Elemental Shaman 8.3

[Valks 2,375]

This thread is for comments about our Elemental Shaman guide.

[Adamant 8]

Please add liquid magma totem to the opener, as well as a section on ability usage for primal elementalist. I'm wondering about when to use meteor.

[Stormy 11]

Regarding the opener, I only have a generic opener up. I didn't want to make overcomplicated openers for every possible spec, and Liquid Magma being primarily used for AoE, you generally want to use it asap in AoE situations. If you happen to have Liquid Magma talented and are in a single-target situation, for example a mythic+ boss, I would want to cast liquid magma after your first Lava Burst. Basically, last in the "opener" section if you're not using Ascendance. If you're using Ascendance, I would cast it before the Flame Shock, otherwise you would risk losing your flame shock as Ascendance ends.

Regarding Primal Elementalist,I've been in the process of doing that, notably checking if macros worked properly for the various elementals: the main one for Storm Elemental AoE works fine, and you'll also likely want one for Earth Elemental's Harden Skin ability.

Good news regarding the Fire elemental, you just keep everything on auto-cast unless you want to hold Meteor for an AoE phase coming shortly. Meteor is worth using in single target.

[Guest Gate]

I get Int being the most important stat, but why did Mastery drop all the way to the bottom? Shouldn't it be most important after Int? Is there a chance it will change once we get into the bulk of BfA content?

[Stormy 11]

Mastery only dropped relatively. The value of secondaries is quite close, only crit is really above the other 3. One of the reasons Mastery is bad is because it is very weak for AoE, while Haste becomes very good. For single-target it is important to have a good amount of mastery but overall crit just gives more value. It is (as always) highly recommended that you sim your characters (using raidbots for example) to find out the exact value of stats for your character. Secondaries being very close, the list I wrote is primarily indicative and will only be true for a majority of elemental players, not all. The stat priority is likely to change when BfA releases, same with talent builds.

[Guest Lōrd]

I don't know if it is the right place to Ask, but whère Can I fond the Ivy Veins Guide you've made on 7.3.5? 

Do you archive previous patches guides ? 

Thanks for all the informations you Give us, so impatient to try this BFA!

Best regards

W.

[Valks 2,375]

2 hours ago, Guest Lōrd said:

I don't know if it is the right place to Ask, but whère Can I fond the Ivy Veins Guide you've made on 7.3.5? 

The only way you'd really be able to view it is here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180324013731/https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/elemental-shaman-pve-dps-guide

[Hakyn 0]

Continuity: (Shaman, not priest)
Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Discipline Priest-specific PvE talents.

[Valks 2,375]

12 hours ago, Hakyn said:

Continuity: (Shaman, not priest)
Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Discipline Priest-specific PvE talents.

Will get it fixed, thanks ?

[checkmate 4]

Hey guys,

maybe the complexity of my request is too deep, but I will ask for it anyway.

Very often I hear that specific talents (from various classes)  don`t scale with haste/mastery.

1) How dou you guys get to know such things?

2) Taking above into account, can you please put more of thisknowledge  into the talent section?

For example:" Unlimited Power has significant scaling, which means it gains significant value the more mastery you have, and also has a great synergy with High Voltage. Because you have very high secondary stats in pre-patch, using both of these talents is recommended. "

To me this reads like: Mastery is really cool.

Then you write in one of the comments above:" One of the reasons Mastery is bad is because it is very weak for AoE, while Haste becomes very good. For single-target it is important to have a good amount of mastery but overall crit just gives more value. "

I guess, here is the moment when most players do not understand anything at all.

Why does mastery loose its worth on aoe? As far as I know, every jump of chainlightning is "deciding" on its own if it overloads or not, right? Therefore many jumps=many procc chances=mastery is important for aoe.

So what am I missing?

 

Greetings

Checkmate

Edited August 10, 2018 by checkmate

[Stormy 11]

1) understanding spec-specific interactions + sims (and really, a lot of the time it's just basic logic)

 

2) At the end of an expansion you have very high secondary stats, and versatility tending to be the least desired, it's assumed you have a lot of crit, a lot of mastery and a lot of haste. From that point, exact stat distribution will make the value of things vary greatly. If you do in fact have low mastery, Unlimited Power + High Voltage won't be as ahead as it is for others. In fact, it may even be worse than other talents, but we couldn't write any recommendations at all if we had to account for every possible gearset. This is why the #1 most important thing to do is "sim yourself". People are sick of hearing that, but now with Raidbots it's very simple and it's by FAR the thing that will allow you to know what to do with your character. Mastery is  generally worse for AoE, because Haste gives Earthquake more value (more ticks) than it gives Earth Shock, among other things. Your quote was more about elemental in general, and I probably shouldn't have said it that way for prepatch, because with Unlimited Power & High Voltage, Mastery is much better than usual for AoE, although again not enough that it overtakes Haste or Crit. For BfA however, Unlimited Power and High Voltage become significantly worse and currently won't be recommended, making Mastery fall again to being quite undesirable for AoE.

Tl;dr : For Prepatch Mastery isn't as bad as I stated, before and after that however it was/will be again. It can be a bit tough to juggle with the state of the specs/stats when it differs greatly from Legion->BfA Prepatch->BfA proper.

[Guest Qautro]

Why wait until 90 Maelstrom to cast Earth Shock? Why not just cast it at 60?

[Stormy 11]

The main reason for not casting Earth Shock immediately as it becomes available is that it gives you the ability to decide when to use a GCD of "free movement with no DPS loss" for a few seconds, which is very useful and satisfying

This is fairly minor and if you're more comfortable casting it at 60/often overcap if you're not doing it that way, it's fine. This should in any case depend entirely on the fight/situation of the moment.

Note that there is a slight difference between "action priority" and "what is desirable". While you don't necessary want to delay Earth Shock until 90 Maelstrom, once you are there, you start to really want to cast Earth Shock as soon as possible in order not to overcap. 

[checkmate 4]

Hey, can you tell us some wellknown streamers (YT/Twitch) for elemental, maybe even the other speccs as well?

[Stormy 11]

I mainly recommend twitch.tv/naesam . twitch.tv/cayna plays mainly enhancement but elemental on occasion as well.

[Guest Bloodcraven]

Hello, I just wanted to throw something out there for my fellow shamans to digest. Right now I’m about a 320 ilvl and I’ve been consistently running storm elemental/primal elementist combo for shorter single target fights such as dungeon bosses (versus a raid boss which have longer encounters). After I flame shock the boss I cast bloodlust, berserking and pop my storm elemental and just spam lightning bolt. I’ve been using earthshock at around 90 maelstrom and I am smoking other people in damage for the boss fights at least that is. I mean these lightning bolts are popping out at like .4 or less cast times after I get to 20 stacks and it lets me get out more earthshocks. Coincidentally both my trinkets have chances to grant additional haste further increasing the value of this build if they proc. I don’t use lava burst at all during the elementals duration unless it’s off a lava surge proc. I’m having a lot of fun using it and thought some other people might to :)

[Guest Ele]

So what happened to our stat priorities?  I can understand haste being top right now, as it seems to be top with a lot of classes, but we also have so much synergy with both crit and mastery.  So why is Vers higher than both of them?  What is vers giving us right now that is so much more important right now?

[Guest Lave shock]

What are your thoughts on Lava Shock?  i didn't see it in your recommended single target list, but with a heavy investment in haste, it stacks so fast right now, and make earth shock hit like an even bigger truck than it already was.

[Stormy 11]

Vers isn't particularly better or worse than before, Crit's value just went down (in part due to echo, and other factors), and our Mastery can't get high enough for the mastery-related talents to really shine.

Lava Shock is okay but only really relevant when you can keep 3 flame shocks rolling, and mostly useful to funnel single target burst. Generally when we mention "best" azerite traits, it's going to be for single target fights or general usefulness for every kind of content. Lava Shock is more "niche", and even in that niche it's not overwhelmingly good.

[Guest nobbie]

I don't agree with the recommended stat priorties. For elemental, I figured after extensive tests that a focus on mastery and versatility is the way to go. I assume that - because elemental is a slow caster -  you'd need an unacceptable amount of haste/crit to the detriment of mastery/versatility, which results in a significant loss of DPS.

[Guest Childishforlife]

Is the weapon enchant [Torrent of Elements](https://www.wowhead.com/item=153479/enchant-weapon-torrent-of-elements) close in DPS? It seems like if it proc'd on Ascendance, along with crit azerite traits could lead to insane burst. 

[Stormy 11]

If you really want it it's not too far, but on average it's a dps loss to use it.

[Guest Dalamar]

The quick guide requires an update: talents have been moved around. 

[Stormy 11]

If you're referring to the "easy mode" talent recommendation, this is purposefully not optimal, because this is aimed at people who are just starting as elemental and want to get a good grasp on the basics of the spec before adding a bunch of buttons/mechanics. 

[Guest Scubydu]

Could you let us know of a good addon for maelstorm monitoring? Something that can be moved around easily.