So ST sucks ass for elemental shamans :(

[Djarid]

I think Shaman should have Shadow as their backup school

no... hear me out here... Blizzard seems to have got its knickers in a twist over what a Shaman is... we are supposed to commune with spirits. They let us play with the spirits of nature, i.e. elementals but what about those of people? One of the key tenets of shamanism is communing with tribal ancestors.

Invoking the power of dead people surely must come under the shadow school.

It would be pretty cool to have a priest 2x lock 2x shaman team if that was the case

[Kaynin]

I think Shaman should have Shadow as their backup school

no... hear me out here... Blizzard seems to have got its knickers in a twist over what a Shaman is... we are supposed to commune with spirits. They let us play with the spirits of nature, i.e. elementals but what about those of people? One of the key tenets of shamanism is communing with tribal ancestors.

Invoking the power of dead people surely must come under the shadow school.

It would be pretty cool to have a priest 2x lock 2x shaman team if that was the case

The fact that shamanism eventually turned to warlockism and only recently back to shamanism again, does not mean shadow is a school of shamans.

Shadow is one of the schools that shamans forbid to practice, lore wise.

If any other school should be for shamans, it's either more frost or fire damage (More then already present).

[Djarid]

I was unaware of the lore, I was referring to shamanism IRL

However I have now been educated (stupid lore)

[elo]

Totally agree here. I consider myself pretty well locked out of running a full Arc run because of this, there's a 50/50 chance of getting an add at the end boss that's immune to nature. I was able to get through Princess without tooo much trouble but the ~50's encounters are a bit simpler than the 70 encounters.

I've also considered building up the melee gear for such instances, if it's a simple fight then the 5x melee isn't unmanageable but you have to be able to see it coming so you can switch to the melee gear cause otherwise, even with a great weapon, the DPS is the suck. Plus, I have to build up that melee set of gear, /sigh. I don't even have good caster gear yet, let alone a whole other set.

Ah well, still love me some shaman.

[Boom]

I wrote an article about my ST run at level 50, to get my Enamored Water Spirit , you can read it here: Multiboxing the Sunken Temple

I ran into the same issues of course. At the time, I BARELY killed the green dragons after a pile of wipes. I also had to leave the temple at the feet of the final boss. He just hit too hard. I can't imagine running instances without my Elementals anymore.

As for the alternate spell type, I have to agree that only frost or fire would be appropriate. While Shaman are known to commune with their dead, it turned out the ability had nothing to do with their Shaman magic. It was actually caused by K'ure, a Naaru who was permanently imbedded into Oshu'gun when Velen and the draenei crashed onto Draenor (now the outlands). (They were running from the Burning Legion)

K'ure, though dying over the last few centuries, remained in the crashed ship, which appeared to the Orc tribes as a "holy place". As an Orc Shaman would die, it's spirit would be drawn to K'ure instead of drifting away, and that allowed the living Shaman to commune with them. That's it. Nothing "shadowy" or evil.

This if course, is the view provided by the book Rise of the Horde , by Christie Golden (love her work) which was published BEFORE TBC. The story we're given in TBC isn't quite as pretty, but it still agrees that Shaman would never touch Shadow magic.

I should totally make this a post on my blog... /runtoblog

Boom