World of Warcraft: Forever’s Elemental Shaman changes draw praise and concern

Wowhead’s October 9 class analysis says Elemental Shaman in World of Warcraft: Forever has been reworked in ways that improve early leveling, but the spec still looks shaky where it matters most: damage scaling, mana, and talent impact. The piece, written by class expert Lucenia, argues that Blizzard gave Elemental more to do in the first few dozen levels while also stripping away power from several of its biggest spells and talents.

The timing lines up with a Blizzard forum discussion about early caster weapons with spellpower, where players say quest rewards for leveling casters are in short supply. Taken together, the two sources point to the same problem from different angles: Elemental may feel better on the pull, but its gear and scaling could still leave it behind as the game goes on.

What Elemental gained in Forever

Wowhead says several recognizable Elemental tools are back. Lightning Overload and Lava Burst return, Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning both cast faster, and Lightning Mastery has been renamed Elemental Alacrity and moved from row 6 to row 3 of the talent tree. Eye of the Storm has also been redesigned so it works like other caster pushback talents, giving a 70% chance to avoid spell pushback when hit.

Another notable change is the replacement of Fire Nova Totem with Fire Nova, which the article says gives Elemental a more dependable area damage button. Mindfulness now adds passive mana regeneration while casting, and Elemental Reach increases Flame Shock range. Lucenia says those updates should let Elemental come online in the mid-20s instead of waiting until level 40, which was the pattern in Vanilla and later expansions.

On paper, that is a real improvement. The spec sounds faster, has fewer awkward gaps in its toolkit, and gets some of the utility and comfort it has historically lacked. But Lucenia argues that Blizzard paired those gains with nerfs that are easy to miss at first glance and hard to ignore once the numbers are compared side by side.

Spellpower changes may hurt more than they help

The main problem, according to Wowhead, is the way Blizzard handled spellpower across leveling gear and spell coefficients. In Forever, spellpower has been added to gear throughout the leveling process while base spell damage has been lowered to account for it. That idea makes sense in theory, but Lucenia says two things have gone wrong: spellpower gear still seems scarce, especially from quests, and the base damage cuts were not applied evenly across classes.

The forum thread linked in the source material supports the first complaint. A player says there appears to be “a great shortage of caster spellpower weapons from questing,” and the post includes a zone-by-zone list of Alliance and Horde questing areas where spellpower weapons are missing or limited. That list was put together with help from lucenia, and it specifically excludes wands.

Lucenia’s breakdown says Shamans were hit harder than any other class by the base damage reductions on core spells. The article notes that the gap may not feel huge in the first few levels, but it becomes much more punishing if a player does not keep up with crafted and dungeon gear. In other words, the leveling curve may look smoother in theory while becoming more dependent on outside item sources in practice.

The article also points out that Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning do not simply get shorter cast times for free. Their spellpower scaling falls by 20 percent, from 85.7% to 71.4% on Lightning Bolt and from 71.4% to 57.1% on Chain Lightning. Lucenia says the faster casts help before Elemental Alacrity is learned, but the change also cuts into damage in a version of the game that leans even more on spellpower than before.

Chain Lightning gets an especially grim assessment. According to the article, it will not be worth using in the rotation until Elemental reaches more than 1,600 total spellpower. That creates a strange breakpoint for a spec that is supposed to feel better while leveling, since one of its signature buttons becomes a late-game luxury instead of a regular tool.

The talents do not fully make up for it

Wowhead’s strongest criticism is reserved for the talent tree. Lightning Overload is described as having an incorrect tooltip, with the actual proc chance sitting at 3/7/10% across its three points. Lucenia says that is the weakest version of the Overload mechanic seen so far, and early simulations reportedly show it trailing even Concussion in single-target value.

Lava Burst, meanwhile, is now the capstone talent and takes the place of Elemental Mastery. Earlier versions made Lava Burst a guaranteed critical strike on targets affected by Flame Shock; in Forever, it simply deals 20% more damage. Lucenia says that is better for stat scaling because guaranteed crits do not benefit from more critical strike chance, but the spell still appears to have weak base damage and only a small sim gain.

Elemental Mastery itself is gone. Blizzard has said the cooldown was removed because of PvP balance, and Wowhead notes that the old one-shot combo was beloved by Elemental players even if it was hated by opponents. The article argues that the removal makes sense as a balance concern, but feels harsh because other, less explosive versions of similar effects exist in the game’s history.

Two more talent changes add to the damage concerns. Elemental Fury has been changed from a 1-point talent to a 5-point talent, while Call of Thunder is now a 1-point talent that grants 3% critical strike chance instead of up to 6%. With Tidal Mastery removed as well, Wowhead says Elemental has effectively lost 8% crit chance from talents.

Mana is still hanging over the spec

The article also returns to one of Elemental’s oldest problems: mana. Mindfulness and the new Eye of the Storm help, but Lucenia says that every caster has some kind of mana support, while Elemental still lacks a real fallback besides downranking. The early-sim picture, as described in the piece, suggests that downranking may still be required, which is exactly the kind of behavior Blizzard has tried to reduce in Forever.

That leaves Elemental behind some of its caster peers in practical terms. Mages, Priests, and Warlocks can use wands when they run dry, while Balance Druids appear able to regain mana while casting Wrath by level 60. Elemental does not have a comparable safety valve, so if mana is tight, the spec is forced to lean harder on gear and talents just to stay functional.

Lucenia’s suggested fixes are narrow rather than dramatic. The article calls for restoring the original cast-time advantages, bringing spell base damage closer to other casters, making Lightning Overload and Lava Burst matter more, and adding one more mana tool deeper in the Elemental tree. The piece also says Blizzard could let Lava Burst interact with more talents, including Lightning Overload and Concussion, the way it did in Season of Discovery and Cataclysm.

That would preserve the faster opening that Forever is trying to give Elemental without leaving the spec dependent on expensive gearing to recover the damage it lost. Until then, the class looks improved in motion but short on the numbers that keep it competitive over a full leveling run and into endgame raids.

Source article on Wowhead

Blizzard forum thread on early caster weapons