DPS Shaman has always been a questionable choice in Classic, and Elemental was no different. Fortunately, Season of Discovery brings with it the perfect blend of new abilities to bring DPS Shaman into the public eye. Not only are we a power house at level 25, we will only get better with more Phases, unlocking very high-value talents, as well as stronger spells for our rotation.

Build Summary

DPS as an Elemental Shaman is not rocket science. We want to keep the appropriate Totems out, maintain Flame Shock on the main target, keep Lava Burst on cooldown, and proceed to hammer them with Lightning Bolts until only one of us is left standing.

To aid in this, we generally want to keep Shamanistic Rage on cooldown at all times, in order to make sure we always have mana. If we are not careful, or neglect Shamanistic Rage, we can very easily run out of mana during a fight, having to resort to whacking the enemy with a small stick. For this reason, you should always make sure to have either Flametongue Weapon or Frostbrand Weapon applied, just in case.

Along with this, you want to utilize your Totems effectively. If you have aggro, you can drop Stoneclaw Totem or Earthbind Totem to buy yourself time. During most fights you will want to keep Stoneskin Totem and Healing Stream Totem down, as well as shifting between either Fire Nova Totem or Searing Totem depending on the fight. If the enemies Fear, throw down a Tremor Totem. If they Poison, throw down a Poison Cleansing Totem. If the damage doesn’t warrant Stoneskin Totem, swap to Strength of Earth Totem for a bit of bonus damage for your melees.

Runes

Chest

Overload

Gives your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Chain Heal, Healing Wave, and Lava Burst spells a 50% chance to cast a second, similar spell on the same target at no additional cost that causes half damage or healing and no threat.

An incredibly obvious choice, Overload gives our main damaging spells a 1/3 chance to repeat the cast for half damage. This is a fantastic damage boost, as well as a fairly solid boost to our healing if we ever need to swap.

Gloves

Lava Burst

You hurl molten lava at the target, dealing 198 to 256 Fire damage. If your Flame Shock is on the target, Lava Burst will deal a critical strike.

For our gloves we have two solid choices, forcing us to pick between damage or sustain. Whenever possible, you will want to use Lava Burst, giving us another incredibly solid damage nuke on a 10-second cooldown. Make sure Flame Shock is always running for this, the guaranteed crits are incredibly strong, especially at level 25.

Water Shield

The caster is surrounded by 3 globes of water, granting 1% of your maximum mana per 5 sec. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, 4% of maximum mana is restored to the caster. This expends one water globe. Only one globe will activate every few seconds. Lasts 10 min. Only one Elemental Shield can be active on the Shaman at any one time.

If you find yourself running out of mana before the fight is over, bring Water Shield instead of Lava Burst. This gives us 1% maximum mana every 5 seconds, which is unfortunately not a lot, but it is definitely something. The main boon of Water Shield is the 4% mana granted every time we take a hit.

To best take advantage of this, you will need to learn when and how you can purposefully take a hit to trigger Water Shield without risking death. This is a fine line to walk, so be careful!

Legs

Ancestral Guidance

For the next 10 sec, 25% of your damage is converted to healing on up to 3 nearby party, and 100% of your healing is converted to damage on your most recent Flame Shock target.

This is a fantastic support option, but offers us no boost to our actual DPS. Instead, this allows us to heal party members for 25% of all damage we deal for 10 seconds. We can pump out some significant burst in any 10-second window, so this can be an incredibly useful tool for brute forcing mechanics, or turning the tides of a fight.

Shamanistic Rage

Reduces all damage you take by 20% and you regenerate mana every second for 15 sec. Mana regenerated per second is equal to 15% of your Attack Power, 10% of your Spell Power, or 6% of your healing power, whichever value is greatest.

This will generally be your go-to. Shamanistic Rage offers a mostly irrelevant defensive cooldown combined with 15 seconds of heavy mana regeneration. The mana restored is based on Attack Power, Spell Power, or Healing Power, choosing whichever is highest. Unfortunately for us, at level 25 we are unlikely to have a ton of any of these stats, likely ending up around 40~ Spell Power and 110 Attack Power. Fortunately, 15% of 110 is still 16 mana per second, for a total of 250 or so mana regained over 15 seconds. Combined with raid buffs and the low 1-minute cooldown of Shamanistic Rage, this can be enough for us to sustain our mana for an entire fight with no issue.

Talent Build

As a caster DPS our choices are fairly obvious and mostly set. Concussion and Call of Thunder add a significant amount of extra damage to your main spells, unfortunately excluding Lava Burst. Convection and Elemental Focus on the other hand give us a bit more longevity during a fight. There are some valuable talents that we are skipping, but with our limited pool of 16 points, there really isn’t anything we can give up.

Call of Flame and Improved Fire Totems are nice boosts to your Fire Nova Totem and Searing Totem but do not offer nearly enough to make sacrifice any of our other talents. Reverberation is a good boost to our DPS on AoE fights, allowing us to get Flame Shock running on more targets, but 1 second for 5 points is a hefty price to pay.

We could put 7 points into Enhancement, grabbing Ancestral Knowledge and Improved Ghost Wolf. This is going to cost you a significant amount of damage but gives you the ability to cast Ghost Wolf in 1 second, which is one of the only mobility options available at level 25. I do not recommend this if you plan on raiding, but it is incredibly useful for open world content.

Key Spells and Abilities

Flame Shock

At level 25 we are sat awkwardly between two Ranks of Flame Shock, meaning our current Rank is fairly low damage. This is outweighed by Lava Burst having a guaranteed critical against any enemy with Flame Shock on them. Because of this, we want to have this running at all times.

Lightning Bolt

This is our main damaging spell. Spam this whenever you have nothing better to do. Combined with Overload this becomes a powerhouse, albeit an expensive one.

Frost Shock, Earth Shock

Your non-DoT Shocks should be mostly used for either their secondary effect or as movement options. At level 25 we have just gotten a new Rank of Earth Shock, while Frost Shock is 5 levels out of date already. Because of this, Earth Shock is the better option for actual damage, unless an enemy is Nature immune. If you do find yourself against a Nature immune enemy, I recommend weeping silently.

If you know an encounter could benefit from an interrupt, I recommend just holding onto these to make sure you’re ready when it counts.

Fire Nova Totem

This is our only actual AoE option, and it is not fantastic. This totem costs 170 mana to place and has a 5-second delay before even dealing damage. Fortunately, the damage is great if the enemies are still standing within 10 yards of it after the delay. Unfortunately, tanks really like moving enemies away from Fire Nova Totems, and this will be wasted more often than you’d like.

Strength of Earth Totem, Searing Totem, Healing Stream Totem

This trio makes up your standard Totem set and should be placed for every boss fight at the very least. Strength of Earth Totem is not a DPS boost for us, but it is a nice boost to our Attack Power, which in turn gives us more mana from Shamanistic Rage. Searing Totem will passively shoot enemies, dealing a fairly small amount of damage every hit, but some is more than none! It is important to remember that Searing Totem only lasts for 35 seconds, as opposed to the 1-2 minutes of your Totems. Healing Stream Totem is effectively passive Health Regeneration for your party, and while it isn’t a game changer, we don’t really have anything else to use our Water Totem slot for.

Outside of our default setup, we want to use Earthbind Totem, Stoneclaw Totem, Tremor Totem, Stoneskin Totem, Poison Cleansing Totem, and Frost Resistance Totem where appropriate. These all have their own niche and can be invaluable within that niche.

Example Best-in-Slot

BiS lists can vary drastically from fight to fight, even more so as a Tank. There is rarely a one-size fits all solution for any given dungeon or raid, so you will need to find what suits your needs best.

Below is an example of an all-round Best-in-Slot list that you can tweak to fit your individual needs.

Armor

• Twilight Elementalist’s Cowl (211507)
• Magician’s Mantle (12998)
• Twilight Elementalist’s Robe (211509)
• Ancient Moss Cinch (209685)
• Soul Leech Pants (209684)
• Twilight Elementalist’s Footpads
• Glowing Leather Bands (209578)
• Slick Fingerless Gloves (211455)
• Flowing Scarf (209423)

Weapons

• Rod of the Ancient Sleepwalker (209561)
• Dagger of Willing Sacrifice (211456)
• Blackfathom Ritual Dagger (209694)
• Carved Driftwood Icon (209575)

Jewelry

• Jagged Bone Necklace (209686)
• Signet of the Twilight Lord (209668)
• Advisor’s Ring (20426)
• Invoker’s Void Pearl (211450)
• Rune of Perfection (21566)

Noteworthy Items

Heavy Dynamite

Dynamite is an iconic tool for Classic WoW, and Season of Discovery is no different. Make sure you stock up, at this level the damage is higher than most of your spells.

Armor of Nature’s Wrath

Not all of our damage is Nature damage, but a significant portion of it is. Combined with the inaccessibility of generic Spell Damage items, sometimes Nature’s Wrath pieces will be your best choice.

Instead of listing every individual piece of Nature’s Wrath armor, I’ll list a few highlights here. There may be better, or more accessible options available to you, so check your Auction House, don’t tunnel vision one particular piece here!

• Robust Shoulders of Nature’s Wrath
• Dervish Tunic of Nature’s Wrath
• Pathfinder Footpads of Nature’s Wrath
• Headhunter’s Bands of Nature’s Wrath
• Cutthroat’s Cape of Nature’s Wrath

Race Choice

Troll

My personal favorite, Trolls deal 5% increased damage to Beasts. They also have access to the very powerful Berserking racial, scaling with your current health. As a caster, you may struggle to activate the full 30% boost, but sometimes when the stars align just right you can stand in a puddle of bad just enough to get the full boost.

Orc

Blood Fury is unfortunately only Attack Power in Classic, meaning it gives us nothing as a caster. Additionally, reducing your healing received by 50% can very easily be a death sentence. Even the crowd favorite, Axe Specialization, brings nothing to the table for us as we don’t plan to hit enemies with our weapon if we can help it, and “Caster Axe” is not exactly a common term.

Tauren

Bringing nothing to the table for casters, Taurens have Endurance and War Stomp, both of which are decent racials, but neither is useful for endgame PvE as a caster.