Elemental Shaman thoughts?

Classes Shaman
1

Every expansion I choose a new main, leaning towards a class and spec I haven’t done so on before. This time, it was an Elemental Shaman. The attacks and effects was the primary reason why. Lightning is cool.

I am running into an issue, and it is becoming frustrating. Trying to figure out if it is me, the class, or the content.

I first noticed something feeling off while leveling. While I was in cooldowns, primarily Storm Elementals, Stormkeeper as well to a lesser extent, it was complete overkill of anything. On the flip side, without using those buffs my attacks were hitting like a wet noodle.
Doing Delves it feels like I am naked, and not wearing Mail Armor + A Shield. Like I take more damage than my cloth wearers.
When it comes to group content, as it is now with Heroics, M0, and Delves Lv8+, it feels like the “Ramp” time is too long. Magma Totem, Double Cast or Flame Shock, Primordial Wave, Lava Burst, before I can start to do damage. Most of the time, things are dead before I can cast a Lava burst. Yet, if I skip that opening I do not have the haste and Maelstorm generation to Earthshock/Earthquake.

I don’t mean this to sound like I am complaining, I am seriously trying to understand what I am doing wrong, or if it is the class itself and not a playstyle for me.

I use Elemental and Storm keeper on CD, in Solo and Groups. Most of the time it is wasted, yet without it I feel weak. I use Astral shift, Bulwark Totem, and even Ancestral Guidance on most pulls. Capacitor Totem as well. Yet any attack chunks me.
I am a seasoned player, have most if not all M+ Portals leading back to BFA. Raided since Vanilla.

Something about Elemental feels bad to play. Is it not for me, or do others have similar issues?

2

I’m not as seasoned as you but I came back to give this season a serious go. I decided on ele/resto. I have the exact same complaints as you do. Perhaps the ramp up time will be okay in higher tier M+ where mobs last longer. Most of the time, especially in open world it feels bad. A lot of setup to hit your peaks and a very low valley without it. Squishy on top of that.

I did switch to farseer for open world which helped a bit. It does feel like hitting with a wet noodle when the cooldowns to summon our ancestors are down. Similar lava burst for haste setup as well.

I tried switching to enhance but it is just as squishy if not squishier. It is also quite busy and requires lining things up right to hit the windows properly. Ultimately I am a bit turned off by the shaman dps specs atm.

In contrast, my windwalker alt feels great to play in all content. I hope others may point out how we may be doing something wrong. I’ve been sticking to resto for now.

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Need to know more. Sounds like you might be playing mainly fire spec with farseer. If so that might be your problem. For m+ if you switch to more lightning focused and stormbringer with haste/crit you’ll see your dmg explode especially in AOE.

Stormbringer gives you plenty of air with free SK every 50secs, CDR with FOL for casted SKs, tempest AOE in 2 free CL (hero talent), earthquake into FS spread.

This all changes when 11.0.5 launches but for now this should give you something to consider. If you can’t take a hit try putting some versatility in your stat mix if you haven’t already. Plus consider defensives in the class talent tree.

I mainly pvp but feel my gear and set up would be just fine in most m+ levels. If you’re trying to min/max I can’t help you there. I feel like more than ever we can play the build we want and be viable in 95% of all content.

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I definitely miss Windspeaker’s Lava Resurgence and Primodial Surge. Not always meta but were great for situations where stuff died quickly and allowed for ease of movement.

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Feel like .5 patch going to be a massive shift to talents

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For some clarity, in long term group fights the damage is fine, good even. However, most combat situations do not last long enough for that to be the case. The survival is rough. Shouldn’t be taking that much with Mail gear and a shield. It feels like “Armor” is a cosmetic name tag these days, not reflecting survival.
The short term fights (90% of combat in the game) and solo fights feel very lacking. Overkill or Underkill. High highs, low lows, and nothing in the middle. The opening definitely has 1-2 too man buttons to be practical. I am still hoping once harder content comes out, it wont be as “bad”. However, it seems the scaling jacks up incoming damage, and not so much enemy health, these days.

Aside from group delves. Holy heck, the day before, and the day after, the recent “tuning” is night and day. Some non-elite mobs took me and my brother 2-4 minutes to kill. Wish we had Devs that played the game, and not just playing spreadsheets.

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I wanna ask about other shamans here, please give me some of your thoughts

Im a casual shaman, but due to personal issues i didn’t play shadowlands at all, didn’t play much BFA and only came back at the end of Df, so, in short, almost no contact with the class after Legion.

What do you guys feel about primal wave being so important in out toolkit? i mean, you literally cant play Farseer without it, why our hero spec need you to take one particular skill in your tree?

I honestly didn’t like it, and i love the ancestors thematic, but hate primal wave. I also can’t get lava burst procs anymore, maybe my stats are a$s or something, cause it doesn’t feel good to play

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I’m leveling farseer ele, I think I’m at 79 right now, so this might change with gear at 80, but I was having a really hardtime until I switched from Storm to Farseer, with a heavy fire build.

Chain Lightning + magma totem + earthquake for 3+ pulls. Pretty standard and self-explanatory

For 1 - 2 targets, I usually pull with a lightning bolt, flame shock, frost shock (for +20% damage to lava + slow), lava burst, frost shock, lava burst, frost shock, lava burst. Then just start the whole thing over. Earthshock whenever its available. Nothing usually survives half of this, unless its elite/boss. If I’m dealing with 2 targets, I chain lightning instead of lightning bolt, because why not.

I don’t take the shield glyph talent, because I keep getting staffs as drops. But I find this works better anyway.

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A brief summary of what I have found so far…

Elemental/Farseer pretty much full fire w/frost shock

  • great for open world and delves, burst on demand, great movement, lots of tools to control mobs and self healing is so so… not terribly squishy so that helps.

Elemental/Stormbringer
-super fun for dungeon and raid groups, big time class fantasy… great windows of burst but Tempest could use a little more control, the 11.05 changes will definitely help
It is by far my favorite spec but it can be frustrating anywhere outside of group content… at least for me

Enhancement/Stormbringer
-fun and fast, decent for all content although being melee is more difficult this expac with the removal of the slight range we used to have, very occasional downtime with bad luck procs but doesn’t seem to happen to often. Extremely squishy but it has crazy self healing when needed… and it is always needed…

I really just need that tank spec to finally show up lol

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After playing Elemental for a bit longer, and fighting through the discomfort of the class and spec. I will have to agree with most of what you said. I didn’t put too much stock into the Hero trees, sort of set and forget. Similar to what Covenants were. I played Stormbringer as it was the “best”, and left it. Boy, was I wrong.

If you are playing Solo, or doing low level Dungeons. Play Farseer. Period.
It gives you the control of the character. The extremely short CD burst windows, Mobility. Healing. Everything I felt the class was lacking. The Instant Lava Burst from the Ancestral Swiftness, while also being able to Macro it into Primordial Wave. Both being on a 30 second CD, Removes 1 button from your opener AND removes the mandatory cast of Lava Burst. It is absurd how much better it plays than Stormbringer.

If you are doing High level Dungeons and Group Play, Stormbringer is better numerically. Sadly, it comes at the cost of an extremely painful opening rotation and reliant a ton on procs and weak aura tracking. As of now, nothing in the game has lived long enough (AOE) for me to say if it is that much greater in actual play to come at the cost of losing everything Farseer has to offer.

My suggestion to anyone playing Elemental.
Play Farseer. Ignore the sims and guides telling you to go Strombringer.
Farseer is so much smoother, and thought out. Stormbringer is extremely clunky with possibly more damage.

That is what I have learned these last few weeks playing Elemental. I only wish I recognized the actual importance of Hero talents early. I figured Blizz was Blizz, so I gave it little credence. I’ve lost any respect and trust for this company I had long ago.

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For ramp you cast a lot of that stuff as the tank is gathering, ideally storekeeper , elemental, primordial (and maybe another flame shock), and magma totem are already out by the time the tank sets himself and damage starts. You should be going right into your lava burst haste window.

For open world I stick to farseer because of how much more burst is in it’s single target damage profile.

Survival has always been kinda garbage on shaman, Elemental specifically because it doesn’t have the self healing built into it that Enh does. You have to kite with earth bind, frost shock, Thunderstorm, Cap Totem, etc and use your Earth Elemental if you run into a mob that can’t be CCed.

This is definitely not a good recommendation in M+. You lose tons of AoE damage potential if you play Farseer in dungeons. Farseer is for open world and Single Target Raids… maybe it has a place in Tyrannical weeks, but not just as a blanket replacement. You should learn to play Stormbringer better and not handicap yourself.

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You may be right on the damage aspect, however. My suggestion still stands, and it is my opinion not fact.
Farseer plays and feels significantly better. Still topping meters in most groups, and neck and neck in others (pug life, always a coin flip), Unless stormbringer is 20-30% more damage. I do not think it is worth it for most players, unless they are in high level content where damage is lacking.

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I was seeing a difference of like 600k dps on the 5 target cleave dummies, and it escalates beyond that. I felt like it was pretty considerable. I do agree farseer feels better to play.

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Playing Enhancement in raids and in M+/Delves. For Raids I been Stomebringer. In Delves and M+ I play Totemic.

I soloed Delves up to 8, and I completed normal raids and we are starting to hit heroics. As Enhance the melee range can be a thing, but so far I have compensated the distance nerf. Stormbringer has worked well, as for Totemic, it is more work but more fun IMO. Come the changes, I think a lot of things may flip.

To survive, get some Vers. As Totemic, the build calls for Vers. Now that M+ is here along with higher delves, the builds will get defined, and people will start to get their builds going. I think Shamans will be all right.

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Enhancement is the only way!

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There’s one thing to note here regarding that discrepancy. The ancestors do not cast elemental blast when they expire when you’re practicing on any dummies for some reason. So that means you’re not getting the dmg from elemental blast and also not getting the buffs increasing mastery, haste and crit.

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Ele main here shaman is great in mythic plus and dung hut if you wanna do pvp find a whole new class cuz ele shaman damage is poo in pvp and enahce just dies. Resto is good but who likes healing?