Elemental Shaman DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (Season 1)

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.

If the rotations below seem overwhelming to you, you might benefit from visiting our Beginner page, which outlines a close-to-optimal rotation in simpler terms.

The content on this page is purely PvE-related. If you are looking for PvP Rotation Tips, please visit our PvP page below.

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.

• 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.

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 start for this strategy.

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 using a Fire build and 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 two targets 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.

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.

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 your next Lava Burst would cause you to go above maximum Maelstrom.

Because of the numerous talents improving our Fire Elemental/ Storm Elemental in various ways, gone are the times where you had to consider carefully when you wanted to use them. In almost all circumstances, assuming the current combat is not about to end, you want to use them whenever they become available again.

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 Tempest.

In situations (heavy AoE generally) where your Fire/Storm Elemental cooldown comes back while your main Elemental is still out and you are using Echo of the Elementals, you want to either wait for the Elemental to fade naturally if it is about to or use a /cancelaura Fire(or Storm) Elemental macro right before summoning it again. If you do not, you will lose the "mini" Elemental, and if using Primal Elementalist, the cooldowns of Meteor and Tempest will not reset.

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.

Note that because most fire builds will most likely use Skybreaker's Fiery Demise, you should have close to 100% uptime on Fire Elemental.

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).

Elemental is quite mobile: between Spirit Walk or Gust of Wind, Spiritwalker's Grace, Earth Shock, Lava Surge, Ghost Wolf form and potentially Icefury. 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 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.