Elemental Shaman Midnight Playstyle and Rotation Guide

All rotations assume you use the talent builds above in the Talents section.

Elemental follows an Action Priority List as opposed to a rotation, meaning you always want to cast the highest thing on the following lists when available (with exceptions for synchronising cooldowns).

Your tier set bonus will change how you play a bit, but the rotations listed below will still be accurate. All that will change is that following your cooldown windows you will alternate builders and spenders regardless of whether you have the Maelstrom to cast your spender, as it will be free.

You should always use a spell with a cast time immediately following Ancestral Swiftness to make sure it goes on cooldown ASAP. It can be a good idea to save a Lava Burst charge for this so you don’t have to worry about keeping enough Maelstrom for an Elemental Blast or potentially overlapping Stormkeeper.

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 damage amp phase.

With Master Of The Elements, you always want to make sure you’re alternating Lava Burst with other spells, ideally stronger ones such as Elemental Blast/Earth Shock or a Stormkeeper-buffed Lightning Bolt.

ST Rotation - Raid Build

1. Stormkeeper - you can hold this as needed for increased value from damage amps or AoE scenarios, but try not to hold it for more than 10 seconds.
2. Ancestral Swiftness.
3. Ascendance - use with your trinket, potion, and Bloodlust.
4. Refresh Flame Shock or Voltaic Blaze if Fire Elemental has less than 3 seconds left.
5. Refresh Flame Shock or Voltaic Blaze with less than 6 seconds left.
6. Lava Burst with no Master Of The Elements buff.
7. Elemental Blast with Master Of The Elements or within 15 maelstrom of cap.
8. Lightning Bolt.

AoE Rotation - Raid Build

2 Targets

Use the ST rotation, but if you have it talented use Voltaic Blaze on cooldown, and use Chain Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt.

3 Targets

Use the 4 target rotation, but if you’re using Flame Shock, keep it up on one target, and never press Lava Burst.

4+ Targets

1. Stormkeeper - you can hold this as needed for increased value from damage amps or more targets, but try not to hold it for more than 10 seconds.
2. Ancestral Swiftness.
3. Voltaic Blaze on cooldown if talented.
4. Ascendance - use with your trinket, potion, and Bloodlust.
5. Lava Burst with Purging Flames, ideally using a Lava Surge proc.
6. Earthquake.
7. Chain Lightning.

ST Rotation - M+ Build

1. Stormkeeper - you can hold this as needed for increased value from damage amps or AoE scenarios, but try not to hold it for more than 10 seconds.
2. Ancestral Swiftness.
3. Ascendance - use with your trinket, potion, and Bloodlust.
4. Refresh Voltaic Blaze if Fire Elemental has less than 3 seconds left.
5. Refresh Voltaic Blaze with less than 6 seconds left.
6. Elemental Blast.
7. Lava Burst.
8. Lightning Bolt.

AoE Rotation - M+ Build

2 Targets

Use the ST rotation, but use Voltaic Blaze on cooldown, and use Chain Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt.

3+ Targets

1. Stormkeeper - you can hold this as needed for increased value from damage amps or more targets, but try not to hold it for more than 10 seconds.
2. Ancestral Swiftness
3. Voltaic Blaze on cooldown
4. Ascendance - use with your trinket, potion, and Bloodlust.
5. Lava Burst with Purging Flames, ideally using a Lava Surge proc.
6. Earthquake.
7. Chain Lightning.

Openers

ST Opener

1. Stormkeeper 3 seconds before pull
2. Lava Burst 1.5 seconds before pull, it should land at 0
3. Ancestral Swiftness
4. Ascendance with trinket and potion
5. Lightning Bolt
6. Lava Burst.
7. Continue on to your normal rotation listed above

AoE Opener

1. Stormkeeper 1.5 seconds before pull.
2. Ancestral Swiftness
3. Voltaic Blaze
4. Ascendance with trinket and potion.
5. Lava Burst.
6. Continue on to your normal rotation listed above.

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 Elemental Blast/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.

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.