No, the water elemental was a cooldown in TBC, and that’s when it was actually a threat. I’m pretty sure it didn’t get made perma until after MoP, and ever since it’s been a nerf gun, no reason to have it, no reason to fear it. Lonely Winter (the talent that let you sacrifice it for a percentage damage increase) was meta in every single expansion it was featured in.
Only bad mages ever thought it was good, pretty much. I get sick of seeing these types of threads because as someone who first capped a mage in TBC, I’ve been around for the entire life of the thing and it was never more useless than when it was baseline always there.
Yeah I could glyph it into something that looked cool, but just why even bother?