Elemental Shaman DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (11.1.7)

Welcome to our Rotation page for Elemental Shaman. On this page, you will find everything you need to know about actually playing the spec in Raiding and Mythic+ scenarios.

Due to simulations still being a work in progress and the many changes, these lists are a work in progress. Additional details for Fire-focused are coming soon.

2.

Best Openers for Elemental Shaman

Single-target Opener Multi-target Opener Single-target Rotation/Action Priority List Multie-target Rotation/Action Priority List

Hero Talents
Stormbringer	Farseer

• Earth Shock
• Elemental Blast
• Storm Elemental
• Fire Elemental
• Surge of Power
• Primordial Wave
• Liquid Magma Totem
• Echoes of Great Sundering

3.

Single-target opener

1. Cast Storm Elemental ~4 seconds before the pull.
2. Cast Fire Elemental ~4 seconds before the pull.
3. Cast Stormkeeper ~3 seconds before the pull.
4. Cast Lava Burst ~1.5 second before the pull so it lands right after the pull.
5. Cast Flame Shock so it hits right before your Lava Burst reaches the enemy.
6. Cast Liquid Magma Totem right before your Lava Burst reaches the enemy.
7. Cast Primordial Wave.
8. Use Ancestral Swiftness and Cast Primordial Wave (macro recommended).
9. Cast Ascendance with on-use trinkets and Tempered Potion.
10. Cast Lava Burst.
11. If at any point you get Icefury, cast it immediately but always cast a Lava Burst before your Stormkeeper-empowered Lightning Bolts!.
12. Cast Lightning Bolt.
13. Cast Lava Burst.
14. Cast Lightning Bolt.
15. If you are able, Cast Earth Shock.
16. Cast Lightning Bolt.
17. If you are able, cast Elemental Blast.
18. Cast Lightning Bolt.
19. Proceed with regular rotation.

3.

Multi-target opener

1. Cast Storm Elemental.
2. Cast Fire Elemental.
3. Cast Stormkeeper.
4. Cast Liquid Magma Totem.
5. Cast Primordial Wave.
6. Use Ancestral Swiftness and Cast Primordial Wave (macro recommended).
7. Use Ancestral Swiftness.
8. Cast Ascendance with on-use trinkets and Tempered Potion.
9. Proceed with regular rotation.

3.

Single-target Rotation / Action Priority List

1. Cast Storm Elemental. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE Shaman Elemental 11.1 Class Set 2pc, delay further casts for your next Ascendance unless it will make you waste an entire use.
2. Cast Fire Elemental. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE Shaman Elemental 11.1 Class Set 2pc, delay further casts for your next Ascendance unless it will make you waste an entire use.
3. Cast Stormkeeper. Make sure it is available during Ascendance, ideally cast two GCDs before it (you want to cast Primordial Wave if talented immediately before Ascendance).
4. Use Ancestral Swiftness.
5. Cast Primordial Wave if Flame Shock is present.
6. Cast Ascendance, sync it with on-use trinkets, Bloodlust, Tempered Potion.
7. Cast Ascendance, sync it with on-use trinkets, Bloodlust, Tempered Potion, Splintered Elements.
8. Cast Earth Shock if Ascendance will fade within the next 3 seconds.
9. Cast Earth Shock (or Earthquake if the Echoes of Great Sundering buff is on) if Ascendance will fade within the next 3 seconds.
10. Cast Elemental Blast if Ascendance will fade within the next 3 seconds.
11. When Flame Shock has less than 6 seconds remaining, cast Liquid Magma Totem. As its cooldown is longer than Flame Shock's duration, you will regularly need to use a "manual" Flame Shock cast instead
12. Apply Flame Shock or refresh it when it has 6 seconds or less remaining.
13. Cast Tempest when Surge of Power is available.
14. Cast Tempest. If possible, try casting Tempest with the Master of the Elements buff.
15. Cast Earthquake if the Echoes of Great Sundering buff is on.
16. Cast Earth Shock whenever you are less than 15 Maelstrom from capping or when Master of the Elements is up.
17. Cast Elemental Blast whenever you are less than 15 Maelstrom from capping or when Master of the Elements is up .
18. Cast Icefury but consume each of the two Fusion of Elements buffs before you cast it again.
19. Cast Lightning Bolt when Surge of Power is available.
20. Cast Lava Burst if Flame Shock is up and Master of the Elements is not up.
21. Cast Lightning Bolt if empowered by Stormkeeper.
22. Cast Icefury-empowered Frost Shock. It can be worth keeping one charge for movement.
23. Cast Lightning Bolt.
24. Cast Frost Shock while moving.

3.

Multi-target Rotation / Action Priority List

If you are only fighting 2 targets, you still want to keep up the single-target rotation, but you use:

• Chain Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt.
• Earthquake instead of Earth Shock.
• Earthquake instead of Elemental Blast.
• If you are using Stormbringer AND Elemental Blast WITHOUT Echoes of Great Sundering, do not use Earthquake when fighting only 2 targets.
• a second Flame Shock on the second target before casting Primordial Wave, as the added damage and Haste from Splintered Elements make this worth it.

1. Cast Storm Elemental. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE Shaman Elemental 11.1 Class Set 2pc, delay further casts for your next Ascendance unless it will make you waste an entire use.
2. Cast Fire Elemental. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE Shaman Elemental 11.1 Class Set 2pc, delay further casts for your next Ascendance unless it will make you waste an entire use.
3. Cast Stormkeeper. Make sure it is available during Ascendance.
4. Use Ancestral Swiftness
5. Cast Liquid Magma Totem.
6. Cast Primordial Wave. Make sure it is available during Ascendance, cast it right before it, after using Stormkeeper.
7. Cast Ascendance, sync it with on-use trinkets, Bloodlust, Tempered Potion, Splintered Elements.
8. Cast Tempest when Surge of Power is available.
9. Cast Chain Lightning when Surge of Power is available and there are at least 6 cleavable targets.
10. Cast Earth Shock if the Echoes of Great Sundering buff is NOT on.
11. Cast Elemental Blast if the Echoes of Great Sundering buff is NOT on.
12. Cast Earthquake if the Echoes of Great Sundering buff is on.
13. Cast Earthquake.
14. Cast Tempest.
15. Consume the Fusion of the Elements buff from Icefury
16. Advanced! Feel free to skip this step When fighting AT MOST 4 TARGETS, cast Icefury. Do not to cast it again until you consume its Fusion of Elements buff by casting one of these spells:
    1. Elemental Blast
    2. Liquid Magma Totem
    3. Ascendance
17. Advanced! Feel free to skip this step Cast Icefury. Do not to cast it again until you consume its Fusion of Elements buff by casting one of these spells:
    1. Elemental Blast
    2. Liquid Magma Totem
    3. Ascendance
    4. Instant Lava Burst via Lava Surge if a Flame Shock is present AND you can follow it up with a spender
    5. Flame Shock if none are present on any target.
18. Cast Chain Lightning.
19. Cast Frost Shock while moving when they are empowered by Icefury.
20. Use Lava Surge while moving.

For basic information on how this new feature works, please visit our Combat Assistant guide.

Short version: It has very limited uses as a new Elemental player.

We recommend against using the Single-button Rotation feature except maybe if you have never played Elemental at all and are off-speccing it for the first time, or are using a level boosted Shaman. In those cases only, it can initially help giving you an idea of the "rhythm" of how Elemental plays, but the built-in GCD penalty is a massive DPS loss. Beyond those basics relying on that button will prevent you from learning how to actually play the specialization, and your damage will be lower.

The Button Highlight feature does not incur a built-in GCD penalty, and is a more reasonable in-between, especially as a fresh Elemental practicing on target dummies or in trivial content. That being said, it is also worse than doing a "proper" rotation, as it will regularly give you bad advice. Finally, it requires you to stare at your action bar and lose focus on your combat environment, which can lead to many mistakes.

Before using each of your cooldowns, you should take special care to consider several factors. Some of our offensive cooldowns have lengthy recharge times, but when correctly utilized, they can be responsible for a large percentage of our damage output. You should always take into account:

• Your raid's Bloodlust/ Heroism/ Time Warp usage.
• The mechanics of the current boss, including intermissions and abilities that necessitate movement.
• The spawn timers of any adds that might be present, as we may want to use or delay certain cooldowns with respect to cleave and AoE.

Make sure you have as many things as possible lined up with Ascendance:

• Bloodlust/ Heroism/ Time Warp
• Tempered Potion
• Splintered Elements right before or immediately at the start
• Storm Elemental cast before
• Stormkeeper
• On use trinkets, most notably Spymaster's Web. Treacherous Transmitter also lines up well.

Before each Ascendance use, ensure no boss mechanics will interfere, such as intermissions, boss movement, or mechanics that will force you to move. It can be a good idea to use Spiritwalker's Grace to ensure full DPS uptime. If using this talent, try casting Elemental Blast immediately before activating Ascendance.

Do not let yourself Maelstrom cap; be sure to cast your spender when or before your next cast would cause you to go above maximum Maelstrom.

Keep in mind that all our Elementals' damage abilities are now available to autocast, and so in single-target in particular, you do not need to manually cast their abilities, although in other situations, it may be worth trying to manually cast Meteor or Stormfury.

Remember not to use Earth Elemental when your Fire/Storm Elemental is still around if you use Primal Elementalist, as it will despawn the latter.

Stormkeeper is used more or less on cooldown on pure single-target encounters.

On multiple-target fights or fights with intermittent cleave and AoE, it can be a good idea to delay your Stormkeeper until you are able to Chain Lightning 5 targets (or 6 with Surge of Power).

In most scenarios, there are two main uses for Surge of Power. Either you use it on Chain Lightning in order to hit a 6th target if possible, or, in a single-target fight, you use it on Lightning Bolt for additional Mastery: Elemental Overload procs.

In addition, if fighting against multiple targets within 8 yards of each other, you may want to empower your Flame Shock to spread to another target, but only if Flame Shock is not already present on either target or is within the pandemic window, and it is not possible or practical to use Liquid Magma Totem or Primordial Wave.

If you do not know what the "pandemic window" is, look here.

Finally, if you are using Stormkeeper as well, it is a solid damage increase to have Surge of Power available for at least one of the Lightning Bolt casts, ideally both if it is practical.

Elemental is quite mobile: between Spirit Walk or Gust of Wind, Spiritwalker's Grace, Ghost Wolf form and its many instant rotational spells. Elemental is, at worst, a fairly mobile spec, especially if you use your instant spells to adjust your positioning. Proactively position yourself to reduce potential movement from mechanics. Keep careful track of boss timers and mechanics, as they can spell disaster for your damage if you are targeted when all your cooldowns are out.

You should avoid casting Maelstrom-generating spells above a certain Maelstrom threshold that would make you go over the Maelstrom cap. Because of all the talents and procs interacting with that threshold, it is difficult to give exact numbers without making a detailed list that would be very impractical to use. Instead, we generally recommend that you use Swelling Maelstrom and follow our recommended priorities in order to never overcap. Keep this in mind when pooling Maelstrom as well. It is likely these spells will overload. Therefore, if you cast Lava Burst and would go over your Maelstrom cap if you gained more than 8 Maelstrom, it is likely you will overcap Maelstrom and waste valuable resources. In practice, it is safer to cast these spells at lower Maelstrom than their limits to avoid wasting your overload procs. The key to success is managing all of your separate procs without overcapping Maelstrom.

The reason why Flame Shock should always be up on your target is because:

• Each tick has a chance to proc Lava Surge, which resets the cooldown of Lava Burst;
• Your Lava Burst will always critically hit if Flame Shock is on the target. This is very important due to Elemental Fury and our multiple other sources of Critical Strike Damage.

You should only cast Lava Burst when Flame Shock is active on the target.

Flame Shock benefits from Pandemic, meaning that you can refresh it any time that it has less than 30% of its original maximum duration remaining, and the remaining duration will be added to the new debuff. Therefore, you are able to refresh Flame Shocks without wasting any duration when it has 5 seconds or less remaining, and it will be extended by 18 seconds. For example, if your Flame Shock has 5 seconds left and you refresh it, your new Flame Shock would last 23 seconds. Note that these numbers are all doubled if you have a Fire Elemental in play.

• Tempest has no target limit but does reduce damage beyond 5 targets.
• Meteor is limited to 8 targets.
• Earthquake and Liquid Magma Totem have a soft-cap at 20 targets. This cap is high enough that it should rarely matter.