TBC Classic Elemental Shaman Stat Priority

The stat priority for Elemental Shamans is as follows:

1. Spell Hit up to the 16% cap vs bosses, 3% in PvP;
2. Spell Haste;
3. Spell Damage;
4. Spell Critical Strike;
5. Intellect;
6. Mp5;
7. Stamina;
8. Spell Penetration;
9. Spirit.

Although Spell Hit is the best stat, it has a very low cap of 4% for PvE Elemental Shamans due to the Totem of Wrath, Elemental Precision, and Nature's Guidance talents providing 12% Spell Hit by themselves. This means that Spell Hit gear is often worse than it looks at first glance, as much of that Spell Hit might go to waste in the context of your whole gear set.

As real stat weights depend heavily on your current gear, we recommend using the Wowsims Elemental Shaman module, which is easy to setup and get quick results with.

Spell Hit allows your spells to land more often, which is a huge DPS increase, but keep in mind that you will always have at least a 1% chance to miss with spells. Depending on the level of your enemy, you might need more, or less Spell Hit to reach this 1% cap:

• For an enemy of the same level as you, 3% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• For an enemy 1 level higher than you, 4% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• For an enemy 2 levels higher than you, 5% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• For an enemy 3 levels higher than you, such as raid bosses, 16% Spell Hit is needed to cap.

Spell Haste decreases your cast times, allowing you to shoot more Lightning Bolts in a fight. While its exact value depends on whether you hit certain breakpoints, this is a very strong stat.

Spell Damage is applied to each spell based on their casting time.

The coefficient is calculated by dividing the cast time of a spell by 3.5. This is because a 3.5 second cast benefits from 100% of your gear's Spell Damage. For example, if you have 20 additional Spell Damage from gear, then this will simply affect your spells as follows:

• Damage Increase per spell cast = n * 20
• n = spell's coefficient

Instant single-target spells typically only get around 43% of the benefit, with area of effect spells having an even greater penalty. Chain Lightning gets about 71%, but a spell with a longer casting time such as Lightning Bolt gets more: roughly 86% of the Spell Damage in your gear as added damage.

This means that 100 Spell Damage on your gear would cause Lightning Bolt to deal around 86 extra damage per cast, but Chain Lightning would only deal 71 extra damage to its main target, using the same gear.

Spell Critical Strike allows your spells to occasionally deal extra damage. Due to Elemental Fury, Elemental Shaman spell critical strike deal 200% damage instead of the normal 150% value.

Intellect is a good stat for Elemental Shamans, as it increases total Mana pool and spell critical strike. The Mana pool gain is very significant during leveling and while AoE grinding, but not so significant during raids, where Mana regeneration and Mana consumables will typically play a bigger part in your sustainability.

Mana every 5 seconds, or simply Mp5, is a common stat found on healing gear. This is the best stat for getting more Mana during a fight because it is constantly in effect, even if you cast something in the last 5 seconds (unlike Spirit) and should thus be taken whenever possible, until you feel comfortable with your Mana sustainability.

Spell Penetration allows your spells to deal more damage / hit more often against enemies with Magical Resistances by lowering their resistance by the spell penetration value on the item. Keep in mind these resistances cannot be lowered below 0 (or 24, for bosses) and that Nature-Immune targets are not affected.

Thus far, no raid bosses have been found to have more than the baseline 24 Nature Resistance, which cannot be reduced, making this stat useless for PvE. It can still be useful in PvP, when used in small quantities.

For Elemental Shamans, Spirit provides Mana regeneration, but only when you have not cast a spell for 5 seconds or more, which will rarely be the case outside of leveling / soloing. Sitting (through the /sit command, or when eating or drinking) increases Spirit regeneration by 33%.

Stamina is the only stat that will help you survive any type of attack and as such should always be valued.

Resilience is a new stat in TBC that is only found on PvP gear. Itreduces your chance to suffer a Critical Strike, as well as the damage you take from those, the Mana burned by effects such as Mana Burn and the damage taken from damage over time effects such as Corruption. This is a great stat in PvP as it makes you a lot more durable, increasing the value of your healing in the process.

Spell Healing works exactly like Spell Damage, but it only applies to your healing spells, and has higher values for the same item level item as Spell Damage, making it more valuable for healers.

Resistance, while inherently niche due to different bosses dealing different magical damage types, can be very useful while progressing specific bosses. Wearing resistance gear of a type makes you take less damage or even completely avoid damage when hit by that type of magical damage.