Elemental Shaman Guide for The War Within

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Elemental Shaman. Ahead of the launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Elemental Shaman spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the War Within Beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Elemental Shaman but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

Note that Hero talent trees are not relevant for the Prepatch period as you unlock your first point at level 71. There will be a dedicated guide for them available for The War Within's release.

While we received an extensive rework, it will not drastically upend our playstyle for the pre-patch period, as we remain more or less locked in Fire-dominant builds due to our tier set. There are significant differences, however, most notably:

• You can now have Deeply Rooted Elements AND Ascendance. They have also become stronger thanks to Preeminence. Meatball enjoyers rejoice!
• Primordial Surge is gone; now you will pretty much always get Splintered Elements. Those last two changes add up to a lot of Haste, which means you will most likely want to drop some Haste from your gear.
• Icefury is now much easier to use and is recommended on most builds. It is now a proc from your Lava Bursts that transforms your Frost Shock button into Icefury, which is now instant and buffs your next 2 Frost Shocks. You want to use those, particularly if you are grabbing Flux Melting.
• We received a bunch of talents enhancing our Elementals, meaning it is both easier and much more important to maintain as much uptime as possible on your Fire Elemental or Storm Elemental. Thankfully, we will almost certainly lock in Skybreaker's Fiery Demise, ensuring a high uptime on Elementals.
• We also received some undocumented changes altering the behavior of some of our Elementals. Meteor and Tempest can now be auto-cast. The lesser elementals from Echo of the Elementals can also cast those (currently at full power). Meteor can also be cast at the Shaman's maximum casting distance (previously, the Elemental had to move closer).

Now that the most crucial changes for your actual play have been covered, we will list a detailed breakdown of the changes affecting Elemental Shamans.

• Healing Surge healing increased by 20%.
• Stone Bulwark Totem now has a 3-minute cooldown, but its effect has been significantly increased.
• Lightning Bolt damage increased by 3%.
• Thunderstrike Ward damage increased by 150%.
• Earth Shock damage increased by 25%.
• Icefury damage increased by 85%.
• Earthen Rage damage increased by 60%.
• Lava Burst damage reduced by 25%.
• Lava Beam damage increased by 10%.
• Elemental Blast damage reduced by 25%.
• Earthquake damage reduced by 6%.
• Flame Shock damage reduced by 15%.
• Chain Lightning damage increased by 10%.
• Chain Lightning damage from Greater Lightning Elemental increased by 200%.
• Call Lightning's damage bonus is now 30% (was 300%).
• Storm Elemental damage increased by 400% (350% for Call Lightning).
• Lightning Blast damage from Fury of the Storms increased by 200%.
• Splintered Elements now grants 10% Haste (was 20%).
• Power of the Maelstrom now has a 60% chance to trigger (was 25%).
• Liquid Magma Totem damage reduced by 30%.
• Liquid Magma Totem now has a 30-second cooldown (was 1 minute).
• Additional Lava Bursts from Primordial Wave now deal 50% of normal damage (was 80%).
• Surge of Power's Lava Burst benefit is now a 4-second cooldown reduction to elementals (was 6 seconds).
• Many, many bug fixes.

• All Damage increased by 30%
• New Talent: Fusion of Elements — after casting Icefury, the next time you cast a Nature and a Fire spell, you additionally cast an Elemental Blast at your target at 60% effectiveness.
• New Talent: Storm Frenzy — your next Chain Lightning or Lightning Bolt has 40% reduced cast time after casting Earth Shock, Elemental Blast, or Earthquake. Can accumulate up to 2 charges.
• New Talent: Elemental Unity — while a Storm Elemental is active, your Nature damage dealt is increased by 10%. While a Fire Elemental is active, your Fire damage dealt is increased by 10%.
• New Talent: Lightning Conduit — while Lightning Shield is active, your Nature damage dealt is increased by 8%.
• New Talent: Everlasting Elements — increases the duration of your Elementals by 20%.
• New Talent: Thunderstrike Ward — imbue your shield with the element of Lightning for 1 hour, giving Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning a chance to call down 2 Thunderstrikes on your target for Nature damage.
• New Talent: Earthen Rage — your damage spells incite the earth around you to come to your aid for 6 seconds, repeatedly dealing Nature damage to your most recently attacked target.
• New Talent: Echo of the Elementals — when your Storm Elemental or Fire Elemental expires, it leaves behind a lesser Elemental to continue attacking your enemies for 15 seconds.
• New Talent: First Ascendant — the cooldown of Ascendance is reduced by 60 seconds.
• New Talent: Preeminence — your Haste is increased by 25% while Ascendance is active, and its duration is increased by 3 seconds.
• New Talent: Fury of the Storms — activating Stormkeeper summons a powerful Lightning Elemental to fight by your side for 8 seconds.
• Primordial Fury has been redesigned — now increases the critical damage bonus of Elemental Fury by 25%.
• Icefury has been redesigned — casting Lava Burst has a chance to replace your next Frost Shock with Icefury, stacking up to 2 times.
• Icefury now empowers the next 2 Frost Shocks (was 4).
• Mastery: Elemental Overload has been redesigned — now increases all Physical and Elemental damage dealt. The damage of Elemental Overloads is now 25% of normal damage (was 85%).
• Lava Surge is now learned at level 12 and has been removed from the Class tree.
• Inundate is now learned at level 14 and has been removed from the Elemental tree.
• The trigger rate of Lava Surge and Searing Flames now scale based on the number of targets Flame Shock is on. In single target, it should trigger slightly more often, and in AoE, it should trigger less often.
• Flash of Lightning now also increases the critical strike chance of Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning by 10%.
• Swelling Maelstrom now also increases the damage of Earth Shock, Elemental Blast, and Earthquake by 5%.
• Master of the Elements now increases the damage of the next spell by 15% (was 10%/20%).
• Echo Chamber now increases the damage of Elemental Overloads by 10% (was 8%/15%).
• Power of the Maelstrom now causes the next Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning to trigger an additional Elemental Overload (was 2). Can now stack up to 2 times.
• Magma Chamber now stacks up to 10 times (was 20).
• Elemental Equilibrium is now a 10% damage bonus (was 8%/15%).
• Elemental Equilibrium no longer has a tracking debuff.
• Eye of the Storm now reduces the Maelstrom cost of Earth Shock and Earthquake by 5, and Elemental Blast by 10.
• Maelstrom generation has been updated for the following abilities:
  • Lightning Bolt is now 6 (was 8).
  • Lightning Bolt Overload is now 2 (was 3).
  • Chain Lightning is now 2 per target hit (was 4).
  • Chain Lightning Overload is now 1 per target hit (was 3).
  • Lava Burst is now 8 (was 10).
  • Lava Burst Overload is now 3 (was 4).
  • Icefury is now 12 (was 25).
  • Icefury Overload is now 4 (was 12).
  • Frost Shocks empowered by Icefury is now 10 (was 14).
• Flow of Power no longer increases Maelstrom generation from overloads.
• Stormkeeper has been removed from its choice node with Lightning Rod.
• Earth Shock is now a choice node against Elemental Blast.
• Earthquake is now a choice node with an option to have it be cast on your target.
• All nodes are now 1 point.
• The following talents have been removed:
  • Tumultuous Fissures
  • Focused Insight
  • Refreshing Waters
  • Primordial Bond
  • Call of Thunder
  • Call of Fire
  • Electrified Shocks
  • Windspeaker's Lava Resurgence
  • Oath of the Farseer
  • Further Beyond
  • Rolling Magma
  • Primordial Surge
  • Maelstrom Weapon

The Shaman Class Tree has received a large rework. Many talents have been removed, many have been added, and the pathing and position of many talents have changed.

• Many talents have moved locations or have had their pathing updated in all trees.
• New Ability: Skyfury — Harness the fury of the Windlord to grant a target ally 2% Mastery and empower their auto attacks to have a 20% chance to instantly strike again for 1 hour. If the target is in your party or raid, all affected party and raid members will be affected. Learned at level 17.
• New Talent: Elemental Resistance — healing from Healing Stream Totem reduces Fire, Frost, and Nature damage received by 6% for 3 seconds.
• New Talent: Refreshing Waters — your Healing Surge is 25% more effective on yourself.
• New Talent: Traveling Storms — Thunderstorm now can be cast on allies within 40 yards, reduces enemies' movement speed by 60%, and knocks enemies 25% further.
• New Talent: Seasoned Winds — interrupting a spell with Wind Shear decreases your damage taken from that spell school by 15% for 18 seconds. Stacks up to 2 times.
• New Talent: Encasing Cold — Frost Shock snares its targets by an additional 10% and its duration is increased by 2 seconds.
• New Talent: Arctic Snowstorm — enemies within 10 yards of your Frost Shock are snared by 30%.
• New Talent: Ascending Air — the cooldown of Wind Rush Totem is reduced by 30 seconds, and its movement speed effect lasts an additional 2 seconds.
• New Talent: Enhanced Imbues — the effects of your weapon imbues are increased by 20%.
• New Talent: Stone Bulwark Totem — summons an Earth Totem at the feet of the caster for 30 seconds, granting the caster a shield absorbing damage for 10 seconds, and an additional absorb every 5 seconds. 2-minute cooldown.
• New Talent: Jet Stream — Wind Rush Totem's movement speed bonus is increased by 10% and now removes snares.
• New Talent: Primordial Bond — while you have an elemental active, your damage taken is reduced by 5%.
• Voodoo Mastery has been redesigned — your Hex target is slowed by 70% during Hex and for 6 seconds after it ends. Reduces the cooldown of Hex by 15 seconds.
• Flurry moved from the Class tree to the Enhancement tree.
• The cooldown of Gust of Wind has been reduced to 20 seconds (was 30 seconds).
• Earthgrab Totem and Wind Rush Totem no longer share a choice node.
• Lightning Lasso and Thundershock no longer share a choice node.
• The following talents are now 1 point:
  • Totemic Focus
  • Elemental Warding
  • Nature's Guardian
  • Winds of Al'Akir
  • Nature's Fury
  • Totemic Surge
• The following talents have been removed:
  • Go With The Flow
  • Flurry
  • Maelstrom Weapon
  • Enfeeblement
  • Stoneskin Totem
  • Tranquil Air Totem
  • Ancestral Defense
  • Surging Shields
  • Swirling Currents

Elemental Shaman's damage on Beta is currently the best in the game along with Arcane mages by a significant margin, however, this is largely due to multiple interactions from our rework, which I do not believe are intended. Our various damage profiles are solid, however, and I expect that with proper tuning, Elemental should be at the higher end of DPS.

All Shamans now bring the Skyfury raid buff, which is quite powerful, especially with melee-heavy compositions. This vastly improves the general desirability of bringing a Shaman, any Shaman, to every raid group.

Elemental Shaman survivability took a large boost. We obtained a significant increase to our passive/background defenses as well as a mediocre but still significant new defensive with Stone Bulwark Totem. We also received the somewhat niche but situationally very powerful Seasoned Winds talent, as well as the oddly designed Elemental Resistance talent that is hard to gain value from reliably. Reincarnation remains as clunky as ever, and got worse in Mythic+ with the longer Death Timer Penalties.

Elemental's utility toolkit is even greater than before and excellent outside of raids where it went from abysmal to alright. The new Traveling Storms node has some potential, we received a choice node allowing us some snare customization from Frost Shock (though it will probably hardly ever be used), we have more sensible access to Totemic Focus, Totemic Surge and Totemic Projection and received a brand new choice node to customize our Wind Rush Totem with either Ascending Air and most notably Jet Stream, the latter being potentially very powerful.

The amount of customization and choices available to Elemental Shaman is good, although, unfortunately, Tier Sets often narrow down our competitive options significantly. For The War Within's Prepatch, our tier set, assuming it remains enabled, will keep locking us into Fire-dominant builds.

Many build variants are viable, and there is room to customize your build often. Playstyles also vary a lot; the main Lightning builds have stricter rotations in order to optimize the various ways we buff our Lightning Bolts, with some potential complexity rewarded by significant damage output, and Fire builds are generally more straightforward & and mobile in single-target. Note that Elemental Blast is very strong and worth using for AoE purposes on up to 3 targets (and with any amount of targets when using Echoes of Great Sundering , which is somewhat counter-intuitive and lowers your mobility potential.

Elemental Shaman gets to choose between the Farseer and Stormbringer Hero Talent Trees. In the sections below, we will talk more deeply about the implications of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec and some thoughts on what looks strong and weak ahead of launch. Note that this is meant to be a quick overview, we will delve into advanced, point-by-point details in the dedicated page later on.

The Farseer tree is all about summoning and enhancing your "Ancestors" that function in most ways like pets and cast things depending on what you cast. The short version is:

• Whenever you cast a single-target damage ability, they cast Lava Burst
• Whenever you cast a multi-target damage ability, they cast Chain Lightning (but that only bounces twice)
• Whenever you cast a single-target healing ability, they cast Healing Surge
• Whenever you cast a multi-target healing ability, they cast Chain Heal

Most notably, while they scale with your stats (to a point), they do not benefit from Mastery or any of your talents and features, nor do you gain anything from them beyond buffs from Elemental Blast if you pick the Final Calling node). They do a bit of damage, and that is it.

While there are some choice nodes, the balance at the moment is very bad, and you are essentially forced to pick all the RNG-based talents that synergize with each other, which is bad for multiple reasons.

Moreover, these nodes largely reinforce the already problematic spend 70% of your time casting Lava Burst behavior from the last seasons of Dragonflight.

We get a choice of defensive nodes that are both disappointing and hardly worth the bother. Chances are you will take Natural Harmony, but it does little.

Finally, the fact that the entire tree essentially has zero effect on your gameplay is quite puzzling, to say the least.

The Stormbringer tree is all about buffing Nature spells and, particularly adding more Lightning-based mechanics to your gameplay.

As much as Farseer is unintrusive to gameplay to the point of making you wonder why they don't replace it with a flat damage buff, Stormbringer is at the extreme opposite end, adding a variety of mechanics that are overly involved and problematic, both in and of themselves and especially combined with what would be proper talent builds for it.

Not one, not two, but THREE different nodes essentially REQUIRE custom WeakAura in order to use them properly. This is...

Most notoriously, our Aberrus 2pc is back with the Rolling Thunder node. While it certainly is fun to get more uses of Stormkeeper, the fact we likely have to use some version of the Season 2 talent builds and have to deal with several more RNG events and an ability force-replacing one of the lynchpin abilities of our somewhat complicated rotation is quite likely to be nightmarish to use in practice. Having optional complexity and room for player skill to shine is good, but this particular setup seems like it would just lead to needless frustration.

The new Tempest ability causes numerous issues both with its lack of synergies with the rest of the spec, your lack of control over when you have to cast it, and what it actually does (not much currently). It is also very buggy.

Add to that that there are a lot of other bugs (with both trees, really, but since Farseer does not affect your gameplay; it is less problematic), and one key node is currently not implemented, and knowing exactly how they implement it can potentially make or break builds; we are waiting for more updates to the tree.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Elemental Shaman in The War Within. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentary that is italicized.

• Shaman Elemental Season 1 2pc — Elemental Blast / Earth Shock damage increased by 25% Earthquake damage increased by 25%. Our spenders need help, and 25% is a solid buff. The worry here is tier bonuses are inherently temporary, and this buff should probably be a baseline buff.
• Shaman Elemental Season 1 4pc — Spending Maelstrom grants you 5% increased Critical Strike chance and 10% increased critical damage dealt. This helps with our low crit rate early on in an expansion, solid damage increase.

The 2pc bonus' value depends on your build and the situation but should be an increase of between 5% and 7% DPS.

The 4pc bonus is more reliable but fairly comparable in power, giving another 6% DPS.

The total expected value of the Tier Set is around 11-13%, which is solid and matches expectations.

Strengths

• Excellent 4-6 targets AoE and good single-target DPS with Lightning/Hybrid builds.
• Excellent spread cleave and solid single-target DPS with Fire builds.
• Optimized single-target to optimized multi-target with different profiles is only a 1 or 2 points difference.
• Can specialize to excel at most damage profiles.
• Vastly improved passive and active survivability.
• Unmatched utility outside of Raids.
• Farseer hero talents are easy to handle gameplay-wise.
• Stormbringer hero talents can enable massive AoE burst.

Weaknesses

• Best builds have you press the same button a lot.
• Lightning builds highly dependent on Flash of Lightning
• Farseer hero talents have little to no gameplay impact.
• Several Stormbringer hero talents come with basically mandatory WeakAura requirements.
• Fire builds' damage is dependent on one talent proccing.
• Average defensives and off-healing.
• Lost some reliable mobility, though still okay.
• A lot of bugs still need to be fixed.