1.0 - The Shaman
This page provides a general overview of the Shaman class, plus note on abilities, raiding, PvP and more. Also see our Shaman leveling guide (for more info on getting to 80 fast) and our pages on the individual Shaman builds: Elemental, Enhancement, and Restoration.
This page is simply intended to provide a general overview of the Shaman class. For a far more in-depth and highly detailed resource on this class, check out this Killer Shaman guide, here.
Shamans represent one amongst three hybrid classes, and much like the others, they possess numerous abilities within three primary paths, capable of excelling within one whilst remaining viable for support within the others. These would be Healing, Damage, and Buffing.
The Totem
Totems gift all shamans with the ability to bring along a slew (4) of helpers, each emitting dramatically helpful increases to damage, mana regeneration, and much more,depending upon what the shaman requires for each encounter.
With totems comes the shamans adaptability, although they are forced to remain in one spot, unlike a paladins aura, as I said above we can have four going at any one time, and with a bit of learning possibly even more buffs.
"Enchants"
However we have more than just totems to enhance our effectiveness, shamans also possess numerous pseudo-enchants for melee weapons, each providing a separate style of buff such as a chance for extra attacks (windfury,) or additional fire/frost damage.
These spells represent a massive boost to melee DPS for enhancement shamans, and with use of dual-wield you gain and even higher chance to proc the effects, being able to apply them to both right and left hand weapons.
Bolt lobbing and healing
Beyond melee abilities, Shaman possess elemental attacks giving them the ability to play the role of ranged caster, elemental shamans being quite versatile and capable in PvP and playing a lesser role if at all in raiding.
Finally, the crown jewel: healing. Shamans with totems and healing capabilities represent one of the most desired healers for all endgame raiding. Chain heal brings massive amounts of health back to multiple raid members and renders us one of the best instance healers in the game.
With the combination of all these facets, Shamans become an immensely powerful class for any situation conceivable with the added bonus of being great soloers to boot.
Race doesn’t factor all that much into a shaman, all of our viability coming from spells and talents plus our variety of abilities make any racials almost pointless. However should you go enhancement an Orc’s bloodfury is a nice amount of added DPS as well as a Tauren’s warstomp for interrupting nearby spellcasters.
Tradeskills
Tradeskills are somewhat less meaningful for most shamans as opposed to class such as Warlock or Priest which gain some of the best gear in the game through crafting. However, that doesn’t mean it’s all unimportant, and for a tradeskill capable of crafting reasonable armor for your shaman, invest in leatherworking.
Oddly enough leatherworking allows you to make mail armor 40+, obviously intended to suit the progression of shamans, hunters, and any other leather wearer gaining access to mail at 40. I personally preferred to simply use quest items or PvP epics as opposed to crafting gear, but that’s not to say it’s not useful.
Money makers are the three staples: Mining, Skinning, and Herbalism. Find
everything you possibly can and sell it all to make massive amounts
of gold, this applies from level 1 all the way to 80. People
are lazy, you profit from this.
Finally, despite the fact that you possess healing spells, First
Aid is always a good investment, and at the very least you become slightly
more mana efficient even If you don’t really need it, unlike some
other classes (warrior) which definitely need First Aid.
2.0 - Shaman Abilities
Shaman abilities are divided into three primary spell trees: Elemental, Enhancement, and Restoration. Each serves a purpose in gifting the shaman with the ability to support or lead in a variety of scenarios. By harnessing all three of these the shaman becomes a true hybrid class, although many times we’ll require only one specialization in situations such as raiding.
The restoration tree is obviously healing centric, enhancement for those who like crushing skulls, and finally elemental (my personal favorite) for anyone wanting to nuke the target from orbit… figuratively speaking.
Even if you’ve gone 41 points into elemental however, you’ll still be needed to drop totems from all three trees depending on the situation. A specific talent in one tree can enhance them yes, but even un-improved totems present massive increases to damage, healing, or mana regeneration.
Elemental
Elemental is the ranged caster tree of the shaman, comparable to say a druid’s moonkin/balance tree, it’s just that we happen to avoid the whole turning into an oversized owlbear in the process, a definite positive.
This tree encompasses all of our shocks, such as earth shock, flame shock, or the ever so well known ‘frost shawk’ from ye old days of overpowered shamans. Despite the passing of our dominating era, shaman are still present as formidable opponents when correctly utilized, and that means using all of ours shocks dependent upon the situation.
Flame can be used to prevent rogues from stealthing, frost to catch someone/slow them down and prevent them from catching you, earth allows you to interrupt spell casting (this one's the most utilized in PvP.) Finally the fire elemental totem enhances your ability to blast away at anything from players to bosses with massive amounts of burst damage.
Elemental is a large part of our viability whether you choose to pick this as your primary talent tree or not.
Enhancement
Enhancement is our low intelligence high strength and attack power tree. To put it simply: how to hit stuff really hard and make it die. Enhancement is the primary tree for efficient leveling, conserving mana for only the necessary buffs and heals while using our potent melee capabilities to bring death.
Windfury is the primary weapon buff of choice when leveling enhancement, and for good reason too. Windfury provides you with a massive attack power boost, made only greater via enhancement talents, for two free attacks, procced quite frequently in fact.
With some luck you’ll find yourself mowing down even level or higher mobs without much trouble at all, and with some mana regeneration you’ll likely never have to stop as long as you take up a good pace, never expending more than you gain back between fights.
This tree also grants us an instant attack, Stormstrike, as well as a more than a few mana efficiency increasers and temporary damage buffs such as Bloodlust/Heroism. However what really rounds this tree out is the earth elemental totem, a great summoned tank for desperate situations.
Restoration
Restoration is healing, the thing that makes us so wildly useful in raids for our massive amounts of semi-AoE healing with chain heal spam. Restoration shamans are in high demand in raiding for good reason, we bring massive amounts of utility via insane healing capabilities and totems as a side-dish.
PvE wise we excel, all the current endgame dungeons such as Sunwell practically demand three shamans healers if not even more, and even in small time instances such as magisters terrace and so on you’ll find yourself quite capable of main-healing all the way through.
Our only problems emerge if you ever hit the arena, we simply lack the survivability inherent to most other healing classes and as a result get smashed the instant we show our face, skill alone will determine whether you thrive or fall in PvP.
3.0 - Leveling
Shaman leveling is actually one of the more enjoyable exercises in the game, not only do you get to pick up some rather interesting abilities almost every 4-8 levels but with the increases to experience gained and the decrease in overall requirements, Shaman are leveling faster than ever.
Whether you be enhancement, elemental, or even restoration, a large amount of our killing ability comes directly from the spells we learn and that remains whether you choose to improve them or not. With careful play an elemental shaman can also match enhancement for sheer leveling speed.
Overall, unlike most other classes, I’d say to pick whichever tree you find most interesting as opposed to a single build specifically for leveling, it’s not going to be that hard either way.
Enhancement Leveling
See our Shaman leveling guide for builds and more details
Enhancement leveling is the easiest and generally draws the more favorable reviews. Besides, becoming a whirlwinding blender machine of death and destruction isn’t at all a bad thing for grinding/questing. Windfury is where this truly begins to shine, and combined with dual-wield you become basically unstoppable.
Most ability rotations will require perhaps one use of earth shock and doing so will save you some life by interrupting any mob abilities. Use the rank one version if you really want to save mana and if you feel fine relying entirely on melee for your DPS.
Totems can alternate between mana regeneration, strength, agility, and possibly a fire totem for some increase in consistent DPS should you want it.
Elemental Leveling
For more details in this build see our Elemental Shaman guide.
Leveling as elemental is a mixture between awed fascination and mired boredom. How can this be? Downtime. Elemental shaman leveling is five seconds of overpowering slaughter followed by five seconds of drinking. Repeat ad infinitum, or at least until you get some nice mana regeneration.
Elemental starts out fairly ho-hum before becoming increasingly flashy as the levels go by. Around 30+ I started unleashing the real power with massive lightning bolt critical and taking down multiples with chain lightning. This is our forte.
Additionally post 50 or so I started maintaining actually good levels of mana efficiency, leading to some long grinds without being forced to stop and drink every other fight, a notably good increase in my leveling speed.
Melee should always be combined in-between spells to pump out your best mixture of quick killing and mana conservation, try and set a specific rotation of what works best for both your life and mana pools.
Restoration Leveling
See our Restoration guide for more info on this tree.
Restoration is one of the more uncommon builds for leveling. That would likely be due to the prevalence of solo players, at least for the 1-80 grind, as opposed to leveling teams. Restoration (leveling solo) will get the job done, but it certainly won’t be very pretty. Grab a team and heal them while they slaughter everything.
Since all your primary abilities will be in healing efficiency you’ll have to use that to your advantage. Generally my experience as restoration was to beat the mob down as efficiently as possible, and what with my heals taking less than 1% my total mana pool, that was fairly easy.
The only real problem with restoration was taking a minute per mob, at least I never had to stop and drink either. If you're leveling up you should really consider one of the other trees.
If you have an extra 1,000 gold, and you're 40+, consider getting the dual talent ability from your trainer. Then you can switch between resto and whatever, whenever you like.
4.0 - PvP
Arena Junkies Resto build:
-
0/20/51 Restoration build. Designed for 2s in Arena play. Make appropriate changes for 3s, 5s, BGs, etc.
- Major glyphs: Stoneclaw totem, Earth Shield, Lesser Healing Wave
- Minor Glyphs: Water shield, Ghost Wolf, Astral Recal
- Recommended gems: yellow: resilience, red: spellpower/resilience, blue: stamina or stamina/resilience, meta: int/mana (Runspeed enchanted on Feet)
55/16/0 Enhancement PvP build for those time when bolt lobbing is the way.
5.0 - Raiding
This is aimed at restoration shamans wanting to start raiding such as Karazhan and heroic 5-mans etc. At a later time we may add and enhancement/elemental gear guide but for now it's just the restoration build oriented gear.
Helm:
Metallic Headband of Simm'onz - Quest Reward
Headdress of the Tides - Drop(Underbog)
Neck:
Necklace of Resplendent Hope - Drop(Old Hillsbrad)
Karja's Medallion - Quest Reward
Natasha's Guardian Cord - Quest Reward
Back:
Lifegiving Cloak - World Drop BoE
White Remedy Cape - Crafted
Cloak of Scintillating Auras - Drop(Arcatraz)
Shoulders:
Mantle of the Sea Wolf - Drop(Heroic Mana Tombs)
Tidefury Shoulderguards - Drop(Shattered Halls)
Chest:
Void Slayer's Tunic - Quest Reward
Earthpeace Breastplate - Crafted
Harness of the Deep Currents - Drop(Murmur)
Wrist:
Primal Surge Bracers - Drop(Black Morass)
World's End Bracers - Drop(Heroic Blood Furnace)
All-Weather Armguards - Quest Reward(Alliance)
Hands:
Fathomheart Gauntlets - Drop(Steamvault)
Earth Mantle Handwraps - Drop(Steamvault)
Thundercaller's Gauntlets - World Drop BoE
Tidefury Gauntlets - Drop(Steamvault)
Belt:
Stillwater Girdle - Drop(Heroic Mana Tombs)
Girdle of the Gale Storm - Drop(Blood Furnace)
Legs:
Oceansong Kilt - Drop(Heroic Ramparts)
Tidefury Kilt - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
Boots:
Auchenai Boots - Quest Reward
Earthbreaker's Greaves - Quest Reward
Rings:
Spiritualist's Mark of the Sha'tar - Quest Reward
Celestial Jewel Ring - Quest Reward
Ancestral Band / Ring of Convalescence - Reputation Reward(Thrallmar/Honor Hold)
Trinkets:
Scarab of the Infinite Cycle- Drop(Black Morass)
Bangle of Endless Blessings - Drop(Botanica)
Scryer's Bloodgem - Reputation Reward(Scryers)
Lower City Prayerbook - Reputation Reward(Lower City)
Weapons:
Lightsworn Hammer - Drop(Shattered Halls)
Hammer of the Penitent - Drop(Mechanar)
The Sun Eater - Drop(Mechanar - Heroic Only)
Shield: Crystal Pulse Shield - World Drop BoE
Light-Bearer's Faith Shield - Vendor(33 Heroic Badges)
Silvermoon Crest Shield - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
6.0 -- 1-80 Shaman Leveling Guide
The best way to get to level 80 fast is to do it with a pre-written
leveling guide. If it's automated to the point where you don't
have to look anything up then it will be just that much faster. Expecially if it trakes where you are and what you're doing, then auto-updates the guide as you complete tasks and quests.
Zygor's Guide fits this bill and can get you to 80 in well under ten
days, maybe even in the 7 days advertised, assuming you pay attention to your leveling and stay out of the raids, PvP sessions, and endless
Auction Housing.
Snag your copy of Zygor's
Guide here or read our review.
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