Shaman Guide

Elemental Shaman is a damage-dealing caster with a rich and flexible toolkit, which provides as much visual spectacle as it does damage numbers. They use all of the natural elements, Fire, Air, Earth, and Water, and combine them into a fluid rotation that adapts well to movement and to each encounter's damage profile. Talents provide flexibility, and the ability to customize your gameplay, with many different options being competitive.

Finally, the specialization also has unmatched utility in many scenarios, bringing class tools such as Reincarnation, Wind Shear, Thunderstorm, and Poison Cleansing Totem, but also the random knockdowns from Earthquake.

Elemental is a valuable caster in raid groups due to its flexible damage profile which performs well in both single and multiple target scenarios, with plenty of potential for funneling, where you use the presence of secondary targets to increase your single target damage to the main target, typically a boss.

They are also hard to kill due to passives such as Elemental Warding and Brimming with Life, and have great mobility thanks to Spiritwalker's Grace, Icefury, and Earth Shock, among other abilities.

The same strengths of Elemental apply in Mythic+, with funneling often being invaluable, and the regular area damage rotation also being very strong. Most importantly, Elemental loses little single target damage for picking up large area damage, which is a core strength for dungeon gameplay.

Finally, Earthquake's crowd control properties and the large amount of utility present in the Shaman tree really shines in dungeons, and all Shamans are popular for bringing Bloodlust/ Heroism and many crowd control skills for enemies, as well as Poison Cleansing Totem and a Curse dispel.

Enhancement is a melee specialization with a heavy emphasis on both Physical attacks, such as Stormstrike, and Elemental spells, such as Elemental Blast, weaving both together with Maelstrom Weapon in a fast-paced battle-mage combat style with a variety of effects that enhance your main abilities and damage cooldowns such as Doom Winds, Feral Spirit, and Ascendance.

Besides providing a large amount of mobility by making spells instant, Maelstrom Weapon also works on support and healing abilities, such as Healing Surge and Chain Heal, allowing for a lot of self-sustain and group support from the Enhancement Shaman. Talents provide further flexibility and damage profile customization, allowing you to focus on the aspects of Enhancement you enjoy the most.

Enhancement has been a very popular specialization in raids for a while, due to its unique Windfury Totem raid buff that is now accessible to all Shamans in the form of Skyfury, and also due to its very high damage numbers in both single and area target scenarios. It helps that they are also great at funneling, where you use the presence of secondary targets to increase your single target damage to the main target, typically a boss.

Mobility is also great between instant melee attacks and instant cast spells, and while survivability has had some bad spots in the recent past, it is now good enough to be well ahead of that of most specializations in the game.

The same strengths of Enhancement apply in Mythic+, with funneling often being invaluable, and the regular area damage rotation also being very strong. Most importantly, Enhancement loses little single target damage for picking up large area damage, which is a core strength for dungeon gameplay, and they can also do great emergency off-healing when needed with Maelstrom Weapon.

Finally, the large amount of utility present in the Shaman tree really shines in dungeons, and all Shamans are popular for bringing Bloodlust/ Heroism and many crowd control skills for enemies, as well as Poison Cleansing Totem and a Curse dispel.

Restoration Shaman is a healer specialization focused on stacked healing with the iconic Healing Rain and Chain Heal area healing spells and sporting many reactive healing tools and miscellaneous utility abilities. Talents provide multiple viable gameplay options suited for various content types and you will also have many healing cooldowns to fall back on, such as Healing Tide Totem, Ascendance, and Spirit Link Totem.

As a Restoration Shaman, you will generally focus on using your efficient short cooldown healing spells whenever possible and fill in healing gaps with strong reactive healing from Chain Heal and Healing Surge. Large damage periods can be covered by your multiple healing cooldowns, and there are usually many opportunities to use your utility for the benefit of the team, by interrupting enemies with Wind Shear, displacing them with Thunderstorm, or mass removing Poisons with Poison Cleansing Totem, among many other tools.

Finally, Shamans can self-resurrect with Reincarnation, and also provide this benefit to someone in the group with Ancestral Protection Totem. These are often game-changers, especially as they do not count towards the limited battle resurrection charges!

While not particularly strong at either spot or area healing when compared to the other healers, Shamans are still very useful in a raid setting due to their multiple strong healing cooldowns, which can help the group get through a particularly hard phase.

They also provide unique utility in Ancestral Vigor, Downpour, and Ancestral Protection Totem, all of which increase your group's effective health, allowing for more margin against one-shot mechanics and damage bursts.

Shamans are one of the strongest dungeon healers due to their huge utility pool, good damage potential for a healer, and quick reactive healing style. The large amount of major healing cooldowns and relatively short cooldown periods on them also allows Shamans many opportunities to recover from healing mistakes or team mates standing in fire.