Ele needs a big change

[DisposableHero]

Right now on mythic at 99th percentile elemental is the top spec on Chromatic Anomaly, Spellblade, and Tich. It is the dead last spec for Gul'dan and Trilliax, and 3rd from the bottom on Star Augur.

So basically:

4+ Stacked Targets most/all of the fight (Anomaly, Spellblade, Tich) - elemental #1
4+ Stacked Targets much of the fight (Skorpyron) - elemental top 5
4+ Stacked Targets for a very small part of the fight or 2-3 targets most of the fight (Korsus, Star Augur, Botanist, Grand Magistrix) - elemental middling to shitty
Little to no cleave or exclusively 2 target cleave (Trilliax, Gul'dan) - elemental literally the worst spec

Elemental shaman should be campaigning for a single target buff, because their single target damage is terrible, and it is being disguised in nighthold because 8/10 fights have very significant AoE and cleave opportunities.

[Kralljin]

Issue with Cl is that while they adjusted the Boss Hitbox to be pretty large while Adds remain extremely small.

I mean i get that buffing all adds to have a Boss Hitbox in terms of Cl would be rather extreme, but on certain fights the range on adds is just too small.

Best examples are Helya and Gul'dan, your AoE Dps not just relies on own procs but also on random Add positioning, that just sucks.

If Melees can Cleave / AoE, Cl should also work, end of story.

As for Single Target, i don't think it's that terrible, the issue is just that Elemental has extreme issues in handling Movement, unless it's something you can solve with Gust of Wind, it's really hurts your Dps to an extreme degree.

Obviously some might argue to play with Icefury on movement heavy Encounters, but Icefury alone doesn't exactly solve the issue, on top of which you also kill your burst Dps and perform worse on any fights involving AoE / Cleave.

Gul'dan is in my opinion the main offender here, you can't really AoE, you need to move a lot, you're fucked beyond belief.

Encounters feel a bit like being designed for a caster toolkit of MoP, despite that this no longer exists (for Non Mages).

[netherflame]

The problem isn't the spec, its the players in your raid worrying about their parses.

The way we setup our raid is such that the specs that excel at single target do that and don't worry about the aoe, that is for the aoe specs to deal with.

Our rogues and DHs rarely switch off the boss they just tunnel and tunnel and tunnel while myself and the warrior and frost dk handle a majority of the add mechanics with help from our paladin from time to time. If everyone has their own job and deals with that instead of trying to get a 5k boost in dps for 10 seconds while dropping their boss damage 50k everyone will see better numbers due to lower fight times.

[Deleted]

Right now on mythic at 99th percentile elemental is the top spec on Chromatic Anomaly, Spellblade, and Tich. It is the dead last spec for Gul'dan and Trilliax, and 3rd from the bottom on Star Augur.

So basically:

4+ Stacked Targets most/all of the fight (Anomaly, Spellblade, Tich) - elemental #1
4+ Stacked Targets much of the fight (Skorpyron) - elemental top 5
4+ Stacked Targets for a very small part of the fight or 2-3 targets most of the fight (Korsus, Star Augur, Botanist, Grand Magistrix) - elemental middling to shitty
Little to no cleave or exclusively 2 target cleave (Trilliax, Gul'dan) - elemental literally the worst spec

Elemental shaman should be campaigning for a single target buff, because their single target damage is terrible, and it is being disguised in nighthold because 8/10 fights have very significant AoE and cleave opportunities.

Honestly this situation would be totally fine if it wasn't for the fact that nighthold is set up in a way where the bosses we are strong on are mostly the earlier easier bosses and the bosses we are weak on are mainly the last, hardest ones.

In the Exorsus interview they said they had a couple of elemental shamans ready to be used, they just never needed them. I suspect this is because they knew they wouldn't be as good on the later bosses so they wanted to gear the chars they will use later if possible and bosses like Tichondrius/Spellblade/Anomaly weren't enough of a road block that they needed to swap them in.

[Deleted]

the top classes need nerfs, like fury dk or dh are balanced pls

[tru]

What if they baked back in the CRIT to lvb like chaos bolt and just had the talent double the effect

[Bevo]

the top classes need nerfs, like fury dk or dh are balanced pls

For the record is Fury strong hell yes it is. Does the spec need a nerf no. What makes Fury so strong right now are 2 things.

1. Fight design. Fights that have extended execute phases or adds that need to be burst aoe'd down Fury will look really good on. That is pretty much every fight but Elisdande and Trillax.

2. DoS + CoF. DoS more so being how it works so well with Fury.

If anything DoS needs some adjusting, but nerfing the spec is not needed.

[DisposableHero]

Honestly this situation would be totally fine if it wasn't for the fact that nighthold is set up in a way where the bosses we are strong on are mostly the earlier easier bosses and the bosses we are weak on are mainly the last, hardest ones.

In the Exorsus interview they said they had a couple of elemental shamans ready to be used, they just never needed them. I suspect this is because they knew they wouldn't be as good on the later bosses so they wanted to gear the chars they will use later if possible and bosses like Tichondrius/Spellblade/Anomaly weren't enough of a road block that they needed to swap them in.

There really isn't going to be a situation where it is totally fine. Nighthold's most difficult bosses are the ones with minimal add involvement, but the nature of end of expansion/end of tier bosses usually means that this is the case. Only really Madness of Deathwing stands out as an end tier/end expansion boss that was not at all a single target centered encounter. The Lich King, The Thunder King, Garrosh, Archimonde (both versions), Blackhand, Sha of Fear, Yogg Saron, Illidan, Ragnaros (both versions), Nefarian (both versions). Take your pick and go back as far as you like.

Nighthold actually does a lot to conceal elemental's single target weakness because so many of the fights emphasize cleave, but its going to be exceedingly rare to expect the important bosses on the hardest difficulties to be about cleave and not single target.

[Ele man]

Honestly this situation would be totally fine if it wasn't for the fact that nighthold is set up in a way where the bosses we are strong on are mostly the earlier easier bosses and the bosses we are weak on are mainly the last, hardest ones.

In the Exorsus interview they said they had a couple of elemental shamans ready to be used, they just never needed them. I suspect this is because they knew they wouldn't be as good on the later bosses so they wanted to gear the chars they will use later if possible and bosses like Tichondrius/Spellblade/Anomaly weren't enough of a road block that they needed to swap them in.

I do not think Exosus prepared for inclusion as regular members.
If not, I think we were ready to see the power of ele at ptr (nerfed, of course), but I think they might have prepared for the situation. Ele's 1m cooldown aoe is deformed strong. Exosus is prepared for the situation. This is the current location of ele. Nobody knows what the next expansion pack will do. However, for the reasons mentioned above, the final boss battle with aoe in general is rare. If Alurliel was the last boss, people would blame Blizzard for this battle as the final boss.

I do not know if ele is good or bad in the next patch. Like Alruel, weak monsters can be poured in 1m cycle. But it is a reality that we can not prepare for other situations. That's the current situation.

[Rend Blackhand]

Ele shaman needs a bit of change but in my eyes we need something to do in fights with high movement. Sometimes it is absolute suffering when I have to move I feel like I can't do any damage with just shock spells. Icefury build isn't enough to resolve the movement issue.

Imagine if they brought back lightning bolt while moving. That would make all the difference in the world.

[Hellfury]

Ele have just ST damage probleam, it could be fixed with a number increase

Our main problem is that

-> Traits are meh so getting 3x of a overpowered relic with same trait doesnt give us big increased like it does for some classes.

-> BIS legendaries are just small bumps in DPS with almost no synergy,

-> 2 of our gold traits are laughable increases in ST dps volcanic/stormkeeper pet.

-> NH dont have OP trinklets for us like it has for melee classes(but this isnt a expclusive probleam of elemental spec)

[Tikishock]

The problem isn't the spec, its the players in your raid worrying about their parses.

The way we setup our raid is such that the specs that excel at single target do that and don't worry about the aoe, that is for the aoe specs to deal with.

Our rogues and DHs rarely switch off the boss they just tunnel and tunnel and tunnel while myself and the warrior and frost dk handle a majority of the add mechanics with help from our paladin from time to time. If everyone has their own job and deals with that instead of trying to get a 5k boost in dps for 10 seconds while dropping their boss damage 50k everyone will see better numbers due to lower fight times.

You're guild sounds pretty awesome actually. I'm a firm believer in allow class specs to play to their strengths instead of "ALL dps the add because we need to dps the add" We don't care if its a net negative to down the bosses--ALL DPS ON ADDS!!!

[Deleted]

There really isn't going to be a situation where it is totally fine. Nighthold's most difficult bosses are the ones with minimal add involvement, but the nature of end of expansion/end of tier bosses usually means that this is the case. Only really Madness of Deathwing stands out as an end tier/end expansion boss that was not at all a single target centered encounter. The Lich King, The Thunder King, Garrosh, Archimonde (both versions), Blackhand, Sha of Fear, Yogg Saron, Illidan, Ragnaros (both versions), Nefarian (both versions). Take your pick and go back as far as you like.

Nighthold actually does a lot to conceal elemental's single target weakness because so many of the fights emphasize cleave, but its going to be exceedingly rare to expect the important bosses on the hardest difficulties to be about cleave and not single target.

I do not think Exosus prepared for inclusion as regular members.
If not, I think we were ready to see the power of ele at ptr (nerfed, of course), but I think they might have prepared for the situation. Ele's 1m cooldown aoe is deformed strong. Exosus is prepared for the situation. This is the current location of ele. Nobody knows what the next expansion pack will do. However, for the reasons mentioned above, the final boss battle with aoe in general is rare. If Alurliel was the last boss, people would blame Blizzard for this battle as the final boss.

I do not know if ele is good or bad in the next patch. Like Alruel, weak monsters can be poured in 1m cycle. But it is a reality that we can not prepare for other situations. That's the current situation.

I totally agree. This is the flaw in Blizzard's view of classes having strengths and weaknesses, it's inevitable that the most important bosses are mainly single target since it would be strange to be fighting the biggest baddest boss and instead be focusing on their underlings in the fight, that's what the earlier bosses are for. This also goes hand in hand with what gypsybob said about the later encounters also being more hectic and generally requiring more movement.

I don't raid at the higher end of mythic so it's not something that effects me a great deal, I can still perform decently well in my raid group. In terms of how elemental plays it's a lot of fun this expansion and got even better in 7.1.5 so I'll be sticking with it, but it would be nice for it to also be a potential top pick as well.

EDIT: I think we will be seeing a decent single target buff in 7.2 though, the new trait to make elemental fury go from 250% to 270% damage is a pretty big deal, that's effectively an 8% buff to lavaburst and obviously effects all our other spells as well with effectiveness depending on crit rating. In addition, having maelstrom go up to 125 is a nice change so we get harder hitting earthshocks and less GCD spent. If I could make one change to ele it would be buffing our survivability a bit, it wouldn't hurt to make our automatic heal when we drop below 35% health be a lot more effective or giving us a heal when we activate astral shift like enhancement does. Our defensives seem to be balanced around the past where we had totems to drop to help us, but now they've all been stripped away and we didn't get anything back in return.

[Deleted]

I don't understand why Lightning Bolt is so weak, still. After all this time, don't they understand that for a spell with such a long cast time, it needs to do something ?
And they really should make it castable on the move again. Ele mobility is horrible.
As a player mostly focusing on high M+ I always dread volcanic weeks, everyone else is like "yay volcanic, easy!" and I'm like "yay volcanic, I'm gonna have huge holes in my damage all the time".

[Venziir]

I'm going to shit on everyones dreams but this is the best Ele has been and a long time and its not like to get any better. If you are in a serious guild you should probably never expect to main ele on progression.

I agree, though I still miss certain elements from MoP, such as Stormlash Totem, Lightning Bolt on the move, Totemic Recall and Spiritwalker's Grace.

[netherflame]

Give back moving lightning bolt and they can keep the rest of it.

[seventysix]

The Thunder King, Garrosh.

Lei'Shen was like the most cleave end boss of all time lol you literally needed to stack demo locks on this fight to cleave down lightning balls fast enough on heroic - and the entire 1st phase of garrosh was AOE -____-

[Ranulf13]

The only thing Ele needs is buffs and an overhaul of our AoE spender (EQ sucks outside trash).

Not a gigantical, shadow/lock kind of overhaul.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't understand why Lightning Bolt is so weak, still. After all this time, don't they understand that for a spell with such a long cast time, it needs to do something ?
And they really should make it castable on the move again. Ele mobility is horrible.
As a player mostly focusing on high M+ I always dread volcanic weeks, everyone else is like "yay volcanic, easy!" and I'm like "yay volcanic, I'm gonna have huge holes in my damage all the time".

Because they added like 4 multipliers to it and balanced it accordingly to you winning the jackpot and getting to stack all of them. LB with PotM and SK is really strong burst, and even more with LR.

Shitty I know.

- - - Updated - - -

Ele have just ST damage probleam, it could be fixed with a number increase

Our main problem is that

-> Traits are meh so getting 3x of a overpowered relic with same trait doesnt give us big increased like it does for some classes.

-> BIS legendaries are just small bumps in DPS with almost no synergy,

-> 2 of our gold traits are laughable increases in ST dps volcanic/stormkeeper pet.

-> NH dont have OP trinklets for us like it has for melee classes(but this isnt a expclusive probleam of elemental spec)

-> Depends on build though, LR and IF have this problem of bad relic scaling because no LB or frost damage scaling there.

-> They nerfed legendaries for most if not all classes. Or they made them mandatory, like the bracers+belt with Fire.

-> Most gold traits arent that powerful either.

-> Whispers in the Dark is one of the strongest Ele trinkets thanks to how much hardcasting we do. In fact, Ele benefits from it considerably more that other casters, iirc.

[Crysth]

For the record is Fury strong hell yes it is. Does the spec need a nerf no. What makes Fury so strong right now are 2 things.

1. Fight design. Fights that have extended execute phases or adds that need to be burst aoe'd down Fury will look really good on. That is pretty much every fight but Elisdande and Trillax.

2. DoS + CoF. DoS more so being how it works so well with Fury.

If anything DoS needs some adjusting, but nerfing the spec is not needed.

In all honesty, they just need to remove the ability for DoS to crit. The classes/specs that primarily make exceptional use of the trinket have the ability to ensure it crits. Keep its ability to benefit from damage buffs, but remove the crit, and it'll be fixed. Sure the people that use the trinket won't like it, but then casters have no trinket with such a massive impact, so I feel it's fair.

-> Whispers in the Dark is one of the strongest Ele trinkets thanks to how much hardcasting we do. In fact, Ele benefits from it considerably more that other casters, iirc.

Yes, Whispers is one of our strongest, but it's so unreliable in my experience. For me and our other Ele, it has about a 10% uptime across a day of raiding, and hardly ever procs on pull or during Asc (I've gone nearly a minute into a pull before getting a proc). Although, when it does line up, we shred. Of course this is anecdotal, so... yeah.

[Deleted]

Do you even understand that your percentile is calculated among your class/spec only...?
A 700k krosus parse for rogue/warr/dh/dk is sub 40%. Guess what? 3 out of those 4 classes also have amazing cleave and aoe.
You are so ignorant you don't even realize that you've just PROVEN the OP's point.

I guess we have to wait until more guilds start progressing guldan and start benching eles, maybe then they'll understand something's up.

786k rogue, 86%..