Elemental Shaman (PVE)

Talents

This is the standard PvE Elemental Shaman build for The Burning Crusade. It focuses entirely on maximizing spell damage throughput and raid utility, prioritizing offensive Elemental talents over defensive options. The build reaches deep into Elemental to secure Totem of Wrath, then extends into Restoration for Tidal Mastery, resulting in extremely strong baseline stats: high spell hit, high spell crit, and excellent early-phase consistency. This talent setup is rigid by design, as most remaining alternatives either reduce damage output or trade DPS for survivability that is rarely required in PvE.

Build Overview

This build prioritizes all major Elemental throughput talents while dipping into Restoration for critical strike chance. By skipping Elemental Warding, the build favors maximum DPS and AoE effectiveness over defensive mitigation, which is rarely necessary in PvE encounters. With Totem of Wrath active, this setup provides a total of 12% spell hit from talents and totems alone, significantly reducing gear dependency and allowing Elemental Shamans to perform at a high level even in early dungeon and raid gear.

Optional Talent Adjustments

While this build is largely locked, a few minor point swaps are possible depending on personal preference or encounter needs: • Move 2 points from Storm Reach into Unrelenting Storm for additional Mana regeneration at the cost of spell range. • Move 5 points from Tidal Focus into Improved Healing Wave for faster emergency heals, trading minor healing mana efficiency. • Move 2 points from Call of Flame and 1 point from Improved Fire Totems into Elemental Warding if additional elemental damage reduction is required. These adjustments are optional and should only be made if survivability or utility is needed, as they slightly reduce overall damage output.

Why This Build Works

Elemental Shamans derive much of their power from talents rather than gear, and this build fully capitalizes on that strength. The combination of spell hit, spell crit, and powerful totem buffs allows Elemental to remain highly competitive throughout Phase 1. Because the remaining unselected talents are either defensive or healing-focused, there are very few viable alternatives if your goal is maximizing PvE DPS. As a result, this build remains the default recommendation for nearly all raid environments.

Key Talents