I've read that elemental shaman have poor dps

Classes Shaman
1

Read it many places. I’ve been levelling one for a couple weeks now, and I’m a bit confused about how their damage is so bad. Perhaps it gets worse with higher levels, but for the last 20 or so levels (45-64) I have just been absolutely wrecking mobs in dungeons and totally dominating the damage meters against all other classes. Like 45%-60% of damage against bosses and 35%-45% or so overall. Multi target, or single target, doesn’t matter. I’ve been pulling bosses off the tanks, as well as groups of mobs (which is something I’d really rather not do), so I know that I’m really laying down some elemental smackdown.

Did they fix elemental, or something? The way things seem to be going, my damage is only going up up up. Is there some point at which the whole rotation just goes to pot or something?

2

Wherever you’ve been reading it, I would stop digesting information there.

Elemental is one of the top ranged specs across all aspects of the game this patch (and last patch as well.)

Unchanged, they’ll likely remain this way the rest of BFA

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3

Aside from the nerf to Lightning Lasso, Elemental is in a prime position.

Haven’t leveled in a while but I believe the biggest spikes you get are when EQ enters the mix and at 80 (78?) when your mastery starts affecting Lava Burst.

4

I had a huge spike in dps when I got the Storm Elemental talent. Storm Elemental + haste pot or trinket + blood lust = some seriously broken damage.

Edit:

I’m curious what exactly I’m supposed to do with a shield. Is there a tank aspect to elemental or something?

5

I personally don’t like Zappy, I prefer to keep Fire Elly and Master of the Elements. But I’m aware of some shamans who love the build around Zappy, Madalynn might show up and share her thoughts on this.

It doesn’t interact with any of our kit but makes us a bit tankier (cause of armor and block chance when not casting). The difference is noticeable when you go Enhance and feel a lot squishier. You might also have stumbled upon a couple of the dozens of posts about sham tank spec, some of them elaborate a bit on this.

6

This is a really my first venture into the shaman forums. I really only started seriously playing my shammy when I’d pretty much plateaud on my warlock, death knight, and druid. I grew bored so I grabbed one of my banking toons and started levelling. I think I may end up maining the shaman. We shall see how it is at end game. I’ll definitely need to replace her as a banker though. I’ll keep an eye out for those shaman tank posts, and I’m guessing you don’t like zappy because if the 3 minute CD?

7

I can only support you in your decision, sham has been my long time main (even though I occasionally played Priest at start of xpacs…). Shams are pretty solid and I personally like the PvP aspect of it.

Fire elly has the same duration and CD of Zappy, if I’m not mistaken. I’d say it’s personal choice, I like the playstyle of weaving the elements enforced by Master of the Elements (which I’d lose by picking Zappy) and also the fact that with Fire Elly out I just keep on weaving my casts, as opposed to Zappy that has me wanting to spam LB/CL to ramp up the haste buff.

I’m sure @Madalynn will show up and elaborate on this (and also correct me if I’m wrong) but the Zappy build uses Totem Mastery for extra overloads and the Vision of Perfection essence for extra Zappy windows. Seems pretty fun, I just prefer my current build.

8

Well I’m nowhere near any essences yet, but I did get my first azerite yesterday (at level 63 lol) when I opened a war supply chest in zuldazar. I wonder if it will remember that when it comes time.

There’s so much I don’t know about the shaman. I seem to have a knack for picking the down and out class/spec combos for some reason, so to find out that, for once, I didn’t is a nice surprise. I always used to wonder about those shaman dudes back in bc and wrath, always dropping those totem things everywhere they went. At the point I made this one, I had my choice of shaman, paladin, and demon Hunter as classes I hadn’t played. I will never create a demon Hunter (dumbest class ever, didn’t sacrifice anything), paladins always seemed 5oo cheesy to me, so shaman it was. I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

You guys have been very helpful. The warlock forum isn’t nearly as pleasant. Probably comes from all that fel, fire, and brimstone.

2 Likes
9

If you want more ele or shaman in general info, google for wowhead guides, the Storm Earth and Lava website, and the Earthshrine discord.

Forums are only as good as the people posting info in them. And if you stick around you’ll find misinformation is about as normal as sunlight.

2 Likes
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Your sources aren’t very good, then. Elemental is currently one of the top specs across the board. #4 in raiding, #6 in M+ (if you leave out the tanks and healers that are currently doing obscene damage for some reason, namely Brewmaster and Resto.)

The worst I see on elemental shammies is from Noxxic for pvp. That’s Noxxic, though. Noxxic is terrible and all things Noxxic should be viewed with much skepticism.

Edit: I did some quick reading on good pvp classes, since I don’t pvp. Most sources I found in my inquiry put elemental at mid-rank, at worst.

11

I have been told it’s really not a nerf … it’s actually a buff wrt total damage.

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Nah, used to be 40% max HP, now it’s a flat % of spell power. It still hits hard, but it is no longer the powerhouse it used to be. I still run it tho :man_shrugging:

13

Hey welcome to the shaman forums.

Yes shamans have had a bad stigma in one form or the other for most of this xpac. Truth be told, all 3 specs are currently in really good spots, except for enhance PVP to an extent.

Faminex posted some good sites. Make sure you feel out all info and take nothing at face value. The reason being is that majority of all sites were claiming that ele shaman was horrible at the beginning of the xpac. Most people were attempting to play ele based off of Legion style ele shaman builds, leggos, and traits that were lost when our artifact weapon was sacrificed to save Azeroth. Everyone was running crit builds with Ascendance even though it was and still is extremely clunky; when a high mastery build was actually extremely successful utilizing Storm Ele, High voltage (now SoP) and UP talents.

Due to this early branding by quite a few top players, ele fell from grace by most and got a bad rap. Ele shaman is also extremely gear and secondary stat dependent meaning that we start every xpac lower than most dps however unlike most dps; as the plateau off mid xpac, ele continues to scale well and surpass most.

All of this being said; ele continues to be in an extremely good spot in all aspects of game play.

Ele also has a wide variance of talent/gear builds that are all viable. there are a few talents that just suck; looking at you Ele blast, Unlimited Power, and Ascendance.

For leveling I would just focus on learning and enjoying the spec. Try all the talents and WM talents, even the talents I mentioned above. If you run across some problems or have some questions on how to get more from your ele or questions about resto or enhance feel free to ask.

Be warned we do have quite a few trolls that like to come in and pass on bad information and contradict what actual helpful people are trying to do or derail a thread into arguments. A few of us do try to correct bad info and politely point out which people who you should take their comments as less than believable.

Here are a few threads you can look through regarding leveling. You will notice a popular theme.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/tips-for-me/346091

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/which-dps-spec-for-leveling/348899

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/so-at-what-point-does-elemental-overtake-resto-for-leveling/133989

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/leveling-elemental-shaman-for-the-1st-time/13503/3

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/does-it-get-better-at-max-level/94129/8

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Thank you all for your timely input. I’ll be checking out these websites, and I learned long ago that there are as many stat weights and opinions on build and rotations as there are websites.

I’ve been running a haste type build focusing on AOE with chain lightning for packs and just lightning and the price that come with it for single target. I frequently find myself pulling the groups and bosses off the tanks so that’s becoming a real problem as I don’t have much in the way of defensives. One boss in one of those zangarmarsh dungeons I pulled aggro and he was in my face. I just did what I was doing and downed him. Looked around for the rest of my party. Then I asked where everyone went . That’s when I saw they had all died. I hadn’t even noticed. Lol

15

Ele is designed as an aoe machine and can be pretty tanky while leveling.

If aoe is your playstyle you can go with the following talents
ER: gives damage and allows you to spam CL
AS: can be hit or miss, however those streaks of procs can produce runs of 3-4. If you want more consistency and run WM try CoT with EA. You can pool up to 180 maelstrom and can drop 3-4 EQ which is a ton of dmg when grinding.

SE: as you know is crazy good for spamming CL and when paired with PE creates a ton of aoe dmg. However LMT has a shorter CD and when paired with WM CST can do massive dmg when aoe grinding.

PE: for EE alone turns him into a beast tank. And gives the big guy and aoe stun and an aoe shield. With SE it gives him a channeled aoe spell that does ton of dmg. Remember he needs to cast at least twice to maximize the aoe channel dmg. Heal your EE.

SK just becomes icing on the cake. Snap aoe dmg and maelstrom gen on a 1 min CD.

You can basically aoe pull every 1 min with zero down time.

Sk pull
Sk+EE pull
SE pull
SK pull
Sk pull
SE pull
Repeat.

When you start getting Azerite pieces just focus on defensive traits until you get to 120. Get stacks of the same. IMO PS is by far the best because it synergizes with both GW talents. You can drop 3-4 EQs and stand in GW and your health will never drop. VE and the resounding shield is nice.

The heal proc secondaries are also great while leveling and grinding.

16

not sure where

elemental shamans are in the best spot they’ve ever been in as long as i’ve been raiding

(end of cata → now)

with niche uses on madness of deathwing (burst aoe adds) or on heroic durumu(mythic of before) breaking the icewalls

this is the first time in forever elemental has had extremely competitive single target damage

17

Ele shams are top DPS but they can be seen as bad DPS because it is extremely hard to pull off what the top people do. Essentially you need to learn to weave your spells at the right times to maximize damage. They have a single target and a multi target build that both do very well right now.