Season of Discovery Elemental Shaman DPS Stat Priority

Before we begin, it should be said that gear in Season of Discovery, such as Extraplanar Spidersilk Boots, tends to be very unique. Thus, you will often be chasing very specific items, rather than simply following a stat priority list. Still, a more detailed explanation on each of an Elemental Shaman's relevant stats will help you understand why those pieces are so sought after.

1. Spell Hit Rating (5% is needed to cap hit against Sunken Temple bosses, see below for details);
2. Spell / Nature / Fire Damage (some spells scale better with it than others, but for the most part you will be casting spells that benefit greatly from it);
3. Intellect (grants spell critical strike and increases your maximum Mana).
4. Spell Critical Strike (200% damage with Elemental Fury);

• Mana every 5 seconds (for Mana regeneration while you are casting);
• Spirit (for Mana regeneration while you are not casting)
• Resistance (strongly reduces Magic damage taken of a specific element);
• Stamina (more health per point);
• Agility (dodge);
• Armor (less physical damage taken).

Spell Hit allows your spells to land more often, which is a huge DPS increase. Keep in mind that you will always have at least a 1% chance to miss with spells. Depending on the level of your enemy, you might need more or less Spell Hit to reach this 1% cap:

• For an enemy of the same level as you, 3% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• For an enemy 1 level higher than you, 4% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• (Sunken Temple Bosses) For an enemy 2 levels higher than you, 5% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• For an enemy 3 levels higher than you, which is the case of raid bosses, 16% Spell Hit is needed to cap.

Unfortunately, Elemental has no talents that increase Hit and, as such, needs the full 5% Hit to max out against Sunken Temple bosses, which diminishes its damage potential greatly.

Spell Damage is applied to each spell based on its casting time.

The coefficient is calculated by dividing the cast time of a spell by 3.5. This is because a 3.5 second cast benefits from 100% of your gear's Spell Damage. For example, if you have 20 additional Spell Damage from gear, then this will simply affect your spells as follows:

• Damage Increase per spell cast = n * 20
• n = spell's coefficient

Instant single target spells typically only get around 43% of the benefit, with area of effect spells having an even greater penalty.

Thus, 100 Spell Damage on your gear would cause Lightning Bolt to deal 85.71 extra damage per cast. A table with the exact coefficients for all spells in WoW Classic can be found in this reddit thread, by u/RobertVests.

Intellect is a fine stat for Elemental Shamans, as it increases total Mana pool and spell critical strike. It will also make Shamanistic Rage more powerful, as it scales with your total Mana pool size.

Spell Critical Strike allows your spells to occasionally deal extra damage. Elemental can increase the damage of critical strikes further with the Elemental Fury talent, bringing them from 150% of normal damage up to 200%!

For Elemental Shamans, Spirit provides Mana regeneration, as long as you are outside the 5-second rule only, making it weaker than it is for Priests or Druids, for example.

Resistance, while inherently niche due to different bosses dealing different magical damage types, can be very useful while progressing specific bosses. Wearing resistance gear of a type makes you take less damage or even completely avoid damage when hit by that type of magical damage.

Stamina is the only stat that will help you survive all types of attacks, and as such, should always be valued.