Giving Elemental A Whirl

So, I've been playing my shaman for the last few days, and have done a good sized chunk of the Zangarmash quests and gotten him from 62 to 64. After a day or two of watching him flail away at things with his maces and axes and pushing a steady series of buttons while waiting for Maelstrom Weapon to proc, I decided it was time to do something different with the Shaman.

So, after hitting 64 and turning in a few additional quests, I marched back to Orgrimmar and paid up to respec to Elemental. Maybe I'm just getting a little tired of melee, maybe the rotation is too complicated, or maybe I've just become too lazy to run all the way over to that caster mob plinking his little fireballs at me.

In any case, I decided to go ahead and pick up elemental and give it a try for a few levels. The other method to my madness is that I will likely start running a few normal dungeons once I hit 70 and Northrend just to get the daily emblems. My preference is to do that as a healer, so was thinking it would be more efficient to just dual spec and use the same gear for an elemental and resto set. I know at end game those would be very different, but for leveling purposes, the differences are minor.

The only down side to this approach is that I'm trading my attack power mail heirloom chest piece for a cloth spellpower heirloom piece. So I'm now a cow in a dress. I'm not sure it's worth it to me to spend the emblems on a mail spellpower heirloom piece for the few levels that I have left on the Shaman. I could do a quick racial change to troll, since they seem to look better in dresses, but not sure that's worth it either.

I've also discovered a new addon that I've been using while leveling - Pawn. It helps evaluating gear selection based on your class and spec. It's prepopulated with the Wowhead stat ranks, but those tend to be focused more on end-game, and not necessarily identical to what you would want for leveling. So I'll probably be trolling a bit to find some good leveling Pawn values for different classes. For most classes, it tends to basically revolve around toning down the emphasis on hit just a little bit and adding a little emphasis on stamina, then making sure you're giving enough emphasis to the key damage dealing stat - spellpower, attack power, strength, agility, intellect - those types of things. In any case, I've found it be very helpful in terms of providing solid in-game guidance - no more alt-tabbing out to LootRank or to Kaliban lists.