Hello.
The current meta for elemental shaman seem to be lightning build only. The old fire build is dead according to the common build sites and streamers. Many talents like Ascendance aren’t used in effective builds. You can read more about the current meta here: https://www.wowhead.com/de/guide/classes/shaman/elemental/the-war-within-guide
So far it looks to me that you killed elemental shamans build variety and now we have the most boring, simplistic lightning build ever.
You once promised use viable builds for lightning AND fire AND mixed damage and currently the last two are missing. I wonder why no one writes about this. I find the current change so horrible, they could have as well just deleted the spec.
Lets hope blizzard fixes this in the near future.
What variety ? You mean the fire build where you spammed 1 single button all the time (lava burst) ? At the expense of any other button. And if you did press any other button, it was 100% exclusively to buff Lava Burst and keep spamming meat balls.
Lightning builds rule. You got spell variety and a neat rotation. With builders, Spenders and procs. As it should be.
Why do you say we have a Lightning or Fire build today? I don’t understand what you mean. If you’re talking about a build oriented toward Lightning, then yes, but a full Lightning build? No, just as the Fire build before was only oriented toward fire…
As I see it, what we have today is a Weaver oriented toward Lightning. You spam Earth Shock (Earth), Flame Shock (Fire), Primordial Wave (all elements), Lava Burst (Fire and Earth), and Earthquake (Earth/Physical) to do AoE, and you fill with Lightning Bolt, which has tons of passives like Rod and Thunderward. But in the end, it’s still a Weaver, just like the Fire build was a Weaver where you spammed Lava Burst, Flame Shock, Elemental Blast, Ice Fury, Frost Shock, and if nothing procced, Lightning Bolt but this build now is RIP
I say that mechanically Fire build as you knew it had problems.
What you mean by “fire build” is what we had before :
This …
Let me correct you on that :
It actually was : 300 casts of lava burst. 20 casts of everything else. And icefury/elemental blasts/flame shock had only 1 purpose… to buff Lava Burst so you cast even more and chunkier Lava Bursts. Even if you were at max Maelstrom. Did not matter.
On top of the problem that since Lava Burst had a guaranteed crit, crit was absolutely useless. The “ideal value” of crit was 0%. It was a DPS loss to equip stuff with crit.
All those things combined made Elemental a 1 botton spec.
BORING. Also, very RNG based.
Today you still have the fire build. It just turns out that instead of pressing lava burst 300 times, you press it less. And press more of everyting else, which provides the bulk of your damage.
Lava Burst returned to its original purpose : Its a builder. To build Maelstrom so that your Elemental Blast (what does the damage) trucks.
It just happens to be the case where Lightning Builds do more DPS now. Like S2 DF vs. S3 DF… same thing…
The naming I used is basically unconciously imitated from wowhead guides. I still find the term lightning build fitting, because the 2 main skills used in the current efficient meta for single target are lightning bolt and earth shock. The only real alternation of this simple 2 button spec is casting a primordial wave + lava shock combo whenever primordial wave comes off cooldown and using occasional instant cast lava burst if movement can’t be avoided. There are also 2 skills (storm elemental and stormbringer) you press whenever they come off cooldown - no meaningful decision here. That was a description of the single target rotation and aoe isn’t much more interesting.
Flame shock isn’t used anymore in single target, there is no meaningful reacting to procs and passives just work in the background without changing the rotation.
The rotations from dragonflight season 1 I remember could get much more complex, e.g. there was one alternating between 3 elements: lightning with storm keeper, fire with lavaburst, frost with icefury and there could be an alternative phase with ascendence. Passives felt a lot more meaningful due to how one skill could often buff others and there was meaningful reacting to procs. There was a more simple to play lightning focused build that felt much more quick and spammed lightning bolts. There were at least 4 different builds recommened by guides - each feeling significantly distinct - and now we are basically down to 1 build with some changes based on the chosen hero talent.
Not true. There were multiple builds recommened on the official build sites in each category (single target, multi target) and the dps differences between them were rather small. Also the AoE and the single target builds played more distinct from each other than in the current situation were they are quite similiar. What killed build diversity later on though was tier sets who usually favoured a certain playstyle - making it better.
I really enjoyed the rotation you called madness. If it goes wrong, well then it goes wrong and I deal low dps, but its at least fun to perform and not a boring rotation.
The current single target rotation might be the simplest dps rotation in the entire game.
I mean… we’re no worse off than the last couple of seasons of DF, where our rotation was literally just hitting lavaburst over and over. There were times in S3 where we didn’t even use our spenders. At least here we’re casting 3 or 4 spells, even if 90% of the time it’s just lightning bolt or chain lightning.
The real problem is that fire just isn’t a build; there’s really just Lavaburst, and literally everything else about the build revolves around it incredibly tightly. You spread flame shock not for the dot itself, but rather to get more LvB procs. You pop fire ele to extend flame shock durations, so you can press LvB more without needing to refresh DoTs. You use DRE not for the mini-cd, but rather to pop out more LvBs on the transformation. Even spenders were generally only used alongside Windspeaker’s, in order to get yet more lava burst procs. This resulted in a build which actively aimed to be a 1-button rotation. Single target, the play was Lavaburst spam; AOE, the correct play was ALSO lavaburst spam.
Balancing that against lightning is impossible since either LvB is good, in which case fire > everything, or it’s bad, in which case fire < everything. Fire needs a really comprehensive looking at, probably involving replacing Lava Surge with a more intelligent, modern mechanic along with adding, say, lava beam as a permanent CL replacement and rethinking Asc to be a real cooldown.
