Shamans are the spiritual leaders of their tribes and clans; they communicate with spirits and have visions of the future. Many mistake the shamans for peaceful leaders but when challenged in combat they have a range of different abilities to their disposal.

The Shaman is a damage dealer, buffer and healer in one. The Shaman is often popular in groups as a secondary healer and for its beneficial totems. The Shamans can initially wear leather armor but when level 40 is reached mail armor becomes available too. The challenge as a shaman is to know which totem to use in different situations.

As mentioned earlier, the Shaman can use different totems in and outside battle. There are four types of totems; Earth, Fire, Air and Water. You can only have one totem active of each type at once. Another very cool feature that Shamans has is the Ghost Wolf and Astral Recall abilities. The Ghost Wolf ability transforms you into a Wolf that allows you to run much faster than before. The Astral Recall ability works just like your hearthstone except that it does not have a long cooldown like the stone; it teleports you to your Home Point.

What are shamans?

Shamans are designed to be healer/warrior/mage hybrids. Generally, we have spells and abilities taken from those base classes combined into one class. We also have totems which add a variety of effects, from group buffs to debuffs and attacks.

The class itself is a complex class that has one of the more varied amount of spells and effects present. Shamans are the most versatile class in WoW.

What is the role of a shaman in groups? In the earlier levels, shamans can fulfill primary tank and healer roles. However, by late to end game, shamans are mainly expected to be secondary tanks and healers, and to offer support via totems and the variety of spells.

What are a shaman’s strengths?

Shamans have the following strengths:

* Versatility. With the amount of spells available, a shaman can adapt to pretty much any situation.
* Melee. With mail armour and shields, shamans have third highest AC in the Horde, behind warriors and druids in bear-form. With weapons buffs and this AC, a shaman can hold his own in most melee situations.
* Healing. While shamans are one of the worst healers in the game (better than paladins, but worse than druids and priests), they *can* heal. WoW does seem to be biased toward healing.
* Shocks. Shamans have three “shocks” — insta-cast spells on the same timer that have a variety of effects. One shock has a DoT, one has spell interruption, and one has a snare effect.

What are a shaman’s weaknesses?

* No Crowd Control. A shaman has no crowd control or the ability to temporarily remove enemy mobs or players from combat.
* Weak healing. While a shaman can heal, the class does not the level of heals that a druid or priest has access to. Unlike a priest, a shaman has no insta-cast heals or shields and has no aggro-minimizing spells or talents.
* Mana usage. Shamans are one of the worst class for mana efficiency. A shaman’s heals are less efficient than other healers and the damage spells burn more mana per damage than other casters. As well, shamans generally have smaller mana pools than casters at the same level. Therefore, mana conservation is a key to playing a shaman well.
* Totems. Totems, while the source of the shaman’s uniqueness and strength, is also a weakness. Totems are easy for mobs and players to kill. Totems left behind can aggro mobs which will attack the totem’s creator. Totems will also indirectly increase the aggro radius of a shaman because each totem has its own aggro radius.
* Cost. A fully trained shaman at level 60 has spent 226g20s10c according to the numbers on Thottbot. That’s higher than a druid (215g2s71c), who has three forms worth of training to purchase.

What race is the best race to be a shaman?

Short answer: personal preference is the dominating factor for race choice. Create a tauren, orc, and troll shaman, and play around with them. Level them up to 5 or 6, and check out the racial abilites, /dance, /flirt, and /silly emotes.

Long answer: it is generally considered that Tauren have the best racial abilites of any shaman race. The warstomp ability especially complements the shaman class which has no inherent stun and several important spells which can be fit into the 2 sec window such as improved ghost wolf and lesser healing wave.

Tauren have three set backs as largest race in the game, however:

* Hard to see around. Tauren are big and this sometimes causes problems when you are trying to see the battle in front of you. This is especially notable in confined spaces.
* Frame is big. The tauren character model is big and sometimes causes problems when moving in confined spaces.
* Big target in PvP. The tauren model is the largest and therefore easiest model to manually target in PvP.

I do not think those drawbacks balance the better racial abilities. But, I’m a tauren, and may be biased. NOTE: I did take a troll shaman to 60 in beta. I prefer tauren over troll, but mainly due to stylistic reasons.

Overview

The Shaman class is a secondary healer and support class. They are designed to supplement all parts of a party, while not being particularly focused on any one aspect of the game. Depending upon how one chooses to customize their character’s talent points, they can specialize in offensive spellcasting, melee combat, or healing. Their primary support buffs come in the form of stationary totems, which (when placed on the ground by the shaman) provide various benefits to party members within a totem’s 20-30 yard radius.

The Shaman class is only available to three of the Horde races: Tauren, Orcs, and Trolls.

In parties, Shamans make the quintessential fifth member, supplementing the other members with off-healing and totem buffs while adding intermittent magic or melee damage. Shamans have the ability to resurrect themselves once per hour using their Reincarnation ability, which saves their party the time of running back in the case of a wipe. Combined with their ability to resurrect other players, this becomes a primary source of wipe control. Parties with Druid healers also benefit from the Shaman resurrection powers, as they can only resurrect other players once per 30 minutes.

Melee-specialist Shamans are sometimes employed as off-tanks, capable of holding aggro on a same-level elite monster while healing themselves. In this role, they lack the survivability of Warriors or Paladins, but their high-threat spells do allow consistent aggro management.

Talent trees

The talent system in World of Warcraft allows Shamans extreme diversity in play style, ranging from melee fighting specialization to healing specialization. The Shaman class recieved a review to its abilities and talents in patch 1.11, effective June 20, 2006. Most changes focused on adjusting the mana cost of the Shaman’s basic abilities.

Elemental

The Elemental tree focuses on the Shaman’s spellcasting ability, in the form of offensive totems, spells, and ’shocks’ (instant-cast spells of various elements). The major effect of this tree is to decrease the mana cost and casting time of offensive spells and totems while increasing their damage. The end-tree ability is Elemental Mastery, a spell usable every three minutes that guarantees a mana-free critical hit on the Shaman’s next offensive spell. Elemental greatly improves the damage output of a shaman’s magical offense, but its high mana cost (combined with the shaman’s mana inefficiency) makes it inviable as a source of group/raiding PvE DPS.

Enhancement

The Enhancement tree focuses on the Shaman’s ability to cast timed enchants on their own weapons, and expands on their melee ability in general as well. This is a very appealing tree to lower-level shamans because of the 5% mana increase, reduced cast time on their travel spell (Ghost Wolf, level 20, increases run speed by 40%), and the ability to wield two-handed weapons. At later levels, Enhancement specified Shamans can deal large amounts of melee damage, sometimes nearly approaching that of a Rogue, however this may only occur during short periods of time, over time an equally geared Rogue will do more damage than a shaman. The end-tree ability is Stormstrike, which grants an extra attack and increases the damage of the next two Nature spells on the target by 20%. Combined with other abilities to gain extra strikes, particularly Windfury Weapon, Stormstrike can be used to great effect. Enhancement greatly increases PvP survivability, while also offering PvE improvements for the shaman’s primary melee buff totems.

Restoration

The Restoration tree focuses on the Shaman’s healing capability, reducing the casting time and mana cost of healing spells and totems, while increasing their effectiveness. Shamans specced in Restoration are highly sought after in end-game parties, where they are quite useful as effective healers, buffers, and backup casters. The end-tree talent in the Restoration tree is the Mana Tide totem, which restores 140 mana every 3 seconds to party members within 20 yards. However, unlike the other two top level talents, higher ranked Mana Tide totem spells can be bought at a trainer at higher levels. Restoration greatly enhances shaman contribution to group/raid PvE content, but severely limits a shaman’s damage output, and is undesirable for PvP activity.

Equipment

Shaman wear leather armor up until level 40, at which time they gain the ability to wear mail armor. Because of this, many shamans take up the leatherworking profession, which can make certain mail armor around the time they get the ability to wear it. Additionally, the Dragonscale Leatherworking specialization can make several mail armor items with stat bonuses that are very beneficial to the shaman class.

Shaman can use one-handed maces with shields and staves by default, and can train daggers, fist weapons, and one-handed axes at a weapon master. In addition, by spending talents in the Enhancement tree, shamans can learn to wield two-handed axes and maces.

After reaching level 40, a Shaman can learn to wear Mail armor from their trainer. For Shaman casters, the Turtle Scale Mail available from Leatherworkers is good, other items are better for melee Shamans.

The Shaman’s endgame sets are The Elements (Dungeon 1) and The Five Thunders (Dungeon 2) and the class-specific epic sets are The Earthfury (Tier 1), The Ten Storms (Tier 2), Stormcaller’s Garb (Tier 2.5), and The Earthshatterer (Tier 3). The 20-man raid sets are Zandalar Augur’s Regalia (Zul’Gurub) and Gift of the Gathering Storm (Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj). Currently these sets only benefit Shaman casters, as yet there are no dedicated Enhancement sets which directly benefit melee Shamans. As a result of this many Shamans use non-class-bound mail items which give melee critical strike bonuses, as well as attack power and agility bonuses.

Attributes

See the main article Attributes. This breaks down specifically for shamans as follows:

* Your level’s worth of agility will increase your chance to crit on a melee hit by about 3% (e.g., +60 agility will give a level 60 shaman +3% crit).
* Your level’s worth of agility will increase your chance to dodge (or parry if you have that talent) by about 1% (e.g., +60 agility will give a level 60 shaman +3% to dodge).
* Every 7 strength provides 1 additional damage per second (e.g., +70 strength will give any shaman +10 DPS).
* Every point of strength provides 2 melee attack power (e.g., +70 strentgth will give any shaman +140 AP).
* Every point of strength increases the amount of damage you block with a sheild.
* Every point of intellect adds 15 mana (MP).
* Your level’s worth of intellect will increase your chance to crit with spells by 1%.
* Every point of stamina adds 10 health (HP).
* Every 10 points of spirit regenerates 1 mana per second. This can also be described as “five spirit yeilds 1 mana per tick” or “2 spirit restores 1 mana per five seconds” (MP5). See also Formulas:Mana Regen
* Every 18 spirit increases health regeneration by 1 health per second (i.e., 9 spirit restores 1 point of health per tick).