03-25-2005, 06:54 AM
When I solo or am in a group without a main tank, I always drop grace of air and usually strength of earth. Grace of air is nice because it increases your defense (AC, dodge, block, etc.) and improves your crit chances, which is especially nice if you've taken up flurry. Strength of earth is mostly for offense. The increased strength adds a substantial amount to your dps (a bit less than ten with my gear). I also drop mana spring to help the magic users in the group if I'm not the main healer.
Exceptions to those three are when I'm in the main tank's party, facing a mob with fear or some nasty curse, and facing hordes of mobs that like to run. For a main tank party, I replace grace of air with windfury to help the warrior with rage generation, which is more important than the benefits of increased agility. For mobs with fear and such, when you can't see them casting and hence can't earthshock them, I use grounding totem instead. For mobs that like to run, I usually frostshock them, but in many of the higher level instances, you'll encounter groups of one or two elites along with a number of non-elites. Mages and warlocks can use their AoE's on the non-elites while the tanks keep the elites busy, but as soon as they do that, the non-elites will turn on your mage, so I drop earthbind to slow them down, and magma to soften them up.
As for a shaman's role in a group, MongoJerry's pretty much covered it, but we're basically there to plug any holes the group may have. If there's no other healer or the healer is getting overwhelmed, we can take over quite well. If some mob breaks away from the tank and starts running towards the casters, then use earthshock to pull them back and then return to your main tank's target. We can last quite a while as secondary tanks via our mail armor and our own healing, and it also gives the crowd controllers some time to (re)cast their spell. If there're runners, or in case of alarm mobs (Gnomeregan, Stratholme), a shock usually can take them down. We can also provide some significant amount of AoE. Lastly, our most important role in an instance is wipe recovery, so when you see things going down the tube, back away from where the mobs are bound so that when you wipe, you can reincarnate safely.
Exceptions to those three are when I'm in the main tank's party, facing a mob with fear or some nasty curse, and facing hordes of mobs that like to run. For a main tank party, I replace grace of air with windfury to help the warrior with rage generation, which is more important than the benefits of increased agility. For mobs with fear and such, when you can't see them casting and hence can't earthshock them, I use grounding totem instead. For mobs that like to run, I usually frostshock them, but in many of the higher level instances, you'll encounter groups of one or two elites along with a number of non-elites. Mages and warlocks can use their AoE's on the non-elites while the tanks keep the elites busy, but as soon as they do that, the non-elites will turn on your mage, so I drop earthbind to slow them down, and magma to soften them up.
As for a shaman's role in a group, MongoJerry's pretty much covered it, but we're basically there to plug any holes the group may have. If there's no other healer or the healer is getting overwhelmed, we can take over quite well. If some mob breaks away from the tank and starts running towards the casters, then use earthshock to pull them back and then return to your main tank's target. We can last quite a while as secondary tanks via our mail armor and our own healing, and it also gives the crowd controllers some time to (re)cast their spell. If there're runners, or in case of alarm mobs (Gnomeregan, Stratholme), a shock usually can take them down. We can also provide some significant amount of AoE. Lastly, our most important role in an instance is wipe recovery, so when you see things going down the tube, back away from where the mobs are bound so that when you wipe, you can reincarnate safely.