Shaman Leveling Guide From 1 to 80 for WotLK Classic

This guide will aim to provide you with a clear skill and gear path to Level 80 in Wrath Classic. While detailing every single quest and the optimal leveling routes is beyond its scope, you can find detailed talent builds for all playstyles, their rotations, and guides for class quests and leveling weapon suggestions below.

Providing non-Shaman leveling advice is outside the scope of this article and is covered in our general Wrath leveling guide.

Shamans have two main leveling options: Enhancement or Elemental.

Enhancement is an excellent leveling build, as it has great area damage with Fire Nova, good survivability when facing multiple enemies, and multiple options for Mana sustain, leading to the least downtime in between large pulls.

Elemental is also viable to level with, and is usually even faster than Enhancement at killing single enemies, but its caster nature often requires drinking and limits mobility. However, it has the upside of having a safer playstyle with less to fear from ranged or running enemies.

Leveling in Dungeons is a popular way to reach Level 80 quickly and painlessly in Wrath Classic, as it skips world congestion on highly populated servers and provides reliable experience values. There are two major gains to be had from skipping questing:

• Avoiding PvP and Competition for tags will make your experience gain much more consistent over time;
• Minimal Wrath Quest and Zone knowledge required, which will be particularly relevant for anyone who is not familiar with the questing content but still wants to rush to 80.

Shamans are always welcome in any group due to their versatile totems, which grant multiple benefits to the party no matter the specialization chosen. For example, Windfury Totem and Strength of Earth Totem cover the most important Physical buffs, while Wrath of Air Totem and (Elemental-only) Totem of Wrath cover critical caster buffs.

These allow the Shaman to give strong support to both melee and caster cleaves, with Elemental being more suited to caster cleaves, Enhancement being great on melee cleaves, and Restoration bringing most of the support capabilities on a healer role.

Learning professions early on is very useful, as you can naturally level them as you go and avoid extra work at max level. While you can start right away with crafting professions if you have extra gold to spare or other characters to rely on for getting started, gathering professions are recommended as they create gold for you without requiring any initial investment.

We recommend that you learn First Aid and two out of Skinning, Herbalism, and Mining, which you can level alongside your questing path and will provide a steady gold income on the way through the auction house. At maximum level you can easily drop these gathering professions and power level your crafting professions of choice by buying materials, so do not worry about falling behind during leveling.

While leveling, if you are Enhancement, your weapon is the most important piece of your gear. You should look for high raw damage, as Stormstrike scales with it, making slower weapons generally stronger when they have equal damage-per-second values. Slower weapons also allow you to kite with Earthbind Totem more efficiently, if needed.

The rest of your gear should have Agility on it, as it is the stat that increases your damage the most and does so on a predictable manner, allowing you to more accurately judge whether you can kill an enemy or need to heal in close-call situations.

For the other specialization options, Elemental and Restoration, gear is less important but try to aim for Intellect and Spell Power as these stats allow you to kill more enemies or cast more heals before having to rest.

By setting yourself up with an upgraded user interface and macros from the get-go, you will make your leveling process much easier. Check out our Shaman Addons and Shaman Macros guide in the links below for the full list.

While all gear is relevant while leveling, weapons are especially important, as they contribute a great part of your damage — especially when you rely on melee hits as Enhancement but also Elemental and Restoration early on. Read our full guide on weapons below.

Every class in Wrath Classic has important class-specific quests that allow them to gear up and learn new active abilities which are often critical to the class. Every single one of your totems, Earth, Fire, Water, and Air comes from doing these quests, and we will detail every single step of the way for you in our full guide for quests below for both Horde and Alliance Shamans.

By the time you hit maximum level, it will be very helpful to read the rest of our guides. Pick Restoration Shaman if you intend to heal at maximum level, Elemental Shaman for Ranged DPS, and Enhancement Shamanfor Melee DPS.