Elemental Shaman PvP Best Covenants, Soulbinds, Conduits, and Legendary Powers (Dragonflight / 10.0.2)

For more information about what Covenants bring you, please refer to our page about Covenant abilities for Shaman.

It is important to choose the correct Covenant, as it has many impacts on your gameplay. Your Covenant will give you both a Covenant ability and a class ability. The next choice you have will be Soulbinds and Conduits. All of these are Covenant-specific and they are different based on which you choose. Here are the best Covenants for Elemental Shaman. In 9.2, we are able to freely change between Covenants which allows you to try multiple Covenants easily.

1. Necrolord is the best Covenant you can choose. This gives you Primordial Wave acting like another Flame Shock for more Lava Surge procs, and allows you to hit all targets affected by Flame Shock with a Lava Burst, which is your highest damage ability. This also generates Maelstrom for each Lava Burst. It also provides you with an absorption shield, which can be a useful additional shield or to stop incoming crowd control.
2. Kyrian is another of the Covenants you can choose. This gives you a large burst with the Vesper Totem ability. When using the Covenant conduit Elysian Dirge and Skyfury Totem you can deal significant burst.
3. Most Elemental Shaman opt for Necrolord due to more sustained damage and survivability. If you are looking for a one-shot burst potential, Kyrian can be a fun alternative; especially with Unity, Kyrian becomes even more powerful this patch.

Soulbinds are unlocked as you progress your character with a Covenant. These unlock powerful paths that can be taken to give you powerful spells, important passives, etc. Here is the Soulbind and path you should take if you chose Necrolord.

This Necrolord Soulbind path is more defensive, which should help the Elemental Shaman withstand the amount of melee compositions which will be early in the Shadowlands release.

This Kyrian Soulbind path is more offensive using the Vesper Totem to burst your enemies down, while providing passive Critical Strike chance.

Conduits are passive buffs that you can use to fill empty slots in your Soulbind Trees. There are three types of Conduits: Potency, Endurance, and Finesse. Here are the best Conduits for each of those different types:

1. Tumbling Waves gives you the chance to get even more Flame Shock which are critical for getting Lava Surge procs in PvP. This is the best Conduit and as you rank up this Conduit it will be increasingly powerful.
2. Call of Flame makes your elemental pet persist for an additional 10 seconds at Rank 1. This is a major offensive cooldown. As you increase the rank of this Conduit it will get even more value.
3. Swirling Currents even though this is a Restoration Shaman Conduit, this boosts the Elemental Shaman's heals significantly which can make the difference in matches especially when playing with another less mobile caster. This benefit combines with the 20% benefit from Earth Shield.
4. Adaptive Armor Fragment provides flat Intellect which will provide more overall damage during burst and sustained damage rotations.
5. Elysian Dirge will significantly increase the damage of Vesper Totem.

1. Vital Accretion provides a total health point buff, which can help temporarily keep the Shaman alive through cooldowns. Just remember this only lasts for 1 minute.
2. Refreshing Waters will significantly improve your self-healing, which is extremely important, especially when combined with the Swelling Waves PvP Talent.
3. Condensed Anima Sphere provides a small amount of additional healing.

1. Totemic Surge provides the utility from your totems with a reduced cooldown. This allows you to provide more utility to your team faster.
2. Thunderous Paws is decent for a slight burst of movement speed for kiting enemy teams.

Legendaries have many different effects and some can alter how you should use some of your abilities. For more information on Legendaries, check out our general guide on them.

Here are the best Legendaries for a Elemental Shaman.

1. Deeply Rooted Elements is optimal for 3v3 Arena with many targets to keep up three or more Flame Shocks. While the random proc can be inconsistent it provides overwhelming damage when used along with Primordial Wave.
2. Deeptremor Stone, makes your Earth Elemental do significant damage, even while in crowd-control or kiting. Due to the fast pace of PvP in the current state this is an easy way to add significant damage and disrupt your opponents.
3. Skybreaker's Fiery Demise is a great overall damage Legendary. This will allow for overall pressure and consistent damage.
4. Elemental Equilibrium works perfectly with Echoing Shock, whose Elemental damage triggers the Legendary. This aligns your burst with the increased damage from the Legendary for maximum pressure.