just don't apply all of your soul stones at once, because they'll all be consumed when you accept the first resurrection.

I always have a felhunter out when I'm PvPing. 30% Reduced damage from all sources plus 60 resist to all magic schools makes the warlocks super tanky and you can round-robin consume magic/dispel to completely negate AoE fear -- so you can pick orc instead of undead for the superior racial.

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Originally Posted by Kruschpakx4

edit: to round this up a little, I know that the mechanics I use will work but it comes down to 1 melee mob not being able to 1 shot me. Of course same goes for bosses.

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Seems super sketchy to me. The more damage you're taking, the more you have to stop and hard cast a heal, which means the less damage you're doing and the longer it will take you to kill things.

I guess it could work but I don't see the point over just going with a proper tank and 4 shamans.

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

Seems super sketchy to me. The more damage you're taking, the more you have to stop and hard cast a heal, which means the less damage you're doing and the longer it will take you to kill things.

I guess it could work but I don't see the point over just going with a proper tank and 4 shamans.

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The main point of 5 shaman is that you actually need 5x shaman to make this work properly. Any number of shamans lower then 5 impacts this setup greatly and will make it much more vunerable exponetially. The main reason for this is :

a) 5x grounding! Incredible as it alllows pretty much to ignore casting mechanics (the usual cast time being 2 sec or so *5 = reset grounding cd> repeat)

b) 5x ns/instant CL for massive dmg (we are talking about 15/10/7k)

c) searing totem ( adds nice dmg overtime)

d) stoneclaw totem (pretty much ignore extra melee adds)

e) there is a build with ele/resto with 5x mana totem which means with some times and mana pot you can rotate your mana 10 mins before required to drink

f) 5x ele just stomps pvp as well vs casters and vs melee (it's really effective vs melee, just requires a bit different approach then Burning Crusade)

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

The main point of 5 shaman is that you actually need 5x shaman to make this work properly.

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I disagree. A tank focuses most of the outgoing damage in PvE onto a single target so you'd spend more time DPSing and less time healing.

I also don't see a lot of difference between 4 or 5 DPS in PvP. 4*LB/CL will kill pretty much anything. Having a druid or even speccing one of your shamans resto and spamming chain heal would be more useful IMO. Adding a priest to the group would make enhance sort of viable since you could dispel slows and your shamans could frost shock to peel for the priest.

Anyway, speaking of goofy fun comps. I was thinking about the 4 paladins / 1 druid thread yesterday and I started thinking 4 druids and a paladin actually might not be that terrible if IWT is working. You could make toggles to switch between bear/cat form and you'd have 4*innervates on your paladin to heal for days, 4*NS/HT if your paladin gets low. Your druids would be immune to slows/roots and the whole group would be pretty tanky.

Cat DPS isn't terrible if you can figure out a macro setup to manage combo points. Not as strong as warriors but still something fun to try if you just like making unusual groups.

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

Seems super sketchy to me. The more damage you're taking, the more you have to stop and hard cast a heal, which means the less damage you're doing and the longer it will take you to kill things.

I guess it could work but I don't see the point over just going with a proper tank and 4 shamans.

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not saying it beats tank 3dps healer, but op wants to avoid it so yeah dropping 1 shaman is the equivalent to running tank 3dps heal

ofc its faster if you dedicate one as resto so the other enhancer dont get their swing timer reset from casting, can always do that if things dont go well

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

And I'll be rolling 4x lock 1x priest alongside Krush so I only need water for priest, tho even that is not needed due to lifetap/drain life! Hype Hype!

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That's why i'm adding 1 mage into my team, To make food/etc. and as frost to slow the target down.
3x locks, 1 priest, 1 mage - priest will be disc, all undead because of forsaken~~~

+1 to make one of the shamans resto, you retain the same utility and synergy of 5x shamans (loving the grounding totem setup) but dramatically increase suitability