Shaman Guide

Elemental Shaman is a damage-dealing caster with a rich and flexible toolkit, which provides as much visual spectacle as it does damage numbers. They use the natural elements, Fire, Air and Earth, and combine them into a fluid rotation that adapts well to movement and to each encounter's damage profile. Talents provide flexibility, and the ability to customize your gameplay, with many different options being competitive.

Finally, the specialization also has unmatched utility in many scenarios, bringing class tools such as Reincarnation, Wind Rush Totem, Wind Shear, Thunderstorm, Purge, Tremor Totem, and Poison Cleansing Totem, but also the random knockdowns from Earthquake.

Elemental is a valuable caster in raid groups due to its flexible damage profile which performs well in both single and multiple target scenarios, and can do some funneling, where you use the presence of secondary targets to increase your single target damage to the main target, typically a boss.

They are reasonably hard to kill due to passives such as Elemental Warding and Brimming with Life, and have great mobility thanks to Spiritwalker's Grace and Earth Shock, among other abilities.

The same strengths of Elemental apply in Mythic+, with their regular AoE damage rotation also being very strong. Most importantly, Elemental loses only fairly little single target damage for picking up large area damage, which is a core strength for dungeon gameplay.

Finally, Earthquake's crowd control properties and the large amount of utility present in the Shaman tree really shines in dungeons, and all Shamans are popular for bringing Bloodlust/ Heroism and many crowd control skills for enemies, as well as Poison Cleansing Totem and a Curse dispel.

Enhancement is a melee specialization with a heavy emphasis on both Physical attacks, such as Stormstrike, and Elemental spells, such as Lightning Bolt, weaving both together with Maelstrom Weapon in a fast-paced battle-mage combat style with a variety of effects that enhance your main abilities and damage cooldowns such as Doom Winds or Ascendance.

Enhancement's gameplay revolves around juggling ability cooldowns and proc management, with their Maelstrom Weapon mechanic providing extra mobility by making spells instant. Finally, the specialization also has excellent utility in many scenarios, bringing class tools such as Reincarnation, Wind Rush Totem, Wind Shear, Purge, Capacitor Totem, Tremor Totem, and Poison Cleansing Totem.

Enhancement brings the important Skyfury raid buff and critical Bloodlust/ Heroism abilities, but is not a particularly meta spec currently. Their speciality is priority damage and cleave, which are further bolstered by flexible Hero talents options, but their overall damage numbers are average.

Mobility is also great between instant melee attacks and instant cast spells, and while their active survivability is not particularly great, they do have strong passive survivability through Brimming with Life, Elemental Warding, and Nature's Guardian, as well as some self-healing with Therazane's Resilience-powered Earth Shield and active casts, especially when empowered by Raging Maelstrom.

The same strengths of Enhancement apply in Mythic+, with good priority damage and cleave damage being very useful, and Skyfury being a rarer buff due to the reduced player count. Since this buff is particularly strong for melee classes, Enhancement fits well into melee-heavy compositions as it is a melee class itself, allowing it to benefit from the buffs the group wants to focus on.

Finally, the large amount of utility present in the Shaman tree shines in dungeons, and all Shamans are popular for bringing Bloodlust/ Heroism and Capacitor Totem for crowd control, Wind Shear as a relatively low cooldown ranged interrupt, and niche tools such as Poison Cleansing Totem and Tremor Totem.

Restoration Shaman is a healer specialization which can do strong stacked healing with Healing Rain and Chain Heal or spot healing with Healing Wave and which has many reactive healing tools and miscellaneous utility abilities. Talents provide multiple viable gameplay options suited for various content types and you will also have healing cooldowns to fall back on, such as Healing Tide Totem or Ascendance, as well as Spirit Link Totem.

As a Restoration Shaman, you will generally focus on using your efficient short cooldown healing spells whenever possible and fill in healing gaps with strong reactive healing from Healing Wave or Chain Heal. Large damage periods can be covered by your multiple healing cooldowns, and there are usually many opportunities to use your utility for the benefit of the team, by interrupting enemies with Wind Shear, stunning them with Capacitor Totem, or mass removing Poisons with Poison Cleansing Totem, among many other tools.

Finally, Shamans can self-resurrect with Reincarnation, being the only class able to do so. This effect is often a game-changer, especially as using it does not count towards the limited battle resurrection charges!

While not particularly strong at either spot or area healing when compared to the other healers, Shamans are still very useful in a raid setting due to their multiple strong healing cooldowns, which can help the group get through a particularly hard phase.

They also provide unique utility in Spirit Link Totem and Ancestral Vigor, which increase your group's effective health, allowing for more margin against one-shot mechanics and damage bursts.

Shamans are a great dungeon healer due to their huge utility pool, good damage potential for a healer, and quick reactive healing style. The large amount of major healing cooldowns and relatively short cooldown periods on them also allows Shamans many opportunities to recover from healing mistakes or team mates standing in fire.