Elemental Shaman DPS Guide — The War Within (Season 1)

Elemental Shaman is a damage-dealing spellcaster with a rich and flexible toolkit. Elemental Shamans can approach a multitude of environments without feeling compromised. The specialization has unmatched utility in many scenarios and can be customized to adapt to a variety of damage profiles. Overall, this specialization has a tool or talent for most scenarios.

Elemental received an extensive rework for The War Within. While it kept its core abilities and interactions, many things are changed. The Elemental tree, in particular has received a large overhaul, and the class tree to a lesser extent, with a lot of the talents that remain shuffled to different spots and with different branching. We will focus on the most important changes and recommend you take some time to read through the new class and talent trees, as well as the new hero talent trees.

You can read more information about Elemental Shaman Hero Talents in our dedicated pages:

The following Specialization talents have been introduced:

• New Talent: Fusion of Elements — after casting Icefury, the next time you cast a Nature and a Fire spell, you additionally, cast an Elemental Blast at your target at 60% effectiveness.
• New Talent: Storm Frenzy — your next Chain Lightning or Lightning Bolt has 40% reduced cast time after casting Earth Shock, Elemental Blast, or Earthquake. Can accumulate up to 2 charges.
• New Talent: Elemental Unity — while a Storm Elemental is active, your Nature damage dealt is increased by 10%. While a Fire Elemental is active, your Fire damage dealt is increased by 10%.
• New Talent: Lightning Conduit — while Lightning Shield is active, your Nature damage dealt is increased by 8%.
• New Talent: Everlasting Elements — increases the duration of your Elementals by 20%.
• New Talent: Thunderstrike Ward — imbue your shield with the element of Lightning for 1 hour, giving Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning a chance to call down 2 Thunderstrikes on your target for Nature damage.
• New Talent: Earthen Rage — your damage spells incite the earth around you to come to your aid for 6 seconds, repeatedly dealing Nature damage to your most recently attacked target.
• New Talent: Echo of the Elementals — when your Storm Elemental or Fire Elemental expires, it leaves behind a lesser Elemental to continue attacking your enemies for 15 seconds.
• New Talent: First Ascendant — the cooldown of Ascendance is reduced by 60 seconds.
• New Talent: Preeminence — your Haste is increased by 25% while Ascendance is active, and its duration is increased by 3 seconds.
• New Talent: Fury of the Storms — activating Stormkeeper summons a powerful Lightning Elemental to fight by your side for 8 seconds.

The following Class talents have been introduced:

• New Ability: Skyfury — Harness the fury of the Windlord to grant a target ally 2% Mastery and empower their auto attacks to have a 20% chance to instantly strike again for 1 hour. If the target is in your party or raid, all affected party and raid members will be affected. Learned at level 17.
• New Talent: Elemental Resistance — healing from Healing Stream Totem reduces Fire, Frost, and Nature damage received by 6% for 3 seconds.
• New Talent: Refreshing Waters — your Healing Surge is 25% more effective on yourself.
• New Talent: Traveling Storms — Thunderstorm now can be cast on allies within 40 yards, reduces enemies' movement speed by 60%, and knocks enemies 25% further.
• New Talent: Seasoned Winds — interrupting a spell with Wind Shear decreases your damage taken from that spell school by 15% for 18 seconds. Stacks up to 2 times.
• New Talent: Encasing Cold — Frost Shock snares its targets by an additional 10%, and its duration is increased by 2 seconds.
• New Talent: Arctic Snowstorm — enemies within 10 yards of your Frost Shock are snared by 30%.
• New Talent: Ascending Air — the cooldown of Wind Rush Totem is reduced by 30 seconds, and its movement speed effect lasts an additional 2 seconds.
• New Talent: Enhanced Imbues — the effects of your weapon imbues are increased by 20%.
• New Talent: Stone Bulwark Totem — summons an Earth Totem at the feet of the caster for 30 seconds, granting the caster a shield absorbing damage for 10 seconds, and an additional absorb every 5 seconds. 3-minute cooldown.
• New Talent: Jet Stream — Wind Rush Totem's movement speed bonus is increased by 10% and now removes snares.
• New Talent: Primordial Bond — while you have an elemental active, your damage taken is reduced by 5%.

The following Specialization talents have been removed:

• Tumultuous Fissures
• Focused Insight
• Refreshing Waters
• Primordial Bond
• Call of Thunder
• Call of Fire
• Electrified Shocks
• Windspeaker's Lava Resurgence
• Oath of the Farseer
• Further Beyond
• Rolling Magma
• Primordial Surge
• Maelstrom Weapon

The following Class talents have been removed:

• Go With The Flow
• Flurry
• Maelstrom Weapon
• Enfeeblement
• Stoneskin Totem
• Tranquil Air Totem
• Ancestral Defense
• Surging Shields
• Swirling Currents

We will only list here the most impactful changes to our abilities, in particular the ones that received mechanical changes and not just slightly different numbers. Most notably, talents that could have two points invested in them have all been adjusted to only have one point.

The following Specialization abilities have been changed:

• Maelstrom generation has been adjusted for every ability
• Icefury has been redesigned — casting Lava Burst has a chance to replace your next Frost Shock with Icefury, stacking up to 2 times.
• Icefury now empowers the next 2 Frost Shocks (was 4).
• Mastery: Elemental Overload has been redesigned — now increases all Physical and Elemental damage dealt. The damage of Elemental Overloads is now 25% of normal damage (was 85%).
• Lava Surge is now learned at level 12 and has been removed from the Class tree.
• Inundate is now learned at level 14 and has been removed from the Elemental tree.
• The trigger rate of Lava Surge and Searing Flames now scale based on the number of targets Flame Shock is on. In single target, it should trigger slightly more often, and in AoE, it should trigger less often.
• Power of the Maelstrom now causes the next Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning to trigger an additional Elemental Overload (was 2). Can now stack up to 2 times.
• Stormkeeper has been removed from its choice node with Lightning Rod.
• Earth Shock is now a choice node against Elemental Blast.
• Earthquake is now a choice node with an option to have it be cast on your target.
• All nodes are now 1 point.
• Splintered Elements now grants 10% Haste (was 20%).
• Power of the Maelstrom now has a 60% chance to trigger (was 25%).
• Liquid Magma Totem damage reduced by 30%.
• Liquid Magma Totem now has a 30-second cooldown (was 1 minute).
• Additional Lava Bursts from Primordial Wave now deal 50% of normal damage (was 80%).
• Surge of Power's Lava Burst benefit is now a 4-second cooldown reduction to elementals (was 6 seconds).

The following Class abilities have been changed:

• Voodoo Mastery has been redesigned — your Hex target is slowed by 70% during Hex and for 6 seconds after it ends. Reduces the cooldown of Hex by 15 seconds.
• Flurry moved from the Class tree to the Enhancement tree.
• The cooldown of Gust of Wind has been reduced to 20 seconds (was 30 seconds).
• Earthgrab Totem and Wind Rush Totem no longer share a choice node.
• Lightning Lasso and Thundershock no longer share a choice node.

Elemental Shaman's damage with our recommended builds is solid for single-target and excellent in AoE, especially with a specialized build.

All Shamans now bring the Skyfury raid buff, which is quite powerful, especially with melee-heavy compositions. This vastly improves the general desirability of bringing a Shaman, any Shaman, to every raid group.

Elemental Shaman survivability received a massive boost. We obtained a significant increase to our passive/background defenses as well as a powerful new defensive with Stone Bulwark Totem. We also received the somewhat niche but situationally very powerful Seasoned Winds talent, as well as the oddly designed Elemental Resistance talent that is hard to gain value from reliably. Reincarnation remains as clunky as ever, and got worse in Mythic+ with the longer Death Timer Penalties.

Elemental's utility toolkit is even greater than before and excellent outside of raids where it went from abysmal to alright. The new Traveling Storms node has some potential; we received a choice node allowing us some snare customization from Frost Shock (though it will probably hardly ever be used), we have more sensible access to Totemic Focus, Totemic Surge and Totemic Projection and received a brand new choice node to customize our Wind Rush Totem with either Ascending Air and most notably Jet Stream, the latter being potentially very powerful. The seasonal dungeons have much use for both Cleanse Spirit and Poison Cleansing Totem.

The amount of customization and choices available to Elemental Shaman is more limited than before in practice because we are largely locked into highly synergetic talents, and you generally want to either pick most of the talents buffing your fire abilities, or most of the talents buffing your lightning abilities.

Some build variants are viable, and there is room to customize your build often. Playstyles vary somewhat, but in effect, both fire and lightning builds tend to emphasize spamming either Lava Burst or Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning. Elemental Blast is now close enough to Earth Shock in raw power that we are recommending most builds use Earth Shock, especially during the content discovery phase.

If you want to play an Elemental Shaman but currently do not have one at max level, you can check out our leveling guide for tips on your journey.

After the leveling phase, you may want to optimize your performance by using one or several addons. In order not to be overwhelmed, we recommend you start using at least some of our recommended addons during the leveling of your Shaman, so you can get acquainted with them and configure/customize them to your liking.

Elemental Shaman is a spec with simple fundamentals for both single-target and AoE, with a wide array of customization available from your talents. Some talents allow for Elemental to be very easy to play or very complex and rewarding.

Most of your time will be spent casting Lava Burst and (depending on the build) Lightning Bolt, while maintaining Flame Shock and casting Earth Shock or Elemental Blast once you have enough Maelstrom. Beyond these fundamentals, gameplay largely depends on your talent choices.

Whether you are just starting as an Elemental Shaman and are interested in learning the basics of the spec or want an up-to-date overview after the Shaman rework, visit the Spell Summary first, and optionally the Beginner page below. Note that the recommendations on this page are optimized for ease of use and are unlikely to yield as much potential DPS as our advanced recommendations.

If you already know how Shamans work, head directly to the Talents and Rotation pages in order to find out more detailed information.

Gearing is not as simple as it once was, although the easy access to simulations is extremely helpful. Our gearing page will help you learn about how best to gear your Elemental Shaman. This includes theoretical Best in Slot lists.

After you have acquired some gear, you must then use the right enchants, gems, and consumables. Visit our dedicated page, as well as our stats page, so you get a better idea of which stats you should look for.

While your core gameplay loop is accessible early on, max-level gameplay can be wildly different than during leveling. Our Mythic+ and PvP guides will help you fine-tune your gameplay in any end-game content. We highly recommend using some of the macros in our Addon page as well.

If you are struggling with doing good DPS and are unsure what you are doing wrong, visit the pages below in order to find answers and advice.