Elemental Shaman DPS Gear and Best in Slot — The War Within (Season 1)

Welcome to our Gearing Page for Elemental Shaman. This section will cover everything you need to know about equipping your character correctly.

If you have a new piece of gear for which you need gems and enchant advice, you can find everything on our dedicated page below.

At this stage in the game, there are so many variables and layers of optimization that you can apply to your character that there is no way for a guide or anything else to tell you exactly what gear you should wear. This is why we always recommend simulating your own character using Raidbots. The website can help you choose set bonuses, trinkets, and combinations in a way tailored completely to your specific character. Learning to use this tool is essential to maximizing your potential, as there is simply no other way to consider all the variables.

The easiest way, and also the method we suggest, to compare multiple items is to use Raidbots' Top Gear. Here, you can input an export from the Simcraft AddOn, select the items to compare, and it will find out which of the items are best.

Many people overthink the distribution of their secondary stats. An important thing to remember is that a higher quantity of stats is nearly always better than a better quality of stats. Because of this, wearing higher item-level gear with worse stats tends to be better than lower item-level gear with great stats. Keep this in mind when considering gear. For more stats information, please refer to our dedicated page.

We only provide "Best in Slot" lists as a mandatory requirement stemming from certain guilds and players thinking they absolutely need to mindlessly chase that one item in that one slot and nothing else will do. Sometimes, raid leaders enforce a very strict "BiS list" for loot council without any nuance; other times, it is players themselves enforcing it on themselves.

Static Best in Slot lists are only an indicative tool in a vacuum; we recommend using the following tools: Raidbots Top Gear and its Droptimizer options.

This weekly loot system remains much the same. You can select ONE item out of a maximum pool of 9, depending on how many raid bosses you defeated, your Dungeon clears and how many Delves and Weekly World Quest you accomplished in the previous week.

You can learn more about this system on our dedicated Great Vault page.

You will be able to upgrade your items via Crests such as Gilded Harbinger Crest. Once you have upgraded a slot to a certain item level, upgrading other items of that slot to that item level is free.

When you upgrade with Crests, you should think of it as upgrading slots and not items.

Additionally, since Crests are a limited resource, you will want to obtain the highest item-level possible before upgrading a given slot, as this means you will spend fewer Crests on that slot in total. If you are at all capable of doing a +9 Dungeon, for example, it would be a VERY bad idea to upgrade an item from a +8 Dungeon, as those are wasted Crests you may not get back for a very long time.

We see a ton of players, even at a high level, mess up their upgrade priorities, and upgrading prematurely. Getting this right will put you far ahead of most players.

Below is the slot priority you should upgrade your items in. If you ever want to deviate from this, you should have a very good reason.

1. Weapons
2. Trinkets
3. Helm/Chest/Legs
4. Shoulders/Gloves/Belt/Boots
5. Rings and Necks
6. Cloaks and Bracers

Note that exceptions are possible, such as special items that have more Item Level scaling than their slot would imply.

Unsurprisingly, you should sim your character to determine which upgrades give the most bang for your buck at any point in time. Beyond that, you generally want to maximize your weapon, then your trinkets, then whatever slot is your worst, and after that, it is generally best to upgrade the slots that give the most stats, with a lower priority on whatever has the best secondaries but maximizing Intellect remains the best way to gain DPS.

What you should craft in our opinion largely depends on what items you obtain, what items you will likely have available to you from various content, if you will get priority on certain items, and generally whether you want to optimize for the short or medium term. Take our advice with a grain of salt and adapt to your particular circumstances.

Note that with the "secret" quest from winning one epic battleground, you receive enough Forged Gladiator's Heraldry to craft up to 3 pieces, and can get more from Conquest points. This allows you to craft up to 610 item level missive items, which DO NOT REQUIRE SPARKS. This is an excellent source of "filler" items once you already have some gear. They will remain at 610 and are not further upgradable however, making them ideal for "temporary" boosts on slots you hope to get a stronger item for in the next few weeks.

Overall, unless you got or will have priority for a high item level Sureki Zealot's Insignia (very rare), we recommend getting an Amulet of Earthen Craftsmanship crafted with Jewelcrafting, with Haste, Critical Strike, and an Elemental Focusing Lens embellishment.

Your second craft should be one of those two:

• Everforged Dagger crafted with Blacksmithing, with Haste, Critical Strike and a Darkmoon Sigil: Vivacity embellishment. If you go for this and you will have access to enough Gilded Harbinger Crests, we recommend you save these to craft this as soon as possible. This will be EXPENSIVE. If you got a great weapon from vault or heroic/mythic raid, you may want to look to other options and craft this later, if at all.
• a Consecrated Cloak crafted with Tailoring with Haste, Critical Strike and either Dawnthread Lining or Duskthread Lining as embellishment.
• If you will not do much Mythic+, it is not unreasonable to craft a Ring of Earthen Craftsmanship with Jewelcrafting, with Haste, Critical Strike and an Elemental Focusing Lens.

Embellishments are significantly weaker in The War Within compared to Dragonflight. As long as you get "something", it makes only a small difference what embellishment you get, so especially early on I would recommend against expensive ones.

Our current generic recommendation is to either get Elemental Focusing Lens on your Amulet of Earthen Craftsmanship and either Darkmoon Sigil: Vivacity on your Everforged Dagger if you go that route, or either Elemental Focusing Lens, Dawnthread Lining or Duskthread Lining on your Consecrated Cloak or Ring of Earthen Craftsmanship, depending on what you craft. These last embellishments remain what we recommend if you decide to craft something else.

Note that the best embellishments from a pure DPS perspective for raiding only, assuming the start of the fight is not the key part, is using Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension on a Everforged Dagger and a Writhing Armor Banding on an armor piece. This is the best long-term DPS gain you get from embellishment, but it takes a long time to stack and drops entirely if you spend more than a few seconds out of combat.

The only special weapons in The War Within are crafted with Blacksmithing but they are not worth the bother, you just want regular weapons instead (with Darkmoon Sigil: Vivacity if crafted). It is important to equip a one-hander and a shield, as opposed to a staff, because Thunderstrike Ward is quite strong.

While professions do not generally give player power, there are possible exceptions in some circumstances. Suppose you want to min/max your player power in all possible situations. In that case, you should be an Alchemist and an Engineer. Note that the actual uses of their unique bonuses are highly conditional and, for the most part, should not dictate your profession choice.