Shaman Elemental leveling guide
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.
