Shamans using Staffs

[Khanus]

I've been thinking about using staves with Yakov for farming and what not, and quite possibly in PVP and other PVE situations. Mostly because of increased stats like int and stam. Spell damage is usually the same as a one hander. Also a staff has about 20 more dps than the 41.x weapons I have. Atm my shield dosent block melle while sheathed, but I read that will be changing next patch. Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts about this.

[Vengeance]

Its abit like pallys and using slow weps, it does more damage for some weapon flametounges and such. But you bein resto, unless your resepccing, you could get alot more from 1h+shield
But im not so good with shammys, what little i know is that their OP healers and from my lv13 shammy.

[Khanus]

I gain some stats and armor from shield, but as I said it dosent block for me atm. My damage with my dagger is like 66 damage per hit because I have no str or ap stats and all daggers with spell damage or healing are 41.x dps. Flametounge adds like 111 per hit.

[Shadowwolf]

I honestly couldnt tell you about stave's on a shaman. I went from 1-60 with a 1h and shield. There was a time in the 20s I was tempted by a staff from WC but I ended up not running it to get it done and by the time I ran it, the staff was sub-par to the axe and shield I had.

[Khanus]

I've only seen one or two shamans using staffs at high levels, so it would seem the general consensus is that shield and 1h works out better. When sheathed shields block it will definatly be better. When it said that a sheathed shield would block it was reffering to pallys and warriors, but I'd imagine it is a general thing so shields would act the same on shamans as well. If true shamans would benefit the most from this because I know my shield is sheathed 99% of the time and I may have blocked 1 attack in pvp because I was oom and scratching someone with my dagger.

[dharq]

From my experiences before TBC, a lot of casting shaman used staves because they got more spell dmg (not healing) than they did from a 1h/shield combo. The best geared elemental shaman I'd seen typically had t2 (mail) or AQ epics (mail & cloth), and they'd have a high end +spell dmg staff from bwl or aq40...

Anyway, that was then, this is now. Invoker greens even do better than some of the old high end +dmg staves now. It's relatively easy to get +100 or more spell dmg from a 1h/shield combo, and so the need for a big +dmg staff just isn't as high now. At lv64, I haven't found a staff yet that gives me the +dmg and crit that I've got with my 1h hammer and shield. Yeah, I could go a point or 2 higher on spell dmg, but I'd lose about 2% crit.. and it's just not worth it to me.

For my resto shaman, unless something changes significantly, I'm sticking with 1h/shield. If for no other reason than it allows me to equip better cloth or leather gear with casting stats and not feel the loss of armor so much if a mob starts beating me around.

[Khanus]

I'm still toying with the idea. Spell damage on a staff is about equal to my shield and sword. The int and stam stats as well as the crit rate are far superior. Btw I'm resto now, 5/5/51. So I'm a total heal bot, before I was 16/0/45.

[capnpop]

The shield block is apparently for instant-cast spells only.  The short animation for various instants would have the shield away again instead of out.  The game read this as it was away and there was no chance to block.  This has now been changed so that if your shield is out and you cast an instant-cast spell the game still reads the shield as out.  If you cast with a cast time the shield will still not block (at least according to my interpretation of what people from the PTR are saying...)

[Khanus]

Bah, in that case the armor is nice, but dosent mitigate that much damage. I think a sheathed shield should still block attacks but possiblt get a block % reduction. If my shield block were 5% sheathed it would be 2.5%. My shield is almost never out.

[dharq]

I think it all boils down to the individual gear.. I know at lv64, I have a lot better spell dmg & spell crit with my hammer and shield than I would have with any staff short of BWL, AQ40, or Naxx..

I like having the flexibility to pick & choose though.