ELE SHAMAN FUNDAMENTALS COURSE

ELE SHAMAN PLAYSTYLE

Welcome to our Elemental Shaman Damage Course for The War Within, which is custom designed to equip you with all of the essential knowledge that's needed to excel in PvP.

So, in this introduction to the whole course, we're going to be exploring what to expect from the Elemental playstyle, and we're going to discuss your most important goals in every arena game. Now, if we had to sum up the role of the entire Shaman class in one single word, it would be disruption.

The Shaman toolkit is absolutely 100% positively jam-packed with abilities that are designed to stop enemy players in their tracks, turning this spec into kind of the goalie of arena. Now, from Windshear to Grounding Totem, Lightning Lasso, Nox, and more, Shamans are perfectly suited to make Shaman play.

But, I'm sure at least one enemy player just really doesn't have fun. This is the key starting point for you as an Elemental Shaman, as being a goalie is what truly defines your role.

The best alley Shamans play goalie in both directions. Defensively, stopping momentum from the enemy team through disruption, using every single piece of their utility to stop damage and CC from landing on their team, especially their healer.

Being a goalie is a very important part of the game, and it's a very important part of the game. But, it doesn't mean having to play defense the entire game.

Because the best elemental Shamans also know when to transition their gameplay to being more offensive, becoming a goalie against the enemy healer, zoning them out of the game, and harassing them endlessly with disruption and even damage. Now, of course, nobody plays DPS without wanting to be on the top of details.

So, what can Ellie offer in the damage department as well? Well, first, we need to explain how to play DPS.

First, we need to explain how Ellie has changed from Dragonflight into The War Within. Now, in Dragonflight, Ellie Shaman was known for its high APM damage rotation.

Lava Burst, Earthshock, Lava Burst, Earthshock. Funneling that damage into a single target all game with limited time to do anything else.

The key difference going into The War Within is that Ellie is now more or less a DOT class. Better optimized for spreading pressure across the map, and more than ever, Ellie is now able to spread flame pressure across multiple targets thanks to a redesign of the spec tree and some sweet new hero talents.

Now, more than ever, keeping Flameshock up on multiple targets is 100% key to your overall damage output, and thankfully, we have a sweet new tool to do that.

In The War Within, Liquid Magma Totem is a more accessible talent option, providing us with yet another way to spread our Flameshocks, and also allowing us to spread them to targets who are out of LOS.

Then, once Flameshocks are spread, Ellie Shamans can blast down multiple health bars at once every 30 seconds with Primordial Wave, and have an even stronger burst window every 3 minutes thanks to Ascendance, which both chuck Lava Bursts in every direction.

And do you want to know the best part about doing damage on Ellie? Virtually all of it is Instant Cast.

Keeping up Flameshocks feeds you Instant Lava Bursts, Instant Lava Bursts feed you Maelstrom, Maelstrom feeds you Earthshocks, and this gameplay loop just cycles over and over again. So, if you want to play a caster that really doesn't need to cast at all, well, Ellie is going to be perfect for you.

Here, you need to be a little bit careful though, because even though Elemental has all this instant damage, there are dead periods where no instant Globals can be pressed. But does this mean you simply just hop around and do nothing at all?

Well, absolutely not. Remember that disruption is what defines Shaman, and in between your instant damage, you need to be weaving in every thread of your utility.

There's no such thing as a dead Global when you're playing Ellie. Now, to wrap up our playstyle guide here, we have the true elephant in the room to talk about.

What we're about to say might sound awful, but trust us, it might be the most valuable mindset to have as an Ellie Shaman in Arena. The best thing you can do for yourself is having the mindset that you cannot win.

This sounds stupid, and it sounds wrong. We get it.

We understand that you feel that way, but just trust us for a minute here. There are some specs like Sub Rogue and Fire Mage who can make high risk, high reward plays to instantly win a game with the snap of their fingers.

This is not what you should expect from Ellie. You don't need to try to win a game.

You don't need to try to win the game, but instead, just try not to lose. There's a key difference here in this mindset.

You're not trying to take the risks. You're not trying to make fancy plays, just 360 no-scope in the enemy team, but instead, your focus should be on winning through attrition.

Your mantra isn't live fast, die young, but instead, it's play safe and win in dampening. And if you can manage to accept and embrace this, then we guarantee that you will be on the right foot when picking up this powerful caster.

Alright guys, be sure to stick around because in the next video, we're going to be outlining the game winning goals you need to be following in every arena game.

ELE SHAMAN GOALS

In this next section, we're going to be giving you some basic goals that you can safely follow in every arena game to maximize your output. Now, by far, our most important damage goal is to keep Flameshock on as many different relevant targets as possible.

Flameshock can be applied to a total of six targets at once, and despite having a cooldown, it's possible to spread it across multiple enemy players quickly with Liquid Magma Totem, which applies Flameshock to three targets in an AoE radius.

But here, we need to be careful, since we want to make sure Flameshock is on targets we actually want to deal damage to, which means we want to avoid just carelessly putting it on minor minions like imps, and instead, focus on applying it to enemy players primarily.

By keeping Flameshock's spread, we can deal significant AoE damage through Lava Burst, which will automatically cleave all targets after using Primordial. Primordial Wave, Ascendance, or even when getting an Ascendance proc.

This is where the majority of our true pressure comes from. Again, we're not really a single-target damage spec, but instead, most of our damage is going to come from sending Lava Burst into multiple targets, which is only possible when Flameshock is spread.

If we can manage to accomplish our first goal here, it's going to make our second goal way, way easier, which is to absolutely avoid Tunnel Visioning, which is to absolutely avoid Tunnel Visioning, which is to absolutely avoid Tunnel Visioning, Again, it's useful to think of Elemental Shaman as more of a dot spec than anything else, because our momentum comes from chipping away at multiple health bars at once.

If you've played Melee DPS over the years, you might have been told to just simply hit the nearest target. Well, the same thing applies to Ellie.

If someone's kiting away from you or ducking behind LOS, just don't worry about it. Tab to someone else and keep up the pressure.

Our win condition is to drain the enemy healer's mana and slowly end the game with attrition, which we can only do by dealing as much AoE damage as possible. This even means hitting the enemy healer when it's possible, killing totems, pets, you name it.

If it has a health bar and it needs to die, pressure it. Our next major goal is to synchronize our damage with our partner whenever we can.

Remember that mindset that we talked about in our playstyle video? That as an Elemental Shaman, you should trick yourself into believing, that you cannot win the game.

Well, at least alone. Since we don't have the control of a Rogue or the burst of a Marks Hunter to instantly win, we need to aim to line up our burst with our partner's cooldowns.

If you can train yourself to monitor offensives with Omni-CD, you're going to find it much easier to win games. By focusing on sending out your burst with your teammate, you can contribute with enough extra damage to make up for the fact that you don't really have the tools to win alone.

Our fourth major goal is to weave in utility and disruption in between our instant cast damage. To be good at Elemental Shaman, you need to multitask.

It's inevitable that throughout the game, we're not going to have any meaningful instant cast damage to press. Maybe you're waiting for Flameshock to come off CD, or you're getting unlucky with Lava Surge procs.

During these times, you could hard cast Lava Burst, but what's often more valuable to do is to use these dead Globals on everything else in your toolkit, whether it's a Purge, Static Field Totem, Earthbind Root, you name it.

Highly reactive abilities like Windshear, Grounding Totem, and Tremor are even going to completely take priority over your damage anyway. In the wise words of Swopsy, Shaman is a GCD capped class.

There's always something to press. So instead of hopping around, doing nothing, waiting for Flameshock or Lava Burst, be effective with every GCD.

So instead of hopping around, doing nothing, waiting for Flameshock or Lava Burst, be effective with every GCD. So instead of hopping around, doing nothing, waiting for Flameshock or Lava Burst, be effective with every GCD.

Now, admittedly, we're getting a little bit advanced here, but let's go back to our original metaphor. As an Ellie Shaman, you're a goalie for your team when it's time to play defense.

You're the one who can stop CC on your healer, whether it's a Windshear, a Grounding Totem, Lightning Lasso, or even a Hex. It's you who can stop the enemy team in their tracks.

We're also one of the best specs when it comes to harassing enemy healers. We're also one of the best specs when it comes to harassing enemy healers.

Between our CC and even our damage, we can threaten healers from crossing the map to heal their team. Even shooting a healer for a few seconds after they've peeked out from behind a pillar can deter them from ever pushing in.

Even shooting a healer for a few seconds after they've peeked out from behind a pillar can deter them from ever pushing in. Our last goal is to be very careful with our defensive cooldowns.

Let's face reality here together as a team. Shaman mobility, definitely not the greatest in this day and age.

But honestly, was it really ever good? Anyway, we need to accept the fact that our mobility just kind of sucks.

Anyway, we need to accept the fact that our mobility just kind of sucks. which means that it's really hard to avoid damage when playing against melee. While mages can blink and teleport around the whole map, we're basically just stuck.

Now because of this, we're going to need to be very careful with our defensives, as none of them can be used while stunned. Our primary line of defense is Astral Shift, giving us powerful damage reduction, but on a much longer cooldown than many enemy offensives.

Astral Shift is not the type of cooldown we're wanting to greed, because at the end of the day, our win condition is attrition, so we want to minimize all damage we take. If an enemy player pops a huge offensive and you can Astral Shift, it's probably a good idea to press it, even if you're already high on HP.

Now, despite what many players think, walling high is actually a good thing. We're going to be treating Burrow and Stone Bulwark a little bit differently, so do be sure to check out our defensives course to learn a little bit more.

But be sure to stick around, because in the next video, we're going to be teaching you step-by-step on how to maximize damage. So, let's get started.

ELE SHAMAN DAMAGE PRIORITY

Welcome back! Now that you have a broader understanding of the goals and playstyle of Elemental in the arena, it's time to optimize your sustained damage profile, allowing you to deal the most consistent damage possible outside of your cooldowns.

Just keep in mind that this isn't a set rotation, but rather it's a priority system to help you understand which spells to prioritize at any given moment, so let's get into it. Kicking things off at the top of your priority list is absolutely going to be Flameshock.

You want to apply this to your main target, and up to 5 additional targets using Liquid Magma Totem and the ability itself to maximize uptime and damage output. Now we prioritize Flameshock because it not only generates Maelstrom, but also triggers Lava Surge, giving us instant Lava Burst procs for consistent pressure.

Additionally, Flameshock is essential for casting Lava Burst, as it guarantees a critical strike. This is especially powerful for Elemental Shamans, as the Elemental Fury passive increases critical strike damage even in PvP, making Lava Bursts even more powerful.

Moving on, we then have Earthshock, which we're going to use to avoid overcapping on Maelstrom. Earthshock delivers massive damage, and managing your Maelstrom efficiently ensures you maximize your instant cast.

If you fail to spend it properly, you're going to be forced to use more Globals on utility rather than damage, lowering your overall pressure.

Spending Maelstrom is also key to triggering Ascendance procs from deeply rooted elements, making it essential to spend as much as possible to maximize your chance of getting a good deal. Next, we have Lava Burst, which we're going to be casting whenever we get Lava Surge procs from Flameshock.

This is our primary method of generating Maelstrom and maintaining consistent single target damage outside of cooldowns. We never want to let our Lava Surge procs go to waste.

As long as you're not overcapped on Maelstrom and your target has Flameshock active, cast Lava Burst as soon as possible to keep up your damage and resource generation.

After Lava Burst, Earthshock comes back into play, but this time we're only going to use it if Flameshock is already applied to as many targets as possible and no Lava Surge procs are available.

After the second use of Earthshock, we move on to Frost Shock, but only if we have the Icefury proc, which we can generate after casting Lava Burst. Icefury Frost Shocks honestly don't do that much damage, so don't feel in a rush to use them when they proc as soon as possible.

Using Icefury Frost Shocks too early can even be detrimental to your burst, in fact, as it may trigger Elemental Equilibrium, outside of your cooldown window. Make sure to keep an eye on the internal cooldown to avoid proccing it before you burst.

Because of this, you only really want to press it if you've already triggered Equilibrium on your burst window. So at this point, we're all out of our instant cast damaging abilities, so we're going to fill our Globals with utilities such as Purging, Refreshing Shields, and Dropping Totems.

Doing this will not only bolster our defense, but also generate us Maelstrom through the Inundate passive, allowing us to get more Earthshocks. In the end, we'll have Lava Burst as the only useful hardcasting damaging ability in our sustain.

While we shouldn't be using this too often, if you're in the rare situation where Flameshock is up and all your utility is taken care of, hardcasting Lava Burst can be a viable option for some extra damage if you're already ahead.

ELE HERO TALENTS: FARSEER

Hey everyone, welcome to the next video in our Elemental Shaman damage course. Now as you likely already know, along with a rework to Talent Trees, every spec now has two distinct hero subspecs to choose from, and luckily for us, the choice for Ellie is pretty obvious.

It's called the Farseer, whose signature perk includes summoning an ancestor to mimic your attacks. If you cast a single target damage spell, your ancestor will cast one too.

If you AoE, they are going to AoE. If you heal, well, you guessed it, so will your ancestor.

Ancestors can be summoned in two different ways. The most reliable way is with Primordial Wave, which is guaranteed to summon one, giving you an even stronger burst window every 30 seconds.

The other way to summon an ancestor is with Lava Burst, which if you're playing the routine communication hero talent, gives every cast an 8% chance to summon an ancestor. And this even includes every AoE Lava Burst from Primordial Wave, Ascendance, or Deeply Rooted Elements procs.

Now it is possible to have multiple ancestors out at once if you get lucky. This just means now more than ever it is vital to maximize Flameshock uptime across multiple targets, since those instant cast Lava Bursts can now grant you even more damage by summoning one.

And if that wasn't enough, whenever an ancestor is summoned, it's going to reduce the cooldown of your Fire Elemental. And then whenever an ancestor expires, they're also going to automatically do some small burst on the target.

Now fortunately for us, ancestors don't really change anything about your rotation, aside from the fact that they simply make it stronger. Ancestors can be thought of like a passive bonus that kind of rewards you for sticking to the damage priority that we covered earlier.

It's a simple, gameplay loop. More Flameshock uptime means more Lava Burst procs.

More Lava Burst procs means more ancestors. More ancestors means more damage.

And plus, a shorter cooldown on your Fire Elemental, which then loops back around to give you longer lasting and faster ticking Flameshocks. Now if the Farseer only included passive ancestors as a bonus, it would already be good enough.

But it even grants an entirely new ability called Ancestral Swiftness, which makes your next casted spell instant 10% stronger, and whenever Ancestral Swiftness is pressed, you're going to automatically summon an ancestor.

Since Ancestral Swiftness has a 30 second cooldown and isn't on the GCD, it means it can be simply combined into a macro with Primordial Wave, and by doing so, you can have a guaranteed 2 ancestors out at once and an incredibly strong 30 second burst window.

99% of the time you're going to be using Ancestral Swiftness with Lava Burst, and you're going to be using Ancestral Swiftness with Lava Burst. So if you're going to have a Lava Surge proc, since Ancestral Swiftness is going to cause it to deal an additional 10% damage, and it won't consume Lava Surge in the process.

For the remaining 1% of the time, you can of course use Ancestral Swiftness for healing. Now this will be quite rare, as most of the time you're simply going to be sending it with Primordial Wave instantly, but it could come in handy for niche situations.

So just to recap everything up until this point, your goal when playing Farseer, is to not only line up Ancestral Swiftness with Primordial Wave every 30 seconds, but also to stick to your sustained damage priority, as you're going to have an RNG chance to summon more ancestors.

As long as you're doing your sustained rotation correctly, you're going to be rewarded with even more damage. So to wrap up this video, let's go over some of the additional perks that's offered by the Farseer Tree.

Well for one, it offers you an additional Lava Burst charge, meaning you can have up to 3 while also increasing your damage. So if you're going to be using Ancestral Swiftness, you can also use it to increase your damage.

It also gives you more Maelstrom, which is a nice quality of life improvement to avoid overcapping. And speaking of which, you'll even do more damage with Earthshock and more healing with Healing Surge, which again, are just minor quality of life improvements.

Defensively, Farseer is pretty good too, as it's going to give you stronger Nature's Guardian procs or more Earthshield healing. If you're a solo shuffle player, we'd probably recommend a stronger Nature's Guardian, since you can't always rely on your healer.

But in coordinated 3v3 matchups against teams with more consistent PvE pressure, Earthen Communion could definitely see some play.

Now as a final, somewhat niche perk to talk about here, the Farseer Tree even allows you to extend the duration of Spirit Walker's Grace and its interrupt immunity when using a spell with a cast time. Most of the time, we aren't hard casting our damage, but instead using Aura Mastery on Hexes or Lightning Lassoes.

And this is a great way to get a good amount of damage out of your talent, as it's going to make these combos more reliable if anything else. Overall, Farseer fits in perfectly to the standard elemental playstyle in PvP.

Although most of its benefits are quite passive, it'll definitely reward you for sticking to your sustained damage priority. But do be sure to stay tuned, because in the next guide, we're going to be walking you through your burst sequence and we're going to show you how to truly pump the numbers.

ELE SHAMAN BURST SEQUENCE

Now for the moment you've all been waiting for, the Burst Rotation. Here we're going to be showcasing you exactly how to burst just like the pros do, and the thought process that goes behind each button.

So let's dive in. So to begin this Burst Rotation, we're going to start by applying Flameshocks to as many targets as possible.

This is going to allow us to ramp Maelstrom, while also giving us multiple chances at gaining Lava Surge procs throughout our Burst window. Following this, we'll then cast our Stormkeeper.

It can be a great idea to do this with Spiritwalker's Grace if it's available to immune any kicks. By casting Stormkeeper here, we're going to be able to get some massive lightning bolts in our Ascendance window, while also buffing our overall damage through the Elemental Unity talent if we choose to play it.

Moving on, we're then going to place our Fire Elemental. After this, we can then start dealing some actual damage, so we're going to use our Ancestral Swiftness along with our Primordial Wave on our kill target.

You always want to have these cooldowns synced together, so it's a great idea to have these two spells and a macro, along with your Bloodlust and any trinkets or racials you might have to increase your DPS.

Next up, it's time to pop Ascendance, which shoots a massive Lava Burst on every target with a Flameshock, while also increasing our Overload damage a ton.

After this, we're then going to use an Instant Lava Burst from our Ancestral Swiftness, chained with our Stormkeeper Lightning Bolt, followed by a Lava Surge Lava Burst, and then the final Lightning Bolt, followed by a Lava Surge Lava Burst, and then the final Lightning Bolt from Stormkeeper, which will then follow up with an Earthshock, which, if we're playing Magma Chamber, should hit pretty damn hard.

Now, at this point, we've actually ran out of spells to press, so we're going to be looking to use our Instants as they come in by following the same priority from our Sustain Damage video, with the only caveat to this being that hard-casting Lava Burst is actually better than using Utility in Ascendance.

However, you should only do this when you have no procs available, as Instant Damage will always be better than Caterpillar, and you're going to be able to cast it.

Now, because of the RNG aspect of the Elemental Shaman's procs, every Burst window as Elemental will look a little bit different, but as long as you're fast to react to your procs and follow your Sustain Damage priority, you are going to be well on your way to scoring far more kills than ever before.

ELE SHAMAN OPENER

Alright, now that we've gone over all the damage rotations and goals for Elemental Shaman, we're going to see them in action from one of the best Elemental Shamans in Europe, Jamie. Now before the game started, we need to go over a few housecleaning chores first to make the most of our kit.

These are what we've applied. Earth Shield to ourself and our other DPS, put up Lightning Shield on ourselves, imbued our weapon with Flametongue, and finally that we've used our Sky Fury buff.

Once all of these have been taken care of, we can then jump into the match by looking for an early Earth Grab on the enemy team. Doing this is going to be vital in every match, and it comes back to the goalkeeper playstyle that we mentioned earlier in the course.

By placing Earth Grab early on in the game, we slow the pace down by rooting the enemy in a bad spot.

Now unfortunately Jamie isn't able to get anyone in this vibe, but generally this will also force the enemy to use Dispel when it lands, which is going to be vital for our next move, applying Flameshot to everything, and Line of Sight, which as you should know by now, is essential for building our damage and ramping our Maelstrom.

After this, Jamie then tries to play for defense, which he does by dropping his Healing Stream and Earth Elemental, which allows his team the best chance of survival when the enemy team chooses to engage.

Then with a quick Grounding Totem on the enemy's opener, it's time to go on the offensive and counterattack, so he pops his Stormkeeper with Spirit Walker's Grace to prevent getting kicked.

He also plays, utilizes his Fire Elemental for that increased damage from his Tear Scent, and then applies his Flameshocks to the other members of the enemy team with Liquid Magma Totem.

Next up, he pops all his offensives following the burst rotation that we gave earlier in the course, and deals a ton of damage on all three players.

It's important to note here that as Jamie pops, he has Line of Sight on every member of the enemy team, meaning his Ascendance hits all three players, which is going to make it deal as much damage as possible. While doing this, he also uses his Astral Shift, so he can stay on the offensive as he deals damage.

You always want to use this cooldown at high health to keep you aggressive. It's also vital that you pay attention to the fact that while he's bursting, Jamie isn't looking for crowd control.

That's not your job as Elemental. You simply need to just deal as much damage as humanly possible, and let your teammates do the rest.

Throughout this opener, Jamie forces the enemy team low and scores a ton of defensives, and then with a callback to that you-can't-finish-the-game mantra, he plays defensive on the end of his Ascendance by avoiding pushing in, while utilizing defensive plays like Healing Stream and Hexing the Mage as he prepares for the enemy team's next go.

So as you see in this opener, Jamie took minimal risks by walling high and using his healing cooldowns off cooldown, while also dealing as much damage as possible with his Ascendance despite having no crowd control on the enemy healer.

He simply lets his damage do the talk, and any crowd control that his partners land is just an added bonus, not the main star of the show. This is a typical Elemental opener, and one you should look to replicate throughout your games.

ELE SHAMAN WIN CONDITION

So now that we've seen the opener, let's see how we can leverage all we've learned to close out the game. To begin this win condition, we're going to have to go back to a minute before the actual kill lands.

This is because Jamie makes a few key decisions here that you should look to understand to advance your own gameplay. Now at this moment you can see that Jamie is stuck in a sheep with Ascendance on a 21 second cooldown, while at the same time having Primordial and Ancestral Swiftness available.

What do you think Jamie does out of this CC? Does he sit on his cooldowns for his next Ascendance, or does he send them out as soon as possible?

If you answered that he sent them out ASAP, well then good job, you've been paying attention. Elemental Shaman is all about that consistent pressure.

You always want to be maximizing your output and never holding onto your Primordial for that perfect moment, as the more damage you deal is going to be the better in the long run.

Now we should say that this doesn't apply to Stormkeeper however, as you should do as Jamie does here and hold onto it if your Ascendance is coming off cooldown soon, as this is going to allow you to do that.

Now if you're going to do that, you should also be able to do that by using the Overload Damage to secure the win.

Knowing that, Jamie fills his Globals with hardcasted Lava Burst and Utility until his Primordial Wave comes off cooldown, which allows him to not only bait out kicks, but also time all his offensives together.

Once all the kicks are down and his Primordial Wave is available, Jamie will be able to use his Overload Damage to secure the win. Jamie then casts his Stormkeeper.

He sends out his Ascendance and uses his Primordial Wave macro to deal devastating burst damage to all three members of the enemy team. Now at this point, it's all about spamming as many instant spells as possible, with hardcast Lava Burst as a backup.

This takes full advantage of Overload to keep up the pressure. Crowd Control isn't really necessary as Dampening is super high and the enemy Healer just has no mana left in the tank.

Which results in Jamie forcing both Ice Block from the Mage and Turtle from the Hunter as they decimate the entire team with AoE pressure. From here, all they need to do is a quick Wind Shear into a Skull Bash on the Healer and it is lights out for the Mage.

Now while this win condition doesn't look flashy, this is really what Elemental is all about. Winning through attrition and timing your second or third Ascendance with your cooldowns for unhealable pressure.

As an Elemental Shaman, you can't really do much about it, but if you're playing as a Dampening, you can't really do much about it. So make sure you're playing for those long games.