4.1 Shaman

[UnusualBunny]

Rift SFP 4.3 - Cleric Shaman Guide - Updated on: 26th October 2017

I've noticed the cleric forums lack some up to date guides. There's still some good old ones out there that explain the skills well but without the current spec mentioned, what might make it confusing for new players or players with alts. Because of this i've decided to rewrite some of those guides while possibly copying some parts of the older guides and add the new specs + legendaries and posible changes in rotations.

Spec:
61 Shaman | 10 Druid | 5 Runeshaper
61 Shaman | 10 Druid | 5 Oracle
61 Shaman | 10 Druid | 5 Sentinel F2P

Legendaries:

- Furious Assault (shaman)
- Deep Freeze (shaman)
- Icy Blow (shaman)
- Fervent Strike (druid)
- Inscribe Fate (runeshaper) or Bolt of Light (sentinel) or Insignia of Blood (oracle)

Buffs:

Furious Assault (shaman)
Glory of the Chosen (shaman)
Heart of the Frozen Sea (shaman)
Vengeance of the Winter Storm (shaman), for single target damage
Vengeance of the Primal North (shaman), when there are 3 targets or more

Playstyle:

Melee single target damage dealing spec with decent cleave. Shaman is about rotating between Physical and non Physical attacks.

Rotation or Priority system:

Pre-pull:
- Use Strike of the Maelstrom and Avalanche Strike to get 2 stacks of Diversify (mastery). Your last ability when putting up Diversify should be Avalanche Strike to get Frostbite up for the opener.
UNLESS you have the trinket from Uttila Resistance, Sadly both abilities trigger the proc from the trinket wasting the 15 seconds it lasts.

Opener:
Fervent Strike > Inscribe Fate > Frozen Wrath > Punishing Strike (mastery) > 2x Icy Blow > Eruption of life >
Cooldown Block starts: Rage of the North > Deep Freeze > Massive Blow > Glacial Strike > Jolt > Rush of Strength > Massive Blow > Lightning Hammer

* Because of the opener you will have some abilities on a separate button that later on can be used in a macro.
** When you have it available use the Reliquary of Ingenuity (planar crafting apothecary) right before you start your cooldown block. The damage of Massive Blow scales with Spell Crit.

Rotation:
After the opener there are a couple of things you have to keep in mind.

1. Keep swapping between Non Physical and Physical attacks.
2. Keep up the damage increase % from the legendaries:

- Inscribe Fate, refresh when it is about to fall off. This ability does NOT count as a Non Physical ability for shaman!
- Fervent Strike, refresh when it is about to fall off. This is a Physical attack.

3. Refresh Eruption of life when all stacks are consumed.
4. Refresh Lightning Hammer AFTER the DoT has fallen off. Lightning Hammer's damage increases over time, so the last tick will be the highest.
5. Keep up 2 stacks of Icy Blow. After the opener the 2 macro's are enough to keep the stacks up.
6. Use Glacial Strike as soon as it comes of cooldown. I track it by just placing the ability on the bar but you can make a Karuul alert for it as well.
7. The Cooldown block should be the same as in the opener:
Eruption of life > Cooldown Block starts: Rage of the North > Deep Freeze > Massive Blow > Glacial Strike > Jolt > Rush of Strength > Massive Blow > Lightning Hammer. This could mean that you might have to slightly delay using Glacial Strike right before your cooldown block comes up.

Abilities:
Earlier i mentioned that some buttons do need a separate button. So what abilities should you have on your bar?
- The macro's provided bellow
- Inscribe Fate
- Fervent Strike
- Punishing Strike (mastery)
- Icy Blow
- Rush of Strength
- Lightning Hammer
- Eruption of life

The abilities used for cleave and Pre-Pull Strike of the Maelstrom and Avalanche Strike, After you apply Frozen Wrath you just rotate between those two to cleave / deal AoE damage.

Utility:
- Ageless Ice This abilitiy became more important with 4.1. Your new 'ethernal' weapon deals extra damage when your above 75% mana, but it also makes you consume your mana faster. In the current LFR TD there are some moments when you are unable to attack enemies, make use of this time to regain your mana to gain that extra bit of damage.
- Ride the Lightning
- Windwalk
- Snowbank
- Numbing Cold used for PvP
- Crushing Blow used for PvP
- Glacial Shield
- Shield of Oak

*If you are using Sentinel instead of Runeshaper just replace Inscribe Fate for Bolt of Light in the rotations.

Macros:

These are personal macros, make them fit to your own liking.

Non Physical:

#show Frozen Wrath
suppressmacrofailures
cast Frozen Wrath
cast Glacial Strike
cast Jolt
cast Icy Blow
cast Ekkehard's Grasp

Physical:

#show Massive Blow
suppressmacrofailures
cast Massive Blow
cast Punishing Strike
cast Icy Blow
cast Fervent Strike

Cooldown:

#show Rage of the North
suppressmacrofailures
cast Rage of the North
cast Deep Freeze
cast massive blow

#show Bitter Wind
suppressmacrofailures
cast @focus Bitter Wind

Karuul-Alarts:
These are my personal Karuul-alerts everybody has their own preferance so just fit them to your own liking.

KA::AfMLveNqtlG1vmzAQx78KX2DMGLBhfmUbrFXqmilh2ptIkUOcYCWByDitsofvPhcy1jRRl0r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If i missed something or if there are thing's that can be improved please let me know ,

Bunny

[Heinith]

i prefer interrupt macro like this

#show Bitter Wind
suppressmacrofailures
cast @focus Bitter Wind
cast Bitter Wind

why you dont use Combined Effort ?

not 100% about my parses but your spec was 320k, 10inq/5rs was 380k

edit: its not, was with wrong legendary ^^

[forbiddenlake]

Physical:

#show Massive Blow
suppressmacrofailures
cast Massive Blow
cast Punishing Strike
cast Icy Blow
cast Fervent Strike

Should Icy be there and not Crushing Blow? Seems awkward to hit the Physical button and potentially not get a physical ability. Would totally mess me up.
And should Combined Effort be in there, below Punishing?

[Heinith]

Should Icy be there and not Crushing Blow? Seems awkward to hit the Physical button and potentially not get a physical ability. Would totally mess me up.
And should Combined Effort be in there, below Punishing?

Crushing Blow buffed with non physical skill does less dmg then Icy Blow, that skill is useless

[UnusualBunny]

why you dont use Combined Effort ?

Hmm, at first i thought the damage was lower then Icy Blow. but looking @ the tooltips Combined effort seems to be dealing more damage then Icy Blow now. i'll check it out later.

edit: checked it out and its indeed a small gain to put into the macro now, will change it in the guide. Thanks for the tip

Should Icy be there and not Crushing Blow? Seems awkward to hit the Physical button and potentially not get a physical ability. Would totally mess me up.
And should Combined Effort be in there, below Punishing?

Crushing blow is a loss of dps compared to Icy blow.

[UnusualBunny]

not 100% about my parses but your spec was 320k, 10inq/5rs was 380k

That's not the case for me, with 10 inq | 5 rune gives me around 435k~ after 5 mins, 10 druid | 5 rune gives around 470k~ after 5 mins

[Heinith]

checked it out and its indeed a small gain to put into the macro now, will change it in the guide. Thanks for the tip

its more about debuff 5% inc dmg then skill it self

That's not the case for me, with 10 inq | 5 rune gives me around 435k~ after 5 mins, 10 druid | 5 rune gives around 470k~ after 5 mins

you are right, was my bad, wrong legendary ^^

and thx for spec, will be using it now

[Shelenia]

I did a slacker Shaman spec, it's the same without Druid but with Oracle, the Legendary Insigna of Blood isn't like Old Legendary Bolt of Judgment but it procs a lot with shaman from every source, like a proc per 2 or 3 sec ratio, it doesn't hit harder but due to the ammount of procs is a good damage source without doing nothing special.

I didn't test it on PTS but in Live you can easy get 400k+ (depends on gear/fragments/essences of course)

[UnusualBunny]

its more about debuff 5% inc dmg then skill it self

The Debuff is applied by Punishing strike, hence effort it self was not needed. The only use of it was if it dealt more dmg then icy blow. Which it does, by a small margin.

[Necrologist]

Why do you prioritize Massive Blow over Glacial strike? GS was hitting a lot harder previous to the patch.

Did I miss something in the patch notes?

Also, are you not able to squeeze two GS into a Deep freeze block anymore?

[UnusualBunny]

Why do you prioritize Massive Blow over Glacial strike? GS was hitting a lot harder previous to the patch.

Did I miss something in the patch notes?

Also, are you not able to squeeze two GS into a Deep freeze block anymore?

All depends on your spell crit and gear. For me i have enough Spell crit for Massive Blow to deal more damage then Glacial strike, also taking in account that Massive blow is a 100% crit, I should've mentioned this tho. And with Glacial Strike (8 second cooldown) being the 2nd attack in 10 seconds you are still able to get a 2nd attack within 10 seconds (unless you have a old timer computer maybe). And its not that both of them are overlapping constantly any way, so your not delaying it that much

Overall i didn't want to go to in depth with the guide, as most players are not that interested in stuff like that, and the guides becomes to long.

[Shelenia]

Overall i didn't want to go to in depth with the guide, as most players are not that interested in stuff like that, and the guides becomes to long.

It's a pity i always check your guides out and all of them around to compare and perhaps learn something new

[WiseHermit]

Just use 1-button Shaman, easy to pull 350K with it...

[Bjourdo]

For me i have enough Spell crit for Massive Blow to deal more damage then Glacial strike, also taking in account that Massive blow is a 100% crit, I should've mentioned this tho.

Would you mind posting what your Spell crit is or the over/under for which to prioritize? And to be clear, you are referring to increased crit damage (not chance to crit)?

Thanks for the Spec BTW, also would you run this in PVP or mod it slightly?

[Bjourdo]

It's a pity i always check your guides out and all of them around to compare and perhaps learn something new

Hi my name is Bixt, and I read long guides...