Elemental Shaman DPS Guide — The War Within (11.1.0)

Ancestral Guidance has been removed. This is an enormous nerf to an admittedly very powerful cooldown. It is fair to say that Ancestral Guidance was perhaps too powerful. Notably, it synergized particularly well with 2-minute Ascendance boosted by Power Infusion, leading to Shamans being able to keep their entire party full health for 10 seconds every 2 minutes no matter how much damage occured, putting it above most healer cooldowns. It was less crazy in raid, but still very powerful. This is a fairly recent thing linked to the Ascendance rework, putting a lot more of our power within our main cooldown again. Removing it altogether however seems like vast overkill, and this is frankly an enormous nerf, especially as it is compounded by us being likely forced to use Primal Elementalist due to our new tier set giving a lot of Elemental uptime which means we will not be able to use Earth Elemental either.

This is supposed to be compensated by Healing Stream Totem's healing being increased by 80%, but it does not even begin to make up for it, and it still would not even if they doubled it. Frankly, no amount of buffing this ability can make up for removing Ancestral Guidance. Anything close would lead to the ability giving absurd healing and leading to silly situations where you may want to stack more Shamans to use it rotationally and drop a healer or two.

Deeply Rooted Elements is now a small percent chance per Maelstrom spent rather than being a flat chance per Maelstrom Spender. The short version is that this ends up being a slight buff to DRE's procrate overall, which is unfortunately more than negated by the next change. This means that in the end, we can expect slightly fewer procs overall.

Primordial Wave has been redesigned — Now deals a high amount of damage to all targets affected by your Flame Shock. This is an odd change that was justified by Primordial Wave being supposedly too complicated to use. The problem is that the supposed "high" amount of damage is simply not there. This spell does less damage than Lightning Bolt, without benefitting from all its synergies or generating any Maelstrom. It remains a mandatory button for Farseer due to Call of the Ancestors, and Splintered Elements remains good. This also makes Liquid Magma Totem significantly more desirable and likely mandatory in Mythic+ unless you ditch Flame Shock outside of single-target altogether.

You can find a detailed overview of all the Shaman changes in Patch 11.1 in the following page.

The Elemental Tier Set is strong, especially the 2-piece bonus which is worth roughly 10% damage compared to base stats, with the 4-piece bonus only being worth around 3 to 4%. This means that all Elemental players will want to rush to their 2-piece bonus as soon as possible, including replacing their previous S1 639 4-piece with the LFR version of the new set (capping out at 639 when fully upgraded with Weathered Crests).

• Shaman Elemental 11.1 Class Set 2pc
• Shaman Elemental 11.1 Class Set 4pc

2-piece: Your spells and abilities have a chance to hit a Jackpot that summons a Fire Elemental or Storm Elemental for 8.0 sec. Casting Ascendance always hits a Jackpot.

Two important notes regarding this bonus: it allows summons the elemental that you chose in your talent tree. If you are talented into Storm Elemental, it will never summon a Fire Elemental. Secondly, Proccing Deeply Rooted Elements apparently counts as "Casting Ascendance, meaning it will also proc the bonus.

This is very strong and synergizes extremely well with multiple talents we use : Elemental Unity, Everlasting Elements, Echo of the Elementals and Primal Elementalist. The big downside is that using this last talent mean we cannot really use Earth Elemental much, though we do get high uptime on Primordial Bond to make up for it.

4-piece: When you summon or extend your Fire Elemental/ Storm Elemental, your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Lava Burst deal 20% increased damage for 8 sec.

While this seems like a strong bonus, unfortunately we do cast a lot of spells nowadays, and in practice you'll typically only cast 2 or 3, occasionally 4 of those spells within that window. While this can coincide with procs or things like Stormkeeper, it is generally a relatively weak bonus.

• Ascendance now requires a target to cast. Flame Shock and Lava Burst from casting it will always hit your primary target.
• Arc Discharge now stacks to 2 and its overloads function properly, but it does not buff Stormkeeper
• Ghost Wolf visuals have been updated to scale with player model, and have been made more transparent to reduce visual clutter.
• Lightning Bolt has a new spell visual.
• Lightning Rod’s visual has been updated.
• The initial shield from Stone Bulwark Totem is no longer dispellable. The repeating shields will continue to be dispellable.
• Chain Lightning overload is no longer displayed to allies in raids and dungeons.
• Chain Lightning now displays a more subtle visual when viewed by allies in raids and dungeons.
• Earthquake Overload is no longer displayed to allies in raids and dungeons.