PvE Elemental Shaman Rotation & Cooldowns

Your rotation for Elemental is going to be fairly straightforward, but with some fun procs thrown in, and when you get some proper gear you’ll be an absolute machine gun of spells! You always want to be casting something, even while moving, and you’ll have the toolkit to do so. Below I’ll go over the rotation as well as the various cooldowns available to you.

PvE Elemental Shaman DPS

Gems, Enchants & Consumables

Stat Priority & Reforging

Best Professions

Pre-Raid Gear

Rotation & Cooldowns

Talents, Builds & Glyphs

Best in Slot (BiS)

Addons & Macros

Single-Target Rotation

Below I’ll go over the two main variations of builds you’ll likely be running. For DPS cooldowns you’re mainly going to be pressing them as they come up, but you should try to overlap big cooldowns as much as you can. This is especially the case for anything that increases your Spell Power when your Fire Elemental Totem is active as that’ll increase the DPS of your elemental. This no longer works as a snapshot, and is dynamic, so just make sure you have cooldowns like Blood Fury or Synapse Springs active during the duration of your elemental.

Elemental Blast

1. Keep Flame Shock active on your target at all times.
   • It’s recommended to not let it expire, so if you see the timer getting under 2 seconds you should probably spend your next GCD refreshing it.
   • Flame Shock will give you Lava Surge procs, resetting the cooldown of your Lava Burst, which makes it our #1 priority to keep up.
2. Cast Lava Burst when off cooldown.
   • Your Lava Surge will reset this cooldown and make it instant cast, so make sure you’re always ready to pop a Lava Burst off as this is a huge damage nuke for us.
3. Cast Elemental Blast when off cooldown.
   • This is a damage nuke as well as gives a bunch of flat secondary stats. Recommended to have the buff up from casting this when entering Ascendance, using Elemental Mastery, or any other large cooldown that would synergize with an extra chunk of stats.
4. Cast Earth Shock when you have 6+ charges of Lightning Shield.
   • Rolling Thunder is a passive that gives you extra charges of your Lightning Shield while it’s active, up to a maximum of 7, when you cast Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning at targets.
   • Fulmination will consume excess Lightning Shield charges to deal extra damage based on how many charges were consumed. It’s easy to overcap charges due to our spells duplicating often, so try to keep an eye on your charges as not to overcap too often.
5. Keep Searing Totem down and in range of your targets for passive damage.
6. Cast Lightning Bolt as a filler whenever you don’t have other, higher priorities.

Primal Elementalist

1. Open with Fire Elemental Totem and use it on cooldown.
   • The Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem will reduce this cooldown considerably, allowing you to cast it multiple times in a fight. With Primal Elementalist this should 100% be taken.
   • Increasing your Spell Power will dynamically update your elemental to increase its damage output, so overlap this cooldown with things that increase your Spell Power or Intellect.
2. Keep Flame Shock active on your target at all times.
   • It’s recommended to not let it expire, so if you see the timer getting under 2 seconds you should probably spend your next GCD refreshing it.
   • Flame Shock will give you Lava Surge procs, resetting the cooldown of your Lava Burst, which makes it our #1 priority to keep up.
3. Cast Lava Burst when off cooldown.
   • Your Lava Surge will reset this cooldown and make it instant cast, so make sure you’re always ready to pop a Lava Burst off as this is a huge damage nuke for us.
4. Cast Earth Shock when you have 6+ charges of Lightning Shield.
   • Rolling Thunder is a passive that gives you extra charges of your Lightning Shield while it’s active, up to a maximum of 7, when you cast Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning at targets.
   • Fulmination will consume excess Lightning Shield charges to deal extra damage based on how many charges were consumed. It’s easy to overcap charges due to our spells duplicating often, so try to keep an eye on your charges as not to overcap too often.
5. Keep Searing Totem down and in range of your targets for passive damage.
6. Cast Lightning Bolt as a filler whenever you don’t have other, higher priorities.

AoE Rotation

Your AoE rotation is mainly going to consist of a modified version of your single-target rotation that actually becomes simpler as more targets are present to fight.

For 2+ Targets:

• Maintain Flame Shock on both targets.
• Use Chain Lightning if they’re close enough for it to chain between them instead of Lightning Bolt.
• Proceed with your normal single-target rotation on one of the two targets.

For 3+ Targets:

• Maintain Flame Shock on all 3 targets if possible.
• Replace Lightning Bolt with Chain Lightning.
• Magma Totem should now replace Searing Totem.
• Earth Shock is going to move down as a priority and should only be cast with max Lightning Shield stacks and you shouldn’t be as concerned about overcapping stacks.
• Proceed with your normal single-target rotation on one of the targets.

For 5+ Targets:

• Spam Chain Lightning instead of following a single-target rotation.
  • The Glyph of Chain Lightning is viable at this point.
• Use Magma Totem.
• Use Thunderstorm to replenish mana, and with this many mobs if they’re grouped you can use it as a DPS gain.
  • If using this spell for DPS purposes it would be highly recommended to use the minor glyph: Glyph of Thunderstorm to remove the knockback.
• Cast Earthquake when available.

Cooldowns

DPS Cooldowns

• Bloodlust / Heroism: Iconic, and a spell you should be extremely familiar with at this point. It gives your entire raid/group a massive 30% Haste buff. While this has a 5-minute cooldown there’s a 10-minute debuff applied so you cannot benefit from it any more than once every 10 minutes. Coordinate with your group/raid on when it’s best to press this, and make sure to have some big cooldowns lined up to maximize the uptime of this enormous buff.
• Ascendance: This will do two things that will improve your single target and AoE damage by a huge chunk respectively. First off, your Lava Burst is now instant-cast giving you the dual benefit of being able to cast while moving and spamming a large damage nuke. Second, your Chain Lightning is replaced by Lava Beam for the duration, which is a superior chaining AoE spell that should be used at 3+ targets.
• Elemental Mastery (Tier 4 Talent): This is a 1.5 minute CD that gives us essentially a mini-Bloodlust. You should attempt to overlap this cooldown with other strong benefits like Ascendance when it’s up, Synapse Springs or other large stat boosts, and even racial abilities such as Blood Fury if you’re an Orc.
• Fire Elemental Totem: This is a strong DPS cooldown, just make sure not to overwrite this with a Searing Totem or other fire totem as you can only have one up at a time. Best used when both you and your elemental have access to hit the boss for a solid minute. Prioritize this over Earth Elemental as casting one elemental will put the other on a 1-minute cooldown. This should be mostly cast when off cooldown, and doubly so if you are using the Primal Elementalist talent and/or the Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem.
• Earth Elemental Totem: Considerably weaker than its fiery counterpart. That said, it’s free damage as long as the elemental is able to whack on something for the minute it’s up. Make sure to prioritize the Fire Elemental Totem as, again, each elemental totem will put the other totem on a 1 minute cooldown. Do keep in mind in non-raid group content it will attempt to taunt targets, which can be a detriment to the tank at times.
• Stormlash Totem: A new raid-wide totem with a 5-minute CD that will enhance everyone’s spells and attacks with an additional burst of nature damage. This is best used when the raid has maximum uptime to attack the boss, and especially so when Bloodlust / Heroism is active (Or if you’re interested in personal damage benefits lining it up with any large Haste buffs will have a similar effect for you).

Defensive Cooldowns

• Shamanistic Rage: Our premier defensive button for predictable incoming damage. It’s on a short cooldown of 1-minute, and reduces all damage taken by 30%. The mana benefit of this spell can sometimes be useful when spam casting an expensive spell like Chain Lightning, but you have other tools for mana management, so this should be mainly a defensive tool. There is the option of using Glyph of Shamanistic Rage to further enhance the ability by making this cooldown cleanse any dispellable magic debuffs on you.
• Healing Tide Totem: Even though you’re not a healer, this water totem will actually output a significant amount of healing, especially in a raid group, by targeting the most injured group members and outputting a good chunk of burst healing in pulses every 2 seconds for 10 seconds.
• Reinforce: This is actually a pet ability of your Earth Elemental when you take the Primal Elementalist talent which makes the elemental channel on you so you take 20% reduced damage and do 10% more healing. Considering the Earth Elemental Totem is not a major DPS cooldown, it could serve better used as a defensive cooldown in certain fights.
• Stone Bulwark Totem (Tier 1 Talent): An earth totem on a 1-minute cooldown that will provide you an absorb shield on cast and further pulses of absorbs every 5 seconds for its duration.
• Astral Shift (Tier 1 Talent): Similar to Shamanistic Rage, but more potent. A flat 40% damage reduction for 6 seconds on a 1.5-minute CD. With a rather short duration you’ll need to have a good idea of when to press this during encounters to make the most use of it.
• Ancestral Guidance (Tier 5 Talent): When this is active it converts a large chunk of your healing and damage done into raid-wide healing that’ll smart-target the most injured group members around you. This is a powerful enough cooldown that it can be used as a raid-wide healing CD, especially if you overlap DPS cooldowns with it to increase the output.

Utility Spells

These cooldowns are going to be more situational and offer you tools to help out your raid/group. Getting the hang of what tools you have available and remembering to use them in the moment will really up your game and make you an essential asset to your raid or group.

• Spiritwalker’s Grace: This is mainly going to be used to make casting our Lava Blast on the go a viable option in times where you need to be moving and can’t stand still to cast.
• Windwalk Totem (Tier 2 Talent): An air totem you can summon on a 1-minute cooldown that provides movement impairing cleansing and immunity for its duration for the whole raid/group within 40 yards of the totem.
• Earthbind Totem: This is a great kiting tool and slows the movement speed of enemies down in an area where you place the totem for its duration.
• Earthgrab Totem (Tier 2 Talent): This replaces Earthbind Totem and upgrades it to pulse every 2 seconds, snaring in vines any enemies within its range that aren’t immune. When a mob has already been snared, secondary pulses of the totem will apply a large slow instead.
• Frost Shock: This is a single-target ranged instant-cast shock that slows the movement speed of the target you cast it on by a decent amount. Another good kiting tool if your Earthbind Totem / Earthgrab Totem are on cooldown.
• Call of the Elements (Tier 3 Talent): This is a 3-minute cooldown that’ll immediately make all of your totems with a 3-minute or lower base cooldown come off cooldown. A lot of your utility package is tied up in totem cooldowns, so this will essentially give you the ability to recast them immediately. If you’re really on the ball you can rotate the cooldowns of your totems such that you’ll always have something available for any given moment.
• Totemic Projection (Tier 3 Talent): This talent is actually fairly useful for Elemental as it can reposition totems that normally cast at your feet to locations at range without moving. Things like Magma Totem or Capacitor Totem are examples of totems that’ll be useful to move around as a ranged character to make things a bit less awkward or dangerous.
• Capacitor Totem: This is a new totem that’s going to stun targets in a wide range around it after a few seconds. This is cast at your feet, so your options are going to be to dip into melee to stun targets with it, or to use Totemic Projection to relocate the totem after casting to wherever you desire. Do keep in mind that many mobs are stun-immune, so make sure to use it on mobs you can actually CC.
• Thunderstorm: This is a bit of a strange one as it’s an extremely useful cooldown for multiple different situations and using it wisely is going to be a great benefit. That said, it can be misused. First off, it returns a whopping 15% of your mana instantly, which is nice in situations where you’re heavily spamming expensive spells. Second, it can actually be used as a DPS cooldown (suggested to use minor Glyph of Thunderstorm to remove the knockback for DPS purposes) when in a heavy AoE situation as the damage output when there’s a lot of targets is worth the GCD. But third, and this is the tricky one, it has a large knockback attached to it – which can be used to reposition enemies, peel them off yourself, better kite, or even save allies from threat. The knockback does take some getting used to, and it’s not something you want to use whenever as it’ll make grouping enemies up more difficult for your tank and the AoE DPS of your group less effective.