Is Elemental a less Desirable Destruction Warlock in BFA?

[Deleted]

Ele rotation is MUCH more fun than Destruction

[Kralljin]

Nature's guardian - 20% heal when u drop below 35% health on a 45 sec cd. If u need more than that idk what to tell u.

Cheat Death does what the name implies - you survive lethal damage, Nature's Guardian does not safe you from a hit that deals more damage than your current health.

[Nfinitii]

Cheat Death does what the name implies - you survive lethal damage, Nature's Guardian does not safe you from a hit that deals more damage than your current health.

Actually it does, according to finalbosstv he shows that he takes a lethal hit and it saves him.

[Deleted]

The biggest difference between ele and destro (besides the latter having way stronger utility and survivability) is consistency of output and for now it holds true in BfA, because elemental fury is still present and aftershock change confirms that they are doubling down on RNG design philosophy for elemental.

Also, with the removal of gust, ele becomes top dog in the least mobile department as far as ranged go. Both burning rush and body&soul don't require you to self silence yourself.

[Kalisandra]

What Ele has: Better mobility, wind rush totem, earthbind totem, heroism and better burst aoe, and strong ST when dot cleave feeds LvB procs. Suffer less with heavy movement, cleaves 'on the fly' with CL where destro cleave can be slow. Can self rez.

BfA Elemental has no Earthbind, and no effective DoT cleave, because Flame Shock has a 6s CD and 18s duration. AoE is currently questionalble because Earthquake blows - it takes 5+ mobs standing in it for the full duration before it's better than using Earth Shock. Self rez is on a 30min CD, so I don't think it's that important.

They're very same-y. If there isn't any one thing that makes it or breaks it for you its hard to call it. For instance, back in Cata, the LB glyph to cast while moving made Ele superior in PvE. Might also consider being a shaman lets you heal and have an op melee spec. With warlock you're committing to being a dedicated ranged player.

Enhance is not always OP. In fact, more often than not in the past it's been fairly poor.

[Elestia]

BfA Elemental has no Earthbind, and no effective DoT cleave, because Flame Shock has a 6s CD and 18s duration. AoE is currently questionalble because Earthquake blows - it takes 5+ mobs standing in it for the full duration before it's better than using Earth Shock. Self rez is on a 30min CD, so I don't think it's that important.
Enhance is not always OP. In fact, more often than not in the past it's been fairly poor.

All shaman specs have Earthbind.

Enhance has been strong since WoD and especially so after the Legion rework. Plus with the BfA CD changes impacting most other specs' rotations significantly, enhance is one of the few 'unscathed' in a way because all it's CDs were already on independent GCDs. Enhance has been Blizzards pet project / baby / experiment through Legion - it's gonna do just fine in BfA.

I'd also agree that Ele's flame shock having a cooldown sucks. However, FS isn't what generates power, and for LvB proc fishing you wouldn't be dotting more than 3 anyway. Once you're 4 or more targets is more effective to use maelstorm for earthquake and spam CL. FS is still instant cast, having one up gets you the procs you need regardless. Most fights as is won't have long lived targets, even if they do you have 2-3 FS up easy, just the procs are going to roll in later rather than sooner.

In that sense, Destro will have more upfront cleaving power just because of Bane, but you're still limited to narrow windows, which in fairness balances the fact that they hard cast immolates and chaosbolt. Destro will get embers primarily from immolate and doesn't catch up until you're incinerated 4-5 times. Where it takes off is in aoe which can be very fun, especially with infernal providing even more ember gen.

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The biggest difference between ele and destro (besides the latter having way stronger utility and survivability) is consistency of output and for now it holds true in BfA, because elemental fury is still present and aftershock change confirms that they are doubling down on RNG design philosophy for elemental.

Also, with the removal of gust, ele becomes top dog in the least mobile department as far as ranged go. Both burning rush and body&soul don't require you to self silence yourself.

You mean shifting into ghost wolf? You would never do this unless there was a designated mechanic requiring long range movement. Like any caster, and like destro lock, you would set up a chain of instant casts and plan movement for those chains. When played properly, Ele in pve is far more mobile. Destro - you gotta use that speed to cover ground with 2 conflags. And no more portals either! If you had something to cleave you could burning rush (-1 gcd), bane (-1gcd), conflag (+4) twice and drop your infernal... so max 4 gcd of movement with a net of 2 GCD worth of damage. Ele you can FS, LvBproc, ES, FS for days (more so if you're using icefury), drop fire ele, drop earthquake, take stormkeeper and have 2 instant LB or CL casts. Plus, even if you had to ghost wolf you wouldn't necessarily need to for a full 5 GCD (or 2 if you're going by net damage windows).

With this argument in hand I'm gonna go ahead and strongly disagree with stating Ele has been relegated to 'least mobile'.

[Deleted]

You mean shifting into ghost wolf? You would never do this unless there was a designated mechanic requiring long range movement. Like any caster, and like destro lock, you would set up a chain of instant casts and plan movement for those chains. When played properly, Ele in pve is far more mobile. Destro - you gotta use that speed to cover ground with 2 conflags. And no more portals either! If you had something to cleave you could burning rush (-1 gcd), bane (-1gcd), conflag (+4) twice and drop your infernal... so max 4 gcd of movement with a net of 2 GCD worth of damage. Ele you can FS, LvBproc, ES, FS for days (more so if you're using icefury), drop fire ele, drop earthquake, take stormkeeper and have 2 instant LB or CL casts. Plus, even if you had to ghost wolf you wouldn't necessarily need to for a full 5 GCD (or 2 if you're going by net damage windows).

Listen carefully and think before you reply:
There are two types of movement inside combat in this game: forced and one you can plan for. The latter you can negate by stutter stepping in between gcds and planning your mobility/instant abilities accordingly, the former you CAN NOT react to with anything besides non-situational instant casts (e.g. not requiring any stacks, pre-built resources or random procs)/ mobility cooldowns (e.g. shimmer/ice floes etc.).

Now go re-read your 'argument' and explain to me how are you gonna plan for surge procs in a forced movement scenario (you can't, the best you can do is bank the proc for a few seconds and the longer you do, the more dps you'll lose by duplicating it), or always be at proper maelstrom threshold for es/eq (in case you haven't noticed ms generation has been nerfed in BfA and it takes ages to build up for even 1 es cast). Fire ele is not an argument either, because that's a spell you burn pretty much on cooldown, neither is stormkeeper, due to it 1) being a 1 min cooldown, which - again - you can't really sit on due to dps loss over the course of the encounter 2) being much weaker in BfA, with only 2 flat overloads and no damage component 3) you wouldn't pick SK for single target anyway.

The only point you have is with icefury, but then again, you won't always be able to utilize it correctly in a forced movement situation, because it requires a cast and banked maelstrom ahead of time. As far as flame shock goes... 6 sec cooldown - if you refresh it just prior to having to move, you are shit out of luck. So yeah, it'd say both destro and ele are in pretty much the same boat as far as meaningful mobility inside a forced movement scenario is concerned, except that you can actually pre-toggle burning rush and have some form of movement speed increase without effectively silencing yourself for the duration.

Also - the underlying difference I listed was consistency of output, not mobility - that was just an addendum, so the next time you quote one of my posts, at least attempt to address the main argument, instead of cherry picking one thing you disagree with and then proceeding to line up made up 'facts' to support your claim.

[Kalisandra]

All shaman specs have Earthbind.

Right you are. I confused it with Earthgrip, which in BfA only Resto can have.

I'd also agree that Ele's flame shock having a cooldown sucks. However, FS isn't what generates power, and for LvB proc fishing you wouldn't be dotting more than 3 anyway. Once you're 4 or more targets is more effective to use maelstorm for earthquake and spam CL.

Not any more. Right now it's best to dump the Maelstrom using Earthshock, because EQ is miserable.

FS is still instant cast, having one up gets you the procs you need regardless. Most fights as is won't have long lived targets, even if they do you have 2-3 FS up easy, just the procs are going to roll in later rather than sooner.

Two FS up is all you're likely to have, between the CD and duration.

You mean shifting into ghost wolf? You would never do this unless there was a designated mechanic requiring long range movement. Like any caster, and like destro lock, you would set up a chain of instant casts and plan movement for those chains.

What 'chain of instant casts'? The best Ele can manage is renewing FS and casting Earth Shock (Icefury + Frost Shock is a DPS loss over ES right now), and maybe have a LvB proc if the rng is kind (but unless EotE is the go-to talent we'll be needing to blow those immediately to avoid losing procs) unless you spec into Stormkeeper, which is likely to have scaling issues. A mobile Ele build *might* come out okay, but it's very likely that it won't. Oh, and claiming that "you can FS, LvBproc, ES, FS for days" is rubbish given the 6s CD on Flame Shock and the 60 MS cost of Earth Shock (and as I've said, Icefury is a DPS loss over saving MS for Earth Shock, and just casting a LB in the time you used for Icefury).

Your arguments will have a more merit if Blizzard tunes the numbers so that some of these spells and talents are actually worth casting.

[Kralljin]

Actually it does, according to finalbosstv he shows that he takes a lethal hit and it saves him.

I highly doubt that intended.

First off, check the wording of Cauterize and Cheat death:

Fatal damage instead brings you to 35% health and then burns you for 28% of your maximum health over 6 sec.

Fatal attacks instead reduce you to 7% of your maximum health.

They clearly state that damage that would kill you instead triggers Cauterize / Cheat Death.
Now Nature's Guardian for comparison.

When your health is brought below 35%, you instantly heal for 20% of your maximum health.

Effects like Nature's Guardian have (to my knowledge) never triggered if you go straight from X% (X being >35% health) to 0%.

Second, unless the Nature's Guardian tooltip omits the fact that you absorb lethal damage, it would only save you if the overkill damage is less than 20% of your maximum health.
Which kinda undermines the whole "Cheat Death" thing, as the "cap" for Nature's guardian is far lower than Cauterize / Cheat Death, which do not trigger on like hits that deal twice of your Maximum health.

[Nfinitii]

I highly doubt that intended.

First off, check the wording of Cauterize and Cheat death:





They clearly state that damage that would kill you instead triggers Cauterize / Cheat Death.
Now Nature's Guardian for comparison.


Effects like Nature's Guardian have (to my knowledge) never triggered if you go straight from X% (X being >35% health) to 0%.

Second, unless the Nature's Guardian tooltip omits the fact that you absorb lethal damage, it would only save you if the overkill damage is less than 20% of your maximum health.
Which kinda undermines the whole "Cheat Death" thing, as the "cap" for Nature's guardian is far lower than Cauterize / Cheat Death, which do not trigger on like hits that deal twice of your Maximum health.

Idk how they have it coded, I just know it saved him from a lethal hit and a larger follow up hit. If I get enough time this weekend I could try to test it to c how it is currently working.

[DarkMethod]

I don't play my shaman much, but they've seemed to me to have the best spell effects, and a fun rotation. My only problem with them is they are so squishy, and I do not like squishy at all. But other than that, they look the coolest of any class when I watch them killing things or at the training dummies.

[mkultra55]

Idk how they have it coded, I just know it saved him from a lethal hit and a larger follow up hit. If I get enough time this weekend I could try to test it to c how it is currently working.

Yeah I saw that and read the same thing on Earthshrine and in my Guild forums.

It will cheat death as long as the overkill isn't greater than 20%. For example you go from 36% to -10% in one hit, this will activate and put you at 10% life. Though apparently it's not completely working that way currently (though Elemental has this as a trait in Legion and that was how it worked in Legion), and that it will actually only save you if you're under 35% already when the talent cooldown refreshes, and then you take a hit below 0%