World of Warcraft Shaman Guide
Welcome to my World of Warcraft Shaman Guide. You are about to learn about a very versatile class with many, many tools to stand out in the World of Warcraft. Let’s start from the top. A shaman is considered to be a hybrid class, in other words, a class in which one can fill many roles within the game. The shaman is made to excel in one of three areas: melting face,crushing face, and healing face. By this of course I mean ranged DPS (damage per second), melee DPS (with the addition of magic), and healing. The talent trees that you can specialize in are Elemental, Enhancement, and Restoration respectively.
World of Warcraft Shaman guide to talent trees:
Elemental
This talent tree is focused on the shaman’s offensive spellcasting. The main spells used in PvE (player vs. environment) are lightning bolts, chain lightning strikes, lava bursts, and flame shock. When talented and glyphed correctly, the shaman can do a superior job of sustained DPS for a LONG time. The lightning bolt is the main spell used since flame shock is a damage over time spell and lava burst is on a cooldown. Another bonus to playing elemental spec is that you can often times assist your group with backup heals when things start to get out of control. Once your healers in the group catch up, you can turn straight back to pure DPS knowing that you saved your team.
Enhancement
Enhancement shaman use their magic to greatly enhance their face-to-face melee DPS. They dual wield two large powerful weapons and pound their enemies into the ground with their enhanced physical abilities. If this isn’t enough to strike fear in the enemy, the shaman also casts deadly elemental magic between bashing the villains into a pulp. The spells that the enhancement shaman uses are able to be cast instantly thanks to the talents that they specialize in. While being pounded, the enemy is also being barraged with lightning bolts, lashes of lava, earth shocks, double attacks from the shaman’s stormstrike ability, but also my favorite enhancement shaman ability… WINDFURY! All shaman imbue their weapon’s with elemental powers. Windfury is arguably the most violent and aggressive of them all. When a shaman’s weapon is imbued with windfury it has a chance on every hit to actually hit the opponent three times simultaneously. Oh, did I mention that these can critically strike? This ability happens at random but it happens quite often and has a devastating effect on whoever is unlucky enough to be on the receiving end.
Restoration
Finally we come to the Restoration (resto) shaman. Resto shamans have focused their abilities to aid their allies. There are two abilities that make a resto shaman stand out from every other healer in the game. These are earth shield and chain heal. Earth shield is a buff that you place on a friendly party member that will heal them when they are hit. It is a passive heal that heals them for a great deal of hit points. Set it and forget it. I like it. Next, chain heal is aimed at a wounded party member and heals them and then bounced to two other wounded party members and heals them as well! The spell will automatically target those most in need of healer after your initial target too! This makes resto shaman phenomenal raid healers especially for healing melee classes who tend to be bunched together.
To recap, shaman have three distinct paths to follow. Spell damage, close quarter damage, and healing. One thing that every shaman gets are his totems and bloodlust/heroism. Bloodlust is for the horde and heroism is the alliance counterpart. Bloodlust/heroism provide your entire team with a 30% speed increase to spellcasting and melee damage for 40 seconds! This is crucial for some fights in the game. Bloodlust makes a shaman one of the most sought after classes for raids.
Totems
Another unique shaman trait is their totems. Rather than directly buffing group members, a shaman will pick and choose the best totems to drop at the moment. Totems provide a mass of effects that the shaman can tailor to the situation. There are four different elemental totems. Earth, fire, water, and air. Only one of each can be used at one time. Some of the effects are increased physical attributes, mana regeneration, health regeneration, increasing your groups spellpower, damaging the enemy with fire, boosting the groups resistances, and many, many more!
There is much more to say about shaman but for a basic view I think you have enough to chew on for now. Keep your eye open for more specialized shaman guides in the near future.
I hope this World of Warcraft shaman guide has given you some insight into this class. Have fun with your shaman. They are a blast!