Elemental Shaman DPS Guide — The War Within Pre-Patch

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.

Note that Hero talent trees are not relevant for the pre-patch period as you unlock your first point at level 71. There will be a dedicated guide for them available for The War Within's release.

While we received an extensive rework, it will not drastically upend our playstyle for the pre-patch period, as we remain more or less locked in Fire-dominant builds due to our tier set. There are significant differences, however, most notably:

• You will now have Deeply Rooted Elements AND Ascendance. They have also become stronger thanks to Preeminence. Meatball enjoyers rejoice!
• Primordial Surge is gone; now you will pretty much always get Splintered Elements. Those last two changes add up to a lot of Haste, which means you will most likely want to drop some Haste from your gear.
• Icefury is now much easier to use and is recommended on every build. It is now a proc from your Lava Bursts that transforms your Frost Shock button into Icefury, which is now instant and buffs your next 2 Frost Shocks. Currently, the proc and the number of buffed Frost Shocks you get stacks, which may not be intended. You want to use those, particularly if you are grabbing Flux Melting.
• Fusion of Elements is currently very strong for several reasons. For starters, it is bugged and deals full Elemental Blast damage. It also procs from both the Icefury proc and when Icefury is spent. And both times, it interacts with everything a regular Elemental Blast interacts with (except Surge of Power and Echoes of Great Sundering).
• We received a bunch of talents enhancing our Elementals, meaning it is both easier and much more important to maintain as much uptime as possible on your Fire Elemental. Thankfully, we will almost certainly lock in Skybreaker's Fiery Demise, making Fire Elemental uptime a non-issue, especially outside of single-target scenarios.

Now that the most crucial changes for your actual play have been covered, we will list a detailed breakdown of the changes affecting Elemental Shamans, starting with the Elemental-specific changes, then the changes common to all Shamans.

• All Damage increased by 30%
• 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.
• Primordial Fury has been redesigned — now increases the critical damage bonus of Elemental Fury by 25%.
• 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.
• Flash of Lightning now also increases the critical strike chance of Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning by 10%.
• Swelling Maelstrom now also increases the damage of Earth Shock, Elemental Blast, and Earthquake by 5%.
• Master of the Elements now increases the damage of the next spell by 15% (was 10%/20%).
• Echo Chamber now increases the damage of Elemental Overloads by 10% (was 8%/15%).
• 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.
• Magma Chamber now stacks up to 10 times (was 20).
• Elemental Equilibrium is now a 10% damage bonus (was 8%/15%).
• Elemental Equilibrium no longer has a tracking debuff.
• Eye of the Storm now reduces the Maelstrom cost of Earth Shock and Earthquake by 5, and Elemental Blast by 10.
• Maelstrom generation has been updated for the following abilities:
  • Lightning Bolt is now 6 (was 8).
  • Lightning Bolt Overload is now 2 (was 3).
  • Chain Lightning is now 2 per target hit (was 4).
  • Chain Lightning Overload is now 1 per target hit (was 3).
  • Lava Burst is now 8 (was 10).
  • Lava Burst Overload is now 3 (was 4).
  • Icefury is now 12 (was 25).
  • Icefury Overload is now 4 (was 12).
  • Frost Shocks empowered by Icefury is now 10 (was 14).
• Flow of Power no longer increases Maelstrom generation from overloads.
• 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.
• The following 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 Shaman Class Tree has received a large rework. Many talents have been removed, many have been added, and the pathing and position of many talents have changed.

• Many talents have moved locations or have had their pathing updated in all trees.
• 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. 2-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%.
• 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 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.
• The following talents are now 1 point:
  • Totemic Focus
  • Elemental Warding
  • Nature's Guardian
  • Winds of Al'Akir
  • Nature's Fury
  • Totemic Surge
• The following talents have been removed:
  • Go With The Flow
  • Flurry
  • Maelstrom Weapon
  • Enfeeblement
  • Stoneskin Totem
  • Tranquil Air Totem
  • Ancestral Defense
  • Surging Shields
  • Swirling Currents

Elemental Shaman's damage on Beta is currently the best in the game along with Arcane mages by a significant margin, however, this is largely due to multiple interactions from our rework, which we do not believe are intended. Our various damage profiles are solid, however, and I expect that with proper tuning, Elemental should be at the higher end of DPS.

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 took a large boost. We obtained a significant increase to our passive/background defenses as well as a mediocre but still significant 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 amount of customization and choices available to Elemental Shaman is good, although, unfortunately, Tier Sets often narrow down our competitive options significantly. For The War Within's pre-patch, our tier set, assuming it remains enabled, will keep locking us into Fire-dominant builds.

Many build variants are viable, and there is room to customize your build often. Playstyles also vary a lot; the main Lightning builds have stricter rotations in order to optimize the various ways we buff our Lightning Bolts, with some potential complexity rewarded by significant damage output, and Fire builds are generally more straightforward & and mobile in single-target. Note that Elemental Blast is very strong and worth using for AoE purposes on up to 3 targets (and with any amount of targets when using Echoes of Great Sundering, which is somewhat counter-intuitive and lowers your mobility potential.

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.