Tauren Shaman - Quick Questions

[bonefish]

After playing City of Heroes for a few years, I decided to take the plunge into WoW after realizing that my new laptop couldn't handle CoH. After playing the game for only a week, I don't understand why I resisted it for so long.

Since my favorite mythological creature is a Minotaur, I decided to roll and Tauren...and Shaman seemed like a decent fit for me. I'm currently at Level 10 and still feeling my way around; but I've found some decent spell chains and am having a blast soloing my way through the early levels.

Right now I'm trying to decide which Totem spell is the best to drop before entering combat. At first I was using the one that taunted to try to draw the combat away from me...but more often than not my would be foe destroys the totem before too long. Lately I've been dropping Stoneskin Totem before pulling aggro toward me...but I'm still not sure if that's the best choice. What are others using?

Since I'll be soloing alot, I've decided to go the Enhancement route on my talent tree. Thus far I haven't bought any armor or weapons...I'm relying mainly on drops and rewards to outfit my character...choosing to save my money for training and the like. Is this a wise move, or should I consider purchasing better equipment?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[IRID1UM]

To be honest, I'd not drop a totem at all unless you fight elite enemies or group up for dungeons. They cost too much mana and the area of their effect is too small. The searing totem is useful in earlier levels though because it does some good damage for little mana.

I'd try to pick up the Mining and Herbalism professions and sell all the materials you get in the auction house. This way you can afford to buy better equipment, which will become more important as you level up and you engage more and more in melee combat. Usually you always have money left for training, also, you don't have to buy all spells or skills if they seem to be useless.
Even though Herbalism seems to be a bad choice in early levels, the prices for stacks of higher level herbs will increase significantly. Mining is a good money maker from the beginning on, Copper Bars sell for more than 1g per stack.
Good luck and have fun!

[Ardani]

Good advice from IRID1UM -- I'd further add that you should generally sell your copper unsmelted, as it tends to go for a slightly higher price that way (since it's also then of use to jewelcrafters who want to prospect), and that you probably shouldn't worry about buying any gear before level 40 or so. Gearing yourself through drops will be just fine, especially if you do an instance or two.

[Dhoum]

I'd avoid taking Mining and Herbalism, best to choose one or the other plus Skinning if you just want to raise money (and there's nothing wrong with that). The reason is that you can only track one resource at a time which means that you are likely to miss out on either plants or mining nodes. Mining gives solid income from the word go and, even though Tauren get a Herbalism bonus I'd still choose Mining just purely because it consistently gives good returns and that is most useful at low levels on your first character.

In terms of totems, unless a fight is looking hairy I wouldn't bother with totems. If things are looking grim though then drop a Strength of Earth and a Searing.

As far as buying stuff is concerned, I'd buy a decent two-handed weapon (for Enhancement sec until you get Improved Dual Wield) but other than that rely on drops for your armour. One key purchase is bags ... you need to buy the biggest bags you can afford as early as you can.

[IRID1UM]

Well, tracking herbs and ore is not such a big problem. Use a Macro and put a keybinding on it. I use Ctrl-Space for my "/castsequence Find Herbs, Find Minerals" Macro.
By getting Gatherer (.com) or Cartographer + Herb/Ore Database you can always see possible nodes on the (mini)map. Extremely useful and herbing/mining is much faster than skinning, because spending 2 sec after each mob skinning sums up to hours.. :P

[Your Average WoW Player]

As stated, Totems eventually become rather useless in Solo combat because of the mana cost. I found with my Shammie (Nickname for Shaman) I stopped using Totems around the early 20s.

Never underestimate the power of good, up-to-date gear on your character. You'll find that with old gear your kill speed goes down and your survivability begins to drop. Espescially as an Enhancement specced Shammie, you're going to want to keep your weapon uptodate, usually no more then 3-4 levels old. By that I mean if you're level 20 and your weapon requires you to be level 17 minimum, it's three levels old and you should start browsing the AH for a new one. Therefore, it's wise to always buy some gear, and in the lower levels, you can get away with buying the vendor "White" gear, which at the lower levels, when combined with money made from "vendor trash" (Items that the name of the item is in grey, things like Cracked Beaks or Leather Collors) and questing isn't TOO expesnive.

As stated above, Herbalism and Mining are excellet choices to take in terms of getting money. Gathering herbs and mining ores can be tedious at times, but it's damn good money. On my first character to get to that level, a NElf Hunter, I got my regular level 40 mount on mining and selling bars on the AH.

[moopy]

As stated, Totems eventually become rather useless in Solo combat because of the mana cost. I found with my Shammie (Nickname for Shaman) I stopped using Totems around the early 20s.

Naughty YAWP, spreading foul lies again, back in your cage :)

You will be using totems a lot, if you have the cojones to pick big fights, even solo. Fearing mobs, casters that need grounding, things that will mash you into a pulp or sear you to a crisp without- smart shammy knows when to drop totems, and doesn't traffic in absolutes :-)

(Hint, there are some group quests- like the 5 man crystal demon dudes in BEM which are soloable, but where you'll have totems down, if you know what's good for you)

Also, as I have posted before, do the maths- you don't need many ticks of mana spring totem, for example, before you're into a mana profit. For mobs that you're not expecting to two-shot, some totems can help (tailored for your spec). Being aware of the optimal way to procede will increase both your uptime and killing speed.

[IRID1UM]

Speaking of mana ticks: when casting a mana spring totem you not only pay the mana cost, but also prevent the normal mana regeneration. so casting a (single) totem actually costs more mana than the tooltip says.