The fun of Lava Burst

[Solwolf]

I have to admit - I'm really enjoying leveling as elemental,
especially now that I've gotten lava burst. That spell packs a
whallop, especially for a 1.43 sec cast (at my base haste level).

Pull with Flame Shock, back up during GCD, LvB, LB, (thunderstorm is
mob is still alive), loot.

Add in both the Lightning Capacitor and the Thunder Capacitor (quest
reward from Dragonblight), and I'm firing off extra LBs left and
right. Plus the occassional exalted SSO necklace's arcane bolt.

Fun times.

[Xenophane]

I never really felt like this at all, it seemed like a waste to me to
cast a flame shock and then immediately remove it with lava burst.
Mob health when you are leveling is somewhat low and they almost never
live through a full flame shock dot so I just didn't bother with it
and used lava burst as a faster casting lightning bolt whenever it was
up. I guess if you had the glyph it would work out all right but I
never saw it on the AH when I went back to org to train and didn't
want to spend the time getting it.

[Aaron]

Glyph of Flame Shock is easy as hell to come by. Once you have it Lava Burst becomes a no hassle CANNON. The other night, just using my trinkets, I got an 8396 Lava Burst crit in a heroic on a trash mob. I needed some new pants. And I'm in level 70 epic/level 80 blue gear. Nothing from Naxx. Only buffs were my trinkets and Curse of Elements. Absolutely epic.

[Solwolf]

Exactly, Aaron.

I sit and watch my LvB cooldown ticking cause I can't wait to see that
big number pop up.

I've also edited my pve leveling rotation -

- LB
- Flameshock as LB hits
- LvB
- either loot or whack the mob once or twice, then loot (no melee
needed if the initial LB crits)

It's pretty amazing to me how much one spell has improved the
playstyle and fun of the spec.

Oh, and the new-ish pushback changes means I can finally solo some
elites or multiple mobs. All in all, Wrath has been to TBC as TBC was
to vanilla regarding elemental - big improvements.

> > want to spend the time getting it.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Aaron]

Man I always top DPS in every run I do. And it's only getting better with the latest changes. =)

If you haven't seen:

We are making some upcoming changes to the Elemental shaman tree. Our goal was to streamline a few of the utility-based talents while giving shamans a little more damage scaling in later tiers of gear.

• Unrelenting Storm – reduced from 5 points to 3 points. Bonus is 4/8/12% of your Intellect returned as mana.
• Elemental Warding – now reduces all damage (not just Nature, Fire and Frost) taken by 2/4/6%
• Elemental Shields – this talent has been removed, since its effects were combined with Elemental Warding.
• Storm, Earth and Fire – reduced from 5 points to 3 points, but keeps around the same net benefit. In addition to current effects, also increases Wind Shock range. The damage bonus to Flame Shock has increased to 60% at 3 ranks. Storm, Earth and Fire has been moved up the tree as well.
• Shamanism – this is a new 5 point talent in the old Storm, Earth and Fire position. Your Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst gain an additional percentage of your bonus damage. We have not finalized the numbers, but it will probably be something like 10% for Lightning Bolt and 20% for Lava Burst at max ranks.

These changes will be available in the next minor content patch, and are in addition to the AE changes mentioned previously.

That's the latest news from Ghostcrawler. I'm totally pumped.