Spooncraft

Shaman are the spiritual leaders of their tribes and clans. They are masters of the elements, using spells and totems that heal or enhance their allies in battle while unleashing the fury of the elements upon their foes. Shaman can wear medium armor, and even wield massive two-handed weapons in combat. They are a versatile class that can wade into battle, restoring their allies while hurling elemental bolts of lightning at their enemies.

Shaman use totems to buff their party or themselves and are pretty strong as far as hybrids go. They can be powerful spellcasters, melee damage dealers, or group healers.

Elemental: Elemental shaman are rolling thunderheads of nature’s fury. They typically use a strong one handed dagger or mace catered towards spell damage stats and a shield of the same type. These shaman can fire off bolts of lightning, chain lightning that jumps to multiple targets, and now in Wrath of the Lich King can launch molten streaks of lava at their enemies. An elemental shaman’s offensive totems are also typically more powerful and have a wider array of affects. Elemental shaman can also call down a bolt of raw lightning fromt he sky knocking back enemies that are too close for comfort as well as damaging them and returning mana back to the shaman.

Enhancement: These shaman are incredibly strong melee fighters that synergize very well with spell damage. They are great buffers as they enhance other melee fighters in their group but a lot of their damage comes from the various shocks and from lightening shield zapping their targets. Enhancement shaman typically dual-wield maces, axes, or claw weapons and take advantage of the variosu weapon enchants like windfury and flametongue to tear enemy targets apart in a flurry of powerful strikes. They can also summon two spirit wolves to fight at their side, these wolves heal the shaman for a percentage of the damage they deal as well as free him of any roots or snares and can taunt all nearby enemy monsters.

Restoration: Resto shaman are still long sought after in groups because their restorative totems and group healing spells such as chain heal scale incredibly well with gear. Earth Shield is an amazing passive healing spell that makes keeping targets very easy to keep alive when coupled with Riptide.

Wowhead has a really great talent calculator where you can experiment with new builds for your Shaman.