Shaman Builds Guide

Solo/Questing

The by far most popular build for this purpose is Enhancement. Even blue posts in the Blizz forums agree on this. It is very mana efficient and therefore suffers from the least downtime while dealing very high amounts of damage. Elemental is also viable, some actually favor it over Enh. As a remote third choice a Restoration build could be considered, but this is only for the very patient because the damage output is too low. Granted, survivability is very high.

Group PvE

All three trees offer great group talents. The traditionally favored group build is Restoration, because of Mana Tide, and there's never enough healers around. The 10% increase in attack power (Enhancement) or the additional 3% crit chance to spells and melee attacks (Elemental) though make these builds perfectly viable in group environments too. Shamans focusing on DPS would be well advised to look at Enchant Cloak - Subtlety and other aggro reducing items as a way of effectively increasing their DPS since aggro management is a problem for most shaman builds (exc. restoration).

PvP

In PvP again all options are wide open. The extreme durability granted by a full Restoration build is interesting, as are the high damage outputs possible by the other variants. One famous PvP build is Enhancement with a slow 2H weapon, this can yield very quick (nearly instant) kills due to the high possible burst damage.

Elemental

The talents at 11, 21, 31 and 41 points really stand out in this tree, they are among the best available to a shaman. The in-between talents are less attractive, the other trees are more balanced in this respect. It's also difficult to spend more than 41 points in this tree in an efficient way.

All-out Elemental

A basic method to spend 41 points in elemental would be like this. There are 5 points which can be considered "free", those in Unrelenting Storm. Leaving them there is good for a raiding/grouping build where the shaman expects not to draw aggro, but needs more mana for long boss fights. Talents like Eye of the Storm and Storm Reach are more geared towards pvp or solo play. It's also possible to put one last point in Reverbaration for playstyles where the shocks (and not lightning bolts) are the primary nukes (namely pvp again).

Usually the remaining 20 points are put in Resto, in order to get another 5% crit chance for lightning bolts. This leads to 41/0/20, with an interesting problem: Healing Focus (uninterruptible heals), Totemic Mastery (totem range) and Tidal Mastery (5% lightning crits) would need a total of 11 points, but there are only 10 available. There are three possible solutions:

1. not increase the totem range (good when soloing)
2. take only 4% lightning crit increase (compromise)
3. not put any points in uninterruptible heals (good when raiding)

Spending points in Natures Guidance (3% spell and melee hit chance) is usually not necessary, because the build already has 9% spell to hit from Totem of Wrath and Elemental Precision, and it's nearly impossible to avoid getting another 2% from gear (to achieve the useful maximum of +11% for fights vs. lvl 73 bosses).

PvP

The above builds should also perform well in PvP. Still, a little redistribution helps to increase the survivability. For example 40/0/21 increases surviability and adds NS while maintaining very high DPS. Since Lightning Overload is a rather lucky affair, builds like 37/0/24 could be considered, sacrificing a few more DPS for more free points, which can be spent for further increased survivability and/or whatever secondary purposes the build should serve.

Enhancement

A shaman going for the highest possible damage output should take a serious look at enhancement. Dual wielding increases damage output by about 10% (compared to an equivalent 2H), offers greater versatility, and one more useful stat (melee to hit chance). Melee specced shamans are sometimes called "rogues in mail".

This tree is rather rich in good talents outside the "magic" boundaries. It's easy to spend 50 points here, without wasting a single one.

Leveling

When choosing an enhancement build to level, the general theory is to rely on physical damage as much as possible and to use mana mainly to heal in between fights. This way, mana can regen during fights for virtually no down time. In this playstyle, the shaman only uses lighting shield, stormstrike and very rarely a shock while in combat. When starting a new character, the first priority should be to get 31 points in enhancement (for stormstrike). After this some choose to go straight to 41, getting Dual Wield along the way, while others choose to go for less interruptible heals and maybe Nature's Swiftness before returning to the enhancement tree.

Suggested build at level 50

PvE Raiding Build

0/42/19 is a pure raid/group enhancement build for level 70, it gets all the talents required for top group performance while getting enough resto abilities to spot/emergency heal, solo, and even main heal non-heroics (provided you have good gear and an off healer). This build does completely neglect any PvP abilities however and will perform extremely poorly there.

Most of the choices here are obvious. For people brand new to the class/spec I figure I should explain some of it.

* Enhancing totems was taken over Imp. Weapon totems because Strength of Earth is almost always used in PvE (except when you are using tremor totem) while Windfury totem is not as both Grace of Air (which enhancing totems buffs), Wrath of Air (for caster heavy parties) and even Grounding totem find use in parties making enhancing totems a better overall choice.

* ALL +hit talents are useful as a shaman needs AT LEAST 15% to hit (shoot for more we work differently than rogues and warriors).

* Shamanistic Rage gives you a reliable way to quickly regen mana in combat. Important for the long fights that occur in raids and useful to decrease downtime while grinding.

* Imp. Healing Wave is preferable to Tidal Focus because 3 seconds is a long time to wait for a heal and you would need to cast 20 heals before getting a free one out of tidal focus. You heals aren't terribly strong unbuffed so you will REALLY notice the .5 second reduction if you are spamming heals on someone getting hit hard.

* We drop totems all the time making Totemic Focus an obvious choice. If you aren't dropping enough totems to see benefit from it then you are doing something wrong.

* Totemic Mastery is so useful I would never build a shaman spec without it.

* Healing focus may seem an odd choice but since we are melee and often in the range of AoE damage Healing focus is critical to your ability to heal through it. It also allows you to heal tank an add in emergencies. Gives you the ability to heal in battle grounds and is required if you want to main heal in an instance.


Enhancement/Elemental PvP

This 20/41/0 aims for many crits (spell crits increase melee crit chance, melee crits result in increased attack speed and AP). With a little luck, about 6 things will proc every 5 hits or less. Crusader is a good complement.

With good gear (preferably hunter gear, because of strength, agility and stamina) this build can be devastating on your opponents. Survivability isn't particularly high, but it's simply not needed.

"Suicide" PvP Build

25/36/0: The focus is on a high amount of damage in a very short time, so no shamanistic rage or unleashed rage, but improved damage and cooldowns for melee and instant cast spells. For as far as i have tested it in arena, i did this with a guild mate Shaman, you will have a great damage output, caster don't stand a chance, and you always have a partner for some backup heals, in our opinion 2H weapons are best for high damage crits, and 1h+shield for endurance fights versus melee classes.

23/38/0 is about the same, however, it will help slow down running prey a little better, and offer more defense. You sacrifice your fire totems to do it, but then again... how much damage would you do with them vs. another melee hit?

Restoration

There was a time when endgame PvE shamans were mandatorily full resto. Mana Tide Totem was just the single best talent shamans had, so there was no real choice. Nowadays, the resto tree offers still some of the best talents for a raiding shaman, but also has some options appealing to players interested in PvP or solo PvE. The landmark talents are enhanced totem range at 11 points, Nature's Swiftness (which is one of the very best talents overall) at 21 points, Mana Tide at 31 and Earth Shield at 41 points. The restoration tree offers so many extremely good talents that a build with only 41 points already lacks at least one them.

PvE

It's hard to find a good 41 point build, because it would lack some key talent. 0/0/41 may be a compromise, but it lacks uninterruptible heals, the heal crit increase and ancestral healing (the AC buff to the heal target).

Still going resto should be an all-out affair, thus better go the whole way and take (0/0/48), which covers all the important talents for a PvE priest replacement shaman (it still lacks the uninterruptible heals, but in a raid environment they are only marginally useful). 5 points could be saved by either leaving away the totem mana cost reduction, or the 5% heal crit increase.

PvP

In PvP, Mana Tide isn't really important, neither is Healing Grace. Thus a minimal PvP resto build would look like 0/0/41. Nature's Guardian makes a shaman rather hard to kill.

Hybrid Builds

In any group environment (in 5 man PvE in particular) hybrid classes should be able to perform in more than one role. Countless wipes were avoided because a backup healer took over when the priest died. With the right spec, shamans can become very versatile.

Spell DPS/Healer

Usually, hybrid builds suffer from the problem that gear only rarely has useful stats for both roles. Granted, there are a few pieces with melee stats and mana/5, but the other interesting stats for spellcasting (+ heal/damage, spell crit rating) are usually not found together with AP, dodge or other melee attributes. OTOH, damage and healing spells both basically profit from the same stats, thus a balanced Elemental/Restoration build like 31/0/30 will in DPS gear still be a good backup healer.

Jack of All Trades

A good hybrid shaman should be able to shift roles in a second and be decent at all of them. Should the tank die, he should be able to pick up the mobs and tank decently, if only keeping aggro through self-healing. If the main healer dies, he should switch to healing mode in a second. Being a hybrid Shaman in PvE is all about keeping an eye on every aspect of the fight and acting appropriately.

11/29/21 attempts to achieve a good balance between dealing high damage, survivability and successful healing, whichever is more appropriate at the time. While it may look deceptive considering it never really goes further than halfway down any specific tree, it really is useful for whatever may come your way. It works well for soloing, instances, and to a lesser degree, PvP. It allows you to deal some good physical DPS, while being mana conscious, allowing you to save mana for when you need to heal, or if you can go all out with shock spells. If you master your totems and have the skill to keep an eye on everything happening in a party, you'll know when to switch your role from DPS to off-tank to healer, this build will allow you the room to be pretty decent at all of them.

Enhancement/Restoration

This 0/31/30 build is a great enhance/resto hybrid build. The damage output is around 80% of a full Enhancement build and the healing abilities are close to full resto, although of course all the top talents are missing. Still is possible to main heal in just about any situation as well as do very good damage. The advantage is that this build conserves his mana for healing, while the melee damage is done basically for free. Good build for a person that enjoys melee and healing and doesn't feel the need to be the 'best of the best' at either.