This week we’re going to continue the leveling with coverage of going from level 41 (so actually a little beyond SM, but “Razorfen Downs to Outland” or “Uldaman to Outland” didn’t really have the same zing) to level 68, which is the level at which you can board the boat to Northrend. Some basic things to consider before getting to the meat of things.
- It is this writer’s opinion that these are the levels that really define your spec and role. It’s in the 40′s that you can actually have enough talents and have trained enough skills that the real potential of each spec comes through: your elemental shaman actually feels and plays significantly differently than your dual wielding enhancement shaman, and while both can still heal, resto really starts pulling ahead here.
- Shamans were originally designed as ‘offensive hybrids’ to balance out the paladin’s ‘defensive hybrid’ nature. Since shamans and paladins are no longer designed in opposition those roles have blurred somewhat, but elements of the original intent still show through. Keep in mind that two of the three shaman trees are DPS oriented, and at these levels the fact that one is a ranged DPS while the other is melee will not seem as distinctive as those roles become in raiding/instancing.
- Gear will start to drop in Outland that is more optimal for individual shaman specs. Before then, mail with spell power and/or MP5 is still somewhat rare on the ground in Azeroth outside of the various instance blues that drop. You’re just going to have to work around it, annoying as it is.
- Shamans are pretty bloody flexible. I have a friend (Hi Will) who has leveled an orc shaman to 80 as resto, and is working on an alliance shaman as well. Again as resto. And he kills things just fine. It’s slower, yes, but it can work, so if you have a spec you really like don’t despair of leveling with it as a shaman.
Okay, now to talk about what you’ll be doing for 28 levels.
The basics of leveling advice is still the same… if this is an alt get it as many heirlooms as you can swing for the XP boost and to avoid having to think about gear upgrades (although it is kind of a bummer when a really nice piece of gear drops and you don’t have any use for it because you’re using an heirloom, but no gift without price, right?) and if you can, run the instances, especially if you don’t have heirlooms. Back when the general revamp to instances went live, a lot of gear that was just kind of ‘meh’ for shamans got changed to actual be decent. Examples include the Deathchill Armor from Razorfen which is a decent piece for a resto shaman at that level or the Gahz’rilla Scale Armor from ZF.
I know that instances can be hard to get groups for when you’re leveling nowadays. I have hopes that the new cross-realm LFG system will help alleviate this to some extent, and running instances (especially ones that you can gather a whole lot of quests for, likeUldaman, Zul’Farrak, the Temple of Atal’Hakkar and Blackrock Depths) can really help you tighten up what you’re expected to do in an instance as you progress in levels. Another way to ‘stress test’ yourself as well as get XP is in the Battlegrounds, especially now that XP gain is allowed there. If you lack the patience to wait for LFG, just don’t want to run the same instance over and over again but are perfectly willing to kill the same Alliance/Horde players time in and time out, or want to see what a raid interface looks like (since most BG’s use one) then BG leveling is definitely a strong option.
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