Enhancement Contents |
This Enhancement Shaman guide is primarily intended for use in PvE and Raids at level 100. However, the principals will still apply during the leveling process. If you’re looking for advice on leveling your Shaman, check out our Shaman Leveling Guide.Other Shaman Guides:
If you want the same in-game step by step leveling guide that we use to get to level 100 as fast as possible, take a look at our favorite in-game leveling guide. |
Enhancement Shaman DPS Talents
Tier 1, Level 15
Nature’s Guardian is useful if you anticipate dropping to low levels of health on a frequent basis.
Stone Bulwark Totem is not recommended.
Astral Shift is a useful damage mitigation tool, pick either this or Nature’s Guardian although personally I’m partial to Astral Shift.
Tier 2, Level 30
Frozen Power is the least potentially useful of the three talents in this tier, only effective on a single target.
Earthgrab Totem is an AoE root/slow.
Windwalk Totem gives you and your raid immunity to movement impairing effects for a short time, quite useful under the right circumstances.
Tier 3, Level 45
Call of the Elements is the most useful choice of this tier.
Totemic Projection offers value only for movement heavy encounters.
Totem Restoration offers less of a benefit than the other talents, avoid it.
Tier 4, Level 60
Elemental Mastery is a decent DPS increase, but sub-optimal.
Ancestral Swiftness is an instant cast spell every minute plus a passive haste buff.
Echo of the Elements has a chance to duplicate spells that deal direct damage or healing, this is the optimal DPS choice at this time.
Tier 5, Level 75
Healing Tide Totem is an effective raid healing tool.
Ancestral Guidance is similar in effectiveness only it depends on your damage dealt and is thus best paired with other effects/cooldowns that boost your damage output.
Conductivity is only useful for situations where the raid and enemies stack up in a single position.
Tier 6, Level 90
- All three of this tiers talents are DPS increases,
Unleashed Fury being the choice I recommend.
Tier 7, Level 100
Enhancement Glyphs
Most of these are useful only in certain situations.
- Glyph of Flame Shock – Increased duration of Flame Shock allows more castings of Earth Shock.
- Glyph of Chain Lightning – Great for 4+ targets, not so hot otherwise. Use if you’ll be fighting appropriate groups.
- Glyph of Fire Nova – Pretty much required for A of E fights, just beware of the possibility of pulling additional enemies.
- Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem – Only useful if it allows you to sync your elemental with other 3 min cooldowns.
- Glyph of Feral Spirit – Takes a bit of the load off your healers.
- Glyph of Spirit Walk – Great if you have to travel between bosses, less so if bosses and encounters are close.
Minor Glyphs – Most of these are purely cosmetic.
- Glyph of Lava Lash – only useful when your Lava Lash might break CC or the rare situations where spreading damage might be bad.
Enhancement Stat Priorities
- Primary stat: Agility – provides Spell Power as well as Attack Power and some Crit.
Crit looks like a pretty weak stat and should be avoided.
In-Depth Rotation Guide
Buffs
- Keep
Lightning Shield active at all times. - Use
Windfury Weapon for your main-hand.
Prioities
- Apply and maintain
Flame Shock on your target. - Cast
Lightning Bolt when you reach 5 stacks of 
Maelstrom Weapon. Each stack of Maelstrom Weapon reduces the cast time and mana cost of your next nature spell by 20% up to a maximum of 5 stacks and therefore an instant cast with no mana cost. - Use
Stormstrike, 
Lava Lash and 
Unleash Elements on cooldown. - Cast Unleash Elements and then use Flame Shock. If none of the above are available, use
Earth Shock. When facing multiple targets use Lava Lash to spread Flame Shock to up to 4 targets at a time.
Three or More Targets
- Replace Lightning Bolt with
Chain Lightning if facing 3 or more targets. Also begin using Fire Nova totem on cooldown and replace the regular use of 
Searing Totem with 
Magma Totem.
Ascendance enhances your melee attacks to deal nature damage for 15 seconds, allowing them to benefit from the effects of our mastery. This ability has a 3 minute cooldown and should be used as often as possible.
Feral spirit should be used on cooldown. The summoned wolves are improved by your attack power and so will benefit if summoned while you’re under effects that increase your attack power. The wolves have a passive ability Spirit Hunter that heals you for 150% or 210% of the damage they do, the latter value coming from the Glyph version of the ability.- Your Fire elemental should be used as often as possible assuming that the elemental will actually be able to effectively attack the boss for the full duration of the ability. The Glyph reduces the cooldown and uptime of the elemental by 40%.
- Earth Elemental should also be used on cooldown.
Spiritwalker’s Grace should be activated whenever movement is required during an encounter.
Spirit Walk removes all movement impairing effects and increases your movement speed by 60% for 15 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown. The Glyph reduces the cooldown by 30 seconds to a total of 1 minute and 30 seconds.
Shamanistic Rage is a defensive cooldown that reduces all damage taken by 30% for 15 seconds. The Glyph makes it also remove all dispellable harmful magical effects. This ability has a 1 minute cooldown.
Tier 4 Talented Abilities
- Elemental Mastery provides a 30% haste for 20 seconds and should be used on cooldown.
- Ancestral Swiftness allows for an instant cast spell every minute and should be used as often as possible.
Tier 5 Talented Abilities
- Both Healing Tide Totem and Ancestral Guidance are healing cooldowns and should be used when your raid needs them.
Enhancement Gems
Agility increases all of your important abilities, including spell casting. Gem for Agility where possible. Socket bonuses are worth matching if they’re Agility and might be worthwhile if Mastery or Haste. Use the orange gems for the yellow sockets and purple for blue sockets.
Enchantments for Enhancement
Helm enchants are gone as of Mists of Pandaria
Short on gold? Most of the enchants below have similar enchants available, of lesser value, for less cash. We’ve linked to a couple of these. Check with the rep vendor or the Auction House for others. If you want to buy the best enchants, fund all of your alts, donate to the guild, etc., but don’t have the cash, then see what the Tycoon Addon can do about about improving your situation.
Race Choice for Enhancement Shamans
As prime Hacking and Chopping Engine of Destruction your race doesn’t matter all that much. If being big and furry or short and annoying is more important than every last iota of DPS, then go for it.
Pandaren
- Can choose to be either Horse or Alliance upon leaving their starting area.
- Take less falling damage, though this has little PvE use.
- If you’re leveling then your rest XP lasts twice as long
- If you eat then you get increased benefits from food buffs.
- Can stun melee opponents for four seconds, which is pretty nice.
- Good with cooking.
Draenei
- Self-Heal: You have plenty of heals, but this one is free and there are times when that’s a nice thing to have.
Dwarf
- Stone Form washes away bleeds and other effects, but this is of value mainly in PvP.
- Ranged weapon expertise is pretty useless for you.
- Good with Archeology.
Orc
- Blood Fury increases Spell Power for 10 seconds, which is a good thing in all cases.
- Resistance to Stuns has PvP value and is occasionally useful in PvE, but will only reduce a 6 second stun by about 1 second.
Tauren
- War Stomp is strictly melee range so has very infrequent use in PvE, but has definite use in PvP when melee types get in your face.
- Health Increase is good in all cases, but is actually kind of puny at high level.
- Good with Herbalism, and this skill provides a Haste buff.
Troll
- Berserk increases casting speed, once every three minutes, which can be rather nice.
- Regeneration Increase isn’t big enough to care much about, especially since you can heal.
- Damage Increased Vs Beasts: Nice for leveling, occasionally useful in PvE, useless in PvP since Worgen and Draenei don’t count as beasts for this ability.
- Da Voodoo Shuffle is always useful in PvP (though not nearly as good as an escape ability or trinket.) Occasional value in PvE. It reduces a six second root to about 5 seconds.
Goblin
- Rocket Jump is a nice little escape from, or entry into, combat. Kinda like a cheap Blink spell.
- Increased Haste (1%) is always useful.
- Increased Alchemy skill is nice if you have that skill. Keeping a pile of mana potions on your bar is a good idea anyway.
PvE Choice? Orc or Troll, since you can pick the timing of your abilities for greatest effect. Draenei, followed by Goblins, for their passive haste increase.
Comsumables
Note that Pandarens get twice the food buff. All food buffs last one hour. Elixirs provide secondary stats and there are none which are better than the Flask.
Professions for Enhancement
| Professions | |
|---|---|
| Tailoring | |
| Leatherworking | |
| Jewelcrafting | |
| Enchanting | |
| Inscription | |
| Alchemy | |
| Engineering | |
| Blacksmithing | |
| Skinning | |
| Herbalism | |
| Mining | |
The Really Fast Enhancement Shaman Leveling Guide
The best way to get to the level cap fast is to do it with an in-game Shaman leveling guide. If it shows you where to go, when to go there, and what to do every step of the way, such that you don’t have to look anything up then your leveling is going to be really fast.
Zygor’s Guide fits this bill and can get you to the level cap faster than you might think possible, assuming you stay out of the RPing, fussing around, PvP ganking, and endless shopping. Zygor’s shows up as a small window in your main game screen and it not only tracks everything that you need to do, but it displays an arrow that points your way to the next task. You’ll never have any doubt as to where to go or what to do, regardless of what level you happen to be.
Leave the game and come back and the guide will remember where you left off. Gain a bunch of levels in PvP and/or the dungeons and Zygor still has your back. It will detect your new level, adjust appropriately, and let you delete your old quests.
Zygor’s is always updated for the latest patches and expansions, and this includes its nifty Talent Advisor tool.
Go here to snag your copy of Zygor’s Guide now (or read our review) and get leveled fast.
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