Elemental Guide

[Berms]

Just doing this brief write up for my ATR family: (Written in August 2011)

I’m assuming you know some of the basics as I’ll gloss over some areas. I’ll probably revisit other areas in the future to flesh them out more.

Talents:

Most people tend to run the standard 34/7/0 set up, but there’s a few floater talents in there depending on the fight, your gear, and your preferences.

Personally, I view the mana reduction and Earthquake as optional talents. As such, I’ve moved those points into Elemental Warding since most heroics will have a lot of spell damage hitting the raid and it offers small bit of protection in case I stand in something I shouldn’t. The reason why I dropped the mana conservation is because we crit so often thanks to Lava Burst and with enough Mastery, you’ll have more than enough Rolling Thunder procs to top yourself up. Earthquake currently does very poor damage for such a mana hungry spell with a comparatively long cast time. There aren’t enough fights that it’ll get much use. (At least that’s my view.)

Reverberation is not optional. While it doesn’t seem like a dps increase, it actually is because you’re now less likely to lock yourself out of your shocks. (More on this later on in “Rotation”.)

Glyphs:

Prime:

For Tier 12, the following glyphs are pretty much mandatory: Flame Shock (Highest Damage Per Cast), Lava Burst, and Unleashed Lightning (Casting on the move). Lightning Bolt has actually moved out of the top three due to the amount of movement required in Firelands and in some of the Tier 11 fights. Once you try Unleashed Lightning, you’ll find it hard to drop it. We’ve gone from being the least mobile caster to the most mobile caster with 4pc Tier 12.

For Tier 13:

Movement Fights with Tier 12 Set:

Flame Shock, Unleashed Lightning, Fire Elemental (This only applies if you have at least 2pc.)

Stationary Fights with Tier 12 Set:

Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Fire Elemental (This only applies if you have the full 4pc.)

Flame Shock, Lightning Bolt, Fire Elemental (This only applies if you have 2pc, but not the full 4pc.)

Movement Fights with Full 4pc Tier 13 Set:

Flame Shock, Unleashed Lightning, Lightning Bolt

Stationary Fights with Full 4pc Tier 13 Set:

Flame Shock, Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst

Fire Elemental falls out of favour once we break our 2pc bonus. The reason for the FE glyph was that we had the opportunity to use the FE twice per boss. It's great for progression attempts too.

Major:

Lightning Shield is the only mandatory glyph here. It’s not so much of a dps increase, but prevents a loss in dps. If you get hit when you have only three charges, you’ll remain at three and not have to make up the deficit from being at two. (Lightning Bolt surpasses Unleashed Lightning only if you never have to move or if you can guarantee a feather for Big Bird. You know which boss I’m talking about.)

The other strong contenders are: Stoneclaw (Nice if you find that you’re in a situation where that small personal cooldown could help you.), Fire Nova (Good if mobs tend to be spread out. Refer to Infinite Flame Shock under Rotation.), Chain Lightning (Good if you have more than three targets and can cleave often. Think Heroic Halfus or Rhyolith.),and Thunderstorm (Useful for a few fights in Firelands. Rag/Rhyolith).

Personally I run Lightning Shield, Thunderstorm, and Fire Nova. (I’ll swap depending on the fight and my mood.)

Minor:

Renewed Life is pretty much the only required one, but even then it’s more of a convenience. I like Water Walking for convenience as well, but also to kill sneaky mages trying to invis and avoid repair bills. (Spam a buff on a mage as they invis and you’ll eventually pull them back into combat. Doesn’t seem to work for hunters and rogues.)

Gemming:

There were two schools of thoughts prior to the recent (August 2011) buff to Shamanism. Some would stack Int and ignore socket bonuses. Others would match the bonuses. In the end, the advantage was very slight towards stacking Int. Thanks to the recent buff, stacking Int is the way to go.

You’ll want +40 Int gems in every socket unless the socket bonus is +20 Int or +30 of a good secondary stat. The exception to this rule is items with two sockets and the bonus is +20 Int. In this case, the total Int you’ll want with the bonus is 80. If gems plus bonus doesn’t equal 80 Int, ignore it. (Refer to Tier 12 legs. Two blue sockets with a bonus of +20 Int.) [Note: This logic has been superceded with the November 2011 update.]

If you have to match a socket bonus, you’ll want either Int/Haste or Int/Spirit.

Update: (November 2011) If the socket bonus is int +10 or better per gem required to obtain it, you're better off going for it. Apparently there's exceptions, but I don't know what they are yet.

Reforging:

Recent stat weights puts our stats as follows:

Hit>Haste>Mastery>Crit

Naturally, we’ll want to be hit capped since a good chunk of our dps revolves around spells with cooldowns. Haste at the moment is a bit better than Mastery, so you’ll want to reforge for Haste first after getting to the hit cap.

This is how I handle my reforges: (Note: I actually plug my reforges into a spreadsheet I created for myself.)

If an item has Crit with either Haste or Mastery, I’ll reforge the Crit to Spirit. Once I’ve gone through all those types of items, I’ll look at items with really large reforge values. Eg: Darkmoon Card: Volcano and Fiery Quintessence (Firelands Rep) Items like this don’t have any Haste on them, but the amount of Haste we can get out of them is so much, that I personally forge these directly to Haste and then figure out my hit cap around these items. The final step is to then juggle my excess Spirit (if any) and Mastery. If I have too much Spirit, I’ll reforge out to Haste or Mastery. If I need more Spirit, I’ll take it out of Mastery.

If plugging your gear into a spreadsheet to figure out your reforges isn’t your type of thing, just head over to askmrrobot.com. It’ll do a good enough job. (It sometimes has a tendency to put you under hit cap, so be careful with that.)

Tip: If you’re struggling to get hit capped and you have an item with Spirit/Crit. You can always double dip on that item and reforge the Crit to Hit.

Enchants:

This is pretty straightforward, and you shouldn’t have any issues here, but I’ll just mention a few things:

If your chest is epic, don’t be cheap. +20 stats is worth it.

If your wrists are epic, don’t be cheap. +50 Int is worth it.

If your gloves are epic, don’t be cheap. +65 Mastery is worth it. (Yes, +65 Mastery is worth more dps than +50 Haste. I’m sad too.)

If your weapon is epic, don’t be cheap. Power Torrent is most definitely worth it.

Moral of the story: If it’s epic, don’t be cheap. (Unless you’re about to replace that gear very soon.)

Rotation:

Now we’re getting to the meat and potatoes!

Like every other class, we don’t use a rotation anymore. We’re on a priority system. Aside from the obvious things like having totems down, Flametongue on your weapon, and Lightning Shield up, the priority goes like this:

ES9>FS>LvB>LB

4pc T12 = FS>LvB>ES9>LB (Change documented below.)

Now to explain the above and expand a bit on this.

You’ll want to Earth Shock when you have a 9 stack of Lightning Shield. There’s only one time when you do it with less and that’s if you have 7-8 charges of Lightning Shield and 6.5-5 seconds left on Flame Shock. The reason being is that you’ll cut down on potentially wasted Rolling Thunder procs while you’re locked out of your shocks after refreshing Flame Shock. Hence, why we took those points in Reverberation. Less time locked out of our shocks. (Indirect dps increase.)

The rest of the priority is self-explanatory. You’ll want to refresh Flame Shock just as it comes off and cast Lava Burst as quickly as you can after it comes off of cooldown. Lightning Bolt is our filler spell.

4pc T12 Priority Change

The reason for this priority is that we now have an instant cast LvB if we get a Lava Surge proc. (You can set up a Power Aura or whatever addon you prefer for this. The buff is called Volcano.) This doesn't mean that we should cancel whatever we were casting to capitalize on this instant LvB, it means that you want to use up that buff as quickly as possible so that you can free yourself up for another potential Lava Surge. (I've seen chain Lava Surges of as much as 7 in a row without being able to cast another spell in between.) If you interrupt whatever spell you were casting to fire off an instant LvB, you've effectively crippled your dps. By interrupting that spell part way through, you've effectively lengthened the amount of time attributed to that LvB by that much. (Interrupt spell after 0.5s with a 1s GCD, you've effectively made your LvB cast time equal to 1.5s. So don't do that.)

Chain Lightning will join the priority before Lightning Bolt if there’s 2+ targets close enough.

Infinite Flame Shock: Since I mentioned this earlier, I’ll explain it here. Fire Nova will 6 seconds to each active Flame Shock. Head on up to the target dummies and watch this in action. Cast Flame Shock on one target and wait for it to come off cooldown. Cast it on the next target and cast Fire Nova. You’ll notice that the duration just increased for both of them by about 12 seconds. Cast Flame Shock on a third target and repeat. You can keep Flame Shock rolling on all the targets forever with one global.

The most common use of this is on Rhyolith. Cash Flame Shock on each leg and cast Fire Nova as often as you can. Those two flame shocks should last you till the end of the fight. The incidental AoE damage to the adds is a bonus. (Note: Not worth trying to do this without at least one other add.)

Flame Shock and Fire Nova have their own quirks which I won’t expand on, but if you had two Flame Shocks up without any damage buffs and then popped Unleash Elements and/or Elemental Mastery, those Flame Shocks will now take on those properties gained from the Fire Nova. Vice versa is true that they’ll lose the damage buffs if you cast a non-buffed Fire Nova. Not really important or worth monitoring, but thought I’d include it anyway.

Unleash Elements: For those of you that used to use this to fill globals on the move before picking up the Unleashed Lightning Glyph, you’ll find that you’ll rarely ever use this spell again.

Elemental Mastery: As tempting as it is to fire off an instant Lava Burst, it’s actually more dps to use the instant cast portion of this buff on Lightning Bolt since that has a longer cast time than Lava Burst. The haste portion will only affect Flame Shock cast after you gain the EM buff. (Same thing applies when under the effect of Blood Lust.)

Update: Since the EM section was poorly worded with regards to haste and Flame Shock, I'm adding a bit to this. Flame Shock's haste values are not actively updated. Ie: If you're under the effect of EM and BL and one or both are about to fall off, one of your last globals should be to refresh Flame Shock. Flame Shock will maintain the haste effect until it expires or is refreshed. Ie: More ticks = more dps. More ticks = more chances for lava surge procs.

Fire Elemental:

Figured this baby deserves its own mini-section. If you’re an Orc with 2pc T12, “Congratulations! You have the best racial!” (Best racial only because of the spell power buff. Command doesn’t affect the Fire Elemental.)

When to drop your Fire Elemental is just as important as how to drop it and how do you get it to work.

How do you get it to work?

I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that if you try to drop a Fire Elemental down right at the start of the fight (3-4 global into the fight), he’ll probably just stand around and do nothing. The reason for this is thanks to Blizzard’s new Assist AI which doesn’t work very well. If you do enough damage to a target, it’ll get its butt into gear, but that’s wasted dps. To get him to attack immediately, start with Searing Totem down before the pull. (Searing won’t attack immediately either.) With Searing down prior to the pull, the FE will attack immediately.

How to drop it?

While this may seem like a silly topic, many elementals actually don’t know that you can use one of our calls to drop both the Fire Elemental and Earth Elemental together. Don’t waste a separate global for the EE. It’s as waste of dps. An EE will only do about 80k damage in its 2 minutes of life. You’re better off binding it to the FE for the bonus damage.

When to drop it?

I’m assuming you know when you want to drop it during the fight. This is more of a different “when”. Many elementals don’t know that the FE is classified as a guardian and not a pet. As such, it takes a snapshot of your stats when you drop it. (The only stats that matter the most are intellect and spellpower.) That means, you’ll want to line up the best possible buffs given your circumstances when you go to drop it. If you’re dropping it at the start of the pull and you’ve pre-potted, you’ll want to make sure the following buffs are present before dropping your FE. Totem Wrath, Volcanic Potion, Volcanic Destruction (trinket proc), Blood Fury (Orc Racial), Power Torrent, and any other buffs that you have which would affect your intellect or spellpower. (Fiery Quintessence trinket buff would be another to watch for.) Naturally later on in the fight, lining up these procs is virtually impossible, so you’ll most likely want to have Volcanic Destruction (trinket proc) and one other good buff together and let him go to town.

Hopefully this hasn’t bored you too much and has given you a bit more insight to the spec. I might come back some time and tidy this up, but this has most of the relevant information. If you’re looking for more, head over to totemspot.com.

I’m not an elemental guru, but I try to keep up with as much information as possible. If you have any questions/comments, please feel free to leave them here, catch me in the shoutbox when I’m lurking or find me on Berms on Eredar (Horde).

Cheers!

Edit: 9/15/11 - Small update for 4pc T12 rotation.

Edit: 11/2/11 - Change in gemming logic.

Edit: 11/10/11 - Update on Elemental Mastery and haste effects on Flame Shock.

Edit: 11/30/11 - Glyphs changes for 4.3. (Prime)

Edited November 30, 2011 by Berms

[Iammoot]

Now we

[Varibash]

tl:dr

[Lyntha]

[quote name='Phobi

[Ulqui]

bad guide, stoneclaw totem glyph ftw

[Viledead]

i think sometimes sims suggest that mastery at certain levels can equal haste....but who knows really and it might be too close to care. Haste seems better for the "realistic world" ie in high movement fights.

One question is this - with BL up, it seems to me that it is possible to hit LavaB under 1s with enough haste? But I guess most dps comes from Lightning Bolt so that means effectively there is no haste "cap" in that case. So who cares if LvB is < 1 sec?

One other issue is...man is ele AoE annoying. FS-tab-FS-tab etc etc. Is earthquake even worth it any more? Or just FS+FN and CL? I can see it working when targets are up for long enough, but on short AoE trash what is really out there? (ie stuff dies before a CL even gets off). Just the totem I guess.

[Berms]

In theory, you can hit 1s LvBs with BL. Even under the effects of BL, you'd still want to use EM (damage buff), so you will go below 1s LvBs, but the damage gain is worth it. You're right. Nobody cares if LvB goes below 1s since LB is the bread and butter spell. 4pc T12 just gives the LvB glyph the edge over the LB glyph.

Ele AoE has always been bad. EQ isn't really that great. I have it for HRag, but that's about it. If the other big hitters are doing their job, you won't need to use it. Supposedly EQ will be intended to be part of our AoE in the next tier. At which point we're supposedly just doing CL/EQ. Not sure if throwing in ES will be worth it. For small packs that will die too fast. If they're dying before you can get a CL off, then they're not worth dealing with.

Magma totem's nice, but I really don't use it often. I'll use it on the bigger trash pulls in FL just to see if I can pad the meter, but then again everyone else is going all out, so I think I'm doing worse.

[Lyntha]

CL will have no CD next patch. That will be fun.