Quick Facts

Screenshots

Videos

Unleash Elements

Unleash Elements

7.5% of base mana	40 yd range

Instant	15 sec cooldown

Requires Shaman (Enhancement)
Requires level 81

Unleashes elemental forces of Flame and Wind, increasing the damage done by the Shaman's next Fire spell by 40%, and increasing the Shaman's attack speed by 60% for the next 6 swings.

Enhanced Unleash (Level 92+)
Your

Elemental (Level 81)
Unleash Flame

Restoration (Level 81)
Unleash Life

Enhancement
Unleash Elements

ability also causes you to gain 30% increased movement speed for 4 sec.

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Nature

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

Normal

Cost

7.5% of base mana

Range

40 yards (Long)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

15 seconds

GCD

1.5 seconds

Effect

Dummy
Server-side script

Guides

A guide to the
Elemental Shaman
(PvE) [Outdated - 5.4.7]

Elementals in
Draenor: A Guide
to Elemental Shaman

Enhancement Shaman Guide

Warlords of Draenor
Shaman Changes

Comments

Comment by Aaro

It looks like this is going to be a generally kick-ass spell. Using this is an instant cast, giving a different effect depending on whether you're using three different Shaman weapon enchants. This has a 15 second cooldown right now and it's undispellable, meaning it will be a part of many rotations.

* Windfury Weapon: Hurls a spectral version of your weapon at a target, dealing 125% weapon damage and increasing the Shaman's melee haste for the next five swings.

* Flametongue Weapon: Deals instant Fire damage and buffs the Shaman's next Fire attack by 20%.

* Earthliving Weapon: Heals the target and buffs the Shaman's next direct heal by 20%.

* Frostbrand Weapon: Deals instant Frost damage to a target enemy and reduces their movement speed by 50% for 5 sec. Increased in effectiveness if the target is already afflicted by a movement-slowing Frost effect.

* Rockbiter Weapon: Forces the target enemy to attack the Shaman for 5 sec.

For Enhancement's dual-wielding, they will be able to use two effects at once -- more often than not, it'll be Windfury/Flametongue (they're considering making Windfury a unique one-weapon enchant) for PvE and Windfury/Frostbrand for PvP, giving you two instant attacks for the price of one; and having a 40 yard range/instant cast, it will be an excellent gap-closer when running up to any type of enemies. I have a feeling in PvE you'll want to use Flametongue UE first, and then throw out a flame shock and watch that DoT tear them apart as you move closer.

Elemental is going to love powered-up Lava Bursts (20% more pwn), while the Earthliving enchant will give heals a kick. (It used to say "next healing spell", but has been reduced to the "next direct heal".) ALL OF THIS, at the incredibly cheap cost of 7% base mana.

The two other effects: Frostbrand is now the go-to enchant for PvP, being a slow that stacks with Frost Shock. Extra damage is the "increase in effectiveness", so a shocked/branded target will be hit harder by this ability. I can only assume the slow is 50% of their current speed -- a target brought down to 50% running speed by Frost Shock will be brought down to 25% with this, and around 12-13% if hit with Frostbrand. You'll be using this and Frost Shock together whenever you get the opportunity.

Rockbiter is, as stated below, simply a taunt; not for tanking, but for situations where the need arises.

Comment by Aaro

Blizz confirmed that Shamans would not be tanks. Arguably the most important part of tanking is being crit-capped. Shamans have no ability to do that, and because they only have mail armor, it makes them very susceptible to big damage.

What it sounds like Blizzard is intending for Rockbiter is for Shamans to be able to pull mobs off of healers or other targets, as well as off-tank in special fights, like how Locks can take a Blood Prince in ICC.

Comment by Arannia

Sort of reminds me of the old Seal and Judgement mechanic of TBC and Vanilla, for paladins.

Comment by lucius

The individual effects and associated buffs are as follows:
Unleash Wind Self buff
Unleash Frost Target debuff
Unleash Flame Self buff
Unleash Earth Target debuff
Unleash Life Self buff

Comment by Praetextus

From what I can see so far, as an enhancement shaman, this would be our opener in order it get the windfury half of up. I do not yet know if following this spell with lava lash or a flame shock would be better at this time. I can tell you based on what Ive seen out of lava lash at level 80 with a 5 stack of searing flames (searing totems dot) on the target, using this immediately before clearing searing flames with a lava lash is going show a huge number, even if it does not crit.

But then again, with hp pools being so large in this next expansion, seeing large numbers will become common.

Comment by KieranM17

For the Earthliving proc (Healing), I assume you would cast Unleash Elements on a friendly player to heal them? Or is it a smart heal where it just heals the lowest health player? The tooltip for Unleash Life reads:

"Unleashes the Earthliving enchantment upon the Shaman's weapon, healing a friendly target for 1916 to 2074 and increasing the effect of the Shaman's next direct heal by 20%."

It says healing "a" friendly target, not healing "your" friendly target. Can anyone confirm how this mechanic works?

Comment by kawakazzi

Usable while silenced.

Comment by Lindentree

Riptide > Unleash Life > Greater Healing Wave = awesome.

Always remember to Riptide before Unleash Life, because it will buff the direct portion of Riptide if you're not careful.

Comment by baayne

As an Elemental Shaman, it has come to my attention that this is a PvP (at best) spell with the Unleash Flame effect. In a PvE scenario UE (specifically Unleash Flame) does scale with Elemental weapons for a total of a 30% buff to the next flame spell. However, even when cast immediately before Lava Blast it is still a DPS loss as opposed to casting LvB then Lightning Bolt (providing Flame Shock is ticking), as LB scales with Elemental's Mastery and can proc a lightning shield charge via Fulmination.

I initially rejected this claim as I am sure others will, however before you do, test it. After testing I realized that the above is quite correct and the GcD wasted on UE can be better spent on a Lightning Bolt cast. I will say I not only wanted this spell to become part of the Elemental "rotation" but also learned how to weave it in quite effectively on my own priority list. Quite sad actually, very cool mechanic for this spell.

*of note, this spell is still quite amazing for Enhancement and Restoration Shamans.
*update*
UE can in fact be put to some situational use for an elemental shaman. As it does not share a cool down with our shocks it can give a little boost to movement heavy fights as an instant source of damage, specifically if Spiritwalker's Grace is unavailable.

Comment by Cloudburst

The Unleash Wind portion of this spell can proc Avalanche (and thus I would assume any other on-melee-hit proc enchant), and will proc Flurry if it crits. However, it seems unable to proc Maelstrom Weapon.

Comment by rrred

I would seriously like to know why this is "great" for resto shamans. From my calculations, using this and Greater Healing Wave has a (very slightly) lower h.p.s. than spamming just Greater Healing Wave (not that you would JUST spam that to heal a tank of course, obviously you would use Riptide as well). There's also the fact that this heals for a VERY small amount, so using it in an emergency scenario doesn't seem ideal. If you imagine that this +GHW is one spell, the bulk of the healing comes LATER, as you have to wait for the GCD to finish and your GHW to cast. So your tank gets hit by a tiny little Unleash Life and then a big old GHW. If your tank is very close to dying, there's a good chance that he or she will perish before the huge GHW hits them. I can only see this as being useful when you are moving.
I would very much like to be proven wrong and I would appreciate hearing from other resto shammies.

Comment by Praetextus

Wanted to add that while playing around during Tol Barad, I noticed something really really useful about this spell. Because of the healing possibilities of this spell it is usable on any target within 40 yards in any direction.

I thought it was kinda cool because I was kiting a warrior around facing 180 degrees from him, and I didnt have to turn a 90 to unleash frostbrand off my offhand. That, and seeing a Claws of Torment flying out of my ass via the unleash wind version was a little disturbing.

Comment by Keru

The animations for unleashing Windfury change slightly depending on what type of weapon you're holding. I've noticed that for both for Draenei and Tauren that an axe or mace results in a 360 jump/whirl as you fling the weapon, while a fist weapon results in a more regular weapon slash-like animation for Tauren, and a lunge attack for Draenei. (and yes, I like enh that much that I leveled a second shaman on another server >_>)

It wasn't even until a while after I got a new weapon that I even noticed, I was already so used to the animation I didn't pay attention. Nice touch Blizz :)

Comment by Sacrosterion

For enhancements shammies, say you just kill someone in PvP and need to heal yourself. You remove your present weapon enchants and you put two earth living up. Will you be healed for twice as much as stated, and will the bonus heal following it be doubled?

Comment by Ganbantein

As of 4.1, if you use double Windfury/Flametongue/Frostbrand/Earthliving and cast Unleash Elements, they will not fire twice.
For example:
shaman is dw and has double flametongue
he casts unleash elements on a target
there will only be 1 hit from the unleash elements because he imbued both weapons

This, however, does not nullify the procs from each weapon.

Comment by ap0calypse

In pvp if you have self cast turned on and do an unleash elements with earthliving weapon on your main hand weapon while targetting an out of range enemy you cannot cast unleash elements.

Annoying, and I cant see it as a bug as you cant cast it on an enemy in the 1st place. It should self cast on yourself, but the game wont let you :S

Comment by SpikedMilk

Wished this spell would be off the GCD, most of the time it just isn't worth using as you can just cast your damaging or healing spell twice to get better results instead of wasting the GCD on this.

That is purely PVE point of view and being on the GCD is completely fine for enhancement.

Comment by EtaCarina

For those that didn't play vanilla and TBC: Pallies only had one generic type of judgement, dependent on the seal active at the time, and consuming it. A seal had to be re-applied, which depleted the mana pool quickly, unless +int gear was used. Also, seals lasted only 30 sec, consistent with the idea of Judging and re-applying all the time.

Since shammies have better mana pools, this may be a smart re-introduction of an old mechanic.

Comment by Sacrosterion

In my opinion, Blizzard should have changed the Frostbrand effect to a stun instead/aswell of/as giving us a totem. If we got the totem aslwell as then this could be only a 3 second stun.

Comment by rawryer

Can be used on friendly NPCs, but has no effect..

Comment by Nomobo

With the release of patch 6.0.2, this is only available to enhancement-specced shaman. (Unlike previous to 6.0.2)

Unleash Elements

Buff

Spell Details

Guides

Related

Contribute