Elemental, What's the Veridct?

[Cempa]

My ele is a fresh 90 with random gear, I just finished the quests and got the new cool stuff (ring, cloak and trinket). I also did those quests on my 550 lock and Shadow and though level 90 is not 100 ele is doing just fine in PvE quest mobs.

The reason I am making this post is to ask the player who do run high end dungeons and raids how are they finding it? (PvP players feel free to jump in)

[Deleted]

got a 562 ele shaman (raided normal soo, no time for hc unfortunately), at the moment it feels very weird having molten earth doing 40% of your dmg as i (and every other ele shaman) is currently mastery stacked and supposedly our best stat will be multistrike at lvl 100. only got the chance to play a little bit of lvl 100 ele on beta and i must say it was interesting. i think we have more options now gameplay wise than we had before

[Paula Deen]

Ele is just as fun as it has ever been.

[Bllets]

Currently I'm enjoying it a lot.

I'm actually hoping that EQ is gonna stay as a part of our single target rotation, since it makes it far more interesting to play and gives us some more damage against 2 targets. The new mastery is in my opinion more fun to play with, despite being passive. The new mastery is very single target focused which has boosted my ST dps compared to other classes, but our AoE has suffered and I'm no longer #1 on AoE fights with 3-5 targets. I'm getting utterly destroyed by enhancement, warriors and mages on these fights, instead my ST dps has gone up compared to others, so I'm actually pretty happy since I prefer being good at ST instead of AoE.

I must admit I miss having healing tide and the new Ancestral Guidance is far from the old one, but I guess that was to be expected.

[Velthari]

ele is going to be fun till lvl 100 and then probably going to be benched till maybe 2nd season of the expac because all our dmg comes from our mastery and bliz dosnt understand how to allocate stats for pvp oh and instant cast eq would be a dream come true right now.

[sunxsera]

Ele felt good yesterday ... i play mainly resto shaman,my ele specc has ilvl 584 ... i pulled some pretty decent dps yesterday.
BUT thats mainly because mastery is so high right now - and does BY FAR the most dmg of all spells.

Also i dont think ele will be viable in any way with lvl 100 in pvp.

[Kuriyama]

Right now, I'm not liking it. The lack of movement hit me harder than I thought it would. It's just super boring having to stand still to cast. Makes me wish I was playing a melee class. So right now I'm tempted to switch back to my Ret Paladin as my main for WoD. I'm giving it a couple of weeks. I really dislike too much change, I love my Shaman a lot but I am not willing to play Resto or Enhancement.

[Sparkidy]

From a PvE perspective, it feels fine.

Look, I'm not raiding heroics (ilvl 571), but I come on this forum and it's really hard to get over the doom and gloom sometimes. And that's totally cool, for some people it might be bad news. But the spec feels awesome. The new mastery is awesome, the look and sound effect is amazing. Having to weave Earthquake in instead of Chain Lightning spam for AoE is fine. The no more moving Lightning Bolt is annoying, but we'll get used to it.

Put it this way: I've been unable to play for 6 weeks, and reading these forums in that time made me seriously consider dropping my shammy because I thought it was gonna be terrible. I got home, logged back on and within an hour, I was excited to be playing it in WoD.

That might not go for people who are genuinely and rightfully concerned about their raid spot, but most people are going to be more than fine.

[Deleted]

The no more moving Lightning Bolt is annoying, but we'll get used to it.

This is very jarring, but it is how it used to be, so I've quickly readapted. The biggest loss for me as an Elemental Shaman main is HTT, I really miss it, but the reason I miss it is because it was so strong. Everyone likes being overpowered, and the amount of offhealing an Elemental Shaman brought from a GCD with HTT and AG was just not balanced. They both needed to be pruned, so I accept that

Put it this way: I've been unable to play for 6 weeks, and reading these forums in that time made me seriously consider dropping my shammy because I thought it was gonna be terrible. I got home, logged back on and within an hour, I was excited to be playing it in WoD.

That might not go for people who are genuinely and rightfully concerned about their raid spot, but most people are going to be more than fine.

I've said this a million times, but nless you are in a guild that is extremely high end competitively (talking top 0.5% of Guilds), it really wont matter, and if you are in that kind of guild you pretty much have to expect to class change because there can only be so many classes at the top. For most of us knowledge of our class, the enjoyment we have in playing it and RNG on Loot drops is infinitely more important to numbers than the spec you play (especially single target, AoE is a little different as the kind of AoE makes a big difference, but then Elemental Shaman really can't complain about that, we have had our insane 3-5 target AoE niche for ages).

[Deleted]

It's quite unclear yet how good the dps specs will be balanced and where elemental will be.

However, what is clear is that dps shamans overall have lost their ability to contribute to healing thereby helping the raid to deal with certain boss mechanics, while other classes have not lost that utility.

In the end, it also is a question of boss design, since extra heal from shamans or other utility from other classes (Portals, Invulnerability, etc.) might not even be a necessity for the upcoming WoD fights (others on the beta severs may shed more light on this topic).

So, finally, we are nothing more than a pure dps class and no "hybrid" or whatever. Many wanted this for some time to happen, but for me, it only means that diversity among classes is getting reduced and vanishes more and more.

During MoP, I really enjoyed being part of the strategy for certain bosses, especially during progression, not only because of my dps but also because of my off healing capabilities - the same way as others contributed with their own class-unique utilities. You could always influence the outcome of a fight significantly by providing the healing at the right time.

That seems to have vanished entirely for shamans at the moment and makes me quite curious (and a bit sad) about the future.

Right now, lvl 90 dmg doesn't matter at all and you cannot say anything about how it turns out during WoD. Even one hotfix one week after release can change everything.

[Sparkidy]

what is clear is that dps shamans overall have lost their ability to contribute to healing

We still have Healing Stream, Healing Rain, Healing Surge and Ancestral Guidance (if you choose it), so I think you're being a bit over the top. Perhaps you mean we've lost the ability to heal meaningfully? Sure, it's no more like MoP when you could drop AG while CL-spamming a pack and the real healers could go afk for 10 seconds, but I can still help out with some (possibly trivial) healing if the need arises.

My understanding was that ALL hybrids with a healing spec lost some ability to heal in their non-healing specs anyway. Aside from druids and their Heart of the Wild (which involves stopping DPS entirely to use properly), shadow priests L90 talents no longer heal as well as do damage. Paladins L45 talents have been weakened dramatically for Prot and Ret. Other classes have lost that utility too.

Anyway I think this is getting off topic to the OP, and heading more down a road that is already being trampled to mud in numerous other threads in this forum.

My verdict, as I see it at this point of time, is that most people who enjoyed elemental in MoP will also very much enjoy it in WoD. If OP is asking performance wise, then you can check out http://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/Raid_T17M.html with the usual caveats that go with sims, or I'm sure someone who has done beta raid testing can give better input than me, but as Xentres said, one hotfix can turn that upside down.

[whyabadi]

I know many classes have lost a lot of things, but I think Elemental shamans are two steps behind now. This is from a PvP point of view.
- The change to Tremor Totem is VERY noticeable. They might as well just remove the ability.
- The loss of Lightning Bolt on the move makes you very kiteable. You simply can't kill a moving target.
- The new mastery leaves no room for skill or strategy. Molten Earth can be outhealed by a glyphed Recuperate.
- Ascendance is only good for ... healing yourself because of its silence protection. Lava Burst doesn't crit that much higher than your mastery rocks. Yes, Lava Burst grants Lightning Shield charges now. See next point.
- Fulmination takes like 15-20% of your target's health. A 3x Starsurge combo does way more damage. So does a 2x Supernova combo.
- Multidotting is completely nonexistent.

So basically, we lost our burst, and gained pretty much nothing. Why would any pvp team take an Elemental shaman?

[CombatJack]

So, finally, we are nothing more than a pure dps class and no "hybrid" or whatever. Many wanted this for some time to happen, but for me, it only means that diversity among classes is getting reduced and vanishes more and more.

I disagree. Ele shaman have way more utility than some other DPS specs/classes. All the various totems and utility spells make it a very useful class.

[Deleted]

In my experience i don´t feel that much has changed. Our rotation remains mostly the change. Yeah it hit abit at first not being able to move and cast and i still gotta get used to it. But i don´t feel my dps personally has decreased a whole lot. In terms of dps and rotation it appears relatively samely in my opinion. So my verdict is that it´s still a good spec.

[Addiena]

I disagree. Ele shaman have way more utility than some other DPS specs/classes. All the various totems and utility spells make it a very useful class.

Compared to what we had ...we are as useful as tits on a bull now, spin it however you want but reality is we don't bring anything now that is strong enough to guarantee a raid spot. Out Strong off healing in MoP made us almost mandatory on certain fights and an amazing bonus on all others. Our Top of the line AoE DPS pretty much made sure I was never in want of a raid position and now ... its terrible.

We have ...middle of the pack ST DPS and nothing else (Lust aside) that says .. you MUST have me in your raid.

I miss HTT the most ...the nerfed AG is so weak you might as well ignore it even being there.

TLR - Ele is back to where it was at the start of MoP (Mediocre DPS in both fields) minus the amazing offheals and utility.

[shamantime]

Correct me if I'm wrong but, aren't both Shaman specs supposed to have the highest AoE DPS? That's something to be brought for (even though I hate EQ.)

[Deleted]

We have ...middle of the pack ST DPS and nothing else (Lust aside) that says .. you MUST have me in your raid.

No class is required for a raid, bring the player not the class has actually never been truer (assuming dps is balanced which we'll see once WoD comes).

[Sparkidy]

I think Addiena is referring to things like warlock portals (for Garrosh or Seigecrafter for example) or DKs Gorefiend's Grasp (for Lei Shen) that trivialised some mechanics to the point that it was overall more valuable to have any warlock than a better performing alternative dps class. While not literally required, such abilities made those fights much much easier.

And sure, Shamans don't really have anything like that aside from Windwalk or Earthgrab Totems, but we just haven't really seen an encounter that has had a mechanic that they can trivialise in the same way as the others I mentioned. Nor are they so unique that they can't be provided by other classes. But they're there.

[Slappyjoe]

Posts like Addiena's reminds me of just how thankful I am to be in a guild that doesn't determine raid spots based solely on how much utility a class brings.

[Regorill]

It has brought some challenge to the class.. balancing your instants for needed movement, etc. And as opposed as I personally was to taking elemental overload away as our mastery, the new mastery is pretty fun looking too. The only thing that I think dps shaman need is a raid utility cooldown; I am totally envious of new 6.0 raid cooldowns like aspect of fox.