12-29-2006, 12:50 AM
Artega, interesting post. I've lurked here for years and thought I'd chime in. My shaman was a hardcore twink for some time in 49 cap. I eventually levelled him out with some friends when we killed the 49 cap bg's on our server after a couple of months (this was before cross-realm bg's). However, prior to that Cho'Gall had a pretty active 49 bracket with many twinks on both sides. The 49 cap comparison is interesting, but I think you'd benefit by exploring the other talent trees. I had a 50g respec fee by the time I left 49 cap as in each bracket I played around with builds pretty extensively. Cap shaman are naturally one dimensional but you have the advantage of having many viable builds. However, I'd argue that deeper than 21 in resto is not one of them unless you went to 24 with the anti silence/interrupt talent. Until you have access to earth shield I would strongly recommend trying non-resto based builds for a change of pace unless you truly want to focus on healing. Even then, going that deep is debatable. Healing way strikes me as situational, what is the honest ratio of lhw to hw when the heals you cast really matter in keeping the fc up? Purification isn't bad, but also it provides just a marginal benefit. Nevertheless the choice in talents comes down to playstyle.
From my own experience in all the lower caps as well as at 60, an offensive shaman out disrupting casters is more effective than a healer in terms of ultimate success. It can work either way, but the shaman at 49 has a greater ability to completely disrupt healers and caster dps than any other class. In any bracket being a dedicated healer as a shaman is going to be frustrating and not terribly effective in organized pvp. You don't have any ability to buy yourself space and time. Priests have fear, pallies have bubble, druids have shift/travel/root etc. Furthermore our trinket doesn't dispell crowd control. This doesn't mean don't heal, it just means that we're not well suited to a dedicated healing role in my opinion. Sure I'll help keep people alive and flash out the flag carrier, but I'm not going to be sitting in the back feeding ashkandi's healing. I let the priests do that. Anyway, this is just a suggestion to try something else. Here's some tips to get a more balanced feel for other dimensions of shaman prior to 60 where the game completely changes.
The first step: get a glowing brightwood staff and put 22 int on it. You now have one of the highest if not highest dps weapon available in 49 cap with killer stats. This will work for whatever build you use and they are quite cheap these days.
A fun build to try initially for a change of pace would be something like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=uE0zEf0oVoZx0b 33 elemental 7 enhance for imp gw
With elemental mastery and all of the good elemental talents you have wicked magic dps, with the brightwood you add on top of it very strong melee dps. Put windfury on there and you can drop cloth quickly. Use ghost wolf for flag running and for kiting. Have a shield and a decent hard hitting 1h on item rack to switch to for rogues and warriors. I assure you this build is beastly in 49 cap with a decent hp/mana pool. I think I remember running around with something like 3400 life and 4000ish mana. You can kill anything quickly and put down pesky druid flag carriers with ease. I'm quite certain that no other class in 49 cap is capable of the burst dps of this build with the brightwood. Add in warstomp and fast ghost wolf and it is plainly unfair. While you don't have the anti-interrupt talent in lhw, it is still fast and you should have the mana pool to flash heal whoever you like for quite some time. Using this build may seem frustrating at first as you don't have a nature's swiftness in your back pocket as an emergency button and you will have a hard time healing through focus fire. However in this bracket it's easily possible to have enough stamina to survive a rogue's initial barrage, heal and begin to kite just because damage hasn't scaled like it does in the 60 bracket. My problem with this build was that my character became known on my server and the focus firing became so bad that often it seemed the alliance wsg objective was not to cap but to keep him in the graveyard. That leads to my next suggestion:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GZxVf0cZxf0t0Lo 0/18/21
Here you're focusing on your survivability, ability to heal and withstand focus fire as well as deal out quite a bit of dps from enhance either with a 2h or with a 1h and shield. With the big mana pool you can still shock to your heart's content. Swap out your caster wsg rings for the melee ones, keep focusing on the eagle, and look for a few items that give crit and AP. You will mow through enemies with ease, though not kill quite as quickly. However, you will have quite good survivability and damage combined.
I wouldn't recommend any of the stormstrike builds I tried until they fix the bug where it cannot proc wf. I believe it's fixed on the latest test build but it hasn't made it live yet.
Anyway, just some opinions here from someone that has done the twink pvp game as a shaman extensively. I think you're missing out on a lot of the class by focusing on healing so early.
From my own experience in all the lower caps as well as at 60, an offensive shaman out disrupting casters is more effective than a healer in terms of ultimate success. It can work either way, but the shaman at 49 has a greater ability to completely disrupt healers and caster dps than any other class. In any bracket being a dedicated healer as a shaman is going to be frustrating and not terribly effective in organized pvp. You don't have any ability to buy yourself space and time. Priests have fear, pallies have bubble, druids have shift/travel/root etc. Furthermore our trinket doesn't dispell crowd control. This doesn't mean don't heal, it just means that we're not well suited to a dedicated healing role in my opinion. Sure I'll help keep people alive and flash out the flag carrier, but I'm not going to be sitting in the back feeding ashkandi's healing. I let the priests do that. Anyway, this is just a suggestion to try something else. Here's some tips to get a more balanced feel for other dimensions of shaman prior to 60 where the game completely changes.
The first step: get a glowing brightwood staff and put 22 int on it. You now have one of the highest if not highest dps weapon available in 49 cap with killer stats. This will work for whatever build you use and they are quite cheap these days.
A fun build to try initially for a change of pace would be something like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=uE0zEf0oVoZx0b 33 elemental 7 enhance for imp gw
With elemental mastery and all of the good elemental talents you have wicked magic dps, with the brightwood you add on top of it very strong melee dps. Put windfury on there and you can drop cloth quickly. Use ghost wolf for flag running and for kiting. Have a shield and a decent hard hitting 1h on item rack to switch to for rogues and warriors. I assure you this build is beastly in 49 cap with a decent hp/mana pool. I think I remember running around with something like 3400 life and 4000ish mana. You can kill anything quickly and put down pesky druid flag carriers with ease. I'm quite certain that no other class in 49 cap is capable of the burst dps of this build with the brightwood. Add in warstomp and fast ghost wolf and it is plainly unfair. While you don't have the anti-interrupt talent in lhw, it is still fast and you should have the mana pool to flash heal whoever you like for quite some time. Using this build may seem frustrating at first as you don't have a nature's swiftness in your back pocket as an emergency button and you will have a hard time healing through focus fire. However in this bracket it's easily possible to have enough stamina to survive a rogue's initial barrage, heal and begin to kite just because damage hasn't scaled like it does in the 60 bracket. My problem with this build was that my character became known on my server and the focus firing became so bad that often it seemed the alliance wsg objective was not to cap but to keep him in the graveyard. That leads to my next suggestion:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GZxVf0cZxf0t0Lo 0/18/21
Here you're focusing on your survivability, ability to heal and withstand focus fire as well as deal out quite a bit of dps from enhance either with a 2h or with a 1h and shield. With the big mana pool you can still shock to your heart's content. Swap out your caster wsg rings for the melee ones, keep focusing on the eagle, and look for a few items that give crit and AP. You will mow through enemies with ease, though not kill quite as quickly. However, you will have quite good survivability and damage combined.
I wouldn't recommend any of the stormstrike builds I tried until they fix the bug where it cannot proc wf. I believe it's fixed on the latest test build but it hasn't made it live yet.
Anyway, just some opinions here from someone that has done the twink pvp game as a shaman extensively. I think you're missing out on a lot of the class by focusing on healing so early.