Shaman Leveling Talent Builds

Here are your options: Elemental, Enhancement and Restoration. First, if you are leveling your shaman to be a healer, do not level it restoration. Restoration is absolutely horrible for leveling unless you plan on having at least one person helping you. The restoration tree has some nice goodies, but it is designed for end-game healing and not for leveling.

So, that leaves two other trees for leveling: Elemental and Enhancement.

Enhancement is likely the more popular talent spec for leveling. Enhancement is a melee Shaman that specializes in hitting people up close in their face. So, if you like melee, up close and personal, then Enhancement is for you.

Elemental is nice for people who like spell-casting hybrids. While leveling, you are likely to still melee some, and you can’t really keep mobs at range. However, you like doing spell damage using your shock spells and lightning bolts, and if you get the chance in a group, you like to stand back farther casting from behind. If you like more ranged spell damage, then elemental is for you.

Keep in mind that talents are really a place for you to invest in the spells and abilities that you use the most. So, what you find as the best spec for you may be completely different from what I suggest here. Feel free to comment, as I take player suggestions seriously. However, this is what I found to work the best through my experiences.

Elemental Talent Spec (not recommended):

Some argue enhancement is better and faster for Shaman. So, you can skip over this part if you have no interest in being elemental. However, I leveled my shaman this way, so I feel confident that it is possible (and rather easy) to level an elemental shaman. Others also argue that the early points in elemental end up being better at lower levels.

Level 10-14: Convection:
Reduces the mana cost of your shocks, lightning bolt, & chain-lightning spells. This is useful since at low levels you don’t have much mana. This gives you less downtime between killing things. I am a big fan of talents that reduce mana costs.

Level 15-19: Concussion:
Increases damage done for your shocks, lightning bolt, & chain lightning spells. This is nice since more damage means you kill things faster.

Level 20: Elemental focus:
Reduced mana cost after a critical spell. This helps give you more mana and is very useful in combination with other talents in the tree.

Level 21-25: Reverberation:
Reduces the cooldown of your shock spells. This helps you be able to use your shock spells faster, which means you do more damage. I mean, you did create a Shaman to be able to frost shock people, right? Just kidding! A lot of talent builds skip this talent, but I use my shock spells all the time, so why not make it useable faster? This may be less useful at high levels, but I find it very important for the way I level.

Level 26-30: Call of Thunder:
Increases your chance to get a critical strike with Lightning bolt and chain lightning. Since lightning bolt is your primary damage spell, this increased crit chance is important, and it unlocks a talent you will need later.

Level 31: Elemental Fury:
Increases damage done when you get a critical strike. Basically, instead of doing the typical 150% damage on a crit, it increases your damage to 200% of your normal (non-crit) damage. What the talent says is somewhat confusing, but it basically means your crits will now do twice your normal spell damage. (so a 500 damage spell now crits for 1000 instead of 750).

Level 32-34: Eye of the Storm:
When you suffer a critical hit, you can cast without being interrupted for a few seconds. I find this useful for getting off heals or lightning bolts when I’m getting hit a lot when soloing. This may be less useful at high levels, but it is good for leveling.

Level 35-39: Lightning Mastery:
Reduces the casting time of your lightning bolt & chain lightning spells. Since you cast lightning bolt all the time, having a shorter casting time means it does more damage.

Level 40: Elemental Mastery:
When you cast this spell, your next spell costs no mana and has a 100% chance to crit. I love this spell, and I frequently use it when I get low on mana and the fight isn’t over yet. This has saved my life many times.

Level 41-43: Elemental Precision:
Increases your chance to hit with fire, frost, and nature spells. Having a higher hit percentage means you will miss fewer spells allowing you to kill things faster. There is nothing worse than dieing because you missed your damage spell.

Level 44: One point in Unrelenting storm:
Basically, you have to spend one point to be able to unlock the next talent, and I (personally) will go back and fill this in more later. You can put this one point in pretty much any other talent you want in this tree to unlock the next talent.

Level 45-49: Lightning Overload
When you cast your lightning bolt or chain lightning spell, you have a 20% chance of doing twice the damage (casting a 2nd spell of the same type for no extra damage). Basically, this is a nice extra bonus of doing extra damage randomly.

Level 50: Totem of Wrath
Gives you a fire totem that increases your spell hit and crit chance by 3% each.

This is what your build would look like at level 50:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hE0zEc0kAot

Level 51: At this point, you have picked up all the talents I consider to be important in that tree. You have several options.

Option one: Fill out Unrelenting storm to increase your in-combat mana regen.
Option two: Invest 5 points in Enhancement to pick up Ancestral Knowledge (increase your maximum mana by 5%). You can skip this talent if you want to put more points in restoration.
Option three: Going straight into the restoration tree and pick up 20 points.
Improved Healing Wave: Reduces the casting time of your healing wave spell. This will make it easier for you to heal yourself as you are leveling.

Totemic Focus: Reduces the mana cost of your totems. Lower mana cost means that you have more mana left for doing real damage.

Totemic Mastery: Increases the range of your totems. There is nothing worse than running out of range of your totems all the time.

Nature’s Guidance: Increases your spell and melee hit chance. More hits means more damage, and you will be able to skip this stat on your gear for the most part if you have a ton of +hit from talents.

Tidal mastery: Increases the critical hit chance of your healing and lightning spells. So, lightning bolt and chain lightning have a higher crit chance. This is a nice talent if you go this far in the tree.

For PvP, ancestral healing or Healing focus may give you more survivability. You can switch out Nature’s Guidance or totemic focus if you are focusing on PvP instead of PvE, since you may need survivability talents more.

Here is what your build would look like at 70:
41/0/20
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hE0zEc0kAotZx0ek0x
If you really like Nature’s Swiftness, you can also go 40/0/21 with the same basic build.

40/0/21
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hE0zy0MqqoxZx0ek0xo

45/5/11
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hE0zEc0qAotxZx0xz

42/0/19
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hE0zE00qAotZx0ek0L

45/0/16
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hE0zEc0qAotZx0ed

Enhancement Spec (recommended)
People call this the more efficient leveling spec. It is still a melee/casting hybrid, however the emphasis is more on the melee and less on the casting. You care more about having high weapon DPS, strength, and agility to do lots of damage and have lots of big critical strikes. The following is where you can invest your talent points to increase your melee damage and make leveling more fun.

10-14: Ancestral knowledge
Increases your maximum mana by 5%. A lot of builds take Shield specialization instead, but even as a melee shaman, having mana is important. If you are going to dual wield later on, you won’t have a shield, anyway.

15-19: Thundering Strikes
Increases your critical strike chance by 5%. Having extra crit is good, and it unlocks a talent you will need later.

20-21: Improved Ghost Wolf
Reduces the casting time of your ghost wolf spell by 2 seconds. This will be the best way to get around until level 40 when you get your mount, so this talent will be really handy at least until you are 40.

22: Shamanistic Focus
After you crit in melee, your next shock spell has a reduced mana cost. This is nice for being able to throw out extra damage along with interrupts and slowing effects for less mana.

23-24: Improved Lightning Shield (2 points)
Increases damage done by your lightning shield orbs by 15%. You can put points somewhere else, but you have to spend two points to unlock the next tier in the tree.

25-29: Flurry
After you get a critical strike, your attack speed is faster for the next 3 swings. This goes nicely with the talent increasing your critical strike chance.

30: Spirit Weapons
Gives you a chance to parry attacks and reduces threat generated by melee. Parry is an ability like dodge and block that prevents you from taking some damage.

31-33: Elemental Weapons
Increases damage done by your rockbiter, windfury, flametongue, & frostband weapon buffs.

34: One point Improved Lightning Shield
You have to spend one point to unlock the next tier. You can spend this maxing out imp. Lightning shield, or if you skipped that talent, put it wherever you want.

35-39: Weapon Mastery
Increases damage done with weapons by 10%. More damage is always better.

40: Dual wield!
Finally, you can hack and slash your opponents by equipping a weapon (instead of a shield) in your off-hand.

41-43: Dual Wield Specialization
Increases your chance to hit while dual wielding. You really need this talent since missing all the time is really not fun.

44: Stormstrike
Instantly attack with both weapons. Increases nature damage done by the next two spells cast on that target in 12 seconds.

45-47: Mental Quickness
Reduces mana cost of instant cast spells, and increases spell damage based off your attack power. Now, you may think “but I don’t cast spells!” However, if that were true you would be a warrior. You should be using your shock spells to do additional damage, interrupt casters, and slow movement speeds. Reducing the mana cost and increasing their damage is good.

48-49: Unleashed Rage (2 points)
Increased mele attack power buff for the group after you get a critical strike. This is a nice bonus for everyone in your party if you instance a lot, and is still nice when you are solo.

50: Shamanistic rage
Reduces damage done to you and gives you a chance to regenerate mana. This helps you a lot, so you should pick it up before you go back and finish…

51-53 Unleashed Rage
It’s better to pick up SR at 50 and then come back to finish up this talent. :o)

This is what your level 53 spec would look like:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZxVfzV0sAuqo

At this point, you should move on to the restoration tree and pick up a few talents over there:
Improved healing wave
Totemic Focus
Totemic Mastery
Nature’s Guidance
& a few points in Healing Focus

This is what your build would look like at 70:
0/44/17
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZxVfzV0sAuqox0eu