How to solo Northrend group quests as an enhancement shaman

My long-suffering shaman alt (which I rolled at the beginning of Burning Crusade) finally hit level 68 a while back and headed for the frozen wastes of Northrend, and I have been enjoying leveling through the new continent significantly more than I enjoyed Outland. Of course, my shaman is late to the game, and is usually one of only two or three Alliance players in the Borean Tundra, unless Blood is Thicker is the fishing daily. This becomes problematic when I need to complete quests like Last Rites and The Assassination of Harold Lane, group quests that involve killing elite enemies. However, in a fit of potential madness, and inspired by my success with solo-ing The Ultimate Bloodsport, I decided to give Last Rites, the first group quest I was charged with when I came to Northrend, a try. So I went in, with only my wits and my quest-reward gear to help me, and after a very tense battle, Valanar lay dead at my feet. It didn't hit me how impressive this feat was, though, until I took a look at my quest log and saw that this quest was orange. Yep, I, a level 69 shaman in nothing but gear rewarded by quests had killed a level 72 elite, alone. This gave me a whole new respect for the shaman class, especially enhancement shamans.

Now, this success had nothing to do with my skills and everything to do with the sheer solo-ing power of the enhancement shaman. What that means is that any enhancement shaman leveling his/her way through Northrend can do what I did with the right instruction. It is that instruction which I aim to provide today.

Before we go into that, though, let's look at the key abilities that will help you while solo-ing elites as an enhancement shaman. You will want all of these abilities to be within easy reach before you try to solo any elites; if not hot-keyed, at least somewhere on your bars.

Earth Elemental Totem: This ability will change your shaman's life when you get it at level 66 and is your main asset while solo-ing a group quest. Dropping this totem releases a greater earth elemental to attack your enemies. He causes a fair amount of threat, and can take quite a beating before crumbling into gravel. The key to successfully solo-ing an elite is to let this guy take damage for you, like a tank.

However, to describe the greater earth elemental as a tank-in-a-totem (tank-in-a-bottle sounds just demeaning) would be a gross over-statement of its power. The Earth Elemental Totem isn't just a set-it-and-forget-it tank. A typical elite can kill your greater earth elemental in much less time than it will take you and him to kill the elite, Also, the amount of threat he causes is very low compared to most player tanks you run dungeons with, and you'll easily cause more threat than him if you aren't careful. However, there is one bright side to this totem that should not be overlooked: you can heal your greater earth elemental. Thus, the key to successfully using the Earth Elemental Totem is to heal him when he needs it and to watch your threat so you don't attract your target's attention. If you don't have an addon to display your threat and the threat of your greater earth elemental, activate the in-game threat display by going to the main menu (escape key), then going to Display and checking off "Show Aggro Percentages". I also recommend you set Display Aggro Warning to "Always", so you'll be able to know immediately if you pulled aggro off of your greater earth elemental.

Wind Shear: Of course, you will sometimes pull aggro from your Earth elemental, no matter how careful you are. An unlucky string of crits will do that to you, and it's when that happens that you'll want to have Wind Shear handy, since it lowers your current threat on your target. Of course, Wind Shear coupled with a ceasing of all of your attacks can only do so much, so it's still important to watch your threat.

Healing Wave: You should have this spell handy while solo-ing, anyways, since being able to heal yourself while leveling is one of the enhancement shaman's greatest strengths. You'll be using this ability to heal your greater earth elemental, and you will make great use of it for that purpose. You might also want to have Lesser Healing Wave handy, in case you space out and forget about your greater earth elemental, then realize you haven't healed him in a while, only to target him and see that his health is low.

Maelstrom Weapon: While this isn't technically an ability, and thus you can't link to it on your action bar, I wanted to bring it up anyways because it makes using Healing Wave on your greater earth elemental much easier. It also serves as a nice reminder to check on your greater earth elemental; any time you hit five stacks of Maelstrom Weapon, check to see if your greater earth elemental is in need of some healing.

Shamanistic Rage: You should keep Shamanistic Rage within easy reach while leveling anyways, but you'll especially want to keep it within reach while fighting an elite because you'll be using more mana. When you fight typical enemies, you usually spend some time out of combat, i.e. not using mana, in addition to the time you spend in combat, i.e. using mana. Thus you don't use mana very quickly while fighting regular enemies. While fighting an elite, however, you are always casting (or at least casting more time per minute than you would be otherwise), so using this ability to get your mana back is critical.

Fire Elemental Totem: The fact is, you will sometimes fight enemies that will outlast your greater earth elemental. He only has a two-minute duration, after all, and what to do when that runs out? Why, bring out this guy, of course. The Fire Elemental Totems summons a greater fire elemental to fight for you, but unlike the greater earth elemental, the greater fire elemental is focused on doing damage, not taking it. Thus, you will be the tank when you take him out, but how will you survive that onslaught of damage in just mail armor with no shield?

Feral Spirit: Why, with your wolves, of course! One of the best benefits of the ghost wolves summoned by Feral Spirit, aside from their taunt, which you will make liberal use of, is that they heal you when they do damage. The healing they do is so significant that combined with a few Maelstrom'ed Healing Waves, you can survive the onslaught of damage brought about by an elite. What could be better?

Bloodlust/Heroism: Ah, yes; this could be better. While you are alone, Bloodlust and Heroism will increase your melee haste, but also the melee haste of your spirit wolves if and only if they are out when you cast it. That means more healing done to you, more damage done by them, and a better chance of successfully killing your elite.

So, now that you have all of the necessary abilities within easy reach (as well as your normal damaging abilities like Stormstrike, Flame and Earth Shock, Lightning Shield--which is a damaging ability with the Static Shock talent--, etc.), you are ready to take down your first elite.

Get ready to fight your opponent by laying down your fire, water, and air totem of choice, leaving your earth totem slot reserved for your Earth Elemental Totem (yes, it actually counts as an earth totem, so you can't have your earth elemental totem and Strength of Earth Totem active at the same time. It sucks, I know.) I use the Flametongue, Mana Spring, and Windfury totem, respectively. I know Magma Totem would probably lead to a greater DPS output, but I personally prefer a totem I can set and forget to one I need to cast every twenty seconds. And did I mention that the one that needs to be re-cast every twenty seconds costs two and half times more mana than the one you can set and forget? Still, if you just want to cause as much damage as possible, then it's your prerogative to go with Magma Totem. I'm not here to tell you how to play, just to give you advice that you can decide whether to follow or not. If you do go with Magma totem, don't drop it until your enemy is in range, so you won't waste any mana on a blast of fire that doesn't damage your enemy.

So, you have your totems ready. Now just wait some time to regenerate your mana, and once it's back at 100%, it's time to fight. Open with a Flame Shock to bring your enemy into range, then cast Earth Elemental Totem. Your greater earth elemental should start attacking your target quickly, but be ready to heal yourself if you do take some damage before your elemental gains control. Now, you want to give your elemental some time to build up threat before you start attacking; think raiding pre-Burning Crusade. While waiting, you might do well to click on your greater earth elemental, then right-click his portrait and set him as your focus so you can always see how much health he has.

Now, once your elemental has established threat, start attacking your target. In these early stages of the fight, you'll probably shoot up from zero percent threat to almost pulling aggro rather quickly if you blow all of your short-term cooldowns, so just be careful. Since you have an effective cap on how much damage you can do (since you don't want to out-aggro your greater earth elemental), you'll want to focus on causing your damage in a way that is as mana-efficient as possible. Assuming you aren't at 95% threat (compared to your elemental), always auto-attack your target so that you can build up charges of Maelstrom weapon to allow you to quickly heal your greater earth elemental. However, don't use your damaging abilities unless you are around 80% threat or below, so that you can cease your attacks if you get a huge crit and get a lot of aggro.

If you are at that magic 80% mark, use your special abilities with the following priorities, stopping if you reach or pass 90% threat. If you have Improved Stormstrike, then use Stormstrike, since it will give you mana back. Then use Lightning Shield if you have the talent Static Shock, since it's free damage. If you don't have Improved Stormstrike, but you do have Static Shock, prioritize Lightning Shield over Stormstrike. If you don't have Static Shock, then don't bother with Lightning Shield. If you still have threat to spare, use Flame Shock, since it's more efficient than Earth Shock. You probably won't use Earth Shock much, since you should use the more efficient Flame Shock if it has run its duration, and you might cause too much threat if you use a shock more than once every 20 seconds or so. You'll probably never use Lava Lash. If you do cause too much damage, use Wind Shear and then stop attacking your target, even auto-attacking, until you greater earth elemental gets its attention again.

As you are doing all of this, you'll want to keep an eye on two things: the threat you have on your target, and your greater earth elemental's health. If your threat falls below 80%, use a damaging ability. If your elemental's health falls below 50%, heal it. Heal it sooner if you don't have many stacks of Maelstrom, and it will thus take you longer to cast the heal. When your mana starts to dip below 50%, check to make sure you aren't approaching dangerously high levels of threat, then use Shamanistic Rage while auto-attacking. I wouldn't recommend doing much else during this time unless you are sure you have threat and mana to spare, since using damaging abilities always poses the risk of out-aggro-ing your greater earth elemental, meaning you'll need to stop attacking, and you'll thus lose mana you could be gaining by attacking.

This strategy alone should be enough to help you with elites that a quest says only require two people to take down, but sometimes you'll need an extra "umph". Sometimes those two minutes won't be enough, and you'll find yourself with an angry elite looking at you and no earth elemental to help you. That's when you pull out the big guns: Feral Spirit, Fire Elemental Totem, and Heroism, in that order. The spirit wolves will heal you with their attacks, the greater fire elemental will damage your target, and Heroism will increase the damage you do, the damage your wolves do, and the healing your wolves do to you. This phase gives you about a minute to finish off your target, since your wolves only last 45 seconds, and you probably won't last longer than 15 seconds against an enemy you couldn't kill in two minutes.

So what to do in that minute? First of all, save your Shamanistic Rage cooldown unless you run desperately low on mana, since that 30% damage reduction could give you the extra time you need to finish your target off after your wolves die and aren't healing you anymore. Until then, make sure your wolves are attacking your target, make sure they use Twin Howl whenever it is off of its cooldown (to divert some damage away from you), and heal yourself if you find yourself below 50% health. Assuming you have taken care of all that, then just unload on your target with all that you have. Since you are now the tank, you don't have to watch your threat anymore. Thus, unload with Stormstrike, Flame and Earth Shock, Lightning Shield, and Lava Lash per usual.

If your wolves disappear and your target is still alive, then pop Shamanistic Rage and hope you can heal yourself and finish him off before he destroys you. Otherwise, you may have to try this whole performance again, or even worse... try to form a group. *shudder*

Of course, pulling this off method of killing an elite off by yourslef is an extremely satisfying exercise, so take what you now know and try it yourself if you are leveling a shaman through Northrend and are skipping the group quests because you can't or don't want to find anyone to help you with them. You don't need anyone to help you with them; you are a shaman.