Shocks and shock cooldown.

Your shocks are one of your most potent weapons in PvP, but only if you use them wisely. You might be able to win by spamming frostshock on your opponent, but don't count on it. Let's look at our available shocks:

Flame Shock - This shock does damage when it first hits and does further damage periodically over 12 seconds. The damage over time component is useful when you're fighting a rogue and don't want him to vanish and escape.

Earth Shock - Best against casters, this shock does damage up front but also acts as an interrupt. Earth Shock will interrupt spellcasting, and prevent any spell of that school being cast for 2 seconds.

Frost Shock - An iconic Shaman spell, Frost Shock does damage and slows the target for 8 seconds. Great for when you want to catch a fleeing opponent, or when you don't want to be caught.


The cooldown of each shock is 6 seconds, unless your talents include Reverberation in the Elemental tree (which at 5/5 points reduces cooldowns by 1 second). The tricky thing is that the cooldown is shared across all three shocks. In other words, if you cast Frost Shock on a mage, they will have a 6 second window where you can't interrupt any of their spells with Earth Shock. It also means that you have to be picky in choosing what spells to interrupt. Yes, you could cancel an Elemental Shaman's Lightning Bolt spell, but he'd still be able to cast a healing spell right afterwards. Knowing what spells each class has available will help you prioritize what to interrupt.

If you can, use your totems instead of shocks to keep the shock cooldown available. In the first example I gave, you could use an Earthbind Totem to slow the mage instead of a Frost Shock. In the second you could use a Grounding Totem to absorb that Lighting Bolt and have the Earth Shock available for the heal. You'll find that taking a more strategic approach to shocking will serve you better than gratuitous spamming.