Shamans are thematically at the front and center of the Cataclysm expansion thanks to its focus on the elements. The Earthen Ring faction is entirely made up of Shamans, led by everyone’s favorite character, Thrall. You’ll feel right at home leveling in the newly revamped open world. The Enhancement specialization is particularly strong for solo questing, and Elemental is perfectly viable as well.
In this guide, we’ll go over helpful tips, where to spend your talent points, what to look for when gearing, effective use of your abilities, and other general advice to make the leveling process as smooth and easy as possible!
Pros
- Simple damage rotations.
- Strong utility with their totems.
- Limited downtime with healing and mana regeneration abilities.
- Easy to get around with Astral Recall, Ghost Wolf, and Water Walking.
- Good mobility with lots of instant casts plus Spiritwalker’s Grace and Glyph of Unleashed Lightning.
Cons
- Totems are a little trickier to use than other buffs since they must be positioned and they can be attacked.
- Elemental is a little slower and weaker to level than Enhancement.
General Leveling Tips
Shamans will do well questing solo in the open world, but you can always change things up with a dungeon or two. If you’re Elemental, you can easily dual-spec and heal dungeons on the side while using the same gear. Most groups will be happy to have a Shaman of any flavor thanks to the usefulness of their totems and Bloodlust/Heroism.
Stat Priority
Enhancement
- Agility
- Mastery
- Critical Strike
- Haste
Elemental
- Intellect
- Haste
- Mastery
- Critical Strike
Rotation
Enhancement
Be sure to maintain your buffs and use your totems:
- Maintain Windfury Weapon on your Main-hand.
- Maintain Flametongue Weapon on your Off-hand.
- Maintain Lightning Shield.
- Totems:
Your rotation is fairly straightforward:
- Cast Flame Shock to apply/maintain the buff on as many targets as possible, if they will live for most of its duration.
- Cast Feral Spirit on cooldown.
- Cast Lava Lash on cooldown.
- Cast Stormstrike on cooldown.
- Cast Chain Lightning when you have 3+ stacks of Maelstrom Weapon if you are fighting more than one enemy.
- Cast Lightning Bolt instead if you are fighting a single target.
- Cast Earth Shock on cooldown.
Elemental
Be sure to maintain your buffs and use your totems:
- Maintain Flametongue Weapon on your weapon.
- Maintain Lightning Shield.
- Totems:
Your rotation is fairly straightforward:
- Cast Flame Shock to apply/maintain the buff on as many targets as possible, if they will live for most of its duration.
- Cast Lava Burst on cooldown if your target has Flame Shock.
- Cast Earth Shock to spend Fulmination or if you have 7+ charges of Lightning Shield.
- Cast Chain Lightning if you are fighting more than one enemy.
- Cast Lightning Bolt instead if you are fighting a single target.
Talents
Enhancement
This is a standard build for leveling. Most of the talents that were skipped in the build above are not worth taking. The order is more flexible, but you will probably want to take each of the three major 1/1 talents as soon as possible.
Elemental
This build takes Earth’s Grasp for some extra crowd control, but you could skip it if you have your eye on something else. Unfortunately Earthquake isn’t really worthwhile for leveling despite being your capstone ability.
Glyphs
Prime
Enhancement
- Glyph of Lava Lash
Increases the damage of Lava Lash, which is one of your core spells. - Glyph of Stormstrike
- Increase the damage done by Stormstrike, another of your core spells.
Elemental
- Glyph of Unleashed Lightning
Now you can run around or even spam the jump key while zapping enemies with Lightning Bolt. - Glyph of Lava Burst
A solid damage increase to one of your core spells, Lava Burst.
Major
- Glyph of Lightning Shield
With this glyph, your Lightning Shield becomes a fire-and-forget spell for its duration, giving you some easy passive damage. - Glyph of Ghost Wolf
Being able to get around faster is always great and you may get more mileage out of Ghost Wolf than you expect.
Minor
- Glyph of Astral Recall
Your Astral Recall spell already lets you hearth more frequently than other classes and this glyph is practically cheating. - Glyph of Water Walking
Now you can take advantage of Water Walking, which is especially useful when questing and exploring the open world, without needing to carry around a bunch of stinky Fish Oil.
Equipment
Shamans are able to use Staves, Daggers, Fist Weapons, and One- & Two-handed Axes and Maces. You should always try to use whichever weapon gives you the best stats. Be sure to also use something in your Off-hand if your Main-hand item is not a Two-handed weapon. This should be another weapon if you are Enhancement or a Shield or Off-hand item if you are Elemental.
Weapon upgrades will often be the biggest damage increase while leveling. Weapons are your primary source of Attack Power or Spell Power, and will be a big boost every time you upgrade.
Shamans can use Cloth and Leather armor, and learn Mail at level 40. At level 50 they gain Mail Specialization, and from that point on you’ll want to wear exclusively Mail in order to benefit from the buff to your primary stat.
Professions
Your professions won’t really affect the leveling process much, but if you want some useful passive bonuses, you can go with gathering professions like Herbalism or Skinning. These will be easy to keep up with while leveling and also offer the best gold-making potential. You can also opt to start working on any crafting professions that you want to use at endgame.
Useful Macros
There aren’t many super important macros for leveling, but there are some that are nice to have.
Startattack Macro
This macro is useful to make sure that your character always uses Auto-Attacks, even if you pull from ranged. This is mainly useful for Enhancement Shamans. You can replace Flame Shock with any other ability from your kit and the macro will work all the same.
#showtooltip/startattack/cast Flame Shock