It’s too early to say, but based on early week public parsing data Elemental Shaman are now high tier raid performers. That’s despite the sampling bias of high skill cap players rolling away from the class in 8.0. Ask any data analyst, that suppresses mean performance at all quartiles of play.
Couple that with the 15% buff to Earthquake and even the ranged classes that generally outperform us in Raids are looking worse in M+. Balance is reporting M+ DPS losses due to the patch shifting their DPS into ramp-up sources. Frost Mages poor scaling has caught up to them at this point in the raiding tier and the utility nerfs have really knee capped their M+ performance. Shadow is never good in M+. Elemental might actually be the top choice for M+ in the RDPS line now due to burst potential, utility, personal defensives, and low cooldown reliance.
I’m mostly amused by how many people are having to eat crow despite the numerous conversations I’ve had explaining that this is exactly what was going to happen with 8.1 on the basis of the marginal buffs and our baseline kit alone. Half of them have fully committed to the now objectively bullcrap line of reasoning that somehow Elemental is still bad in 8.1. The other half just aren’t mentioning that they spent the last several months spreading misinformation about Elemental, especially the launch state in 8.1.
The fact that the best ST Ele lvl100 talent is also the best AoE talent is certainly a great boon. Now Ele isnt getting instadeclined on Tyrannical weeks anymore. Basically we are closer to what endgame Legion Ele was: having both absurd AoE potential and good ST. There are still some issues like some utility talents being rather useless (Earth shield, Ancestral Guidance) and one of the new talents being undertuned (Call the Thunder).
As for Enh, from what I have seen, the damage is the same or somewhat better on both pvp and pve, but in pvp you also get to pick utility talents instead of being shoehorned into only the same 3 damage pvp talents.
Resto also feels much better specially on M+. Before I was strugging on healing outside of CDs, but now it feels considerably less limited to that time frame.
I started playing enhancement in 8.01 and progressed quickly in pvp achieving 2100 3s and 2k in 2s, Nothing to special, but it was my first time rolling enhance. Patch 8.1 has completely gimped us in pvp, running 2s was a nightmare opening night of 8.1, dropped 250cr, was not putting out near the damage or pressure I was before, and I was breaking my healers CC’s with the new stupid ride the lighting pvp talent. We are forced to use shamanism, which is dispelable by most classes, and my maelstrom was lagging. I have talked to a number of high rated glad enhance shaman, and they are feeling the same effects, completely gimped, and mael starved. Maybe different for Pve, as far as pvp goes we have been stripped of our best pvp talents and left with this new laggy build.
in my opnion elemental is just broken, but not as broken as Unholy dk but still broken op laso and stormkeeper will be nerfed which is honestly why i think ele right now is in a good place these talents fo shoot at alot of other talent making more talents useless and making these 2 mandatory, why couldnt they just added some mobility and defensives and maybe make casting a bit faster
Thing is. You aren’t educated on the state of things. Clearly. Elemental is going to outstanding in all aspects of the game. Saying that you are somehow a harbinger of information when you clearly have no idea what you are talking about is kind of stupid.
Elemental is going to be so strong this tier I’m rerolling to it.
My elemental feels better than it has since the start of the expansion. We could still use a buff to AS for damage mitigation so we aren’t forced into using a rock boi for the tough skin cd, but it hasn’t really been an issue for me yet. I know it’s only anecdotal, but I’m doing much better in raids AND mythic + since the rework.
I am enjoying the shaman way more than I have in a while since 8.1. Resto is really cool now and works! Elemental is awesome fun to play, so many spells and attack combinations. I don’t PvP with a shaman, that is a given! Freekill, free kill…prolly still. But for PvE, these changes are terrific.