Elemental Shaman Playstyle and Rotation Guide

General Priority Single Target:

1. Storm Elemental
2. Stormkeeper
3. Primordial Wave - With Flame Shock on the target
4. Ancestral Swiftness
5. Ascendance
6. Flame Shock - If less than 6 seconds remain.
7. Earth Shock or Elemental Blast - If another cast would put you over maelstrom cap
8. Icefury - without Fusion of Elements
9. Lava Burst - Without Master of the Elements
10. Earth Shock or Elemental Blast
11. Frost Shock - with Icefury buff
12. Lightning Bolt

It’s very important to line things up for Ascendance. You want to avoid having to cast spells that can’t overload during it like Stormkeeper, Primordial Wave and Flame Shock, those should always be cast prior.

To make it possible to line Ascendance up with Stormkeeper and Primordial Wave it’s crucial that they are used as soon as possible in order to not have them desync their cooldowns.

Master of the Elements should be taken into account and ideally spent on Earth Shock, Elemental Blast, Tempest or Stormkeeper Lightning Bolts when possible. Avoid casting Lava Burst twice in a row.

Make sure to cash in on Fusion of Elements before casting a second Icefury, specifically both a fire and lightning spell must have hit the target. Casting Icefury, Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, Icefury will make you lose out on a free Elemental Blast because of Lava Bursts travel time.

Opener Single Target:

1. Storm Keeper 3 seconds before pull
2. Storm Elemental - Straight after, don’t have the boss targeted
3. Flame Shock
4. Primordial Wave
5. Tempered Potion
6. Ascendance
7. Lava Burst
8. Lightning Bolt
9. Lava Burst
10. Lightning Bolt
11. Earth Shock
12. Lightning Bolt

This is the consistent opener, if you gain any Icefury or Lava Surge procs make sure to weave them into the opener.

Multi Target Priority:

1. Storm Elemental
2. Stormkeeper
3. Ascendance
4. Tempest
5. Earthquake
6. Chain Lightning

AoE rotation is fairly simple, it’s mostly about spamming Chain Lightning and Earthquake while casting Tempest when available.

Just as in single target it is very important to line up everything for Ascendance, casting Stormkeeper and Primordial Wave before activating Ascendance to not lost any globals during it.

Opener AoE:

1. Stormkeeper
2. Storm Elemental
3. Ascendance
4. Earthquake
5. Chain Lightning
6. Earthquake
7. Chain Lightning
8. Earthquake

General Playstyle

The goal when playing Elemental is the same as every other class, making the most of every cast. For Elemental this means taking full advantage of different buffs and procs like Master of the Elements, Surge of Power and Lightning Rod.

Master of the Elements should always be considered for your Maelstrom spenders in single target as they are the most efficient damage abilities. Otherwise it’s best spent on Tempest, Icefury and Stormkeeper buffed Lightning Bolts.

Surge of Power most interesting effects are the additional target for Chain Lightning, additional Overloads for Lightning Bolt and additional Flame Shocks.

These all have very different use cases.

For single target, spend the buff on Lightning Bolt.

How you use the buff in AoE depends on target count as well as how long they are expected to live.

In 6+ targets, spend it on Chain Lightning, less than that and it can be worth getting double Flame Shocks instead if the enemies are going to live long enough for the debuff to run its duration.

This also interacts with Stormkeeper making it produce 36 overload hits rather than 25.

Lightning Rod is a great funnelling tool when paired with Chain Lightning and Tempest, making 10% of their total damage also hit any target with Lightning Rod.

It’s possible to have multiple of these active in AoE and Earthquake is smart enough to apply to a target within its area that doesn’t already have it, but will prioritize current target if it doesn’t have the debuff.

Defensives

Elemental has access to three defensives. Astral Shift, Stone Bulwark Totem and Earth Elemental.

Astral Shift is in general the strongest of these three with a solid 12 second duration and short cooldown of 90 seconds, when improved with Planes Traveler. This should be what you use for heavy bursts of damage.

Stone Bulwark Totem provides a respectable absorb for upwards of 40% of your health when cast and then another smaller shield that refreshes to roughly 5% of your health every five seconds. This works best when the damage intake is over a longer period of time where you get the benefit of all the smaller shields. More importantly this serves as something to cover potentially dangerous situations while Astral Shift is already on cooldown.

Earth Elemental provides 15% maximum health and 5% damage reduction through Primordial Bond for a full minute, assuming it doesn’t die. This might not help a lot for a short period of heavy damage intake, but it’s nice when it can cover multiple bad overlaps thanks to its long duration.