ShaqPack

Pre 60 there isn't really a mp/5 set.... the few items that do have mp/5 have such a small amount that you won't really notice it. With mages in general, there is no such thing as an mp/5 set. Spirit on the flip side is always a great stat while leveling. You'll always have enough mana to down a mob, even without any gear, while leveling for that reason spirit is king in terms of just flat out grinding. Int along with stam are mainly useful for pvp situations.

Never go for spirit if you can get mp/5 - spirit is useful for priests and druids because of talents and things like bonuses on their tier 2 sets. Shamans don't get anything like this so spirit is far less useful. In fact, the only time spirit helps a shaman is if you go without casting for very long periods of time, something which is not really an option as a healer.

Can't bring anything that a resto shammy can't? The resto shammy can't bring damage. As for mana tide, in most situations it's very unlikely that you'll be placed in a group with other healers. Most shammies go with melee and tanks and from there if there's enough, get paired up with locks, and then finally mages and other healers if there are an abundance. That being said even in this scenario, simply get paired up with anyone besides the healers and mages and your utility won't be any different. As for short fights, just about any guild outside of brand new ones has BWL on farm, in which case just about all of the fights are short outside of Nef and Chromag. More to the point, ele shammies are already doing stuff like BWL fine and they existed back in vanilla and were in guilds fully capable of clearing content. The only real difference is the mana regen, which is made up for with potions and dark runes and slightly weaker healing spells. Long story short the penalties for going elemental are minimal, and on the flip side you can mix in dps as elemental.

Orc all the way, none of the races really matter healing wise in pve, troll berserking is fairly over rated. With the Orc you get the axe specialization which is nice with the night fall axe, should you ever decide to go melee and raid. Tauren's warstomp + heal combo is great, but the Orc stun resist can be huge at times too. If it procs on a rogue, it pretty much ruins their game plan.

You have to consider the fact that you don't have any +healing gear. Mix that in with the 3 piece tier 2 bonus and chain healing is extremely strong. In many cases it doesn't matter if the target you are healing gets filled up while you're still casting the ability, since it will still bounce twice more to people that need the healing. Also most raids have 4 to 5 shammies on top of this so even using the weak rank 1 chain heals will be enough since everyone else is spamming it.

Also for OP, the big thing is shammies need spell pen since they don't benefit from curse of the elements or shadows, like all other casters do. The tricky part here is actually obtaining the gear because most of what you need doesn't really come out until AQ40. Being in a guild that has more than one tank with thunder fury (for the debuff) can help out a lot here. That being said you'll definitely want to have a healing off set for certain fights and you'll want to be prepared to spend a lot of time farming potions. That being said elemental spec when played to it's fullest is probably one of the most interesting specs out there when raiding, besides the fury warrior spec of course. You essentially can do 2 roles at once which is a lot more interesting when raiding.

Have you actually tried playing an ele sham? You mention that they can't bring anything that a resto shammy can't healing wise..... yeah, because resto is the healing spec. That being said the only talents an elemental shaman really miss out on is the 10% to heals, not really a big deal. Anyways in terms of damage ele shammies do just fine when properly geared and are competitive on short fights. Not to mention if a healer dies on the fight you can switch roles and everything will still be fine. As for "not bringing anything" Shammy totems are always going to be useful, whether it's tranquil air for casters or wind fury for the melee. Not to mention stuff like resist buffs and mana spring. Ideally every raid would have a shammy for each group.... the problem is that 8 people casting chain heal is overdoing it. That's where the hybrid specs come in.

The guide is good but a few things I strongly disagree with going for all mail pieces. Mail armor helps, but the vast majority of your armor comes from your shield, if you wear a lot of cloth pieces but still equip the shield, you will still be very durable. Cloth pieces are important because they often give the most amount of damage, and as an elemental shammy, your best tool is your burst when being left unchecked. That being said, in terms of damage, spell power is your best stat, you'll make greater use of it since you have the quicker cast time as opposed to every other caster. Shammies already get a lot of crit from talent points and more crit is a good thing,but the vast majority of time you'll want to favor spell power pieces. If you want to get gear as elemental, doing bg's and ranking up helps - a lot of the best pieces only come from high ranks or from being revered with the different BG's though. This can be very time consuming. You can do dungeons but the gear there is routinely weak. The other option is to raid as a healer and slowly pick up dps items along the way. Either route, the pvp or raiding route is going to take time and won't happen over night. And in pvp, chances are you're probably going to be healing too, when you first start out, you won't do anywhere near as much damage as other classes but as a healer you are highly valuable. Tauren are the best race but orcs IMO are just as good depending on stun resists. Just one resist will turn the fight greatly in your favor. As for other stats, I wouldn't focus on stam too much. As an elemental shammy, you will be going oom often, and the more int you can get, the more likely are you able to heal yourself or give yourself that much needed burst.Play around with it and find a level of stam that you are comfortable with, while bearing in mind, you will almost always want to be in the background, focusing on targets that the MS warriors are hitting. The road to getting a geared elemental shammy is long but well worth it. It's extremely uncommon, most allies don't know how to handle them or aren't expecting the burst, and best of all, elemental shammies left unchecked do more damage in quicker time than any of the other casters. Locks often have to resort to dots and searing pain (shadow bolt takes an eternity to cast) and mages are more used for control as opposed to damage since frost bolt can feel like an eternity to cast. The 1.5 sec cast on chain lightning, while expensive, almost always goes off and can quickly put multiple enemies in trouble.