I really don't think Blizzard has put serious thought/consideration into Elemental.

[Deleted]

I think the spec ended up being fun because:

1. Flavor, master of elements. What's not to love?
2. Great sound effects and spell animations, goes with the above. Hurling lava and lightning.
3. Some fun mechanics with guaranteed lava burst crits, being a burst monster etc.

However, so many mechanics are counter intuitive and you get the feeling Blizzard is reading feedback and being like "oh shit, didn't think of that".
It feels like they are struggling to band-aid fix DPS without overdoing it. The mechanics and our mastery I'm guessing makes balancing VERY difficult and risky for them, so they'd rather undershoot than overshoot and have us 1 shotting people and mobs when the stars align.

- Power of the maelstrom and stormkeeper - you wan't them both at the same time but it's counter intuitive. Do you wait? Do you cast SK on cd? Hard to know without looking up what the best DPS is.

- PotM not working on chain lightning making it a useless golden trait very often (don't cast a single Lightning bolt with the buff up).

- NEEDING talents to be DECENT at something (icefury for movement, ascendance for burst etc) but instead feeling like chosing one of those things leaves 2 gaping holes instead. A talent should feel like 1 great bonus, not 1 bandaid and 2 gushing wounds left you wish you could bandaid also.

- Flame shock using maelstrom - dumb. Should be a builder / not have anything to do with maelstrom. Counter intuitive recasting it and losing maelstrom right before dumping it with earth shock.

- Too many buffs and procs. Stormkeeper, PotM, icefury, elemental focus, full maelstrom, lava surge. ALWAYS STUFF GETTING LOST!!! - doesn't feel good.

- So much DPS tied into Fire Elemental - doesn't feel good. Hard to use perfectly because timing is hard on many encounters.

- Elemental blast, one of my favorite spells. What's really the point of it? I mean what's the benefit? I use it because I like the animation and I'm not a min maxer. Should be unique somehow. The buffs aren't even noticeable. Please make it better and feel like our BEST spell to cast. It's all elements together FFS it should be epic!

And many more that I think of when playing but don't come to mind now.

Please feel free to add counter intuitive / silly designs of the elemental class.

[Munjica]

I totally agree with the title. Best indicator of this is the recent buffs. The fact that they forgot to buff overload spells damage shows that nobody there is actually invested in this spec. It feels like ele is that spec that nobody gives a deam about and everybody in blizzard would be happy if it didn't exist.

[Crutos]

"It feels like ele is that spec that nobody gives a deam about and everybody in blizzard would be happy if it didn't exist."

Interesting how so many players are saying almost the same thing about their class/spec on both these forums and the wow-forums

[AsapShocky]

Yeah I completely agree with what you said. The elemental shaman is an epic class. Why does the only thing that ever amazes is the rarity that i cast an LvB and 4 come out?

I think SK is so clunky, its like hold up, leme just chill here for a second...

[gambit998]

I agree with the OP, the fact that i HAVE to give up my true burst for mobility kills the spec, I like Icefury i enjoy the spell but half the time i HAVE to use Primal Elementalist because you know Numbers. (Which i dont do because i enjoy the freedom of movement) This should not be the case, this should give you a buff that turns the next 5 spells into Ice spells and makes thm castable while moving or something simple like that but it doesnt do that. It adds a spell that granted hits like a truck with the buff into the mix, So i have to now watch Lavaburst, flameshock durations, Maelstrom, Icefury cooldowns so i know when the time comes for me to move i have enough time to get the cast off so i can be mobile to spam my frost shocks and surges. Or when i am all bursty mode o look i have to move but wait.......i am in ascendance and i have my Primal Fire Ele out o well cant move now or i waste the cooldown. The entire talent system doesnt mesh well.

Personal Movment should be baseline. (Gust of wind) and i dont understand why it is even in our 'Utility tier' it just doesnt make sense. Blink which is better than an invested talent is better and it is baseline. I mean if i was invulnerable and un targetable for its duration it would be amazing. but that is not the case. Blizz needs to look at the spec and decided on what needs to go and what needs to stay and fix things that do not mesh properly with the spec.

[grandpab]

From the little bit of reading I've been doing here and there since I came back, I quit 5 years ago, it seems like a lot of the classes got a pretty decent rebuild. I mean other specs got new abilities for their rotation or the old abilities do something different than what they used to.

Then you look at elemental and it's basically the same thing it was 5+ years ago. The rotation is the same, the major damage dealing abilities all pretty much do exactly the same thing. The only thing that's really different is there's a couple different cooldowns now and they've got maelstrom. Maelstrom works so much better for enh that it does for ele though.