Shaman downtime

[Hroth]

I'd still go alteration for solo. With roots/regen/heals/slow/malo/kragg/buffs and haste for pet, I think at worst alteration would be about even with conjuration. If you were going to solo but just root-rotting some easy con mob outdoors with no risk, conjuration would be better. But that just isn't how most shamans solo.

However if you ever group or raid at all, alteration>>>>>conjuration.

[gotrocks]

Alteration is really an all-around safe bet.

Conj. specialization is really only going to top Alteration for a very, very specific type of player, and even then its benefit is small at best.

I thought about this for a long time here and finally decided on Alteration, you really can't go wrong picking it.

All the cool kids spec divination tho.

[Elements]

At 60 sitting with max meditate you should regen 20 mana per tick.

At 60 with fungi, chloro, torpor, and doing the canni dance you can regen ~49 mana per tick.

So yea significantly less downtime.

[mazukon]

When soloing, half your spells are Alteration.
when grouping, all your spells are Alteration.

Also, you don't use real Dots once you have jbb/epic until 60 with Torpor (they cost wayyyyy too much mana). So Conj is pretty useless.

[gotrocks]

Once you hit 24 your downtime is drastically reduced.

As someone said above, its sort of like having clarity. My shaman is currently 24, and i will often canni dance to 50% hp (if im in a safe area where i can see the mobs, and never ever below that much) and find i have very little downtime (stacking dots on mobs i can confidently pull at 50%hp and expect to end the fight at around 70%hp because regen is always on.... and im an iksar so i get around 10hp a tick).
Furthermore, i can down blue mobs with less than full mana and not have to worry much. the occasional sticky situation does pop up, but when it does i can *always* root/cannidance/finish mob since i have the iksar regen. I would like to point out i played a 60 iksar shaman on live and have a ton of experience/confidence in my ability to do these kinds of things, but i doubt anyone else should have much trouble with it.

All this being said, if you do make a shaman go troll. dont believe the hype and go ogre. the troll/iksar regen stacked with everything else is simply insane, and even at 60 (though its effectiveness is reduced) it outweighs the frontal stun immunity. Dont go iksar unless you want a serious challenge. or if you just want to be an unbelievable badass (turn on the iksar luclin models to increase this effect)

Tl;dr: shaman mana downtime is short, go troll, unless youre cool and can deal with the poor itemization, in which case go iksar.

shamans are the best class imo. period