Shaman Leveling Guide 1-120 Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1

Table of Contents

• 1. General Battle for Azeroth Leveling Tips
• +2. Leveling 1-120 as an Enhancement Shaman
  • 2.1. Gear Options
  • 2.2. Level by Level Rotation and Talents
    • 2.2.1. Talents to Level Up as an Enhancement Shaman
    • 2.2.2. Rotation to Level Up as an Enhancement Shaman
    • 2.2.3. Summary of Unlocked Abilities for Enhancement Shaman
  • 2.3. Enhancement Shaman War Mode Talents for Leveling
    • 2.3.1. General PvP Talents
    • 2.3.2. Enhancement Shaman PvP Talents for Leveling
  • 2.4. Legendary Options
  • 2.5. Quest Rewards
  • 2.6. Consumables
    • 2.6.1. Gunshoes Macro
  • 2.7. Congratulations!
• +3. Leveling 1-120 as an Elemental Shaman
  • 3.1. Gear Options
  • 3.2. Level by Level Rotation and Talents
    • 3.2.1. Talents to Level Up as an Elemental Shaman
    • 3.2.2. Rotation to Level Up as an Elemental Shaman
    • 3.2.3. Summary of Unlocked Abilities for Elemental Shaman
  • 3.3. Elemental Shaman War Mode Talents for Leveling
    • 3.3.1. General PvP Talents
    • 3.3.2. Elemental Shaman PvP Talents for Leveling
  • 3.4. Legendary Options
  • 3.5. Quest Rewards
  • 3.6. Consumables
    • 3.6.1. Gunshoes Macro
  • 3.7. Congratulations!
• +4. Leveling 1-120 as an Restoration Shaman
  • 4.1. Gear Options
  • 4.2. Level by Level Rotation and Talents
    • 4.2.1. Talents to Level Up as an Restoration Shaman
    • 4.2.2. Rotation to Level Up as an Restoration Shaman
    • 4.2.3. Summary of Unlocked Abilities for Restoration Shaman
  • 4.3. Restoration Shaman War Mode Talents for Leveling
    • 4.3.1. General PvP Talents
    • 4.3.2. Restoration Shaman PvP Talents for Leveling
  • 4.4. Legendary Options
  • 4.5. Quest Rewards
  • 4.6. Consumables
    • 4.6.1. Gunshoes Macro
  • 4.7. Congratulations!
• 5. Changelog

1. General Battle for Azeroth Leveling Tips

Welcome! While this leveling guide is specifically made for the class and specialization(s) listed, we also have a general Battle for Azeroth leveling guide that focuses on the specific features of the Battle for Azeroth expansion including preparation of your mission table that will be used to unlock new areas, progressing on your faction's War Effort to save time at Level 120, and a reminder to keep ALL of the gear you find for the Scrap-o-Matic 1000 or Shred-Master Mk1, which will greatly increase your resource generating capabilities. Please visit our 110 to 120 leveling guide for this information and more (including Heirloom and War Mode advice that also applies to players who are not yet Level 110.

2. Leveling 1-120 as an Enhancement Shaman

2.1. Gear Options

When leveling up, you should always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. The only exception to this rule is if you have a Ring or Necklace with a slightly lower item level, but 2 secondary stats on it instead of 1.

2.2. Level by Level Rotation and Talents

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

2.2.1. Talents to Level Up as an Enhancement Shaman

Your first talent row unlocks at Level 15.

Your talent set up should be as follows.

• Level 15: Lightning Shield
• Level 30: Forceful Winds
• Level 45: Spirit Wolf
• Level 60: Searing Assault
• Level 75: Feral Lunge
• Level 90: Sundering
• Level 100: Elemental Spirits

2.2.2. Rotation to Level Up as an Enhancement Shaman

Starting at Level 1, you only have one main attack ability: Lightning Bolt. This will change at level 10 when you select Enhancement as your specialization, and unlock melee oriented abilities. Until then, use Lightning Bolt to kill targets, and make use of Flame Shock when it unlocks at level 3.

1. Cast Stormstrike whenever available.
2. Cast Sundering as frequently, and on as many grouped up enemies, as possible.
3. Cast Flametongue to get the buff up.
4. Cast Lava Lash when you have enough Maelstrom to use it.
5. Cast Rockbiter as frequently as possible.
6. Use Feral Spirit as often as possible.
7. Cast Crash Lightning on 2+ targets.
8. Only cast Bloodlust on large enemies, due to its 10 minute cooldown.

2.2.3. Summary of Unlocked Abilities for Enhancement Shaman

You unlock your first ability of interest at Level 5.

• At Level 5, you unlock Healing Surge, which serves as a castable heal to keep yourself alive. At Level 10 when you switch to the Enhancement specialization, this will also become instant when you have 20 or more Maelstrom.
• At Level 8, you unlock Earthbind Totem, which can provide an AoE slow around the totem to keep enemies snared.
• At Level 10, you unlock specializations, and will gain your Enhancement specific spells: Rockbiter, your source of active Maelstrom generation, and Lava Lash, which spends Maelstrom for damage. These form the core of early Enhancement gameplay.
• At Level 12, you gain access to Flametongue, a short-duration buff that causes your melee attacks to deal additional Fire damage when active.
• At Level 13, you unlock Far Sight, allowing you to place a targeting circle a large distance away to observe what is happening elsewhere on the map.
• At Level 14, you unlock Ancestral Spirit, allowing you to resurrect dead allies when out of combat.
• At Level 16, you unlock Ghost Wolf, allowing you to shapeshift into a wolf, granting additional movement speed with no cooldown. While you cannot deal much damage in this form, it is excellent for moving between groups of enemies.
• At Level 18, you unlock Wind Shear, giving access to a ranged interrupt on a low cooldown. This is useful for interrupting casters that chain cast from a distance, allowing you to engage them more easily.
• At Level 20, you unlock Stormstrike, which provides the most important core ability for Enhancement. This is your heavy hitting, low cooldown tool that will later have additional effects built around it.
• At Level 22, you unlock Cleanse Spirit, allowing you to remove Curse effects from yourself or allies on a short cooldown.
• At Level 24, you unlock Windfury, causing your Main Hand melee attacks to have a chance to trigger two additional hits. This provides more power to your Stormstrike casts and your auto-attacks.
• At Level 26, you unlock Reincarnation, which allows you to resurrect yourself once every 30 minutes. This is an excellent time-saving tool, rather than having to run back to your corpse when something goes wrong.
• At Level 28, you unlock Crash Lightning, which is the first AoE tool that Enhancement gets access to. This is easy to make use of and slips into the rotation quite easily whenever additional targets are within range.
• At Level 32, you unlock Water Walking, which is a buff that can be cast on you, or allies, that will allow you to walk on water for 10 minutes. This effect can be used while mounted, but will be lost if you take any damage.
• At Level 34, you unlock Feral Spirit, Enhancement's primary cooldown. This will spawn two wolves that deal a moderate amount of damage and should be used frequently.
• At Level 36, you unlock Earth Elemental, a 5-minute cooldown that will spawn an Earth Elemental guardian for 1 minute, that will attack and taunt all nearby enemies. This can be extremely useful if anything goes wrong when pulling enemies, as it will pull aggro from you and tank the damage. This guardian can also be healed if necessary.
• At Level 38, you unlock Frostbrand, which is a weapon enhancement that will cause your attacks to also slow the target. This can be slightly useful if you need to keep some things snared, but is not frequently used during leveling.
• At Level 40, you unlock Maelstrom Weapon, which causes your weapon attacks to generate 5 Maelstrom per hit. This includes Windfury and provides a large chunk of your passive Maelstrom generation.
• At Level 42, you unlock Hex, which can be used to crowd control an enemy for up to a minute on a 30-second cooldown. This effect can be broken early if you deal additional damage to the target.
• At Level 44, you unlock Astral Recall and Capacitor Totem. Astral Recall serves as a secondary Hearthstone and will take you to your current bound location. Capacitor Totem provides an AoE stun option, which can be useful if you pull too many enemies and need a short break in damage.
• At Level 48, you unlock Stormbringer, the core passive of Enhancement. This causes your melee attacks to have a low chance to reset your Stormstrike cooldown and cause your next cast to cost no Maelstrom, as well as invoking no cooldown. This is the final and most important core part of Enhancement gained.
• At Level 50, you unlock Bloodlust / Heroism, which increases your Haste by 30% for 40 seconds, on a 5-minute cooldown. You can only gain the benefits of this once every 10 minutes.
• At Level 52, you unlock Astral Shift, which is your defensive tool. It should be used whenever you expect to be taking a large amount of damage over the next 8 seconds.
• At Level 56, you unlock Feral Spirit's passive effect, which causes each attack to generate 5 Maelstrom when they deal damage. This can be a strong burst-Maelstrom tool.
• At Level 58, you unlock Tremor Totem, which will break Fear, Charm and Sleep effects when active.
• At Level 63, you unlock Purge, allowing you to offensively remove buffs from enemy targets.
• At Level 78, you unlock Mastery: Enhanced Elements, which is the Enhancement Shaman Mastery. This increases the chance for Stormbringer and Windfury to trigger, as well as increasing all Elemental damage dealt by a percentage.
• At Level 80, you unlock Spirit Walk, the final ability learned. It is the Enhancement sprint and increases your movement speed for 8 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown, while also clearing any roots or slows when cast. It is great for moving between groups and stacks up with Ghost Wolf movement speed increases.

2.3. Enhancement Shaman War Mode Talents for Leveling

In this section, we will rank the PvP talents for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content in order of priority. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Enhancement Shaman-specific PvE talents.

2.3.1. General PvP Talents

• Adaptation is likely your most passive choice, since it will automatically remove loss of control effects over 5 seconds. It is recommended for leveling to take this PvP talent.
• Relentless is also a passive ability, but it does not automatically remove crowd control abilities, instead reducing the duration.
• Gladiator's Medallion is an on-use ability that removes all movement impairing effects and all loss of control effects.

2.3.2. Enhancement Shaman PvP Talents for Leveling

1. Ride the Lightning provides the largest damage increase option, and should be picked first.
2. Shamanism allows for more liberal Bloodlust / Heroism usage without having to worry about the 10-minute lockout. It is great for solo and duo content.
3. Skyfury Totem provides a moderate boost when staying in the same area, increasing your Critical Strike damage and Healing by 20% for 15-seconds, with a 40-second cooldown that is low enough to be used liberally, and boosting allies within its range on top of that.
4. Counterstrike Totem replicates and reflects damage you take for 15 seconds, on a 45-second cooldown. This can be really strong when in a high damage area to deal some chip damage to targets around you, and convert your health pool into additional damage.

Ethereal Form, Purifying Waters, Thundercharge and Grounding Totem, on the other hand, have very limited PvE uses, being more focused on in-combat control more suited to a PvP engagement, and as such are not really recommended for large groups of low health enemies.

2.4. Legendary Options

If you are just coming out of Level 110, you will probably have a number of different Legendary items to choose from. Your Legendaries' special effects will stop working at Level 116, but until then, they can be a very powerful addition to help you level up quickly. These are our Legendary recommendations for leveling as an Enhancement Shaman in Battle for Azeroth:

• Sephuz's Secret is extremely strong, granting passive movement speed as well as a bit of free Haste. The effect can also be triggered almost on cooldown with each Sundering cast and is highly recommended.
• Spiritual Journey can also be very powerful, allowing you to recharge your Feral Spirit when moving between areas with Ghost Wolf.
• Vigilance Perch is essentially an automatic mount when out of combat. Despite its tooltip, it only allows you to fly in flying zones, so you will not be able to fly in Battle for Azeroth zones. This is a great Legendary to pair up with Sephuz's Secret to really push your ability to move between combat areas.

2.5. Quest Rewards

You should equip new quest rewards when their item level starts beating out your previous set of gear. If you are currently wearing Tier 21 gear, it is best to let the quest rewards significantly beat your existing item level before using them. With that said, you will unlock Azerite pieces early on, which are worth using over Tier gear in most circumstances.

If possible, we recommend holding on to all Quest Rewards you do not use. They can be scrapped at Level 120 for material resources for profession crafting.

2.6. Consumables

There are several consumable items that can be purchased that will help you with your leveling speed.

• Skystep Potion increases your movement speed by 150% (more than a mount!) for 8 seconds. It has a 1-minute cooldown. This is extremely useful and should be used often and aggressively for any travel that is more than ~100 yards long.
• Gunshoes are an Engineering item that increase your movement speed by 200% for 25 seconds. These will make you almost as fast as a Flying mount. We recommend having a lot of these, and using them whenever you are traveling more than ~250 yards.
• Goblin Glider Kit is very useful for covering long distances from high places.

2.6.1. Gunshoes Macro

The Gunshoes will not let you stop moving as long as they are active. Using this macro twice will click the buff off and allow you to stop.

• #showtooltip
• /use Gunshoes
• /cancelaura Gunshoes

2.7. Congratulations!

Congratulations on reaching Level 120! Now that you have hit Level 120, we recommend looking at our Easy mode page and Talents section to learn how to play at max level. To get yourself prepared for the end-game content ahead, we strongly recommend this Battle for Azeroth Raiding Lexicon/Spreadsheet by Medivh. It is a gold trove of information that will help you when gearing up in Battle for Azeroth and more.

3. Leveling 1-120 as an Elemental Shaman

3.1. Gear Options

When leveling up, you should always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. The only exception to this rule is if you have a Ring or Necklace with a slightly lower item level, but 2 secondary stats on it instead of 1.

3.2. Level by Level Rotation and Talents

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

3.2.1. Talents to Level Up as an Elemental Shaman

Your first talent row unlocks at Level 15.

Your talent set up should be as follows.

• Level 15: Earthen Rage
• Level 30: Aftershock
• Level 45: Earth Shield
• Level 60: Master of the Elements or Liquid Magma Totem
• Level 75: Nature's Guardian
• Level 90: Surge of Power or Icefury
• Level 100: Stormkeeper

3.2.2. Rotation to Level Up as an Elemental Shaman

Starting at Level 1, you only have one main damaging ability: Lightning Bolt. This will change at level 10, when you select Elemental as your specialization and unlock other ranged abilities. Until then, use Lightning Bolt to kill targets, and make use of Flame Shock when it unlocks at level 3.

1. Apply Flame Shock if it is absent
2. Cast Fire Elemental if it is off cooldown. Try to pair your elemental with Haste buffs if possible (e.g. Bloodlust/ Heroism).
3. Cast Earth Elemental if it is off cooldown.
4. Cast Stormkeeper whenever available. Delay the usage if multiple stacked targets will be present within the span of its cooldown
5. If talented, cast Liquid Magma Totem whenever available. Delay the usage if multiple stacked targets will be present within the span of its cooldown.
6. Cast Earth Shock if Maelstrom is 90 or greater; or 60 or greater if you have Master of the Elements's buff.
7. Cast Lava Burst whenever available.
8. If Icefury is talented, use the empowered Frost Shocks before the buff fades.
9. If talented, cast Icefury whenever available.
10. Cast Earth Shock if Maelstrom is 60 or greater.
11. Cast Lightning Bolt as a filler on a single target.
12. Cast Frost Shock as a filler while moving.

3.2.3. Summary of Unlocked Abilities for Elemental Shaman

You unlock your first ability of interest at Level 3.

• At Level 3, you unlock Flame Shock, your damage over time ability.
• At Level 5, you unlock Healing Surge, which serves as a castable heal to keep yourself alive.
• At Level 8, you unlock Earthbind Totem, which can provide an AoE slow around the totem to keep enemies snared.
• At Level 10, you unlock specializations, and will gain access to Earth Shock, your main single target Maelstrom spender.
• At Level 12, you gain access to Lava Burst, your Maelstrom generating nuke. It deals good damage and has a short cooldown.
• At Level 13, you unlock Far Sight, allowing you to place a targeting circle a large distance away to observe what is happening elsewhere on the map.
• At Level 14, you unlock Ancestral Spirit, allowing you to resurrect dead allies when out of combat.
• At Level 16, you unlock Ghost Wolf, allowing you to shapeshift into a wolf, granting additional movement speed with no cooldown. While you cannot deal much damage in this form, it is excellent for moving between groups of enemies.
• At Level 18, you unlock Wind Shear, giving access to a ranged interrupt on a low cooldown. This is useful for interrupting casters that chain cast from a distance, allowing you to engage them more easily.
• At Level 20, your Lava Burst will now be a guaranteed critical strike if your Flame Shock is active on the target.
• At Level 22, you unlock Cleanse Spirit, allowing you to remove Curse effects from yourself or allies on a short cooldown.
• At Level 24, you unlock Thunderstorm. This spell knocks away enemies around you and slows them by 40% for 5 seconds. It is quite useful (and fun!), especially when you use it to displace an enemy in a specific direction.
• At Level 26, you unlock Reincarnation, which allows you to resurrect yourself once every 30 minutes. This is an excellent time-saving tool, rather than having to run back to your corpse when something goes wrong.
• At Level 28, you unlock Chain Lightning, your first AoE spell. You will use this a lot.
• At Level 29, you unlock Mastery: Elemental Overload, your Mastery, which gives your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning a 15% chance to cast a second time for 85% damage.
• At Level 32, you unlock Water Walking, which is a buff that can be cast on you, or allies, that will allow you to walk on water for 10 minutes. This effect can be used while mounted, but will be lost if you take any damage.
• At Level 34, you unlock Elemental Fury, which makes your Critical Strikes deal 250% damage instead of the normal 200%.
• At Level 36, you unlock Earth Elemental, a 5-minute cooldown that will spawn an Earth Elemental guardian for 1 minute, that will attack and taunt all nearby enemies. This can be extremely useful if anything goes wrong when pulling enemies, as it will pull aggro from you and tank the damage. This guardian can also be healed if necessary.
• At Level 38, you unlock Frost Shock, an instant spell with no cooldown or cost. It deals moderate damage and slows the target. You should use this only for moving or kiting.
• At Level 40, you unlock Lava Surge, which gives your Flame Shock ticks a 15% chance to reset the cooldown of Lava Burst and make it instant. It is the main proc you should pay attention to.
• At Level 42, you unlock Hex, which can be used to crowd control an enemy for up to a minute, on a 30-second cooldown. This effect can be broken early if you deal additional damage to the target.
• At Level 44, you unlock Astral Recall and Capacitor Totem. Astral Recall serves as a secondary Hearthstone and will take you to your current bound location. Capacitor Totem provides an AoE stun option, which can be useful if you pull too many enemies and need a short break in damage.
• At Level 48, you unlock Earthquake, your main Maelstrom consuming nuke for AoE/Cleave. It deals good damage over 6 seconds in the targeted area and can knock down enemies within.
• At Level 50, you unlock Bloodlust / Heroism. This ability increases your Haste by 30% for 40 seconds, on a 5-minute cooldown, but you can only gain the benefits of this every 10 minutes.
• At Level 52, you unlock Astral Shift, which is your defensive tool and should be used whenever you expect to be taking a large amount of damage over the next 8 seconds.
• At Level 56, you unlock Fire Elemental, a 2.5-minute cooldown that summons a powerful Fire Elemental for 30 seconds. You do not have control over it, but it deals significant damage and you usually want to pair it with Bloodlust/ Heroism.
• At Level 58, you unlock Tremor Totem, which will break Fear, Charm and Sleep effects when active.
• At Level 63, you unlock Purge, allowing you to offensively remove buffs from enemy targets.
• At Level 78, you unlock the second rank of Mastery: Elemental Overload, which now also affects Lava Burst, as well as the talents Icefury and Elemental Blast.

3.3. Elemental Shaman War Mode Talents for Leveling

In this section, we will rank the PvP talents for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content in order of priority. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Elemental Shaman-specific PvE talents.

3.3.1. General PvP Talents

• Adaptation is likely your most passive choice, since it will automatically remove loss of control effects over 5 seconds.
• Relentless is also a passive ability, but it does not automatically remove crowd control abilities. Instead, it reduces the duration. I personally favor this option.
• Gladiator's Medallion is an on-use ability that removes all movement impairing effects and all loss of control effects.

3.3.2. Elemental Shaman PvP Talents for Leveling

1. Skyfury Totem increases the critical effect of spells of allies within 40 yards by 20% for 15 seconds, with a 40-second cooldown. It is good for solo play, but excellent if you are doing outdoors content with others.
2. Swelling Waves makes your Healing Surges 50% stronger.
3. Elemental Attunement increases your maximum Maelstrom by 50, allowing for a lot more banking and control.
4. Earthfury makes your Earth Shocks stun the target for 2 seconds if you are at 100 Maelstrom or above when casting it. This has excellent synergy with the previous talent and should rarely be used without it.
5. Counterstrike Totem replicates and reflects damage you take for 15 seconds, on a 45-second cooldown. This can be really strong when in a high damage area to deal some chip damage to targets around you, and convert your health pool into additional damage.

Grounding Totem, Lightning Lasso, Purifying Waters, Spectral Recovery, Traveling Storms and Control of Lava have either niche uses or just are not very useful compared to the other talents. Do not dismiss them entirely but for the most part, you can safely ignore them.

3.4. Legendary Options

If you are just coming out of Level 110, you will probably have a number of different Legendary items to choose from. Your Legendaries' special effects will stop working at Level 116, but until then they can be a very powerful addition to help you level up quickly. These are our Legendary recommendations for leveling as an Elemental Shaman in Battle for Azeroth:

• Sephuz's Secret is extremely strong, granting passive movement speed as well as a bit of free Haste. The effect can be triggered on cooldown with each Earthquake, Wind Shear or Capacitor Totem cast, and is highly recommended.
• Vigilance Perch is essentially an automatic mount when out of combat. Despite its tooltip, it only allows you to fly in flying zones, so you will not be able to fly in Battle for Azeroth zones. This is a great Legendary to pair up with Sephuz's Secret to really push your ability to move between combat areas.
• If you can not get those two, we recommend you use Roots of Shaladrassil, for added survivability, or Echoes of the Great Sundering, for added damage and mobility.
• If you are leveling with a group, we recommend you use Kil'jaeden's Burning Wish for its AoE on-use ability.

3.5. Quest Rewards

You should equip new quest rewards when their item level starts beating out your previous set of gear. If you are currently wearing Tier 21 gear, it is best to let the quest rewards significantly beat your existing item level before using them. With that said, you will unlock Azerite pieces early on, which are worth using over Tier gear in most circumstances.

If possible, we recommend holding on to all Quest Rewards you do not use. They can be scrapped at Level 120 for material resources for profession crafting.

3.6. Consumables

There are several consumable items that can be purchased that will help you with your leveling speed.

• Skystep Potion increases your movement speed by 150% (more than a mount!) for 8 seconds. It has a 1-minute cooldown. This is extremely useful and should be used often and aggressively for any travel that is more than ~100 yards long.
• Gunshoes are an Engineering item that increase your movement speed by 200% for 25 seconds. These will make you almost as fast as a Flying mount. We recommend having a lot of these, and using them whenever you are traveling more than ~250 yards.
• Goblin Glider Kit is very useful for covering long distances from high places.

3.6.1. Gunshoes Macro

The Gunshoes will not let you stop moving as long as they are active. Using this macro twice will click the buff off and allow you to stop.

• #showtooltip
• /use Gunshoes
• /cancelaura Gunshoes

3.7. Congratulations!

Congratulations on reaching Level 120! Now that you have hit Level 120, we recommend looking at our Easy mode page and Talents section to learn how to play at max level. To get yourself prepared for the end-game content ahead, we strongly recommend this Battle for Azeroth Raiding Lexicon/Spreadsheet by Medivh. It is a gold trove of information that will help you when gearing up in Battle for Azeroth and more.

4. Leveling 1-120 as an Restoration Shaman

4.1. Gear Options

When leveling up, you should always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. The only exception to this rule is if you have a Ring or Necklace with a slightly lower item level, but 2 secondary stats on it instead of 1.

4.2. Level by Level Rotation and Talents

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

4.2.1. Talents to Level Up as an Restoration Shaman

Your first talent row unlocks at Level 15.

Your talent set up should be as follows.

• Level 15: Undulation
• Level 30: Echo of the Elements
• Level 45: Spirit Wolf
• Level 60: Earthen Wall Totem
• Level 75: Nature's Guardian
• Level 90: Flash Flood
• Level 100: Ascendance

4.2.2. Rotation to Level Up as an Restoration Shaman

Starting at Level 1, you only have one main damaging ability: Lightning Bolt. This will change at level 10 when you select Restoration as your specialization and unlock other abilities. Until then, use Lightning Bolt to kill targets and make use of Flame Shock when it unlocks at level 3.

1. Apply Flame Shock if it is absent
2. Cast Earth Elemental if it is off cooldown.
3. Cast Lava Burst whenever available.
4. Cast Chain Lightning against two or more targets.
5. Cast Lightning Bolt as a filler on a single target.

Starting at Level 15, you are able to queue for dungeons with the in-game group finder. You should aim to do this whenever possible while in Restoration specialization, as it is an efficient way to level up while learning your healing kit. In order to understand in-depth how to use this kit, especially at higher levels, check out our rotation page, but we have added a short summary below:

1. Cast Riptide and Healing Stream Totem whenever possible.
2. Cast Chain Heal if multiple people in your group are hurt and close to each other.
3. Cast Healing Surge on damaged allies.
4. Use your DPS rotation (detailed above) if no healing is required.

4.2.3. Summary of Unlocked Abilities for Restoration Shaman

You unlock your first ability of interest at Level 3.

• At Level 3, you unlock Flame Shock, your damage over time ability.
• At Level 5, you unlock Healing Surge, which serves as a quick heal to keep yourself and your group alive.
• At Level 8, you unlock Earthbind Totem, which provides an AoE slow around the totem.
• At Level 10, you unlock specializations, and will gain access to Riptide, your main heal over time effect.
• At Level 12, you gain access to Lava Burst, a strong damage spell with a short cooldown.
• At Level 13, you unlock Far Sight, allowing you to place a targeting circle a large distance away to observe what is happening elsewhere on the map.
• At Level 14, you unlock Ancestral Spirit, allowing you to resurrect dead allies when out of combat.
• Also at level 14, you unlock Healing Stream Totem, which provides very strong healing every 30 seconds.
• At Level 16, you unlock Ghost Wolf, allowing you to shapeshift into a wolf, granting additional movement speed with no cooldown. While you cannot deal much damage or heal in this form, it is excellent for moving between groups of enemies.
• At Level 18, you unlock Wind Shear, giving access to a ranged interrupt on a low cooldown. This is useful for interrupting casters that chain cast from a distance, allowing you to engage them more easily.
• At Level 20, your Lava Burst will now be a guaranteed critical strike if your Flame Shock is active on the target.
• Also at level 20, you unlock Chain Heal, which is a strong area of effect heal without a cooldown.
• At Level 22, you unlock Purify Spirit, allowing you to remove all Magic and Curse effects from yourself or allies on a short cooldown.
• At Level 24, you unlock Healing Wave. This spell has a higher cast time then Healing Surge, but costs less Mana and heals for slightly more to compensate.
• At Level 26, you unlock Reincarnation, which allows you to resurrect yourself once every 30 minutes. This is an excellent time-saving tool, rather than having to run back to your corpse when something goes wrong.
• At Level 28, you unlock Chain Lightning, your area of effect damage spell.
• At Level 32, you unlock Water Walking, which is a buff that can be cast on you, or allies, that will allow you to walk on water for 10 minutes. This effect can be used while mounted, but will be lost if you take any damage.
• At Level 34, you unlock Tidal Waves. You can gain them (up to two charges) by casting Riptide or Chain Heal, and when you have at least one stack, your next Healing Wave has its cast time reduced by 20% and your next Healing Surge has its Critical Strike chance increased by 30%.
• At Level 36, you unlock Earth Elemental, a 5-minute cooldown that will spawn an Earth Elemental guardian for 1 minute, that will attack and taunt all nearby enemies. This can be extremely useful if anything goes wrong when pulling enemies, as it will pull aggro from you and tank the damage. This guardian can also be healed if necessary.
• At Level 38, your Riptide has its duration increased by 3 seconds.
• Also at level 38, you unlock Spiritwalker's Grace, which allows you to cast while moving on a 2-minute cooldown.
• At Level 40, you unlock Lava Surge, which gives your Flame Shock ticks a 15% chance to reset the cooldown of Lava Burst and make it instant. It is the main proc you should pay attention to when dealing damage.
• Also at level 40, you unlock Healing Rain, which allows you to place a circle on the ground that will heal allies within for 10 seconds, also with a 10-second cooldown. This is an efficient group heal that you should cast when expecting group damage, assuming your group is stacked together.
• At Level 42, you unlock Hex, which can be used to crowd control an enemy for up to a minute, on a 30-second cooldown. This effect can be broken early if you deal additional damage to the target.
• At Level 44, you unlock Astral Recall, which serves as a secondary Hearthstone and will take you to your current bound location.
• Also at level 44, you unlock Capacitor Totem, which provides an area of effect stun, which can be useful if you pull too many enemies and need a short break in damage.
• At Level 48, you unlock Resurgence. This passive causes your Healing Wave critical hits to return 1% of your maximum Mana, Healing Surge and Riptide critical hits to return 0.6% of your maximum Mana, and Chain Heal critical hits to return 0.25% of your maximum Mana, improving your overall Mana efficiency.
• At Level 50, you unlock Bloodlust / Heroism. This ability increases your Haste by 30% for 40 seconds, on a 5-minute cooldown, but you can only gain the benefits of this every 10 minutes.
• At Level 52, you unlock Astral Shift, which is your defensive tool and should be used whenever you expect to be taking a large amount of damage over the next 8 seconds.
• At Level 54, your Chain Heal bounces to one more target passively.
• At Level 56, you unlock Spirit Link Totem. This totem has a 20-yard diameter, reduces damage taken by everyone inside by 10%, and redistributes the health of everyone inside every second such that they have the same percentage of maximum health. You can use this to instantly save low health allies who are near other, healthy, allies.
• At Level 58, you unlock Tremor Totem, which will break Fear, Charm and Sleep effects when active.
• At Level 63, you unlock Purge, allowing you to offensively remove buffs from enemy targets.
• At Level 66, you unlock Ancestral Vision, allowing you to resurrect all dead allies in a 100-yard range, when all of your group is out of combat.
• At Level 70, both effects of Tidal Waves are increased by 10%.
• At Level 78, you unlock Mastery: Deep Healing. This passively causes your heals to be more powerful on low health targets. When you heal a target with full health, you get no additional healing, but when you heal a target with 0% health (1 health point), you get its full benefit.
• At Level 80, you unlock Healing Tide Totem. This totem is placed beneath you and pulses periodically, healing all members within 40 yards for 10 seconds. Healing Tide Totem is mainly used to counteract very high incoming group damage periods.

4.3. Restoration Shaman War Mode Talents for Leveling

In this section we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Restoration Shaman-specific PvE talents.

4.3.1. General PvP Talents

• Adaptation is a passive that automatically removes loss of control effects over 5 seconds with a 1-minute cooldown.
• Relentless is also a passive ability, but it does not automatically remove crowd control abilities, reducing their duration instead. This is usually the best option.
• Gladiator's Medallion is an on-use ability that removes all movement impairing effects and all loss of control effects.

4.3.2. Restoration Shaman PvP Talents for Leveling

1. Skyfury Totem increases the critical effect of spells of allies within 40 yards by 20% for 15 seconds, with a 40-second cooldown. It is good for solo play, but excellent if you are doing outdoors content with others.
2. Ancestral Gift allows you to cast uninterrupted for 5 seconds after using Spiritwalker's Grace. This is critical when facing one or more opponents who can interrupt you, allowing you to land every spell cast during that window.
3. Counterstrike Totem replicates and reflects damage you take for 15 seconds, on a 45-second cooldown. This can be really strong when in a high damage area to deal some chip damage to targets around you and convert your health pool into additional damage.

Swelling Waves, Voodoo Mastery, Electrocute, Cleansing Waters, Grounding Totem, Spirit Link, Tidebringer and Spectral Recovery have their own niches, but are not as generally useful when leveling.

4.4. Legendary Options

If you are just coming out of Level 110, you will probably have a number of different Legendary items to choose from. Your Legendaries' special effects will stop working at Level 116, but until then they can be a very powerful addition to help you level up quickly. These are our Legendary recommendations for leveling as an Restoration Shaman in Battle for Azeroth:

• Sephuz's Secret is extremely strong, granting passive movement speed as well as a bit of free Haste. The effect can be triggered on cooldown with each Hex, Wind Shear or Capacitor Totem cast, and is highly recommended.
• Vigilance Perch is essentially an automatic mount when out of combat. Despite its tooltip, it only allows you to fly in flying zones, so you will not be able to fly in Battle for Azeroth zones. This is a great Legendary to pair up with Sephuz's Secret to really push your ability to move between combat areas.
• If you are leveling with a group, we recommend you use Kil'jaeden's Burning Wish for its powerful on-use ability.

4.5. Quest Rewards

You should equip new quest rewards when their item level starts beating out your previous set of gear. For healing, if you are currently wearing Tier 21 gear, it is best to let the quest rewards significantly beat your existing item level before using them. With that said, you will unlock Azerite pieces early on, which can be worth using over Tier gear.

If possible, we recommend holding on to all Quest Rewards you do not use. They can be scrapped at Level 120 for material resources for profession crafting.

4.6. Consumables

There are several consumable items that can be purchased that will help you with your leveling speed.

• Skystep Potion increases your movement speed by 150% (more than a mount!) for 8 seconds. It has a 1-minute cooldown. This is extremely useful and should be used often and aggressively for any travel that is more than ~100 yards long.
• Gunshoes are an Engineering item that increase your movement speed by 200% for 25 seconds. These will make you almost as fast as a Flying mount. We recommend having a lot of these, and using them whenever you are traveling more than ~250 yards.
• Goblin Glider Kit is very useful for covering long distances from high places.

4.6.1. Gunshoes Macro

The Gunshoes will not let you stop moving as long as they are active. Using this macro twice will click the buff off and allow you to stop.

• #showtooltip
• /use Gunshoes
• /cancelaura Gunshoes

4.7. Congratulations!

Congratulations on reaching Level 120! Now that you have hit Level 120 we recommend looking at our Easy mode page and Talents section to learn how to play at max level. To get yourself prepared for the end-game content ahead, we strongly recommend this Battle for Azeroth Raiding Lexicon/Spreadsheet by Medivh. It is a gold trove of information that will help you when gearing up in Battle for Azeroth and more.

5. Changelog

• 16 Apr. 2019: Enhancement section reviewed, no changes currently necessary for Patch 8.1.5.
• 10 Dec. 2018: Updated Elemental, Enhancement and Restoration sections for 8.1.
• 10 Dec. 2018: Updated for changed War Mode talent choices.
• 12 Aug. 2018: Changed Ascendance to Stormkeeper, fixed Lava Burst usage at 90 Maelstrom, removed unnecessary condition for Earth Shock usage. Consistency updates to give all leveling guides a similar feel.
• 10 Aug. 2018: Page Updated with Enhancement notes for Battle for Azeroth and 1-120.

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