WoW Classic Shaman Guide: Weapon Skills, Abilities, Trainers, & Gear

Enter the Shaman: the Horde-specific class opposite the Alliance-specific Paladin. Commune with the elemental spirits and wield the four elements of nature — fire, earth, air, water — through placed totems. A hybrid class, Shamans can dish out huge AoE healing through chain healing; meteoric, elemental nukes like chain lightning; and big bonks through two-handed Windfury procs. Metaphorically, Shamans are the toolbox’s toolbox; there really is a totem for everything. Shaman players are resilient and creative in their playstyle, and fit in as a support element to any team. They don’t output the biggest damage, and not always the biggest heals, but their totems are a must-have in every raid group, and raids usually bring a shaman for each 5-man grouping.

Elemental Shaman DPS

Enhancement Shaman DPS

Restoration Shaman Healing

Enhancement Shaman Tanking

Shaman Talent Calculator

Shaman Leveling Guide

Elemental Shaman PvP

Shaman Pre-Raid & Best in Slot (BiS)

19 Shaman Twink

29 Shaman Twink

39 Restoration Shaman Twink

39 Elemental Shaman Twink

Roles and Specializations

There are three talent trees for Shaman: Elemental, Enhancement and Restoration.

• Elemental
  • Focuses on spellcasting elemental spells like Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and various Shock spells like Frost Shock.
  • Elemental Shamans are not particularly in demand as damage dealers, but they can usually find a spot just for the totems they bring.
• Enhancement
  • Focuses on, well, “big bonks” with various weapon enchantments like Windfury Weapon in melee combat.
  • While not the strongest damage dealers, Enhancement Shamans are often desirable in raids for the buffs they give to other melee classes.
• Restoration
  • Focuses on healing, generally raid healing.
  • Shaman healers are often in high demand for their totems and solid AoE healing capabilities.

View the complete Shaman talent tree in our Shaman Talent Calculator.

Class Feature: Totems

Totems are the signature characteristic of Shamans, and the primary reason you want one in every group. Their buffs are static and affect members of your party in an area of effect around the totem. Most 40-man raid groups bring a Shaman for each group because their totems are so invaluable.

Before you can start dropping totems, you’ll need to acquire four permanent reagents, one matching each totem type: fire, water, air, earth. You collect them throughout leveling: Earth Totem at level 4, Fire Totem at 10, Water Totem at 20 and Air Totem at 30. Each type of totem has a theme and a number of different castables for each. Only one of each type of totem can be placed at once, e.g., you can’t have Grace of Air Totem and Windfury Totem at the same time. Casting a totem of the same type to one already present will cause the previously cast totem to disappear.

Some of the unique and vital-to-raid totems are listed below:

• Windfury Totem: This totem is the reason there are spots for Enhancement shamans in raids. Generally, you need Windfury in each melee group for them to parse well, so you’re absolutely bringing one Enhancement for each of your melee groups. This totem gives your main-hand weapons a 20% chance of granting an extra attack with extra melee attack power. Needless to say, Warrior players will be screaming at you to drop this in your dreams.
• Tremor Totem: An AoE fear dispel that is applied every few seconds on a tick-based system; the only tool like it for the Horde.
• Mana Spring Totem and Mana Tide Totem: Mana Spring Totem is available to all Shaman specs, but Mana Tide Totem is available only to Restoration Shamans. These two totems are the most effective group-wide mana regenerating spells for Horde.
• Earthbind Totem: A 50% AoE slow is ridiculous, especially when you can place it out of LOS and slow an entire group of mobs to a crawl. Don’t underestimate this in raid scenarios either; there’re plenty of mobs which aren’t slow immune.
• Poison Cleansing Totem & Disease Cleansing Totem: The great thing about these totems is that you can place them down and cast your single-target dispel at the same time, really piling on the dispels. Fights like Viscidus rely heavily on these totems because of mass poison dispel.
• Strength of Earth Totem: This is the butter to Windfury Totem‘s bread. Adds strength to all members within a party, which means more attack power.

Resources

Shamans use Mana as their main ability resource.

Races

Racial Abilities

Shamans have three different Race options, all on the Horde side. There are no Shamans on the Alliance faction.

Orc

• Axe Specialization
• Blood Fury
• Command
• Hardiness

Tauren

• Cultivation
• Endurance
• Nature Resistance
• War Stomp

Troll

• Beast Slaying
• Berserking
• Bow Specialization
• Regeneration
• Throwing Specialization

Starting Stats

Stat	Orc	Tauren	Troll
Stamina	23	23	22
Strength	24	26	22
Agility	17	15	22
Intellect	18	16	17
Spirit	25	24	23

Weapon Skills and Armor Proficiencies

Shamans can equip Cloth and Leather armor from level 1, and can learn to use Mail armor at level 40 from their class trainer. They can also equip Shields in their Off-hand slot and Totems in their Relic slot.

Below is a table of weapon types that Shamans can use and where the initial skill can be trained.

Notable Abilities

Shamans have a lot of useful abilities that will make them a welcome addition to any group.

Utility

• Ancestral Spirit
• Astral Recall
• Far Sight
• Reincarnation
• Sentry Totem

Movement

• Ghost Wolf

Dispels

• Cure Disease
• Cure Poison
• Disease Cleansing Totem
• Poison Cleansing Totem
• Purge
• Tremor Totem

Crowd Control

• Earthbind Totem
• Earth Shock
• Frost Shock
• Frostbrand Weapon

Threat

• Rockbiter Weapon
• Stoneclaw Totem
• Tranquil Air Totem

Buffs

• Flametongue Totem
• Fire Resistance Totem
• Frost Resistance Totem
• Grace of Air Totem
• Mana Spring Totem
• Mana Tide Totem (Restoration talent)
• Nature Resistance Totem
• Stoneskin Totem
• Strength of Earth Totem
• Water Breathing
• Water Walking
• Windfury Totem
• Windwall Totem

Debuffs

• None

Shaman Trainer Locations

Shaman class trainers can be found in starting zones and major cities.

Gear Sets

Here are all of the equipment sets for Shamans in Classic WoW, including dungeon sets, raid tier sets, and PvP sets.

• The Elements (Dungeon Set 1 or Tier 0)
• The Five Thunders (Dungeon Set 2 or Tier 0.5)
• The Earthfury (Tier 1 – Molten Core)
• Augur’s Regalia (Tier 1.5 – Zul’Gurub)
• The Ten Storms (Tier 2 – Blackwing Lair)
• Gift of the Gathering Storm (Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj)
• Stormcaller’s Garb (Tier 2.5 – Temple of Ahn’Qiraj)
• The Earthshatterer (Tier 3 – Naxxramas)
• The Defiler’s Determination (Arathi Basin)
• Champion’s Earthshaker (Rare PvP)
• Warlord’s Earthshaker (Epic PvP)

Notable Items

• Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros: One of the first legendary weapons in the game from Molten Core, which is usable by Shamans. (Sulfuras Guide)

Skill Books

Below are all of the skill books that are available for Shamans in WoW Classic. These books teach new abilities or ability ranks that cannot be learned from trainers. The books are not Soulbound and can therefore be traded or purchased from the Auction House.