New to Elemental Shaman

[Obas 0]

Hi I just made an elemental shaman and he's about level 42. I was just wondering what weapons i should be going for in terms of 1h and shield or staff. Also i was wondering if it is necessary to always have searing totem down when im in combat. Thank You !

[Tarazet 144]

You should drop your totem before the pull and keep it up 100% since it will buff your damage.

Do you have a high-level character who can buy heirloom weapons? If so, get yourself a Scholarly Headmaster's Charge. A staff will be just fine for leveling, and you can go on to use it to level any character that is Intellect-based. Yes, you lose some Armor, but unless you're planning on PvPing in the 40's bracket, there's no need to wear a shield.

[Obi 0]

I'm nearly done leveling my shaman, so I'll tell you what I found, but others may have different perspectives.

Since you are elemental, you're going to want whatever gives you the most stats, especially intellect. At lower levels, secondary stats are not very important, and because you're leveling, the gear will get replaced quickly. So I just went with whatever gives the best intellect. Below level 50, you can even use cloth or leather perfectly fine and it's only a 5% intellect boost, so I'd wager that if you found really good cloth gear, you could probably still wear it until then, and then get mail to get that 5% boost (unless you find int cloth/leather that somehow gives more intellect than you would lose. You can just check your stat sheet to see. Honestly though, it's not a huge difference).

So let's pretend you have 105 int total. If you are above level 50 replaced a piece of mail with something identical but made of cloth, you would only have 100 intellect. If that piece of cloth/leather gear had >5 intellect more than the mail, it should be a boost. That said, at low levels, these differences are very small, so don't stain yourself doing calculations. Just check your stat sheet.

As for searing totem, it isn't necessary, but it's a pretty nice boost at lower levels. Once you have access to lava surge, most mobs die too quickly in single target combat to make it worth the effort. One thing you can (and should) do to speed up leveling is go in the middle of a large pack of stuff, drop your totem, and pull everything towards you. You can heal yourself quite well until ~80-ish and chain lightning/lava burst murder all things. It's also useful if you have mobs that like to run away, but you want to focus on something else. If searing totem is already down, it will fire at your runner, which will be down in short order.

[Obas 0]

Thank You everyone for your responses and yeah I have the staff BoA so i will equip that on my toon. Thanks again for the help :)