Shamans have a total of three different talent trees like most classes and like many hybrids they can be broken down into melee, magic, and healing. Going heavy into one tree will often lead towards a playstyle that mimics that tree. For instance, going heavy into Elemental will cause the Shaman to become like a Mage, able to shred enemies apart from a distance with their elemental magic. Choosing your playstyle is key to choosing what build you want to go.

Choosing a Specialization

Enhancement

Enhancement is the melee specialization for Shamans and going heavy into will produce a melee brute who uses very little mana and can output high DPS with their melee weapons and melee orientated totems. For leveling it’s the de facto standard and for raiding there is little reason NOT to go enhancement. For PvP it’s alright, but generally going up to people and beating on them isn’t for everyone.

Elemental

For leveling it can “work” in that you’ll usually wipe the floor with an enemy before it gets to you but its very mana dependant. For raiding it’s completely viable and PvP sees a lot of Elemental Shamans roaming the fields.

Restoration

For leveling, forget it. The age old adage “You can’t heal a mob to death” is pretty spot on. For raiding, well it’s perfect if your raid group needs a healer or you want to get instance spots but it’s not necessarily the most exhilarating or fun.  It’s one of the best specs for group based PvP due to Shamans having chain, lots of crowd control, and a lot of excellent healing abilities.

Talent Builds

Shaman talent builds are a little bit difficult to form due to the nature of Shaman talents. There is a lot that has to be covered, some talents that should be skipped, and a whole lot of

PvE

Enhancement Build

This Enhancement build gives you 10% more Intellect, Flurry & 5% critical strike, less threat, Dual Wield, and a full toolbox of other goodies to help you smack enemies into the ground. Your last 10 points go into helpful abilities in Elemental and Restoration to kind of make them a little bit better too. It’s basically every powerhouse talent to make sure when your weapons connect you truly “connect” with a massive punch. Great for DPS.

Restoration Build

This Restoration build does a few things. It gets you Earth Shield, Riptide, and well Riptide. Riptide is the best skill for healing on a Shaman. It is an instant cast heal with a HoT effect on the end of it. What more could you ask for?

Elemental Build

This Elemental build gets you Thunderstorm (somewhat useful), the 10% intellect in Enhancement(what build doesn’t include this?) and all of the abilities that will juice up your spells. You can skip Thunderstorm and places the points elsewhere if you find it necessary.

PvP

There are no current “good” PvP builds with the arena season not yet starting. Check back when the arena season starts to see some prime arena builds. In the meantime most PvE builds will work ifne in the battlegrounds.