The Shaman
Shaman are spiritual guides and practitioners, not of the divine, but of the very elements. Unlike some other mystics, shaman commune with forces that are not strictly benevolent. The elements are chaotic, and left to their own devices, they rage against one another in unending primal fury. It is the call of the shaman to bring balance to this chaos. Acting as moderators among earth, fire, water, and air, shaman summon totems that focus the elements to support the shaman’s allies or punish those who threaten them.
Updated for Mists of Pandaria 5.2
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Leveling your Shaman? Shaman leveling is as easy as any other class, unless you’re Resto, and even that isn’t bad if you’re dungeon leveling.
With the changes in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria quest leveling is about as fast as other forms of leveling. If you don’t care for the pace, frustrations, and occasional jerks in PvP or the dungeon groups you’re joining, then questing is the way to go. Still, with a bazillion quests to do it can take awhile.
Here’s how to smooth the process. This guide is a widget which sits in your in-game window and shows you exactly where to go and what to do, every step of the way, all the way to max level. Whether you’re new to WoW or an old hand, Zygor has your back. Grab yours here.
The Shaman
Stixxay, Dwarf Restoration Shaman, Kel’Thuzad
Shamans represent one among three hybrid classes (the others being Druids and Paladins,) and much like the others, they possess numerous abilities within three primary paths, capable of excelling within one while remaining viable for support within the others. These paths are Healing, Damage, and Buffing.
At level 10 you pick your Specialization and then you are locked into that spec.
In exchange for being locked into one of the three talent trees you will receive certain abilities, unique to each tree, and a Mastery ability (trainable at 80) which buffs some aspect of your abilities. See below for more details on how this works.
Buffs and Nerfage: With patch 4.0 class balance became… interesting. One day any given class might rule (casters, in this case) and on the next day the same class might drool. Hot fixes and minor patches will tweak the class balance and things will eventually settle down.
Mists of Pandaria did the same thing and so will the next “game balance” patch and the next expansion.
Those of you with multiple 90s can play the “flavor of the minute” game, but we won’t do that on these pages. Instead we’ll concentrate on what should be good builds and mechanics and let the buff/nerf game sort itself out.
This page is an overview of the Shaman class, you can get a lot more detail on these pages, including gems, enchants, rotations, etc:
- Shaman leveling
- PvE: Enhancement, Elemental, Restoration
- PvP: Restoration
5.2 Patch Notes for the Shaman
- Chain Lightning will now deal the same damage to subsequent targets as it does to the first.
- Lava Beam‘s damage now increases with jumps. Each jump increases the damage by 10%.
- Healing Rain had its mana cost reduced by 15%.
- Flame Shock‘s duration has been increased by 25%.
Tier 1 Talents (Lev 15)
- Stone Bulwark Totem now absorbs 25% more damage. When summoned, the Stone Bulwark Totem has health equal to 10% of the casting Shaman’s health.
- Nature’s Guardian now preserves the player’s health percentage when its maximum health boosting effect expires.
Tier 3 Talents (Lev 45)
- Totemic Restoration no longer allows the Shaman to instantly destroy a totem to obtain a full 50% refund on cooldown. Any totems that have been destroyed or replaced behave as if the totem had been active for at least 1 second.
Tier 4 Talents (Lev 60)
- Elemental Mastery now has a 90-second cooldown (was 2 minutes.)
- Ancestral Swiftness now increases spell haste by 5% and melee haste by 10%, instead of 5% each.
Tier 5 Talents (Lev 75)
- Conductivity no longer requires that the target be within the area of effect of Healing Rain. Conductivity also now shares 30% (was 20%) of the healing received from Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, or Healing Surge.
- Ancestral Guidance now copies 60% (was 40%) of the amount healed.
Tier 6 Talents (Lev 90)
- Unleashed Fury Flametongue now increases Lightning Bolt damage by 20% (was 30%), and Lava Burst damage by 10%.
- Elemental Blast now has a chance to increase the caster’s Agility for Enhancement Shaman.
- Primal Elementalist: Primal Earth Elemental and Primal Fire Elemental now deal 20% more damage.
Elemental
- Elemental Focus now increases the Shaman’s spell damage by 15% (was 10%.)
- Shamanism now increases the damage of Lightning Bolt by 70% (was 50%.)
- Shamanistic Rage is now available to Elemental Shaman as well as Enhancement Shaman.
- Lava Burst base damage has been reduced by 33% but now always deals a critical strike. When cast on targets affected by Flame Shock, it now deals 50% more damage.
Enhancement
- Mental Quickness now lowers the cost of shocks by 90% (still lowers the cost of other “beneficial, instant, damaging and totem spells” by 75%.)
- Spirit walk now has a 1-minute cooldown (was 2 minutes.)
- Shamanistic Rage is now available to Elemental Shaman as well as Enhancement Shaman.
Restoration
- Lava Burst base damage has been reduced by 33% but now always deals a critical strike. When cast on targets affected by Flame Shock, it now deals 50% more damage.
Glyphs and Gear
- Glyph of Purge now adds a 6-second cooldown to Purge.
- Glyph of Flame Shock has been redesigned. This glyph now causes the Shaman to heal for 30% of the damage dealt by Flame Shock.
Shaman Abilities & Specs
Pandaren Shaman, can be Horde or Alliance
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.
The Restoration tree is obviously healing centric, enhancement for those who like crushing skulls face to face, and finally elemental (my personal favorite) for anyone wanting to nuke the target from orbit… figuratively speaking.
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.
The Totem
Totems gift all shamans with the ability to bring along helpers (totems,) 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 Shaman’s adaptability, although they are forced to remain in one spot, unlike a Paladin’s aura.
“Enchants”
However we have more than just totems to enhance our effectiveness. Shamen 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 an 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. Shamen 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. Not bad, at all.
Elemental Spec
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.
Intellect is the go-to elemental stat, and spellpower will only appear on some items. Intellect still gives us mana and a smidgen of crit chance, too. In short, load up on the Int. With Mists of Pandaria it no longer has anything to do with Mana Pool or Mana Regen.
Spirit is a staple requirement for elemental shamans. The spirit we get will be turned into Spell Hit Rating through the revamped Elemental Precision talent, but only spirit from your gear counts, base spirit is worthless. This means that gemming for Spirit is good.
For PvE (Raiding) the stats are:
Spirit/Hit (until capped (15%)) >> Intellect >= Spellpower > Haste = Mastery >> Crit
Your crit on gear should be reforged into the best available stat.
Elemental Leveling
For more details on Elemental Shammies, see our Elemental Shaman page for PvE goodness and our Shaman leveling guide.
It used to be that leveling as Elemental is a mixture between awed fascination and mired boredom. How could this have been? Downtime. Elemental shaman leveling was five seconds of overpowering slaughter followed by five seconds of drinking. Repeat ad infinitum, or at least until you get some nice mana regeneration. With the 4.0 patch (Cataclysm) mana problems seemed to be gone. In Mists of Pandaria the whole thing is “No Sweat.”
Enhancement Spec
Goblin Enhancement Shaman
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 boost.
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.
Enhancement Leveling
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.
Totems can alternate between mana regeneration, strength, agility, and possibly a fire totem for some increase in consistent DPS should you want it.
See our Enhancement Shaman guide for PvE builds, rotations, and more details. If you’re not yet 90 see our Shaman leveling guide for tips on how to get to 90 quickly.
Restoration Spec
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, many of the current endgame dungeons practically demand three shamans healers if not even more, and even in small time instances 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.
Restoration is one of the more uncommon builds for leveling. That would likely be due to the prevalence of solo players for the 1-90 grind, as opposed to leveling teams (such as in dungeons.)
In the old days (before the Dungeon Finder tool) Restoration (leveling solo) would get the job done, but it would be very much on the slow side. The recommended tactic was to grab a team and heal them while they slaughtered 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 10 gold, and you’re 30+, consider getting the dual talent ability from your trainer. Then you can switch between resto and whatever, whenever you like.
Nowadays you can use the Dungeon Finder tool and heal dungeon teams all the way to 90. You’ll get fast XP and better gear, too. Plus, think of how much that will prepare you for end-game raiding.
See our Restoration Shaman guide for more on this build, for PvE, and check out our Dungeon Leveling Guide if you want to go the dungeon route. If you’re the PvP type then check out our Resto PvP page.
Shaman Races
Pandarens will be allowed to become Shamen. They can pick Horde or Alliance when they leave the starting area.
- Bouncy means the take less falling damage. Just the thing for jumping off cliffs…
- Can stun melee opponents with a quick hand strike.
- Rest XP, as gained from an Inn, lasts twice as long as for other races.
- Good with Cooking
- Buffs from food have increased effect.
For the Horde
Goblins as Shamen? Who’d they bribe to get that deal? Do they buy their totems from GobMart?
- Orc
- Blood Fury increases melee and spell damage for a short time
- Resistance to stuns is nice for PvP and certain other situations
- Expertise with Axes will save a few points at the end-game and add 1% to your Spell Hit, if an axe is the best weapon available.
- Tauren
- War Stomp is nice to have for the melee shaman. It’s not quite so useful for bolt lobbers or healers.
- Increased Health is always nice to have, but seems to be weak at high level. It’s still equal to several of the Stam gems.
- Good with Herbalism
- Troll
- Berserk increases casting and attack speed for a few seconds, which is always useful.
- Increased Regeneration sounds nice, but it’s a very small amount and you have heals.
- Reduced Duration of Movement Impairing Effects is nice in PvP and has its uses elsewhere.
- Increased damage Vs beasts is nice for leveling and some PvE.
- Ranged Weapon Expertise is of no use to you.
- Goblin
- Rocket Jump is a nice way to get to the fight or to escape from it.
- Haste (1% increase) is a nice little DPS/Heal increase in all cases.
- Vendor Discounts and Personal Bank are useful even if they don’t add to damage or healing.
- Good with Alchemy and Goblins get better results with their own potions.
For the Alliance
These two can be Shamen and Humans can’t? Sheesh.
- Dwarf – The dwarves have been corrupted/enhanced by new tribes, some with a Shamanistic tradition. Naturally their totems should be kegs, but aren’t.
- Stone Form washes away bleeds and such, for a few seconds, as well as reducing damage by 10%.
- Increased Expertise with Maces save a few points when trying to maximize your end-game efficiency, if a mace is the best weapon. Their Ranged Weapon Expertise is of no use to you.
- Good with Archeology
- Draenei – Um, well, er…
- 1% increased chance to hit is nice for PvE gearing. It also adds to your Spell Hit.
- The heal is nice, but redundant for you.
- Increased Jewelcrafting skill.
Shaman Professions
If your other characters are rich then go ahead and level a crafting profession. If you’re poor then you might want to stick with the gathering professions for awhile. You can earn gold with the crafting professions, but it takes some work, it helps if you’re very high level with the skill, and you need to keep an eye on the Auction House. Tycoon will be a help with that.
All three gathering skills are good money makes. You get to pick two. I suggest skinning and Herbalism.
- First Aid – You have heals, so why bother? Every once in awhile it’s useful.
- Cooking – You can create your own buffing foods. Cooking mats are often dirt cheap.
- Archeology – You can find BoEs, mounts, very nice weapons, and even some BoA (Bind on Account) items. The downside is that it’s a bit, well, boring to level up.
- Fishing – Kick back and goof off after a few dozen quests, dungeons, or battlegrounds.
- Mining – Breaking ore out of rock nodes builds big muscles, so your Stam increases.
- Herbalism – Pick flowers and gain a self heal (yawn) and a very nice haste effect.
- Skinning – With the bazillions of critters in WoW it’s easy to gather many stacks of skins. Might as well take advantage. This also increases your crit rating.
Ok, so you have enough gold:
All of the crafting professions are good for about 320 Stat points through their self-only enchants or items. Depending on your spec that will be either Int or Agility. Blacksmithing is, in some ways, the most useful profession in that you will be able to make your own armor, some weapons, and will get two extra gem slots. Gems with secondary stats are twice the value of those with primary stats (eg: 320 Haste Vs 160 Int.) and that gives you added gemming versatility.
- Leatherworking -You’ll be able to make your own mail armor, including your starting PvP gear at high levels. It adds 500 Ag/Int in MoP.
- Alchemy – Get about 30% more effect from your own potions and an extra hour of duration from your Flasks and Elixirs.
- Enchanting – Add a 160 Int/Ag enchant to your own rimgs.
- Engineering – Besides various nifty gadgets, the Synapse Springs widget adds 1,920 to your best stat for 10 seconds, which is awesome for burst.
- Inscription – You get some nice shoulder enchants: 520 Int/Ag and 100 Crit. In Mists of Pandaria this is the skill that will make all of the shoulder enchants.
- Jewelcrafting – You can create gems that add twice to your favorite stat.
- Tailoring – Cloak enchants can add occasionally add a lot of either Int (2k) or AP (4k) for 15 seconds.
- Blacksmithing – Can add an extra gem socket to gloves and bracers. Drop the appropriate gem into those sockets.
Shaman PvP
Oops, this section seems to have been carted of by rampaging Gnomes.
If you really want the scoop on Shaman PvP, for any spec, from BG to Arena, then check out Skill-Capped. It’s not free, but it’s pretty cheap and has a ton of good Shammie stuff.
Mists of Pandaria
Enhancement Shaman Core Abilities in MoP
Mists of Pandaria
- The Shaman Relic slot is going away
- Prime Glyphs are going away, Major and Minor remain.
- Talents, as we know them in Cataclysm, are going away.
- All Shamen will share a pool of abilities, just as they do now.
- Each spec will have a set of ten or so abilities unique to that spec.
- Some of the old talents have been folded into the above abilities.
- The new talent system works like this – There will be six tiers of talents, one is gained at each of levels 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90. Each tier has three talents and any Shaman of any spec can pick from any of these talents. At level 90 you will have six of them.
- Points are no longer spent in talents or abilities, when you pick up either you will have the whole thing and not just 1 to 3 points in it.
Here’s footage from Blizcon, discussing the new Shaman abilities in MIsts of Pandaria
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