Elemental Shaman DPS Guide — The War Within (11.1.7)

There are no changes to Elemental Shaman in Patch 11.1.7.

Patch 11.1.7 introduces a new feature, the Combat Assistant. You can find information regarding that feature on our Combat Assistant guide.

This is a light patch balance wise, our only changes are an 8% buff to spenders and a 15% buff to single-target Ancestor damage for Farseer:

• Earth Shock damage increased by 8%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
• Elemental Blast damage increased by 8%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
• Farseer: Ancestor Lava Burst damage increased by 15%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
• Farseer: Ancestor Elemental Blast damage increased by 15%. Does not apply to PvP combat.

These are sensible changes that boost Elemental's single-target damage by 4% when using Farseer, further emphasizing properly focusing on spender optimization. This does not lead to any gameplay change, although you now lose more damage in single-target by not optimizing spender damage. In M+ with Stormbringer this should be at most a 1% overall buff.

It is worth noting that if using Elemental Blast, it is now no longer worth it to use Earthquake in single-target when you get Echoes of Great Sundering. Just ignore it unless there are multiple targets. It remains a small DPS gain when using Earth Shock.

Ancestral Guidance has been removed. This is an enormous nerf to an admittedly very powerful cooldown. It is fair to say that Ancestral Guidance was perhaps too powerful. Notably, it synergized particularly well with 2-minute Ascendance boosted by Power Infusion, leading to Shamans being able to keep their entire party full health for 10 seconds every 2 minutes no matter how much damage occurred, putting it above most healer cooldowns. It was less crazy in raid, but still very powerful. This is a fairly recent thing linked to the Ascendance rework, putting a lot more of our power within our main cooldown again. Removing it altogether however seems like vast overkill, and this is frankly an enormous nerf, especially as it is compounded by us being likely forced to use Primal Elementalist due to our new tier set giving a lot of Elemental uptime which means we will not be able to use Earth Elemental either.

This is supposed to be compensated by Healing Stream Totem's healing being increased by 80%, but it does not even begin to make up for it, and it still would not even if they doubled it. Frankly, no amount of buffing this ability can make up for removing Ancestral Guidance. Anything close would lead to the ability giving absurd healing and leading to silly situations where you may want to stack more Shamans to use it rotationally and drop a healer or two.

Deeply Rooted Elements is now a small percent chance per Maelstrom spent rather than being a flat chance per Maelstrom Spender. The short version is that this ends up being a slight buff to DRE's proc rate overall, which is unfortunately more than negated by the next change. This means that in the end, we can expect slightly fewer procs overall.

Primordial Wave has been redesigned — Now deals a high amount of damage to all targets affected by your Flame Shock. This is an odd change that was justified by Primordial Wave being supposedly too complicated to use. After a 500% damage buff, the spell became actually reasonable and its niche works well, despite not benefitting from most synergies. It is a mandatory button for Farseer due to Call of the Ancestors, and Splintered Elements remains good. This also makes Liquid Magma Totem significantly more desirable and mandatory in Mythic+ for Farseer unless you ditch Flame Shock outside of single-target altogether.

You can find a detailed overview of all the Shaman changes in Patch 11.1 in the following page.

The Elemental Tier Set is solid, with the 2-piece bonus which being worth roughly 6% damage compared to base stats (assuming you use our recommended builds), with the 4-piece bonus being worth around 4%.

• Shaman Elemental 11.1 Class Set 2pc
• Shaman Elemental 11.1 Class Set 4pc

2-piece: Your spells and abilities have a chance to hit a Jackpot that summons a Fire Elemental or Storm Elemental for 8.0 sec. Casting Ascendance always hits a Jackpot.

Two important notes regarding this bonus: it summons the elemental that you chose in your talent tree. If you are talented into Storm Elemental, it will never summon a Fire Elemental. Secondly, Proccing Deeply Rooted Elements does NOT count as "Casting Ascendance", meaning it will NOT proc the bonus.

This is a good bonus that synergizes well with multiple talents we use : Elemental Unity, Everlasting Elements, Echo of the Elementals and Primal Elementalist. The big downside is that using this last talent mean we cannot really use Earth Elemental much, though we do get good uptime on Primordial Bond (slightly above 50%) to make up for it a little.

4-piece: When you summon or extend your Fire Elemental/ Storm Elemental, your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Lava Burst deal 30% increased damage for 8 sec.

While this seems like a strong bonus, unfortunately we do cast a lot of spells nowadays, and in practice you'll typically only cast 2 or 3, occasionally 4 of those spells within that window. While this can coincide with procs or things like Stormkeeper, it is generally only an okay bonus.

• Ascendance now requires a target to cast. Flame Shock and Lava Burst from casting it will always hit your primary target.
• Arc Discharge now stacks to 2 and its overloads function properly, but it does not buff Stormkeeper
• Ghost Wolf visuals have been updated to scale with player model, and have been made more transparent to reduce visual clutter.
• Lightning Bolt has a new spell visual.
• Lightning Rod’s visual has been updated.
• The initial shield from Stone Bulwark Totem is no longer dispellable. The repeating shields will continue to be dispellable.
• Chain Lightning overload is no longer displayed to allies in raids and dungeons.
• Chain Lightning now displays a more subtle visual when viewed by allies in raids and dungeons.
• Earthquake Overload is no longer displayed to allies in raids and dungeons.