Shaman Leveling Guide

Shaman Leveling Guide
  • Author: Luxrah
  • Date: May 20, 2024
  • Updated: May 20, 2024
  • Expansion: Cataclysm

Shamans are thematically at the front and center of the Cataclysm expansion thanks to its focus on the elements. The Earthen Ring faction is entirely made up of Shamans, led by everyone’s favorite character, Thrall. You’ll feel right at home leveling in the newly revamped open world. The Enhancement specialization is particularly strong for solo questing, and Elemental is perfectly viable as well.

In this guide, we’ll go over helpful tips, where to spend your talent points, what to look for when gearing, effective use of your abilities, and other general advice to make the leveling process as smooth and easy as possible!

Pros

Cons

  • Totems are a little trickier to use than other buffs since they must be positioned and they can be attacked.
  • Elemental is a little slower and weaker to level than Enhancement.

General Leveling Tips

Shamans will do well questing solo in the open world, but you can always change things up with a dungeon or two. If you’re Elemental, you can easily dual-spec and heal dungeons on the side while using the same gear. Most groups will be happy to have a Shaman of any flavor thanks to the usefulness of their totems and Bloodlust/Heroism.

Stat Priority

Enhancement

  • Agility
  • Mastery
  • Critical Strike
  • Haste

Elemental

  • Intellect
  • Haste
  • Mastery
  • Critical Strike

Rotation

Enhancement

Be sure to maintain your buffs and use your totems:

Your rotation is fairly straightforward:

  1. Cast Flame Shock to apply/maintain the buff on as many targets as possible, if they will live for most of its duration.
  2. Cast Feral Spirit on cooldown.
  3. Cast Lava Lash on cooldown.
  4. Cast Stormstrike on cooldown.
  5. Cast Chain Lightning when you have 3+ stacks of Maelstrom Weapon if you are fighting more than one enemy.
  6. Cast Earth Shock on cooldown.

Elemental

Be sure to maintain your buffs and use your totems:

Your rotation is fairly straightforward:

  1. Cast Flame Shock to apply/maintain the buff on as many targets as possible, if they will live for most of its duration.
  2. Cast Lava Burst on cooldown if your target has Flame Shock.
  3. Cast Earth Shock to spend Fulmination or if you have 7+ charges of Lightning Shield.
  4. Cast Chain Lightning if you are fighting more than one enemy.

Talents

Enhancement

cataclysm enhancement shaman leveling build
cataclysm enhancement shaman leveling build order

This is a standard build for leveling. Most of the talents that were skipped in the build above are not worth taking. The order is more flexible, but you will probably want to take each of the three major 1/1 talents as soon as possible.

Elemental

cataclysm elemental shaman leveling build
cataclysm elemental shaman leveling build order

This build takes Earth’s Grasp for some extra crowd control, but you could skip it if you have your eye on something else. Unfortunately Earthquake isn’t really worthwhile for leveling despite being your capstone ability.

Glyphs

Prime

Enhancement

Elemental

Major

Minor

Equipment

Shamans are able to use Staves, Daggers, Fist Weapons, and One- & Two-handed Axes and Maces. You should always try to use whichever weapon gives you the best stats. Be sure to also use something in your Off-hand if your Main-hand item is not a Two-handed weapon. This should be another weapon if you are Enhancement or a Shield or Off-hand item if you are Elemental.

Weapon upgrades will often be the biggest damage increase while leveling. Weapons are your primary source of Attack Power or Spell Power, and will be a big boost every time you upgrade.

Shamans can use Cloth and Leather armor, and learn Mail at level 40. At level 50 they gain Mail Specialization, and from that point on you’ll want to wear exclusively Mail in order to benefit from the buff to your primary stat.

Professions

Your professions won’t really affect the leveling process much, but if you want some useful passive bonuses, you can go with gathering professions like Herbalism or Skinning. These will be easy to keep up with while leveling and also offer the best gold-making potential. You can also opt to start working on any crafting professions that you want to use at endgame.

Useful Macros

There aren’t many super important macros for leveling, but there are some that are nice to have.

Startattack Macro

This macro is useful to make sure that your character always uses Auto-Attacks, even if you pull from ranged. This is mainly useful for Enhancement Shamans. You can replace Flame Shock with any other ability from your kit and the macro will work all the same.

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Flame Shock

 

About the Author

Luxrah

I've been playing World of Warcraft on and off since vanilla, usually as a healer or caster and often as a guild leader. I play both retail and classic. I also love RPGs, sandboxes, and sims.
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