5 Enhancement Shamans

[Curryman]

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.

[Apatheist]

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.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

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.

[Curryman]

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?

[Apatheist]

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.

[Kruschpakx4]

What do you guys think about 5 enhancement shaman?

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.

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

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

[Curryman]

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.

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.

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

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.

[Apatheist]

since shaman tanks are a thing in vanilla

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.

[Kruschpakx4]

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.

[Apatheist]

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.