Mists of Pandaria Classic Elemental Shaman Talent Builds

For single-target we recommend the following talent build:

For area damage we recommend the following talent build:

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. While this is not a particularly powerful talent, it is also fully passive making it easy to make full use out of.
• 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 by far the most powerful as it reduces all damage taken by 40% for 6 seconds when used. That means you can activate it before hard hitting abilities or if you cannot dodge a dangerous ability to guarantee your survival.

This tier of talents has crowd control and anti-crowd control options. Their usefulness depends on the encounter you are facing, so be prepared to adjust these talents on a fight by fight basis.

• 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 can be very useful whenever dangerous enemies need to be crowd controlled for an extended period.
• Windwalk Totem grants allies within 40 yards immunity to movement impairing effects 6 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown. While this totem does nothing if the encounter you are doing lacks movement impairing effects, it is invaluable against slows and roots!

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 can be very useful to get multiple utility totem usages in emergencies or more Healing Stream Totem healing.
• 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, as Tremor Totem and Earthgrab Totem would not be able to be active at the same time otherwise, for example.
• Totemic Projection allows you to change the location of your totems to a nearby point every 10 seconds. This can be extremely useful to avoid having to recast Searing Totem when repositioning, or when using Earthgrab Totem and Capacitor Totem on enemies far away, for example.

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, which makes it very useful for fights requiring heavy burst damage, especially when used alongside other cooldowns such as Ascendance and Fire Elemental Totem.
• 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. This is usually weaker than Elemental Mastery due to the power of stacking DPS cooldowns together, but has minor self-sustain benefits with its instant spell every 90 seconds.
• Echo of the Elements gives you a 30% chance to duplicate spell effects other than Elemental Blast which has only 6% chance. This is very powerful if you want to focus on area damage, 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 healing kit.

• Rushing Streams allows your Healing Stream Totem to heal two targets at once for 15% additional healing. This is a good passive option, but its total healing bonus is rather underwhelming when compared to the potential of the other two options.
• 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. While it is often overkill, if you need to help your healers against burst damage this is a great button to press.
• 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. This makes it potentially the best talent of the row, but also the most situational, as having to recast Rain often will ruin its benefit.

The final tier of talents provides significant throughput increases mostly focused on dealing additional damage or buffing yourself.

• Unleashed Fury causes Unleash Elements to add additional effects. For Elemental the important one is Flametongue Weapon increasing the damage taken from Lightning Bolt by 30% and Lava Burst by 10% for 10 seconds. This is the best single-target talent in the Level 90 row, and is likely to only get better as gear improves.
• Primal Elementalist transforms your Fire Elemental Totem and Earth Elemental Totem into more powerful versions with access to Empower and Reinforce. This is generally the best option for increasing area damage and also has some defensive value through Reinforce, making it the a reliable and easy to use option.
• Elemental Blast is a 2-second cast which deals high damage plus a large stat boost for 8 seconds on a 12-second cooldown. While the stats and damage are quite decent, forcing you to stand still and cast for 2 seconds every 12 is a large mobility loss and it is easy to delay it, thus losing some of the potential value.