PvE Elemental Shaman Rotation & Cooldowns

PvE Elemental Shaman

Gems, Enchants & Consumables

Stat Priority & Reforging

Best Professions

Pre-Raid Gear

Rotation & Cooldowns

Talents, Builds & Glyphs

Best in Slot (BiS)

Addons & Macros

Once your gear is accounted for and you’re all prepped and ready to go, it all comes down to how well you push your buttons! Playing Elemental Shaman in Raid is like whack-a-mole: you have a number of procs to utilize as efficaciously as possible with short windows for execution. While a large plurality of your time will be spent casting Lightning Bolt as your filler, finding success will be in how you maximize your procs like Clearcasting and Lava Surge; by making sure to cast Earth Shock as soon as you build 9 stacks of Lightning Shield for maximum Fulmination damage; and of course by making sure you cast Elemental Mastery whenever it’s available. Because of this, the Elemental Shaman rotation is like an if/then priority list; see below:

Spell Priority

Before the pull make sure you’ve applied Flametongue Weapon and cast Lightning Shield. You’ll also want to set up your Totem Bar ahead of time so you can cast Call of the Elements with the appropriate totems for the encounter.

1. Cast Call of the Elements with your Fire Elemental Totem included at the outset of the fight.
   • When Fire Elemental Totem ends and goes on cooldown, replace it with Searing Totem. If you’re a good team player, you’ll focus on totem uptime [glares accusatorily in Shaman].
2. Cast Elemental Mastery on cooldown.
3. Apply Flame Shock as close to its expiration time as possible.
4. Lava Burst on cooldown when Flame Shock is applied your target to activate Clearcasting.
   • Pay attention to Lava Surge procs and cast as soon as you see them. Flame Shock should always be on the target, but cast Lava Burst on Lava Surge procs regardless.
5. Earth Shock your target at 9 Lightning Shield stacks for maximum Fulmination damage.
6. Cast Thunderstorm for mana.
7. Cast Lightning Bolt as a filler whenever there’s nothing higher on this list to do.

Cooldowns

Bloodlust/Heroism – Coordinate with your raid to see if this is necessary, as someone else may be casting this. It has a 5 minute cooldown but applies the Sated/Exhaustion debuff, preventing you from being affected by Bloodlust/Heroism or Time Warp again for 10 minutes.

Thunderstorm – You want to do a little planning for this, as you may be sacrificing damage to cast Thunderstorm when you wouldn’t actually need the mana for the fight. Get an idea for how long the fight is and how much mana you need to always-be-casting throughout the fight. You don’t want to end the fight with heaps of mana and a low parse.

Elemental Mastery – Running Glyph of Unleashed Lightning means you can cast Elemental Mastery on cooldown without worrying too much about missing any casts in that short window of duration.

Fire Elemental Totem – Your most effectual spell. If there were a stat that increased totem duration, it’d probably be a high priority stat for us. The glaring downside is of course how stationary the elemental is since its tethered to the totem. Make sure you get a good placement for the totem and snapshot your totem, which means using your spell-power-increasing consumables and cooldowns beforehand.