Shaman

Shaman are masters of the elements. They are able to deal lightning and fire to foes at range with the Elemental specialization, or deal damage up close with lightning and wind with the Enhancement specialization. Alternatively, they can heal allies with nature and water spells with the Restoration specialization.

Shaman provide totems, allowing the player to deploy various unique effects, often with a short duration. These can range from smart heals like Healing Stream to utility abilities like Grounding or Tremor totem. They also have the Grace of Air passive aura, granting additional haste and mastery to allies within 100 yards. The most notable group ability is Bloodlust/Heroism, increasing the haste of all party members by 30% for 40 seconds.

Shaman can also summon temporary elemental pets to assist them. The normal versions will simply assist the player with their current target. However, by taking the Primal Elementalist talent at level 90, these pets will be upgraded with a full pet command bar and additional abilities.

Boosting to Level 90

Know when to use Bloodlust or Heroism. Most of the time it doesn’t matter, but there are often enrage or other mechanics that it should be saved for.

Make use of defensive cooldowns, heals, and utility abilities even when solo. They can mean the difference between living and dying.

Know what totems can do, and when to use them. Being able to negate a spell cast, break fears, or slow enemies can be useful at the right moment.

Remember that there are spells for roles outside of your current specialization in the Shaman spellbook. Elemental and Enhancement have a few heals, while Restoration has a few damage spells, crowd controls, and an interrupt. Most other classes don’t have this ability overlap.

Most items will be suitable for multiple roles, with a few exceptions. Don’t be afraid to switch should the situation demand it.

Class Abilities and Resources

Like other spell casting based classes, Shaman use mana to cast spells. Mana management is important to Restoration Shaman, and mana regeneration can be improved with additional Spirit. Elemental and Enhancement Shaman also use mana, but they have secondary resources to manage and mana use should not be an issue with their default spell set.

Elemental Shaman gain Lightning Shield charges up to 15 (20 with the perk Improved Lightning Shield). These extra charges can be expended by casting Earth Shock to trigger Fulmination. This expends all but one of your current Lightning Shield charges in a single attack against the enemy target.

Enhancement Shaman gain Maelstrom Weapon charges from melee attacks. This decreases the cast time and mana cost of a castable spell like Chain Lightning, Lightning Bolt, or Healing Surge by 20%. As it can stack up to 5 times, it can make the spell cast instant and cost no mana. If used on a healing spell, it also increases the amount healed by 10% per charge.

Restoration has Water Shield, which increases passive mana regeneration as well as restoring a fixed amount when hit. This is useful because Restoration is the only Shaman specialization to actively manage mana. In addition to Water Shield, Restoration also gains a fixed amount of mana from healing critical strikes via the Resurgence passive. This makes Critical Strike Rating an important mana regen stat in addition to Spirit.

Totems

In addition to these, all three specializations have access to totems. Totems are essentially stationary short duration pets that perform a specific function. These can range from Searing Totem which attacks your target, Earthbind which snares enemies, or Healing Stream which heals you and your allies. Longer cooldown totems include the Elemental totems which summon a Greater Earth or Fire Elemental to fight by your side.

Totems also allow Shaman to summon Greater Elementals as temporary pets for 1 minute, with a 5 minute cooldown. These Elementals grant Shaman additional damage or utility while they are alive. The Earth Elemental acts as a tank, generating threat against hostile targets so they take damage rather than their owner. The Fire Elementals only focus is to deal damage, either via Fire Blast or melee hits. The Storm Elemental Totem talent summons a Greater Storm elemental that provides additional damage too, but it also converts a portion of the damage to healing on nearby party members.

Non-Specialization Abilities

Name	Level	Description
Lightning Bolt	1	Fires a bolt of lightning at the target, dealing Nature damage.
Primal Strike	3	An instant weapon strike that causes Physical damage.
Healing Surge	7	Heals a friendly target for a moderate amount.
Lightning Shield	8	The caster is surrounded by a reactive lightning barrier. When an attack hits the caster, the attacker will be struck for Nature damage. This effect may only occur once every few seconds. Lasts 1 hour.
Flame Shock	12	Sears the target with fire, causing Fire damage and then additional Fire damage over 30 seconds.
Purge	12	Purges the enemy target, removing 1 beneficial Magic effect.
Ancestral Spirit	14	Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with 35% of maximum health and mana. Cannot be cast when in combat.
Ghost Wolf	15	Turns the Shaman into a Ghost Wolf, increasing speed by 30%.
Searing Totem	16	Summons a Fire Totem at the feet of the caster for 1 minute that repeatedly attacks an enemy within 25 yards with fire damage.
Wind Shear	16	Disrupts the target’s concentration with a burst of wind, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 3 seconds.
Cleanse Spirit	18	Removes all Curse effects from a friendly target.
Frost Shock	22	Instantly shocks an enemy with frost, dealing Frost damage and reducing the target’s movement speed by 50%. Lasts 8 seconds.
Water Walking	24	Allows the friendly target to walk across water for 10 minutes. Any damage will cancel the effect.
Earthbind Totem	26	Summons an Earth Totem at the feet of the caster for 20 seconds that slows the movement speed of enemies within 10 yards.
Chain Lightning	28	Hurls a lightning bolt at the enemy, dealing Nature damage and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Affects 3 total targets.
Healing Stream Totem	30	Summons a Water Totem at the feet of the caster that heals an injured party or raid member within 40 yards every 2 seconds. Lasts 15 seconds.
Totemic Recall	30	Returns your totems to the earth, refunding 25% of their mana cost.
Reincarnation	32	Allows you to resurrect yourself upon death with 20% health and mana. 30 minute cooldown.
Astral Recall	34	Yanks the caster through the twisting nether back to their hearthstone location.
Far Sight	36	Changes the caster’s viewpoint to the targeted location. Lasts 1 min. Only usable outdoors.
Grounding Totem	38	Summons an Air Totem at the feet of the caster that will redirect one harmful spell cast on a nearby party member to itself, destroying the totem. Will not redirect area of effect spells. Lasts 15 seconds.
Mail Specialization	40	Allows the player to equip Mail armor items.
Mail Specialization	50	Increases the player’s primary attribute by 5% while wearing Mail in all armor slots.
Tremor Totem	54	Summons an Earth Totem at the feet of the caster that shakes the ground around it for 10 seconds, removing Fear, Charm and Sleep effects from party and raid members within 30 yards.
Earth Elemental Totem	58	Summons an Earth Totem at the feet of the caster, calling forth a Greater to protect the caster and their allies. Lasts 1 minute.
Healing Rain	60	Healing rains blanket the area targeted by the Shaman, restoring health to up to 6 allies in the area over 10 seconds.
Capacitor Totem	63	Summons an Air Totem at the feet of the caster that gathers electrical energy from the surrounding air and then explodes after 5 seconds to stun all enemies within 8 yards for 5 seconds.
Fire Elemental Totem	66	Summons a Fire Totem at the feet of the caster, calling forth a Greater Fire Elemental to rain destruction on the caster’s enemies. Lasts 1 minute.
Bloodlust/Heroism	70	Increases haste by 30% for all party and raid members within 100 yards. Lasts 40 seconds. Allies receiving this effect will become Sated and be unable to benefit from Bloodlust, Heroism or Time Warp again for 10 minutes.
Hex	75	Transforms the enemy into a frog. While hexed, the target is incapacitated and cannot attack or cast spells. Damage caused may interrupt the effect. Lasts 1 minute. Only one target can be hexed at one time. Only works on Humanoids and Beasts.
Grace of Air	80	Empowering winds swirl around the Shaman, granting all nearby party and raid members 550 Mastery and 5% Haste.

Talents

Talent	Description	Notes
Level 15 Tier
Nature’s Guardian	Attacks that bring your health below 30% increase your maximum health by 25% for 10 sec, and reduce your threat toward the attacker. Cannot occur more than once every 30 sec.	Works passively, so it’s good for saving you when you need it most. Good for PvP and PvE.
Stone Bulwark Totem	Summons an Earth Totem at the feet of the caster for 30 sec, granting the caster a shield absorbing damage for 10 sec, and additional damage every 5 sec.	Handy for mitigating low but sustained damage.
Astral Shift	Shift partially into the elemental planes, taking 40% less damage for 6 seconds.	Has a longer cooldown than the other two talents. Is more suited towards mitigating high burst damage in a short timeframe.
Level 30 Tier
Frozen Power	Your Frost Shock now also roots the target in ice for 5 sec.	Elemental: Useful for immobilizing foes, but as Frost Shock shares a cooldown with Earth & Flame Shocks it can reduce your damage output.Enhancement and Restoration: Useful for immobilizing foes, but remember that diminishing returns won’t allow you to immobilize them for long on subsequent hits.
Earthgrab Totem	Summons an Earth Totem at the feet of the caster for 20 seconds. The totem pulses every 2 seconds, rooting all enemies within 10 yards for 5 seconds. Enemies previously rooted by the totem will instead suffer 50% movement speed reduction. Replaces Earthbind Totem.	The root effect is useful verses a large group of foes, either for AoE damage or running away.
Windwalk Totem	Summons an Air Totem at the feet of the caster for 6 sec, granting raid members within 40 yards immunity to movement-impairing effects.	Removes slows/roots and provides immunity for 6 seconds, making it very useful for certain PvE encounters & PvP teams.
Level 45 Tier
Call of the Elements	Resets the cooldown on all totems with a base cooldown shorter than 3 minutes.	The usefulness of this talent comes down to what totems you want to use with a cooldown less than three minutes. This will include Earthbind, Grounding, Healing Stream and Tremor.
Totemic Persistence	Summoning a second totem of the same element no longer causes the first totem to be destroyed. May only have one extra totem at a time, and may not be a Fire totem.	Persistence prevents the problem of overwriting one totem with another, e.g.: Earth Elemental with Tremor. It can be used to give a bit more flexibility with totem use so there is no waiting for one to expire before placing another.
Totemic Projection	Relocates your active totems to the specified location.	This talent allows relocation of totems to a target area, very useful for placing something like Capacitor on a ranged target or relocating your active totems to another location after moving.
Level 60 Tier
Elemental Mastery	Elemental forces empower you with 30% haste for 20 sec.	Combine with Ascendance and other cooldowns for maximum effect.
Ancestral Swiftness	Increases haste and attack speed by 5% at all times. When activated, your next Nature spell with a base cast time less than 10 seconds becomes instant.	The on-use ability allows one spell to be instant cast. Note: does not affect spells like Ancestral Spirit or Astral Recall.
Echo of the Elements	Elemental: Your spells and abilities have a chance to cause your next Lava Burst, Frost Shock, or Earthquake not to incur its cooldown.Enhancement: Your spells and abilities have a chance to cause your next Lava Lash, Stormstrike, or Fire Nova not to incur its cooldown.Restoration: Your spells and abilities have a chance to cause your next Riptide, Unleash Life, or Purify Spirit not to incur its cooldown.	Sometimes causes a few of your abilities to not trigger their cooldown when cast.
Level 75 Tier
Rushing Streams	Your Healing Stream Totem now heals two targets at once for 15% additional healing.	Is effectively a 150% throughput increase, but only if a second target is available.
Ancestral Guidance	For the next 10 seconds, 20% of your direct damage and healing is converted to healing on up to 3 nearby injured party or raid members.	Ancestral Guidance can be useful as a group heal when taking AoE damage, but is not that effective as a solo self-heal.
Conductivity	Elemental and Enhancement: Your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Earth Shock, and Stormstrike increase the duration of your Healing Rain by 4 seconds, up to a maximum increase of 30 seconds.Restoration:Your Healing Wave, Healing Surge, and Chain Heal increase the duration of your Healing Rain by 4 seconds, up to a maximum increase of 30 seconds.	Extends the duration of your Healing Rain, but only one can be active at a time.
Level 90 Tier
Unleashed Fury	Elemental: Empowers your Unleash Flame, causing it to also increase damage done with Lightning Bolt by 30% and with Lava Burst by 10% for 10 sec.Enhancement: Empowers your Unleash Elements, increasing damage taken by the target from your Lightning Bolt by 30% for 10 sec, and increasing your multistrike chance by 5% for 8 sec.Restoration: Empowers your Unleash Life, increasing the healing from your next single-target heal on that ally by 50%.	Elemental: Improves the effectiveness of Unleash Flame, making it a part of the stationary single-target rotation.Enhancement: Improves the effectiveness of Unleash Elements.Restoration: Improves the effectiveness of Unleash Life.
Primal Elementalist	Your Earth, Storm and Fire Elemental Totems draw forth primal elementals 80% more powerful than regular elementals, with additional abilities, and acting directly under your control.	Empowers your elemental pet totems, granting access to a pet bar and additional abilities.
Elemental Blast	Harness the raw power of the elements, dealing Elemental damage and increasing your Critical Strike, Haste, Mastery, or Multistrike (plus Agility for Enhancement Shaman) by 500 for 8 seconds.Also increases Restoration Shaman’s Spirit by 1000 for 8 sec.	Elemental: Deals damage and grants a random secondary stat buff.Enhancement: Deals damage and grants a random secondary stat or Agility buff.Restoration: Deals damage and grants a random secondary stat buff in addition to Spirit.
Level 100 Tier (Elemental and Enhancement Shaman)
Elemental Fusion	Your Lava Burst and Lava Lash increase the damage of your next Shock by 40%, stacking up to 2 times.	A nice damage increase for shocks. Multiplies with Unleash Flame for extra damage.
Storm Elemental	Summons an Air Totem at the feet of the caster, calling forth a Greater Storm Elemental to hurl gusts of wind at the caster’s enemies. Each gust of wind does damage to the enemy, and then heals all allies within 15 yards for 100% of the damage dealt, split evenly. Lasts 1 min.	Acts as a second damage elemental, with some low raid healing. Also gains a runspeed aura with Primal Elementalist.
Liquid Magma	Empowers your current Fire Totem with the power of lava, causing liquid magma to erupt from it toward random enemies within 40 yards every 0.5 sec for 10 sec. Each glob of liquid magma deals Fire damage to all enemies within 4 yards.	Functions both as a single target and AoE damage cooldown. Remember to have a Fire Totem up for the 10-second duration.
Level 100 Tier (Restoration Shaman)
Cloudburst Totem	Summons a Water Totem at the feet of the caster for 15 seconds that collects power from all healing spells & their multistrikes. When the Cloudburst Totem is destroyed, replaced or expires, the stored power is released, healing all injured allies within 40 yards for a total of 20% of all healing done while it was active, split evenly between them.	Use at the start of a phase of heavy AoE damage to take advantage of cooldowns and help top off the raid.
Storm Elemental	Summons an Air Totem at the feet of the caster, calling forth a Greater Storm Elemental to hurl gusts of wind at the caster’s enemies. Each gust of wind does damage to the enemy, and then heals all allies within 15 yards for 100% of the damage dealt, split evenly. Lasts 1 min.	Acts as a second damage elemental, with some low raid healing. Also gains a runspeed aura with Primal Elementalist.
High Tide	Your Chain Heal also bounces to up to 2 additional targets affected by your Riptide, and no longer diminishes in power with each bounce.	Improves the raid healing from Chain Heal. More useful for sustained raid healing over the burst healing of the other level 100 talents.

Elemental

Elemental is the spell casting damage specialization. It uses Fire and Nature spells like Lava Burst or Lightning Bolt to deal damage from a distance. Elemental has increased critical damage strikes, an area of effect knockback in Thunderstorm, and transforms into a Flame Ascendant with the Ascendance cooldown.

Specialization Abilities

Ability	Level	Description
Earth Shock	10	Instantly shocks the target with concussive force, causing Nature damage.
Elemental Fury	10	Critical strikes deal 250% damage instead of the usual 200%.
Elemental Reach	10	Increases the range of your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Lava Burst spells by 10 yards, and increases the range of your Shock spells and Searing Totem by 15 yards.
Shamanism	10	Increases the damage of Lightning Bolt by 36% and Chain Lightning by 100%, reduces the casting time of Lightning Bolt by 0.5 seconds, and removes the cooldown from Chain Lightning.
Spiritual Insight	10	Increases your mana pool by 400%. Reduces the cooldown of Earth and Flame Shock spells by 1 second.
Thunderstorm	10	Calls down a bolt of lightning, dealing nature damage to all enemies within 10 yards, reducing their movement speed by 40% for 5 seconds, and knocking them back from the Shaman. This spell is usable while stunned.
Fulmination	20	While Lightning Shield is active, damage and multistrike damage from Elemental Blast, Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells generate an additional Lightning Shield charge, up to a maximum of 15 charges (20 with the Improved Lightning Shield Perk). Casting Earth Shock will consume any charges beyond 1, dealing their total damage to the enemy target.
Lava Burst	34	You hurl molten lava at the target, dealing Fire damage. Lava Burst will always deal a critical strike.If your Flame Shock is on the target, Lava Burst will deal 50% additional damage.
Lava Surge	50	Your Flame Shock damage over time has a chance to reset the cooldown of your Lava Burst spell and cause your next Lava Burst spell to be instant.
Earthquake	60	You cause the earth at the target location to tremble and break, dealing Physical damage over 10 seconds to enemies in an 8 yard radius, with a 10% chance of knocking down affected targets.
Shamanistic Rage	65	Reduces all damage taken by 30% for 15 seconds. This spell is usable while stunned.
Unleash Flame	81	Unleashes elemental forces of flame, increasing the damage dealt by the Shaman’s next Fire spell by 40%.
Spiritwalker’s Grace	85	Calls upon spiritual guidance, permitting movement while casting Shaman spells. This spell may be cast while casting other spells. Lasts 15 seconds.
Ascendance	87	The Shaman transforms into a Flame Ascendant for 15 seconds. While in this form, Lava Burst has no cooldown and Chain Lightning is empowered to become Lava Beam.
Elemental Overload	90	You have a 20% increased chance to multistrike. Your multistrikes deal 35% increased damage. You gain 5% more of the Multistrike stat from all sources.

Draenor Perks

Every other level while leveling up to 100, you receive a boost to an existing ability called a Draenor Perk. You learn one Draenor Perk randomly from this list each time. Once you get to 100, you will know them all.

Perk	Description
Enhanced Chain Lightning	Each target struck by your Chain Lightning or Lava Beam increases the damage done by your next Earthquake by 40%.
Enhanced Unleash	Your Unleash Flame ability also causes you to gain 30% increased movement speed for 4 seconds.
Improved Lightning Shield	Lightning Shield gains 5 additional maximum charges, and Lava Burst and its multistrikes can now generate additional Lightning Shield charges through Fulmination.
Improved Reincarnation	Increases the health that you Reincarnate with by an additional 50%.

Rotation

The idea with the Elemental rotation is to make sure Flame Shock is always up to get the 50% bonus to Lava Burst. Remember that Flame Shock gains up to an additional 30% of the maximum duration, based on the remaining time on the current DoT effect.

Secondly, use Earth Shock to expend Lightning Shield charges at around 15 charges or more, but use it after other spells like Elemental Blast or Lava Burst. This is to prevent wasting charge generation and also avoid delaying the hard-hitting short cooldown spells.

Ensure Flame Shock is on your target.
If talented for Unleashed Fury, cast Unleash Flame.
Cast Lava Burst if it is off cooldown.
If talented for Elemental Blast, cast it.
If at 15 or more Lightning Shield charges, cast Earth Shock.
Recast Flame Shock if it has 9 seconds or less remaining.
Cast Lightning Bolt for the primary filler spell.

Group Play

Elemental Shaman are great for dealing ranged damage, or frequently interrupting spell casts with Wind Shear. Have Hex handy to throw out a bit of extra crowd control if needed, but remember that it has a 45-second cooldown, so use it wisely.

Group Buffs

All Shaman provide the Grace of Air passive aura, which increases Haste and Mastery for all allies within 100 yards. They also have Bloodlust (Horde) or Heroism (Alliance) which increases party haste by 30% for 40 seconds. This is best used for finishing off a boss fight with an enrage, or burning through a particularly nasty encounter phase that is tied to the life percentage of the boss.

Preparing for High-End Content

When preparing for high-end content, look for mail armor items with a stat priority for Multistrike, then Haste. Try to get one-handed weapons with a shield where possible. This is because Elemental Shaman are one of only three specializations that can use Intellect Shields (the other two being Restoration Shaman and Holy Paladins). That said, using a staff or other off-hand items will be fine in most cases.

Avoid items with spirit or bonus armor as you will not benefit from these stats.

Enhancement

Enhancement is the up-close melee damage spec for the Shaman. They wield dual one-handed weapons, enhancing their strikes with elemental weapon attacks like Lava Lash or Stormstrike. They also cast short range spells like Flame or Frost Shocks. Enhancement Shaman have the ability to instantly cast spells with Maelstrom Weapon, reducing the cast time of spells like Lightning Bolt or Healing Surge by 20% per stack.