Elemental Shaman DPS Mythic+ Tips — Shadowlands 9.0.2
In this guide, you will find tips and advice to tackle Mythic+ dungeons with your Elemental Shaman in World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.0.2.
Elemental Shaman in Mythic+
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 1 page below.
Elemental Shaman Mythic+ Rotation
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 Shaman Utility
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.
Mythic+ Talents for Elemental Shaman
Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+.
Level | Choices | ||
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15 |
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25 |
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30 |
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35 |
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40 |
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45 |
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50 |
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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 fairly close in power for AoE.
Echoing Shock gives the best burst,
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 is good if
you can cast it for most pulls, but is lackluster in single-target.
Storm Elemental is still fairly strong on 4-6 target AoE if you also use
Primal Elementalist. Do not pick it otherwise.
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.
Mythic+ Affixes
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.
Seasonal Affix (Season 1)
The seasonal affix, Prideful, is not particularly tricky and
I do not have any specific Elemental tip to give. Just make sure that when you
receive the debuff that surrounds you with red arrows, stand still so the other
players can easily avoid them, or move slightly so other players do not need to
move.
Legendary Powers for Mythic+
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, and
Windspeaker's Lava Resurgence brings the best single-target,
as well as good mobility for boss fights.
Elemental Equilibrium makes you
do a lot of damage on pulls so it is also a possible choice.
For more details about Legendary Powers, please visit our dedicated Legendary Powers guide.
Covenants and Soulbinds for Mythic+
All four covenants and their varied Soulbinds all have different advantages for Mythic+ and it is very hard to recommend a "best" one. You probably cannot go wrong with Necrolord however.
For more in-depth recommendations on Covenants and Soulbinds, please visit our dedicated guide.
Gear for Mythic+
For a better idea on how to gear for Mythic+, please visit our dedicated Gearing guide.
Changelog
- 24 Nov. 2020: Page updated for Shadowlands release. Removed the Azerite Traits section, updated talent recommendation and advice for dealing with different affixes. Added sections for Covenant and Legendary Power choice.
- 15 Oct. 2020: Updated some talent recommendations, adjusted the description of lvl 35 talents.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More Shaman Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Stormy, Elemental main since Wrath of the Lich King and member of the Storm, Earth and Lava Elemental theorycrafting team.
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