Elemental Shaman info

[un4]

Note: your crit chance is significantly increased against a target 20 levels lower than you.

[JohnnieRat]

This is an awfully long post for an underpowered spec
I think blizz said y'all are getting a sweet buff here in the foreseeable future.

Copied from MMO-Champ
[blizzard]Elemental DPS
1. Yes, it is too low on live.

2. I can't speak towards the PTR specifically. It takes awhile to create a build, so they are often a few days (or longer) behind our changes. I can say that in our internal testing all of the changes together gave Elemental something like a 10 to 12% dps increase for Naxx 25 geared characters in full raid buffs. Elemental dps should be very close to Balance druid dps, which we used as the standard we wanted to reach.

We discussed several of the concerns that have come up over the last few days and ran some additional tests, but we are still satisfied with the numbers produced by the new changes. (Source)[/blizzard]

[Nasanna]

But I am an engineer. I liek math! If anything, the changes we'll see from the PTR just mean SP is even more important than crit since LB will benefit even more from SP. From the DPS tests I did, about 30-40% of damage came from LB and 30-40% came from lava burst, which always crits, so getting more crit doesn't help that damage at all. I guess I could've just made this post 

[dharq]

I think the biggest problem I've noticed with my elem shaman is that all of your damage totems are fire, and yet your big buff comes from a fire totem as well. On paper, the changes to nova and magma totems sound really good, but in practice, will you ever give up a 280 sp and 3% crit increase for a whole raid for it? I don't think so.

I'm wondering what other changes they're talking about that boost DPS by 10-12%?  Shamanism sounds good, but I don't think it can account for that much.. nor can the changes to elemental shields/warding and SE&F. I'm not meaning to be skeptical here because everything I've read about 3.0.8 sounds great for elems, but I'm just wondering where the increase is actually coming from.

Also, I've seen a number of posts regarding shamanism and chain lightning... it seems like once you hit approx 2500 SP range, chain lightning does indeed drop out of the casting rotation.

Good stuff, all considered.

[Iliessa]

Dharq - You're right about the fire totem thing, that's the dilemma all Ele shammies will have to take into account. Obviously you're going to need to have ToW down for every boss encounter which makes the new totem changes worthless for that. There are times when using magma totem may be more beneficial to the raid than ToW, like clearing large groups of trash (especially in the arachnid quarter of naxx, where there's about 10 non elites that come at you at once.) But it will be rare when it will be useful, in my opinion.

As far as the damage increase goes, we're getting about 5 separate buffs: Increase to FS dmg, 10% more LB and 20% more LvB  bonus damage, 10% more damage to all spells while Clearcasting is active (which is approximately 65% of the time, give or take based on your own crit chance), 20% more crit chance for 30 seconds every 3 minutes, and a glyph that adds 4% more damage to LB. They may be dropping a magma totem in there too with its increased damage and coming up with the 12% increase in overall DPS - I hope not - but I can see how these changes could make a 12% difference. Whether or not this actually put us back in the running with other hybrids.. we shall see

And as far as needing 2500 SP to remove CL from our rotations, that is not correct. Someone on the EJ forums had posted that, but they were corrected later on by the individual who is writing the Spreadsheets and the Theorycrafting documents for Elemental. According to him (Bink) you would actually need 12322 Spell Power in order for LB to just break even with CL DPS. So it looks like CL is here to stay.

It also looks like the general consensus is that our rotation is never going to be a specific 1,2,3,4, repeat... type of thing. The priority system that Nasanna described in an earlier post is the way to go, even after these changes, so getting good DPS on your Elemental Shaman is going to take practice and patience. What feels good one run may feel off the next time due to an upgrade that changes your haste value. Also, if you have a trinket that procs with a haste buff then your rotation may feel different from one minute to the next.

So in summary from our collective wisdom here and Elitest Jerks:

Rotation priority - FS, LvB, CL, LB
And don't forget to use your Trinket and Elemental Mastery cooldowns whenever they are available.

Stat priority - Hit Rating (until cap of 341) > Spell Power > Haste > Crit

Glyph Priority - Glyph of Flame Shock > Glyph of Lava > Glyph of Lightning Bolt ( 3.0.8 ) > Glyph of Flametongue Weapon

And most importantly - Fun > all. 

[Nasanna]

A good guide of basically what we discussed here:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=7372911776&postId=73722594111#0