Method Elemental Shaman Guide - Playstyle And Rotation

Playstyle & Rotation

General Rotation

Elemental has a very simple priority to follow.

Stormkeeper
Ascendance
Ancestral Swiftness or Tempest
Earth Shock or Elemental Blast
Flame Shock or Voltaic Blaze - With less than six seconds remaining on the debuff
Lava Burst
Lightning Bolt

Stormkeeper should always be used just prior to Ascendance.

Delay Ascendance as necessary to achieve this unless it will make you lose an Ascendance cast throughout the fight or cause you to not use it during a phase where the boss takes increased damage.

Power Of The Maelstrom only stacks to two; make sure to cast a Lightning Bolt over Lava Burst when at two stacks to not potentially waste a stack.

General AoE Rotation

AoE is very similar but replaces Lightning Bolt with Chain Lightning and spends maelstrom on Earthquake instead. Lava Burst is only cast after a Voltaic Blaze with Purging Flames and Voltaic Blaze is used on cooldown.

Openers

Cast Earth Shock when possible, it will not always be at the same point because of overload variance.

Use instant cast Lava Burst from Lava Surge as quickly as possible.

General Playstyle

Elemental offers a very simple and straight forward playstyle that mostly just revolves around maintaining Flame Shock on your target to guarantee that Lava Burst always crits and casting Earth Shock or Lava Burst. If neither is available proceed to cast Lightning Bolt.

Make good use of Spiritwalker's Grace to maintain damage while being forced to move and ask your Evoker friends to cast Time Spiral since it gives you an additional use of this ability.

If Master Of The Elements is taken it’s important to alternate spells in a way that you don’t cast two Lava Burst in a row.

Cooldowns

Elemental has three primary cooldowns that you want to pay attention to.

Ancestral Swiftness - This Farseer ability should be cast on cooldown since a massive part of your damage comes from the Ancestor that it spawns.

The ancestor spawns immediately but the ability only starts recovering its cooldown once the instant cast has been used. This means that you want to make sure you follow Ancestral Swiftness with a spell that actually has a cast time and not Earth Shock.

Often Stormkeeper and Ancestral Swiftness tend to line up fairly well and a Stormkeeper buffed Lightning Bolt will not consume the buff, therefore it can be worthwhile to make an attempt at having a Lava Burst charge ready so that Ancestral Swiftness can be spent instantly.

Stormkeeper - This should also be cast on cooldown in most scenarios since it also summons an ancestor as Farseer and has a shorter cooldown on Stormbringer.

There are plenty of encounters however where it’s beneficial to delay Stormkeeper for incoming AoE as the improvement to Chain Lightning is much more powerful than the improvement to Lightning Bolt.

On five targets you get five guaranteed overloads resulting in 25 overload hits while on four you only get 16 since you only hit four targets.

On two targets it’s better to cast Lightning Bolt with Stormkeeper buff active.

Ascendance - Elementals big cooldown. It can be improved with either First Ascendant or Preeminence depending on what the fight requires which is a nice option to have.

It’s very important to pair Ascendance with Stormkeeper, always cast Ascendance after Stormkeeper.

Make sure you’re able to do uninterrupted damage during Ascendance, pairing it with Spiritwalker's Grace if you need to move during it.

Elemental Shaman Midnight Playstyle and Rotation Guide