Utolsó módosítás programmer, ekkor: 2014.06.27.
In this article, we list your Elemental Shaman (WoW 4.3) core abilities and how they should
be used together (rotation). We also explain when to use your various
cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtleties that playing
an Elemental Shaman will face you with.
The other articles of our Elemental Shaman guide can be accessed
from the table of contents on the left.
1. Basic Single Target Rotation↑top
In the case of a single target, the rotation of an Elemental Shaman is a priority
checklist:
- Keep
Flame Shock up on the target. Refresh when there are 3 seconds or less left.
- Keep
Searing Totem up.
- Cast
Lava Burst on cooldown
- watch out for its cooldown being reset by procs of
Lava Surge.
- Cast
Earth Shock when you have between 7 and 9 charges of
Lightning Shield.
- Cast
Lightning Bolt as a filler.
2. Basic Multiple Target Rotation↑top
If the enemies are spread out, simply maintain your
Flame Shock on as many of them as possible while
performing your single-target rotation on one of them.
If the enemies are in the same area, proceed as follows.
- For 2 enemies:
- For 3 enemies:
- For 4 or 5 enemies, spam
Chain Lightning.
- For 6 or more enemies:
3. Cooldown Usage↑top
As an Elemental Shaman, you have a total of 5 DPS cooldowns.
Elemental Mastery temporarily increases your damage and gives
you an instant cast of
Lightning Bolt,
Lava Burst, or
Chain Lightning.
It is your main cooldown and should be used whenever it is available (preferably
before casting Lightning Bolt since it has the longest cast time). Thanks to the
Feedback talent, each cast of
Lightning Bolt or
Chain Lightning
reduces the remaining cooldown of Elemental Mastery by 3 seconds. See
our Macros article for
a macro to combine Elemental Mastery and Lightning Bolt.
Fire Elemental Totem and
Earth Elemental Totem are important DPS
cooldowns (especially the former), they should be used whenever your Elementals will be able to
attack the boss for 2 minutes without being interrupted. It is important to time these spells
so that you cast them with the highest amount of Intellect, as the damage your
Elementals do is proportional to the Intellect you have when you summon them.
Spiritwalker's Grace should be used when you need to move, so that
you can keep casting. If you are using Glyph of Unleashed Lightning,
you will find yourself using this ability a lot less often.
Thunderstorm is both
- an AoE DPS cooldown, which you should always use when you have
6 or more enemies to attack and;
- a mana management tool, which you should use on cooldown if
you are having mana issues (most likely from spamming
Chain Lightning).
4. Self Buffs and Totems↑top
There are two self-buffs that you should always have up:
As a Shaman, you can provide your raid with various buffs from your totems.
As other classes can provide buffs equivalent to those of your totems, you
should discuss with your fellow raid members and your raid leader before deciding
on which totems you will use. By default, use the following:
Note that thanks to
Totemic Wrath, any of your Fire totems will
provide you and the raid with a 10% spell power buff.
5. Optional Read: Mastering Your Elemental Shaman↑top
The advice provided above will enable you to play your Elemental Shaman very
efficiently. The only real optimisations are regarding the use of
Unleash Elements
in conjunction with
Lava Burst and
Flame Shock, and regarding the management
of your charges of
Lightning Shield. We detail them below. Other than
that, you might be interested in the various mechanics your class have.
Also, some of the Tier set bonuses slightly change the way you play your class.
5.1. Using Unleash Elements
Normally, using
Unleash Elements for
Flame Shock or
Lava Burst does not
increase your damage enough that it will make up for the global cooldown you used to cast
Unleash Elements.
However, there is a trick to make both
Flame Shock and
Lava Burst benefit
from the
Unleash Flame buff that
Unleash Elements gives you. Simply cast
Lava Burst immediately followed by Flame Shock, while Unleash Flame is active. Both
spells will land on the target at the same time and both spells will benefit from
Unleash Flame.
The only time when you should use this trick is when you want to refresh
Flame Shock
and
Lava Burst happens to be off cooldown. In every other situation, it is not worth
delaying your cast of Lava Burst or refreshing Flame Shock early just for using the trick.
5.2. Fulmination and Charges of Lightning Shield
When you deal damage with
Lightning Bolt or
Chain Lightning, you have a 60% chance
to generate an additional charge of
Lightning Shield, thanks to
Rolling Thunder.
Damage done by
Elemental Overload (your mastery) also has the same chance to proc
Rolling Thunder.
When you take damage, you lose a charge of Lightning Shield, but because of
Glyph of Lightning Shield, your charges of Lightning Shield will never drop
below 3. Therefore, you will always have between 3 and 9 charges of Lightning Shield.
Note that each of the jumps of
Chain Lightning has a chance to generate an additional
charge of
Lightning Shield. This means that in a multiple-target situation, you will
generate charges of Lightning Shield much faster than in a single-target situation. Depending
on the number of enemies, you may find yourself in a situation where you generate these
charges faster than you can spend them (but there is nothing you can do about the wasted
charges).
Using
Earth Shock when you have 4 or more charges of
Lightning Shield
consumes the extra charges and deals
Fulmination damage proportional to the
number of charges consumed.
Ideally, you should always use
Earth Shock when you have 9 charges of
Lightning Shield. Unfortunately, things are not so easy. There is a slight
delay between the moment you finish casting
Lightning Bolt and the moment
a new charge of Lightning Shield is being granted to you. This means that
when you receive your 9th charge of Lightning Shield, you will have already started
casting something, most likely another Lightning Bolt. As you can see, this runs the risk
that this new cast will generate a wasted charge of Lightning Shield (since you cannot
have more than 9). Therefore, to avoid wasting charges, we advise you to try and cast
Earth Shock at 7 or 8 charges of Lightning Shield (remember that
Lightning Bolt can generate two charges, due to
Elemental Overload, your mastery).
You also need to keep an eye open for
Flame Shock, which you need to refresh
right before its last tick (when its remaining duration is below 3 seconds). Since you
need to sometimes save the spell shock cooldown for
Flame Shock, this means that
you will sometimes have constraints on your timing for casting
Earth Shock.
Approximately 8 seconds before Flame Shock expires, you have two courses of action, depending on
your number of charges of
Lightning Shield.
- If you have 7, 8, or 9 charges of
Lightning Shield, cast
Earth Shock
and refresh
Flame Shock as soon as the shock spell cooldown finishes.
- If you have 6 or less charges of
Lightning Shield, do not cast
Earth Shock and refresh
Flame Shock as soon as possible (ideally, right
after the duration hits the 3-second mark). When the shock spell cooldown
finishes, you will have enough charges of Lightning Shield to use Earth Shock.
Note that you should always prioritise casting
Lava Burst over consuming your
charges of
Lightning Shield with
Earth Shock, even if you have 9 charges.
Indeed, Lava Burst does not generate extra charges of Lightning Shield, so you will
never run the risk of wasting a charge of Lightning Shield when you cast Lava Burst.
5.3. Lava Burst and Flame Shock
The reason why
Flame Shock should always be up on your target is because:
- each tick has a chance to proc
Lava Surge, which resets the cooldown of
Lava Burst;
- your Lava Burst is guaranteed to be a critical hit, if Flame Shock is on the target.
Conversely, you should only cast
Lava Burst when
Flame Shock is up on your target.
Flame Shock ticks every 3 seconds, which means that you have 3 seconds
to make use of a proc of
Lava Surge before running the risk to see it
wasted by a new proc of
Lava Surge. To prevent wasting procs of
Lava Surge, you should always cast
Lava Burst as soon as its
cooldown is reset.
The reason why you want to refresh
Flame Shock with 3 seconds remaining or less is
because if you refresh the spell with one tick remaining, this tick will simply be added to
the new duration (and will therefore not be wasted).
5.4. Mana Management
As we will see in this section, you have many talents and
abilities to ensure that you will never go out of mana.
You have several passive mana management tools:
In addition to this, you have
Thunderstorm, which you can use to
restore 10% of your mana (12% with Glyph of Thunderstorm) every 45
seconds (35 with Glyph of Thunder). Thunderstorm will mostly be useful
when you are faced with the high mana cost of spamming
Chain Lightning.
5.5. Tier Bonuses
The Bonuses from your Tier 11 and Tier 13 sets are entirely passive and they
do not influence your play style.
Things are different with the
2-piece bonus of your Tier 12 set.
This set bonus grants your
Lightning Bolt a 30% chance to reduce the remaining cooldown on your
Fire Elemental Totem. This makes it a lot more interesting to choose
the
Totemic Focus build (presented in our Talents article).
Also, replacing Glyph of Lightning Bolt by Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem
becomes a viable choice.
5.6. Tier 13 4-piece Restoration Bonus
If you have 4 pieces of the Restoration Tier 13 set, you can equip
them before a fight begins and cast
Spiritwalker's Grace. You will benefit
from the +30% haste that the
Tier 13 4-piece Restoration bonus
gives you while Spiritwalker's Grace is active. Do not forget to equip back your
Elemental gear.