Shaman Basic Information

Pros

• Very versatile class, with heals, good melee abilities, nukes, and instant-cast spells.

Cons

• Will rely on melee to deal damage much of the time, but can’t wear as much armor or have as much health as exclusively-melee classes.

This Horde-exclusive class is focused on harnessing elemental magic to their bidding in combat. Shamans are somewhat like druids in that they meld melee abilities, ranged magic, and buffs and healing spells into one complete package.

As mentioned, shamen are elemental spellcasters, drawing on the power of earth, wind, fire, and water to achieve their goals. In order to control the elemental forces, though, you’ll need to acquire totems, powerful magical items which will allow you to, well, control elemental forces. These are acquired through the completion of shaman-specific quests. You can cast some spells of a particular elemental school without acquiring its totem, but many of them will be locked away from you until you do go through and complete your quests.

Indeed, the most distinctive Shaman spells will require you to access the totem items; these are the totem spells themselves. When you have an elemental totem in your inventory, you’ll be able to cast totem spells from that element; you can cast up to four totems, one for each element, but you can only have one totem from each element active at a time. For example, if you have an Earth Totem and a Fire Totem in your backpack, then you could cast both a Searing Totem and an Earthbind Totem and have them be active at the same time, but you couldn’t cast both an Earthbind Totem and a Strength of Earth Totem, since they’re both from the Earth element. When you have all four totem items in your inventory, you’ll be able to have four totems out at one time.

As mentioned, totems are unique to the shaman, in that they are spells that create small items on the battlefield (in the shape of a totem - are you getting sick of that word yet?) that can have a variety of effects, from direct damage against your enemies, to buffing your party, to debuffing your opponents. The one thing to remember is that Totems can be attacked by your enemies, which will prematurely end the effect, but in most PVE combat, this won’t be much of a problem. If a Totem does get destroyed, though, they’re easy to recast, and they’re immune to most area-of-effect spells.

There are plenty of totems to choose from, giving shamans quite a bit of versatility in combat, making them one of the best soloing classes. Not to say that they aren’t desired in groups, though; their combination of hard-hitting melee abilities, totem buffs, and heals/resurrections will certainly make it easy for you to find a party when you want one.