Elemental Shaman: Midnight Expansion Preview

Welcome to our Midnight expansion guide for Elemental Shaman. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Elemental Shaman spec in the forthcoming expansion, including changes, new Hero Talents, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the Midnight Beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Elemental Shaman, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

• Deeply Rooted Elements is gone.
• Icefury is gone.
• Stone Bulwark Totem and Totemic Recall are gone.
• Liquid Magma Totem and Primordial Wave are gone and have been consolidated into Voltaic Blaze.
• Storm Elemental now only exists via Fury of the Storms.
• Fusion of Elements now procs from Power of the Maelstrom.
• Stormbringer: Tempest now procs from casting Ascendance and randomly from spending Maelstrom.
• Stormbringer: Casting Tempest now grants a charge of Stormkeeper.
• Farseer: Ancestors now spawn from Stormkeeper (and still from Ancestral Swiftness) instead of Primordial Wave.

Each specialization now automatically learns 1 spell instead of 2 through the Shaman talent tree, meaning you now need to spend a point to learn Chain Lightning.

• Talents being removed or moved elsewhere:
  • Several talents have changed positions in the talent tree.
  • Thunderstorm is now a base ability learned by all Elemental Shamans at level 30.
  • Lightning Lasso is now a PvP talent.
  • Stone Bulwark Totem
  • Totemic Recall
  • Guardian's Cudgel
  • Call of the Elements
  • Creation Core
  • Arctic Snowstorm
  • Totemic Recall
• Modified talents:
  • Wind Shear interrupt duration increased to 4 seconds (was 2 seconds), does not affect PvP combat.
  • Chain Heal cast time is now 2 seconds (was 2.5), jump range is now 20 yards (was 15).
  • Poison Cleansing Totem is now a choice talent against Tremor Totem
  • Seasoned Winds renamed to Windveil and redesigned — Interrupting a spell with Wind Shear reduces all spell damage taken by 15% for 12 seconds
  • Earth Elemental now lasts 30 seconds (was 1 minute) and has a 3 minute cooldown (was 5 minutes).
  • Static Charge now reduces the cooldown of Capacitor Totem by 15 seconds.
  • Encasing Cold has been redesigned - Now increases the cooldown of Frost Shock by 15 seconds and causes Frost Shock to freeze its target in place for 4 seconds.
  • Totemic Surge reduces the cooldown of totems by 5 seconds (was 6).

With all the talents being removed without any being added, our class tree becomes quite small, and while we already had enough points to get everything we wanted in any raid, you now can get pretty much all you could need for dungeons and even PvP and should not need to change your class tree much aside from choice nodes. There are 3 "Coming Soon" blank talent nodes toward the bottom of the tree including a capstone in what appears to be the more "defensive-themed" vertical line so I have hopes that an active defensive will appear there to replace Stone Bulwark Totem.

Windveil is in most cases a welcome survivability buff although it not stacking anymore does mean we are not unkillable on certain packs anymore. The Earth Elemental changes are fairly neutral overall though in practice are probably a slight buff on most encounters, though it does not make up for the loss of Stone Bulwark Totem.

Elemental damage gain from Mastery reduced by 10%.

Apex talents are a new set of talents within your Spec tree that focus on enhancing one of your core abilities. As of now, these talents are not yet announced for Elemental Shaman, but as soon as they do we will add them!

• New talents being added:
  • Apex talents - TBD
  • Tectonic Collapse — Earth Shock, Elemental Blast, and Earthquake deal 20% additional damage. Choice against Aftershock.
  • Molten Wrath — Lava Burst deals 25% additional damage. Choice against Master of the Elements
  • Elemental Resonance — All Elemental damage increased by 3%. Choice against Thunderstrike Ward.
  • Storm Infusion — Increases the effect of Elemental Resonance, by 2%, increases the chance for Thunderstrikes to occur by 30%, and increases Thunderstrike damage by 75%.
  • Inferno Arc — Lightning Bolt, Tempest, Chain Lightning, Earth Shock, Elemental Blast and Earthquake deal 15% increased damage to targets affected by Flame Shock.
  • Voltaic Blaze — Instantly Shocks the target and 5 enemies within 10 yards with blazing thunder, applying Flame Shock and dealing significant Nature damage. Always critically strikes. Replaces Flame Shock.
  • Improved Voltaic Blaze [NNF] — Voltaic Blaze's cooldown is reduced by 5 seconds.
  • Purging Flames — Voltaic Blaze unleashed volcanic rage, causing your next Lava Burst cast to hit all Flame Shocked targets at 80% effectiveness with reduced Maelstrom generation. Lava Burst damage increased by 10%.
• Talents being removed
  • Deeply Rooted Elements
  • Liquid Magma Totem
  • Primordial Wave
  • Icefury
  • Storm Elemental
  • Erupting Lava
  • Splintered Elements
  • Elemental Equilibrium
  • Flux Melting
  • Magma Chamber
• Modified talents:
  • Several talents have changed positions in the talent tree.
  • Flametongue Weapon now replaces Improved Flametongue Weapon and does not exist anymore without the talent, preventing new elementals from using the old base ability when it did nothing for Elemental.
  • Undocumented change: Fire Elemental cooldown reduced to 2 min (from 2.5)
  • Ascendance now increases the damage of Elemental Overloads by 75% while Ascendance is active (was 150%). Remains 25% in PvP combat.
  • Fusion of Elements has been updated — Consuming Power of the Maelstrom additionally fires an Elemental Blast at your target at 40% effectiveness.
  • Earthquake now does Nature damage (was Physical).
  • Fury of the Storms now summons a Greater Storm Elemental (was a Greater Lightning Elemental).
  • Herald of the Storms has been redesigned — Now reduces the cooldown of Stormkeeper by 15 seconds.
  • Flame Shock application logic has been updated for Voltaic Blaze to prioritize enemy players and ignore enemies in breakable crowd control.
  • Removed the activation overlays that appear when you have enough Maelstrom to cast Earth Shock, Elemental Blast, or Earthquake.
  • Echoes of Great Sundering now has an activation overlay when gaining its effect.
  • A sound now plays when Aftershock refunds Maelstrom.

The obvious immediate consequences of these changes are that you have a lot fewer buttons and the complexity of the rotation has been gutted. While it may sound good to new players, alts or people who generally prefer simpler rotations, people who enjoy current elemental will likely be disappointed. In single-target we are back to Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, a spender and Flame Shock and that is it.

Beyond that, we are missing 6 bottom level talents including Apex talents, and all the new Farseer talents so it is too early to make precise assumptions, but it is most certainly going to remain on the simpler side. Our damage profile will also be much flatter with the removal of Deeply Rooted Elements and a significant nerf to Ascendance.

• New talents being added:
  • Stormbringer: Natural Gift — Nature damage is increased by 2%
  • Stormbringer: Descending Skies — Ascendance upgrades your next Lightning Bolt to Tempest
  • Stormbringer: Stormwell — Storm Elemental lasts 2 seconds longer and Stormkeeper generates 10 Maelstrom.
• Modified Talents:
  • Stormbringer: Tempest no longer triggers based on total Maelstrom spent and now has a 0.3% chance to occur per Maelstrom spent.
  • Stormbringer: Awakening Storms has been redesigned — Now increases the chance to gain Tempest by an additional 0.3% per Maelstrom spent.
  • Stormbringer: Rolling Thunder has been redesigned — Now reduces the cooldown of Stormkeeper by 15 seconds.
  • Stormbringer: Arc Discharge has been redesigned — Now causes Tempest to grant a stack of Stormkeeper.
  • Farseer: Call of the Ancestors has been updated — Stormkeeper calls an Ancestor to your side for 8 seconds (was 6 seconds and Primordial Wave)
  • Farseer: Routine Communication can now also trigger from Flame Shock and Voltaic Blaze.

These Stormbringer changes are mainly targeted at dropping the necessity (or at least the feeling of it) of tracking many different Stormbringer related procs and resources. This achieves that goal, at the cost of significantly increasing the RNG involved, although adjusting the old Rolling Thunder effect into instead making Tempest grant a charge of Stormkeeper will feel nice. The loss of Arc Discharge's original damage increase will significantly lower the power of the Hero tree unfortunately. Notably, the changes and loss of the tier will lead to far fewer Tempest procs and generally "chain" procs, making the spec more manageable but less exciting.

The Farseer change is inevitable following the removal of Primordial Wave, with another source of ancestors being added to Routine Communication to make up for Stormkeeper's cooldown being higher.