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I finally got my thumb out of my bum and wrote this so you better use it! Feel free to ask questions if you have any and I will answer them to my(or Google's) best knowledge.
Basics:
Playing an Elemental Shaman is easy, playing it good is very easy, playing it to it's full potential is close to impossible. You have to be on your toes constantly and always be ready to react to proccs etc while still monitoring the duration on Flame Shock, stacks on Lightning Shield, cooldown on shocks and all the other things needed when fighting a boss. Do not let this scare you, try doing you best on a dummy for some 15 minutes and you will find it's comming to you. Also, no-one expects you to play it flawlessly.
What specc and glyphs do we use then?
This specc is a good one. Note that there are some talent points left to spend, also only one point in Convection. These points can be put wherever you like, it's pretty much down to personal preference. Same thing goes for the open glyph-slots. Here are some suggestions:
Talents:
[Convection] is a decent talent. The thing is that unless you heal or cast Earthquake your mana should be just fine due to [Rolling Thunder], making this talent only semi-good.
[Reverberation] is one I recommend, both because it helps managing Flame -/Earth Shocking and gives us an interrupt with a 5 second cooldown. That has helped me several times.
[Earth's Grasp] is an awesome utility-talent. Amazing for fights where kiting/slowing adds is crucial, two good examples being Valkyries on The Lich King and oozes on Omnitron Defense System, probably also adds on Beth'Tilac.
Glyphs:
On the empty Prime Glyph you have two options: [Glyph of Lava Burst] or [Glyph of Lightning Bolt]. Up until 4.2 Lava Burst was superior but with the addition of [Glyph of Unleashed Lightning] these two are now pretty much on par, depending on the amount of movement in each fight. Much movement -> Lightning Bolt. Much standing still -> Lava Burst
Concerning Major Glyphs you will have to try and see what fits you best. I personally go with the Thunder and Ghost Wolf but both Healing Stream, Hex and Fire Nova is very viable.
On the minor ones you can go with whatever, though I can tell you Water Walking is awesome.
Stats
As Elemental is a caster specc Intellect is the way to go for us. Spirit is also a good way to go as it gives Hit Rating, though only to a certain point. After that both Mastery, Haste and Crit is viable. The priority here looks something like this:
Spirit (until 1742 hit*) > Intellect > Haste = Mastery > Crit
*Note: Cap for Draenai is 1640
The Haste vs. Mastery issue is pretty fun. Mastery increases our chance to get duplicates of our spells and haste increases the amount of spells we cast. This means that they buff each other so try to keep them as close to each other as possible.
Spells
There is no real rotation that you have to follow when playing Elemental, just as with many other classes, instead you follow a system built on prioritizations.
This is what we have to play with in a basic fight:
* [Lightning Bolt]
The "filler-spell". Does good nature damage and should be used whenever you are doing nothing else.
* [Flame Shock]
Applies a DoT on the target dealing fire damage every 3 seconds(Modified by haste). This should be on as many targets as possible, never let it drop off your "main" target.
* [Lava Burst]
Our "hard hitter". Using this on a target with Flame Burst on it will make the spell a guaranteed critical hit. Has an eight seconds cooldown.
* [Earth Shock]
Should be used in combination with the talent [Fulmination] and [Lightning Shield], as explained later on.
* [Searing Totem]
Should always be up. Your fire totems grants 10% extra spell damage to you and your raid/party. Mind the short duration.
Here follows a summary of the most important talents that comes into play during a basic fight and a short explanation on how they affect us:
* [Elemental Overload (Mastery)]
Each time we cast a spell either Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning we have a chance to instantly cast duplicate of that spell that deals 75% of the original spells damage. These spells count as separate spells and thus proccs many of our other talents.
* [Elemental Precision]
Basically gives us hit rating from Spirit on a 1:1 conversion.
* [Rolling Thunder]
Every time we hit with Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning we have a chance to gain one charge on our Lightning Shield up to a maximum of 9 stacks. You want to stack it as close as possible to 9 but never actually to 9 since after that every lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning you cast is a wasted potential stack. This talent is affected by our mastery
* [Fulmination]
If we have more than three charges on our Lightning Shield and cast Earth Shock we will cast an additional spell, separate from Earth Shock, called Fulmination. This spell will consume all stacks above three and deal damage equal to all those stacks to the target. More stacks = More damage
* [Elemental Mastery]
Our only real "popable" cooldown. Should be used as soon as you are somewhat certain you will benefit from the whole duration. As it isn't on the global cooldown you can bind it to any spell with a simple macro, most people bind it to Lava Burst but I personally have it on Lightning Bolt
* [Feedback]
Every time we successfully cast a Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning we reduce the cooldown on Elemental Mastery by one second. This will, when on a dummy-like fight, give Elemental Mastery an effective cooldown on ~1 minute. This talent is affected by our Mastery
* [Lava Surge]
Basically our Lava Burst can reset its cooldown every 3 seconds. This is an awesome but unpredictable cooldown. This is one of the talents that makes elemental hard to play perfect, you always have to be on our toes to see if it proccs since letting Flame Shock tic another time (i.e wait ~3 seconds) is wasting another potential Lava Burst, which is a major DPS increase.
The prioritization-order while standing still looks something like the following:
Fire Totem > Flame Shock > Lava Burst > Earth Shock(Stack 7-9) > Lightning Bolt
Other stuff
This will be a chapter for other stuff, questions and maybe some discussion.
What do I gem?
As much Intellect as possible while getting the Int socket bonuses with Int/Haste, Int/Mastery or Int/Spirit gems.
For your Meta socket [Burning Shadowspirit Diamond] is the only way to go.
How do I reforge my gear?
I've stolen this from ElitistJerks but it works out very well:
If you're hit capped, and/or you have excess hit or spirit, do the following:
1. If an item has hit/spirit and crit, reforge hit/spirit to Haste or Mastery, otherwise reforge crit to Haste or Mastery
2. If an item has hit/spirit and haste, reforge hit/spirit to Mastery, otherwise leave it alone
3. If an item has hit/spirit and mastery, reforge hit/spirit to Haste, otherwise leave it alone
4. If an item has crit and haste, reforge crit to Mastery
5. If an item has crit and mastery, reforge crit to Haste
6. If an item has haste and mastery, leave it alone!
In other words, reforge crit to either haste or mastery whenever possible, depending on the other secondary stat on the item. If you have a choice between haste and mastery on an item, try to keep around the same amount of both stats.
WoWReforge is a great tool for optimising your reforging if you can figure out how to use it. Keep in mind though that the stats-weight is wrong to some extent.
What buffs do we use?
Flametounge Weapon and Lightning Shield, no exceptions. For mana regen Lightning Shield and Lightning Bolt is still better than Water Shield.
What totems do I use?
Except for Searing Totem you use whatever the raid lacks or the encounter require.
How good are our new abilities, Unleash Elements and Spiritwalkers Grace?
They are pretty bad.
Unleash Elements does a small bit of damage and increases the damage of your next fire spell by 30%. Unleash Elements only have one use: Should ever Lava Burst be off cooldown and your Flame Shock in need of refreshing you do gain a slight DPS increase in casting Unleash Elements, Lava Burst and then, before Lava Burst actually hits, cast Flame Shock. This way both spells will benefit from the increased damage. Other situations than that it's better to use that global cooldown on a Lightning Bolt as it does more damage overall.
Spiritwalkers Grace was pretty decent until 4.2 and the addition of the above mentioned glyph for Lightning Bolt. Now you either use Spiritwalkers Grace to actually maximise your DPS, the only difference from not using it is that for 15 seconds you will be able to use Lava Burst. You could also save it for situations where healing yourself (or others) while moving is a good idea, such as the tornadoes on Alysrazor. Other than that the ability is useless.
Now you should be set to go!
Please do post questions or thoughts if you have any.
I cant promise I will be able to keep this one up to date but I'll try my best.
"Lets also remember were all communicating in second languages here! so its easily to misinterpret what people are saying alot, some times its read wrong, sometimes typed wrong sometimes both"
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Angelic
