Hi guys, i was looking at the heroic BiS slot gear and I was wondering if using "Empty Fruit Barrel" for the + 3.3k int would be better then vision of the predator.

Seeing as ancestral guidance gives a chance to heal, and pretty much turns the barrel trinket into an on use function that doesn't share an internal cooldown with flash frozen resin globule for a burst of +7616 int.

I use this macro
/castsequence [nomodifier] Flashfrozen Resin Globule, Ancestral Guidance
/castsequence [modifier:alt] Ascendance, Heroism, Stormlash Totem

This way I can control my buffs during Heroism giving me 7k int when I blow all my major cooldowns.

Things to note. The barrel is hard to proc while solo, so get three people in a group with you and get them to take some fall damage (along with yourself) that way you get the maximum chance of the on equip effect. Let me know if you guys think this is a worthwhile strategy!

Here are a couple of overviews of what has changed for elemental with patch 5.2. I have added them to the guide at the beginning of the thread as well.

5.2 Elemental Primer - Blogs - Totem Spot

Patch 5.2 Class Reviews – Part 3 - World of Warcraft

After reading through some of the 5.2 information, I'm curious if exploring low haste, high mastery gearing options would be a constructive use of time.

The new tier set bonuses highly favor Mastery over Haste as both of them work with Overload and Mastery is simply cheaper in terms of itemization for what should mathematically average out to approximately the same effect per-1%. It also skirts around the obvious issues with GCD capping under the effects of Lust or EM. The idea would be to reach the exact GCD cap when Ascendance is active, and with enough mastery you should be able to shave 35+ seconds off of Ascendance cooldown (you would shave ~22 seconds off during Ascendance alone with ~50% mastery.)

It seems to me like haste doesn't actually offer very much value to enhancing either of the new tier bonuses since you can never achieve haste values that would create an extremely good Flame Shock tick rate for Lava Surge. At the same time, creating more instances of Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning through Overload should result in more Lightning Shield stacks, and a higher chance of triggering the 2p.

I guess the summery of this post is: how can haste possibly be better than mastery when the GCD cap and tier bonuses are taken into account?

To those who haven't already, could you visit this and fill in the form? Accumulating some user feedback on the guide distribution system.