Earth elemental totems = tanks for shaman multiboxing teams?

[Lazzadorabcd]

Hello! I almost to 70 now!!! About half way through 66. I rock a 4 shaman team. So mosylt just 4 manning instances.

Typically I just run around instances (when rested) and burn through as many mobs as I can and then repeat.

Does anyone have a good sense about how well I will be able to use the earth elementals to tank? Should I summon all of them at once? or stagger it?

Any thoughts/advice is definitely appreciated

[Ken]

It completely depends on which instance you are running.
The stone elementals will be vaporized shortly with most lvl 70+ instances bosses though, that's why I levelled a PVE protection tank to go with my shamans.

[Ringiho]

Is leveling with 4x Shammies and 1x Tank (Prot Pally?) the best way of doing instances fairly well?

Edit: In your opinion of course.


Cheers

[zanthor]

In my opinion if you are going to instance grind, lower is better for xp. For the most part you can clear all of blood furnace in 30 minutes at level 64/65ish and get 100K XP/hour without rested, This keeps up til you hit 68 and you can even push all the way to 69 there if you are a real masochist. About 1/3rd of the mobs gray out at 68 so the xp is slower then...

I personally balance between instance grinds and questing so I don't lose my mind. I find more than 3-4 runs through an instance in a row and I just want to slit my wrists.

[Schwarz]

When you first hit 70 I would suggest summoning all of your earth elementals at once. If you kill the boss and all 5 are still standing then next time you try it reduce it by 1 or 2 earth elementals. They can tank fairly well. What I end up doing on some hard hitting boss fights is having one character spam a down ranked lesser healing wave on the target of the boss. The toons spamming these heals will run out of mana quickly but this should buy you enough time to kill the boss. I do that on the following bosses.

2nd boss in Mana Tombs
2nd/3rd boss in Slave Pens
2nd boss in Underbog

Good luck with your instances.

[Sarduci]

When you first hit 70 I would suggest summoning all of your earth elementals at once. If you kill the boss and all 5 are still standing then next time you try it reduce it by 1 or 2 earth elementals. They can tank fairly well. What I end up doing on some hard hitting boss fights is having one character spam a down ranked lesser healing wave on the target of the boss. The toons spamming these heals will run out of mana quickly but this should buy you enough time to kill the boss. I do that on the following bosses.

2nd boss in Mana Tombs
2nd/3rd boss in Slave Pens
2nd boss in Underbog

Good luck with your instances.

At 68 I was farming up to the first boss in Sethekk halls for 35k xp normal in slightly under 15 minutes. It's down to 10 minutes now at 69, less if I skip six pulls up the the boss but then it messes my timings up. My first run through I'd pally pull, pop off 4xCL, drop 4xfire elementals, then open up full dps and soak all the adds with consecration while spamming purge to keep the debuffs off. Second time around it's the same thing but with earth elementals. I don't bother with the consecration then and just try to add a little DPS with my pally. Crypts up to the first boss (don't bother trying to kill him or anything on the bridge) was really good to me too. Lots of places to LOS casters and the majority of the mobs are split casters/melee so grounding totems worked great while I burded things down. No 4+ elite pulls in there either.

But then again, that's with a pally tank.