Mists of Pandaria Classic Elemental Shaman Stat Priority

The stat priority for Elemental Shaman is as follows:

1. Intellect
2. Hit, Expertise, or Spirit (15% Hit Cap)
3. Haste
4. Mastery
5. Critical Strike

Intellect is the primary stat for all casters and increases the magnitude of all spell effects, as well as granting a small amount of Critical Strike.

Your Intellect will also get further increased by raid buffs such as Blessing of Kings, making it the stat to stack above all others. You will get more of it on higher item level gear naturally, making it an easy stat to stack.

Your second priority will be to reach the Spell Hit cap of 15%, which can be obtained through the Hit Rating stat, Expertise in Mists of Pandaria, or with Spirit thanks to the Elemental Precision talent. Reaching the Spell Hit cap ensures that your spells can no longer miss your target, giving you the highest possible DPS increase out of any secondary stat.

Haste is a great stat for Elemental as it allows you to go through your rotation much faster, and fit in more Lightning Bolts casts for every Lava Burst. It will also add additional damage ticks to Flame Shock, increasing its damage. Adding these additional damage ticks requires you to hit certain Haste breakpoints, which can be easier or harder to hit depending on your buffs.

Elemental Mastery is Elemental Overload, which causes your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Lava Burst to have a chance to instantly fire off a copy spell that does 75% damage and causes no threat. This is a strong stat, especially for area damage with Chain Lightning, but Haste and capping Spell Hit are more important than stacking Mastery for DPS purposes.

While Critical Strike Rating is your worst DPS stat because of Lava Burst being guaranteed to crit, and thus not scaling at all with crit, it is not far behind the rest as everything else benefits from crit. Another problem with Critical Strike Rating, however, is that you need a lot of Rating to get 1% more chance to land critical strikes.