Elemental Shaman DPS Mythic+ Tips — Shadowlands 9.1.5

Elemental Shaman is currently an above average ranged-DPS specialization for Mythic+ in Shadowlands. 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 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 Shadowlands Mythic+ Season 2 page below.

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 at no DPS-cost.
• 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 Elemental is a summon that is primarily used to help with tanking for 1 minute. It can taunt and, in Battle for Azeroth, can now take quite a bit of punishment before dying, while also dealing decent damage.
• Wind Shear is your "kick". It is fairly unique in that its 30 yards 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Cleanse Spirit removes all curses from a friendly target.
• Healing Stream Totem does a pretty good amount of healing. 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.

Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+.

Level	Choices
15	? Earthen Rage	✓ Echo of the Elements	✗ Static Discharge
25	✓ Aftershock	? Echoing Shock	✓ Elemental Blast
30	✓ Spirit Wolf	✗ Earth Shield	✓ Static Charge
35	✓ Master of the Elements	✓ Storm Elemental	? Liquid Magma Totem
40	✓ Nature's Guardian	✓ Ancestral Guidance	? Wind Rush Totem
45	✗ Surge of Power	✓ Primal Elementalist	? Icefury
50	✗ Unlimited Power	✓ Stormkeeper	✗ Ascendance

As you can see, for all tiers except one, nothing is an automatic pick. Talents that are too weak will not be mentioned.

For Level 15 talents, Earthen Rage requires no input and does well in every situation, but is almost always worse than Echo of the Elements, because of the latter's many synergies.

The Level 25 row has all three talents somewhat close in power for Mythic+. Echoing Shock gives the best burst but significantly less overall dps, Aftershock is, on average, great value for sustained AoE, but is an all-or-nothing gambling talent. Elemental Blast is the best for single-target and, with its Maelstrom generation, makes it competitive in dungeons.

Static Charge is a good default choice on the Level 30 row, if you think the additional crowd control will be needed. Otherwise, the speed and damage reduction from Spirit Wolf is always nice to have.

Master of the Elements has good synergy with many things, notably Echoes of Great Sundering, and even without, it is the strongest overall talent in this tier. Liquid Magma Totem has very strong burst and works well with Seeds of Rampant Growth if you joined the Night Fae. It is good if you can cast it for most pulls, but is lackluster in single-target. Storm Elemental is strong on 4-6 target AoE if you also use Primal Elementalist, and generally gives good damage to power through hard pulls. Do not pick it without Primal Elementalist.

The Level 40 row provides a choice between passive survivability with Nature's Guardian or active group healing with Ancestral Guidance. We recommend the former if you are unfamiliar with the content you are playing, but Ancestral Guidance can be very helpful to help your group through significant damage phases.

In most situations, Primal Elementalist is just the better choice in the Level 45 row, although Icefury allows constant single-target DPS throughout the dungeon even if heavy movement is required. Surge of Power is generally not worth using although it does have some interesting synergies, notably with Skybreaker's Fiery Demise.

Stormkeeper is the best choice by far in nearly every situation.

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 will 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. 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.

The Inspiring can be dealt with in a variety of ways. If the Inspired mob is hexable, you can hex it and deal with the other mobs as usual. Alternatively, you can Thunderstorm it away from the rest of the mobs.

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

Use Healing Surge liberally during Grievous weeks and bring consumables to assist your healer when out of combat.

Necrotic debuffs the target of enemy melee swings with stacking healing reduction and minor DoT. Elemental Shamans should utilize Thunderstorm, Capacitor Totem, Earthbind Totem and potentially Earth Elemental to assist tanks in kiting enemies before they become unhealable when doing a dungeon with the Necrotic affix.

The seasonal affix, Tormented, is essentially a more refined version of the season 1 affix, Prideful. It is a bit more complex, but essentially just adds 4 optional minibosses that you can kill to gain boons and remove dangerous auras from the dungeon's final bosses. Most of those auras are extremely dangerous and you will definitely want to kill most minibosses in most dungeons, especially in Tyrannical. The anima powers you gain are common for every role, and are generally quite substantial, so it is safe to assume that most groups will kill 3 or 4 of those minibosses. Only one of those bosses, Executioner Varruth, seems notably scary.

Because the new minibosses are all pretty straightforward and the anima powers gained are generic, there is not really anything special for Elemental Shamans here, nothing to interrupt or otherwise deal with other than dodging abilities. The vast majority of those anima powers should not influence your gameplay in any way.

When participating in a Level 10 or higher Legion Timeworn Keystone you will encounter the new affix: Infernal, which adds Infernal Beacons near some bosses. Activating a Beacon or engaging a nearby boss will trigger a Legion invasion. Like most "seasonal" affixes, this is just more mobs to kill and this time it involves mobs instead of a single mini-boss, which Elemental is adept at dealing with.

Depending on the dungeon and the level of the key, or your party's composition, different Legendary Powers can shine. Overall however, your best bet is probably Echoes of Great Sundering for bringing fantastic stacked AoE while keeping good single-target damage. Skybreaker's Fiery Demise will shine for multi-dotting split targets but is generally just weaker, and Windspeaker's Lava Resurgence brings the best single-target (but not by a lot), as well as good mobility for boss fights, so it can be an option for dungeons with multiple scary bosses with Tyrannical.

For more details about Legendary Powers, please visit our dedicated Legendary Powers guide.

All four covenants and their varied Soulbinds all have different advantages for Mythic+. Currently, Night Fae is generally acknowledged to be the strongest covenant for Mythic+, especially when using the benefits ofKorayn intelligently. Necrolord remains very strong however, especially for its defensive utility.

For more in-depth recommendations on Covenants and Soulbinds, please visit our dedicated guide.

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