Shaman buildsedit
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Talent builds require patch version testing info!
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| Class races: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Quests: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Abilities: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Trainers: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Talents: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Glyphs: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Talent builds: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Tactics: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Armor sets: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Starting a: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| PvE: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| PvP: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Useful macros: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
This article is a guide on shaman builds. As a hybrid class, shamans can adapt to a wide variety of tasks. The three talent trees each result in a rather different game experience.
Contents
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Talent trees By purpose
Leveling/Solo PvE
- Enhancement
It's the designers stated intent that the Enhancement tree is the leveling spec for Shamans. It combines little to no down time and high damage output. The important spells and abilities are Windfury Weapon, dual-wielding, Stormstrike, and Lava Lash. The drawback of this spec is that it's melee and thus takes a solid amount of damage from most mob types. At higher levels, Maelstrom Weapon allows regular instant heals, which remedies this problem greatly.
- Elemental
As the ranged DPS tree, Elemental can also be used for leveling. It's much safer since mobs are usually seriously hurt (or even dead), before they are in melee range. However, it uses a lot of mana and thus leads to higher downtime.
- Restoration
For the purpose solo play, Restoration is a rather poor choice. The tree offers next to no enhancements to damage output and therefore killing mobs takes a very long time. It grants high survivability though. Yes, a resto shaman can kill some mobs which nobody else can. But that's not very relevant in practise, because it's just not worth spending 10 minutes to bring down that elite four levels higher. Restoration is a nice spec when leveling in a group environment with many instances. This method has become viable with the introduction of the Dungeon Finder.
Group/Raid PvE
- Restoration
Healing was the traditional role for Shamans in all groups or raids. Over the years, the other specs have become viable too, but Restoration is still a very well liked specialization for raiding Shamans. Since 3.0.1, healing Shamans even got an interesting spell rotation (since 2.0 it had been mostly Chain Heal spam). At least one Earth Shield is still wanted by every raid leader. Shamans are good point (tank) healers and decent AoE (raid) healers.
- Elemental
An elemental shaman is a ranged damage dealer who contributes a strong raid-wide buff of 3% crit for all other damage dealers (including melee). This buff alone may be worth bringing an elemental shaman. If no Moonkin druid is in the raid, elemental provides a similar buff (Elemental Oath, exclusive with Moonkin Aura) for another 5% crit. The drawback is that an elemental shaman has only some limited AoE abilities which cannot compete with Mages, Warlocks or Priests in that department.
- Enhancement
Enhancement Shamans are melee damage dealers with high burst capabilities and very good point damage output, but again (simliar to elemental) only mediocre AoE capabilities. Additionally they provide AP to the whole raid (Unleashed Rage) and their totems are a little more effective than those of other shamans due to Enhancing Totems.
PvP
- Elemental
This tree has great potential to throw off both melee and caster opponents. Elemental Warding fends off up to 6% damage from all sources. Astral Shift further reduces damage if placed under one of the conditions. Thunderstorm is an amazing way to fend off melee attackers for enough time to throw in a quick heal. Finally Eye of the Storm (Talent) helps when trying to get a cast in when there are multiple attackers. These damage-reducing talents along with the high damage output allow for a well-rounded PvP Shaman.
- Enhancement
This tree can be very fun to mess with people, especially when they are caught off guard. The key talents are Toughness which reduces both movement-impairing effects and a good amount of damage, Static Shock for 9 charges of Lightning Shield, and Maelstrom Weapon which makes one spell instant after a certain number of melee hits. Jumping an enemy by surprise with both Feral Spirits, Bloodlust (Heroism for Alliance players), and both instant-strike attacks can make enemies feel helpless and intimidated.
- Restoration
Restoration shamans are not the easiest build to play in PvP. Players need to put some effort into understanding and familiarizing themselves with the various abilities. The low damage output makes restoration shamans rather easy prey for enemy damage dealers. Nature's Swiftness is a highly useful spell when a fast, big and uninterruptable heal is needed. Also, Nature's Guardian is more useful than it seems at the first glance.
Talent builds
Elemental
Elemental MaxDPS/MaxAoE (57/14/0)
| Purpose | Everything |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.3.2 |
By far better than any other builds on here, You want to stack loads of haste, minimal crit ( 20%+ Crit Atleast though ) - Use glyphs of lightning bolt, flame shock and totem of wrath ( glyph of lava is crap totem of wrath is around 80sp which benefits all spells, lava glyph only benefits a 8 second cooldown which is around 300dps per lava burst and 80sp benefits your lava burst + all the lightning bolts between the cooldown ( which is > 300dps total ( atleast 500dps depending on gear ) ) rotation is simple, on bosses Flame Shock -> Elemental Mastery -> Lava Burst -> Lightning Bolt / Chain Lightning ( Never cast chain lightning if the cast time gets below 1 second or you will hit the GCD ) repeat from lava burst - reapply flame shock ( make sure you apply just after it ticks or just after it has left the target ). on aoe the rotation is Flame Shock - > Chain Lightning - > Fire Nova - > Lava Burst - > Chain Lightning - > Lightning Bolt - > Chain Lightning - > Fire Nova - reapply flame shock when needed. on single trash the rotation is Flame Shock - > Lava Burst - > Chain Lightning ( Reason behind this is because it is a faster cast than lightning bolt and doesn't cost much mana after a crit ) if the target isn't dead after that spam Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst every cooldown - try keep flame shock up constantly. Totems :: E: Any F: ToW(Always! even if another shaman can do it) W: Any A: Spell Haste. Enjoy!
Elemental Solo PVE (57/14/0)
| Purpose | Solo |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.1.1 |
This build focuses on high damage output and mana efficiency. After you get Lava Burst at lvl 75, rotation will be Lightning Bolt -> Flame Shock -> Lava Burst -> Thunderstorm (if not in cooldown) -> Frost Shock. Points can be shifted around depending on your play style.
Elemental Raiding (54/17/0)
| Purpose | Group/Raiding |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | ??? |
This build focuses on high damage output and more group utility. Shamans are becoming more of a group/raid tool for the Elemental-only buffs they give to casters. This spec also grabs Elemental Warding to reduce damage being done to you by raid mobs. On raid bosses, 17% (446 Hit Rating) total hit percentage is needed to never miss with a spell. With Elemental Precision, that drops it to 14% (368 Hit Rating, 289 with Misery or Improved Faerie Fire debuff) needed from gear.
Points can be shifted around depending on your play style.
Elemental Warding is highly recommended over some of the other talents that were not chosen due to its priority to survivability in raid boss fights that require resist gear and do a good amount of damage with spells. If you wanted to sacrifice these points for something more viable before raid fights, Elemental Reach can be taken along with a few other talents in Enhancement
Here are some specs to further expand upon the versatility in Elemental Shaman speccing expressed by the above author. I should also note here that Draenei Shamans will only need 13% (342 Hit Rating) from gear due to Heroic Presence with Elemental Precision maxed out.
Elemental Raiding (57/14/0)
| Purpose | Group/Raiding |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.2 |
57/14/0(Updated for 3.2)
This build is all about crit and spell power(and obviously hit or you would never hit anything). (It's slightly similar to the one above.) There isn't much in there for MP5 because your Water Shield should handle most of that. I use this spec on my Shaman (Junn of Rexxar) but he has 500+ MP5. Get your crit up to at least 20%, and you should keep on critting for about 5 or 10 seconds. The Glyphs that should be used are Glyph of Lightning Bolt, Glyph of Lava, and Glyph of Flame Shock. It really doesn't matter what you use for the minor ones though. Good luck shamans!
This spec is designed to maximize a Flame Shock, Lava Burst, and Lightning Bolt rotation while still remaining mana efficient and being mindful of survivability. It has the stock Lightning Bolt enhancements we all know and love, plus Call of Flame, Lava Flows, and Storm, Earth and Fire to enhance Flame Shock and Lava Burst. In addition, Elemental Weapons was included for more spell power overall, and Shamanistic Focus and Totemic Focus for added mana efficiency. These talents with Glyph of Lava, Glyph of Flame Shock, and Glyph of Flametongue Weapon make for an effective DPS build, while remaining survivable through the increased range of the spec and the minimal 4% off some incoming damage from Elemental Warding.
This spec is a level-80 version of the old level-70 Lightning Bolt spam rig. The 10 points spent between Tidal Focus, Improved Healing Wave, and Improved Reincarnation can be shifted around to meet one's own personal play style. Also 2 points from Lightning Overload or Elemental Oath can be shifted around, possibly to Thundering Strikes to increase static crit rate (though I would only suggest removing the points in Elemental Oath if you have another Elemental Shaman in group that has it.) This spec also allows you to act as a spot healer in a pinch, though you will burn through mana fairly quickly.
An added note for any Elemental Shaman, adding Chain Lightning into any spell rotation will increase your DPS, but at the cost of mana efficiency. Before adding this spell to a rotation you should make sure your mana pool and regen can handle the strain it causes. Being OOM 2 minutes into a boss fight is not a good thing, no matter how high your DPS was for those 2 minutes.
PvP
Elemental PvP (53/18/0)
| Purpose | Solo |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.2.0 |
53/18/0 Grabbing all the damage-reducing talents in this tree will make you a lot more durable in both big and small battlegrounds. PvP situations can differ depending on what other classes you could face. Some situational talents are deferred like Lightning Overload and Totem of Wrath because, to get the most out of them, you need to be constantly casting. This usually is not possible, especially when there is a melee class preventing most of your spell casts. Your best bet is to Frost Shock and Earthbind Totem to kite away from them in order to pull out a few extra spells. Ranged and casters are more likely to be played closer as you can interrupt them better and also prevent them from kiting you.
- With the changes to shaman in patch 3.2, placing points in Improved Fire Nova Totem are viable, as 4 totems can be placed at the same time. This works well combined with an Earthbind Totem, rooting then stunning an enemy. Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem is highly recommended for the (53/18/0) build, as are Glyph of Fire Nova Totem and Glyph of Hex, but they can be substituted with Glyph of Thunder, Glyph of Frost Shock, or Glyph of Elemental Mastery depending on style of play.
Points can be shifted around depending on your play style.
This build could benefit a little from Elemental Oath, but it is not worth pulling out points from anywhere else in order to get this talent.
Enhancement
Basic PvE Leveling (0/51/0)
| Purpose | PvE / Solo |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.1.3 |
This is a build for maximizing DPS and minimizing downtime. It allows for flexibility based on play style, since an enhance shaman is very flexible. The instant cast Ghost Wolf, along with Glyph of Ghost Wolf and an Earthbind Totem or a Stoneskin Totem drop, allow for an extra "panic-button" combination to limit your deaths when things do go wrong. 5 points into Maelstrom Weapon get you either an instant cast Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning to burst down the mobs quicker, or an instant cast Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave or Chain Heal when things go wrong. The Unleashed Rage will proc every fight at least once, with the high critical strike rating on shaman gear, the increased crit from Thundering Strikes, and the Dual Wield talent (since you attack more and each attack has a chance to crit). The extra attack power, along with Mental Quickness, allows for larger heals and larger damage from shocks and instant casts from the Maelstrom Weapon. You'll experience minimum downtime and fast mob kills.
The Enhancing Totems talent can be traded for Static Shock. All of the totem talents are useful for leveling except Guardian Totems. Frozen Power, while it does allow for the extra DPS and root, is often not worth the points invested in it as Frostbrand Weapon does not scale well enough with spell power to be superior to Windfury Weapon on the main-hand and Flametongue Weapon on the off-hand, making the root not worth it just for leveling.
Enhancement leveling build samples
PvE Leveling and Raid (16/55/0)
| Purpose | PvE / Solo |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.1.0 |
This is the result of many talent changes, and some personal testing. With this build you will never need to stop and drink, and your spells will deal comparable damage to your melee abilities. The totems are a good investment despite what some might think, since in a leveling situation you can plant them and pull several sets of mobs to within their large range. This is also a very good raiding build. Any build that doesn't take Feral Spirit is not worth looking at. The healing Feral Spirit will give you alone makes it a great ability, especially with the limited survivability that shamans face in raids.
Solo PvE Leveling and Raid (17/51/0)
| Purpose | PvE / Solo |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.1.0 |
This build tweaks the above build a bit more geared towards those who like to quest solo even for the group quests. It gives you a bit burstier damage with spell crits being double damage rather than the normal 150% damage, and gives some more mitigation for those hard-hitting elites for those group quests you can never find a group for, only really sacrificing the 10% AP party boost that is really more viable in groups and raids. The 2 points in Frozen Power is for kiting those hard-hitting elites that you can't heal through such as the giants in Howling Fjord/Grizzly Hills. In a standard solo fight, these 2 points are a waste, since you'll more than likely be using either Flametongue Weapon or Windfury Weapon, and you'll more than likely be in melee range for normal fights. But, for those that you need to kite, the 100% chance to root the mob if you cast Frost Shock from further than 15 yards makes kiting that much easier when you have to worry about pulling other elites in the area. Keep in mind though that enhance shamans are melee fighters. Don't get stuck in the caster mindset.
All in all not the best spec for those who party up a lot, but fairly good for those who like to play without others' help.
Enhancement PvE Raid build samples
Group/Raid Build (PvE) (16/55/0)
| Purpose | PvE / Solo |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.1.0 |
The two points in Call of Flame can be shifted to Elemental Warding if survivability is an issue, although it's normally considered a PvP skill.
Points can be shifted around depending on your play style and raid makeup.
Again, depending on your raid progression, Elemental Warding could help a ton in bigger advanced raids. If you are still in parties and raids where resist gear isn't an issue yet, you could toss them around for Improved Shields or something as relevant.
AOE/Raid Build (PvE) (18/51/0)
| Purpose | PvE / Solo |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.3.0 |
This is a build for patch 3.3.0 which sees the addition of Fire Nova to Enhancement's arsenal of attacks. Two points are placed into Improved Fire Nova so as to lower it's cycle rate to 6 seconds in order to maximize it's damage potential against large mob packs while keeping mana consumption manageable. Additional use of Glyph of Fire Nova is not recommended. There are two loose points in the build that can be used to cap out Improved Stormstrike, split between Improved Stormstrike and Elemental Focus (which will proc off of and lower Fire Nova mana cost substantially), to help sustain your mana pool or placed into Improved Shields for additional Static Shock DPS if you're finding mana manageable within your raid.
Note, however, you will have fewer mana issues in general PvE or when lacking a source of Replenishment with one of the first two options.
Enhancement PvP builds
PvP (0/51/0)
| Purpose | PvP |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.1.3 |
This is a standard PvP build that covers most of the PvP highlights in this tree. Improved Ghost Wolf will enable quick getaways in order to heal up or when threatened with danger. Earthen Power is an amazing utility that will enable any quick getaway with Ghost Wolf combined and makes it easier to kill those pesky plate wearers. Finally, Feral Spirit will not only heal you as your wolves do damage, but they can really annoy any caster trying to mess with you and are supurb for stopping ganks.
PvP (19/38/0)
| Purpose | PvP |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.1.0 |
This build sacrifices damage from Enhancement and provides more disable effects from the Elemental Tree, also providing for more possibility to root with Frozen Power
Enhacement PvP build samples
PvP (12/59/0)
| Purpose | PvP |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.1.3 |
This build is not set in stone. There are a few controversial talents that were both taken up, and also abandoned. Anticipation and Toughness could be considered, but Anticipation just isn't worth the points; and Toughness doesn't do enough damage reduction; and, with the help of Earthen Power, it isn't really needed. There is also the idea of going into the Resto tree to pick up Improved Healing Wave when you need to get away and make a quick, efficient heal. Again, it all depends on your play style.
PvP (12/59/0)
| Purpose | PvP |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.1.3 |
You should get the point now of what works in PvP with this type of build.
PvP (19/52/0)
| Purpose | PvP |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.1.3 |
This PvP build does away with the PvE totem talents and includes talents that improve PvP totems and shocking. Reverberation will allow for more frequent spell interrupts and snares. Elemental Warding is a solid damage reducing talent and Improved Fire Nova Totem can be quite effective, especially in large scale PvP. Although stacking crit will negate your opponents resilience, Unleashed Rage still loses much of its potency due to it being a proc on critical hit, which tends to benefit only the player in many cases. Static Shock seems lackluster, since reapplying Lightning Shield is a minor grievance and the added damage is insignificant.
Restoration
- Current top end-game raiding specs
The Chain Healer (0/16/55)
| Purpose | optimized for raid healing with chain heal |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.1.0 |
Shamans are usually assigned to heal the raid; that happens because that is what Shamans do best. This spec is optimized for raid healing with Chain Heal. You should have haste-based gear to be an excellent raid healer. Post-Naxxramas 25, you should have about 500+ haste, and with tier 8 set bonus you will get 0.2 seconds reduction on Chain Heal cast time, making Chain Heal a very good reason for a raid healer to choose a Shaman. To use this build, you should have 3 Riptides always ticking in your raid mates and, as soon as an AoE damage situation occurs, spam Chain Heal and top everyone up. In the meanwhile, you can help healing everyone with Lesser Healing Wave, but remember to keep your Water Shield and Earth Shield up.
The Raid Healer (0/16/55)
| Purpose | optimized for general raid healing |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.1.0 |
Despite Chain Heal being our most characteristic spell, some very good Shamans state that, while you don't have the tier-8 set bonus, Shaman AoE healing with Chain Heal is not as effective as healing with Lesser Healing Wave + Riptide. In 25-man raids, it's still not clear what is the best because very few Shamans have more than 2 tier-8 pieces, and it's not clear what technique heals more. But in 10-man raids, it's much more effective to heal with Lesser Healing Wave + Riptide. To heal with LHW + Rriptide, you just have to use Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave instead of Glyph of Chain Heal, use your Riptide to get the speed boost on LHW, and top everyone up. In some situations, Chain Heal is much superior to LHW, especially if cast before the damage occurs, which leads to the option of putting 2 points in Improved Chain Heal. To heal with Lesser Healing Wave, you should have crit-based gear.
The Tank Healer (0/15/56)
| Purpose | optimized for tank healing |
| Talent Link(s) | Wowhead |
| Tested patch | 3.1.0 |
We Shamans should not be full-time tank healers. We can heal a tank quite efficiently, but that's by far not what we do best. Gear up for critical strike with this build, keep Riptide up on the tank, and use it for faster casts. Healing Wave consumes much mana, so use LHW more often and be sure to /stopcast if you need to to save mana and you are 100% sure the tank won't take damage. Remember to keep your mana shield up all the time and you should do fine, but never as fine as a Paladin of course. Use this build ONLY if you will be a full-time tank healer, which I do not advise any raid leader assigning a Shaman to do.
- Leveling
As stated before, Restoration is the road less traveled when it comes to leveling. If you were interested in instance leveling, then just follow the PvE- or PvP-talent build. You might want to go with the talent build that matches your server type.
Points can be shifted around depending on your play style.
This could be the only place you might see a viable hybrid class. When you level, you could put close to even points in Resto and Elemental so you get some damage increasing talents along with making you a viable healer if ever needed.
Many people find leveling a Restoration Shaman tedious and slow because they sacrifice a lot of DPS for an increase in healing. A costly solution to this is to use an Elemental build for solo questing, and a Restoration build when grouping up for 5-man instances. Another solution might be to choose one of the Elemental/Restoration hybrids to draw synergies from the spell power you already possess as a Restoration Shaman (this applies only to players going from 70 to 80). For a starting Shaman, leveling with an exclusive Resto build from level 10 on up is no easy feat. If you decide to do so, you should consider the following build. The build will aim for good healing capabilities in 5-man instances but also get some talents that will help your leveling. One solution is to use a hybrid build (26/8/37) like this suggestion for leveling/instancing or lvl-80 questing and instancing. There is a fair bit of freedom in the Resto tree; and this is a good build for MP5, so it could probably be used as an off healer/DPS for raids.
Shaman elder (level 70 - 79)
Build
Back in the old world, yet on a new continent, we continue in the Enhancement tree with Elemental Weapons 3/3. Returning now to the Restoration to flesh out the last details with another 2 points in Totemic Focus 4/5, and filling in the missing points in Improved Water Shield 3/3 and Healing Grace 3/3. We are rounding it all off with Ancestral Awakening 3/3.
The Patriach/Matriarch (level 80)
Your end result should look something like this. Depending on if you put your points in Healing Focus (Shaman talent) or Healing Grace you might have to respec. Take into consideration how often you gain aggro in groups before you decide how many points you want to spend on Healing Grace. If you don't know the group or tank you are healing, some aggro reduction might be in order. Regardless of how often are you getting pounded while healing out in the wild, you shouldn't pick Healing Focus (Shaman talent) with 5-man runs in mind; it's primarily a solo talent, leaning towards PvP.
This build maximizes healing, crit, and mana regen at the cost of aggro reduction. 0/16/55. If you have problems with aggro, this build isn't ideal.
Elemental (0 points)
None
Enhancement (13 points)
2/3 Enhancing Totems 5/5 Ancestral Knowledge 3/3 Improved Shields 3/3 Elemental Weapons
Restoration (58 points)
5/5 Improved Healing Wave 4/5 Totemic Focus or 4/5 Tidal Focus (or a combination) 3/3 Ancestral Healing 3/3 Improved Water Shield 1/1 Tidal Force 3/3 Healing Grace 5/5 Restorative Totems 5/5 Tidal Mastery 3/3 Healing Way 1/1 Nature's Swiftness 5/5 Purification 1/1 Mana Tide Totem 2/2 Blessing of the Eternals 2/2 Improved Chain Heal 3/3 Nature's Blessing 3/3 Ancestral Awakening 1/1 Earth Shield 2/2 Improved Earth Shield 5/5 Tidal Waves 1/1 Riptide
Resto PvP
I don't know how people feel about Resto Shamans in PvP, but they certainly do their job as a healing class. Rather than most healers that try and get the killing blow, I know my place in a battleground, which is to keep people alive. (Funny enough, I get more honor from healing than I do from DPS.)
So here is my build for a PvP Resto Shaman (0/20/51) [1]
Raiding (PVE)
Standard Raid healing
This build (patch 3.1.2) offers a 14% increase in crit with all spells (Thundering Strikes, Tidal Mastery, and Blessing of the Eternals) which allows Ancestral Healing, Improved Water Shield, and Ancestral Awakening to proc fairly often. Keeping Earth Shield on the tank and Water Shield on you are always important, but with this build there is no benefit from Improved Shields so they have to be up at all times. I have had mana issues with this build before, but now I have over 150 more MP5. [Shamanistic Focus] is added for either when you manage to pull aggro or your getting put on interrupting it will save a large chunk of mana. This does not include full [Tidal Focus]; its points are spent in favor of Shamanistic Focus.
Chain Healing / Improved Shields / Crit
This Build gives you all the good talents for Shields and Chain Healing. Also adds a lot of crit, enough not to need the Tidal Force talent. Also I skipped Healing Grace as most tanks generate huge amounts of aggro. Healing Way and Improved Healing Wave are useless talents because if you're allocated to healing the main tank something is wrong with your raid setup. The best way to heal with this build is to keep Chain Healing when necessary, and keep the Riptide for instant heals before a Chain Heal on a target getting too much damage. You can use Lesser Heal to heal fast also; and, with the Ancestral Awakening and the amounts of crit, you should heal one extra target, too. Best practice is to heal the Earth Shield target and have the glyph [2] for the extra 20% increased Lesser Healing Wave on target affected by Earth Shield.
Healing Wave / Crit
Another good build is this one. This is mostly oriented towards heroics. The Healing Way talent plus Improved Healing Wave allows the caster to use Healing Wave on the tank; and, with the Glyph of Healing Wave, heal himself while healing tank (or other member of party). You will use Riptide (to shorten Healing Wave time), then Healing Wave on the tank or member in hard times. Also the Tidal Forces makes it even better because with crits you can heal yourself with big heals and trigger Ancestral Awakening. This will make all heals from Shaman viable: Healing Wave for big trouble on single target, Riptide for shortening that heal and added as an instant in between, Lesser to heal an off-party up while still doing Healing Wave, and Chain Healing if more members are in same spot and more AoE (not so much single-target damage).
Elemental Raid DPS
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This article or section contains information that is out-of-date.
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This build is centered around talents to maximize personal single-target damage output while keeping up necessary raid buffs. Elemental Weapons is taken over Enhancing Totems, as a Death knight will generally overwrite it with Horn of Winter; and Totem of Wrath should be used instead of Flametongue Totem. Call of Flame and Storm, Earth and Fire are taken to increase your Lava Burst and boost the DoT portion of your Flame Shock.
Points have been taken out of Improved Shields as mana is rarely an issue with Replenishment and Mana Spring Totem. Instead, Elemental Reach is taken, which is often useful in many boss situations. However, if you find yourself having mana issues while keeping Water Shield and Mana Spring Totem active and using Thunderstorm proactively, then feel free to drop Elemental Reach for the former talents.
Convection remains at 2/5 as points spent in Elemental Warding actually provide benefit, assuming there are no mana problems. If there are mana issues, another option is to take 3 points out of Eye of the Storm (talent) to place into Convection.
Glyphs are Glyph of Lava, Glyph of Lightning Bolt, and Glyph of Flame Shock to maximize damage and efficiency of Lava Burst and boosting Lightning bolt.
Here is another build that may be considered useful. This is more of a build for solid damage and a sufficient leveling build. This also spreads out to other trees to get a few very beneficial talents, including Improved Reincarnation which is probably the talent that best reduce down time a Shaman can use. You go down a solid, maximum-ranked 51 points into Elemental, of which the points are well spent for good DPS and a useful Lightning Overload proc.
Hybrid builds
The term "hybrid build" means spending the same amount of points in two or all three trees. The problem with this is that you lose the punch of all three of the builds if you do not fully invest 51 or more points into one tree. To distribute 20 or more points in all three trees will make you a viable jump-around class for DPS or healing, however you will not be as viable as a Shaman that has at least 51 points in the tree.
A three-tree build for Shaman is never a viable choice.
- Elemental Shaman will go to the Enhancement Tree for Thundering Strikes and Shamanistic Focus.
- Enhancement Shaman will go to the Elemental Tree for Elemental Devastation and Elemental Focus.
- Resto will also go to the Enhancement tree for Thundering Strikes and Improved Shields.
A real hybrid spec, this one is used for spell DPS, gains from dual welding Flametongue, Mental Quickness, Mental Dexterity, and Shamanistic Focus from Enhance, and can result in very large amounts of spell damage when stacking intellect gear. (Note: as of patch 3.0.8, Blizzard is reworking Mental Quickness to only gain from agi rather than all AP so this spec loses most of its raid usefulness.)
One of the main reasons hybrid builds will never be viable DPS or healers is due to gear. Mail gear is split into spell-damage and melee-damage stats. To get an equal type of stats (for example, half of your gear is spell power and the other is attack power) for two trees will make you a weaker version of both of the two trees. You are basically not putting forth the power that you could if you just specced into one tree and pulled a few points from the other tree.
Elemental/Resto hybrid
A build made for leveling and not much else, though I can imagine it would be usable for other purposes due to the focus on mana regeneration. Caster DPS talents along with some healing ones from the Resto tree to make both questing and instance healing pretty easy on your way to 80. This should not be considered a fast leveling spec; it's for those of us who want to heal dungeons and still want to solo a lot. The gear you will need for this is of course pure spell power mail and a lot of intellect.
Pre-WotLK (3.0.2) patch
For older builds, see Shaman builds: Pre-WotLK
External links
- Shaman Leveling Builds at WoW Leveling Builds
- TalentChic - Builds taken from armory and sorted by popularity
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