Elemental Shaman Leveling Guide from 1 to 90 — 12.0.5

Elemental Shaman is excellent at questing when your cooldowns are up, much less so when they are not. Generally, you will be slower than many other specs at pure questing leveling because your raw burst, multidotting, or ability to reliably pull half a zone is not as good as many other specializations. That being said, with smart cooldown use, you can pull just about anything, especially when your trusty Earth Elemental and Bloodlust/ Heroism are available. In a way, this favors taking breaks, appreciating the new zones, and reading quest text and not speedrunning as fast as possible, which is what we would recommend!

Elemental Shaman is well suited to dungeons as well, with their wide toolkit allowing them to help get any group out of almost any bad situation and their AoE damage being extra powerful when using a dedicated dungeon build.

Leveling Information

Beginner Leveling Guides

If this is your first character, or want to know more about the leveling process in Midnight, we've got you covered with these two guides!

Basic LevelingMidnight Leveling

When leveling up, always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. The only exception to this rule is if you have a Ring or Necklace with a slightly lower item level but two secondary stats on it instead of one.

If you are using Heirloom items, we recommend using those with Mastery and Haste, as they will slightly improve the gameplay flow while leveling.

Itemization

Leveling Heirlooms

Learn how to use Heirloom gear to level your characters as fast as possible!

Heirlooms Guide

There are several consumable items that can be purchased that will help you with your leveling speed.

• Ideally you want to have useful flasks buffing you at all times, you can buy various level-appropriate ones for cheap. Charged Phial of Alacrity (from level 61) needs refreshing often but gives Speed, which is is typically more useful than combat stats for leveling. If you prefer combat stats, you can use flasks such as Flask of Tempered Versatility from level 71, or Flask of Alchemical Chaos since it gives you slightly more secondaries overall.
• Food buffs are not as good if only because you need to waste time to eat, but it can still be useful, particularly when you have to wait for an NPC or for a mob to spawn. Fried Bonefish or Bear Tartare will give you speed after killing an enemy.
• Healing potions will help minimize downtime by allowing you to play more aggressively without having to heal yourself as much. Use level-appropriate ones, such as Invigorating Healing Potion from level 71.
• The Loot-A-Rang toy can be used to retrieve loot from a nearby corpse.
• Goblin Glider Kit is very useful for covering long distances from high places.
• Gunshoes are an Engineering item that increase your movement speed by 200% for 25 seconds. These will make you almost as fast as a Flying mount. We recommend having a lot of these, and using them whenever you are traveling more than ~250 yards.

The Gunshoes will not let you stop moving as long as they are active. Using this macro twice will click the buff off and allow you to stop.

• #showtooltip
• /use Gunshoes
• /cancelaura Gunshoes

If you are just starting your journey into Midnight, we have a Level 80 import string for you. You can follow the point-by-point allocation of the below tree once you start gaining levels in Midnight.

If you are willing to take the risk and utilize War Mode, the following PvP talents are recommended during leveling or for other open-world content. There may be times when you would like to use other options and are encouraged to experiment! PvP talents can be freely changed at any time.

Your first PvP talent slot will unlock at Level 20, your second at Level 30, and the final at Level 40. The following is a curated list of PvP talents that we consider good for leveling.

• Level 20: Storm Conduit or Lightning Lasso
• Level 30: Lightning Lasso or Storm Conduit
• Level 40: Counterstrike Totem or Burrow, depending on personal preference.

To help with understanding what changes for your spec as you level up and progress through the talent tree, use the slider below to select your current level. Each time you level up, move it along, and the section will level up with you!

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

Remember to keep the following buffs up at all times!

• Lightning Shield, mostly important after talenting Lightning Capacitor.
• Skyfury
• Earth Shield
• Flametongue Weapon

Use the following spells in this order of priority.

1. Cast Stormkeeper whenever it is available.
2. Use Ancestral Swiftness whenever available.
3. Cast Flame Shock when engaging enemies , with Voltaic Blaze when it is available..
4. Cast Ascendance whenever you need the burst.
5. Cast Lava Burst whenever it is available.
6. Cast Earth Shock/ Elemental Blast or Earthquake if multiple enemies will be hit by for its whole duration.
7. Cast Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning if multiple enemies will be hit by it.
8. Cast Flame Shock when you need to move, and the enemy will live for a while yet.

Class Guides

Shaman Class Guides

Finished leveling your character? Check out our max level guides!

All Shaman Guides

Stormy

Guide Author

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This guide has been written by Stormy, Elemental main since Wrath of the Lich King and member of the Storm, Earth and Lava Elemental theorycrafting team.