Shaman: Elemental

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Shaman - Contents

[top]Introduction

Elemental combat is the ranged magic damage tree for the Shaman class. The basics of the Elemental rotation, important talents, spells and totems, stats and gearing, and other topics will be covered in this article.

This article was last updated on April 22, 2010 under Patch 3.3.3.

Upcoming changes:
Further updates/revisions to 3.3.3 info.

Please do not post suggestions, questions or comments on the article on this page, as it is rarely checked. Questions about the article or suggestions for additions or changes should be made at this thread: TTT Entry Work-In-Progress. Questions or discussion about Elemental or shaman play in general should be made in the appropriate class forum threads.

[top]Basics

[top]Playstyle

Elemental is an interesting spec in that while its rotation is simple to understand, mistakes have a disproportionate impact on our DPS. This is largely because our rotation centers around Lava Burst, a single-target nuke on an 8-second cooldown. With the correct rotation, Lava Burst is a guaranteed crit with large damage bonuses and a fast cast time, making it crucial to cast it as often as possible, whenever it is off cooldown (cast it too late, and your overall DPS will decrease). The difference between excellent and mediocre play as an Elemental is effectively managing the rotation under changing fight conditions. More on this below in the Rotation section.

[top]Important Stats

As with most casters the primary stats for Elemental (in general order of importance) are spellpower, hit, haste, crit, intellect and stamina. Spirit and mp5, as well as melee-oriented stats, have insignificant or no benefit and should be avoided on gear. More information about stats and their relative importance may be found later in the article.

[top]Buffs and Debuffs

The Elemental spec provides a few specific bonuses to a raid beyond the basic totems given by any shaman: a 5% spell crit aura from Elemental Oath, and a 280 spellpower increase/3% increased chance to be crit debuff (for all types of DPS) from Totem of Wrath. Like most class buffs and debuffs, ours are not exclusive and coverage can be found with similar or identical buffs elsewhere.

Elemental Buff/Debuff	Alternates	Class/Spec	Notes
Elemental Oath	Moonkin Aura	Balance Druid	Identical to our buff. As of patch 3.3.3, both auras have a 100-yard range and are constant.
Totem of Wrath (spellpower)	Demonic Pact	Demonology Warlock	These buffs are not identical and in fact function in very different ways, but are exclusive, so the higher spellpower value will always supersede the lower. Demonic Pact's spellpower bonus is always 10% of the warlock's current spellpower, and is refreshed by their demon's critical strikes. At Icecrown gear levels, Demonic Pact will always be more spellpower than ToW, and with recent changes to its duration, its uptime will be effectively 100%. However, not having to drop ToW is a significant DPS gain for an Elemental Shaman, as they can then focus on using fire DPS totems.
Totem of Wrath (crit debuff)	Master Poisoner, Heart of the Crusader	Assassination Rogue, Retribution Paladin	The debuff provided by all three abilities are identical. Both alternatives to the crit debuff from ToW are applied by melee classes, who have a far easier time applying it than Elemental shamans do. If you have either of these specs in raid (and you are dropping ToW) you do not need to worry about your ToW placement, otherwise the totem must be within 40 yards of a target for the debuff to apply. The advantage of ToW over these other versions of this debuff is that ToW's aura is AoE, and can be applied to multiple targets with minimal effort.

For totem buffs that are nonspecific to the Elemental spec, see the Totems section.

[top]Spells

[top]Primary Spells

There are three primary spells in the Elemental rotation.

Spell		Base Co-Efficient	Notes
Lightning Bolt	LB	71.43%	LB is the "filler spell" for Elemental rotations. With its 2 second cast time (talented), it has the longest cast time of any of the elemental spells (but is extremely fast by comparison to many other caster classes). Talents wise, it gains an extra 5% crit, and a 33% chance to proc an additional half power bolt free of charge (with no threat as well), in addition to many passive damage boosts. A very large percentage (up to 60%, depending on fight and gear) of Elemental damage comes from this spell, so talents and glyphs that increase its effectiveness will be disproportionately better than others.
Flame Shock	FS	21.40% DD 10.00% DoT tick	FS is our standard shock ability. Primarily used to guarantee a LvB crit, it is also useful to cast whenever you are moving (or just unable to cast non-instant spells while still able to perform actions) in order to maximize DPS time. As of 3.3.3 the DoT portion of this spell is affected by haste (each point of haste reduces the time between ticks), and is therefore one of our best-scaling spells. For more about the interaction of haste, Flame Shock and 4pc t10, see the Set Bonuses section.
Lava Burst	LvB	57.14%	The core spell of the Elemental rotation, LvB is a high damage spell on an 8 second cooldown. This spell will always crit (with massive crit damage bonuses from talents) as long as a Flame Shock DoT is present on the target, and as such it should never be cast if FS is not present or will fall off before LvB finishes casting. The automatic crit is useful in that it will guarantee two clearcasting charges, further increasing damage and reducing mana consumption.

[top]Secondary Spells

These spells are core to the class but are situational or not part of the rotation.

Spell		Base Co-Efficient	Notes
Flametongue Weapon	FT	N/A	FT is the Elemental weapon buff. Provides 211 spellpower (274 with talents). This is the only weapon imbue you should ever use as Elemental.
Chain Lightning	CL	57.14%	CL is a ranged cleave. The 3 target jump allows us to put out some AE damage at ranged, while still focusing on the primary dps target. The 1.5 second cast time can be useful for syncing up with LvB cooldowns, but there is a much higher mana cost. This spell can potentially be a DPS increase for single-target fights if used correctly, but is always a DPS increase if there is more than one target.
Elemental Mastery	EM	N/A	The primary Elemental cooldown. This spell was changed in patch 3.3, and now boosts haste instead of crit. Given this change it is now recommended to use EM on its own and not in conjunction with Bloodlust/Heroism once above about 800 haste rating. To do so will likely put you over the haste hardcap for LB, thus "wasting" a part of the haste buff.
Fire Nova	FN	21.43%	Fire Nova, introduced in Patch 3.3, replaces the former Fire Nova totem with an AoE ability originating at the currently active Fire totem. This spell is commonly used in conjunction with Magma Totem for higher AoE DPS on trash or certain AoE-friendly boss encounters (such as Anub'arak), and may be talented and/or glyphed to reduce its cooldown and increase the damage dealt.
Frost Shock	FrS	38.57%	Frost Shock is a close-range, high threat spell with a slowing component that is useful in two major PvE situations: fights that involve kiting, and periods of movement on bossfights once the shaman has acquired 4pc t10 (or any situation where one would lose DPS by refreshing Flame Shock on the target).
Hex		N/A	This is the Shaman CC (similar to Polymorph, except with a 30 sec duration and a 45 sec cooldown). It is possible to use Hex aggressively in solo situations, casting it, then using LB, FS, and then LvB in quick succession to kill the target where it stands. Generally in PvE, the first CC target to be killed will be Hexed (similar to how Sap works) as re-casting to keep CC up is impossible with the cooldown.
Thunderstorm	TS	17.14%	Thunderstorm is the Elemental tree 51 point talent. It is an instant AE spell, with a 20 yard knock-back, and also has a mana restore function. Primarily used in PvE as a mana restore and in PvP as a knock-back, both functions are useful in the other environment. For example, it is useful to knock nearby mobs back to tanks to be picked up, or in specific boss fights like Gluth, as another way of preventing the Zombie Chow from reaching him.
Wind Shear	WS	N/A	A close-range, instant spell interrupt that is not on the GCD. This spell has a 25-yard maximum range (and no talents to increase it), so it requires careful positioning to make effective use of.

[top]Totems

This list ranks totems from top to bottom in terms of their recommended or common use as Elemental in raids.
Air

Totem	Usage	Notes
Wrath of Air	Recommended	This is the primary air totem for Elemental raiding. Increases all spellhaste by 5% for all raid members.
Windfury Totem	Not Recommended	Drop this totem only if you are the only shaman in the group, there are no Frost DKs, and the group is melee-heavy.
Nature Resistance Totem	Situational	Does not stack with hunters' Aspect of the Wild, but is preferable to that ability due to its low opportunity cost on the shaman. There is really only one fight in which this totem is used in WotLK: Anub'arak in ToC and ToGC.
Grounding Totem	Situational	There are not very many PvE raiding applications for this totem, as most boss abilities ignore it and it is unnecessary for most trash. The one notable exception in WotLK raiding is Mimiron, where in phase 3 the arcane damage nuke may be directed into the totem.
Sentry Totem	Ignore	This totem is generally useless for just about everything.

Earth

Totem	Usage	Notes
Stoneskin Totem	Recommended	The general-use earth totem for Elemental. The armor bonus from this totem stacks with Devotion Aura and is raid-wide.
Strength of Earth Totem	Not Recommended	Similar to Windfury, drop this only if there are no Enhancement shamans or DKs of any spec in the raid.
Tremor Totem	Situational	A continuously pulsing AoE fear break for your party only. This totem is required for several fights; examples include Auriaya and Blood Queen.
Earthbind Totem	Situational	Useful in certain fights such as Deathbringer Saurfang or Gluth, this totem slows all nearby targets and, when talented, can temporarily root them as well. Also very useful for PvP.
Earth Elemental Totem	Ignore	This totem has little to no use in a PvE raiding environment. Placing this totem down puts the Fire Elemental Totem on a 2-minute cooldown, ensuring that both cannot be up at the same time. That in combination with its low survivability and taunt ability makes it very unattractive for everything but solo or small group play.
Stoneclaw Totem	Ignore	This totem has almost no practical application for Elemental PvE, and (with the glyph) is primarily a PvP totem.

Water

Totem	Usage	Notes
Healing Stream Totem	Recommended	The general-use water totem in raid situations, usually because there are very few other choices that provide tangible benefits. Some guild may require you to glyph and use this totem for fights like Heroic Anub'arak to significantly increase the party healing.
Mana Spring Totem	Not Recommended	This totem is primarily used for solo play or 5-man dungeons, unless there are no Paladins or Restoration shamans in your raid.
Cleansing Totem	Situational	A continuously pulsing poison and disease removal for your party only. Necessary for some fights like Yogg-saron, but just as important to avoid for fights where an auto-cleanse can cause a wipe, such as Putricide or Lich King.
Fire Resistance Totem	Situational	A rarely used resistance totem. Most of the time this resistance school, if needed in raid, is best applied by a Paladin aura, as that aura has a longer range and is not anchored to a single spot on the ground (and can be buffed significantly by Aura Mastery).

Fire

Totem	Usage	Notes
Totem of Wrath	Recommended	This totem should at the very least be dropped once every 5 minutes in a fight to gain the benefit of its glyph. Otherwise this is the standard raid-buff totem to drop if your group does not possess a Demonology Warlock.
Searing Totem	Recommended	The standard single-target fire damage totem. This spell has a longer duration and attack range than Magma, which puts it over that spell in single-target damage due to decreased GCD usage and placement time. Use this and magma only if your raid has a Demonology warlock.
Magma Totem	Situational	A point-blank AoE damage totem. Mostly useful for trash and AoE-heavy bossfights such as Anub'arak and Lich King. Commonly used in conjunction with Fire Nova for increased AoE DPS, although this is mana intensive. Like Searing, this totem should only be used if your raid possesses a Demonology warlock (except perhaps on trash).
Fire Elemental Totem	Recommended	The Fire Elemental is a free-moving AI-controlled mob (not a pet), but is anchored to its totem. Can be an extremely effective form of both single-target and AoE DPS, and at higher gear levels can do upwards of 1400 DPS on its own. Because it is anchored to the original placement spot, you should make sure that the target it will be attacking is not moved significantly while it is out. This totem lasts for two minutes, has a ten minute cooldown, and therefore should be used at least once per fight. Glyphing this totem cuts the cooldown in half, and so for some fights lasting longer than seven minutes (enough for two full durations of the totem) the glyph is competitive with other choices.
Frost Resistance Totem	Situational	Only useful for certain fights, such as Sapphiron or Sindragosa, but in both cases the Paladin Aura is superior (for the same reasons listed above for Fire Resistance). In addition, even on these fights other fire totems are a better choice.
Flametongue Totem	Ignore	ToW is better in all respects, and does not stack with this totem.

[top]Talents and Glyphs

[top]Talents and Talent Builds

Different talent builds for Elemental are really only based around a single choice: whether the shaman prefers to take Convection or not (for a technical explanation of Convection and other mana efficiency talents, see here: Mana Efficiency). Therefore there are two recommended builds:

57/14/0 Without Convection, Improved Fire Nova/Elemental Warding
57/14/0 With Convection

[top]Elemental Combat

Tier	Talent	Recommendation	Notes
1	Concussion	Required	Stacks additively with Call of Flame.
1	Convection	Optional	The weakest of the mana efficiency talents, Convection would be taken if you have mana problems, or spare points to use.
2	Elemental Devastation	Ignore	Despite being in the Elemental tree, this is a pure Enhancement talent. Should not be taken at all.
2	Elemental Warding	Optional	A useful filler talent, effectively gives you a 6.4% hp bonus.
2	Call of Flame	Required	Stacks additively with Concussion for a 11% damage bonus on Lava Burst.
3	Elemental Fury	Required	Multiplies with CSD to give 109% damage bonus critical strikes. Stacks additively with Lava Flows.
3	Elemental Focus	Required	While this only procs from damage spells, it can be consumed by damage and healing spells.
3	Reverberation	Not Recommended	This talent is not useful for Elemental, as we do not cast shocks on a frequent basis.
4	Eye of the Storm	Recommended	A useful filler talent. Very handy for leveling, and for encounters with high pushback frequency. Elemental suffers more than other casters from pushback due to lower cast times.
4	Improved Fire Nova	Optional	A useful filler talent if mana is not an issue; this talent significantly boosts the AoE damage potential of Fire Nova.
4	Unrelenting Storm	Recommended	A useful filler talent. A passive regen talent that generates more mana per point than Convection saves.
5	Call of Thunder	Required	This is one of the most valuable talent points in the tree because of the low point investment.
5	Elemental Reach	Recommended	Increases range to allow more time casting while farming, but also allows the player to more easily avoid ranged abilities in both PvE and PvP.
6	Lightning Mastery	Required	The equivalent of 25% haste in 5 easy points.
6	Elemental Precision	Required	Hit is the most valuable stat you can have, and the threat reduction is mandatory as the only shaman threat reduction ability has a 20 yard range.
7	Storm Earth & Fire	Recommended	Provides some extra damage output, and utility.
7	Elemental Mastery	Required	See the description in the spells section.
8	Booming Echoes	Recommended	20% direct damage bonus to Flame Shock and Frost Shock with reduced shock cooldown for both spells. This can be quite useful in multi-target environments.
8	Lightning Overload	Required	Effectively a 16.5% damage bonus for CL and LB due to the 33% chance and 50% damage modifier. Crits can proc clearcasting and Oath. Chance for CL is split over all three hits (so 11% chance per hit).
8	Elemental Oath	Required	5% crit aura that does not stack with Moonkin Aura, and one of our primary raid buffs. The Clearcasting bonus from this talent is a flat 10% damage bonus, rather than a 10% spellpower gain.
9	Lava Flows	Required	The critical strike bonus stacks additively with Elemental Fury. The haste bonus on FS dispels is rarely applicable for PvE, minus certain fights such as Faction Champions.
9	Totem of Wrath	Recommended	High spellpower buff with a 3% crit debuff aura.
9	Astral Shift	Not Recommended	Primarily a PvP talent, no real bonus for PvE.
10	Shamanism	Required	Increases the co-efficient of Lightning Bolt (20%) and Lava Burst (25%). This is a direct co-efficient gain, rather than a % spellpower gain.
11	Thunderstorm	Optional	See: Spells

[top]Enhancement

There are four talents useful for Elemental in the Enhancement tree. No other talents in this tree serve any purpose for PvE Elemental, so they are not listed.

Tier	Talent	Recommendation	Notes
1	Ancestral Knowledge	Recommended	Most useful talent from this tier (see Intellect in the stats section for more information).
2	Thundering Strikes	Required	One of the prime reasons to use an Enhancement subspec. The 5% crit is included in the character spell stats when a weapon is equipped.
3	Shamanistic Focus	Recommended	Useful for reducing the high mana cost of Flame Shock. Stacks additively with Convection.
3	Elemental Weapons	Required	Increases FT Weapon from 211 to 274 spellpower, a gain of 63.

[top]Restoration

The Restoration tree only has one talent that can affect Elemental: Tidal Mastery. As this is a Tier 4 talent, it takes a 20 point investment to get that 5% crit, compared with 10 points in Enhancement (not to mention the other talents that can be taken). As such, a resto sub-spec is not practical.

[top]Glyphs

Major Glyph	Recommendation	Notes
Glyph of Lightning Bolt	Recommended	4% total damage gain to Lightning Bolt, and also increases damage done by Lightning Overload procs.
Glyph of Totem of Wrath	Recommended	A flat 84 spellpower bonus for 5 minutes upon dropping ToW, remains up even if ToW is canceled.
Glyph of Flametongue	Conditional	2% crit as long as Flametongue is active on your weapon. Better than Lava for "ideal" fights (those with little movement), as a higher percentage of casts will be LBs and benefit from the glyph.
Glyph of Lava	Conditional	This is an additional 10% co-efficient bonus for Lava Burst, stacking with Shamanism for a 87.14% co-efficient (up from 57.14% base, 77.14% with only Shamanism). However, due to the frequency of LvB use, the effectiveness is diminished. As of 3.3.3 this glyph is eligible for the third glyph spot on fights with moderate to large amounts of movement, where a higher percentage of your casts will be LvB. Is always superior to Flametongue if you have 4t9.
Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem	Conditonal	This glyph reduces the cooldown of Fire Elemental from 10 minutes to 5 minutes, making it a competitive choice with our other glyphs for a select few fights. For a fight to be worth using this glyph, it must be at least 7 minutes long (to gain the benefit of two full durations of the totem). Keep in mind that this glyph only gets better the longer a fight runs, but it is 100% useless on any fight shorter than 7 minutes. The best example of a fight that this glyph excels for is the Lich King himself.
Glyph of Flame Shock	Not Recommended	As of 3.3.3, this glyph increases the critical strike damage bonus of FS by 60%. This does not turn out to be a significant DPS increase, therefore relegating this glyph to a distant fifth place.
Glyph of Elemental Mastery	Not Recommended	After extensive investigation, this glyph remains well behind the rest of the pack even with 2t10. It is not a DPS increase over the four above glyphs under any circumstances, even longer fights.
Glyph of Chain Lightning	Not Recommended	Minimal AoE gain from the fourth jump, which suffers the same 30% damage reduction as the previous jumps. The final jump would be only 34% of the original hit's damage.
Glyph of Shocking	Not Recommended	Reduces shock GCD use to 1 second. Not a significant DPS increase by any means.
Glyph of Water Mastery	Not Recommended	+30mp5 when WS is active. If you run out of mana and think you require this, you have more to worry about.

In 3.3.3, glyph choices have changed, and the standard layout will typically be LB, ToW and either Flametongue or Lava. As mentioned above the choice between these two glyphs depends on fight conditions and both have their niche. Under ideal circumstances, i.e. stand-and-nuke fights, Flametongue will win out by a small margin at most gear levels. Lava has the advantage for any and all fights involving movement, and is likely the "safe" choice for a third glyph if you aren't interested in carrying around a stack of both.

Some notes on minor glyphs:
Glyph of Thunderstorm may be required by your raid leader, although this is somewhat uncommon. Use this glyph if you don't trust yourself with the knockback portion of the spell.
Glyph of Water Shield adds an extra orb to water shield. This will only be useful if you are losing charges of the shield during the fight, in which case it will provide a small mana benefit. Mostly a PvP or solo glyph.

The rest of the minor glyps reduce cooldowns or remove reagent requirements and are not really worth mentioning.

[top]Rotation

[top]Basics

The purpose of gameplay at endgame is ostensibly to challenge players, mostly by giving them a generally simple rotation and then confronting them with changing conditions over the course of a fight that they must respond to. Elemental's rotation is very simple, but the reality of fight mechanics like movement and fire means that we will rarely be able to just perform our rotation uninterrupted (stats like haste that change our cast times have a similar effect, since it is very rare that two players will share the same haste values, let alone all of us). Because of these factors, players should think of their rotation in the context of what is happening in the fight, and make choices constantly about what to cast next as opposed to staying with a fixed rotation (or a castsequence macro) that they will be forced to break anyways.

[top]The Rotation

The name that we give this recommended rotation is the Priority Rotation, and it is best illustrated by a handy graph, courtesy of SA:
BERJAYA

Our rotation is centered 100% around the Lava Burst cooldown. The best way to increase your DPS if you are having trouble is to try to reduce the amount of time between Lava Burst casts as much as possible, and recast it as close to the 8-second cooldown as you can.

[top]Movement

The difference between a great Elemental shaman and a mediocre one is the ability to mitigate the DPS loss caused by movement. There are a few things you can do while moving:
Redrop totems. If the fight is guaranteed to last more than 5 minutes, a GCD used on redropping your totems while moving gives you that GCD later for a damaging spell. Also useful if a boss is moved and you need to move with it.
Cast or recast a shock spell. Until you get 4pc t10 this is usually going to be Flame Shock. Get in the habit of casting a shock while moving, as it's one of the only things you can do. If you have 4pc t10, cast Frost Shock instead, as clipping Flame Shock too early kills the benefit of the set bonus and is a DPS loss.
Thunderstorm or refresh Water Shield. As long as it's safe to use Thunderstorm (or you've glyphed it), you can gain some mana back and potentially do a little DPS. Most bosses are immune to the knockback portion of Thunderstorm.
Fire Nova. This is conditional based on whether you are able to place your fire totem correctly relative to the boss (due to Fire Nova's short range), but this is a good form of DPS while moving if you are able to do it.

[top]Chain Lightning

Chain Lightning's place in our rotation is somewhat interesting. If you have no mana concerns (which most of us do not), adding it to the rotation can be a DPS gain if used correctly.

A few simple rules regarding CL use:

If there is more than one target within CL range, you should use it on cooldown provided you have the mana, as it will be a major DPS gain.
Testing shows that CL used on single targets can be a small DPS gain when used following Lava Burst (this guarantees Clearcasting will be up for the cast). This depends entirely on your current level of haste, so if you want to include CL in your rotation you should use simulators such as SimCraft or ZAP! to model your stats and spell use.
If used on single-target fights in every rotation, CL should not be used during EM or Heroism/Bloodlust as you end up with much more "GCD waste."
Even when not being used after every LvB or on cooldown, CL may still be "weaved" into the end of a rotation if LvB is coming off cooldown before the next LB would finish casting. This shortens the time between LvBs and increases DPS if you can do it correctly.

[top]"Clipping" Flame Shock

With the advent of hasted Flame Shocks, you will encounter very often circumstances where Lava Burst comes off cooldown at a point where Flame Shock is still on the target but there is not enough time to cast LvB before it falls off. While recasting FS before the original spell falls off (known as "clipping" the DoT) is technically a DPS loss, you will gain much more DPS from recasting Lava Burst as soon as possible. You should only have to clip FS at the very end of its duration, and the most ticks you should ever lose from doing this is 1.

[top]Multiple Targets

The spell priority will change if there are multiple targets within range of your spells, however the exact priority changes depending on the exact number of targets.

The following list illustrates the relative priority of multiple target spells and Lightning Bolt with more than one target.
2 targets: CL/LvB -> Fire Nova -> LB
3 targets: CL -> Fire Nova/LvB -> LB
4 targets: Fire Nova -> CL -> LvB -> LB

[top]Stats and Gearing

[top]Stats

The following is a basic summary of the stats that Elemental finds important and why.

[top]Priority

Our most important stats, in order of DPS increase per point, is the following:

(Hit) -> Spellpower -> Haste -> Crit -> Int -> Other stats

[top]Hit

Hit is the single largest DPS increase of any stat, until it is capped. Once capped it provides zero extra benefit, so you should aim for as close to the cap as possible.

Elemental Shamans need 17% total hit to be capped against raid bosses at 80. All shamans gain 3% hit from talents, draenei shamans gain 1% from Heroic Aura, and if you raid with a Shadowpriest or Balance Druid, you gain an additional 3% from their spell debuffs.

Hit caps for various circumstances:

	Unbuffed	with Moonkin/Shadowpriest
Alliance	342 (13%)	263 (10%)
Horde	368 (14%)	289 (11%)

[top]Spellpower

Spellpower is our most important stat, as it is for every other DPS caster. Past the hit cap, we gain more DPS point per point from this stat than any other. This means that gaining enough spellpower from some socket bonuses will often make gemming sp/haste worthwhile (to use a yellow slot example).

[top]Haste

Haste benefits essentially all of our damaging spells minus fire totems and Fire Nova. It is often very close to spellpower point-for-point in damage returns, but there are some complications.

[top]Haste Caps

Haste has several caps that affect its overall benefit. The first is the GCD cap (50% haste), which occurs when you gain enough haste to reduce the global cooldown of your spells to 1 second (from 1.5). Past this point haste will no longer affect the GCD. This is important because although regular spells appear to have no minimum cast duration, once past 50% haste the GCD will never change, so the effective minimum time between each spellcast will always be the GCD, or 1 second.

This means that every spell has a haste cap that is equal to the amount of haste it would take to reduce that spell to a 1-second cast time, as past that point, haste will provide no additional benefit.

There are a number of abilities that affect your current haste %. Wrath of Air increases all spellcasting haste by 5%, and group buffs such as Improved Moonkin Form increase it by 3% (multiple sources do not stack, so you will only get 3% from your raid). Elemental Mastery increases haste by 15%, and Bloodlust/Heroism by 30%.

The following table displays the haste rating values under different conditions that you would need to reach the haste cap for a given spell.

Spell	Base Cast Time	Haste Cap %	Unbuffed Haste Cap Rating	with WoA+group buff	with WoA, group buff and EM	with WoA, group buff and BL/Hero	with WoA, group buff, EM and BL/Hero
Lightning Bolt	2.0 sec	100%	3279	2785	1994	1386	778
Lava Burst	1.5 sec	50%	1640	1269	676	220	0
Chain Lightning	1.5 sec	50%	1640	1269	676	220	0

Note that for instant cast (non-DoT) spells, the effective "haste cap" is the GCD cap, or 50% haste. The DoT portion of Flame Shock has no haste cap whatsoever, and will continue to provide DPS from extra haste well past 100%. More on this below.

So what does this all mean? Haste loses some of its benefit for us once Chain Lightning and Lava Burst are haste capped, but generally not enough to change its relative importance to spellpower and crit. The cap for LB is high enough that it is typically only reachable under Heroism/Bloodlust or Elemental Mastery (or both). So even if you are past the cap for LvB and CL, since LB is such a high percentage of our damage it will not change how you should gear or gem (even at BiS T10, this is still true).

Since at T10 gear levels we run with a very high amount of haste rating (including an additional 200+ from our relic slot), it is highly recommended to split up activated haste buffs such as EM, BL/Hero, and troll racial from each other so as not to go past the LB haste cap and thus waste a portion of the buff. So if your raid starts a fight with Heroism/Bloodlust, save your Elemental Mastery until after the buff ends (or just before, so you can combine the haste buffs to increase the DPS of Flame Shock--more on this below).

[top]Haste "Targets"

There are no haste targets, none, zero. You should never gear around a specific rating number for any of our stats (except hit). This is an extremely common misconception and it will not help you be an effective damage-dealer.

Back in the first half of WotLK, some players noted that at certain haste levels it became possible to add additonal casts of Lightning Bolt to a fixed rotation at specific haste values. At this point these haste values started popping up everywhere as "fixed" values that every Elemental shaman should get to and then stop. The problem with this approach, and with fixed rotations and castsequence in general, is that it takes very little for them to break down under the normal conditions of a fight, and in fact they become nearly impossible to use effectively for most fights. So, to reiterate: you should never aim for a specific amount of haste, and you should avoid using a fixed rotation. See the Rotation section above for for in-depth information on this.

BERJAYA

For a more technical explanation: this simple graph illustrates the very linear way in which increasing haste increases our DPS. Even for perfectly ideal conditions where castsequence macros and fixed rotations could actually work, the use of spells like EM, Heroism/Bloodlust, trinkets etc. will generally negate any "deadzone" in haste caused by the addition of another LB to the rotation.

[top]Haste and Flame Shock (and 4t10)

As of 3.3.3, haste now benefits Flame Shock, our core DoT spell. This is great news for Elemental shamans, as the uptime of this spell should be very close to 100%, and it now scales with one of our best DPS stats. The downside is that haste scaling's current implementation shortens the total duration of the spell, which can be a problem for us since we must always have FS on the target when Lava Burst finishes casting. However, though the duration gets increasingly shorter with the addition of more haste (and we must spend more GCDs on recasting FS), the DPS gained from the ticks being hasted is more than enough to outweigh any potential loss from casting the spell more frequently, as illustrated in this graph:

BERJAYA

Note that FS's hasted ticks are not limited by the GCD cap that our casted spells are, and so FS will continue to gain value from haste well after other spells are capped on it.

You may notice that at high haste values, the duration of Flame Shock can seem alarmingly short considering our need to keep the debuff up to guarantee Lava Burst crits. Fortunately, the 4pc t10 setbonus can help us get around this by extending the duration of the DoT. This bonus adds a set number of ticks to the duration of FS when Lava Burst is cast, based on your current level of haste. That means the set bonus scales nicely with haste as well, which is great news for us.

BERJAYA

Simply put this setbonus adds to FS the closest number of ticks to 6 seconds always. This means at higher haste levels, more ticks will be added, but you can expect that the duration added will be pretty much the same every time you cast Lava Burst.

[top]Crit

Critical strikes increase both overall damage done as well as mana efficiency. With the relevant talents, crits proc two charges of Clearcasting, which is modified by Elemental Oath to increase all spelldamage by 10%. This effect is subject to diminishing returns, as shown by this graph:

BERJAYA

DPS gained from Clearcasting decreases with each subsequent point of critical strike rating. For more technical information about this see this portion of the article: Clearcasting

[top]Other stats

Intellect, aside from increasing our mana pool, gives a small damage increase due to the small amount of crit percentage it also adds. The amount is small enough that you should never gem or gear specifically for it, as it is on all of our gear anyways.
Spirit is a 100% useless stat for an Elemental shaman and should be avoided on gear if at all possible.
mp5, despite appearing on much of the dropped caster mail in the game, is a healing stat and useless for Elemental. With the talents we currently have we are not a mana-limited spec, so mp5 is of little benefit and wastes stat points better used elsewhere.

Agility, Strength, Attack Power, and other melee-oriented stats serve only one function for us: they boost the damage of our Fire Elemental spell by a small amount. If you like to squeeze out every ounce of DPS from your abilities, being buffed with these stats increases the damage of that spell, but you should never gear for them specifically.

[top]Spreadsheets, Simulators and Stat Valuation

The following spreadsheets and simulators are useful to compare stats and gear choices, as their relative values will change depending on your current gear. Use them!

ZAP! Written and maintained by Zamir, this spreadsheet is a continuation and "spiritual successor" to SEIC.
ESSE, by ldrx: another spreadsheet via Googledocs.
SimulationCraft has an Elemental plugin. This is a great tool to test a lot of fight variables.
Rawr also has an Elemental plugin. This tool is great for seeing how gear choices interact, although gemming often has to be done manually and trinkets can often be modelled inaccurately.
SEIC: Shaman - Elemental Item Comparisons v3 is no longer being maintained, as Binkenstien has moved on from WoW.

[top]BiS Lists

BiS lists are a complicated subject. They are a useful tool for theorycrafters testing class changes or maximum potential DPS, but they should not be seen as a be-all-end-all list of gear to get to the exclusion of all other upgrades. That said, several BiS lists for Elemental exist. The two listed here were generated with the ZAP! spreadsheet, SimulationCraft and Rawr.

T10 277 BiS Alliance
T10 277 BiS Horde

Note: these two lists were made with Jewelcrafting and Enchanting for simplicity's sake.

[top]Sets and Set Bonuses

Set	Combo	Notes
T7	2pc	Mana cost reduction has no effect on DPS, since we are not mana-limited.
	4pc	10% critical strike damage bonus.
T8	2pc	Changed for 3.3.3, now increases the damage of the DoT portion of FS by 20%.
	4pc	Effectively an 8% multiplicative bonus to Lightning Bolt (excluding Overload procs). Behaves similarly to the Mage talent, Ignite. Remaining damage from the previous dot is added to the new one to tick through (theoretically, this accounts for spells in-flight as well). More information here. Note: full mechanics of Ignite are not fully understood.
T9	2pc	This set bonus is a very significant DPS increase for those still using this set (with the changes to haste and FS, it is more DPS by far than 4pc T9).
	4pc	The 10% bonus to LvB makes Glyph of Lava a superior choice to alternatives. Given LvB's higher use in fights with more movement, once you acquire this set bonus you will want to switch to Lava if you aren't using it already.
T10	2pc	Most shamans elect to use EM on cooldown in combination with this setbonus.
	4pc	After several changes, this setbonus now adds a variable amount of ticks to Flame Shock (depending on your haste level) with each LvB cast. After some rigorous testing, it was determined that the amount of ticks added is always the closest value to +6 seconds added to the DoT, with a 2-tick minimum. The good news is that this set bonus, like FS, now scales very nicely with our gear.

[top]Relics

The current list of totems, from highest to least DPS increase:
[Bizuri's Totem of Shattered Ice]
[Totem of Electrifying Wind]
[Totem of Hex]
[Thunderfall Totem]

Note on totem usage: it is worthwhile to note that while Bizuri's and Electrifying Wind have very similar procs and uptimes, they are both "best utilized" in different cirumstances. Bizuri's is best for multi-target fights and fights with lots of movement, whereas EW is better for short single-target fights (less than 1 minute) due to Bizuri's ramp-up time. Technically very very short AoE fights would still benefit most from Totem of Hex, although there are virtually no raiding situations where this is the case.

Thunderfall is not recommended over other Relics under any circumstances because of the comparatively low frequency of LvB casts in your rotation. Since the spell cast ratio of LB to LvB will be 4-6 to 1, Thunderfall needs to be at least 4 times better on an individual cast to be used. Unfortunately it's only twice as good when looking at individual casts (this remains true even with the T9 4pc bonus and/or Glyph of Lava).

[top]Gems

For most cases with current gear levels, the gems you should use in various slots are as follows:
Red: [Runed Cardinal Ruby]
Blue: two [Glowing Dreadstone] to meet the meta requirement in blue slots with the highest spellpower socket bonuses, otherwise [Runed Cardinal Ruby]
Yellow: [Reckless Ametrine] if over hit cap, otherwise [Veiled Ametrine] (you should generally not use 20haste or 20hit)

It is important to note that [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] is the only meta you should use.

[top]User Interface

The UI of an Elemental Shaman should be primarily concerned with two major things: the Flame Shock DoT and its duration, and the Lava Burst cooldown. There are a few mods that can help with this.

ForteXorcist: A very useful addon for many classes that can track both cooldowns and DoTs in an attractive package. Best known for its visual cooldown bar, ForteXorcist is a great choice if you want your information right in front of you in an obvious manner (plus it looks pretty cool).

DoTimer: If you want a more straightforward bar-oriented mod, DoTimer is a solid choice. This mod displays both DoTs and cooldowns in a configurable bar format, although the configuration can be somewhat complex.

PowerAuras: A classic from TBC days, PowerAuras is a simple way to track different abilities by making visual cues display on the screen when certain conditions are met, such as your Flame Shock DoT being present on the target.

For a more general Shaman utility addon, one can hardly go wrong with TotemTimers. This is easily the most feature rich totem, shield and weapon buff tracking mod out there, and it works flawlessly with Blizzard's new totem UI.

[top]Math

This second covers some of the more technical aspects of the article.

[top]Clearcasting

The expected uptime of ClearCasting can be calculated using the following formula:

$\frac{-c^2n+4c^2+2cn-8.05c+2n+4.05}{n}$

Where C = Crit Chance of LB (where a crit chance of 50% is 0.50) and N = number of spells in a rotation. This is assuming that FS will be cast just before LvB. As shown on the following graph, the change in N has a minimal impact on the overall uptime figure, and you can also see how uptimes increase with increasing critical chance.

[top]Critical Strike Bonus Damage

Base Crit Bonus * (Crit Bonus 1 + Crit Bonus 2 +....)

Firstly, the "Base Crit Bonus" is able to be modified by the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond. The calculation goes like this:

1.5*1.03=1.545 or 154.5% of base damage.

The 54.5% bonus is then multiplied by critical damage bonus talents. All talents will act as a multiplier of this 54.5%, but stack additively. In the case of Lava Burst with the T7 4pc bonus, it works as follows:

54.5% * (1+100%+24%+10%) = 54.5% * 234% = 127.53%

The 100% is from Elemental Fury, 24% from Lava Flows, and 10% from the T7 4pc bonus. This 127.53% bonus is then added back on top of the base 100% to give a total 227.53% figure. Without the 10% set bonus, we'd see a 222.08% bonus like so:

54.5% * (1+100%+24%) = 54.5% * 224% = 122.08%

[top]Damage Bonuses

Damage bonuses that are passive will stack additively, but multiply with buffs.

Additive bonuses: Booming Echoes, Concussion, Call of Flame, Storm Earth & Fire
Multiplicative bonuses: Elemental Oath (via Clearcasting), Raid Damage Buffs/Debuffs

Additive bonuses multiply base damage and Spell Power (with bonus SP talents).
For Lava Burst, we'd see the following:
100% + 5% + 6% = 111%

Flame Shock has different bonuses for the Direct Damage and Damage over Time portions:
DD: 100% +5% +20% = 125%
Dot: 100% +5% +60% = 165%

The multiplicative bonuses come into effect after the passive bonuses are calculated. For this example, the start point is the final passive damage calculated above.

100% * 110% * 103% * 113% = 128.029%

Clearcasting = 110%, Raid Damage buff = 103%, Raid Spell Damage Debuff = 113%

[top]Mana Efficiency

With the lack of mana use as Elemental, the question is whether to take the points from mana regeneration or cost reduction talents, and use them in damage or utility talents.

Firstly, we need to look at the mana consumption of Flame Shock, Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt under various conditions:

Spell	% of Base Mana	Base	Convection	Sham-Focus
Flame Shock	17%	747	672	411
Lava Burst	10%	439	395	439
Lightning Bolt	10%	439	395	439

Assuming a "standard" rotation with 9 Lb, 2 LvB and 1 FS, we would expect to see the follow mana use per second (or mps) from the above conditions (with an average ClearCasting uptime of 84.61%, meaning mana costs are reduced by 33.844%)

Condition	mps	Saving	per point
Base	181	0	0
Convection	163	18	3.6
Sham-Focus	170	11	11

As you can see, Shamanistic Focus appears to be better, point for point, than Convection. The next question is how these values compare with Unrelenting Storm. As the above figures are in mps, and US uses mp5, we need to first calculate the mp5 and convert to mps.

Assuming raid buffs, an average elemental shaman will be around 1100 Intellect. This converts to 132 mp5, or 26.4 mps. Also, if we assume a mana pool of ~ 21000, we can add Thunderstorm into the mix (using once every 50 seconds), we see the following:

Condition	mps	Saving	per point
Base	181	0	0
Convection	163	18	3.6
Sham-Focus	170	11	11
Thunderstorm	NA	33.6	33.6
Unrelenting Storm	NA	26.4	8.8

On a point by point comparison, Convection comes out as the best place to remove points from, followed by Unrelenting Storm and Shamanistic Focus.

[top]Special Thanks

Thanks to Zamir, who continues to be the major source of mathematical genius behind this article, and who also puts up with my anxious PMs on a regular basis. Check out his blog, it's full of awesome: Planet of the Hats!

Thanks also to Binkenstein, the original author of this article. Most of us wouldn't have any idea where to start without the work you've done.

And finally, thanks to the goons, who I stole a graf from. 1 2 3 4 5 rogue rogue

[top]Copyright Information

This article is a derivative work by masanbol of an original article by Binkenstien (located here). The article and all future versions of the article are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License. Reproduction of the article in full or in part, or further derivative works based on the article, including translations, are permitted as long as:

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