Classic Elemental Shaman DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents

Elemental Shaman talent builds vary in focus between maximizing damage throughput, maximizing group utility and the infamous 30-0-21 PvP burst damage / burst healing build which is good at everything.

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

This build's namesake, Elemental Mastery is a powerful talent that guarantees that your next spell will be a 0-Mana cost critical strike. This has great synergy with the Chain Lightning / Earth Shock combo, as often you can land a critical strike on both and one shot someone.

Because we want to focus on ranged DPS 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.

While this build's damage potential is slightly under an Elemental Mastery build, it more than makes up for it by picking up Nature's Swiftness and the flexibility it provides. You can use Nature's Swiftness defensively, with Healing Wave, or offensively with Lightning Bolt.

Compared to the previous build, we are taking more PvP / soloing oriented talents here such as Eye of the Storm and Ancestral Healing. Feel free to swap them to Totemic Focus and Elemental Warding if you only want to focus on raiding.

This build is a full Elemental / Enhancement hybrid which picks Flurry alongside Elemental Devastation and the maximum damage Elemental talents, capping at Elemental Mastery.

By picking up Flurry and Two-Handed Axes and Maces, you gain better soloing abilities and, especially, the capacity to efficiently keep up the weapon debuffs of Nightfall and Annihilator.

With this sort of build you can afford to just dish out as much damage as you can with your maximum rank spells, as you will be able to regenerate Mana when swapping to melee attacks during Elemental Devastation procs.

Keep in mind that casting most spells will reset your swing timer, and as such you should always wait until your next melee swing before resuming your spell casting after Elemental Devastation wears off.

The only arguable talent in this build is Guardian Totems, which can be swapped to Improved Ghost Wolf if you prefer.

The Elemental Tree has several useful ranged damage-oriented talents and some PvP utility, which you can learn more about in our Classic Shaman PvP guide.

Earth's Grasp increases the health of your Stoneclaw Totem and the radius of your Earthbind Totem. While this can occasionally be useful, the other options are generally more impactful.

Call of Flame increases your Fire Totem damage by 15%. Since you will want to have your Fire Totems out in most fights, this can contribute a small amount of damage to your rotation.

Elemental Focus causes you to have a 10% chance to make your next damaging spell cost no Mana whenever you cast a spell. You can easily fish for these procs with lower rank shocks and Lightning Bolt if needed, and every time this procs you get to use a maximum rank spell for free!

Reverberation reduces the cooldown on your shocks. This allows you to interrupt / slow / DoT enemies more often and to proc Elemental Focus / Elemental Devastation 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, as it will allow you to cast all of your spells without interruption when you really need it, because you were just hit by a critical strike!

Elemental Devastation increases your critical strike chance by up to 9% after you deal a spell critical strike. This can easily be activated as an Elemental Shaman, but it is generally not worth swapping to melee attacks unless you are using the hybrid Enhancement build with Flurry.

Elemental Fury is a great burst damage increase, as it doubles the bonus damage you get whenever you critical strike with your spells.

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. Try to use an Earth Shock immediately after the Chain Lightning for even more burst damage!

The Enhancement Tree is your main tree for melee damage increases and offensive totem boosting talents.

Guardian Totems increases the damage reduction of Stoneskin Totem by up to 20%, which is a small boost to your tanking support 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.

Enhancing Totems increases the Strength and Agility granted by Strength of Earth Totem and Grace of Air Totem by up to 15%, making them stronger DPS increases for the melee players in your group.

Two-Handed Axes and Maces allows you to use its namesake's weapons. Besides the high damage boost it brings to a Shaman, it allows you to use Nightfall, which is one of the best raid boosting tools in WoW Classic.

Flurry increases your attack speed by up to 30% whenever you land a critical strike. This allows you to keep your weapon debuffs more reliably, and is a significant damage increase.

Improved Weapon Totems increases the melee attack power granted by your Windfury Totem, which makes it even stronger at boosting your melee group's damage. While you will generally leave this talent to Enhancement or Restoration Shamans, it can be difference between in the raid or the bench.

The Restoration Tree is where much of your Mana sustainability and healing power comes from, and as such you will almost always want at least some points into it.

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.

Ancestral Healing increases your target's armor significantly after you land a critical heal. While a niche talent for us, it can help stabilize an ally in danger.

Totemic Focus reduces the Mana cost of your Totems significantly. This is generally not that useful for an Elemental Shaman, as you will not have enough Mana / 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 and only takes 3 talent points!

Totemic Mastery increases the range of your totems to 30 yards, allowing them to affect targets that are further away. While this talent does not stack with our Tier 1's 3-piece bonus ( Increased Totem Radius), it is generally a good talent to use, ensuring maximum uptime on your Totem's effects.

Tidal Mastery increases your critical strike chance with heals and lightning spells. This has great synergy with Elemental Fury 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, when trying to finish off a running enemy with Chain Lightning or as part of the Lightning Bolt into Nature's Swiftness Lightning Bolt into Chain Lightning and Earth Shock one shot combination.