Shaman Leveling Guide From 1 to 70 for TBC Classic

This guide will aim to provide you with a clear skill and gear path to Level 70 in TBC Classic. While detailing every single quest and the optimal leveling routes is beyond its scope, you can find detailed talent builds for all playstyles, their rotations, and guides for class quests and leveling weapon suggestions below.

Providing non-Shaman leveling advice is outside the scope of this article and is covered in our general TBC leveling guide.

Shamans have three talent trees: Enhancement, Elemental, and Restoration.

Enhancement is the recommended leveling build, as it has great damage, survivability, and mobility; you can also drag most enemies with you as you move from mob to mob, finishing them while moving.

Critically it is the most Mana-efficient specialization for Shaman, especially once you get Water Shield at Level 62, leading to the least downtime in between pulls.

Elemental is also viable to level with, and is usually even faster than Enhancement at killing enemies, but its caster nature requires frequent drinking and limits mobility. However, it has the upside of having a safer playstyle with less to fear from ranged or running enemies.

Finally, Restoration is naturally slower to solo with than the other two specs, as most of its talents boost healing, instead of damage. However, if you are going to be leveling in a group or dungeons as the healer, then this specialization has all the tools you need to keep your allies healthy and allow for larger pulls than off-spec healing ever could.

If speed is what you care about, the best way to proceed in WoW TBC as a solo Shaman is to use our Enhancement talent build until Level 40, at which point you can decide whether to continue with Enhancement or respec into Elemental.

The reason for this is that Enhancement has much stronger talents early on, and melee attacks are also much stronger earlier in the game. However, by the time you hit Level 40, Elemental has all of its killer talents available:

• Elemental Fury increases your Critical Strike damage and has great synergy with the next talent;
• Elemental Mastery makes your next spell free and a guaranteed Critical Strike, allowing for huge Chain Lightning bursts;
• Lightning Mastery massively increases your DPS by heavily reducing your cast times.

Elemental is much faster at killing enemies than Enhancement at this point, and will stay very strong all the way to Level 70. There is also an argument to be made for staying Enhancement, however, due to its superior Mana management which will reduce your downtime between pulls, especially once you obtain Water Shield at Level 62.

Shamanistic Rage is also useful, but due to your relatively low Attack Power while in leveling gear and long cooldown, the Mana gains are lower than those of Water Shield.

Leveling in dungeons is a very popular way to reach Level 70 quickly and painlessly in TBC Classic. There are three major gains to be had from skipping questing:

• Avoiding PvP and competition for tags will make your experience gains much more consistent over time.
• Reputation Gains can be obtained from killing enemies in most dungeons up to Honored, while keeping the regular quests for extra experience and gold later.
• Minimal TBC Quest and Zone knowledge required, which will be especially relevant for anyone who is not familiar with the questing content but still wants to rush to 70.

Shamans are always welcome in any group due to their versatile totems, which grant multiple benefits to the party no matter the specialization chosen.

This is especially true in TBC Classic, as Windfury Totem and Strength of Earth Totem are joined by their caster counterparts, Wrath of Air Totem and (Elemental-only) Totem of Wrath.

These allow the Shaman to give strong support to both melee and caster cleaves, with Elemental being more suited to caster cleaves, Enhancement being great on melee cleaves, and Restoration bringing most of the support capabilities on a healer role.

Learning professions early on is very useful, as you can naturally level them as you go and avoid extra work at max level. While you can start right away with crafting professions if you have extra gold to spare or other characters to rely on for getting started, gathering professions are recommended as they create gold for you without requiring any initial investment.

We recommend that you learn First Aid and two out of Skinning, Herbalism, and Mining, which you can level alongside your questing path and will provide a steady gold income on the way through the auction house. At maximum level you can easily drop these gathering professions and powerlevel your crafting professions of choice by buying materials, so do not worry about falling behind during leveling.

While leveling, if you are Enhancement, your weapon is the most important piece of your gear. You should look for high raw damage, as Stormstrike scales with it, making slower weapons generally stronger when they have equal damage-per-second values. Slower weapons also allow you to kite with Earthbind Totem more efficiently, if needed.

The rest of your gear should have Strength on it, as it is the stat that increases your damage the most and does so on a predictable manner, allowing you to more accurately judge whether you can kill an enemy or need to heal in close-call situations.

For the other specialization options, Elemental and Restoration, gear is less important but try to aim for Intellect and Spell Power as these stats allow you to kill more enemies or cast more heals before having to rest.

By setting yourself up with an upgraded user interface and macros from the get-go, you will make your leveling process much easier. Check out our Shaman Addons and Shaman Macros guide in the links below for the full list.

While all gear is relevant while leveling, weapons are especially important, as they contribute a great part of your damage — especially when you rely on melee hits as Enhancement but also Elemental and Restoration early on. Read our full guide on weapons below.

Every class in TBC Classic has important class-specific quests that allow them to gear up and learn new active abilities which are often critical to the class. Every single one of your totems, Earth, Fire, Water, and Air comes from doing these quests, and we will detail every single step of the way for you in our full guide for quests below for both Horde and Alliance Shamans.

By the time you hit maximum level, it will be very helpful to read the rest of our guides. Pick Restoration Shaman if you intend to heal at maximum level, which is the preferred specialization for a Shaman looking for a raid group, but Elemental Shaman and Enhancement Shaman are also great supports which every raid will want at least one of.