5 Shaman instance tactic question

My shaman are currently 18 and I took them to deadmines and found myself slightly stuck.. Not having a tank seems to be my first issue.. I thought it would be ok but at the moment its causing some issues. Second I found that mana was another issue. I had somewhat expected this and without the mana reduction on crit talent it makes it worse but I get a boss to like 35% and am out of mana.

Anyone doing 5 shaman have any recommendations? I don't want to drop a shaman for another class to make it work. Does it get any better a little further on? I know at 40 having mail will make a difference but I need to get there first..

I don't really want to give up and go back to priest warlocks but I may just for the pets as tanks..

a few problems your a low lvl shamans dont peak elemental is the shaman "multi-box" spec and u have barely any beneficial talents at that lvl also elemental gear at that lvl is basicly non-existent

Mages cant heal :) and yes thats x-box all 5 are elemental and pretty well geared

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Originally Posted by Fursphere

There is a video in the movie section of this forum that has a 5 man shaman team doing heroics @ 70.

It looks to be either 5x elemental spec'd, or 4x elemental and 1x restoration spec'd.

In the video, you'll see almost no melee interaction. You'll see lots of nuking, and slowing totems to keep the mobs at range with kiting. I don't know if this will work with lower level shammies, due to the lack of totems and such.

I've got a 2 man shammy team right now, probably going to add a third, and I'm already seeing a need to go elemental and turn them into casters basically. (which makes you wonder why you didn't roll mages in the first place... :) )

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I don't have problems with trash mobs so kiting isnt an issue. At 70 you will see he uses elementals as tanks for bosses which I don't have obviously. Also mages cant heal or self rez and don't wear mail.

but u can kinda tank it with mail enough to take a beating anyway and dont forget shield

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Originally Posted by Fursphere

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Originally Posted by Texic

I don't have problems with trash mobs so kiting isnt an issue. At 70 you will see he uses elementals as tanks for bosses which I don't have obviously. Also mages cant heal or self rez and don't wear mail.

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You're sort of missing my point. If you can't tank it with leather/mail, who cares what kind of amor you're wearing?

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Eventually they can essentially "tank".. at this level they can't thats the point. If I wanted to play another class I would be playing another class so the armor isn't an issue here. I wasn't looking to be told to play something else I was looking for people who have leveled 5 shaman and found ways to deal with it.

Hold out until level 20...it all changes then :-) Shammies are really bad until that point.

It does not work at lower levels is what I am saying. Just because you watched a 70 shaman do something doesn't mean it can be done at level 18.

Bosses cannot be kited.. Xbox NEVER kites bosses because he has elementals and they cant be. He kites trash because in heroic instances they hit incredibly hard and he can essentially 1 shot them.

I don't have problems on trash only bosses since they CANT be kited and I don't have level 70 pets.

Just treat all your shammies as tanks, dps and healers as one collective...they'll ping pong aggro when they fight. Lesser Heal and 5 x healing totems arrive at twenty and they make an incredible difference...instances are suddenly a lot easier. Unitl then I would just try and grind the best you can until you hit 20.

I nearly gave up with mine pre 20 because they were so bad but am glad I stuck with it. They've now cleared every instannce including mara (except princess - lighting immnuity) with reasonable ease. Kiting could be in the future but for now it's full on elemental nukage with a touch of melee when the mana runs low and all shammies casting lesser heal when one needs it (macroed on F1 to F5) - the speed of lesser heal is a life saver especially when all shammies are casting :-)

Ya without lesser heal its been rough.. Healing stream totem will be nice too.. I managed to push my way through most of deadmines at 19 so 1 more level to go.

I currently have 4 level 70 shaman and trying to gear them out pre-tbc is a nightmare. There just isn't any gear to choose from and elemental doesn't shine until you have the gear to back it up.
Instead of instancing I would highly suggest questing/grinding until you have a few more levels under your belt. Like others have said the healing stream totem is huge, it stacks and just keeps chugging out mini heals :)
If anything try to find a tank, should make life a little easier.

Well I managed to get to 20.. I leveled a draenei shaman 1-70 awhile back and remember the lack of gear then so I will be used to that part. I would prefer to do everything with my 5 man group of shaman rather than bring in another class but I guess I will see how things go now with the water totem.

Hmm, you are doing something wrong.

With my 4 shamans i'll do easily instances at their level:
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=46156

Ive seen the movie but you didn't show anything pre-20 which was where I was having problems.

Im doing 5 x shamans, currently at lvl 44.

I done mainly instances for lvling up. And up till now it has been all easy. Cleared every instance so far without wipe with my team being 3 lvl’s bellow the highest lvl Boss in that instance. Archaedas in Uldaman being the only exception so far. Still havent down him at lvl 44 ?


I go all enhancement, currently. Since I noticed the Mana problems with Elemental and I saw that > 50% of the over all dmg, in my case, came from melee any way.

This is what I learned along the way.

Tank
My main always get the good gear first, and focus mainly on stamina and strength. One the hard fights I have him put a shield on. Take initial aggro with a light bolt and a frost chock then the beating from the rest of the toons start.

Off-tanking.
On some of the fight where the boss pull includes several adds, I sometimes initially spread the targets between my toons to spread the aggro. Then focus fire one target.

Healing.
Macro A) Lesser Healing Wave (chain heal once you get it) on my target, if no target or not friendly, heal self.
Macro B) Lesser Healing Wave (down ranked) on my main. This macro is only on my followers. The main keep building aggro or whatever in the meantime. With the 4 toons healing this (with down rank) gives me aprox 60-65% of total HP back.

Totem
Healing/ Mana
Healing Stream Totem x 5 is often the only healing I need. Or at least till I started doing SM. Any how Healing Stream is always on the ground in any boss fight. Sometimes I do add a Mana Stream totem in the mix though.

Support Totems
On key on my keyboard casts 5 different support totems, a different one on each toon. Like Stoneskin, SoE, GoA, Earth Bind and so on.

Off tanking
Stoneclaw, my good, always hated this totem before and rarely used it. When you have 5 of them though its another story. Love them. Excellent for handling adds in larger pulls. Let’s you concentrate on one mob at the time. Also gets the attention away from other totems like Fire Nova, so they wont get smacked before the explode.

Grounding totem.
Many instance guides tells you to nuke casters first. I found with 5 grounding totems up, you don’t have to. Just let the grounding totem deal with the caster spells while fighting the other mobs. Then nuke him last. Ofc this depends on the type of caster and situation. But many times I found “off tanking” casters with grounding totem to be excellent.

Dmg
Fire Nova Totem, when fighting multiple mobs
Searing Totem on the fight with 5 vs 1.

The above information relates to PvE, whit PvP other strategies may work better. Allthough I suck so hard at PvP in BG I blush just think of it… cry

Comment appreciated

// Ztar
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