Elemental Shaman DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — 12.0.5

Midnight introduces "Apex" talents, which are a change-up compared to regular talents by providing multiple different bonuses depending on how many points you allocate in them. Elemental Shamans gain Feedback Loop, which while being a powerful damage increase has no influence your gameplay in any way. You simply gain slightly more Maelstrom, and Mastery becomes more valuable. For the most part, Feedback Loop is just a "do more damage" alent, but since the bonuses are tuned very high, they are absolutely mandatory picks in every circumstance.

You should avoid casting Maelstrom-generating spells above a certain Maelstrom threshold that would make you go over the Maelstrom cap. Because of all the talents and procs interacting with that threshold, it is difficult to give exact numbers without making a detailed list that would be very impractical to use. Instead, we simply recommend you follow our recommended rotation priorities in order to never overcap. Keep this in mind when pooling Maelstrom as well. It is likely these spells will overload. Therefore, if you cast Lava Burst and would go over your Maelstrom cap if you gained more than 8 Maelstrom, it is likely you will overcap Maelstrom and waste valuable resources. In practice, it is safer to cast these spells at lower Maelstrom than their limits to avoid wasting your overload procs. The key to success is managing all of your separate procs without overcapping Maelstrom too often.

Note that for Stormbringer builds in AoE, particularly when using Aftershock, you may overcap regularly and sometimes it will be correct to cast a generator even when at the cap. This is one of the reasons Stormbringer is more difficult to handle.

The reason why Flame Shock should always be up on your target is because:

• It increases most of your damage by 10% thanks to Inferno Arc
• Each tick has a chance to proc Lava Surge, which resets the cooldown of Lava Burst
• Your Lava Burst will always critically hit if Flame Shock is on the target. This is very important due to Elemental Fury and our multiple other sources of Critical Strike Damage

You should only cast Lava Burst when Flame Shock is active on the target.

Flame Shock/ Voltaic Blaze benefits from Pandemic, meaning that you can refresh it any time that it has less than 30% of its original maximum duration remaining, and the remaining duration will be added to the new debuff. Therefore, you are able to refresh Flame Shocks without wasting any duration when it has 5 seconds or less remaining, and it will be extended by 18 seconds. For example, if your Flame Shock has 5 seconds left and you refresh it, your new Flame Shock would last 23 seconds. Note that these numbers are all doubled if you have a Fire Elemental in play.

Elemental is relatively mobile thanks to its active abilities: between Spirit Walk or Gust of Wind, Spiritwalker's Grace, Ghost Wolf form and its many instant rotational spells. Outside of these however, you have few instant spells to adjust your positioning, making it more important to do so properly. Proactively position yourself to reduce potential movement from mechanics. Keep careful track of boss timers and mechanics, as they can spell disaster for your damage if you are targeted when all your cooldowns are out.

• Stormfury (from Fury of the Storms with Primal Elementalist) has no target limit but does reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
• Meteor is limited to 8 targets.
• Earthquake has a soft-cap at 20 targets. This cap is high enough that it should rarely matter.

Stormkeeper is used more or less on cooldown on pure single-target encounters.

On multiple-target fights or fights with intermittent cleave and AoE, it can be a good idea to delay your Stormkeeper until you are able to Chain Lightning 5 targets.

Make sure you have as many things as possible lined up with Ascendance:

• Bloodlust/ Heroism/ Time Warp.
• Light's Potential.
• The Purging Flames buff from casting Voltaic Blaze in multi-target situations.
• Stormkeeper cast before Ascendance preferably.
• On-use trinkets.

Before each Ascendance use, ensure no boss mechanics will interfere, such as intermissions, boss movement, or mechanics that will force you to move. It can be a good idea to use Spiritwalker's Grace to ensure full DPS uptime. If using this talent, try casting Elemental Blast immediately before activating Ascendance.

Do not let yourself Maelstrom cap; be sure to cast your spender when or before your next cast would cause you to go above maximum Maelstrom.