Mists of Pandaria Classic Elemental Shaman Leveling

Elemental Shaman is not a particularly good leveling specialization, but it works out fine when alternating between large pulls with cooldowns and small pulls when waiting on them.

Overall, most of the area damage will be done by Chain Lightning which is very powerful, but also requires targets to be close together in order to work, so make sure to avoid pulling too many casters and ranged enemies at once.

In Mists of Pandaria you will be able to unlock a new row of talent selections every 15 levels, starting at level 15. Each row has a specific theme in order to keep the choices balanced with each other, and thus the choice will mostly rest on what type of defensives you want, or mobility, or utility, for the situation.

This tier of talents is dedicated to additional defensive options and cooldowns.

• Nature's Guardian provides a passive defensive layer by increasing your health by 25% and reducing your threat whenever you drop under 30% health once every 30-seconds. While this is not a particularly powerful talent, it is fully passive and has a very short cooldown, which makes it great for general leveling.
• Stone Bulwark Totem summons a totem which shields you for 30 seconds. With its short cooldown of 60 seconds it is easy to get good value out of this talent but its shields are not particularly powerful.
• Astral Shift has the longest cooldown of all options at 90 seconds but is also the most powerful as it reduces all damage taken by 40% for 6 seconds when used. That means you can activate it on very large pulls, along with Shamanistic Rage, to guarantee your survival, making it a very strong talent for leveling as long as you are doing huge pulls whenever it is ready.

This tier of talents has multiple crowd control abilities. These are situational, but there are a few good leveling options which can help you be more efficient.

• Frozen Power causes Frost Shock to root its target for 5 seconds. While this can occasionally be useful, its diminishing returns and high time cost when needing to root multiple times make it not that useful in practice.
• Earthgrab Totem replaces Earthbind Totem and roots its targets before slowing them. This totem is highly recommended for leveling, as you can use it to survive failed pulls if enemies are stronger than what you initially expected.
• Windwalk Totem grants allies within 40 yards immunity to movement impairing effects 6 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown. While the effects of this totem can be very powerful, it is will be rarely of use while leveling.

This tier of talents increases the quality of life for using most of your utility totems.

• Call of the Elements allows you to reset the cooldown of all totems with a base cooldown under 3 minutes which mostly excludes Healing Tide Totem, Stormlash Totem, and the Fire / Earth Elemental totems. This is recommended, as it allows you to reset the cooldown of your utility totems in emergencies, and can also be used for more healing with Healing Stream Totem.
• Totemic Persistence allows you to have multiple totems of a type active at the same time, but does not affect Fire totems. This is mostly used to allow you to use your utility totems freely, but you will rarely need this capability while leveling.
• Totemic Projection allows you to change the location of your totems to a nearby point every 10 seconds. This can be useful to use Earthgrab Totem and Capacitor Totem on enemies far away, although usually they will come to you by themselves, regardless.

This tier of talents grants you extra throughput ranging from long cooldowns to passive bonuses.

• Elemental Mastery grants a 30% Haste boost for 20 seconds on a 90 second cooldown. This effect is strong at amplifying your burst damage potential, making it a fine pick if you need more support for your large pulls.
• Ancestral Swiftness increases your melee Haste by 10% and spell Haste by 5% passively and also allows you to make your next spell instant cast every 90 seconds. While not completely useless, this is a generally weaker talent than the alternatives, even when considering the instant cast.
• Echo of the Elements gives you a 30% chance to duplicate spell effects other than Elemental Blast which has only 6% chance. This is a very powerful boost for leveling, as most of your area damage comes from Chain Lightning, which fully benefits from Echo.

This row is healing focused with multiple options to increase the power of your self-sustain while leveling.

• Rushing Streams allows your Healing Stream Totem to heal two targets at once for 15% additional healing. If you are leveling solo this will be of little use, but it can be a decent passive option when dungeon leveling.
• Ancestral Guidance copies 20% of your damage to three injured allies nearby for 10 seconds, resulting in a 60% total conversion to healing on a 2-minute cooldown. This can be a great way to self-sustain, especially when doing large pulls with Chain Lightning.
• Conductivity extends the duration of your Healing Rain by 3 seconds every time you use most spells and abilities, up to a maximum of 30 seconds. While having Healing Rain up only for yourself is relatively weak, it can be a great way to help sustain your dungeon group.

There are only two categories of Glyphs in Mists of Pandaria: Major and Minor Glyphs. Major Glyphs tend to improve or change how major abilities work and thus have direct impact on your performance, while Minor Glyphs are mostly cosmetic or small quality of life improvements for niche spells.

While not all recommended glyphs affect your throughput, we still recommend using the glyphs listed below for their high quality of life improvements.

• Glyph of Lightning Shield — reduces your damage taken by 10% whenever Lightning Shield is triggered. This is one of the best leveling glyphs since you will constantly be under direct attack in any solo situations.
• Glyph of Capacitor Totem — reduces the charging time of Capacitor Totem by 2 seconds, making it much quicker to go off. While this is not necessary if you are placing the totem earlier, it makes the stun much easier to time.
• Glyph of Chain Lightning — is situational since it lowers your area damage in situations with less than 4 targets, but is highly recommended whenever you will be facing 4+ targets.
• Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem — is a situational DPS increasing glyph and is very useful for short fights, where the full duration of Fire Elemental Totem would be wasted.
• Glyph of Flame Shock — causes your Flame Shock to heal you for 30% of the damage dealt, which can have decent value while leveling for self-sustain.
• Glyph of Spiritwalker's Grace — increases the duration of Spiritwalker's Grace by 5 seconds, allowing you to cast while moving for a bit longer.

Elemental Shamans only have quality of life Minor Glyphs, but there are a few useful ones listed below.

• Glyph of Astral Fixation — causes Astral Recall to take you to your capital's Earthshrine rather than your Hearthstone location, allowing you to have a different Hearthstone location for extra mobility around the world.
• Glyph of Spirit Wolf — allows you to use Ghost Wolf while in ghost form, which is likely to make any corpse runs much faster.
• Glyph of Astral Recall — reduces the cooldown of Astral Recall by 5 minutes, allowing you to teleport with it more often.
• Glyph of the Lakestrider — causes Ghost Wolf to allow you to run over water (similar to having Water Walking) while active, which can make it faster to go through water while leveling.

Your leveling rotation as an Elemental Shaman is very similar to your maximum level rotation, but you should always try to fight three to five enemies at a time, in order for your Chain Lightning to be of maximum use.

Make sure to use the Flametongue Weapon weapon imbue and keep Lightning Shield buffed on yourself.

The priority list for Elemental Shaman is as follows:

1. Cast Chain Lightning as your main ability against 3 or more enemies, only stopping to Earth Shock at 7 charges of Lightning Shield if there is a particularly high health enemy mixed in;
2. Maintain Searing Totem if Fire Elemental Totem is not available;
3. Use Flame Shock on as many long-lived enemies as possible;
4. Cast Lava Burst on cooldown on a target with Flame Shock;
5. Use Earth Shock once at 6+ charges of Lightning Shield;
6. Cast Lightning Bolt as a filler on single target, or Chain Lightning against two or more enemies.