WotLK Classic Elemental Shaman Spec, Builds, Talents, and Glyphs

Elemental Shaman talent builds are typically very defined. Certain talents are mandatory for throughput, and others are helpful to prevent you from running out of Mana early.

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

This build takes all throughput and Mana sustain talents in the Elemental and Enhancement trees, as well as extra damage reduction from Elemental Warding, which is very useful in Ulduar due to the high raid damage present in many fights.

Enhancing Totems is not taken by default since you are likely to have another Shaman in the group is already providing it, but otherwise, make sure to move three points from Ancestral Knowledge here for 15% more Strength and Agility.

Because we want to focus on doing as much DPS as possible with this build, there are a few good options for point swaps. The main option is picking up Convection instead of Elemental Warding if you have any Mana issues.

In Wrath, you will be able to unlock Glyphs that improve your abilities and can be swapped around freely as long as you have the consumable glyph item on your bags.

As an Elemental Shaman in PvE, you will want to be using Glyph of Flametongue Weapon, Glyph of Lightning Bolt, and Glyph of Totem of Wrath, as they increase your throughput the most.

Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem can be used instead of Flametongue for min-maxing purposes on long fights where multiple Fire Elemental Totem can be used.

For minor glyphs, use Glyph of Thunderstorm in PvE to make Thunderstorm regenerate more Mana and remove the knockback, but replace it with Glyph of Ghost Wolf for PvP, the knockback is precisely what you need to secure kills. Glyph of Water Shield, Glyph of Renewed Life and Glyph of Water Walking are good quality-of-life options for the remaining two slots.

The Elemental Tree carries most of the power for a caster DPS Shaman, as would be expected. It also has a lot of PvP utility, which you can learn more about in our Wrath Elemental Shaman PvP Guide.

Call of Flame increases your Fire Totem and, more importantly, Fire Nova damage by up to 15% and giving Lava Burst a slight boost. This is a significant boost to your area damage but has a relatively low value for pure single-target.

Elemental Focus increases your Mana sustain in area-of-effect situations drastically by giving you a 40% discount on your next two spells after getting a Spell Critical Strike. This is typically used with Fire Nova, which hits all targets near your Fire Totem, making it have great odds of landing at least one Critical Strike.

Reverberation reduces the cooldown on your shocks and Wind Shear. This smooths out your rotation and allows you to interrupt/slow / DoT enemies more often.

Improved Fire Nova makes your Fire Nova hit up to 20% harder and have a cooldown up to 4 seconds faster. As Fire Nova's baseline cooldown is only 10 seconds allows you to use it almost twice as often and can be stacked with Glyph of Fire Nova for a 3-second cooldown Fire Nova, which can do the highest sustained area DPS in the game as long as you have Mana.

Eye of the Storm is now an unconditional cast pushback reduction talent instead of relying on you taking a crit as it was in previous iterations, making it a great talent in all situations.

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 makes your subsequent damage spell instant cast and increases your Haste by 15% for 15 seconds, making it a proper DPS cooldown which should be stacked with your combat potion and used at times, you can stand still and cast for 15 seconds in a row.

Storm, Earth and Fire is a new talent that reduces the cooldown on Chain Lightning by 2.5 seconds and increases the periodic damage of Flame Shock by 60% but, most importantly, causes Earthbind Totem to root nearby targets for 5 seconds when used, which is invaluable for soloing and in PvP.

Totem of Wrath is less useful than it used to be as it does not stack with Demonic Pact, which is superior after the casting Warlock has 2,800 or more Spell Power, but is still a good totem to have when your group lacks a geared Warlock, and it will also make their first Demonic Pact application stronger, provided you use the totem at the start of a fight.

Astral Shift is a new talent that causes you to take 30% less damage while stunned, feared, or silenced. This is excellent in PvP, as it reduces damage when you need it the most against setup-based teams.

Thunderstorm causes some damage, returns some Mana to you, and also knocks back all targets hit a significant distance, making it very useful when soloing, in PvP, some PvE encounters, and in general, AoE when used alongside Glyph of Thunderstorm.

The Enhancement Tree is decent for extra throughput and utility. Still, you will mostly throw any leftover points in here rather than chasing critical talents.

Enhancing Totems increases the power of your Strength of Earth Totem by up to 15%, which makes it the best buff of its kind. While any Shaman can bring this buff, at least one should do so, as it is a powerful raid DPS increase.

Guardian Totems increases the armor provided by Stoneskin Totem by up to 20% and, most importantly, the cooldown on Grounding Totem by 2 seconds, allowing you to use it more often in PvP.

Improved Ghost Wolf makes Ghost Wolf instant-cast, which is great for quickly moving around when outdoors and in PvP.

The Restoration Tree provides no real benefits to Elemental and should be ignored.