Elemental Shaman on end game

[gushDH]

Hey everyone,

I used to be a main elemental shaman in MoP (still sad about the removal of casting Lightning Bolt while moving).

I recently restarted leveling my shaman 100+, and, to be honest, it feels very nice and has a smooth gameplay. Both single target and AoE rotations are satisfying to go through.

Nowadays the max end game I am willing to reach is to clear heroic (I currently farm it with my main Hunter).

How does the rotation feel like at that level, and also for high mythic+ (around +15, patch 7.2)? Any other opinions you might have in favor of or against the spec would be appreciated.

[Rend Blackhand]

Great for trash and bosses with adds. Chain lightning spam with a few earthquakes.

Single target dps sucks balls.

Also: http://stormearthandlava.com

[Unbelievr]

The elemental rotation is quite easy, especially when specced into Ascendance or Lightning Rod. Icefury is slightly harder, with more buttons to push, but it allows you to do damage on the move. In raids, we're good at fights with bursty cleave - i.e. many adds spawning that needs to be quickly taken care of. We're slightly good at fights with sustained cleave (council fights), but a lot of casters are better. For single-target we're not very great, unless the fight duration is short.

In M+ we completely suck up until +10 or so. Our AoE spells take a longer time to cast than the mobs actually live, so melee will obliterate the packs before you get to throw your second instant CL. Even if you stack haste, you probably won't be asked to join any boosting groups. In higher M+ we're okay additions, especially in weeks with fortified. The mini-stun from EQ is great against a lot of annoying trash, and our AoE damage is quite evenly distributed, making bolstering less painful too. Add in stun/slow totem, heroism, 12s CD interrupt and an okay personal CD (40%) and we can be quite helpful in a coordinated team.

We're really hurt by tyrannical, volcanic, sanguine and explosive though. Our main DPS cooldowns don't line up with the encounters in M+, making it really hard to optimize their uptime. As an example: You normally want Ascendance (3min CD) on Tyrannical weeks, and in addition you have fire elemental (5min CD, reduced a bit for each LvB cast). Since you barely ever cast LvB on trash mobs, the fire ele will not be up for every boss fight. Nor Ascendance. This means that you have to memorize when to use which CD, or you risk being dead weight on some of the bosses. Last 3 bosses of HoV is a good example there. You barely get your Ascendance back from the 3rd to the 4th, and the 5th comes right after. In CoS, the last two bosses are about 2 minutes inbetween. In both instances, the amount of trash between 1st and 2nd boss is high enough that it warrants 1-2 uses even there. This is not a problem for many other classes, where their CDs are 2/4 minutes instead of our 3/5 minutes.

[TripleZero]

Ele is one of the best specs for m+ out there, especially with sephuz and bracers. High aoe damage, ascendance for high burst on bosses for tyrannical, aoe stun, eq knockdown. CDs can be an issue in some instances, especially on lower levels but i think the poster above is a bit dramatic. It pretty much ceases to be an issue on 15+.

Keep in mind though that if you truly want to excell you need to be able to play icefury as well ocasionally, upper kara fortified for example.

Were also sick on the aoe heavy bosses in nh, mainly skorp, spellblade, tichondrius. Were good on guldan to burst eyes and adds on chronomatic.

Pure st bosses can be tough on mythic levels until you have proper gear, but since youre only doing heroic you will be completely fine.

[netherflame]

Coming from an 8/10 mythic raider ele is actually in a pretty poor place overall, before everyone says omg aoe!

There are three fights where ele can really excel; lel skorp, spellblade, and Tich. The rest of the fights you're better off bringing another raider of a different class who can do good single target/priority damage. The classes that ele is beating right now are ones that have fundamental problems with them either with their functionality or their rotation. Short of those three fights above I swap to my warlock for everything else because it simply isn't worth it.

I wish we actually had less malestrom generation during AoE but things like Earthquake and Shock would pack more punch. I frequently feel like every time I press CL I'm back to a full bar even if I just dumped it all. Then for ascendance it just doesn't seem to pack a punch when we are already required to not move at all to do kinda ok damage.

[roflwaffle]

I wish we actually had less malestrom generation during AoE but things like Earthquake and Shock would pack more punch.

id be totally ok with them making EQ a 100 spender and doubling the damage, would make aoe ramp up a thing, but its not like CL doesnt do good damage anyway

[netherflame]

id be totally ok with them making EQ a 100 spender and doubling the damage, would make aoe ramp up a thing, but its not like CL doesnt do good damage anyway

100% agree, I don't think CL is bad but there is a problem where if CL overloads the damage skyrockets, otherwise it feels pretty abysmal.

Chart for jesus.
https://www.stormearthandlava.com/wp...ning_jesus.png

[roflwaffle]

100% agree, I don't think CL is bad but there is a problem where if CL overloads the damage skyrockets, otherwise it feels pretty abysmal.

Chart for jesus.
https://www.stormearthandlava.com/wp...ning_jesus.png

ah yes, the palpatine chart