Season of Discovery Elemental Shaman DPS Talents and Runes

This build generally offers the most balanced DPS to Mana capabilities. Regardless, if you are comfortable with using Shamanistic Rage, you could possibly be able to drop Convection in order to pick up some extra utility from Improved Ghost Wolf and survivability from Elemental Warding.

Elemental Shaman's bottom talents are incredibly powerful: Elemental Fury, Lightning Mastery, and Elemental Mastery are all great talents that drastically increase your burst damage capabilities.

You should also pick up Improved Lightning Shield to increase the damage potential of Rolling Thunder and Ancestral Knowledge provides a small, but relevant contribution to the Mana returned by Shamanistic Rage

• Gloves — Lava Burst
• Pants — Ancestral Guidance
• Chest — Overload
• Waist — Power Surge
• Feet — Spirit of the Alpha (if not available from other Shaman) or Decoy Totem
• Head — Burn
• Wrist — Rolling Thunder
• Back — Feral Spirit (ST) or Storm, Earth, and Fire (AoE)
• Ring — Nature Specialization
• Ring — Fire Specialization

Overload provides a large passive damage increase to Elemental Shamans, while Lava Burst is an extra spell capable of high damage, as long as you remember to apply Flame Shock first.

With Shamanistic Rage turning baseline in Phase 4, Ancestral Guidance is the best leg Rune option, enabling extra off-healing with minimal DPS cost! For the Waist slot get Power Surge for a ton of Mana regen and occasional instant offensive spell casts.

The Feet slot is quite straightforward: Spirit of the Alpha should always be taken if you do not have an alternative way to obtain this buff in your group, but if you will already be getting it from other Shaman in the group, just get Decoy Totem for the small defensive and movement benefits.

Burn improves your Spell Power and Flame Shock massively, especially for area damage where you can get huge amounts of Power Surge procs very quickly with minimal effort. Rolling Thunder enables your Lightning Shield to contribute towards your damage and Mana regeneration when Earth Shock is used together with the lightning damage spells.

Feral Spirit provides a powerful cooldown for single-target situations, while Storm, Earth, and Fire has great synergy with Burn and Overload, making your Chain Lightning into an Area DPS monster. Finally, Nature Specialization and Fire Specialization increase your Spell Hit, making gearing for the Spell Hit cap much easier and improving your DPS as a result.

Make sure to check our Shaman Rune guide in order to learn where to get all the SoD runes!