Yeah ele is pretty easy. High mobility and only a 3-4 button rotation. All you really need to worry about is snapshotting a fat fire ele.
Demo has low mobility, a ton of buttons, pet twisting, doom guard snapshotting, and prepull meta snapshotting with a mastery set. A lot to think about, but is going to be potentially one of the top dps when played perfectly.
Currently leveling an ele sham (69 now) and doing a lot of pvp. Even now I can tell this class is going to be insanely fun at 80/85. You can move while casting, get insane guaranteed crits, your totems have an answer for everything, and your heals and durability aren’t bad either. I can’t speak towards lock but I’m happy with my purchase, let’s say lol.
Casual PVP yes, but if you wanna rank up in arena's ELE just die lol they are tier C at most. And Warlock are S tier for sure (Affli) Resto shaman also S tier.
Cheers, no problem! I'm going through a similar dilemma myself, but between hunter and warlock. Hunter is pretty strong and VERY easy to gear up but demo was insanely fun on the beta so I'll probably continue playing my warlock.
Feels a bit more involved than ele, but not nearly as much as demo. Mostly just need to keep sniper training up as much as possible and make sure you're saving focus for BA and serpent sting when they need to be refreshed. But it definitely pumps.
Any class is viable if you put in the time to learn how to play it. Honestly you should play what you find fun instead of what’s the strongest… on that note warlock and shaman equally shit on people in PvP.
Sometimes when people talk about demo they go over the top. As of right now very little snapshots in demo. Immolate certainly doesn't. So a lot of the radical pre-pull prep for the perfect snapshot is for very little. The only thing that snapshots is.... Metamorphisis (demon form) which doesn't last forever... and really do you want to pull and instantly do the burstiest amount of damage in the game..... or do you want to go light on threat for a few seconds so tanks can get it? But hypothetically, you could switch on a full mastery set (trinkets and weapons), hit metamorphisis and swap back on your other gear for a slightly more powerful metamorphisis (but it loses DPS if the pull takes 3-4 seconds longer than you expect with the timing).
As far as a rotation goes you have to keep up immolate, corruption, curse of elements and bane of doom. Bane of Doom is every minute. Curse of elements is every 5 minutes. As filler you will use Hand of Gul'dan on cooldown, this will also refresh immolate. You will use shadowflame on CD if in melee range (you should be in melee range). You will spam shadowbolt unless you get a molten core proc and then you'll shift to incinerate. Below 25% you will use soulfire as your execute spell (but still prefer incinerate on molten core procs). You will use Metamorphisis on CD and your aoe fire ability as soon as you pop it (if you're in melee range... you should be in melee range). Sometimes you can time this for high AOE moments in a fight... but generally... on CD. You will have an ability called Demon Soul that gives you a personal Power Infusion if you have a felguard out. But felguard DPS sucks. So you pop it when you have your felguard out and then quickly summon the felhunter back using a soul shard. You can just use it on your felhunter but now you only get bonus shadow damage (and you don't do a lot of shadow damage in this spec).
That's a lot. But demo lock will require perfect play to parse... not to kill bosses.
Ele shammy rotation is a lot simpler and in most cases, performs better on single target fights. Resto shammy is the worst healer in Cata..... but people seem to just love carrying around a resto shammy. They have a raid wide cooldown called spirit link totem that equalizes all health loss... which basically means no one dies for the length of the totem and disc and resto druid healing becomes more effective. Between that and a resto druid/boomie this is the stronger DPS/healer off spec raider and represents something all raids will need.
Enhancement shammy.... is the second weakest DPS spec in the entire game. And it's also just not a really high performing arena spec. A great enhancement shammy will get into raids.... but you need to really be on your A-grade to be a mid-tier DPS.... and be really charming to find someone who'll do rated BGs or arena with an enhance shammy.
Smoking something if you think reso sham is a carry.
In progression the resto shaman mastery is absolute gold, for huge heals when hp is low and people learning fights.
Then you have more health and damage reduction
Healing rains to do the above in a tight stack group.
Resto shammy are behind disc priest in top two healers for cata.
That's like.... an opinion man!
In terms of pure output holy pallies, disc priests and holy priests will all beat resto shammies. The only healer resto shammies will compete with are resto druids. And resto druids will also provide less raid utility. The only thing your resto druid is going to give us a lot of hots to allow for a lot of movement (and there's a lot of movement in Cata raids).
Resto shammies are good, but they're closer to the bottom than they are to the top. It's like how for a while people getting exclaiming that prot warriors are going to be the greatest in Cata. Every 25-man guild will want one resto shammy. But absolutely no guild is going to stack resto shammies.
> In terms of pure output holy pallies, disc priests and holy priests will all beat resto shammies.
This is only because the Resto Shaman are getting sniped by those other healers. If you remove those healers from the equation, the Resto Shaman is better at tasks like solo healing a 10-man.
I think you're overzealous with what resto shammies bring to the table here. There are holy pallies in pre-patch solo healing H LK.... which is incredibly difficult because of how the infest mechanics work and because everyone's been given a giant health pool buff.
Let's take for example, chain heal. It hits a maximum of four targets. Each bounce will go a maximum of 12.5 yards. Across all four targets at a base level it will heal for 9844 across all targets. This can be increased by healing an earthshielded target by 18% to 11,616. And if all your targets are below health you'll get another 24% for 12,206 if raid healing and 14,404 if healinig off of the earthshield target. With a 1.5 GCD that's a theoretical HPS range of 12,206 HPS-14,404 HPS
Prayer of healing base heals for base 3458 per target and hits five. Thats 17,290 health. That is to say, without any talents or masteries, a priest will out heal a resto shammy in raw power.
Holy priests get Chakra which will increase healing by another 15%. Divine Providence will increase prayer healing by 10%. Glyph of prayer of healing will give POH a hot worth 20% of the heal. Healing a target hat was flash healed can increase healing by 4% for every heal. Prayer of healing will now grant shields for disc priests for an additional 12% of the healing. Holy priests will get a hot for 8% of the total heal stacks up to 3 times.
Just in terms of the base mechanics of the game, priests will just out perform shammies in raw healing regardless of whether or not resto shammies are getting their heals sniped. Empty bag fights like Chaemeron you could have a contest, but resto shammies would never win unless they are fully BiS against a greens raider.
Your comparison omits Earthliving Weapon, Healing Rain and Healing Stream Totem. While it also omits Holy Word: Sanctuary, HW:S is a minor effect compared to the above. There are also issues with mana efficiency that become important in Cataclysm but may not be fully apparent right now.
The issue I'm trying to point out is that in virtually every solo-healing situation you can imagine, Resto Shaman excel. So why would they suddenly be awful in a multi-healer situation when there are no antagonistic effects between the healers?
You should also consider that what makes the 'best' healer isn't *healing*. Rather, it's the buffs/debuffs/cooldowns they bring to the table. So a lot of the 'value' in a healer is related to their off-specs. Resto Shaman happen to have what is perhaps the best healer off-spec (Elemental) while the other healers have considerably less effective options.
Healing rain is like a weaker version of Power Word: Barrier Power Word: Barrier (and Anti-Magic Zone) will prevent more damage than Healing Rain could ever hope to heal. And unfortunately, Healing Rain really relies on fights where people stack... and there really aren't that many.
In the world of healing you're talking about pennies. Resto shammies have to overcome a healer who at their base will heal 50% more than them without any talents.
As for Earthliving weapon, I left it off because priests have a similar buff of their own that is roughly a paralell talent.
I think you're playing this same game again where you talk up resto and talk down the others without bringing any facts to the table. Disc priests make super effective shadow priests. And shadow priests (and ele shammies) are among the top three single target DPS in the game. The reason why you would choose to have your resto go ele over your disc is because a disc priests raw thoroughput is just so insanely high and the only thing you lose is Spirit Link Totem.
> Healing rain is like a weaker version of Power Word: Barrier
Healing Rain can be kept up constantly. Power Word: Barrier is a long cooldown more comparable to Spirit Link. Anti-Magic Zone is both a long cooldown and mostly useless.
> And unfortunately, Healing Rain really relies on fights where people stack... and there really aren't that many.
People stack on 100% of the fights - they're called 'melee'. The fact that there are times they don't stack doesn't change this.
> As for Earthliving weapon, I left it off because priests have a similar buff of their own that is roughly a paralell talent.
Which similar buff are you talking about?
Earthliving weapon is 532 spellpower and a flat 2300 hot over 12 seconds (making the hot worth 190 spellpower).
Inner Fire is 532 spellpower.
That's not a kind of distinction that would make up for the raw stats I laid out to you.
You've provided zero argument in favor of shammy other than LOOK AT THIS ONE ABILITY I HAVE NO INFORMATION. But if you really want to be right about this, you have to provide... evidence. I provided a break down of the two abilities that each class uses 90% of the time.
For example in order for Healing Rain to outheal Prayer of Healing it would need to hit 12 people. That is, anything less than 11 people and it gets out healed by Prayer. That's half the raid.
> a flat 2300 hot over 12 seconds (making the hot worth 190 spellpower).
Earthliving has a 68% coefficient, is affected by haste but not critical.
> For example in order for Healing Rain to outheal Prayer of Healing it would need to hit 12 people.
Healing Rain has significantly higher hpct because it's a 10 sec healing over time effect rather than a spammable heal, especially in conjunction with other Shaman abilities.
You keep asking for 'evidence' but you apparently don't know much of anything about how Resto Shaman work.
Bro you're a clown.
Now pre patch pallies are OOM and can't even do 1/3 the healing of my sham.
In cata disc priests resto shaman will own, once geared some skilled resto druids will solo heal 10m cata content and 2m heal 25m content.
There are actually logs out there available right now because Cata is almost 20 years old. There are also the weekend beta logs that went out. Certainly if you have so much confidence in your answer you should be able to find a single log with a progression resto druid solo healing 10-man Cata content.
Just FYI in case this might help influence your decision, chances are there’s going to be a lot more demand for warlocks in PVE as most raids probably won’t want more than one elemental and the spec is bound to be quite popular. Warlock tends to be underrepresented.
Enhancer is great in 10 man, as you have a lot of buff flexibility. And its much easier to go second spec resto, as you dont share that gear with your ele spec. You can reforge more optimally.
Dmg wise its not that much off.
As someone who just leveled elemental shaman i must say i really like it, simple rotation, big damage and glyph for casting lightning bolt while moving will be really useful for cata raids, where is lot positioning related to mechanics.
I dont know about ele and PVP but for PVE i would give him a shot.
Affliction warlock will be very strong in PVP, ele will be good in RBGs. Resto shaman are s tier for arenas. Affliction warlock will also end up being s tier in raid. Hunters are s tier in arena and RBG, I don’t remember for sure but I’m fairly certain they are A to S in Raid.
Enhancement is pretty ass in pvp and very mediocre in pve. If you're not willing to play resto or ele, I think warlock has way more options in cata.
How is ele/resto in PVP compared to warlock ?
Ele resto and aff are all very good in pvp. Just depends on if you'd rather play a bursty playstyle or more of a rot playstyle.
I see , shaman would be easy rotation wise compared to Walrock PVE wise right ? Demo looks complicated
Yeah ele is pretty easy. High mobility and only a 3-4 button rotation. All you really need to worry about is snapshotting a fat fire ele. Demo has low mobility, a ton of buttons, pet twisting, doom guard snapshotting, and prepull meta snapshotting with a mastery set. A lot to think about, but is going to be potentially one of the top dps when played perfectly.
Thankyou ! You helped me with my choice. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to reply to my post.
Currently leveling an ele sham (69 now) and doing a lot of pvp. Even now I can tell this class is going to be insanely fun at 80/85. You can move while casting, get insane guaranteed crits, your totems have an answer for everything, and your heals and durability aren’t bad either. I can’t speak towards lock but I’m happy with my purchase, let’s say lol.
Casual PVP yes, but if you wanna rank up in arena's ELE just die lol they are tier C at most. And Warlock are S tier for sure (Affli) Resto shaman also S tier.
Cheers, no problem! I'm going through a similar dilemma myself, but between hunter and warlock. Hunter is pretty strong and VERY easy to gear up but demo was insanely fun on the beta so I'll probably continue playing my warlock.
I never thought about hunter , how is it ?
Feels a bit more involved than ele, but not nearly as much as demo. Mostly just need to keep sniper training up as much as possible and make sure you're saving focus for BA and serpent sting when they need to be refreshed. But it definitely pumps.
You want to do afli for pve anyway
Why affliction over demo ?
Way more fun
Ele is not great in pvp (at least arena not sure about rbg)
Any class is viable if you put in the time to learn how to play it. Honestly you should play what you find fun instead of what’s the strongest… on that note warlock and shaman equally shit on people in PvP.
Sometimes when people talk about demo they go over the top. As of right now very little snapshots in demo. Immolate certainly doesn't. So a lot of the radical pre-pull prep for the perfect snapshot is for very little. The only thing that snapshots is.... Metamorphisis (demon form) which doesn't last forever... and really do you want to pull and instantly do the burstiest amount of damage in the game..... or do you want to go light on threat for a few seconds so tanks can get it? But hypothetically, you could switch on a full mastery set (trinkets and weapons), hit metamorphisis and swap back on your other gear for a slightly more powerful metamorphisis (but it loses DPS if the pull takes 3-4 seconds longer than you expect with the timing). As far as a rotation goes you have to keep up immolate, corruption, curse of elements and bane of doom. Bane of Doom is every minute. Curse of elements is every 5 minutes. As filler you will use Hand of Gul'dan on cooldown, this will also refresh immolate. You will use shadowflame on CD if in melee range (you should be in melee range). You will spam shadowbolt unless you get a molten core proc and then you'll shift to incinerate. Below 25% you will use soulfire as your execute spell (but still prefer incinerate on molten core procs). You will use Metamorphisis on CD and your aoe fire ability as soon as you pop it (if you're in melee range... you should be in melee range). Sometimes you can time this for high AOE moments in a fight... but generally... on CD. You will have an ability called Demon Soul that gives you a personal Power Infusion if you have a felguard out. But felguard DPS sucks. So you pop it when you have your felguard out and then quickly summon the felhunter back using a soul shard. You can just use it on your felhunter but now you only get bonus shadow damage (and you don't do a lot of shadow damage in this spec). That's a lot. But demo lock will require perfect play to parse... not to kill bosses. Ele shammy rotation is a lot simpler and in most cases, performs better on single target fights. Resto shammy is the worst healer in Cata..... but people seem to just love carrying around a resto shammy. They have a raid wide cooldown called spirit link totem that equalizes all health loss... which basically means no one dies for the length of the totem and disc and resto druid healing becomes more effective. Between that and a resto druid/boomie this is the stronger DPS/healer off spec raider and represents something all raids will need. Enhancement shammy.... is the second weakest DPS spec in the entire game. And it's also just not a really high performing arena spec. A great enhancement shammy will get into raids.... but you need to really be on your A-grade to be a mid-tier DPS.... and be really charming to find someone who'll do rated BGs or arena with an enhance shammy.
Smoking something if you think reso sham is a carry. In progression the resto shaman mastery is absolute gold, for huge heals when hp is low and people learning fights. Then you have more health and damage reduction Healing rains to do the above in a tight stack group. Resto shammy are behind disc priest in top two healers for cata.
That's like.... an opinion man! In terms of pure output holy pallies, disc priests and holy priests will all beat resto shammies. The only healer resto shammies will compete with are resto druids. And resto druids will also provide less raid utility. The only thing your resto druid is going to give us a lot of hots to allow for a lot of movement (and there's a lot of movement in Cata raids). Resto shammies are good, but they're closer to the bottom than they are to the top. It's like how for a while people getting exclaiming that prot warriors are going to be the greatest in Cata. Every 25-man guild will want one resto shammy. But absolutely no guild is going to stack resto shammies.
> In terms of pure output holy pallies, disc priests and holy priests will all beat resto shammies. This is only because the Resto Shaman are getting sniped by those other healers. If you remove those healers from the equation, the Resto Shaman is better at tasks like solo healing a 10-man.
I think you're overzealous with what resto shammies bring to the table here. There are holy pallies in pre-patch solo healing H LK.... which is incredibly difficult because of how the infest mechanics work and because everyone's been given a giant health pool buff. Let's take for example, chain heal. It hits a maximum of four targets. Each bounce will go a maximum of 12.5 yards. Across all four targets at a base level it will heal for 9844 across all targets. This can be increased by healing an earthshielded target by 18% to 11,616. And if all your targets are below health you'll get another 24% for 12,206 if raid healing and 14,404 if healinig off of the earthshield target. With a 1.5 GCD that's a theoretical HPS range of 12,206 HPS-14,404 HPS Prayer of healing base heals for base 3458 per target and hits five. Thats 17,290 health. That is to say, without any talents or masteries, a priest will out heal a resto shammy in raw power. Holy priests get Chakra which will increase healing by another 15%. Divine Providence will increase prayer healing by 10%. Glyph of prayer of healing will give POH a hot worth 20% of the heal. Healing a target hat was flash healed can increase healing by 4% for every heal. Prayer of healing will now grant shields for disc priests for an additional 12% of the healing. Holy priests will get a hot for 8% of the total heal stacks up to 3 times. Just in terms of the base mechanics of the game, priests will just out perform shammies in raw healing regardless of whether or not resto shammies are getting their heals sniped. Empty bag fights like Chaemeron you could have a contest, but resto shammies would never win unless they are fully BiS against a greens raider.
Your comparison omits Earthliving Weapon, Healing Rain and Healing Stream Totem. While it also omits Holy Word: Sanctuary, HW:S is a minor effect compared to the above. There are also issues with mana efficiency that become important in Cataclysm but may not be fully apparent right now. The issue I'm trying to point out is that in virtually every solo-healing situation you can imagine, Resto Shaman excel. So why would they suddenly be awful in a multi-healer situation when there are no antagonistic effects between the healers? You should also consider that what makes the 'best' healer isn't *healing*. Rather, it's the buffs/debuffs/cooldowns they bring to the table. So a lot of the 'value' in a healer is related to their off-specs. Resto Shaman happen to have what is perhaps the best healer off-spec (Elemental) while the other healers have considerably less effective options.
Healing rain is like a weaker version of Power Word: Barrier Power Word: Barrier (and Anti-Magic Zone) will prevent more damage than Healing Rain could ever hope to heal. And unfortunately, Healing Rain really relies on fights where people stack... and there really aren't that many. In the world of healing you're talking about pennies. Resto shammies have to overcome a healer who at their base will heal 50% more than them without any talents. As for Earthliving weapon, I left it off because priests have a similar buff of their own that is roughly a paralell talent. I think you're playing this same game again where you talk up resto and talk down the others without bringing any facts to the table. Disc priests make super effective shadow priests. And shadow priests (and ele shammies) are among the top three single target DPS in the game. The reason why you would choose to have your resto go ele over your disc is because a disc priests raw thoroughput is just so insanely high and the only thing you lose is Spirit Link Totem.
> Healing rain is like a weaker version of Power Word: Barrier Healing Rain can be kept up constantly. Power Word: Barrier is a long cooldown more comparable to Spirit Link. Anti-Magic Zone is both a long cooldown and mostly useless. > And unfortunately, Healing Rain really relies on fights where people stack... and there really aren't that many. People stack on 100% of the fights - they're called 'melee'. The fact that there are times they don't stack doesn't change this. > As for Earthliving weapon, I left it off because priests have a similar buff of their own that is roughly a paralell talent. Which similar buff are you talking about?
Earthliving weapon is 532 spellpower and a flat 2300 hot over 12 seconds (making the hot worth 190 spellpower). Inner Fire is 532 spellpower. That's not a kind of distinction that would make up for the raw stats I laid out to you. You've provided zero argument in favor of shammy other than LOOK AT THIS ONE ABILITY I HAVE NO INFORMATION. But if you really want to be right about this, you have to provide... evidence. I provided a break down of the two abilities that each class uses 90% of the time. For example in order for Healing Rain to outheal Prayer of Healing it would need to hit 12 people. That is, anything less than 11 people and it gets out healed by Prayer. That's half the raid.
> a flat 2300 hot over 12 seconds (making the hot worth 190 spellpower). Earthliving has a 68% coefficient, is affected by haste but not critical. > For example in order for Healing Rain to outheal Prayer of Healing it would need to hit 12 people. Healing Rain has significantly higher hpct because it's a 10 sec healing over time effect rather than a spammable heal, especially in conjunction with other Shaman abilities. You keep asking for 'evidence' but you apparently don't know much of anything about how Resto Shaman work.
Bro you're a clown. Now pre patch pallies are OOM and can't even do 1/3 the healing of my sham. In cata disc priests resto shaman will own, once geared some skilled resto druids will solo heal 10m cata content and 2m heal 25m content.
Logs?
Sure after first cata raid ill send them out first thing friend.
There are actually logs out there available right now because Cata is almost 20 years old. There are also the weekend beta logs that went out. Certainly if you have so much confidence in your answer you should be able to find a single log with a progression resto druid solo healing 10-man Cata content.
No problem buddy, I'll have that report to you 12 font double spaced 4 references. You must be a hit at parties and in disc
And what you stated is also your opinion, a wrong one, but still just your opinion based on your limited experiences.
Just FYI in case this might help influence your decision, chances are there’s going to be a lot more demand for warlocks in PVE as most raids probably won’t want more than one elemental and the spec is bound to be quite popular. Warlock tends to be underrepresented.
Enhancer is great in 10 man, as you have a lot of buff flexibility. And its much easier to go second spec resto, as you dont share that gear with your ele spec. You can reforge more optimally. Dmg wise its not that much off.
As someone who just leveled elemental shaman i must say i really like it, simple rotation, big damage and glyph for casting lightning bolt while moving will be really useful for cata raids, where is lot positioning related to mechanics. I dont know about ele and PVP but for PVE i would give him a shot.
Affliction warlock will be very strong in PVP, ele will be good in RBGs. Resto shaman are s tier for arenas. Affliction warlock will also end up being s tier in raid. Hunters are s tier in arena and RBG, I don’t remember for sure but I’m fairly certain they are A to S in Raid.