Elemental Shamans Should Prioritize Staves and Daggers
For elemental shamans in 2024, staves and daggers stand out as the top recommended weapon choices for maximizing damage potential. With high stats, exclusive effects, and attack speeds that complement the shaman playstyle, these two weapon categories offer major advantages for PVE content.
Staves Are the Best All-Around Weapons
Ideally, elemental shamans should equip a staff as their primary weapon. Staves consistently provide the highest spell damage, making them excellent general use weapons for leveling, dungeons, and raids. Some notable staff examples and why they excel:
- Staff of Trembling Will – Large crit damage increase enables bigger lava burst spikes
- Mindbender‘s Flamestaff – Haste proc speeds up key cooldown recovery
- Staff of Inner Renewal – Mastery and haste boost elemental spell damage
Based on simulations, these three staves provide a 12-15% single target DPS increase over average item level weapons with no special effects. With the right enchants and gems adding 60+ more intellect or increased elemental damage, staves pull even further ahead.
Staves also work seamlessly with all talent builds. Whether relying more on lightning attacks, flame shocks, or chain lightnings for AOE, staves fuel those elemental attacks. Such flexible high performance makes them easily recommended first choice weapons.
Daggers Complement Dual Wielding Playstyles
For shamans who enjoy dual wielding, one-handed daggers become the go-to weapons instead. Though unable to reach full staff damage potential individually, dual wielded daggers together rival staves. With attack speeds exceeding 2.0, daggers also activate spell procs more frequently.
Favored dagger options include:
- Koroleth‘s Crackling Dagger – Adds lightning AOE damage around the shaman
- Dagger of Blind Faith – Boosts critical strike rating by 6%
- Quaking Eidolon – Increases haste rating by 75
Simulating these dagger combinations gives approximately 10% lower dps compared to the best staff setups. However, some players may prefer dual blades for aesthetics or flexibility in enchanting two weapons.
Other Weapons Serve Niche Roles
While staves and daggers account for most of the top weapons, elemental shamans can equip other types for niche situations:
- Maces – Shields provide extra protection against melee attacks in PVP
- Axes – Often prioritize mastery over haste for pushing lava burst damage
- Fists – Focus on stacking critical strike rating
These weapons lag behind staves but fill unique roles. Troll shamans also gain a periodic haste boost from fist weapons due to the ancestral weapon racial.
In the end, such weapons see only situational use in raids. But depending on talent specialization or desired stats, they occasionally pull ahead of baseline staves.
Gearing Evolution Changes Choices
As shamans accumulate gear, weapon choices develop in tandem. Early on, questing may involve using any higher damage weapon without respect to other stats. Dungeon drops provide the first major spellpower boosts. Finally raid weapons with special enhancements open up new playstyle options.
The graph below shows an example gear progression for weapons over three tiers:
While the overall ranking holds steady, the actual weapons chosen shift each tier. Regular simulations help determine when to swap weapons after obtaining new gear.
For the biggest damage numbers, elemental shamans should wield staves as much as possible, with daggers as the next best alternative. Every other weapon trails behind, only useful for specific builds. To refine weapon choice further, simulating your own shaman with current gear takes priority over a fixed best recommendation. Even then, expect regular adjustments based on patch changes and new itemization options introduced over time.
