Shaman Talent Builds: The Elemental Shaman

Wield Nature’s Weapons With an Elemental Shaman

Elemental Shaman Build

Today I’m looking at an Elemental build for Shamans that has a monster crit strike bonus built in, and has some great utility spells to round it out.

This build is great for solo players, good for raiding shamans, and great for PvP play where you want to get off huge crits as often as possible.

These huge crits won’t hurt while you’re leveling, or while you’re grouping of course…!

This is another of my favorite Shaman builds – the Elemental Shaman to me is like fighting in bear form as a Druid, its what they were made for, you know?

But enough rambling – here’s the build. Its flexible, but definitely skewed to leveling or small groups where you can do secondary healing and secondary DPS duties.

Elemental Shaman Talent Build

Row 1 (Convection, Concussion)

Your Elemental shaman is going to be pumping out a ton of spell damage in his time with this build, so its important to make that casting efficient and effective. Max out Convection and Concussion to save 10% on mana and increase damage by 5% for Shock, Lighting Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Lava Burst.

Row 2 (Call of Flame, Elemental Warding, Elemental Devastation)

I’m not a big fan of any of this line, but we need points to unlock talents later on down the tree, so I put 3 points into Call of Flame, to get the Fire Totem and Lava Burst damage bonus, and 3/3 into Elemental Warding to reduce all damage we receive by 6%.

Row 3 (Reverberation, Elemental Focus, Elemental Fury)

While Reverberation is a potential choice, and one I’ve used a lot before, for this build I just want to focus on other more useful talents. Elemental Focus is a definite – 1/1 in there to get Clearcasting which reduces mana costs by 40% for your next two spells. Very handy to keep you casting longer. Elemental Fury is a keystone of this build, 5 points go here to up our crit damage by 100% for Searing, Magma, and Fire Totems, and Fire, Frost, and Nature spells.

Row 4 (Improved Fire Nova Totem, Eye of the Storm)

Leave IFNT alone, unless you’re looking at making your Shammy more PvP focused, in which case the 100% chance of stunning from a Fire Nova is gold. Put 3 points into Eye of the Storm to help you keep pumping out those spells even under constant attack – reduce pushback by 70% for Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Burst and Hex spells.

Row 5 (Elemental Reach, Call of Thunder, Unrelenting Storm)

How can you NOT want to be an Elemental build with such awesome talent names as these? Unrelenting Storm, anyone? Yes please, many!

Ok so back to reality – Call of Thunder is another keystone for this build.. an extra 5% bonus chance to crit is HUGE, and you MUST take it for this build (and I’d be surprised if I didn’t see it in every enhancement build). Just keep in mind this is only for Lighting, Chain Lightning and Thunderstorm, which is where you’ll be doing most of your big damage crits.

Now for my favorite — Unrelenting Storm.  For this build, you really, really want to be covered in +int gear because of the big crit bonus you get to spells from high int… and since you’ll be working to increase your int, this talent will keep your mana ticking over really well every 5 seconds. Max it out at 3 points.

Finally, 2 points into Elemental Reach. The 6 yards more mean another cast, and another chance at hitting a crit. The extra radius on Thunderstorm is nice, too.

Row 6 (Elemental Precision, Lighting Mastery)

Whats a good crit chance without a high chance to hit in the first place? Max out Elemental Precision and make every cast count – you’ll also get 30% less threat from your Fire, Frost and Nature spells. Also max out Lightning Mastery and reduce your cast time for Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Lava Burst by half a second. More casts, again equals more crit chances, and more damage.

Row 7 (Elemental Mastery, Storm Earth and Fire)

Max out the whole line, Elemental Mastery is the most pivotal talent in this line. Get this up in PvP, or really any situation, and your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning or Lava Burst spell becomes and instant cast spell, and your Fire, Frost, and Nature damage spells get an EPIC 15% bonus to crit hit chance for 15 seconds.

Row 8 (Booming Echos, Elemental Oath, Lightning Overload)

I’m leaving BE & EO alone for this build, only Lightning Overload gets some love – max it out for a 33% chance to cast a second similar spell on the same target at no extra mana cost. In addition your spell won’t cause any extra threat which is great for groupers and raiders. You might consider taking Elemental oath if you’re doing a lot of grouping – its excellent for big groups – check it out, but for this build hold off.

Row 9 (Astral Shift, Totem of Wrath, Lava Flows)

While this line has some cool factor with Astral Shift, we’re going to avoid it unless you’re a heavy PvP player (in which case take it because rogues and pallys are our doom), and only put 1 point into Totem of Wrath which is yet another crit boosting tool in your arsenal. Get 3% extra crit chance while the totem is up, and increase party spell power by 100 for 5 minutes. Sold!

Leave Lava Flows, yawn worthy performance unless you’ve got the hots for your Fire based spells. Lightning is where this build is at.

Row 10 (Shamanism)

Getting to the end of the tree and things keep getting better — max out Shamism with 5 points and get another 10% damage bonus to your lightning attacks. By this stage I’m sure you’re stringing together how all your lightning based attacks are stacking, and with all the crit bonuses and high chance attacks, you’re going to be doing a lot of damage from a distance.

Row 11 (Thunderstorm)

The top of the tree is Thunderstorm, one of my favorite talents for obvious reasons… it looks really cool!

On top of its awesome effects, Thunderstorm kicks ass with a two pronged bonus, helping you, and damaging everyone else, throwing them back a massive 20 yards and restoring 8% of your mana back to you. Another great bonus is that you can use this while stunned, making it great for PvP and all manner of tight spots you need to get yourself out of. If this spell crits, which it has a decent chance to with this build, you can do some stunning damage to a large number of enemies.

For this particular build, where I want to continue to max out my crit chances and keep my mana costs low, I’ve gone a bit of an odd 3 tree build which includes:

5/5 Ancestral knowledge for the 10% increase in Intellect (go you critty thang).

5/5 Thundering Strikes for another 5% bonus to crit chance.

1/1 Shamanistic Focus to get 45% cheaper shock spells.

5/5 Totemic Focus to reduce totem mana costs 25%, and finally,

2/2 Improved Reincarnation to reduce your reincarnation cooldown by 20 minutes – just a bit of utility to round off a very crit heavy ranged spec.

Give this spec a go and I have no doubt your Elemental Shaman will enjoy blasting your foes with some killer critting lightning bolts and elemental fury!

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Related posts:

1. Shaman Talent Builds: The Enhancement Shaman
2. Shaman Talent Builds: The Resto Shaman
3. Shaman PvP Build: Level 29 Elemental Spec