Patch 3.1 is finally here, and with it more bosses, more items, and more changes. The question is (or at least the one that I will address here) how does this affect Elemental Shaman? As per usual, I shall be covering this from a PvE perspective, as I have little interest in (or skill with) PvP. I'll cover talent builds, glyphs, and a few general gearing issues. There will be a short re-cap at the end.

Firstly, talents. We didn't see many changes to talents this time around, mostly...

Binkenstein

Many of you will know this term: Best in Slot (or BiS for short). It's the ultimate list of items that everyone wants to get, for which there are no better items (lesser substitutes are oft frowned upon). What does this term really mean, and is it that important?

Most times, Best in Slot lists are created as some hypothetical listing of items, ignoring progression, availability, and armour slots. There will be much argument as to what exact combination should be on this ultimate listing,...

Binkenstein

It's a pretty universal law of the internet that where-ever you find someone voluntarily doing a website/forum/etc, there will be people that demand more. In WoW circles, it's the TC types that get this more often than not, and these forums would be another example.

Lets look at EJ first. There are a number of rules which the forum operates around. These may be a bit more restrictive than most forums, but the upside of this is that there is a much higher "signal to noise ratio" (which...

Binkenstein

Dear Blizzard,

Could you please re-think the way caster gear is itemised?

Most of the gear that is showing up on the PTR at the moment has Spirit or MP5 on it. Not much of an issue for other classes, given they get some benefit from spirit (although for some this bonus is fairly minimal), but Elemental gains precisely zero from any regen itemisation. What this means is that the few items that are added without regen stats will be hotly contested by DPS casters, or forcing...

Binkenstein

So far patch 3.1 has very few changes for Elemental. The only change/addition is the talent Booming Echoes, adding a +10% damage bonus, per point for a maximum two points, to Frost Shock and the direct damage portion of Flame Shock, as well as reducing the cooldown on these shocks by 1 second per point (incidentally, it appears that the shock cooldown is reduced to 4 seconds after FS or FrS, while ES/WS will give a 6 second shock cooldown).

The question now is where to take the two...

Binkenstein