New ele player here, and actually having a blast(heh) playing elemental, especially in pvp. I have noticed in BGs i struggle mightily with rogues and warriors, who seem to be able to stick on me without consequence. I can’t stand and cast and kill them as they dumpster me, but it seems like the kite tools are lacking (unless i should be weaving 1 spell in after each frost shock). A lot of times it feels like the moment they close and stun me, its GG.
Any tips? Or is this something that’s just an inherent weakness in the class, and you need a buddy to peel for you?
1v1 you rely heavily on frost shock + ghost wolf (dont over look thundering paws conduit) and lightning lasso. use earth shield to help and earth ele to stun them and provide both an extra damage reduction cooldown and a stun that can be used while you are cc’d.
mostly they are going to do quite alot of damage to you if they get uptime, its fairly inherent to the class.
Frost shock/wolf kiting + lasso has generally been what i’ve been trying to do, and has worked moderately well versus monk/dh.
I’ve had more trouble with rogue/warrwho can automatically close through step and charge/leap, and have hard stuns that they seem to just eat me through. I also have found against those two, I can sometimes kite, but then can’t get any meaningful damage off. I am basically waiting for lava procs, but any hard casts either get kicked, or lets them gap close, where they then just dumpster me. If i dont cast though, i cant kill em (assuming spirit walker is down). Thoughts?
Also this is more 1v1, so obviously in arena and rbgs it wouldn’t be a 1v1 scenario. Just curious if there’s a better way to outplay. Also, I’m glad you mentioned earth ele stun cause i forgot about that
edit- also forgot to mention they usually trinket the lasso, so i try and follow with cap totem, but its either dodged or blade stormed. Rogue cloak also is a pain, so its really these two classes
You can consider unleash shield for a root or knockback as well. A 4s root can be pretty debilitating for warriors and they may try to bladestorm out of it leaving you with an opportunity for lasso. Icefury is a tough tradeoff to primal earth elemental but might serve you better in BGs than arena as it does offer a period of decent instant cast damage you can weave between lava burst procs while kiting if you can get the initial cast off reliably. You may want Earthen Rage if you don’t already have it as well given the amount of time you’ll spend kiting and depending on instant cast lava burst.
Earthen rage is a good talent but I’m less sure of icefury.
Personally I think icefury would pair well with vesper totem but giving up primal elementals is a painful choice.
For dealing with kicks and pummel and dealing damage, you just have to get really good at fake casting. Try dropping capacitor totem and then casting stormkeepr, most will ignore thr totem if they see you casting and eat the stun, which will give you some time. Make them make a choice between letting you cast or sniping the totem
icefury turned out to be interesting. Its a little clunky, and needs a dmg buff, but it does generate a ton of upfront malestrom. It also gives you a 3rd school to cast from. However, you lose some back end burst, and the low amount of time you have to cast the frost shocks feels a little harder to weave in lava bursts before the proc expires.
personally i think icefury has potential in a Vesper build. it just gives you a 2nd school to use w/ vesper… you can either load up a stormkeeper (ideal) or if that gets kicked you can go right into an icefury and GO with that instead. i dont know the damage breakdowns of what you’d see with 3 ice fury frost shocks to proc vesper but its still probably pretty decent damage
Dang I kinda struggle with this too.
Do warriors still have the “Gap” thing? Like between 5-10 yrds or something where they cant mele, and they cant charge. REALLY tough to pull off but I’ve done it once and I felt like a real winner, but I’m not sure if i outplayed the warrior or if he was just bad.
You need a dope healer tbh and kite during enemy CDs into bad positions so their healers are put into bad positions.
There’s no real straight forward fix, you got 1 baseline wall and ghostwolf.
You straight up have to outplay people because you don’t have much stuff to trade.
Juggle between static field on small maps (when they use gap closers is the most value)
Travelling storms on z axis maps like dalaran and blades edge, travelling storms also prevents Tstorm from DRing other knockbacks like vortex or rop
Spectral recovery + spiritwolf and janky stuff like the speed boosts from emeni will make some melee bored of chasing you. I’ve had Warriors land like 9 mortal strikes in a 7 min game chasing me
I also don’t fleshcraft inside the gates most of the time I actually bait a kick on nature and utilize the 20% wall from channeling fleshcraft.