Elemental Shaman PvP Rotation and Playstyle — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

Elemental Shaman are dependent on combining the benefits of multiple talents to kill their opponents, which requires Maelstrom and preparation. Elemental Shaman will either be one of three states during PvP:

1. Sustaining damage and generating Maelstrom.
2. Dealing large amounts of damage by using Voltaic Blaze, Flame Shock, Lava Burst, and Earth Shock on cooldown, Lightning Lasso when you are able to line up crowd-control.
3. Playing defensively.

This is done through spreading damage and disrupting the enemy team.

1. Maintain Voltaic Blaze as a core priority, which applies Flame Shock to multiple targets instantly and ensures your Lava Burst always critically strikes. This helps generate Maelstrom if talented into Searing Flames.
2. Use Lava Burst on cooldown as soon as possible if you have a Lava Surge proc on a target with Flame Shock active to guarantee a critical strike.
3. Cast Earth Shock if Maelstrom is above 80, and you do not have Lava Surge proc available.
4. Cast Purge or Greater Purge as a filler.
5. Cast Wind Shear on the healer or enemy casters.
6. Cast Hex on enemy melee to reduce incoming damage, or on enemy healers.

The burst of Elemental Shaman is relatively consistent compared to other classes.

1. Ensure Voltaic Blaze is used on your kill target and as many other enemy team members as possible to apply Flame Shock.
2. Ensure you have 80 or more Maelstrom to be able to use Earth Shock.
3. Cast Stormkeeper, which will activate Totem of Wrath, if talented.
4. Use Ancestral Swiftness.
5. Use Ascendance.
6. Cast Lava Burst, which will critically strike all targets with Flame Shock from Voltaic Blaze.
7. Use Lightning Bolt.
8. Use Lava Burst with Lava Surge procs.
9. Use Lightning Bolt.
10. Use Earth Shock if you have enough Maelstrom.
11. Fill with Lava Burst.

Healing Stream Totem should be used on cooldown to provide moderate amounts of passive healing. This is also increased through the 20% benefit if Earth Shield is on the target and will provide significant side healing.

Healing Surge is a spammable heal that provides significant side-healing. This should be used if your healer is stunned or crowd-controlled.

Earth Shield maintain this on yourself and one teammate due to talent Elemental Orbit to provide side-healing to your team.

Hex is a curse 7-second crowd-control which can be broken by damage. In general, you do not want to damage a target that has been hexed. That player does still have control of their character to move out of line of sight. This is best used on the enemy team when they have used an offensive or defensive cooldown or the healer as part of a crowd-control chain.

Earthbind Totem is a placed totem that slows any enemies within the radius. This totem is incredibly useful and should be used on cooldown. This helps your team's positioning. This totem can also help you land Capacitor Totem.

Thunderstorm knocks back all enemies around the Elemental Shaman as long as they are not rooted or have an immunity to knock-backs or magic effects active like Anti-Magic Shell from Death Knights. This is incredibly useful and can be used to save your teammates on arena maps with ledges, Dalaran Sewers, and Blades Edge Arena. This is also a great ability for battlegrounds in Eye of the Storm or certain areas of Twin Peaks and Arathi Basin, which can kill the enemies from fall damage in these cases.

Purge or Greater Purge can be used defensively to purge off your opponent's offensive cooldowns or Mana back cooldowns, which are purgeable. One very important use is during a Priest's Mind Control of your teammate. When a Priest does this, it is better to use purge on your Mind Controlled teammate and not use your Wind Shear interrupt. This is because purge has no cooldown, while Wind Shear is on a 12-second cooldown.

Astral Shift is the main defensive for Elemental Shaman, which is on a 1.5-minute cooldown. This ability decreases damage taken by 40% for 12 seconds and is not usable while stunned. It is best to communicate with your healer and use this cooldown at high health when your opponents are using their offensive cooldowns and your healer needs help keeping you alive.

Burrow an immunity, similar to Dispersion from a Shadow Priest. While under the ground, you can be healed and can move at full movement speed. This is particularly useful if your healer gets crowd-controlled and the Shaman does not have Astral Shift available.

Ghost Wolf is an underrated ability; it allows the Shaman to stay at 100% movement speed with any slowing debuff active. This is the way Elemental Shaman can kite melee opponents and stay very mobile. If you are moving beyond a very short distance, Ghost Wolf is worth the global cooldown it incurs. Ghost wolf can be purged, which is one of the reasons why the Spirit Wolf talent is not as good as it could be.

It is advised to use Macros to use abilities on enemies or allies without having to target them. For this reason, we have a page dedicated to them.