Shaman abilities

This is an article on Shaman abilities. Nearly all of the Shaman's abilities are mana-based and are split into three disciplines.

Elemental
 * The focus lies on the shaman's offensive spell casting abilities. It increasing their damage and critical strike chance.

Enhancement
 * Enhancement spells include those which increase your melee damage output and your chance to survive.

Restoration
 * Includes healing capability, reducing the casting time and mana cost of healing spells, while increasing their effectiveness.

Trainable abilities
These abilities are available to all Shamans, at the appropriate level, regardless of Talents.

Talent granted abilities
These abilities are only unlocked by purchasing them from the appropriate Talent tree.

Long range
Shaman have three long range attack spells (30 yards range), the single target Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst, and the multi-target Chain Lightning.

Short range
The 3 Shock spells have a 20 yards range and provide good burst damage during a fight. Earth Shock reduces enemy attack speed. Frost Shock slows the enemies which allows you to catch people running away or slow down attacker coming at you (this is the shaman's best kiting spell), it also causes extra threat, making it great for pulling mobs off of casters. Before talents, a single Flame Shock does more damage than either Earth Shock or Frost Shock. However, the damage is spread out over 12 seconds (this is the shaman's only DoT spell). After the changes to downranking in patch 3.0.2, wind shock was added as a possibility for a short range counterspell, instead of rank 1 earth shock - with the additional effect of lowering the aggro on the target.

Weapon buffs
Windfury Weapon gives a 20% chance of 2 extra attacks with greatly increased attack power. While this can give inconsistent damage, it can also provide impressive results if the additional attacks score critical hits. Beware, Windfury crits can cause high amounts of threat and can easily steal aggro in group battles.

Flametongue Weapon adds a bonus to the shamans damage spells and it does slightly less damage than its peers, but it is a good choice for increasing damage consistently against foes with high armor or frost resistance. It also benefits from spell damage gear and is the best choice for a elemental shaman or an enhancement shaman's offhand, due to Lava Lash.

Frostbrand Weapon provides superior (though less consistent) DPS when compared with Flametongue. It also slows enemies when it procs, though most consider this to have marginal utility considering the availability of Frost Shock. For PvP situations, it can be combined with the talent Frozen Power for additional damage of other shaman spells.

Earthliving Weapon is unique among weapon buffs as it gives bonuses to healing spells rather than providing a damage bonus to the shaman's attacks, and has the chance to add a heal over time effect on the target of a shamans heals.

Rockbiter Weapon increases a weapon's DPS, and is currently intended as a low-level alternative to to Windfury Weapon. In Patch 3.0.2, all ranks of Rockbiter Weapon beyond rank 4 were removed from the game.

Which buff to use is a matter of preference and situation. Windfury delivers the highest burst damage, Frostbrand produces a limited snare effect basically for free, and Flametongue delivers constant damage regardless of opponents' armor. Earthliving Weapon is purely for the healing and support role, but its bonuses are not to be underestimated.

Dual-wielding shamans apply buffs to each weapon separately. Procs from offhand weapon buffs suffer the usual damage penalty. See the article of Windfury Weapon for quirks about dual-wield buffing.

Healing
Shaman have three types of healing spells. Healing Wave is big, slow and relatively mana-efficient heal. Lesser Healing Wave is quick and less efficient. Chain Heal is an AoE heal of sorts. When a shaman puts enough points in the Restoration tree, he can become a full-fledged healer with special healing abilities through talents, like riptide (a instant heal with healing over time effect) or Earth Shield.

Shaman can also Cure Poison and Cure Disease (singularly or with group-affecting totems), and cleanse curses with the talent Cleanse Spirit.

Totem
Totems fall into several different categories. For more, go to Shaman Totems.

Damage
Searing Totem is a single target damage totem. Fire Nova Totem does a single AoE attack to all nearby. Magma Totem surrounds itself with an AoE DoT effect. None of these totems cause substantial amounts of damage.

Buff
Shamans have the ability to buff all party members instantaneously through the use of totems. These totems can increase stats, resistances, armor, spellpower, and melee/casting speed.

Debuff
Earthbind Totem and Stoneclaw Totem debuff the enemies by slowing them down or distracting them. Totem of Wrath also places a debuff on all enemies within range, increasing their chance to be critically hit.

Healing
Healing Stream Totem and Mana Spring Totem increase the regeneration rate of health and mana respectively. The Cleansing Totem removes poison and disease effects from party members.



Other
Grounding Totem makes the next hostile spell within its range hit the totem instead of its target.

Non-nature based damage
Elemental and Resto shamans tend to have a hard time dealing with enemies that are resistant to nature based spells, though at later levels this is improved with the addition of Lava Burst. One strategy is to switch to an enhancement style of play, using strong melee attacks (2H weapons with Windfury Weapon or Flametongue Weapon), non-nature based shocks (Flame Shock or Frost Shock), and damage totems (Searing Totem, Magma Totem, or Fire Nova Totem) as your main sources of damage.