Elemental Shaman Leveling Guide from 1 to 80 — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

Elemental Shaman is excellent at questing when your cooldowns are up, much less so when they are not. Generally, you will be slower than many other specs at pure questing leveling because your raw burst, multidotting, or ability to reliably pull half a zone is not as good as many other specializations. That being said, with smart cooldown use, you can pull just about anything, especially when your trusty Earth Elemental and Bloodlust/ Heroism are available. In a way, this favors taking breaks, appreciating the new zones, and reading quest text and not speedrunning as fast as possible, which is what we would recommend!

Elemental Shaman is well suited to dungeons as well, with their wide toolkit allowing them to help get any group out of almost any bad situation and their AoE damage being extra powerful when using a dedicated dungeon build.

When leveling up, always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. The only exception to this rule is if you have a Ring or Necklace with a slightly lower item level but 2 secondary stats on it instead of 1.

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Your first talent unlocks at Level 10.

This is an example setup; it is difficult to go wrong while leveling. For example, you may want to make a beeline for damage talents and ignore some defensive/healing or crowd-control abilities. We would encourage experimenting with the feel of different talents. Note that the value of some talents/talent combos can change significantly depending on your secondary stats. This assumes no particular stat is heavily favored.

• Level 11 and 12: Get Chain Lightning then Fire and Ice on your class tree and Earth Shock or Elemental Blast on your elemental tree.
• Level 13 to 19: Get Astral Shift then Astral Bulwark and Thunderous Paws on your class tree and Elemental Fury, then Tectonic Collapse and Stormkeeper on your elemental tree. If you would prefer a higher Astral Shift uptime at the cost of a significantly lower damage reduction, you can spec into either Planes Traveler instead.
• Level 20 to 26: Get Nature's Guardian, Wind Shear and Brimming with Life from the class tree, then Molten Wrath, Earthquake and Flash of Lightning on the elemental tree.
• Level 27 to 35: Get Spiritual Awakening, Earth Elemental, and Winds of Al'Akir from the class tree and Lightning Capacitor, then Fury of the Storms, Primordial Fury, Path of the Seer and Elemental Resonance on the elemental tree.
• Level 36 to 44 Get Chain Heal, Earth Shield, Gust of Wind, Elemental Orbit and Capacitor Totem from the class tree and Storm Frenzy, Storm Infusion, Echo Chamber, and Earthshatter from the elemental tree.
• Level 45 to 52: Get Wind Rush Totem, Nature's Fury and Elemental Warding from the class tree as well as Amped Up, Power of the Maelstrom, Flametongue Weapon and Ascendance from the elemental tree.
• Level 53 to 58: Get Therazane's Resilience, Instinctive Imbuements and Earthgrab Totem from the class tree, and Inferno Arc, Voltaic Blaze and Purging Flames from the elemental tree.
• Level 59 to 64: Grab Refreshing Waters, then get Spiritwalker's Grace and Graceful Spirit. On the spec tree, grab Call of Fire, First Ascendant and Mountains Will Fall.
• Level 65 to 70: Get Nature's Swiftness, then Windveil, and Ascending Air from the class tree. On the spec tree, grab Crackling Fury and Primal Elementalist.
• Level 71 to 74: I recommend using the Farseer tree for leveling as it is much easier to use than Stormbringer. You will want to get Elemental Reverb, Spiritwalker's Momentum, Final Calling and grab Ancestral Swiftness as soon as possible!
• Level 75 to 80: After that, it matters less, you probably want to get Heed My Call, Latent Wisdom, Primordial Capacity, Maelstrom Supremacy, Offering from Beyond and Earthen Communion.

Remember to keep the following buffs up at all times:

• Lightning Shield, mostly important after talenting Lightning Capacitor.
• Skyfury
• Earth Shield
• Flametongue Weapon

1. Cast Stormkeeper whenever it is available.
2. Use Ancestral Swiftness whenever available.
3. Cast Flame Shock when engaging enemies , with Voltaic Blaze when it is available..
4. Cast Ascendance whenever you need the burst.
5. Cast Lava Burst whenever it is available.
6. Cast Earth Shock/ Elemental Blast or Earthquake if multiple enemies will be hit by for its whole duration.
7. Cast Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning if multiple enemies will be hit by it.
8. Cast Flame Shock when you need to move, and the enemy will live for a while yet.

There are several consumable items that can be purchased that will help you with your leveling speed.

• Ideally you want to have useful flasks buffing you at all times, you can buy various level-appropriate ones for cheap. Charged Phial of Alacrity (from level 61) needs refreshing often but gives Speed, which is is typically more useful than combat stats for leveling. If you prefer combat stats, you can use flasks such as Flask of Tempered Versatility from level 71, or Flask of Alchemical Chaos since it gives you slightly more secondaries overall.
• Food buffs are not as good if only because you need to waste time to eat, but it can still be useful, particularly when you have to wait for an NPC or for a mob to spawn. Fried Bonefish or Bear Tartare will give you speed after killing an enemy.
• Healing potions will help minimize downtime by allowing you to play more aggressively without having to heal yourself as much. Use level-appropriate ones, such as Invigorating Healing Potion from level 71.
• The Loot-A-Rang toy can be used to retrieve loot from a nearby corpse.
• Goblin Glider Kit is very useful for covering long distances from high places.
• Gunshoes are an Engineering item that increase your movement speed by 200% for 25 seconds. These will make you almost as fast as a Flying mount. We recommend having a lot of these, and using them whenever you are traveling more than ~250 yards.

The Gunshoes will not let you stop moving as long as they are active. Using this macro twice will click the buff off and allow you to stop.

• #showtooltip
• /use Gunshoes
• /cancelaura Gunshoes

If you are willing to take the risk and utilize War Mode, the following PvP talents are recommended during leveling or for other open-world content. There may be times when you would like to use other options and are encouraged to experiment! PvP talents can be freely changed at any time.

Your first PvP talent slot will unlock at Level 20, your second at Level 30, and the final at Level 40. The following is a curated list of PvP talents that we consider good for leveling.

1. Storm Conduit reduces the cooldown of Astral Shift, Gust of Wind, Wind Shear and Nature Totems by 1 second every time you cast Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning. It also reduces the time you are interrupted by 30% when casting those two spells.
2. Lightning Lasso is a channeled ability that grips the target in lightning, stunning it and dealing moderate Nature damage over 5 seconds while the lasso lasts. It also lets you move while channeling.
3. Counterstrike Totem replicates and reflects damage you take for 15 seconds on a 40-second cooldown. This can be really strong when in a high-damage area to deal some chip damage to targets around you and convert your health pool into additional damage.
4. Burrow Burrow beneath the ground, becoming un-attackable, removing movement-impairing effects, and increasing your movement speed by 50% for 5 seconds. When the effect ends, enemies within 6 yards are knocked into the air and take a moderate amount of Physical Damage. This ability has a 2-minute cooldown.
5. Totem of Wrath increases the critical effect of spells of allies within 40 yards by 15% for 15 seconds after casting Stormkeeper. Good for solo play and excellent if you are doing outdoor content with others.
6. Static Field Totem summons a totem at a target location that creates a circle of terrain that enemies cannot move through. It is extremely handy, versatile crowd control with a 1-minute cooldown.
7. Shamanism transforms Bloodlust/ Heroism into a weaker, shorter duration cooldown that is up every minute. It lasts 10 seconds and, only increases Haste by 20%, and does not apply Sated/Exhaustion. It is certainly an okay choice, but I much prefer the stronger, rarer cooldown.

We recommend picking 3 of the above talents, depending on what you value most. Personally, we would recommend the following picks:

• Level 20: Storm Conduit or Lightning Lasso
• Level 30: Lightning Lasso or Storm Conduit
• Level 40: Counterstrike Totem or Burrow, depending on personal preference.