Basic Elemental PvE & PvP guide by Solemn/Spanx

Updated for 2.3

So I saw that there were like ZERO guides, for the shaman’s elemental tree on the forums, so I thought – “Well, I’ve been playing elemental for so long, both PvE and PvP, so why not?”
This guide is aimed to help newcomers and to give you a view of how it’s like to play as an Elemental Shaman, in most aspects of the game, to do so I had to steal The Great Wall of China and write in the guide there, that consists of 2.902 words, so you have been warned :)


Ok I’m 70 – now which stats should I aim for PvE wise?

If you just respecced and got absolute nothing except for the greens and BoE blues on AH… This is my advice for what you should aim for:

*… of the Invoker and Sorcerer items. Generally +spell crit and spell damage. To advance from this, I worked on getting all my heroic keys and from that I got a lot of set pieces of Tidefury, your dungeon set, which gives you a good amount of crit and spell dmg. And remember – cloth does NOT gimp your dps, use it if you like, I did.
(Some might prefer NOT to look like a weakling in a dress, but to be honest. It’s only about the looks. If the stats are great for you, don’t hesitate just because you loose some armor, any improvement in the beginning is still an improvement, just don’t ninja anything other clothies can use of course.)

*Stamina: 7000-8000 hp is what I call “decent” for PvE. Your not as squishy as most think, unless you for some unreasonable reasons think you can mass AoE grind. Short: Stamina is not a huge must.

*Intellect: 8000-9000 mana is what I call “decent” for PvE. Intellect is an important fact in all situations and you should definitely aim for a lot of this to boost your crit, expand your mana pool and less downtime.

*Spell Damage: I had like 350 or so when I dinged 70. This is decent and a little less than normal when you reach 70. Let me give you some examples of what I think you need for the different instances. I recommend everything above:
400 Spell Damage for normal 70 instances.
500 for Black Morass event (As an add dealer).
Approximately 700 Spell Damage for Karazhan and Heroic instances.
900+ Spell damage for the T5 instances.
+Nature damage also works in PvE – this will boost your bolt damage slightly compared to normal spell damage.

*Spell Crit%: Is one of your most vital stats, approximately 20% is a good and reasonable amount to get with full blues. This means you got 30% crit chance on Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning due to your talents.

*Spirit/MP5: It’s ok to give this a boost if you want to last in longer boss fights, but you should wait with this till you progress further than Karazhan. Any improvement here helps you a lot.

Recommended talent builds for PvE check out:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=264016466&sid=1
My raid build: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hE0zqc0qAotZV0xp0x (Tweak it as you like)

Ok, I’ve geared up to aid my guildies properly in Karazhan, but it’s getting darn boring sometimes – I wanna punt some gnomes/trolls in BG!

Stamina: 8000+ is a good start; improve from there to around 10k and you’re suited with a nice amount of survivability.

Intellect: 8000+ as well, you WILL burn a lot of mana with Chan Lightning/Shock bursts, so running out of mana after several fights is not a rare situation.

Spell Damage: This might surprise you. But I only got like 670 Spell damage without Quagmirran’s Eye trinket. 650+ spell damage is actually “decent” for PvP. I decided to improve Spell Damage later, since my play style is based on survivability and not beat-down. If you go want to play beat-down style get 800+, but this means you will lack other important stats.

Spell Crit: This one is pretty hard to maintain and still improve in your other stats. I aimed for 20% and I maintain it by equipping Xiri’s Gift trinket, otherwise I got 18.xx% crit – and I can live with that since 18% still means 28% crit on bolts, which is ok in my opinion. Although crit is a good thing, resilience really nerfs it. I have found that in PvP you will need to sacrifice some of your spell crit for raw damage, since you are probably shooting at people with high resilience. Having higher raw spell damage will increase your damage output overall without having to rely on crits, and also increase the effectiveness of your deadly Elemental Mastery+Chain Lightning.

Spirit/MP5: Forget it.

Resilience: Take the resilience you can, EVEN if you don’t aim for survivability, this is an important stat to improve and you should not underestimate this. 300+ nowadays ain’t that much but it’s good enough as a shaman, but remember: A dead shaman in arena doesn’t help your team-mates. Resilience ftw.

Additional Comments:
"However i'd say 8.5khp-9khp is a better start for pvp, as resillience compliments hp. I'd personally rather have 9khp 200 resill than 8khp 300 resill, especially because of elemental shields. - ßlashinko"
ßlashinko is right - eventhough it can be tough to get 9k hp in the start, this is a good goal to keep you going.


Recommended talent builds for PvP check out:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=264016466&sid=1
My arena/pvp build: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hAczEc0oVsxZV0xp0xo (Tweak it as you like)

PvE – “More than just 3 totems and Lightning Bolt…”




Solo – While questing it’s sometimes a waste of time dropping down totems, but mostly when mobs are near you and if the spawn rate isn’t bad you can setup your “totem station” somewhere in the middle and start killing, this way you avoid recasting totems all the time. The totems I mainly use for questing/grinding:
Stoneskin / Tremor (Situational)
Wrath of air / Grounding / Nature resistance (Rarely)
Mana Spring / Fire resistance
Searing (Sometimes) / Frost resistance


Resistance totems? Wtf?
We got them for a reason, so use them when you can – like when grinding primals, like fire and water, it will reduce your damage taken significantly, and that will save you alot of time in the end. Don’t waste your time grinding Air and Earth… Immune to nature :´(, It's do-able yes of course it is. But you could grind fire/shadow/water ALOT faster and sell those primals to buy the Primal Air. Primal Earth is relatively cheap anyway.


5-man instances/Group quests – Your job is too improve your groups stability and/or dps and as much as possible. Use of totems varies along with your group members, this is how I do it:

Earth Totem: Stoneskin primary to aid the tank – if the tank is good geared, use Strength to improve his and/or other class’s dps if they benefit from strength. Tremor if it’s needed.

Air totem: Wrath of air if the group consists of caster/caster/healer/melee dps/tank. 3/5 benefits of this. Use Windfury if you got: melee/melee/tank/healer/caster since it’s most beneficial. If you for a rare occasion got 2 hunters in your group or 2 dagger rogues, Grace of Air will slightly increase their dps more than windfury.

Water totem: Mana spring mostly, sometimes healing stream helps as well, if your group consist of 3/5 non-mana users… But it’s up to you. Remember fire resistance on hard hitting fire-mobs or bosses.

Fire totem: Totem of Wrath if you got it. Alternatives: Flametongue to increase melee dps (and use Wraith of Air for your own benefit) or Searing totem for additional damage and Magma/Fire Nova for some decent aoe.

*Main spells used are: Lightning Bolt, occasional Chain Lightning, but ONLY when you got clearcasting proc. CL is a mana killer. Earth Shock Rank 1 and Lightning Shield.


Raid – Mainly the same as above can only add some additional tips (feel free to suggest):
* Use Water Shield

* At bosses: consume mana pots as soon as you can, to maximize your mana pool from the start and to decrease downtime – chug down the next one as soon as possible!

* If you reach 1k nature damage and 25% base crit, you might consider using Tranquil totem, this + Salvation + talent will decrease your threat generated immensely, which let you deal even more damage. Just a suggestion if you’re kicking the MT’s butt in threat.

* Use Bloodlust wisely and combine your spell dmg trinkets / Blood Fury (Orcs) with it, to maximize your dps.

* More to come…

PvP – “The Survivor – in general…”

As I mentioned already – in BG PvP you run out of mana pretty fast if you manage to survive through several fights, unfortunately this is normal, we’re not mana efficient, our high burst damage has a price. But don’t hesitate to use your high dmg spells, just because they cost you a lot of mana. You will learn how to manage your mana better as you play and sooner or later you’ll be an excellent killer. (2.3 changed this A BIT so you’re a bit more mana efficient ^_^ Hurray!)

To become this killer, you need to be aware of some things, which might give you problems:

*Avoid close-combat. Staying ranged gives you the best head start. You got absolutely no crowd control or immobilizing effects in PvP and your only way of escape from a snare is your PvP trinket. Frost shock DR has been removed as of 2.3. And all I can say again is: Hurray! Use Frost Shock Rank 1 in case you’re low on mana and/or combine it with Earth Bind.

*Sometimes when healing seems to be the best option, it’s your death. Heals + your nature dmg spells + most of your totems, are in the same school of spells, which means a pummel/counterspell/kick is devastating. You might want to use Shocks+Chain Lightning and hope for some lucky crits instead.

*Due to your lack of CC you can hardly face 2 at the same time and survive, since its all gear dependant and it’s simply too tough as a shaman. Have to add that Tauren Shamans got their War Stomp for an open Chain Lightning/Heal opportunity and War Stomp is indeed the I.W.I.N button vs. multiple enemies. All-though… Engineering can turn the tide :p

The key to win…:

… is to combine your defensive spells, with your offensive spells. Examples are LB+LB+CL+Grounding+Heal+Shock+CL+Purge+Purge/Totem (of great use in this situation...)+Shock+CL+recast Lightning Shield+Grounding+Heal… and so on... Use your moves! Don't run around like a headless chicken and spam your frost shock!

“… combine your defensive spells, with your offensive spells.” Is the best way I can describe it… It kindda all becomes natural, as you play. It’s all about trying to get better, test things, conclude what tactic is best against the enemy class+specc, not alone just know your own class, but also know your enemy, to know the duration and cooldown of your enemy abilities is a good advantage.

Let me sketch up how to deal with the different classes, and which things you have to be aware of.

Druid:
*Kiting them is almost hopeless, but it’s a good way to burn their mana on shifting.
*Save your trinket to free you from a cyclone that you failed to interrupt or if you were stunned/maimed.
*Purge+Fire Nova+Lightning Shield
*Cyclone is their life saver – grounding totem can ruin everything for them.
*Stay within their dead-zone of Feral Charge - but the time to cast a bolt they can easilly get out the dead-zone and charge you... So...
*Predict their Feral Charge, it might be hard, but many druids tend to run away and wait for you to cast, just to interrupt you and break your damage output for a while. A good trick is to “pretend” to cast and interrupt it yourself. So called Fake-heals.
*If you’re facing a moonkin, interrupt as many spells you can and save the grounding totem for his Starfire/Cyclone

Hunter:
*Without the talent “Eye of the storm” you’re in trouble. The pet is a good way to help you trigger this and to let you cast an easy heal or CL.
*Try to get off his bow range and shock+CL him as he tries to take distance to you.
*Use Fire Nova when you run up to him and he tries to wing clip you.
*If he snake traps you – use Fire nova or if it’s on cooldown Magma + Poison Cleansing Totem.
*Save trinket for Freeze Traps – Grounding totem works too.
*Grounding absorbs intimidation stun and Stoneclaw Totem might keep the pet busy for a few secs if you don’t have “Eye of the storm”. (Not sure about the Stoneclaw taunt thing though…)
*Use Windwall if you got time, it can actually save your life.
*As of 2.3 Arcane Shot dispells -_- so if you got Bloodlust on vs a hunter, keep water shield up. Might work, not sure though.

Mage:
*Purge is your friend
*Use resistance totems – yes both.
*Grounding
*As soon as he blows his water elemental use Elemental Mastery+CL on him and the elemental will take a lot of serious dmg, since it’s right next to him and a simple shock can finish it. It’s worth it.
*Trinket out of frost nova.
*Bandage when he ice blocks.
*Trick him to counterspell you by “fake” healing.
*Shock his bolts.

Paladin:
*Purge – but not if he seems to spam his seals even if he knows that you’ll just purge them. He’s gonna waste your mana by using rank 1 seals.
*Retri palas are normally not hard to deal with, but some of them got some very nice burst and before you even notice it it’s too late and you’re dead. Just be sure to purge their important buffs. All their dps increased buffs are purgeable which gimps them immensely.
*Save trinket for stuns.
*Open burst or even pop bloodlust to force a bubble.
*Shock open heals beware of “fake” heals.
*Grounding absorbs Hammer of Justice + Judgements. Abuse it.

Priest:
*Purge is your friend
*After removing his NEWLY cast Power Word. Shield – open up for your burst.
*Save Grounding for a safe Heal
*Tremor vs Fear
*Searing totem can trouble his casting.
*Save shocks for his flays and/or Mind Blast
*Save the trinket for a fear/blackout stun if you’re low on HP – things could get critical very fast, because tremor is not reliable.

Rogue:
*Keep Poison Cleansing Totem down – All the time.
*Searing Totem.
*Lightning Shield is a great way to damage him while you’re stunned, combined with your searing.
*Swap between Fire Nova and Searing.
*Save trinket for a long Kidney Shot.
*Try to fake heal, but if he succeeds in kicking you, don’t worry the silence is not that long and Instant heal asap.
*Getting rid of the poisons can be annoying esp. the Wound ones. Try aim for a complete beat down and simply kill him before he kills you. (If possible)
*Avoid Gouge by trying to keep your back to him.
*If you try to kite him - beware of Deadly Throw, it might interrupt your spell casting if they have the arena gloves.

Shaman:
*Use water shield.
*Purge everything else but water shield, because water shield costs no mana at all.
*Shock+Melee Frostband actually works vs. Resto/Elemental. This is all about who got most mana.
*Grounding for a safe heal.
*Interrupt as much as you can by using rank 1 earth shock.
*Only use Chain Lightning because of its short casting time, a Lightning Bolt might be hard to cast.
*Enhancement Shamans can hit you for pretty hard, but just wait for them to consume their Stormstrikes with Earth Shock and THEN heal.
*Swap between Fire Nova+Searing
*Kite Enhancement Shamans.

Warlock:
*Tremor + Grounding
*SL/SL locks are simply too imba for us imho. High resistance, resilience and HP.
*Try to kill the Fel-puppy, it has massive resistance and cannot be 2 shotted at all, but still worth a try because you won’t stand a chance vs. the warlock with it.
*Abuse engineering or other dirty tricks to win.
*Interrupt fear and Life Drains
*Beware of the Fel-puppy’s Devour magic. It will remove your Nature’s Swiftness right after you cast it. Use Water shield to burn his Devour magic and then NS+Heal.
*Don’t cry if you loose to an equally geared SL/SL lock in a duel, it’s been like this for very long and it’s just a thing we gotta live with.
*Your chances are better when you deal the 1st hit (BG or Open PvP)
*Purge Fel armor
*Use Searing to trouble his casting.

Warrior:
*Save trinket till AFTER he intercepted and hamstringed you.
*Go for a fast beat down – don’t bother healing while affected by Mortal Strike.
*If you see him run towards you ready to charge, drop a searing and run off a bit, to get him into combat and force him to intercept instead. This way you can trinket out of hamstring and kite.
*Try to “fake” your casts to let him blow his pummel.
*Tremor totem
*Swap between Fire Nova and Searing.
*Don’t underestimate fury warriors. Pop bloodlust if you drop down too fast.

I’ll work on expanding the tips and stuff as time goes and patch after patch. Feel free to add some stuff, I’ll read it eventually.
Hopefully I gave you a taste of how it is being an elemental shaman, or if I mentioned something that you didn’t know – well then I’ve accomplished a lot already. I’m not trying to educate you; this is my point of view of how to play this type of shaman. You don’t have to do everything I say, but I hope I’ve somehow inspired you to be better or work on it, I’m still learning and I’ll work on being better everyday. You can read about more advanced stuff like mechanics in other posts.

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Q u o t e:
last Reservation :)

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In that case, first!

Currently leveling a Elemental Shaman to 70 so will check back and love to read it when it's made.

Bumped for the cause of my first post.

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Q u o t e:
Don’t waste your time grinding Air and Earth… Immune to nature :´(

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Bull. Quick dagger, lots of +dmg, Searing Totem and Flametongue, coupled with occasional shock = win. Not as fast as non-nature immune, but still very fast.

Will comment on more later.

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Q u o t e:


Bull. Quick dagger, lots of +dmg, Searing Totem and Flametongue, coupled with occasional shock = win. Not as fast as non-nature immune, but still very fast.

Will comment on more later.

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Not often I disagree with you Nathaira, but I would say the OP has a point.

Find out how many Primal air and earth you can grind, and then see how many fire/water you can do in the same time, sell on the AH and just buy back what you need of other primals.

You are right it is possible to grind them, but I can't say its a good idea.

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Q u o t e:
Not often I disagree with you Nathaira, but I would say the OP has a point.

Find out how many Primal air and earth you can grind, and then see how many fire/water you can do in the same time, sell on the AH and just buy back what you need of other primals.

You are right it is possible to grind them, but I can't say its a good idea.

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Well, it's hard to say, considering I never timed myself. Usually when grinding up at Elemental Plateau, I nuke fire elementals, then switch to air elementals when I run out of fire. At the end of the grind, I usually have around 3 primal fires for each primal air. Note that my focus is on fire and I only grind air during respawn timer, so I'd say primal-wise, the result is pretty damn decent.

I used to use my mage for primal air and earth grinding, but I've forsaken her in favour of my shaman. Why? Because, frankly, it's faster. Partially because Nath has better gear, partially because there's much less downtime and partially because I simply can't be arsed to travel around with two chars all the time.

Would I grind primal air as main primal? No. Grinding fire IS faster and given my BT neck, I usually just port to Shadowmoon and nuke a few mobs around the Hand. However, if I'll need a primal fire for this or that, I won't hesitate to port to Shadowmoon and nuke air elementals as well. Funny thing is, I've grinded about 15 primal air with my shammy before deciding that I won't make Netherstrike (and I sold those primals for sexy goldz <3). On the other hand, I tried grinding with my retri pala and almost lost my soul in the process.

To be honest, I think it's harder to grind water elementals with frost mage than it is grinding air or earth with elemental shaman. But then, that's just me.

EDIT: oh, btw: I use the Flametongue + Shocks tactic for antiwarrior pvp as well.

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Q u o t e:
Druids:
*Predict their Feral Charge, it might be hard, but many druids tend to run away and wait for you to cast, just to interrupt you and break your damage output for a while. A good trick is to “pretend” to cast and interrupt it yourself or use Astral Recall.

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I'm not sure, but isn't feral charge more like a silence rather than a counterspell? The best way to deal with Feral Charge is to stay in the bear's "deadzone", the zone between melee range and feral charge range.

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Q u o t e:
Mages:
*Trick him to counterspell you by “fake” heal or cast Astral Recall.

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This won't work for several reasons
- Astral Recall is in the nature school. If you get counterspelled when casting AR ór a healing wave, it won't matter. You're srewed either way
- Many people have the "enemy castbar" option turned on, so they'll see it when you cast a "fake spell" (like Heartstone)
- ... because Heartstone can be used in combat, and Astral Recall can't.

I just felt like pointing that out. As for everything else, it's a very decent guide :)

Reported for sticky. Or... updated in the sticky. Whatever :p

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Q u o t e:

Priest:
*Purge is friend
*After removing his NEWLY cast Power Word. Shield – open up for your burst.
*Save Grounding for a safe Heal
*Tremor vs Fear
*Searing totem can trouble his casting.
*Save shocks for his flays and/or Mind Blast
*Save the trinket for a fear/blackout stun if you’re low on HP – things could get critical very fast, because tremor is not reliable.

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As soon as he casts his Power Word Shield start casting a LB, he probably wont stop you becouse of his shield absorbing part of the dmg. Right after your LB is casted, spam purge. if he has no other buffs, or you purged them before, you will purge his new shield before the LB hits -> he takes the full LB damage (it doesnt work with CL because it has no "fly time" an hits instantly when casted)

Edit:
First :P

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Q u o t e:

I'm not sure, but isn't feral charge more like a silence rather than a counterspell? The best way to deal with Feral Charge is to stay in the bear's "deadzone", the zone between melee range and feral charge range.

This won't work for several reasons
- Astral Recall is in the nature school. If you get counterspelled when casting AR ór a healing wave, it won't matter. You're srewed either way
- Many people have the "enemy castbar" option turned on, so they'll see it when you cast a "fake spell" (like Heartstone)
- ... because Heartstone can be used in combat, and Astral Recall can't.

I just felt like pointing that out. As for everything else, it's a very decent guide :)

Reported for sticky. Or... updated in the sticky. Whatever :p

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thx for the heads-up. Cheers.

Updated based on the comments above me, thx for your in-put.

Good guide. Could only see one thing that was slightly erroneous:

Warlocks
**Don’t cry if you loose to an equally geared SL/SL lock in a duel, it’s been like this for very long and it’s just a thing we gotta live with.

Should be:

*Don’t cry if you lose to a warlock that is naked or in full greens, it’s been like this for very long and it’s just a thing we gotta live with.


Try dueling a really skilled Warlock as Elemental, even if they're naked. Still tough as hell! :P

I'm about to level to 70 the coming weeks ... however I am a bit worried about gear.

I always thought well ... why not cloth, it doesn't matter. However, I did a few dungeons last week, and well ... I 'took' a cloth pair of gloves, while a mage also wanted them. It was a fair roll, and he was ok with it ... but it still felt odd, like I was stealing it or something.


I have gone through wowwiki.com, the instances ... and checked the normal gear, heroic gear, karazhan gear ... and apart from maybe a trinklet, a ring or a necklace, I could find ... maybe 1 or 2 elemetnal shaman items ... and ... not even that great ... and that was it.

Karazhan drops NO elemental shaman armor at all.

I didn't know it was that bad to be honest. So what do you do? How do I get into Heroics with hardly anything that drops, do you need to get lucky when mage gear drops and a mage allows you to roll too?

I thought my Druid had a bad time, but the resto druid only had a real problem with bracers, and Karazhan boss 1 dropped them. The elemental shaman can expect like ... nothing from karazhan, armor wise ... what a thing to look forward to ... and the worst Dungeon 3 set out there as well ... what were they thinking when they were developping the gear, that there wasn't any elemental shaman?


Anyway, checking the gear guide now ... but I was really surprised ... even ZA isn't that good for us!

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Q u o t e:

Karazhan drops NO elemental shaman armor at all.

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That's right, however granted you can kill the bosses anyway, you'll have a steady income of badges which can be turned into very nice gear.

edit: It doesn't even drop enhancement gear, it drops hunter gear.

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Q u o t e:

Karazhan drops NO elemental shaman armor at all.

... even ZA isn't that good for us!

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everything kara is able to offer is a decent head, ring and a dagger. rest u have to get thru heroic badges (hands, belt, boots r ones of the best ingame) BoP LW craft, heroic instances and honor vendor (vindicator's mail bracers pwn Supremus' drops by dmg and crit). and concerning ZA... it might not have too many good drops, but there r some still. kilt from 4th boss pwns t6 by 5 spelldmg and 1 critrating if properly socketed. but before u get there u have to work hard on getting your gear from previous mentioned sources
gl

31.12.2007
Updated for typos.
Happy New Year!

Solemn from BDF? Was wondering what had happened to you :)

Nice post, will definitely use some of these tips!