Elemental Shaman Guide
((This guide was written by Liax of the Shaman Fourms. All credit goes to him. The original post can be found here. This link will also be the most updated version of the guide that you can find.))
This guide is going to be completely for PvE, so any comments you read about this doesn’t automatically apply to PvP (it might, but if it doesn’t I don’t want to hear some stupid comment about how it’s worthless in PvP)
If you find any incorrect data, or data you think could be added, feel free to let me know.
What this guide will cover
1. Gear choices and stats
2. Spec
3. Rotation
4. Glyphs
5. Gemming
6. Enchants
7. Consumables
9. Common question/answers
10. BiS lists (For the top 2 current raids) *not updated currently*
Puut has made an elemental shaman blog site:
http://www.elementalsham.blogspot.com/
1. Gear choices and stats
Alright, first off. Mail, leather, or cloth? From a PvE perspective the answer is, “whatever has the best stats”
Don’t be ashamed if you have to wear all cloth to get the best stats possible, it won’t make a difference 99.99% of the time. Chances are if you’re getting hit for physical damage the extra armor from mail would not of saved you
Now that that’s out of the way what are the stats you look for in gear?
Hit Rating
Spell Power (SP)
Haste Rating
Crit Rating
Hit rating
Hit rating increases your chance to hit with abilities. You need 17% hit rating to be able to never miss. It is our most important stat.
26.232 hit rating = 1% spell hit chance.
Horde Shaman: you need 368 hit rating to get to 17%. 14%(Hit rating) +3%(talents) = 17%
Alliance Shaman: you need 342 hit rating to get to 17%. 13%(Hit Rating) + 1%(Racial) + 3%(talents) = 17%
Now that we’ve gotten that taken care of I’d like you to meet my friends Mister Oomking, and Mister Mana Battery. These 2 friends of mine like to spec into talents that will grant the entire raid 3% chance to hit with spells. We now revise how much hit rating you need. As good of friends as they are, their abilities DON’T stack.
26.232 hit rating = 1% spell hit chance
Horde Shaman: You need 289 hit rating to get to 17%. 11% (Hit rating) +3%(talents) +3%(Boomking/Spriest) = 17%
Alliance Shaman: You need 263 hit rating to get to 17%. 10% (Hit rating) + 1%(Racial) + 3%(talents) +3%(Boomkin/Spriest) = 17%
Crit rating
Crit rating increases your chance to do double damage (when talented) with your abilities. It’s no longer as important as before in TBC. Back in TBC we were LB machine guns. We are no longer that, and instead of LB making up all of our DPS, it now makes up about ~65% of our dps. Therefore crit has lost 1/3 of its value.
Spell Power
Spell power makes our spells hit harder. Who knew. We like it, so stack it on after you get the hit rating.
Haste rating
Haste rating decreases your cast time of spells. Haste is something we want, but we don’t want to go overboard on without keeping our other stats in mind. I personally believe haste is something to work towards after you have gotten hit capped, a decent amount of SP, and around 20-25% crit chance. By the time you have all of that done, you should already have a bit of haste, and then can start stacking more.
To actually get 1.6s LBs requires (1.25/1.05 -1) * 100 * 32.79 = 625 haste rating (rounding up)
With 3% from boomkin, that's (1.25/1.05/1.03 - 1) * 100 * 32.79 = 511
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Now that we know what stats you should go for, what is their priority?
The simple version: Hit > SP > Haste > Crit
The complicated version: Hit > SP > Crit over Haste > Haste over Crit.
Liax what did you just say? Well really it depends on your gear for which stat you want more (in terms of crit or haste) You generally want to be at 20-25% crit rating before you start stacking on the haste rating. Therefore crit can take priority over haste, but haste can also take priority over crit.
Simply put get 20-25% crit, then bring in your haste. Until then, don’t gear yourself for haste, you’ll find that you’ll get some haste along the way when you gear yourself up for that nice crit range and after that you can stack even more haste on.
So how do you go about prioritizing yourself? You should always go for the hit cap for raiding. You need to get 17% in some way shape or form. Your spec will grant you 3%, so 14% to go. If you’re a spacegoat you get +1% chance to hit, and you need 13%. (reread the hit cap section for specifics)
After that, you should work on SP and crit or SP and haste. Like I said before, if you are below 20% crit chance, work on your crit. Therefore you work on your SP and crit until you bring yourself up to that nice range, and then switch over to SP and haste working. SP is always a work in progress, you never can have too much (in a balanced character).
2. How should I spec?
The spec that I recommend is this
Note: Minor glyphs in this build were chosen for the biggest bang for your buck as well. If we are talking 100% PvE here and never PvP, one extra water shield charge reduces the # of times you have to waste a GCD for it, Tstorm glyph gives more mana with no knockback (though on some fights you may of wanted that, Gluth zombies for example), and renewed life removes the need for ahnk reagents and you can never say “Dammit I forgot reagents”
It should be noted though that many talents in here are not “a must” for raiding.
Eye of the storm and convection are not “a must” for raiding. Some shamans don’t even spec into convection at all (usually the people with the mostly BiS equips) because mana regen isn’t hard to come by. Eye of the storm, while certainly nice to have when pushback can occur, doesn’t help on every single fight, and therefore is not a staple.
Booming Echoes is a talent you can pick up if you want. It should be noted however, that this is no where near a staple in raiding either. 20% increase damage in FS direct damage is going to be less than a .5% dps increase, and the reduced CD of the spell will only help out shamans who aren’t hit capped and miss with their FS.
3. Spell Rotation
Alright, you’ve geared yourself, you’ve specced yourself, so now you want to shoot fire and lightning out of your eyes. First things first though. How do you do it right, and which spells? Not including totems, we have several main spells we will cast in combat
Flame Shock
Lightning Bolt
Chain Lightning
Lava Burst
Thunderstorm
Water Shield (Whenever it needs to be refreshed)
Thunderstorm should only be casted if you feel that you might go OOM in the fight, and you will get the full benefit. Not messing up your rotation is a plus as well, but it can be hard to do that.
Basically, if you have 80% mana and the boss has 10% hp left, don’t bother Tstorming, but if the boss has 50% hp and you have 60% mana, you should start throwing in Tstorms
Our rotation revolves around LvB and it's cooldown. Depending on your haste depends on what spells you cast in between the LvB CD
FS LvB LB(2) LB(4) LB(6) LB(8) LvB LB(2) LB(4) LB(6) and repeat
Note: This is a rotation with NO haste and called a 4:3 rotation. (LvB LBx4 LvB LBx3)
However any good shaman will get haste in some way shape or form. Yeah it’s pretty fuzzy and we like it. It messes with our rotation a bit though, and that’s where Chain Lightning can come into play. When you are not at 500 haste, but above 0 you will find that you can get off 4.01-4.99 lightning bolt casts off. You don’t want to try to cast a 5th lightining bolts off because then you delay LvB. However, you don’t want to just sit there and wait for LvB to come back up. This is exactly where chain lightning comes into play! It’s a shorter cast time than LB, and while it MIGHT (and probably still will) delay your LvB off, it will do it to a lesser degree than LB, allow you to still do damage, AND get your LvB off sooner than if you had casted LB. It’s a win-win.
Now, like I said before. You want 511 haste. You want to get your LBs to 1.6 second casts. This allows 5 lightning bolts to get off, instead of 4. Here’s what it would like with 1.6 second casts
FS LvB LB(1.6) LB(3.2) LB(4.8) LB(6.4) LB(8) LvB LB(1.6) LB(3.2) LB(4.8) LB(5.6) and repeat
Note: This is called the 5:4 rotation (LvB LBx5 LvB LBx4)
Now, hopefully you can do some math and realize that if 4 2 second casts = 8 and 5 1.6 second casts = 8 then any number between 1.6 and 2 equals 4.01-4.99, IE: an incomplete cast and something you don’t want. And that is why we want 1.6 second casts and nothing in-between.
Note: With our new BiS totem (Totem of electrifying winds) it may be possible to get a new rotation off . We need almost 1300 haste to get 1.33 LBs, and most shamans are hitting around 600-800 haste without the totem buff, in a couple of content patches a new rotation may form.
The rotation also looks complicated on paper. You will probably look at those numbers and think that you'll have to pay extreme attention. You don't, you're doing a 4:3 rotation or the 5:4. Just pay attention to the LB number you are at and know when you need to renew Flame shock. Practice in front of a dummy long enough and you will get it down eventually to it's instinct
4. Glyphs
Currently, the best three glyphs are:
Major
Glyph of Totem of Wrath- 30% more SP from ToW for 5 minutes (86 SP)
Glyph of Flame Shock- 6 second more on duration, no loss when LvB is used
Glyph of Lightning Bolt- 4% more LB damage
Note: After approximately 3.3k spell power unbuffed glyph of LvB takes priority over ToW. So once you hit that point in gear you will want to go back to LvB.
Now a lot of people like to say HEY I LIKE CRIT GLYPH OF FLAMETONGUE SOUNDS GOOD.
NO
Crit, as stated above, has lost 1/3rd of it’s value from TBC, it’s no longer a huge priority on our list and we only get it when it’s practical. As a rule of thumb we never drop SP/hit/haste for crit. And we will CERTAINLY not give up 4% LB damage, 86 spell power, or have to refresh our FS for a measly 2% crit.
Minor
Glyph of Thunderstorm
Glyph of Renewed Life
Glyph of Water Shield
Again, these glyphs are picked for solely PvE, with no thought for PvP.
5. Gemming
Glad to hear it!
Now then here’s how it works. If we assume you’re hit capped we want Spell power!!! That’s it! Easy huh? Well, dammit we have this stupid thing called a meta gem that wants 2 blue gems. There are few exceptions where we will take a sp/haste gem though.
So here’s how it’s going to work. (I’m not going to bother stating names)
Meta Choice: +21 crit rating, and +3% increased crit damage
Red Gems: +spell power
Yellow Gems: +hit rating
Orange Gems: +spell power, and + hit rating, or +spell power and +haste
Purple Gems: +spell power and stamina.
Ok so the general rule is after the hit cap go for spell power (along with the 2 blue gems). There are times when it's ok to gem for sp/haste though. It all depends on the socket bonus. If the bonus is something lame like int, mp5, crit, or hit (and you're capped) then ignore it. If the socket bonus is spell power then you can probably take it.
Point for point, spell power beats haste. Haste loses point value after 511 haste as well. Whereas spell power never loses value.
You need 2 blue gems, and nothing past that. After that you gem for hit rating until capped, and after that you gem for spell power. You can use spell power/hit gems for when you are close to the hit cap but pure +hit gems would be overkill.
Obviously I suggest using epic gem, however I assume people know this, as min/maxing is an important aspect of the game.
6. Enchanting
If you can ever enchant an item, do it. That’s all there is to it. Even if you think you’ll replace it soon you should always have some sort of enchant on there, there is no excuse not to. I will list the BEST enchants (or offer the profession) for you to go, but there can be lesser enchants.
HEAD – Arcanum of Burning Mysteries– +30 Spell power, 20 to crit.
SHOULDER – Sons of Hodir Rep or Inscription– +24 spell power and +15 crit from Greater inscription of the storm from Exalted Sons of Hodir, or if you inscribe you can get +61 spell power and +15 crit from Master’s inscription of the Storm.
CLOAK – Enchant: Cloak: Greater Speed– +23 haste rating
CHEST – Enchant: Chest: Powerful Stats– +10 to stats
WRIST – Enchant Bracers: Superior Spell power (Enchanting) or Fur Lining: Spellpower – +30 spell power, or +76 spell power if LW.
GLOVES – Enchant Gloves: Exceptional Spell power– +28 spell power
You can always enchant gloves with precision (+20 hit) to get closer to the hit cap as well.
WAIST– Eternal belt buckle– An extra socket!
PANTS – Sapphire Spellthread – 50 spell power and 30 stamina
FEET – Enchant Boots: Icewalker – +12 hit, +12 crit
RINGS (Enchanters only) – +19 spell power per ring.
WEAPON – Enchant Weapon: Mighty Spell power – +63 spell power
SHIELD (If present) – Enchant Shield: Greater intellect – +25 intellect
7. Consumables
The last thing YOU need to bring before fully prepared for raids are consumables. Yes, please reread the sentence before this one again, and please note the bold.
YOU, and only YOU should be responsible for being ready for a raid. It also makes the impression on the guild that you are dedicated to doing content, and if it comes down to bringing you and someone else, if that someone else is bringing the consumables and you aren’t, guess who gets to go?
1. Well Fed: Firecracker Salmon- +46 spell power
2. Flask of the Frost Wrym- +125 spell power
3. Potion of Wild Magic- 15 seconds of +200 crit rating and 200 spell power
4. Runic Healing Potion- Restores 2700 to 4500 health
5. Runic Mana Potion- Restores 4200 to 4400 mana
Note: I strongly advise shamans to pick up both cooking and fishing and level them to at least 400. This allows us to fish glacial salmon, and cook them into firecracker salmon.
Also as stated by Apolik: You can farm Glacial Salmon for Firecracker Salmon while getting tons of Pygmy Suckerfish for the Pygmy Oil required to make a Potion of Wild Magic... that's another win-win situation an elemental fisher can always abuse :B (and water walking makes easier the fishing task).
These are things you should ALWAYS carry with you at all times for a raid especially on progression nights. As you can see 1 and 2 gives you 171 spell power, that’s a lot of extra damage and can make the difference between wiping or not! Add in a potion of wild magic (pref during the burn phase of a boss with lust) and you can really rack in the numbers.
The last part would be the “What gear should you have before starting Naxx” but I’m NOT going to include this part. Why?
1. Most gear is debatable in the first place. I don’t want to clutter this thread up with “No, this is better, NUH UH THIS IS BETTER, NO UR RONG MENG THIS IS”
2. Probably 5% of the people tops who would read the section would run off to get all that gear before actually encountering Naxx
3. The gear doesn’t matter. What matters are the stats on your character sheet. Are you at or near the hit cap? Are you doing decent on spell power and crit? Then head on in. That’s all there is to it.
Well I think I got it all, but as every guide does, I will reserve some slots below in case I ever decide to add things.
Common Questions and answers
This part of the guide will focus on common questions/answers to elemental shamans. This part may have questions that are answered in the guide, but that’s ok. This section of the guide is for people who just want to look up some questions.
Some of this may vary as it can be opiniated (IMO), if someone ever sees something that feels like it sounds opiniated, and there's solid proof that it's really not feel free to let me know. Specifically I know off hand race choices are going to be opiniated.
Common questions about elemental shamans
1) Is the t7/7.5 set bonus worth it? Or if I get a better piece should I break the set
The tier set bonus is nice, however don't be afraid to break it if you find a nice upgrade. WIth T8 out now you're going to break it eventually anyways. It's only about a ~1% dps increase.
2) What’s the required hit rating I need for raiding?
This all depends on if you’re a spacegoat or not, and/or you have a boomkin/spriest with you. If you have +3% to hit with talents...
Draenei need 342 hit rating to be hit capped without a boomkin/spriest
Draenei need 263 hit rating to be hit capped with a boomkin/spriest
Horde need 368 hit rating to be hit capped without a boomkin/spriest
Horde need 289 hit rating to be hit capped with a boomkin/spriest
3) What are the best professions for an Elemental Shaman?
BS + JC seems to be the best at the current time. 2 extra sockets with 3 incredibly powerful gems allows you to socket bigger hit rating gems, thus conserving gem slots, and focus more on spell power.
4) I don’t understand, crit was our biggest stat in TBC, what happened?
As explained in the guide, shamans during TBC had 2 spells in their rotation (CL and LB), and it made up 100% of our dps. LB now only makes up ~65% of our dps, therefore crit lost 1/3rd of it’s value.
We spammed LB and CL on every CD. We were a very simple class. We also got something like 12% chance to hit along with ToW and we needed something like 50 hit rating to cap. Since we did not revolve around any cooldowns (other than CL) haste was not that big of deal, and crit gave us our biggest bang for our buck because 100% of our DPS came from LB/CL and those were not auto-crits.
5) CL used to be in the rotation, it seems like it’s fading in value, what’s up?
Back in TBC, and for part of wrath, we didn’t have our talent “shamanism” which makes lightning bolt gains an additional 10% and lava burst gains an additional 20% of your bonus damage effects. CL doesn’t gain anything. Neither badge/emblem totems from 70/80 proc off CL either.
Add in the fact that one of our glyphs makes LB 4% stronger and suddenly CL isn’t doing so hot compared to it.
Before CL used to be worth investing a bit more mana because it gave a faster spell and stronger spell. Now it’s just faster and still expensive.
6) Why is the 80 badge totem so worthless and why is the new one worthwhile?
The 80 badge totem, sadly, has an ICD of 45 seconds. To my knowledge the level 70 version doesn’t. However, the best totem for BiS is Totem of Hex, and following those are any totems that give spell damage to LB/CL. The BT totem, if memory serves, is 2nd best.
The newest 80 badge totem (from triumph) gives 200 haste rating for 12 seconds. The key to the difference in the totems is that it's ICD is 6 seconds and it has an amazingly proc rate of 70%. This basically will give you a 100% uptime. It's like a free 200 haste.
7) What’s the best race for a PvE elemental shaman?
If we are talking pure elemental dps orcs would be your strongest caster. It makes sense afterall, SP is our strongest stat, and therefore this will give us the bigger dps increase. Taurens have no beneficial talents to help out in PvE, and trolls have nice beserking buff (sort of a weak, personal bloodlust).
So orcs > trolls > tauren
However I would like note here that the orc racial got changed to only give spell power bonuses. You don’t gain healing power. This makes trolls slightly better for when you have to off-heal as we can beserk for faster heals. Still though, pick the race you like the most. A well played tauren shaman will outdps any poorly played orc shaman any day of the week.
8) What stats am I looking for when rolling on gear?
Hit
Spell power
Haste > crit
Crit > haste
Those are the main stats that we go for. Getting hit capped is crucial, a missed 10k LvB is painful. Then you go for spell power and haste/crit. If you are below 20% crit go for SP and crit, if you are sitting 20-25% crit, then go for SP and haste. As I stated in the guide, SP is always a work in progress, so you can never have too much (in a balanced character)
9) What should I be socketing?
The meta should be +21 crit and +3% crit damage. This requires 2 blue gems.
I know mp5 isn’t a stat we care at all about however the best blue gems (imo) are sp/mp5 gems. Two of those, and no more.
After that gem until you’re hit capped. Pure +hit gems are the best if you’re far off from the hit cap, if you’re close and pure +hit would put you over, go for +hit/sp
After you are hit capped truck away with +SP gems make your LBs pew pew that much harder
10) What totems should I lay down in a raid setting?
It might vary from boss to boss, but as a general rule of thumb:
Fire Totem- Totem of wrath down, hands down.
However, you may have a group with more than one elemental shaman in the raid. In this case use searing totem on single target dps. Yes, magma totem WILL do more dps than searing totem, mine ticks for 700ish every 2 seconds. However magma totem is more expensive, and on a much shorter duration. You’ll be blowing mana down the drain.
Water totem- Mana spring totem or Healing stream. If you are the only shaman and a paladin is in the raid giving everyone BoW then you might as well use healing stream totem since mana spring and wisdom no longer stacks. The heal is pretty much crap, but it's better then nothing.
Some bosses do have some sort of a raid-wide disease or poison debuff though. If your healers are having a hard time (and you’re the only shaman to put it down) keeping up to pace with the raid help them out, give them that poison/disease cleansing totem. Sure they lose the extra Mp5 but they blow a lot more mana spamming their cleansing abilities. You, on the other hand, plant a totem down once and it constantly removes it from your group, minimizing the number of cleanses that need to be casted.
Earth- Stoneskin or strength of earth are our best 2 choices.
Use stoneskin if there is a DK in the raid as he will provide the str totem buff with his horn. If you are the only shaman and without a DK you can place str totem down or stoneskin. The speculation is the agi gives tanks nice raw mitigation from damage, and gives the physical dps a dps upgrade.
Air- Wrath of Air totem or Windfury totem
Same concept with earth. 5% casting for your healers and yourself (even if there weren’t any other caster dps) is more important than the physical dps getting faster attacks off. However, if you have 2 shamans, make sure you aren’t double planting as these totems don’t stack.
11) Glyph of Totem of Wrath is coming out, will it replace a current glyph?
Glyph of Totem of Wrath now replaces Glyph of LvB if and only if you are running 3.3k-3.8k SP unbuffed. Until then use glyph of ToW, and switch to Glyph of LvB when you hit that point...and to that I say good luck.
12) PTR: FT Change to affect weapon speed! What does this do to an Ele shaman?
Nothing. It's poorly worded. The spell power granted to you via FT is going to stay the same. What IS changing is the fact that faster weapons will deal less FT damage when you melee, and slower weapons will hit harder with FT when you melee. In other words: It's ok, calm down, take a deep breath and move on
13) My Elemental Oath doesn't stack with boomkin! What about my 10% increased damage!?
Correct, the buffs don't stack with each other, however you still gain elemental oath anyways, the +5% crit just does nothing. This is why people raise a fuss about am I getting +10% extra damage from clearcasting?
YES YOU ARE! No where in the buff does it state EO must be up WITH clearcasting from elemental focus to get the +10% damage, so even if elemental oath didn't proc because the boomkin overrides it you'd still get the clearcasting buff which is the ONLY thing needed for +10% damage.
14) Do I revolve around staying at 511 haste or can I go past it?
First off, you can do a 5:4 rotation while being below 511 haste, just not by much. I was doing a 5:4 rotation since 490 haste. (Though technically I was clipping LvBs by half seconds). So don't gouge your eyes out if you get a new item that drops you to 500 haste. You don't have to revert to a 4:3 rotation
Second off, don't revolve around 511. I see a lot of people saying to get to 511 haste and that's it. This is wrong, you are able to go past 511 haste. It's still a dps increase, just not as much. It loses value past that point because a 6:5 rotation is not possible yet. With the new totem of 200 free haste it could be possible that a new rotation may form (at some point in time) due to that much extra haste.
Naxxaramas Gear guide
First off: http://www.codeplex.com/Rawr is finally up with a shaman part to help min/max your gear.
So here’s the list of current best in slot items (BiS) for an elemental shaman. The thing I would like to stress is just because it’s the BiS doesn’t mean you should go for it automatically. Do not be mechanical when gearing yourself. If something is the BiS, but because of your current itemization you drop 40 some hit (like dropping t7/t7.5 gloves for the benefactor gloves) and fall under the hit cap, wait until you can use them properly. DON’T BE MECHANICAL
1. Head- Valorous Earthshatter Helm
2. Neck-Wyrmrest necklace of power
3. Shoulder- Valorous Earthshatter Shoulderpads
4. Back- Pennant Cloak
5. Chest- Valorous Earthshatter Hauberk
6. Wrist- Bands of Mutual Respect
7. Hands- Benefactor's Gauntlets
8. Waist- Girdle of Recuperation
9. Legs- Valorous Earthshatter Kilt
10. Feet- Eruption-Scarred Boots
11. Finger 1-Signet of the Malevolent
12. Finger 2- Signet of Manifested Pain
13. Trinket 1- Dying Curse
14. Trinket 2- Illustration of the Dragon Soul
15. 1H- Torch of Holy Fire
16. Shield- Voice of Reason
17. Totem- Totem of Hex
There can be debate on which rings (and in certain situations which trinkets) to use, but the important part to look at here is the main gear slots. This is the bulk of where your hit rating, haste, spell power, and crit comes from, and it can vary (especially due to racials or the presense of a boomkin/spriest) on what rings/trinkets you end up using. This is all in all a general outline and you don’t have to follow it like the bible, so don’t.
New updated Ulduar gear guide
As I said in my last post: Just because it's the BiS item for us doesn't mean that it's your best item. If you're going to go 50 points under the hit cap by picking up the item then don't use it till you can solve that problem. Don't be mechanical when gearing.
1. Head- Conqueror's Worldbreaker Helm
2. Neck- Pendant of the Shallow Grave
3. Shoulder- Conqueror's Worldbreaker Shoulderpads
4. Back- Drape of Mortal Downfall
Runner-up- Pennant Cloak (If I have Frozen Loop, this is really debatable though)
5. Chest- Conqueror's Worldbreaker Hauberk
6. Wrists- Bindings of Winter Gale
7. Hands- Runeshaper's Gloves
8. Waist- Belt of the Fallen Wyrm
9. Legs- Conqueror's Worldbreaker Kilt
10. Feet- Treads of the False Oracle
11. Ring 1- Pyrelight Circle
Runner-up- Frozen Loop
12. Ring 2- Nebula Band- (Alagalon loot, not currently on database yet)
13. Trinket 1- Dying Curse
14. Trinket 2- Illustration of the Dragon Soul
15. 1H- Constellus
16. Shield- Wisdom's Hold
17. Totem- Totem of Hex