For anyone who plays an Elemental Shaman, or has an Elemental Shaman friend, I’m posting the Shammur Guide to Elemental Shaman. TL;DR warning: This Guide is somewhat thorough.
dons a monocle My credentials: I played Elemental Shaman as a progression raider in all of Wrath of the Lich King, including getting a world top-100 25man Insanity run (that’s ToGC25 with no wipes).
Elemental, like all casters, starts with your UI. Specifically, you need two things the default UI does not provide; a DoT tracking mod and a better castbar. Quartz provides both of these, as do many other addons.
Talents and Glyphs: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhGzGRfkzGobhM:m0oscoM
There are four points available (counting the point in Reverberation I put in to complete the tree). I personally chose to place these into 2x Reverberation and 2x Totemic Reach. Either of those, as well as Elemental Warding, Spark of Life, and Ancestral Resolve are valid choices.
Glyph-wise, there’s really no room for adjustment in your Primes. Chain Lightning is a possible choice for a Glyph, and so is Glyph of Thunder if you use the Thunderstorm Minor Glyph. I recommend keeping Glyph of Healing Stream Totem for 10man raids and Heroics, but for 25man raids, it’s often not useful.
Gearing:
As with nearly every caster, your gearing is pretty easy to figure out. Intellect > Spirit/Hit until you’re capped > Haste >> Mastery >> Crit.
Crit is both more expensive and does not affect your Lava Bursts, which makes it valued very low. Reforge all Crit on your gear into Hit/Spirit until you’re hitcapped, then Haste. Reforge all Mastery the same way on any item with Mastery and no Crit.
Gem for Intellect first and foremost. Reckless (Int/Haste) in any yellow socket that has a non-terrible bonus (10 crit is questionable, certainly) and a Purified (Spirit/Int) or Veiled (Hit/Int) gem in any blue socket. Because of socket bonuses, it is better to take socket bonuses with int/hit gems than it is to reforge into Hit.
Meta-Gem: As of next patch, the Chaotic and Burning Shadowspirit Diamonds will require 3 Red gems instead of requiring more blue than red. This means that they are by far better than any other Meta (+3% Critical Damage), and you should probably go with the BSD.
Self-buffs:
Always keep Flametongue Weapon and Lightning Shield up. Never use any other weapon buff or shield buff as Elemental.
Every time a Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning lands (the chance is drastically reduced for CL), you have a chance to gain a Lightning Shield charge. At 9 charges, you can Earth Shock them all off for a massive nuke. It’s good times.
Spiritwalker’s Grace is a fantastic spell which you will learn to love. Cast it (including while casting), and you can freely cast while moving. Use it to kite, use it to freecast during “run out of the fire” phases of bosses, use it because it’s candy.
Totems:
Air Totem - Wrath of Air (unless covered by a Balance Druid or other Shaman) > Windfury Totem (unless covered by Frost DK, Survival Hunter, or other Shaman) > Grounding Totem.
Fire Totem - Searing Totem unless you’re facing more than 3 mobs, in which case you use Magma Totem.
Earth Totem - Tremor if there are fears, Strength of Earth otherwise (unless covered by a Hunter, Warrior, or DK), in which case you drop Stoneskin. If you’re dropping Stoneskin, let any Paladin who is running Devotion Aura know to change to something else (like Concentration or Retribution Aura).
Water Totem - Healing Stream. It helps the healers more than Mana Spring does, and you should have it Glyphed to reduce the amount of damage coming in in the first place.
Spell Use: AoE
AoE pulls are simple. If you have three mobs, prioritize Chain Lightning over all other spells, use Earth Shock when you have nine Lightning Shield charges, and Lava Burst your Flame Shock’d target to get Clearcasting for more mana.
For any number of mobs greater than three, keep Magma Totem down instead of Searing Totem.
If you have four or five targets, or six to seven and you have Chain Lightning glyph’d, maintain that rotation.
Otherwise, for large packs, use Earthquake.
Do not use Fire Nova unless you have to move and you do not have your Shock, Unleash Elements, or Spiritwalker’s Grace off cooldown, and your totems are all up. It’s a pathetic amount of damage.
Single-Target DPS:
Chain Lightning is no longer a viable single-target spell, due to its lower coefficient, lower chance to proc Overload, and lower chance to proc Rolling Thunder. Therefore, Elemental has a simple priority rotation:
Searing Totem should be kept up, both for personal DPS and because it provides a large spellpower buff to yourself and the raid.
Flame Shock should be kept up for 100% uptime. Due to the changes in DoT mechanics with Cataclysm, casting Flame Shock before the last tick but after the second-to-last-tick will grant you maximum possible uptime.
Lava Burst should be cast every time it’s up. If Flame Shock is going to fall off before your Lava Burst lands, you should recast Flame Shock, because there’s only one tick of the DoT left and Flame Shock has a higher priority than Lava Burst.
(( Advanced play recommendation: If your Lava Burst is coming up in one global cooldown and your Flame Shock will be on its last tick in 2 GCDs, cast Unleash Elements, Lava Burst, and then Flame Shock while your Lava Burst is in the air. ))
Cast Earth Shock whenever you have nine charges on your Lightning Shield (you will get a graphic on your screen, as well) for massive nukage.
(( Advanced play recommendation: Earth Shocking at 9 can lower your Flame Shock uptime if it happens to coincide with FS falling off. ES at 8 if your FS has 6 seconds or less on it. ))
Lightning Bolt is your filler. Cast it when the above are not applicable.
Multi-target fights call for multi-dotting. When there are multiple targets being tanked separated from each other (Halfus is a perfect example), try to keep Flame Shock up on as many targets as possible without losing DPS uptime on your main target. Remember that you can queue spells, so during a Lightning Bolt’s cast, you can target another target, queue up a Flame Shock, and return to your original target during your Global Cooldown!
If you feel up to it, use Unleash Elements before your Lava Burst if you have a target that does not have Flame Shock on it. You will get the boost on both LvB and FS. Doing this on Halfus with two drakes up, for example, will give you around 85% uptime on Flame Shock on Halfus and the second drake while you lose next-to-no DPS on the drake you’re focusing (since all you lose is one lightning bolt every 30 seconds). A significant personal DPS increase!
Finally, there are a number of utility abilities the Elemental Shaman should be looking to maximize his use of.
Hex: This is one of the best crowd control spells in the game. Usable on Beasts and Humanoids, Hex is not broken by trivial damage, is fast-casting, and lasts longer than its cooldown.
Bind Elemental: Another crowd control spell, this one works on (you got it) Elementals. Both this and Hex can make Heroic runs much easier on your group!
Remove Curse: Shaman have the ability to remove Curses off their party members. There are very, very few curses in the game you want to leave on for any amount of time (Kalecgos cough), so as a general rule, dispel all curses on all party members instantly.
Purge: This spell removes beneficial Magic effects from enemies. Many enemies use such effects, from Heroics to raids. In almost all cases, it is absolutely worth using the time to purge any such buff off. Do it, even if it’s not the target you’re attacking; groups live and die by interrupts and dispels. The only real exceptions are Heroic Ozruk and if there is a Mage who wants to Spellsteal buffs for himself (such as in Halls of Origination and Throne of the Tides).
Wind Shear: This spell interrupts spellcasts. You can interrupt almost every spell that any creature in the game casts, and you should. As a general rule, do not let any spell get off if Wind Shear is off of cooldown. Practice it! Go into Vortex Pinnacle and interrupt every heal from the Adepts. Go into Grim Batol and interrupt every everything.
Thunderstorm: This spell makes tanks want to beat you to death with your stupid little shield that makes you supposedly smarter. Don’t use it to knock mobs away from the tank; use it to knock mobs into the tank. He will love you.
Kiting: Finally, the Elemental Shaman is one of the two best kiting classes in the game. Between Earthbind Totem, Thunderstorm, Frost Shock, and Ghost Wolf, the Shaman can remain comfortably ahead of his enemies; with Hex, Wind Shear, and Grounding Totem, he can nullify spell damage; and with his instant-cast spells, the occasional casted spell, and Spiritwalker’s Grace, he can kill entire trash packs by kiting them until the cows return to their barns, full of grain or hay or whatever cows eat before they come home.
Well, that’s about it. Good luck, slay safe, and pew a great pew!
/pewpew,
~Shammur of Kel’Thuzad Alliance
