Elemental Shaman DPS Mythic+ Tips — Dragonflight 10.0.7

Elemental Shaman is currently an above average ranged-DPS specialization for Mythic+ in Dragonflight. It can provide strong multi-target burst and sustained damage, as well as a lot of utility. Its mobility is much better than before and it is slightly less fragile. Its single-target damage is okay, but nothing special.

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our Dragonflight Mythic+ Season 1 page below.

To get an idea of the approximate power level of different specs in Mythic+, visit the page below. Tier lists are not the end-all for the actual value of specs in various content however so take it with a grain of salt.

Both the single target and multi-target rotations do not change in Mythic+ content. For more information about the Elemental Shaman DPS rotation, refer back to the Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities page.

A couple additional habits you should practice in Mythic+:

• Pool your Maelstrom towards the end of every trash pull, in order to reduce the ramp-up time needed to reach your maximum output.
• Keep in mind that efficiency is important and that you should not waste spells that do damage over time on enemies that will die within seconds. In particular, limit the amount of Flame Shock and Earthquake casts. This of course also goes for cooldowns. Do not waste cooldowns on packs that are are about to die.
• Damage is not all there is in Mythic+, so you will often want to weave in crowd control abilities, such as Hex or Capacitor Totem, between damaging abilities.

Elemental Shamans provide support for the party through heavy crowd control, a variety of dispels and occasional healing.

• Your Earthquakes will always knock down non-Boss enemies once. Being able to spam Earthquakes results in considerable crowd control.
• Healing Surge heals for a moderate amount with a fast cast time. It costs 25% of your Mana pool. Do not hesitate to use it on yourself or others.
• Earth Shield and its sister talent Elemental Orbit are nice ways to help your healer, especially combined with your own healing spells.
• Earth Elemental is a summon that is primarily used to help with tanking for 1 minute. It can taunt and take quite a bit of punishment before dying, while also dealing okay damage.
• Wind Shear is your "kick". It is fairly unique in that its 30-yard range and 12-second cooldown are shorter than most other ranged characters. This makes Wind Shear one of the best interrupts in the game, and you should use it a lot. This cooldown gets even lower if you are using Flash of Lightning, typically along with a Lightning-focused build.
• Capacitor Totem is your only way to stun targets. You cast it at a target location and, after 2 seconds, it will stun enemies within 8 yards for 3 seconds. This ability has a 1-minute cooldown, which can be reduced by using the Static Charge talent, or lead to a follow-up stun if using Guardian's Cudgel.
• Hex is the Shaman equivalent of Polymorph. This spell transforms 1 enemy into a frog for 60 seconds, preventing it from attacking or casting spells as long as you do not attack it. It only works on humanoids and beasts.
• Earthbind Totem projects a totem that slows everything around it for 20 seconds. It is very useful, especially if you kite around the totem.
• Earthgrab Totem is the previous totem's big brother, it roots surrounding targets for 8 seconds, then slows them.
• Thunderstorm does very little damage, but knocks away enemies around you and slows them by 40% for 5 seconds. It is quite useful, especially when you use it to displace an enemy in a specific direction, which is extremely useful to push enemies off Sanguine Ichor in Sanguine keys. The Thundershock talent, recommended in most other situations, transforms Thunderstorm into a more reliable crowd-control spell that does not risk pulling additional enemies.
• Tremor Totem summons a totem removing all Fear, Charm and Sleep effects on party and raid members within 30 yards every few seconds for 10 seconds.
• Purge remove 1 beneficial effect from an enemy target. Greater Purge removes 2, which is rarely useful in PvE.
• Cleanse Spirit removes all curses from a friendly target.
• Healing Stream Totem does a decent amount of healing over time. If you have a few seconds before a pull, it can be a good idea to drop one before the fight begins.
• Chain Heal does significant healing in dungeons. You should not use it often but it can be very good to help your healer or to keep your party up if your healer died or ran out of Mana.
• Nature's Swiftness is a must-pick in every situation
• Depending on the dungeon, pick Wind Rush Totem or Earthgrab Totem. Earthgrab can be used reactively and makes for safer "discovery" of dungeons, while Wind Rush is better with pre-planned use to gain some time or kite.
• In some dungeons, Poison Cleansing Totem or Stoneskin Totem might have some use. Most notably, Poison Cleansing Totem is a godsend to help the tank survive poison stacks when fighting Hungry Lashers in Algeth'ar Academy
• Ancestral Guidance can potentially be useful if your healer cannot deal with some damage situations properly in high keys, or just to help save their Mana.

There are many competing builds for non-single-target situations and what is best will heavily depend on your stats and the specific combat situation. They are split into two main categories, "Lightning-focused" builds and "Fire-focused" builds.

Lightning-focused builds have stronger and faster cleave and are best on 4+ stacked targets, even if they do not live for very long.

Fire-focused builds require enemies that live for longer, but are massively better against spread out enemies and have better priority target damage and single-target damage in general. They can also spec into reliable burst of various duration, or rely on Deeply Rooted Elements and have higher variance.

For the beginning of the expansion, we think Lightning-focused builds will give more reliable results to most players, although you should keep the previous paragraphs in mind. Here is an example. Remember that you can use the "Copy Export String" option to import it directly into the game.

Note that the class tree assumes a non-specific dungeon situation, so you might have specific utility needs not covered by this general recommendation.

There are multiple variants here depending on whether you want to lean a bit more on the fire side, or want better single-target at the cost of some AoE. The main issue with Lightning-focused builds more of their points give mediocre or bad value compared to fire builds. This makes hybrids of all sorts viable. We will not mention every possibility here and recommend testing things yourself or reading our detailed opinions on talents further down the page.

Alternatively, you can also use a Fire-focused build. Here is an example. Remember that you can use the "Copy Export String" option to import it directly into the game.

As before, there are many variants of such builds, varying their strengths and weaknesses. Choice paralysis may be a real issue for us this expansion.

While these recommendations should help you with your talent picks in Mythic+, in some situations it can be better to tailor your talents to specific situations. For a more in-depth look at all the Elemental Shaman talents, visit the link below.

For general information about Mythic+, please visit our general mythic+ page.

Elemental Shamans should excel during Fortified weeks as our multi-target damage has a short ramp up time and then will sustain at high numbers with or without the use of cooldowns, and our crowd-control is unmatched. During Tyrannical weeks, players may want to take more single-target oriented trinkets, gear, or even talents but that will be both dungeon and key level dependent.

Use any mobility or crowd-control at your disposal to help deal with Spiteful Shades from Spiteful. Elemental is particularly good at dealing with this affix because of their arsenal of crowd-control and the fact that their Earthquakes will knock down the shades, buying precious time.

Elemental Shamans should use Thunderstorm to push enemies off of Sanguine Ichor zones when on this affix.

Use Healing Surge liberally during Grievous weeks and bring consumables to assist your healer when out of combat. Do not hesitate to lean more into healing-focused talents for this affix: Refreshing Waters, Focused Insight, Earth Shield, Chain Heal and of course getting Ancestral Guidance.

The seasonal affix, Thundering, gives everybody one of two temporary buffs that when they expire stun and damage everybody with the other buff who is within 100 yards. This can be prevented by having 2 people with opposing buffs move to the same spot. As Elemental Shamans have no immunity, they do not have any particular or exceptional way to interact with this affix, but their high mobility should make it easy to handle.

For more details about the season 1 Thundering affix, please visit our dedicated affix page.

For a better idea on how to gear for Mythic+, please visit our dedicated Gearing guide.