Introduction
My name is Raime and this will be my guide for the Elemental Shaman, a spec that I’ve played for almost one and a half decade. I’ve been competing in the race to world first with Method for three years and before then I co-lead the guild Halcyon for a dozen tiers.
Elemental is looking more promising for The War Within than it has for several expansions thanks to the introduction of Skyfury, a fairly strong raid-buff that any Shaman provides. This means it’s now always worthwhile to bring a Shaman, not just specifically an Enhancement Shaman.
What has changed
Patch 11.1 Changes
The first major patch since the rework brings very few changes to Elemental, and the largest change is a change for the worse.
Primordial Wave has been reworked and now only shoots a projectile that does essentially no damage at every target affected by Flame Shock. It no longer applies Flame Shock nor grants the effect that causes your next Lava Burst to hit every target with Flame Shock.
This means you have to reapply Flame Shock manually twice as often on single target and you also lose a significant amount of maelstrom and damage from the additional Lava Bursts, especially in AoE.
This change is a pretty significant nerf and makes the spell lack any sort of pay-off, apart from the haste it provides.
A recent hotfix tried to remedy this by making Primordial Wave itself generate more maelstrom and hit much harder. It’s a change in the right direction but still feels worse than the old iteration.
Ancestral Guidance has been removed. To compensate they buffed Healing Stream Totem by 80% making it remain useless in raid and probably m+ as well, it still does less healing than Earth Shield.
Deeply Rooted Elements has been changed to take the maelstrom spent into account so that Elemental Blast is more likely than Earth Shock to trigger Ascendance. This is not enough to make Elemental Blast better as the loss of mobility is too great.
Lastly the first beneficial change the patch brings is that Stormbringers Arc Discharge talent can now stack to two, meaning you will not lose out on the instant and improved Lightning Bolts or Chain Lightnings by casting two Tempests in a row.
Second change for the better is that the Primal Storm- and Fire Elementals abilities have their cooldown reset when their duration is refreshed or extended.
Patch 11.0.7 Changes
Patch 11.0.7 doesn’t bring any changes to Elemental but a recent tuning pass that increased the throughput of the Ancestors from Farseer has pushed it into the preferred hero talent for single target encounters. The new ring will be BiS for Elemental, more details on gems can be found in the gearing section.
Patch 11.0.5 Changes
Elemental saw substantial rework with patch 11.0.5 that removed or reworked a lot of problematic talents that encouraged heavily spamming either Lightning Bolt or Lava Burst depending on the build.
Flash of Lightning no longer provides cooldown reduction when casting Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning while Deeply Rooted Elements now triggers Ascendance from maelstrom spenders rather than Lava Burst.
Ascendance itself has also been reworked and now makes overloads deal 150% more damage and overload an additional time for its duration. This is an incredibly strong cooldown that once again makes mastery the most desired stat. It also has a new function that applies Flame Shock to upwards of six targets when activated and then fires Lava Burst at each of them.
Icefury is back as a staple talent now that it triggers from Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Tempest in addition to Lava Burst. It’s still mostly a spell used to get free Elemental Blasts from Fusion of Elements.