Elemental section with reddit syntax

#Elemental

Note: this is largely a re-post of the Community Letter & 8.1 Preliminary Thoughts posts from [Storm Earth & Lava](http://stormearthandlava.com/) as 8.1 has not resulted in significant changes in most of these areas.

##Echo of the Elements
There are two changes to other classes with reasons that can be applied to Echo:

- 7.2.5 saw a second charge added for Dire Beast: “This gives all Beast Mastery Hunters access to a Dire Beast with 2 charges playstyle that is more engaging and fun, allowing you to make decisions on when to use the buttons, instead of feeling like you should most often simply push them on cooldown.”
- The BfA Beta has changes to Affliction talents to allow Nightfall + Haunt or Drain Soul + Haunt builds “which a lot of players think is fun (and is fair feedback)”.

These can be applied to Echo, either for why it should not be in the same talent row as Elemental Blast or justification for becoming a baseline passive.

Both Lava Burst and Elemental Blast are on fairly short cooldowns (8 & 12 seconds respectively). Taking Echo in combination with Elemental Blast allows players to use both fluidly, and adds more rotational depth. Other additional rotation abilities have cooldowns of 30 seconds or more, and any other spells can be delayed until after Lava Burst is cast.
Echo has high synergy with Master of the Elements, to the point where it seems quite unlikely that MotE will be taken without Echo. This relates to the points made above, where the gain is not just from the additional Lava Burst casts but the ability to delay them to make use of the frost/nature damage bonus before generating another buff.
Lava Burst has a CD reset proc (Lava Surge) tied to it, making the ability a whack-a-mole button without any thought like Dire Beast was before the change.

##Base Spell Interactions
Currently outside of Flame Shock/Lava Burst (generating Lava Surge charges & the auto crit behaviour) there are no direct spell interactions in the base toolkit (For further discussion of the auto-crit mechanic refer to the Target Switches section.) Maelstrom generation & spending can be considered an indirect interaction between generators (CL/LB/LvB) and spenders (ES/EQ) but this is fairly weak due to the low payoff feeling from using spenders. This limits the rotational depth of the spec to a “hit X when off CD, Y when resource above cost, otherwise Z”.

There are talent options for increasing the rotational depth, but there are many that share the. This leaves Elemental in an “easy to learn, easy to master” situation which some players will not enjoy.

##Area of Effect Damage
The generation time for Earthquake is lower in BfA than Legion. In BFA it takes roughly 5 seconds to generate enough maelstrom for a single Earthquake with 5 targets. However, with 2-4 targets it can take anywhere from 6.5 to 12.8 seconds to generate enough Maelstrom for a single Earthquake.

Combine this with the 6 second duration plus the fixed area of effect and it can result in lost damage when targets (or tanks) move around. This would be mitigated somewhat by a shorter buildup & higher cast frequency for Earthquake.

In addition to this, there are specific points that feel very poor right now in the generation of Maelstrom for AoE. When taking the Stormkeeper talent, if you use it at the start of a pull on 5 targets or more your first Chain Lightning will generate 65 Maelstrom. This puts you in the awkward spot of either casting the second Chain Lightning and wasting 30 Maelstrom, or making sure that you avoid using Stormkeeper unless you have at least 10 Maelstrom banked. No matter what choice you make in that situation, it’s an awkward and frustrating one.

##Movement
The removal of Gust of Wind (taken by 91% of PvE players & 99% of PvP players) means that Elemental is the only ranged spec aside from Shadow that has no burst movement ability. Elemental players will either move at normal run speed while using Earth/Flame/Frost Shocks and Lava Surge procs, or in Ghost Wolf form while casting nothing as Ghost Wolf silences the player.

Elemental gameplay basics have remained roughly similar for several expansions, but haven't been fully adapted to the mobility pruning that occured. Being able to cast Lightning Bolt while moving lead to problems, and removing it was a good change. Since then Elemental lost Spiritwalker's Grace, which was the main tool for dealing with circumstances preventing you from casting for a moderate amount of time. Now, Elemental is about to lose Gust of Wind, which was already one of the less powerful blink-type abilities in the game, as well as the variety of legendaries that helped with overcoming mobility issues, notably the elemental-specific Boots & Shoulders. Elemental gameplay has always been described as "being a turret", and while this is somewhat of an exaggeration, it is still justified. So, we end up with a "turret-like" caster with bottom of the barrel mobility, and some of the worst utility of any spec in raids. The only positive change in BfA in that regard has been Frost Shock having its maelstrom cost removed and doing slightly more damage baseline, making it actually usable when you're walking around and can't do anything else, but not only is it still a severe dps loss compared to Lightning Bolt, most other ranged specs also have similar "backup" abilities they can spam for low damage while moving.

##Spell Ranges
A number of spells like Wind Shear, Hex and Tremor Totem have a 30 yard range, and Earthquake has a 35 yard range, vs the maximum 40 yard range for damage spells. Increasing these to 40 would maintain consistency across abilities without the need to inch closer in order to use them.

##Raid Utility
Functional Shaman raid utility is very low compared to other classes, especially with many of the tools we exclusively had early on in Alpha being added back to other specs in Beta. Tremor Totem is a super niche ability with historically few encounters having a fear mechanic, and so far in testing the ones that do have this mechanic are immune to Tremor Totem.

To expand a little bit on Tremor Totem, while its effect seems to be strong historically Fear, Charm, or Sleep effects aren’t used very often in PvE encounters. This is probably because losing control over your character and dying due to otherwise easily dodgeable AoE is not fun. If such mechanics are in play they usually aren’t intended to be mitigated, and as such are not dispellable by this totem. This can already be seen in Alpha/Beta where some Uldir fights had mechanics that could be broken by Tremor Totem but were either flagged immune or changed in school shortly thereafter to prevent that. This totem offers flavor but little-no utility for PvE.

##Target Switching
Elemental has had a weakness with priority target switches in the past, primarily late Warlords where it was a specific issue on Archimonde in Hellfire Citadel. This is because the majority of Lava Burst damage comes from its auto-crit mechanic, to the point where it’s better (in terms of overall DPS) to delay casting Lava Burst until Flame Shock is up rather than gamble on getting a “natural” crit. This was worked around in Legion by removing the Flame Shock cooldown, but the combination of returning this in Battle for Azeroth & removing then reinstating the Flame Shock requirement for Lava Burst auto crits is taking this back to square one again.

It’s also not possible/practical to “bank” resources in anticipation of a priority target switch or burn phase. Lava Burst needs to be used immediately to avoid wasting cooldown recharge time or surge procs, and while Earth Shocks fixed maelstrom cost does give the player some leeway it is also a DPS loss to generate maelstrom with a full bar.

##Spells
Earth Shock
The Earth Shock animation is easily lost among other spell animations, meaning players with their camera behind their character and/or zoomed out will often miss the visual indicator that the cast completed.

##Fire Elemental
Fire Elemental is our base DPS cooldown. Currently it is not affected by Elemental Fury so any crits it generates are 200% rather than 250% damage, nor is it affected by Elemental Overload (Mastery) in any way. Combine this with the “fire and forget” nature of the ability, and you come to the conclusion Elemental has a somewhat underwhelming damage cooldown that does not interact with the rest of the toolkit.

##Talents
The talent rows generally have themes, but there are places where some talents in a row have an impact on one area while another does not.

##Level 30
###Aftershock
The immediate resource refund isn’t responsive and more often than not creates confusion during play. “Didn’t I cast Earth Shock just now? Did I lag? Is the ability broken?” are somewhat common questions for new players in Earthshrine, and having no noticeable Earth Shock animation does not help. Taking advantage of the refund to its fullest requires fast reflexes and an eye on your Maelstrom bar, as nothing else tells you whether or not it actually happened.

##Level 60
###Master of the Elements
Technically it does have an AoE component now as the buff affects Earthquake, but we don’t cast Lava Burst during AoE as it’s a DPS loss & Master of the Elements doesn’t change that for any target count over 3. Storm Elemental & Liquid Magma Totem on the other hand provide strong AoE impact.

##Level 90
###Surge of Power
The best description of this new talent is Blackout Combo, but for Elemental. It looks a bit overwhelming at first, but there are clearly defined functions for each effect:

- Flame Shock. This will be avoided most of the time, but it introduces room for multi-dotting in a scenario where you're going to be casting Earth Shock instead of Earthquake, such as spread multi-target fights. Generally though, you'll want to avoid triggering this effect. This seems like a weird way to address the Flame Shock cooldown issue, but it's not an effective fix because there's a disconnect between balancing your desire for one more Flame Shock and very tangible damage (from Lightning Bolt) and benefit to your major cooldown (Fire Elemental cooldown reduction).
- Lightning Bolt adds one additional overload to a cast, while Stormkeeper forces an overload to occur for a maximum of two overloads on any one cast.
- Lava Burst. This effect creates an anti-synergy with Master of the Elements without Echo of the Elements. Consider a scenario where you have both Surge of Power and Master of the Elements; do you cast Lava Burst before or after Earth Shock? There's no clear correct gameplay decision here, and it will just rely on whatever turns out to be best in simulations. This issue would be addressed by Echo going baseline, a change that seems it would be unanimously positive in the community.

###Icefury/Surge of Power
Offers no AoE value while Primal Elementalist adds an AoE ability to the Elementals. (Storm Elemental gets a HUGE AoE ability from this)