Shaman Leveling Guide from 1 to 80

Welcome to our Shaman leveling guide. Here you will find all you need to know to level up your Shaman efficiently. In addition, you may wish to check out our general Leveling guide, complete with detailed information on XP, mounts, addons, consumables, tips, and more. We encourage to read it to increase your leveling speed even more.

Shamans can level as either melee or ranged damage dealers, both of which have strong area of effect damage and self-healing capabilities. They can also swap into a healing specialization, which is particularly useful for group play, and to reduce the queue time on the Dungeon Finder.

Shamans have three talent trees: Elemental, Enhancement and Restoration.

Elemental is a ranged damage specialization with decent burst damage and area of effect spells. Its main limitation is that you cannot do as much damage while moving, although this limitation is alleviated by the instant-cast spells gain while leveling.

Enhancement is the melee damage option for Shamans, and has a distinct battle-mage melee style. You will be able to do most of your damage while moving and also heal yourself instantly with Maelstrom-enhanced Healing Surges, making it an efficient leveling spec.

Finally, Restoration is a healing specialization, and thus slower for solo questing due to its lower damage output, but if you are going to be leveling in a group or by doing dungeons, healing is a very important role which will allow larger pulls and much quicker dungeon queues.

• At Level 1, you unlock Lightning Bolt, which is a long cast ranged damage spell. This will be your ranged bread and butter attack.
• At Level 2, you unlock Primal Strike, which will be your bread and butter melee attack for a while.
• At Level 3, you unlock Flame Shock which deals some instant damage and more damage over time. Because it only takes a single global to apply, it is very damage/time efficient.
• At Level 4, you unlock Healing Surge, which lets you heal with a short cast time. Use it to keep yourself healthy when needed.
• At Level 5, you unlock Earthbind Totem, which slows nearby enemies by 50%, on a 30-second cooldown.
• At Level 7, you unlock Flametongue Weapon, which enchants your weapon for 1 hour, causing your melee attacks to deal extra fire damage.
• At Level 8, you unlock Reincarnation, which allows you to resurrect yourself at the place of death, once every 30 minutes.
• At Level 9, you unlock Lightning Shield, a 30 minute self-buff that causes enemies that strike you in melee to suffer Nature damage.
• At Level 10, you unlock Ghost Wolf, which allows you to instantly transform yourself into a spectral wolf, increasing movement speed by 30% and preventing your movement speed from being slowed under 100%.
• At Level 13, you unlock Ancestral Spirit, a long cast that allows you to resurrect dead allies outside of combat.
• At Level 14, you unlock Far Sight, a spell that allows you to see distant areas while channeling.
• At Level 16, you unlock Skyfury, a 1-hour long buff that works on your entire party or raid.
• At Level 32, you unlock Astral Recall, a second Hearthstone on a 10-minute cooldown.
• At Level 33, you unlock Water Walking, which allows you to walk on water for 10 minutes. Taking any damage will instantly cancel this effect.
• At Level 48, you unlock Bloodlust, which causes your and nearby allies to gain 30% haste for 40 seconds, on a 10-minute cooldown due to the debuff that it leaves on affected players.

The best Heirloom to level with are the ones with Haste and / or Versatility. That is because they increase your DPS (and thus your leveling speed), the smoothness of your rotation and your survivability, respectively.

Haste can also be useful to get tags faster when competing for mobs with other players, giving you a slight leveling advantage.

Once you've reached Level 80 and your leveling journey has found its end, you definitely want to check out the in-depth information on how to excel in all types of PvE content by checking out our Shaman Specialization Guides!