Elemental Shaman DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Dragonflight 10.0.7
On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Elemental Shaman in both single-target and multiple-target situations. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to minmax your DPS. All our content is updated for World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.0.7.
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Elemental Shaman rotation.
Elemental Shaman Rotation
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.
Easy Mode
If the rotations below seem overwhelming to you, you might benefit from visiting our Easy Mode page, which outlines a close-to-optimal rotation in simpler terms.
PvP
The content on this page is purely PvE-related. If you are looking for PvP Rotation Tips, please visit our PvP page below.
Mythic+
Neither our single-target nor our multi-target rotations change in Mythic+ content. If you are looking for information and tips specific to Mythic+ content, please visit our Mythic+ page below.
Tier Set Bonus for Elemental Shaman
Our tier set bonuses should not change our rotation much overall.
Elemental Shaman 2pc makes it more important not to cast more than 5
Lightning Bolt,
Chain Lightning and
Lava Burst without
casting a spender, but in practice it should not really happen anyway.
Elemental Shaman 4pc is similar, in practice this should be up
most of the time and does not change our priorities.
There is some awkwardness for AoE, Elemental Shaman 2pc leads
Echoes of Great Sundering
users to try to game the stacks by using single-target spenders with as few stacks
as possible, meaning ideally right after
Earthquake. The anti-synergy with
Elemental Shaman 4pc
is pretty clear. In practice if you have both, you are probably better off ignoring
Elemental Shaman 2pc
and focusing on maintaining
Elemental Shaman 4pc uptime, particularly
if you use
Echo Chamber and
Mountains Will Fall.
Single-Target Rotation for Elemental Shaman
The rotation of an Elemental Shaman revolves around the following priority
list. Note that for the special "rotation" involving Stormkeeper,
Surge of Power and
Icefury, we assume you are using
Eye of the Storm,
Flow of Power and
Swelling Maelstrom. If you are not, adjust
accordingly.
Note that this does not currently support all the viable fire build variants introduced with the latest hotfix, this is currently a work in progress and will be updated for Dragonflight's release.
-
Storm Elemental
-
Fire Elemental
-
Lava Surge
-
Stormkeeper
-
Surge of Power
-
Icefury
-
Electrified Shocks
-
Master of the Elements
-
Elemental Blast
-
Primordial Wave
-
Deeply Rooted Elements
-
Ascendance
-
Primal Elementalist
-
Liquid Magma Totem
-
Primordial Surge
-
Further Beyond
-
Windspeaker's Lava Resurgence
-
Lightning Lasso
-
When in
Ascendance form cast
Earth Shock whenever available, but always alternate it with
Lava Burst.
-
When in
Ascendance form cast
Elemental Blast whenever available, but always alternate it with
Lava Burst.
-
Cast
Earth Shock if your next cast will make you overcap Maelstrom.
- Cast
Lightning Bolt as a filler on a single target.
- Cast
Flame Shock as a filler while moving, unless
Primordial Wave will become available
- Cast
Frost Shock as a filler while moving.
For more information on your opening sequence, please refer to our dedicated section.
Note that if you are using Primal Elementalist without
Storm Elemental,
you can cast
Meteor whenever you want, as you can only cast it once
per Elemental. Since its damage is not split, you ideally want to hold onto it
if multiple targets are going to be present.
Multiple Target Rotation for Elemental Shaman
Note that this does not currently support all the viable fire build variants introduced with the latest hotfix, this is currently a work in progress and will be updated for Dragonflight's release.
-
Storm Elemental
-
Fire Elemental
-
Surge of Power
-
Stormkeeper
-
Electrified Shocks
-
Primordial Wave
-
Ascendance
-
Deeply Rooted Elements
-
Primal Elementalist
-
Elemental Blast
-
Echoes of Great Sundering
-
Liquid Magma Totem
-
Splintered Elements
- Cast
Earth Elemental if it is off cooldown and you either are not using
Primal Elementalist or your
Fire Elemental is not currently active. You cannot have 2 Primal Elementals active at the same time.
- If all targets are split, keep
Flame Shock up on as many of them as you can as long as they will live for the whole duration.
- Cast
Earthquake.
- Cast
Lava Burst if there are 3 or fewer targets and if a
Flame Shock is up
- Cast
Chain Lightning.
- Cast
Flame Shock when moving
AoE Target Caps
Tempest has no target limit, but does reduced 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.
"Funneling"
Funneling means using the fact that there are multiple targets present in the fight
to gain damage on a single target. For Elemental Shamans, this means having multiple
Flame Shocks running on several targets and using the additional
Lava Surge
procs to gain a significant amount of DPS on one target. If this is an important part
of the fight, you may want to gear toward Haste, as this is a very good stat
for this strategy.
Master of the Elements
If you are using the talent Master of the Elements you may want to try
to use the buff on the most appropriate spell for the situation, usually
your spender. From best to worst, you ideally want to use
Master of the Elements
on:
Lightning Bolt empowered by
Stormkeeper
Earthquake if it will hit 4+ targets or 2+ if empowered by
Echoes of Great Sundering.
Elemental Blast
Earth Shock
Frost Shock empowered by
Icefury
Lightning Bolt empowered by
Power of the Maelstrom
Icefury
Lightning Bolt
Frost Shock
Note that the list above is what will give the most value for the proc,
but IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THIS IS THE ACTUAL SPELL PRIORITY IF YOU HAVE A PROC.
It should not override the fact that you should cast Earth Shock if you
have 90 or more Maelstrom or that casting
Elemental Blast should generally
take priority over everything else if long term efficiency is the goal. Obviously
there are plenty of situational exceptions, but it is impossible to give static
priorities for every situation.
Surge of Power
In most scenarios, especially in a raid, there are two main uses for
Surge of Power. Either you use it on
Lava Burst in order to get
a full additional use of
Fire Elemental, or, if the fight will not last long
enough, you use it on
Lightning Bolt for additional
Mastery: Elemental Overload procs.
In addition, against exactly 2 targets within 8 yards of each other, you
want to use Earth Shock to empower your
Flame Shock to
hit both targets, but only if Flame Shock is not already present on both or is
within the pandemic window.
If you do not know what the "pandemic window" is, look here
Finally, if you are using Stormkeeper as well, you should
almost always want to pool Maelstrom before casting it, so that both Stormkeeper-empowered
Lightning Bolts become also empowered by
Surge of Power. The exact
amount of Maelstrom required depends on the talent whether or not you are using
any combination of these talents:
Eye of the Storm,
Flow of Power,
Elemental Blast,
Searing Flames.
Here is an example assuming you use our recommended single-target build, with
Eye of the Storm and
Flow of Power:
- Pool Maelstrom until you have at least 58; if specced into
Electrified Shocks cast an
Icefury-empowered
Frost Shock just before or just after casting
Stormkeeper.
- Cast
Stormkeeper
- Cast
Earth Shock
- Cast
Lightning Bolt
- Cast an
Icefury-empowered
Frost Shock if specced into
Electrified Shocks
- Cast
Earth Shock
- Cast
Lightning Bolt
This talent has some interesting synergy with Primordial Wave and
Skybreaker's Fiery Demise for heavy multi-dotting of split targets.
Cooldown Usage for Elemental Shaman
Before using each of your cooldowns, you should take special care to consider several factors. Our offensive cooldowns have lengthy recharge times, but when correctly utilized, 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.
Ascendance
There are a few things to consider before each Ascendance
usage.
- Ensure
Flame Shock is present on as many targets as possible.
- 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.
- Clear
Lava Surge if active, and any remaining
Lava Burst charges.
- If using this talent, cast
Elemental Blast immediately before activating Ascendance.
Do not let yourself Maelstrom cap; be sure to cast your spender when
or before you reach 90 (140 with Swelling Maelstrom) Maelstrom,. If using
Further Beyond, make sure you do not let
Ascendance fade
when you could have used a spender to extend it.
Fire/Storm Elemental
Fire Elemental (or
Storm Elemental) has a long cooldown, and
its usage should be considered carefully. The best time to use this cooldown
is always during periods of increased Haste or damage, and therefore we typically
will pair it with the
Bloodlust/
Heroism/
Time Warp usage.
That said, we never want to lose a potential usage of Fire/Storm Elemental by delaying
it for maximum efficacy. For example, on an encounter that lasts 3 minutes, you
would use Fire Elemental immediately on the pull and once again as soon as
it is off cooldown, regardless of when Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp is used.
Remember not to use
Earth Elemental when your Fire/Storm Elemental is still
around if you use
Primal Elementalist.
Stormkeeper
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 the adds.
Managing Movement for Elemental Shaman
Elemental is a lot more mobile in Dragonflight, between getting Spirit Walk
or
Gust of Wind with some talents increasing your movement speed further
especially in
Ghost Wolf form and
Icefury being a must. Fire-focused
builds also have formidable mobility thanks to massive amounts of
Lava Surge
procs. Elemental is at worst a fairly mobile spec, especially if you use your
instant spells to adjust your positioning. Pro-actively 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
during a damage dump.
Academic Information for Elemental Shaman
Maelstrom Management
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. We recommend
instead 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 at raid levels of gear, therefore, if you cast
Lava Burst at 90/140 Maelstrom or
Icefury at 75/125 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.
Lava Burst and Flame Shock
This section is currently somewhat obsolete unless Lava Burst gets buffed.
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 your
Elemental Fury passive.
You should only cast Lava Burst when
Flame Shock
is active on the target, or the target will live for less than 5 seconds.
Flame Shock ticks every 3 seconds without accounting for Haste, meaning that you
have to take advantage of
Lava Surge within one global cooldown to
avoid potentially wasting a new Lava Surge proc from the next Flame Shock tick.
By the same token, casting Lava Burst immediately as it comes off cooldown is
also imperative so that Lava Surge is not wasted while Lava Burst is off cooldown.
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 be 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.
Opening Sequences for Elemental Shaman
- Cast
Fire Elemental/
Storm Elemental 3 seconds before the pull.
- Use
Elemental Potion of Power.
- Cast
Lava Burst.
- Proceed with normal priority.
Changelog
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 05 Jan. 2022: Overhauled several parts of the single-target priority list to be more precise, fixed a couple of oversights.
- 21 Dec. 2022: Added dedicated lines for Lava Surge and Windspeaker's Lava Resurgence. Adjusted a couple other lines.
- 15 Dec. 2022: Removed a duplicate line from from the multi-target rotation.
- 13 Dec. 2022: Added checkboxes to the opener section.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Adjusted some wording on multitarget rotation.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Small fix to multitarget rotation.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 18 Nov. 2022: Updated with a disclaimer on the new fire builds.
- 07 Nov. 2022: Added Lightning Bolt with Surge of Power to multi-target rotation (2 targets only).
- 03 Nov. 2022: Further fixes to several talent toggle issues, modification in the Master of the Elements section.
- 02 Nov. 2022: Fixed a variety of issues, mostly with talent toggles, improved several lists, added some information on build viability.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight 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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