5x Elemental Shaman - Should I spec one resto (and/or enhance)?

[Fixxa]

I love my shammy team...I really do. They're all level 63 and have cruised through pretty much everything to this point, including HFC and BF.

I'm now trying to do Slave Pens, and I feel like I've hit a wall...Quagmirran...who is supposed to be easy, at least according to our Wiki. http://www.dual-boxing.com/wiki/inde...ir:_Slave_Pens . No matter what I try, nature buff from NPC + nature resist totem + poison cleansing totem, I just can't seem to take the guy down before he kills me. This from a boss that's supposed to be tank and spank. The problem usually stems from my designated healer going oom before I kill him, or all toons going oom if I try to rotate healers. Currently, all 5 are speced elemental with 5x Totem of Wrath.

My twofold question is this: (1) is it about time to spec one resto, and gear as a healer; and (2) should I spec and gear one as an enhancement tank. Doing both of these would eliminate two Totems of Wrath...I'd love to hear some ideas on whether the tradeoff would be worth it.

Also, is a group of 5x elemental shaman really viable at 70 (at least until all are well geared) or should I just designate one as a healer now and forever

Any help / advice is greatly appreciated!

--Fixxa

[Anozireth]

I found it was essential to have one speced resto for instances.

[Pyrial]

So that wiki was designed around having a main tank..

With 5 elemental shaman you do not have (usually) a main tank therefore you can adopt some differing strategies prior to getting your earth elementals:



The best thing I have come across so far is formations:

X=Shaman

X.........................X

.............X..............

X.........................X


This can easily be accomplished by changing either the hotkeys or the keybindings for different characters...
Once in this position, drop your totems in the center followed by spreading out.. then its ping-pong time...


Set a macro for round robin frost shock and start casting as usual. When the mob gets to a character, cast the frost shock macro (hopefully it isn't the same char who already pulled agro) This will make another char pull aggro and the mob will have to walk all the way to the other chars position.. I find that two rounds of lightning followed by a frost shock is nice in terms of pulling appropriately.. You can kill most anything up to your level until you get elementals that way..

Rinse... repeat..



BTW this is also fun in BG when you get those pesky mages or warlocks..

Pyr

[Kyudo]

I found it was essential to have one speced resto for instances.

I did too until I got reasonably geared. These days I just run them all as elemental, and just switch the one who used to be resto to healing gear for bosses. It can be a bit tight on mana, but I can handle most heroics like that.

[Anozireth]

Yeah I suppose it would be OK to have the healer be elemental spec as long as he has good healing gear to switch into. Takes a whlie to get there though.

[Pent]

I ran Slave Pens while leveling on my 5x shaman and found on the last boss a little tough (yes he's still tough on heroic :O)
Basically I had two shamans heal using rank 4 or 5 of lesser healing wave while the rest dps'd. By that time I had tons of mana potions too from leveling alchemy so I also popped a few of those whenever my healers ran out of mana (always using mana potions on heroics and kara/mag)

Now that I've got decent gear at 70, I run with only one of my shaman casting lesser healing wave in heroics.

tldr: use mana potions, down rank heals over two shamans, bosses are doable with 5x shaman

[Vyndree]

should I spec and gear one as an enhancement tank

Not for instances/PvP.

Enh shammies are VERY squishy. They don't have a shield and typically have lower health (they tend to stack Str/AP).

Furthermore, you can't kite-dps things with EB+LB like you can as ele

[Fixxa]

Basically I had two shamans heal using rank 4 or 5 of lesser healing wave while the rest dps'd.

Thanks Pent (as well as everyone else) for your suggestions. It's funny how a subtle change in macro strategy made all the difference. My standard "heavy hitting" boss macro setup was with 4 shaman casting lightning bolt and the 5th casting healing wave (all elemental spec). Just spamming that macro, my healer would often overheal and go oom when Quag was at about 30-40%. Alternatively, I found that if I wasn't spamming the macro my primary shaman would get hit with unlucky crits and/or crushing blows and would die before a heal could be cast.

My change, instead of one shammy healing with healing wave, I had 2 heal with Lesser Healing Wave. The shorter cast time allowed me to only cast it when needed (it got in before the crushing blows killed me), and the low mana costs allowed me to survive the fight with my healers ending at about 30% mana.

Thanks!!

[Elili]

should I spec and gear one as an enhancement tank

Not for instances/PvP.

Enh shammies are VERY squishy. They don't have a shield and typically have lower health (they tend to stack Str/AP).

Furthermore, you can't kite-dps things with EB+LB like you can as ele

That's not really true. In fact it's a pretty misinformed statement, Yes Enhancement shamans don't take hits like a Paladin, Warrior, or Druid tank in any way shape or form, but they can easily equip a shield and work towards tanking, Reality is though, I've seen more impressive results from Restoration shamans tanking with Earth Shield.

Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIC0ytG9Ch0 for a Shaman from my server tanking Kara.

Personally I'd try sticking with the 5 elemental shamans and just nailing out different strategies, it's good to practice and fail now while repairs are cheap.