I will begin by saying that I am new to Ele. I decided to get my KSM with my Ele this season.
I went through the builds and what not I’ve seen online and did some recent reading.
For this week (fortified) I am running the build where we have Magma Totem, Splintered Elements, Surge of Power and Icefury and Skybreaker.
Here’s my issue; after casting Earthshock OR Earthquake, you ideally wanna cast Lava Burst or Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning to benefit from the Surge of Power. But when it comes to AoE, casting Earthquake + Lava Burst (or chain lightning) while hitting Frost Shock in case you are empty for both damage and mael generation, feels weird.
The damage doesn’t seem good,
Casting Earthquake then casting Frost Shock wastes the Surge of Power,
I don’t find the CDR effect on the Fire Elemental that useful; its damage doesn’t seem high enough to have almost an entire build around it,
Asc. proc seems very random, sometimes it procs back to back and sometimes it just doesn’t,
Due to strength of Asc. proc, i sometimes find myself just quickly spending Mael via Earth Shock so I can just bust more Lava Surge procs,
Lack of haste and/or mastery seems to impact the spec significantly, which I don’t like,
I don’t know, obviously its a new spec that I haven’t played much in PvE but the rotation feels really weird to me. I almost decided to just switch to Aftershock and put Icefury related points into Call of Thunder and Power of the Maelstrom. At least my AoE rotation would feel a bit better.
P.S: Its very possible that I am simply in a full confusion about my AoE rotation. If such is the case, let me know and please advice on the proper AoE rotation.
I am playing fire aoe build, and it is quite strong. Key elements are keeping your fire elemental up, spreading flame shocks on CD, dumping earthquakes. At some point on big and long enough pull you start generating so much MS that you no longer need to cast CL - You basically spam earthquakes (flame shock on cd/lava burst in between EQ). Your 2 highest aoe dps skills then are flame shock dot and EQ.
Liquid magma totem is super useful to get initial “burst” of 3 free flameshocks, it really helps to ramp up. If the initial pull is really big - you just reset liquid magma toten to get instant 6 flameshocks.
Then ofc there is primordial wave, which in itself gives massive dmg (lava burst to every flame shocked target plus massive haste buff).
Juice up things with stormkeeper (opener).
On small pulls, where you can’t have 10+ flameshocks rolling, you will be casting a lot more chain lightnings.
Maybe this is the issue around my key level where I am doing 12-13 (on average) keys?
We did a test together with my Arcane Mage on dummies. While initially he surges up to 400k, we both average around 150-200k in the long run. The issue though is that if both DPS blast around 400k, some of the mobs just die and due to lack fo active Flame Shocks, my damage just fizzles out.
Another issue is the size of the EQ Lets say I did a solid opener, busted 5 EQs very quickly. If tank moves out of them; well thats gg for me. My damage becomes garbage.
How do you have the flame related talents on the right side of the tree + stormkeeper? Are you not playing Icefury? I thought that was the build for fire aoe? A no Icefury build would do wonders for me to be honest. I really hate casting Frost Shock during the AoE rotation.
Yes, the biggest issue is the size of EQ and how it forces tank to stand in one place (which is not practical at all).
And another downside is that mobs just don’t live long enough
Single target damage is lacking as well.
This is why I mostly play resto spec in m+, elemental is very impractical spec to have around Maybe if you pair it with smth like frost mage, destro lock - which also needs target to stay in one place… Elementals can pump, but they need specific environment for it.
This build is from Icy veins, 1.2 AoE/Cleave: https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/elemental-shaman-pve-dps-spec-builds-talents
This is the talent tree I am using, it differs from Icy veins by 1 talent (I add 2/2 on Searing flames, and remove Deeply rooted elements - I don’t like RNG side of it, I prefer more consistent option ) This is the tree, it only includes ele tree, class tree is just standard tree: https://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/shaman/elemental/DABBAOVUUUFRSZEQgoQQDBVQ
This is just an example of sustained AoE on dummies, the composition of damage (50mil dmg, 410ilvl, no tier sets, this resulted in ~170k dps): https://ibb.co/fXMp36V
What I like a lot is how little hard casting you need to do during AoE. Also EQ is expendable, since you gain so much MS, you can throw them left and right.
And no need to hard cast elemental blast, cast empowered EQ and see your tank move from it
I just tried your talent tree on dummies and you are absolutely right. Not only the damage is a bit higher than the Icy Veins build (perhaps Icy Veins can simp better but optimizing it is very difficult), the rotation feels soooooo smooth as well.
Its a bit sad to forsake deeply rooted elements but I guess it makes sense, as you (and i) mentioned, it sometimes procs back to back, sometimes doesn’t at all.
I’ve found a really fun and satisfying spec, it uses all schools constantly and you get to move alot. And the main aoe rotation is just chain lightning, and then apply as many earthquakes as possible to apply more Lightning Rod buffs, and then repeat. Simple and effective. (Icefury is usually stronger on small packs tho)
Idk how to link the spec but core abilities are :
Lightning Rod
Stormkeeper + Flash of Lightning
Icefury + electrified shocks
Storm Elemental
Surge of Power
Windspeaker’s Lava Resurgance
The single target rotation goes like :
Icefury)) → Frost shock → Earth shock → Lightning Bolt → Lava burst >> repeat
Keep flame shock up inbetween the combo and fill with lightning bolt when you don’t have enough Maelstrom for an earth shock.
Lets say I did a solid opener, busted 5 EQs very quickly. If tank moves out of them; well thats gg for me. My damage becomes garbage.
Maybe if you pair it with smth like frost mage, destro lock - which also needs target to stay in one place… Elementals can pump, but they need specific environment for it.