Nica's guide to elemental shaman PvE - Abilities, rotation and cooldowns (5.1)

Prologue

Elemental shaman is the only class/spec combination I have ever truly fallen in love with in World of Warcraft. I created my first and most notable shaman in June 2010. She soon became my main, pushing aside the rogue who had lingered in the spotlight for a good while. She has remained my main character to this day, and I don't see that fact changing.

I have raided as an elemental shaman since late Wrath of the Lich King. The information I'm about to present is, in its entirety, acquired through experience, making mistakes and learning from them, and use of common sense. I'm not much of a mathematician, so if you are looking for accurate numbers and calculations, you should turn towards another source of information, such as Mr. Robot.

Elemental shaman is an interesting and active caster with a bunch of options to make influential changes to your playstyle. Playing effectively as an elemental shaman consists of maintaining one damage-over-time spell, keeping track of totems, dealing with short duration cooldowns and filling that relatively bursty rotation with some lightning.


Single target damage

As an elemental shaman, always cast Lightning Shield on yourself and self-enchant your weapon with Flametongue.

Elemental Blast: If you did like me and chose this talent, you should use it as often as possible. It doesn't only hit hard, but also increases your critical strike, haste or mastery rating by 3500 for 8 seconds. Ideally you would hope for haste with mastery as your second best option, but extra crit doesn't hurt you either. Elemental Blast will be your third most damage dealing ability. The major downside of this talent is that the numbers are solid: the worse your gear is, the greater the benefit is, which makes the talent particularly powerful for a shaman that is new to level 90, and less effective for a shaman with raid level gear.

Flame Shock: Your only damage-over-time spell and an extremely important tool when dealing damage to your foes. Whatever you cast after Elemental Blast benefits from the stat boost, which is why you should take as much advantage of it as possible, also by casting Flame Shock afterwards. Always keep Flame Shock active and refreshing a second or two before the last tick. If you have the option to cast Flame Shock on multiple targets that aren't going to die within a few seconds, do it. It will increase the amount of your Lava Surge procs, thus increasing your single target damage.

Lava Burst: What you will do the majority of your damage with. Lava Burst is guaranteed to crit when Flame Shock is active. Cast it as often as possible, and keep in mind that Lava Surge procs make Lava Burst instant, which allows you a moment to move without a loss of DPS time, should you need it.

Lightning Bolt: While Lightning Bolt's importance in an elemental shaman's rotation has constantly decreased, often referred to as a "filler spell", its power shouldn't be underestimated, as it will be responsible for dealing the second most damage of all of your abilities. Cast it when none of the other abilities are available, excluding Earth Shock and Unleash Elements in their own ways (see below for explanation).

Earth Shock: While dealing damage with Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning, you will eventually gain up to seven stacks of Lightning Shield. You should unleash the offensive power of those charges somewhere between five (5) to seven (7) stacks, whatever fits the global cooldown of your shocking best, but make sure not to keep a fully charged Lightning Shield up.

Unleash Elements: Unless you have chosen Unleashed Fury as your level 90 talent, cast Unleash Elements before Lava Burst only when you need to move or need a little bit of extra burst in a short time. If you chose Unleashed Fury, cast Unleash Elements as often as possible, preferably when you know you will be using Lightning Bolt a lot.

Searing Totem: You should have Searing Totem up constantly while damaging a single target, unless you can use Fire Elemental Totem.


AoE damage

Note: This is how I AoE as an elemental shaman and without Glyph of Chain Lightning. I am sure there are differing opinions, but after crawling through a lot of different techniques, I noticed this one having the highest damage output.

Elemental Blast: As with single target damage, you want to get the stat boost from Elemental Blast for AoE as well.

Flame Shock: The idea is to cast Flame Shock on as many targets as possible. It will be more beneficial to cast and refresh Flame Shocks than it would be to use the cooldowns on Earth Shock.

Lava Burst: A critting (guaranteed with Flame Shock) Lava Burst hurts more than a Chain Lightning that hits three targets. With a lot of Flame Shocks active, there will be a lot of Lava Surge procs, which allows you to cast a lot of Lava Bursts.

Chain Lightning: For when Elemental Blast or Lava Burst are not available, or there is no need to recast/refresh Flame Shock.

Magma Totem: Magma Totem deals more damage to two (2) or more targets.

Fire Elemental Totem: Fire elementals do occasional AoE damage as you do it.


Cooldowns

Ascendance: Before activating Ascendance, make sure you have just refreshed Flame Shock and cast Elemental Blast and Lava Burst, and you have not procced Lava Surge. Also make sure you have used all global cooldowns, such as Stormlash Totem or Heroism before Ascendance.

Heroism: Your best known raid-wide cooldown. It's preferable to agree with your raid leader when to use Heroism in each encounter, if its use lies on your shoulders. If you use it for yourself, it's best to use Heroism together with other cooldowns for maximum benefit.
The following macro makes you unable to cast Heroism out of combat, thus saving you from unfortunate accidents.

#showtooltip Heroism
/cast [combat]Heroism

Stormlash Totem: Best used together with Heroism, as they both benefit the entire party. If you use it for yourself, combine it with other cooldowns for maximum benefit. Elementals do not benefit from Stormlash Totem.

Fire Elemental Totem: Your fire elemental benefits from any short term stat increases such as trinkets, Elemental Blast and potions, so the ideal time to use this cooldown is when you have such effects, preferably during Heroism as well. As elementals are on a five (5) minute cooldown, you probably won't get to use them more than a maximum of two times in an encounter.

Earth Elemental Totem: Doesn't provide a major damage increase. Also doesn't taunt raid bosses, so it doesn't hurt to use it during raid encounters. As with the fire counterpart, benefits from short term stat increases. Note that you cannot use both earth and fire elemental at the same time, but they do not share cooldown, so you can use one after another.

Elemental Mastery: The level 60 talent Elemental Mastery is best used together with Ascendance for maximum benefit of the latter, with any possible 2+ minute trinket cooldowns.

Ancestral Swiftness: The level 60 talent Ancestral Swiftness should be used as often as possible, preferably before Elemental Blast or Lava Burst.


Miscellaneous

Solar Beam (Symbiosis): The druid ability Symbiosis grants elemental shamans their silence, Solar Beam, and the druid either Purge, Feral Spirit or Spiritwalker's Grace depending on their specialization. You cannot use Solar Beam to silence raid bosses, but casting it while they are casting a spell interrupts the cast (for example the Spirit Kings of Mogu'shan Vaults).

Wind Shear: The following macro makes you stop casting any other spell when casting your interrupt spell Wind Shear:

#showtooltip Wind Shear
/stopcasting
/cast Wind Shear

The following macro makes you Wind Shear a "focus interrupt." If you have /focused on something, and your current target isn't casting, Wind Shear will interrupt your focus instead. If your target is casting, it will interrupt your target.

#showtooltip Wind Shear
/stopcasting
/cast [target=focus , exists] Wind Shear
/cast Wind Shear

As always, any suggestions, corrections and questions are most welcome.

Mogu'shan Vaults as an elemental shaman

So, I finally got around to writing something half-useful! This is not a general elemental raiding guide, nor a guide to boss tactics, but focuses on the fights encountered in the Mogu'shan Vaults raid on normal mode from an elemental shaman's point of view. I may be a wee bit late with this, but perhaps it'll provide a tip or two for an elemental shaman that's paying the raid a visit for the first time.

Mogu'shan Vaults is quite friendly and nice for an elemental shaman to raid. We bring a whole of three raid-wide buffs: spell power, spell haste and mastery, so we make valuable additions to any raid group - even more so, if we know how to best make use of our abilities. Below are some elemental-specific things that I pay attention to in this raid.


The Stone Guard

While one of the quilen in each trash pack goes bananas, bringing the little ones a protection buff against AoE damage, don't be fooled. Chain Lightning continues to damage them as usual, as it's not tied to an area.

Tips: Cast and refresh Flame Shock on both guards that are tanked together. All three of them share their health pool, but you will still get to have two individual dots on, which doesn't only increase your damage as it is, but also gives you more Lava Surge procs. If you wish, you can replace Lightning Bolt with Chain Lightning while damaging the two that are together, but keep in mind that this makes it more challenging to maintain the rest of your DPS rotation: Lightning Shield charges will build up faster and you need to plan your shocking more carefully and with less time to spare. Using Chain Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt is also way more mana costly.

Preferred talents: Both Astral Shift and Stone Bulwark Totem are useful for this fight. It doesn't make any major difference if you go with one over the other. The totem has a shorter cooldown and a lesser effect. In this fight you'll pretty much be DPSing constantly, so for healing, you can practically go with either Healing Tide Totem or Ancestral Guidance. The greater your damage output is, the more efficient Ancestral Guidance is. If handled correctly, people should barely take damage from overloads, so I would rather go with Ancestral Guidance, as there shouldn't really be need for raid-wide healing, but rather specific.


Feng the Accursed

Tips: Spiritwalker's Grace allows you to keep your usual DPS rotation up while having to move in phases two and three. Astral Shift is very useful when Arcane Resonance prevents you from stacking on the boss during Arcane Velocity.

Preferred talents: While both specific and raid-wide damage is involved in this fight, the raid-wide damage is much more powerful. Therefore I recommend using Healing Tide Totem for this encounter. If your tanks don't manage to interrupt Epicenter in the first phase, and the protective shield is on cooldown, Healing Tide Totem comes in extremely handy, letting healers save their major cooldowns for later. Epicenter makes you miss a lot, due to which Ancestral Guidance wouldn't be of much use at all.

In the second phase your raid may also be dealing with high raid-wide damage from the stacks that Feng's Draw Flame ability gives him. Although you can continue casting while moving using Spiritwalker's Grace, and therefore get the full benefit of Ancestral Guidance, Healing Tide Totem still makes for a more powerful heal for all raid members. As the last phase is mostly about coordination, having to deal with necessary damage isn't so essential.


Gara'jal the Spiritbinder

Tips: If possible, take the chance to visit the spirit world right away, if you don't become a Voodoo Doll in the first lot. Save the use of Ascendance until you return to the physical world with your secondary stat and damage boosting buff. However, if you are one of the first players to become a doll, don't save cooldowns until you get to go to the spirit world, as it'll be more beneficial to just use them.

Preferred talents: Although the damage the raid takes in the frenzy part of the fight can potentially get high, the fight is quite short overall and Ancestral Guidance is my choice for a healing talent. It'll be a fast remedy for players that suffer from Voodoo Doll. Stone Bulwark Totem is at its best in encounters like Gara'jal, providing you with minor absorption half the time. Astral Shift gives you powerful protection against damage taken through Voodoo Doll, or late in the encounter.


The Spirit Kings

Tips: If possible, have a druid cast Symbiosis on you. It will give you Solar Beam, which, together with your Wind Shear, makes you an interrupt machine for the two spirit kings that require it: Meng the Demented and Zian of the Endless Shadow.

Use Thunderstorm to knock back the shadowy adds. You can easily participate in killing an Undying Shadow that's fixated on you with the help of Spiritwalker's Grace. Don't use damage-reducing cooldowns during Meng's Maddening Call - although that sudden drop in your health may look alarming, you want to be released through damage.

Preferred talents: There shouldn't really be any major raid-wide damage in this encounter, which is why I go with Ancestral Guidance when it comes to healing talents. This also means that Stone Bulwark Totem may end up being more useful than Astral Shift.


Elegon

For the first trash before Elegon and Will of the Emperor, a PvP trinket isn't the worst choice - while the magic debuff can just be dispelled, too, but not by elemental shamans, as we can only remove curses. Just remember to swap your trinket back to a PvE one once you are done with the petrifying trash! You can also make use of Windwalk Totem here.

Tips: All ranged DPS should take a moment to find that particular spot on the edge of the celestial zone that allows you to reset your stacks of Overcharged simply by jumping. It's easy to find by first taking a step into the celestial zone, and then a tiny step back... by backpeddling! If you can't find that spot, or you'd rather reset your stacks by moving out and back into the celestial zone, do it while you're casting an instant spell or get a Lava Surge proc.

If you decide/have to reset your Overcharged stacks during the last phase, popping Astral Shift for your visit outside the celestial zone is a good idea, as you're be taking a lot of damage regardless of where you are. Astral Shift can also be a useful talent for soaking the damage of Total Annihilation from a Celestial Protector. Using a cooldown like that is particularly important if you aren't at full health, as it may save your life in those situations. Both Astral Shift and Stone Bulwark Totem are helpful in the last phase of the encounter.

Popping Spiritwalker's Grace as you begin your journey towards your designated Draw Power phase spot is a good idea, as it maximises your DPS on Elegon. Killing the Energy Charges in second phases is quite easy for a bursty spec like elemental. It's essential to keep DPSing the boss while you don't have a charge to kill. Keep your burst spells, like Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Elemental Blast and highly charged Earth Shock mostly off cooldown for the charges. It may save you some close calls.

Preferred talents: I personally go for Astral Shift over Stone Bulwark Totem for this one. The berserk timer doesn't allow much spare time between your offensive attacks, so using a global cooldown for a minor absorption every minute doesn't really help maximise one's damage output. Ancestral Guidance works well in this fight, because you want to be DPSing as much as possible and most of the time, but there can be situations where you can't do enough damage to make Ancestral Guidance useful. So, although the cooldown is one minute longer, I use Healing Tide Totem for Elegon, as there are a lot of moments when the raid takes a ton of damage.


Will of the Emperor

Tips: As with the Stone Guards right at start, have Flame Shock active on as many targets as possible, but particularly Jan-Xi and Qin-Xi. There isn't much time to just DPS the bosses, so those dots will make a good contribution to the damage they receive. Again, while their health pool is shared, you have two individual dots ticking.

Emperor's Rage adds fixate on random targets. Both Frozen Power and Earthgrab Totem are useful talents for slowing and preventing them from getting to their targets. Keep in mind that while Earthgrab Totem replaces Earthbind Totem with an improved version of the totem, you can use Earthbind together with Frozen Power. You should use Thunderstorm to knock them back if they are about to reach their targets, and no other methods are used. Capacitator Totem, together with the Totemic Projection talent, gives you an AoE stun that you can relocate if your targets move out of its range. This, as other means of crowd control, only work on the smallest adds, the Rages, but you can use Earthbind Totem to slow down Emperor's Courages. You may also want to crowd control the Rage adds with Hex at some point, usually towards the end of the encounter.

The best time to use Stormlash Totem in this encounter is during Titan Gas, as this is when melee DPS will likely be damaging the bosses as well, there's little to no target swapping and people get the most out of their DPS rotations. Save Heroism/Bloodlust for the last/fourth Titan Gas phase that you encounter in the fight, and preferably cast Stormlash together with it. Keep in mind that you get to use Stormlash Totem and Fire Elemental Totem twice in this encounter.


Preferred talents: As Titan Gas does relatively high raid-wide damage, I recommend using Healing Tide Totem in this encounter. Both Frozen Power and Earthgrab Totem are useful talents for add control. Totemic Projection allows you to relocate Capacitator Totem to stun any Emperor's Rages within 8 yards of the totem.


Please do let me know, if you feel that something is missing from the list. I'll make sure to add anything new I discover.

Nica's guide to doing Klaxxi dailies with feeling \m/

I'm not much of a guide-maker, but this one... This I know how to do. I got super excited when I got the idea for it, and I hope not too many have got ahead of me.

You might have guessed it, but in case you haven't, here's the deal: the Klaxxi enchantments, those buffs provided by the Klaxxi that help you in the Dread Wastes, are all named after more or less iconic heavy metal songs. I've covered the list with links to the songs, so you can do your Klaxxi dailies with appropriate soundtrack!

Angel of Death (Slayer)
Painkiller (Judas Priest)
Raining Blood (Slayer)
Silent Lucidity (Queensrÿche)
Children of the Grave (Black Sabbath)
Master of Puppets (Metallica)
Seek and Destroy (Metallica)
Iron Man(tid) (Black Sabbath)
Speed King (Deep Purple)
Battle Hymn (Manowar)

Enjoy! \m/