PvE Enhancement Shaman Rotation & Cooldowns

Your rotation is going to be less of a set-in-stone order of buttons to press and more of a priority system that will change dynamically as procs hit, maelstrom builds, and cooldowns come up. The objective is to minimize downtime without button presses or wasted GCD’s.

Single-Target Rotation

This is more of a priority list of what buttons to focus on as they come up over other options you’ll have at your disposal as the rotation isn’t static. Do keep in mind that certain talent options will shift your priority around, especially when talking about the tier 6 capstone talents. I’ve separated the different tier 6 priority lists below to make that easier, although they’ll be relatively similar to each other. For big cooldowns such as Ascendance or Fire Elemental Totem I will discuss these further down in the “Cooldowns” section, but assume these are mostly pressed at the rip and on cooldown from there.

Elemental Blast

1. Open with Searing Totem down in range of your target.
   • Keep this up at all times except when using Fire Elemental Totem as it’ll overwrite your Fire Elemental.
   • Try to not let this lapse for more than 2 seconds as it provides a stacking debuff towards its targets that you don’t want to fizzle.
2. Cast Elemental Blast on cooldown.
   • Maelstrom Weapon will not apply to this spell, but Spiritwalker’s Grace will let you cast it while moving.
3. Cast Lightning Bolt if at 5 stacks of Malestrom Weapon
   • 4 stacks of Malestrom Weapon if you have the T15 2-piece
4. Cast Stormstrike (Or Windstrike when in Ascendance form).
5. Keep Flame Shock active on your primary target.
   • Utilize Unleashed Elements beforehand to empower Flame Shock with Unleash Flame.
   • If Unleashed Elements is not going to be up within 5 seconds and the shock has fallen off your target completely then refresh it.
6. Cast Lava Lash.
7. Cast Unleash Elements.
8. Cast Earth Shock.

Primal Elementalist

1. Open with Fire Elemental Totem and use it on cooldown.
   • The Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem will reduce this cooldown considerably, allowing you to cast it multiple times in a fight. With Primal Elementalist this should 100% be taken.
2. Cast Searing Totem in range of your target.
   • Keep this up at all times except when using Fire Elemental Totem as it’ll overwrite your Fire Elemental.
   • Try to not let this lapse for more than 2 seconds as it provides a stacking debuff towards its targets that you don’t want to fizzle.
3. Cast Lightning Bolt if at 5 stacks of Malestrom Weapon
   • 4 stacks of Malestrom Weapon if you have the T15 2-piece
4. Cast Stormstrike (Or Windstrike when in Ascendance form).
5. Keep Flame Shock active on your primary target.
   • Utilize Unleashed Elements beforehand to empower Flame Shock with Unleash Flame.
   • If Unleashed Elements is not going to be up within 5 seconds and the shock has fallen off your target completely then refresh it.
6. Cast Lava Lash.
7. Cast Unleash Elements.
8. Cast Earth Shock.

Unleashed Fury

1. Open with Searing Totem down in range of your target.
   • Keep this up at all times except when using Fire Elemental Totem as it’ll overwrite your Fire Elemental.
   • Try to not let this lapse for more than 2 seconds as it provides a stacking debuff towards its targets that you don’t want to fizzle.
2. Cast Unleash Elements on cooldown.
3. Cast Lightning Bolt if at 5 stacks of Malestrom Weapon
   • 4 stacks of Malestrom Weapon if you have the T15 2-piece
4. Cast Stormstrike (Or Windstrike when in Ascendance form).
5. Keep Flame Shock active on your primary target.
   • Utilize Unleashed Elements beforehand to empower Flame Shock with Unleash Flame.
   • If Unleashed Elements is not going to be up within 5 seconds and the shock has fallen off your target completely then refresh it.
6. Cast Lava Lash.
7. Cast Earth Shock.

AoE Rotation

The AoE “rotation” is going to essentially just change up some of our priorities from the single target priorities, and sub out certain spells for their multi-target counterparts. You’ll still want to pick a main target and follow your main rotation when you don’t have AoE abilities up to press. Our Lava Lash is going to spread Flame Shock to nearby targets, which is going to make the complexity of the AoE rotation significantly easier to manage.

3+ Targets:

• Start using Chain Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt at this point.
• Cast Flame Shock on your main target and spread it with Lava Lash.
• Fire Nova now becomes a high-priority button as it spreads outwards from any target inflicted by your Flame Shock.

6+ Targets:

All of the above applies, with a couple of additions.

• If you have a Glyph of Chain Lightning available, it would be worth using at this point.
• Replace Searing Totem with Magma Totem.

Cooldowns

DPS Cooldowns

• Bloodlust / Heroism: Iconic, and a spell you should be extremely familiar with at this point. It gives your entire raid/group a massive 30% Haste buff. While this has a 5-minute cooldown there’s a 10-minute debuff applied so you cannot benefit from it any more than once every 10 minutes. Coordinate with your group/raid on when it’s best to press this, and make sure to have some big cooldowns lined up to maximize the uptime of this enormous buff.
• Ascendance: A new offensive cooldown added in Mists of Pandaria that transforms us into an elemental form and converts our Stormstrike casts into Windstrike, which makes them do nature damage. By doing nature damage with your Windstrike, it’ll scale off of our Mastery bonus. It’s a 3-minute cooldown that should be used as often as possible. Although there is an added benefit of making your auto-attacks and Windstrikes have a 30-yard range, which can be useful if you’re being forced out of melee range in predictable spots in an encounter.
• Feral Spirit: A 2-minute CD that should be cast as often as possible. It’s nice passive damage, and they’ll also heal you for a percentage of their damage done, which can be increased by a Glyph of Feral Spirit to make this both a defensive and offensive cooldown.
• Elemental Mastery (Tier 4 Talent): This is a 1.5 minute CD that gives us essentially a mini-Bloodlust. You should attempt to overlap this cooldown with other strong benefits like Ascendance when it’s up, Synapse Springs or other large stat boosts, and even racial abilities such as Blood Fury if you’re an Orc.
• Fire Elemental Totem: This is a strong DPS cooldown, just make sure not to overwrite this with a Searing Totem or other fire totem as you can only have one up at a time. Best used when both you and your elemental have access to hit the boss for a solid minute as not only is the DPS from the elemental significant, it also applies your Searing Flames debuff on its target to enhance your Lava Lash strikes. Prioritize this over Earth Elemental as casting one elemental will put the other on a 1 minute cooldown. This should be mostly cast when off cooldown, and doubly so if you are using the Primal Elementalist talent and/or the Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem.
• Earth Elemental Totem: Considerably weaker than it’s fiery counterpart. That said, it’s free damage as long as the elemental is able to whack on something for the minute it’s up. Make sure to prioritize the Fire Elemental Totem as, again, each elemental totem will put the other totem on a 1 minute cooldown. Do keep in mind in non-raid group content it will attempt to taunt targets, which can be a detriment to the tank at times.
• Stormlash Totem: A new raid-wide totem with a 5-minute CD that will enhance everyone’s spells and attacks with an additional burst of nature damage. This is best used when the raid has maximum uptime to attack the boss, and especially so when Bloodlust / Heroism is active (Or if you’re interested in personal damage benefits lining it up with any large Haste buffs will have a similar effect for you).
• Ancestral Swiftness (Tier 4 talent): If you do wind up taking this talent it’s recommended to make a macro that binds the cooldown to a Lightning Bolt so there’s no thought involved, and it’s essentially used as a free instant Lightning Bolt when your Malestrom Weapon stacks aren’t capped.

Defensive Cooldowns

• Shamanistic Rage: Our premier defensive button for predictable incoming damage. It’s on a short cooldown of 1-minute, and reduces all damage taken by 30%. The mana benefit of this spell is no longer that useful, so use it purely as a defensive cooldown. There is the option of using Glyph of Shamanistic Rage to further enhance the ability by making this cooldown cleanse any dispellable magic debuffs on you.
• Healing Tide Totem: Even though you’re not a healer this water totem will actually output a significant amount of healing, especially in a raid group, by targeting the most injured group members and outputting a good chunk of burst healing in pulses every 2 seconds for 10 seconds.
• Reinforce: This is actually a pet ability of your Earth Elemental when you take the Primal Elementalist talent which makes the elemental channel on you so you take 20% reduced damage and do 10% more healing. Considering the Earth Elemental Totem is not a major DPS cooldown it could serve better used as a defensive cooldown in certain fights.
• Stone Bulwark Totem (Tier 1 Talent): An earth totem on a 1-minute cooldown that will provide you an absorb shield on cast and further pulses of absorbs every 5 seconds for its duration.
• Astral Shift (Tier 1 Talent): Similar to Shamanistic Rage, but more potent. A flat 40% damage reduction for 6 seconds on a 1.5-minute CD. With a rather short duration you’ll need to have a good idea of when to press this during encounters to make the most use of it.
• Ancestral Guidance (Tier 5 Talent): When this is active it converts a large chunk of your healing and damage done into raid-wide healing that’ll smart-target the most injured group members around you. This is a powerful enough cooldown that it can be used as a raid-wide healing CD, especially if you overlap DPS cooldowns with it to increase the output.

Utility Spells

These cooldowns are going to be more situational and offer you tools to help out your raid/group. Enhancement has a rather complex rotation and a decent amount of buttons to press, so it might be easy to forget about the utility you have available. Utilizing these cooldowns effectively will set apart the good players from the elite and make you a crucial asset to your team.

• Spirit Walk: This has been an ability we’ve had access to in the past, but it was attached to our Feral Spirits cooldown previously. No longer do you need to have the wolves out to use this, it’s a 1-minute cooldown (45 seconds with the highly recommended Glyph of Spirit Wolf) that grants a massive 60% movement speed boost for 15 seconds. On top of that it also cleanses us of any movement impairing effects, making this a fantastic mobility button.
• Spiritwalker’s Grace: This is less useful than for our Elemental counterparts, but still has its time and place. This allows us to cast spells that have cast-times while moving for 15 seconds. The main use is going to be when we’re forced out of melee range and you still want to squeeze some damage out until you can get back in there. Also if you’re using Elemental Blast it’s a decent way to allow you to be mobile while casting it as it’s essentially our only non-instant cast in regular rotation.
• Windwalk Totem (Tier 2 Talent): An air totem you can summon on a 1-minute cooldown that provides movement impairing cleansing and immunity for its duration for the whole raid/group within 40 yards of the totem.
• Earthbind Totem: This is a great kiting tool and slows the movement speed of enemies down in an area where you place the totem for its duration.
• Earthgrab Totem (Tier 2 Talent): This replaces Earthbind Totem and upgrades it to pulse every 2 seconds snaring in vines any enemies within its range that aren’t immune. When a mob has already been snared secondary pulses of the totem will apply a large slow, instead.
• Frost Shock: This is a single-target ranged instant-cast shock that slows the movement speed of who you cast it on by a decent amount. Another good kiting tool if your Earthbind Totem / Earthgrab Totem are on cooldown.
• Call of the Elements (Tier 3 Talent): This is a 3-minute cooldown that’ll immediately make all of your totems with a 3-minute or lower base cooldown come off cooldown. A lot of your utility package is tied up in totem cooldowns, so this will essentially give you the ability to recast them immediately. If you’re really on the ball you can rotate the cooldowns of your totems such that you’ll always have something available for any given moment.
• Totemic Projection (Tier 3 Talent): If you place a totem down and the fight moves location, or you need to reposition, this is a decent way to do that without having to sacrifice the benefits of your totems.
• Capacitor Totem: A totem you place down that charges up and will stun in an AoE around it after a couple of seconds. Potentially very useful, but keep in mind that you’ll want to use this on mobs that aren’t stun-immune, and you’ll want to use it in situations where mobs are going to be held still in an area for a period of a few seconds.