Elemental shaman FAQFollow

The FAQ sticky is lacking class definiton.

Q. What is my role in a group?

A. To sustain DPS while droppin totems and switching back and forth between off/healing.


Q. What stats should i look for?

A. +Spell crit, Spell damage, Intellect, MP/5, Stamina.


Q. What is a viable pve build?

A. Don't be fooled by EotS, it isn't worth the points. Mobs rarely crit anyway.


Q. What about pvp?

A. NS is great for stacking with EM to burst a group of horde/alliance

Chain Lightning over CC anyday

Q. Stave or 1h/shield?

A. Staves are for the stats. 1h/shield is for the armor.
Staves for instances/raids, 1h/shield for solo. For pvp use w/e wrosk best for you.


Q. Is it viable for me to use cloth or leather?

A. When solo'ing you should go for the armor of mail. Pvp, groups i suggest stats > armor.


Q. Do we fare well in arena?

A. Yes and no. 2v2 for elemental shamans equals a no/no. We don't have true CC so stay in groups in 3v3, 5v5.


Q. What is the best strategy for BGs?

A. Play like a rogue. Choose your fights, don't let them choose you. Stay with a group, let another person fight the battle while you stay in the back and nuke LB/CL and earthsock heals ALWAYS. Your main target should be healers and casters. A good Elemental shamans should almost always kill another caster. Since we have no CC chose your battles, healers would be the best for you to target with that handicap.


These were the questions i feel were not answered by the sticky... plz add more if you find i left some out.

















Edited, Nov 27th 2007 7:21am by Draeneipally

edit : also plz add any mods or addons, that would be nice



Edited, Nov 28th 2007 12:58pm by Draeneipally

lol I have links to your original specs in my original post in this thread lol I forgot about those lol, that was the build, you did change it, so was it an accident, or did I teach you something?

Dranaeipally, not maxing out elemental precision is a big mistake, threat is the only thing that holds me back from doing my maximum damage in raids and instances.

Also, if you are using fire totems in any sort of raid/instance experiences except for flametongue/ToW/AoE then I don't know what to say about that except "Break CC's much?" so this basically makes call of flame useless.....

Storm Reach is ok, but standing 6 yards back is mostly useless for raiding and only Ok for soloing. Trust me I have been suckered into thinking this talent was cool before and I'll never trust it's lies again.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents.html?5500015500001435105100000000000000000000050204301005000000000

That spec is basically what I run with, with one point from totemic mastery moved to improve reinc because I just recently changed my mind about the importance of that talent. I'm sure that when I actually start taking loads of damage in raids from AoE magic attacks I will move 3 points from reverberation into elemental warding but I have not needed to do that yet b/c I get basically free rejuv pots from the new Alch only pots.

Other than those few nitpicks I like your suggestions

I think you edited your terrible spec cause you made a mistake on the link originaly but the specs you have up there are in proper order, and your forrect they arent in the titles because I don't know how to do that lol, but I know those where your original specs.

Well lets add something constructible at least at this point.

Everyone obviously has there own opinions but generally speaking these are the key talents to get for every Ele build regardless of use for the spec (pve or pvp)

Elemental Focus: helps save mana, this scales with gear so very nice

Call of thunder: you want lots of crit, this will help you do more damage and save more mana

Elemental Fury: Do more damage with crits, you stack a lot of spell crit as an elemental shaman so this helps in a big way to increase dps.

Lightning Mastery: Lowers the casting time on your Lightning spells

Elemental Mastery: Nice quick boost in dps, should always be used with CL, nice way to squeeze out some more spells when mana is running dry

Lightning Overload: This is an increase in DPS of about 10%, also these extra bolts can crit and give you Elemental Focus so this helps a ton for saving mana in pve, and offer some nice reliable burst for pvp

Tidal Mastery: While there are other helpful talents in resto this is a must for elemental shamans, helps you crit heal more often (bigger heals ftw) and will increase your dps and mana conservation like call of thunder from your elemental talent tree.

Talents less necessary but great for shaman are listed here, but you can pick and choose these as you want these are more preferenced talents more focused in a pvp or pve role:

Elemental Warding: Nice for pvp and pve, take lass damage from some AoEs in raids, and take less damage from an angery mage gnome in a bg.

Reverberation: Great for pvp to give you more of an edge against casters to earth shock or melee to kite, but not as great in pve when you are spamming LB spells often and fighting against global cooldown often, and since you get more dps from just chuckin out bolts its better just not to shock in pve.

Eye of the Storm: Great talent for PvE and PvP to help get spells out when you have a fast attacking enemy beating away at your cast bar, this also affects heals, sure when you solo you can kill enemies before they get to you, but this is not always the case in pvp or if you agro an extra mob or perhaps they spawn on top of you. side note if you invest into Elemental shields you are uncritable so its not gonna help you much in pve using both those talents, but they both work together fine in pvp.

Storm Reach: nice pre raiding talent, gives you more room to play with and get out an extra spell before your enemy reaches you, and allows you to move around less during a boss fight, but you can't get this and max out unrelenting storm so pick wisely, this talent is great for pvp.

Unrelenting Storm: Mana regen is amazing, this is an amazing talent, this is a great talent for raiding and offers about 50 mana per 5 seconds with buffs on my shaman, this is a huge amount. If you plan on raiding this talent is a must, even with the loss of Storm Reach.

Elemental Precision: In raids you need a lot of hit to not miss a spell (they can still be resisted though) this talent helps us have to worry less about it, and the threat reduction is amazing as well, but both these are for pve, in pve spell hit helps but is not as necessary, and reducing your threat doesn't mean that angery gnome I mentioned before wont want to attack you back ^^

Elemental Sheilds: Crit immune in PvE and take even less crits from your enemies in PvP, this is not a must but it is pretty nice.

Totemic Focus: Cheaper totems you drop totems a lot, nice for pve to help save mana.

Nature's Guidance: This helps your spell hit which is great, the more spell hit you have from talents the more you can focus on Spell damage and crit in gear, but not necessary in pvp.

Healing Focus: Help you heal yourself when your being attacked, this is a great talent, but has nothing to do with DPS, but in pvp it helps a lot, and for solo play it is also a big help too.

Totemic Mastery: Gives you more room to work with and helps your party members stay in range of buffs which is nice for 5 mans when your standing in the back but need your melee to still get totem buffs.

Ok here is the big one Nature's Swiftness or Totem of Wrath.

Nature's Swiftness is a save the day button. Use it to bust out some extra burst to kill an enemy, or use it to heal yourself in pvp. This is great when you need to heal tank or healer or yourself in a 5 man. If you want to stay on the safe side pick NS, it will help you be much more flexible in the long run for pve or pvp.

Totem of Wrath is a useful totem, its helps you offer more to your party and a raid as far as dps, helps your fellow caster have more hit to resist less and more crit to dps harder, but it is a totem, its nice cause it is more of an on going ability, but you and your group need to stay near it to gain the buff. This helps you bring the most you possibly can to your group while raiding, since in a raid the only healing you will probably do is on yourself it is a batter deal then NS. With this and some other talents I listed you can achieve 12% hit with just talents which is note bad at all.

So NS and ToW, which is better there is no wrong choice but the way I see it, if you want to be flexible NS will help you with that, if you want to do as much damage and buff as much as possible ToW is what you want.

There are my tips that I hope can make you shaman build your very own elemental shaman, I showed you the necessary talents and explained all the extra talents. Good luck building your own builds, remember your goal is 40/0/20ish so if it looks almost like that you should be safe, from there you pick NS or ToW GL

The more threat reduction has the more damage you can do while dpsing, rogues can unleash in the beginning of a fight vanish it never happened, Threat affect 2 things weather you die and if you can dps harder then average.

If i am in a kara with a pally tank that means I can start dpsing the second he pulls, why, because he gains enough threat on his annitial attack to do more threat then my 1 LB because he gave me BoS (and tanking pallies are OP), I never wait I never stop dpsing with a pally tank, I have BoS I have tranquil air, zomg no WoA for trash, thats right, cause me and my group have no limitations we just mess stuff up.

to be honest tho, why would Velena need to worry about threat yet she doesnt get one shot at lvl 64 anyhow, i mean ppl dont really NEED to be smart about threat until 70 when stuff gets difficult, Draeneipally you will see soon at 70.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Draka&n=Velena

I think thats you, anyhow it is awesome they changed that main hand I believe when BC came out that was only +healing but I guess it was changed for us shaman... oh and boomkins and shadow priests too =P

Someone already addressed this, but I see it didn't get changed in your original post. You say staves are for instances/raids. I wouldn't say this, you generalize it too much. It doesn't matter what you use for instances/raids as long as it gives you the best stat combination. If you have a great staff, sure, use it. But for the most part a one-hand + shield is going to give you more spell damage than a staff which is what you are concerned about for raiding. Someone also mentioned your comment about "switching back and forth between off/healing". You should qualify this with what you mean. Ie sure throw some heals if the healer needs it, but your focus should always be on dps. If I'm in a group with an elemental shaman while I'm the healer, I don't expect them to throw heals unless I really am falling behind for some reason.

Also, if people critique your builds, ask them why. Maybe you will learn something, rather than just reacting badly and taking their comments personally. It degrades the quality of your original post when people read your replies to what others have said and see you get sub-defaulted on things.

Oh and yes if you find a staff better then your 1h and shield for raiding go for it, but from what I have seen, from epics 1h and shield will offer more damage and crit, you lose out in stats but thats fine generally. If lets say your doing kara and your weapons are pretty bad and curator drops staff, it may be a nice upgrade, but I think the Lower City Mace and 33 badge shield are better, and if your taking staff away from mage or lock or shadow priest consider this, they don't have a shield option, staffs for heavy stam is as good as it gets for them and may not be worth it in the long run for you to take over them.

It would be like a holy pally taking away your spell damage shield from nightbane tho he has Healing shield from chest event, sure he can solo better, but who would get more use out of it?

Anyhow loot is kool, but shoot for the best in a zone don't take stuff from other classes just cause you haven't gotten lucky yet.

IU think every ele shaman's first goal at 70 is to bring lower city to exhaulted for mace and collect 33 badges for shield. I still use my shield and have only upgraded my weapon once since. It is a great starter combo and people will always comment on how kool your shield looks =P

Pretty much all casters are going to go for one-hand plus offhand/shield if they can, outside of PvP at least. They just offer too much to pass up - all the staves I've seen, except for the Season 3 one, just don't stand up for any class compared to one-hands.

Fire Totems also seems a bit more like a leveling talent to me. In groups and raids, at least, you'll have ToW out 98% of the time. That other 2% being Leo as the only shammy, and Fire Elem + Bloodlust during burn phases (either just after the pull or the last 15% of a boss). Great for raiding resto shammies, iffy for enhance and elemental imo.