Enhancement vs. Elemental: The Leveling Conundrum

So before even like the beginning of time and stuff, people sat around and debated the age-old question.  Socrates and Plato fought over it.  Leonardo Da Vinci made paintings about it.  Einstein theorized about it.  The question:  Should I level as Enhancement or Elemental?

The simple answer you’ll see out there is that there is no right answer.  Both have their pros and cons.  I, teh Pif, obviously have a bias and strong inclination towards one of the two specs.  I’ll let you guess which one. 

But that’s not the answer you want to hear is it?  Let’s look at it as objectively as possible.

Having leveled a few toons, I look at the following things when determining what is best for leveling:

Downtime – Downtime is bad.  If you can just keep moving and kill mob after mob without stopping, that’s good.  Stopping to drink, dying a lot, having to deal with cumbersome class mechanics, etc. all contribute to downtime.

Damage – Less important than downtime but still important is how quickly the mob will die.  A resto shaman will have very little downtime once they get water shield and if they choose to melee hit instead of cast to kill things.  The resto shaman will also spend 3 and a half hours killing the ten mobs needed to finish a quest. 

Movement – Azeroth is a huge place.  Before you get to Outlands and Northrend, you’re going to spend a big chunk of time going place to place from quest to quest and using your pitiful level 30 mount and flight paths.  Nothing can help the pitiful mount and flight path but there are other tools that help you get from one area in a zone to another to finish multiple quests.

Fun – This doesn’t really determine anything.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I have noticed that among my toons if it’s not fun to level as a certain spec regardless of how efficient or inefficient it is, I won’t level it quickly.  I will always choose to do different things and the leveling process will be super slow.  Take my warrior for instance.  Fury is thought of to be THE leveling spec for many warriors.  I choose to go Prot.  Because it’s more fun.  I like it better.  So choose what’s fun.

Aside from these things there are other things that help you level: the professions you choose, the race/class specials you get, and even where you choose to quest.  There are a lot of factors to quick and efficient leveling.  That’s not within the scope of this guide or this blog as there are several resources dedicated to fast and efficient leveling.

Now let’s look at these characteristics of leveling from each spec.

Downtime

Now many people will say enhancement totally wins here.  And it’s true.  But only to a certain extent.  You have to look at the talent tree, because those people who say enhancement has less downtime is looking at it from a high level where you already have the talents needed for efficient grinding.  Grinding and leveling are similar but they are not the same. 

Elemental Shaman will stand back at max range, cast, and things will usually die before they reach you or you’ll whack them once or twice until they die.  However, because of the poor elemental itemization at low levels (which means your mana pools are really really small), you’ll be drinking a heck of a lot.  Water shield helps but you don’t want things hitting you, now do you?  Because then you’ll be spending mana healing yourself, or bandaging, or eating.  All of that equals downtime.  You know what though? Your drinking downtime is inevitable because there is no way your water shield will keep up while you are casting all those spells.

Enhancement shaman will run in, use their melee attacks and then move on to the next using very little mana in the process.  But don’t be confused, you will have downtime too. Your mana pool is even smaller than the elemental shaman, AND you’re running in there taking more damage than the elemental shaman.  You’ll spend less mana fa sho on abilities and skills but it’s the same difference as using it on healing.  Once you get to level 40 though, with double windfury, things will die super uber fast as enhancement shaman have tremendous burst once we get Stormstrike and Dual Wield.  But before level 40, plan on running in fighting and having to throw on a lesser healing wave or two  or three before the next mob or pack of mobs.

The thing is, while enhancement shaman leveling gets better as your level gets higher, elemental shaman leveling only gets better as your mana pool increases.

The Winner

Very close but I give the slight edge to Enhancement.  Enhancement wins once you reach level 40 onwards. Elemental downtime is only dependent on how much mana you have.  And gear can only afford you so much as you level unless you spend time in the AH which is a total no-no while leveling.

Damage

Now, again the opinions of many I’ve heard in the past hands the damage to elemental.  I, again have to agree but only to a certain extent.  Elemental will make things explode pretty quickly, all the way throughout your leveling process, but once again, when enhancement reaches that magical level 40 mark, their burst damage is outright nasty.

As an Elemental Shaman, you’ve already got all your core abilities available to you at level 10 except for Chain Lightning which you don’t get until level 32.  Things will die before they hit you.  If they don’t whack them once or twice, and then you’ll have a heap of dead mob sitting in front of you.

The core Enhancement Shaman talents, however, don’t come into play until you get to 30 points in enhancement.  Stormstrike and Dual Wield.  You also don’t get the Windfury weapon imbue until level 30, another thing to keep in mind.  This means you don’t have any instant attacks except for your shocks until you get to level 40 at which point you’ll start to get plenty of instant attacks at a steady pace while leveling (lava lash and then maelstrom weapon). 

The Winner:

Gonna have to give it to elemental here.  Like I said, level 40 is the magic level for enhancement shamans, and elemental is pretty consistent with taking down mobs quickly.

Movement:

Both classes and specs take the same flight paths and no tree has a talent that increases mount speed.  The one thing that needs to be talked about is Improved Ghost Wolf.

2/2 points in Improved Ghost Wolf takes the casting time of Ghost Wolf from 2 seconds to 0.  Win.

Now it’s story time:

One time there was this mob.  Then teh Pif came and killed it.  Then teh Pif became turned into a Ghost Wolf.  He ran to another mob.  Then he killed that one.  Teh Pif then turned into a Ghost Wolf again and went over to the other mob.  He was gonna kill the thing, but then the mob’s friends came.  Teh Pif turned dropped an Earthbind Totem, turned into a Ghost Wolf and ran away.

Elemental Shaman can’t do that.  They have to cast the thing for 2 seconds.  I’m telling ya, it just ain’t the same.  Yeah, yeah, they can put seven points into Enhancement and grab the friggin’ thing.  But that means seven levels more to get those higher up Elemental Talents. 

Level 80 Enhancement Shaman, even the really good ones, will forgo 2 points in dps increasing sexily beautiful talents, to keep those two points in Improved Ghost Wolf.  With the changes in 3.1 and the freedom of 3 extra talent points from Unleashed Rage, I’m thinking about doing it too.

The Winner:

The guy who wrote that story!  That was the best story I’ve heard in a long time!

Fun:

They’re both really fun.  Honestly.  And way different.

If you’ve played a caster before (which I didn’t), Elemental will feel like second nature just with different spells and totems.  You’ll enjoy bigger crits than you’ll see in Enhancement.  Lightning Overload and Thunderstorm are seriously awesome leveling talents when you get that high up in the tree.  And let’s face it.  You are shoving lightning bolts into the noses of ugly monsters.

Enhancement is also way fun.  You’ll go in and whack the mobby mobbersons for some decent damage.  The real fun comes when you get your arsenal of stormstrike, lava lash, and maelstrom weapon going.  That’s when you really start to feel the hybridness of Enhancement.

The Winner:

A tie.  I mean, it’s totally up to you how you want to play.  Some people like leveling as Resto for jeebus sakes!

The Score:

Downtime: Enhancement

Damage: Elemental

Movement: The guy who wrote the story

Fun: Tie

So we have a tie breaker here!  For me, in all honesty.  I could’ve been an elemental shaman at 80.  It really was between Thunderstorm and Feral Spirit.  And I have to tell you, Mugsy and Molly are soooo cute.  I could never ever let them go.

So that’s it folks.  Mugsy and Molly makes the last minute three-pointer to win it for Enhancement Shamans.  Hurray!

Disclaimer:  What spec you choose to level with, how you level and where you quest is not anywhere half as important as having fun while you’re doing it.  Do what is fun for you.  If you got a lot of gold, do what I did.  Level as both.  :)