TBC Classic Elemental Shaman Spec, Builds, and Talents

Elemental Shaman talent builds are typically very stretched due to the need of grabbing deep talents from both the Elemental and Restoration trees in order to maximize the spell critical strike and spell hit gained from the talent tree.

If you were looking for leveling builds, please refer to our leveling guide for Shamans.

This build reaches deep into Elemental for Totem of Wrath and midway through Restoration for Tidal Mastery, finishing up with an impressive 12% Spell Hit from talents plus Totem of Wrath, as well as 10% extra Spell Critical Strike!

Because we want to focus on doing as much DPS as possible with this build, there are not many good options for point swaps, as all of the remaining Restoration talents are healing-focused and the Elemental talents that were not taken are less than ideal for our Mana-conscious rotation.

This build is similar to the PvE one, with some notable exceptions:

1. Nature's Swiftness is taken instead of Totem of Wrath for the added burst / life saving potential, as the Spell Hit cap is very low in PvP and it is easy to destroy Totem of Wrath.
2. Eye of the Storm and Elemental Shields are taken instead of Unrelenting Storm and Elemental Precision, as you will be frequently focused in PvP and the extra defensives are more useful than overcapping on Spell Hit.
3. Ancestral Healing is taken instead of Nature's Guidance and Improved Reincarnation for the occasional armor buff when healing in PvP situations.

As explained above, the general idea is to gain more defensive tools, while dropping most of the Spell Hit from the tree, as you only need 3% Spell Hit from any source to cap out in PvP.

The Elemental Tree has most of the juice for the caster DPS Shaman, as would be expected. It also has some PvP utility, which you can learn more about in our upcoming TBC Classic Shaman PvP guide.

Call of Flame increases your Fire Totem damage by up to 15%. This is a significant amount, but unfortunately the total contribution of these totems towards your total damage is low, making this talent mostly forgettable.

Elemental Focus is changed in TBCC and now lowers the Mana cost of your next two damaging spells by 40% after you cause a damaging Spell Critical Strike. You can easily fish for these procs with lower rank shocks and Lightning Bolt if needed, and should also look to use the expensive Chain Lightning when you have a proc, if Mana will be an issue in your current encounter.

Reverberation reduces the cooldown of your shocks. This allows you to interrupt / slow / DoT enemies more often, but Elemental Shamans should rely more on their Lightning Bolt / Chain Lightning spells than on shocks.

Eye of the Storm is a great talent for PvP and leveling, as it will allow you to cast all of your spells without interruption when you really need to because you were just hit by a Critical Strike!

Elemental Devastation increases your melee Critical Strike chance by up to 9% after you deal a spell Critical Strike. This can easily be activated as an Elemental Shaman, but unfortunately your melee attacks are too weak to make use of it.

Elemental Fury is a great damage increase, as it doubles the bonus damage you get whenever you critical strike with your spells, which should happen quite often.

Elemental Mastery allows you to deal massive damage on demand, and also makes the spell free. This has great synergy with Elemental Fury and Chain Lightning's status as a very high Mana, high damage spell.

The Enhancement Tree is your main tree for melee damage increases and offensive totem boosting talents, but is ultimately a dead tree for caster DPS Shamans, especially at Level 70.

Guardian Totems increases the damage reduction of Stoneskin Totem by up to 20%, which is a small boost to your support tanking capabilities. It also reduces Grounding Totem's cooldown, which is situationally useful.

Improved Ghost Wolf reduces Ghost Wolf's cast time heavily, which is great for quickly moving around when outdoors.

The Restoration Tree is a great support tree that improves your totems, heals and even brings some extra Spell Hit and Spell Critical Strike, making it an excellent secondary tree to put points into.

Improved Healing Wave decreases your Healing Wave's cast time by up to 0.5 seconds. This is typically not impactful enough to warrant being taken as an Elemental Shaman but can be used if you off-heal often in PvE.

Ancestral Healing increases your target's armor significantly after you land a Critical Heal. While a niche talent for Elemental, it can help stabilize an ally in danger, especially in PvP.

Totemic Focus reduces the Mana cost of your Totems significantly. This is generally not that useful for Elemental Shamans, as you will not have enough Mana or time to totem twist while performing your spell rotation.

Healing Focus lowers the chance of suffering spell pushback on heals from taking damage. This is useful when you need to heal yourself or others under pressure, but Eye of the Storm is generally a superior talent for Elemental, especially as it only takes 3 talent points!

Totemic Mastery increases the range of your totems from 20 to 30 yards,allowing them to affect targets that are further away. This is a very good talent, as having allies out of totem range is a huge throughput loss.

Tidal Mastery increases your Critical Strike chance with Heals and lightning spells. This has great synergy with the Elemental tree and is a nice reason to go deep into the Restoration tree as an Elemental Shaman.

Nature's Swiftness causes your next Nature spell to become instant. This is great when trying to land an emergency Healing Wave on a struggling ally or when trying to finish off a low health enemy with Chain Lightning.