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The spiritual holy-warrior for the Horde, the Shaman is a hybrid class akin to the Druid and Paladin. While the Druid’s abilities are restricted based on the form she is in, however, the Shaman can use all his abilities all the time. This makes the Shaman a very versatile class, albeit nonetheless a support class, unlike the Druid who can effectively replace a fallen tank or healer.

The Shaman is primarily a melee class whose attacks are supplemented by spells. The Shaman’s support role is emphasized by his ability to drop totems, each of which create an area-of-effect (AoE) buff, or in some cases, are offensive in nature. These totems are mostly designed to aid the group the Shaman is in by maximizing their ability to survive and deal damage.

Offerings

The Shaman is a DPS class that adds better survivability to a group. His attacks are potent, and his ability to heal and resurrect fallen comrades is a definite boon to any group he is in. Like the Hunter, the Shaman can wear mail armor at level 40, and he can even use a shield to maximize his armor. All these merits make the Shaman a very easy class to solo with, though because he has such a wide range of abilities, none are quite as potent as can be found on other, more specialized classes.

Survivability & Crowd Control

While the Shaman has no snaring effects, he can escape bad pulls fairly easily. His Stoneclaw totem taunts enemies to attack it rather than the Shaman, usually giving the Shaman enough time to run away. His ability to assume the form of a Ghost Wolf allows him to create a larger gap between he and his enemies (because it increases his land-based running speed), and should a Stoneclaw totem not work as intended, the Shaman can drop a Grounding totem to slow an enemy’s advancement.

Given his ability to wear mail, heal himself, and even use a shield, the Shaman can take a fair pounding early in the game and walk away victorious. Against numerous opponents, however, the Shaman’s survivability drops rapidly if he intends to maintain a decent DPS flow. As a capable DPS machine, the Shaman unfortunately has no way to reduce his aggro, which is a boon if the Shaman travels with cloth-wearing classes, but horrible if the Shaman is not with a Warrior or Druid.

Specializations

The Elemental talent branch allows a Shaman to increase his spell-based damage, making the Shaman a deadly ranged attacker to supplement his melee strikes. However, given the Shaman’s rather small mana pool, repeated use of spells in combat will quickly negate the Shaman’s chance to effectively use his heals. As such, strong focus in the Elemental tree is only ideal for short fights, or for Battlegrounds, wherein the Shaman may be better off dying quicker but taking out more opponents in the process. Outside of PvP, the Elemental tree, and its respective spells, are not ideal.

The Enhancement tree focuses on the Shaman’s melee damage, and makes him a potent DPS machine. The downside of this is that it will become more and more difficult to pull aggro off the Shaman, especially if the Shaman mixes in high-damage spells between strikes. Enhancement is the ideal talent tree for grinding, because it allows the Shaman to conserve mana for healing purposes, and still maximizes close-range combat damage. However, for PvP purposes, the Enhancement tree is rather poor, and has little purpose end-game unless one’s group wishes to buff the melee damage of its existing DPS classes.

The Shaman’s Restoration tree focuses on his ability to heal. The least popular of the trees, the Restoration tree is usually regarded useless at lower levels, with some Shaman’s focusing more on this tree once they reach endgame. The Restoration tree not only allow the Shaman to supply his group with a steady mana flow (Mana Tide totem), but also instantly cast any spell (healing or offensive) by way of Nature’s Grace. Arguably, Earthen Shield is one of the most useful Shaman abilities in the game, which allows the Shaman to shield an ally (or himself), converting damage taken into health.

Professions

Being one of only two classes that moves from leather armor to mail at level 40, skinning/leatherworking is a possible profession path the Shaman can take, specializing in Dragonscale at later leatherworking levels. As a hybrid class, the Shaman can also benefit from potions with the herbalism/alchemy duo, allowing him to create potions that increase his mana pool, armor, and melee power.

Races

With three of the Horde races able to be Shamans, a good variety of Shamans can be seen in the game. Each race offers a decent racial ability, such as the troll ability to regenerate health and mana faster and enter a berserker rage, or the orc’s increased power with axes. Overall, however, the Tauren’s increased health pool combined with their Warstomp ability simply offers more gameplay flexibility. (Our race guide to the classes has additional information.)

LF1M

The Shaman’s role in a group differs somewhat from how he is played solo. While the Shaman should maximize his ability to kill when soloing, in group environments, the Shaman needs to better control his damage (by reducing it) so as to keep aggro off himself. Otherwise, potent shocks (his instant-cast spells) combined with his deadly Windfury-enhanced strikes will easily draw aggro from a tank who is not constantly taunting. However, when an enemy’s health begins to get low, the Shaman should use his entire arsenal to bring the enemy down, such that he and the group can then focus on the next aggroed mob.

Because of his healing ability, the Shaman is usually expected to conserve some mana to help keep the group alive. Because his spells are not very mana efficient, a good Shaman will only drop totems when he expects their duration to span a good portion of a fight, else mana is generally wasted. Foretunately, with Burning Crusade, Shamans can now gain some mana back for banishing dropped totems that still have duration, making totems more viable for shorter fights.

Shamans who intend to focus heavily on the Restoration tree, or Elemental tree, should wear a shield to keep them alive longer, since melee DPS is not their main concern. Enhancement Shamans will wield two-handers or dual weapons, but need to be careful not to gain too much aggro; Enhancement Shamans need to be ready to drop totems again before they expire, and recognize that because they do not wield a shield, they do not have the damage mitigation to off-tank for more than a couple seconds.

As a support class, a Shaman’s role is to aid his group, not serve a singular role. Regardless of spec, a Shaman is expected to heal when the main healer is having trouble, and a Shaman is expected to utilize his totems where appropriate. Additionally, a Shaman should be weary of adds, so as to aid casters when melee mobs come their way. When caster mobs are encountered, the Shaman, like the Rogue, has very effective anti-caster skills, and so should engage such mobs to keep them from toasting the tanks, whose armor is meaningless to offensive spells.

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