Well, we’ve downed the Firelands, and now we’re off to fight the next element – which appears to be either slime, tentacles, or apostrophes, looking at Patch 4.3’s raid bosses. Anyway, Thrall’s in trouble, so it’s time for his fellow shamans to pick up their totems – that might take some time – and get down there to help him. Here’s our Elemental Shaman guide for Patch 4.3, including stats, talent spec, glyphs, reforging, gems and priorities, so you can start zapping without delay.
Updated Nov 29th 2011 for Patch 4.3
Elemental Shaman Changes in Patch 4.3
Elemental Shamans have had some heavy changes in Patch 4.3, mostly aimed at AOE. Earthquake’s damage is up 75% (!), Chain Lighting no longer has a cooldown for Elemental shamans, and several spells have had their damage buffed for Elemental shamans by roughly 4%.
At the same time, Fire Nova will no longer extend the duration of Flame Shock. All of this means that our AOE rotation has totally changed – see below.
In other news, Reverberation now massively reduces Wind Shear’s cooldown – which has gone up, and comes down again with this change. However, that doesn’t change our recommended talents.
Elemental Rotation / Priorities
Like most DPS classes in Cataclysm, Elemental shamans don’t have a fixed rotation any more. Instead, we have priority system – use whichever ability is highest-priority and available.
- Top Priority: Put down a Fire totem if one isn’t down already. If the target doesn’t have a Flame Shock Damage over Time on it, apply one.
- Second Priority: Cast Lava Burst if it procs. Cast Earth Shock if it doesn’t, and if you have 8 or 9 Lightning Shield stacks.
- Third Priority: If you have nothing else to do, cast Lightning Bolt.
Totems: Unless your raid/group leader tells you otherwise, use Earth: Stoneskin, Air: Wrath of Air, Water: Healing Stream, Fire: Searing.
Buffs: Keep Flametongue Weapon and Lightning Shield active at all times.
Cooldowns: Use Fire Elemental Totem whenever possible and when the mob will survive long enough to outlive its duration. Use Elemental Mastery whenever it’s off cooldown. Use Spiritwalker’s Grace if you’re about to have 10 sec or more of constant movement.
Advanced tips: Fire Elemental Totem is best cast when you have a Spellpower proc. Flame Shock is best cast when the FS DOT has about 2 sec left to run. See the MMO Champion guide, in Links, for more.
AOE: Cast Earthquake where the mobs are tanked. Then spam Chain Lightning, and use Fulmination whenever you reach 9 charges.
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Elemental Talent Spec
This is a good standard Elemental talent spec for 4.3
If you’re having mana problems, try swapping Reverberation (2nd Tier Elemental) for Convection (First Tier Elemental).
Stats, reforging and gemming for Elemental
The most important stat for Elemental is Intellect, then Hit or Spirit to the cap (1742 – don’t settle for just under, you need cap or over), then Haste, then Mastery. Crit is the least useful stat for Elemental shamans.
Reforging: Reforge to Spirit to the hit cap, then reforge to Haste. Reforge from hit above the cap first, if you have any, then Crit.
Gems: Use a Brilliant Inferno Ruby in all sockets. unless the socket has a per-socket bonus of 20 Int or better. In blue or yellow sockets where the bonus is 20 Int or better, use Purified Demonseye (Int/Spirit) or Reckless Ember Topaz (Int/Haste).
Note – If you can’t reach hit cap with reforging alone, you’ll also want to gem for it. Match blue gem sockets first if you’re doing that.
Elemental Shaman enchants
Several professions can provide better enhancements than these – Inscription, Tailoring, Engineering all have potential buffs. Check the stat priorities above.
| Head | Arcanum of Hyjal |
| Shoulders | Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone |
| Back | Enchant Cloak – Greater Intellect |
| Chest | Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats |
| Wrist | Enchant Bracer – Mighty Intellect |
| Hands | Enchant Gloves – Greater Mastery |
| Belt | Ebonsteel Belt Buckle |
| Legs | Powerful Ghostly Spellthread |
| Feet | Enchant Boots – Precision or Mastery |
| Weapon | Enchant Weapon – Power Torrent |
| Off-Hand Weapon | Enchant Weapon – Superior Intellect |
Glyphs
Prime: Unleashed Lightning, Flame Shock, Lava Burst (NOTE – if you are in a fight where you will need to move a lot, Glyph of Lightning Bolt can be used to replace Glyph of Lava Burst)
Major: Lightning Shield, Healing Stream Totem, Thunder. Chain Lightning is useful if you know you’ll be hitting a lot of adds.
Minor: Entirely your choice.
Links
- MMO Champion Elemental guide – Interesting and well-written, a good counterpoint to the EJ guide. Not up to 4.3 yet, but still worth a look.
- Elitist Jerks Elemental Shaman Guide – as usual, an excellent resource, split into a FAQ and a very detailed guide that’s worth reading. Fully updated to 4.3.
- Blogenstein – math-heavy Ele Shammie blogger, extremely worth reading.
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Stats, reforging and gemming for Elemental
Crit is the least useful stat for Boomkin
Whoops! Fixed, thanks.
Unleashed lightning should only be used for cirtain fights and should be replaced with the Glyph of Lightning Bolt, Glyph of lava burst should be there instead of the Unleashed lightning.
Mastery is the stat to stack haste should not be reforged or stacked but can be reforged from crit if the item already has mastery on it.
FIX IT!
@kadungo – EJ disagrees with you on the reforging. Cite please?
Have corrected the glyphs slightly, although I feel on most fights an Ele shaman will benefit from being able to move and cast more than they will from 10% extra damage on one spell.
Also, SHOUTING does not guarantee a positive response to your comment.
Haste equal to Mastery, does that mean that I might have to reforge haste into mastery since i have quite alot more. Also is that counting the 5% haste totem. I dont really get why i have to lower haste in order to equalize it with mastery :-s
@Makegoh – You don’t – sorry if that’s unclear. What you should do is reforge hit above the cap and crit to haste or mastery, whichever is lower.
But how does exactly having ‘haste = mastery’ help me more, rather than ‘as much haste as possible and the rest mastery’ ?
@Makegoh – saying ‘as much haste as possible and the rest mastery’ is not quite accurate. In terms of pure stat weightings, Haste and Mastery are virtually equal. That means that if you can reforge a stat to either haste or mastery, you should do so. If you have the choice (ie, you can reforge to haste or reforge to mastery), then it becomes a very subjective decision. In general (and particularly at anything other than high-end levels of raiding), you should try to ensure that you have approximately equal levels of mastery and haste.
The Elitist Jerks Elemental thread currently states:
and later
Doesnt spirit count as hit, so why would u forge spirit to hit
@Domnhalls – You shouldn’t – as the guide says, “Reforge to Spirit to the hit cap”.
in the gems section you said reckless ember topaz is haste/spirit.. may wanna fix it
@Meetunysu – Wow, that typo’s been around for a while! Thanks for spotting it.
Hi, nicely set out and found it easy to read. I do question a few of your talents but mainly from the perspective of DS raiding. I personally have come out of Earthquake due to the fact i feel it is DPS loss with a CL/Fulmination spam at >2, I see only a few viable situations for this talent which don’t outweigh my decision.
Also, Totemic reach; I think that DS does not provide as much movement as FL which may require using a GCD on repositioning totems. Not much movement at all really so an educated drop on the pull should be sufficient.
Where would i put these points? Well depends which boss you are on but i find defensive talents such as Elemental Warding more beneficial.
Just my opinion anyway
@Trenchmental – Interesting – thanks very much!
I can’t agree with you where you say ‘Obtain the hit cap… even if it means gemming for hit… don’t settle for just under the hit cap.’
Point for point hit has a higher value than any other secondary stat if you’re below the cap, but it still has a value, even if that value changes depending on how much hit you have.
What I’m trying to say is that depending on how much hit you have, it won’t trump all other stats all of the time.
As an example, if you are 10 points below the hit cap and the only way you can get those extra 10 points is to reforge 86 of your haste into it, taking you 76 points over the hit cap, then that is a bad decision. At that level of gear/stats 86 haste has higher value for you than 10 hit. The one miss per 1000 spell casts is more than made up for by the 86 haste that is applied to your other 999 casts.
The same is true for int gems vs hit gems, only at impossibly low levels of hit (As in, you’re wearing all greens or you haven’t reforged properly) will a 40 hit gem provide you more dps than a 40 int gem. Again, at decent (+15%) levels of hit, the one miss per 250 spell casts is more than made up for by the extra 40 int and the spellpower that it brings to your other 249 casts.
@Mitch – My understanding of the subject is that capping hit isn’t vital purely because of the miss chance, but because a single miss can really screw up the Ele priority chain’s DPS. Thus, both EJ and the Ele theorycrafting expert I discussed this subject with a while ago strongly recommend capping hit.
Having said that, of course there are always edge cases – and your example of reforging 86 haste to gain 10 hit is one of those, of course!
As for the int/hit gemming issue – it’s only at very low levels of gearing that you won’t be able to hit cap from reforging, I believe. Thus, whilst you’re probably correct that gemming for hit at higher gear levels will be a DPS loss, it’s also never going to be an issue.
I’m happy to be corrected on that point, though, if you have specific examples of higher-end gear sets that would still need to gem for Hit?
Sorry I’m new to wow, is this guide for pvp or pve? Or just in general?
Nice thank you for this guide, i see that i figured out mjost of it already without it but still thanks for the things i didn’t know.
And to Ben Clarkson: This a PVP guide
Do i need to balance the haste and mastery like 50/50?
(HITCAP) It’s not always necessary to get hit cap at every level. If you are still runing Cata Normal instances and even Cata Heroics there are no bosses at level 87 & 88 so its not overly necessary to reforge for it.
As you get better gear and move on to harder content and higher level mobs then yes hitcap becomes much more important.
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