The Basics

It's very important to know which races and what types of Shamans exist during your leveling and at the end-game, so let's get started with the basics to the Shaman Class.

Be sure to check out our Shaman forum if you ever have any questions about your Shaman or have something to add to this guide!

Shaman Facts

• Shamans are similar to Druids in that they have a rather high nature affinity. Instead of constant shape shifting, they use totems to increase their damage.
• Shamans can heal and buff allies, use totems to support allies and attack enemies, and they can also do some mighty potent damage in melee.
• Chain Lightning is a very powerful magical damage spell and many of the totems are heavily desired by parties.
• Shamans use totems to both support their allies and attack their enemies. Totems are placed on the ground and pulse an effect. Ranging from healing allies hit points and mana, slowing down enemies, giving everyone more defense, and many more things like directly attacking enemies.
• Shamans have a ghost wolf form that allows for faster travel. This is desired by many.
• Shamans also have the ability to buff weapons. Very useful to boost their melee fighting power.
• Shamans can do everything with the correct spec at the end-game, be it healing, melee DPS, or caster DPS, and excel at it with the correct setups.

Alliance

Draenei: Being a Draenei Shaman is the only choice for being a Shaman and in the Alliance. It’s a fairly good choice giving the Draenei racial abilities. The self heal is useful and the passive to-hit buff is nice to increase your support ability.

Horde

Orc: Orcs are great if you want to PvP a lot, since they have useful abilities like Blood Frenzy and have a passive stun resist that will make them extremely hard to deal with as Shamans. This is the race you pick if you see a lot of PvP in your future.

Troll: Trolls are overall decent for a Shaman, as they have a couple passive abilities that help them mostly in PvE and no real drawbacks.

Tauren: Tauren Shamans are generally rarer nowadays, since Nature Resist, more health, and Warstomp aren't as useful as the other racial abilities. They are a good pick if you like War Stomping and a bit more health during your raids, however.

If you need additional help in leveling up or finding places to level then see these other extremely helpful resources that should aid in getting you started:

• Making Money Guide
• Alliance 1-60 Guide / Horde 1-60 Guide
• PvP Survival
• City and Starting Region Guides
• Weapons Guide
• Where to Adventure
• Must Know WoW Tips

• Herbalism and Alchemy
  A good choice overall. Potions are useable by Shamans all of the time and they are usually in demand for end game, not to mention alchemy perks like Alchemy stones and potion procs to sell.
• Mining and Blacksmithing
  This combination is only recommended if you're going hardcore into Melee Shaman (Enhancement Tree), and even then it's probably not worthwhile to have as your only combo skills, since you may change your mind throughout your travels and Blacksmithing really doesn't offer you much at the endgame.
• Mining and Engineering
  Useful if you like using trinkets that improve your damage, health, or have other gimmicky effects - may be best as a PvP-oriented character.
• Skinning and Leatherworking
  Leatherworking can create some really nice endgame mail for the Shaman. Use this if you want to create your own endgame armor that will hold itself at level 70 nicely for awhile.
• Mining & Skinning or Herbalism & Skinning
  A combination of gathering skills is recommended for those out to earn a quick buck, but generally not worthwhile in the endgame as it doesn't buff your character's stats in any way.
• Talioring & Enchanting
  Tailoring is nearly useless for a shaman with their endgame perks, but if you have access to high level tailoring recipes, it might be worthwhile if you're either a healer or an elemental shaman. Enchanting is a good idea if you like the fact you will be enchanting a lot and needing more materials each and every time, so it's best left as a secondary profession to level.

Shamans rely on something known as Mana to cast their spells. It can be replenished by drinking, potions, or just waiting. It regenerates based on spirit and does not regenerate during casting.

Learning to best use your Mana will be key in defeating enemies as a Shaman. If you use too much then you'll spend more time regenerating. If you try to use too little then you may find you are sacrificing more health to use less mana. Remember though, it's easier to sit down and drink then walk back to your corpse!

Certain totems can be used to regenerate mana. Rely on these when you need to regenerate mana in combat.

Totems are very unique to the Shaman class. They are the only class that can use totems and are extremely useful. Totems are spells obtained through quests that can summon a “totem” on the ground that does a certain effect.
There are many different totems and each one has a different effect. There are over 25 different ones! Learning when and where to use any totem will determine how good a Shaman really is.

Click here for more info!

Since the Shaman can melee, be an offensive caster, or support, the stat choice depends on the situation. Shaman that prefer to melee will usually focus on melee stats, namely strength, stamina, and agility. Support and caster Shaman will usually focus on intelligence. Regardless of which role your Shaman will take, most agree that a Shaman only dies when the mana pool has been depleted.

Strength is used to raise shaman melee damage, each point of strength will increase melee dps by 1/7.

Each intelligence will increase maximum mana by 15.

Each point of stamina will increase maximum hit points by 10.

As a Shaman, depending on your build you will need to focus more on certain stats and effects than others. For instance, if you're going caster (elemental) shaman, it's not unusual to seek out caster gear such as cloth armor in order to improve your lightning bolt effects, and int becomes your most sought-out stat, not strength.

If you're going enhancement, you should focus on the best mail melee DPS sets you can find since you're going face-to-face with monsters. Strength and Agility become your primary stats here.

If you're going restoration, seek out either healing cloth gear or your own mail healing gear, which is a bit rarer, anything helps however. Spirit and Intellect become your primary stats here.

There's lots of ways to play Shaman, you can be melee DPS, healer, or caster DPS, however, don't be fooled into thinking you can tank - you cannot - as Blizzard's level 70 game isn't designed to have a Shaman tanking with mail armor.

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