With the release of dual specs and seeing all the requests for Benefactor's Gauntlets, I figured this would be a good time to release a helpful guide that would rival Shadow's usual novels. Hopefully, someone out there finds this useful. And hell, even if not, I got paid for slacking off and writing this at work, so piss off.

Update #1: Woohoo spell and talent links!
Update #2: Fixed some mistakes in the sample rotation under the Spell Rotations section.
Update #3: Added the Tier Set Bonuses section and a small update to the Stats and Gearing section.
Update #4: Made a couple of PvP sections. As if this post wasn't a ridiculous wall of text already.
Update #5: Patch 3.2 breakdown at the bottom of this post.


Talents
This is a base cookie cutter Elemental build: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hEh0qcdItGfzAo0xxco:kb
The main variations on this build don't directly affect your damage, but may fit your play style a little better:
* If you are not having mana problems and are raiding, move 3 points in Convection to Elemental Warding for lowered incoming damage.
* If you like to PvP occasionally, points can be moved from Convection or Unrelenting Storm to pick up Astral Shift for survivability.
* If you like to shock constantly (not recommended), Reverberation instead of Convection, Eye of the Storm, or Unrelenting Storm may be for you.


PvE Spell "Rotations"
Elemental doesn't have spell rotations as much as a priority system. The main points are:
1. Flame Shock (FlS) should always be up on a target to guarantee a crit from Lava Burst.
2. Cast Lava Burst (LvB) whenever it is not on cooldown.
3. Use Lightning Bolts (LB) and Chain Lightnings (CL) to fill in the space between Lava Bursts to get as close to the Lava Burst cooldown as possible.

Ok, simple enough, why the need for so much text below? The real challenge of Elemental comes into play at #3, since you'll have to do some on-your-feet thinking on how to best fit your LB/CL chains to get as close to the LvB cooldown as possible. One thing you have to keep track of is balancing the CL cooldown with the LvB cooldown, since you can fit at most 2 CLs within one LvB cycle. Another important point relates to #1: you want to clip FlS as little as possible since applying FlS is very low DPS compared to LB/CL. The DoT component of Flame Shock is typically negligible.

With no haste, casting LB (2 sec cast time) 4 times fits perfectly in between LvB cycles. However, every other LvB cooldown you'll have to re-apply FlS, which means you have to decide whether to wait 0.5 seconds (FlS, 3xLB) or go over the LvB cooldown 0.5 seconds (FlS, CL, 2xLB, CL). More on that later.

Once you hit about 12% haste, you can fit in one extra cast into your rotation with CL, LBx2, CL, LB. For cycles where you need to re-apply FlS, replace one of the CLs with FlS.

The next haste landmark is 25%, where you can go back to a 5 LB spam. It isn't really possible to be at this point without Bloodlust until you're decked out in full Naxx-25/Uld-10 level gear, dropping Wrath of Air totem for 5% haste, and grouping with a Boomkin or Ret Pally for the 3% haste.

Bloodlust kind of makes all the pre-planned filler rotations go to shit. Just forget it and faceroll your way to victory.

Here's a full sample "rotation" (assumes about 12% haste for max effectiveness): FlS, LvB, CL, LBx2, CL, LvB, CL, LBx2, FlS, LvB...
FlS, LvB, CL, LBx3, CL, LvB, LB, CL, LBx2, FlS, LvB...
This clips flame shock dots a little, but it's easily repeatable to get the feel of what you should be casting.
Edited: Realized the sample rotation didn't fit with CL and LvB cooldowns at all, fixed that.

When you're first trying out Elemental, a "wait" method may seem like a good idea (not casting for half a second or so until LvB comes off of cooldown to avoid delaying out rule #2), but from my experience usually results in a greater dps loss than just delaying out the LvB a little by squeezing in another cast (LB is usually overkill, CL is usually the best bet).

Why is this? The DPS gain of LvB compared to LB is nice, so you definitely want to delay casting LvB as little as possible. However, consider it this way: waiting for LvB to come off of cooldown is like adding extra cast time to it, greatly dropping the DPS gain over your other bread and butter spells which was the main draw for casting it in the first place. Although your average DPS drops if you go much over the LvB cooldown, if you do nothing for half a second before casting LvB waiting for the cooldown to come up, you've effectively reduced LvB's DPS by 25% or more depending on your haste and the wait time.

With all of this being said, keep in mind that what's on paper sucks ass for actually playing. Raiding keeps you moving constantly and its impossible to stick to the above fill rotations. Hence, plan for the ideal to get a feel for how many casts you can squeeze between LvBs, and then be prepared to improvise until you can find a stable nuking spot again. My suggestion is to get the OmniCC mod (see below for a link), which puts nice big numbers on your abilities showing the cooldown timer so you can adjust quickly once you're ready to resume flinging spells.

On the topic of threat: this should be one of the last things on your mind now. Between Elemental Precision's 30% threat reduction, Lightning Overload procs causing no threat, and Magma Totem causing no threat, you'll be one of the lowest threat raid members even with the crazy damage you're putting out. Start out with Flame Shock while you're running in to give your tanks enough time to establish agro and positioning, but then feel free to go to town.

TLDR version: PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW! Seriously, this stuff doesn't make much sense without getting the whole picture, so it needs to be written out long. Go back up and read it, asshole.


PvP - Battlegrounds
Although your playstyle and teammates will be a huge factor and make each game different, here's a few bits of advice from my honor farming days:
* Quick damage pressure is crucial in PvP, so cast Chain Lightning and shocks a lot more often. If you can keep the damage pouring in, your target will often have to waste global cooldowns (GCD's) using defensive abilities. To offset the higher mana cost, try to mostly use CLs right after a LvB.
* An Ele sham's greatest strength is burst damage. Don't worry about spending a little time purging or shock kiting and not having a steady stream of dps going out if there's pressure on you. Waiting for your cooldowns to all line up is key to keeping opposing healers guessing.
* Whether you have a pocket healer or not, use defensive cooldowns like Grounding Totem, Stoneclaw Totem (see Glyph section below), and Earthbind Totem roots often. With totems only having a 1 second GCD and being in the physical school, they are your go-to abilities while keeping mobile or silenced.
* Watch your team's healers, we have quite a few tools to peel between Hex, Thunderstorm, and Earthbind roots.
* If you get caught out alone against a rogue, it's going to be an uphill battle. Don't try to be a hero if there's reinforcements nearby: it's better to use EB roots, spamming cleansing totem, and shock kiting instead of getting the rogue to low health and then dying after they pop Cloak of Shadows or numerous other cooldowns.
* If you're using Hex offensively to set up a good combo, make sure to FlS first- if you cast FlS after the Hex and get a lucky crit you'll most likely break the CC and ruin your opportunity.
* For both BG's and arenas, Thunderfall Totem is extremely potent. You will lose a lot of your top-end damage from LvB because of resilience, but it's still your #1 burst spell when FlS sticks on your target.
* Use Lightning Shield when you are at full mana (like right after a rez), since Water Shield isn't useful until you've spent some of your mana.


PvP - Arena
For all arena brackets, you will almost ALWAYS be the first target. Stacking resilience and stam should be your top priority. Remember that surviving the initial bursts and waiting for the best opportunity to unleash your own killer burst is key.

For 2's, I haven't heard much viability about Ele + healer, and I've personally only rolled as 2 dps.
For 3's, 2 dps + healer has been my favorite setup. I have heard that mixing with a Warrior, DK, or Hunter yields great results. My advice in this section comes from the BM/Ele/HPal point of view. I'd imagine 3 dps teams with other high burst classes would be very successful as well.

The 2's and 3's teams I have been successful with are essentially a planned faceroll:
1. Pre-Purge your kill target, stay mobile (Frost Shocks and Flame Shocks), and play defensively to get into position for casting Hex (20 yards becomes a stupid short range in the heat of battle).
2. Hex the player that's not the kill target. If it misses, re-consider continuing with steps 3 and 4 of your coordinated burst unless a partner can apply a CC as well. It's really a judgment call, as waiting too long on an all dps team will greatly increase the chance of one of you being killed.
3. Pop Bloodlust and any other of your offensive cooldowns: trinkets, Blood Fury, Berserking, and the like... DO NOT use Elemental Mastery.
4. Go for the kill combo: Lava Burst (FlS first if it's not up), Elemental Mastery'd Lightning Bolt, Frost Shock. If you are on a target that's close by, Thunderstorm is an excellent finisher if you need one last bit of burst after the Frost Shock, otherwise cast a Chain Lightning. The largest advantage of this casting chain is that all 3 of the abilities tend to hit at the same time, since there is travel time to LvB and LB- this gives any opposing healers a much smaller window to react (especially if they eat the whole Hex duration). With strong PvP gear and lucky crit chains, you can get as much as 15k damage in the span of 3 GCDs against a target wearing 600 resil. This typically puts the target in range of finishers for your teammates.

Communication is clutch for this strategy, make sure your partner has saved up all of their cooldowns because there are few classes that can survive a coordinated burst without giving up all of their damage output. Against teams with a mage or pally, don't go into steps 2-4 until you've forced a bubble or Ice Block (unless you know that Avenging Wrath has been used- then you have a 30 second window to set up your kill). If you're teamed up with a strong DPS partner, don't be afraid to go after higher health pool targets instead of a more mobile, squishier target. If you're in a lower ranked match, a warrior won't always be expecting the hits and if you're lucky they won't have a shield->Spell Reflect macro.

I haven't been on a consistent 5's team since S4, so I'll leave that bracket untouched.

Disclaimer: Before all the cries of n00b and what not, I admit that I have not reached the top end brackets. But chances are if you took the time to read this section, neither have you! The above is quite relevant though for all of us who are climbing the 1500-1900 ratings ladder.


Totems
There's not much need to go into totem specifics since everything has been so consolidated. However, I do want to use this section to say: do NOT underestimate Magma Totem on AoE trash. It does an insane amount of damage for a set and forget spell. If there's another Ele sham in your group or raid dropping Totem of Wrath, use Magma Totem or Searing Totem for a nice, selfish DPS boost.
Also, if Blessing of Wisdom/Mana Spring Totem is covered in the raid, drop Healing Stream Totem. With all the spell power you're rocking it's a decent helping hand to the healers for raid damage even though it's party only.

Oh yeah, and use a /castsequence macro or TotemTimers (see Mods section below) for the sake of your sanity.


Glyphs
Major Glyphs
The only MUST-HAVE glyph is Glyph of Flame Shock. Seriously, don't roll without it. Ever.

After that, you have a few DPS options with:
* Glyph of Lightning Bolt - For PvE, LB will make up 35-40% of your overall damage done with a 5xLB fill rotation, this is the highest DPS boost after Glyph of Flame Shock. In arenas, you'll probably cast LB a lot less frequently and may want to consider Glyph of Lava.
* Glyph of Totem of Wrath - A straight 84 spell damage boost at level 80. At Naxx and Ulduar level gear, Elitist Jerks has calculated this to be superior to Glyph of Lava since it applies to all of your spells.
* Glyph of Lava - A 10% coefficient boost to Lava Burst is still sexy, and will probably overtake the effectiveness of the ToW glyph simply because it scales with your spell power. For PvP, this is great for getting a little more oomph in your killer burst combo.
* Glyph of Flametongue Weapon - Considering how devalued crit is for elementals in PvE (see below), this is not a recommended glyph. It still has its uses in PvP though, when you can effectively overcome 164 resilience of crit reduction in one glyph.

Minor Glyphs
* Glyph of Water Shield - Great for soloing and raiding, the less you have to cast this spell the better.
* Glyph of Thunderstorm - If you're happy with just being in a PvE setting, get more out of your AoE trash pulls (ie. not pissing the hell out of AoErs) and long mana-intensive fights with this. Works beautifully if you use Thunderstorm while running back after dropping Magma Totem in close range.
* Glyph of Renewed Life - Never ask for Ankhs again! Unless you want to be a douchenozzle, then ask for Ankhs just for the hell of it.


Stats and Gearing
Elitist Jerks (see link below) has done far more math on this than I have, but the basic stat priority is:
Hit (until capped) > Spell Power > Haste > Crit

Spell hit cap for all casters is 17% on raid bosses. Elemental shams benefit from 3% hit thanks to Elemental Precision and can gain another 3% from Shadow Priests and Boomkin. If you're PvPing, the hit cap is only 4% and should be easily attainable with gear. Drop Elemental Precision points into PvP-friendly talents for best results.

The major reason crit is so low on this list is because it pretty much has no effect on Lava Burst and point-for-percentage is less powerful than haste. At level 80, 1 point of haste rating = 0.03% spell haste, 1 point of crit rating = 0.022% spell crit chance.

However, do keep in mind the benefit of each stat. Haste will allow you to improve your filler rotations and makes your rotations a little more lenient if you suffer from bad latency. Crit rating will still help your damage by improving the uptime of Elemental Oath's damage bonus and improve your mana efficiency through Clearcasting procs. Both have their place, and depending on your current gear, each stat's mileage will vary.

Update: Check out the discussion of T7 vs. T8 set bonuses below, I believe it will have a huge impact on how you gem/gear because of the emphasis on crit chance and Lightning Bolt. Once you've hit the 5xLB filler rotation (around 500-550 haste rating, depending on your lag), stacking more haste won't be as optimal since it will pull you into using CLs in your rotation again. On the other hand, both T8 set bonuses scale with having a higher crit chance. Note that this is ONLY a comparison of haste vs. crit (in case you're trying to hit a socket bonus when a yellow slot is involved), as pure SP will typically win out over both of those stats still.

Most made-for-elemental gear in Naxx and Uld are haste/crit/SP. The only mail pieces you'll find hit on are tier pieces, so save up that DKP! If you get lucky and no clothies want a piece that's itemized with hit/haste/SP, you know what to do (even if it makes you look really gay wearing a dress). The early raiding gear you come across will typically be Resto mail pieces. While you should be nice to healers regarding gear in general, you have to start somewhere and these pieces have the stats you need. The cloaks/jewelry from badger vendors with haste (and unfortunately spirit usually) make good starter pieces as well, even with the wasted stats.

As if you don't have enough alt gear already, I also recommend having several hit heavy pieces (gemmed/chanted with hit) to help reach hit cap, and a crit/haste/SP piece backup for that slot. If you're an OCD min/maxer like me, you can play around with those hit pieces for different situations:
* Have a Shadow Priest or Boomkin? You only need 11% hit from gear for primary targets (some of your CL hops may miss unless your Spriest is dot happy or the Boomkin likes to Faerie Fire everything in sight).
* Running a heroic or soloing? You only need 3% hit from gear (6% total not including talents or buffs) to never miss a level 82 mob. Blast faces just a little harder by switching out most of your hit gear.
* PvP'ing? Mix and match your PvP gear with one or two pieces of your hit heavy gear to easily reach the 4% hit cap (not including talents or buffs), assuming you dropped out your Elemental Precision talent points.

And of course, the age old 1h + shield vs. staff argument! Use a 1 hander and a shield, you'll get a higher spell power and an extra chanting slot. Any crit/haste you may get from a staff is secondary when elementals favor spell power much more. This same reasoning makes using non-shield offhands acceptable (although not optimal since the armor is nice for soloing and you lose out on a chanting slot). Using an offhand gives others every right to laugh at you and your obsessions with magical sticks though.


Tier Set Bonuses
Now that I've played around with both 4pc T7 and 4pc T8, I feel like I can weigh in on the "When do I break a set bonus" question for Ele shams. As a recap, here are the set bonuses:

Tier 7 (Earthshatter Garb)
2pc: Your Lightning Bolt costs 5% less mana.
4pc: The bonus critical strike damage of your Lava Burst is increased by 10%.

Tier 8 (Worldbreaker Garb)
2 pc: The periodic damage dealt by your Flame Shock can now be critical strikes.
4 pc: Your critical Strikes from Lightning Bolt cause the target to take nature damage equal to 8% of the Lightning Bolt's damage over 4 sec.

Obviously, the T7 2pc bonus does nothing for our damage, so you should never be worried about breaking that one. Now how does the T7 4pc bonus stack up to the T8 2pc and 4pc ones? The T7 4pc bonus sounds nice on paper, but really isn't substantial. According to EJ math, the bonus will take you lava burst crit multiplier from 222% to 227% (assuming you have a CSD in). This becomes a 2.2% increase on your Lava Burst damage... which is a whopping 0.55% overall dps gain if Lava Burst makes up 25% of your damage. That's right, you gain barely half a percent of damage overall with this bonus.

For me, the T8 2pc suffered the opposite problem: it doesn't sound very enticing but actually works out to be a rather large boost. First off, DoT crits do not trigger Clearcasting which makes it seem less desirable. Above, I mentioned that the DoT portion of FS is typically negligible as it will only make up about 4-6% of your overall damage. Here's where things look up: Elemental Fury does apply to DoT crits, so you're essentially gaining another 35%-40% (your crit chance raid buffed) of the Flame Shock DoT contribution. After looking at some early parses, I was seeing about a 100 dps increase from the DoT crits- about a 2-3% overall dps gain for me (YMMV). Significantly better than the T7 4pc, so break it as soon as you get your first 2 T8 items.

Here's the run-down on T8 4pc, since it sounds so simple yet ends up being so complex. This bonus is essentially 1 talent point in a mage's Ignite and the mechanics are the same. The DoT effect is called Electrified and ticks every 2 seconds. Getting an LB crit while Electrified is up will renew the duration on the DoT, roll the damage in to the next 2 ticks of the DoT, and delay the time for the next DoT by 2 seconds. Lightning Overload crits do not trigger the bonus (thankfully, or we'd never get any of the Electrified DoTs to tick). By the time you have T8 4pc, you should have enough haste to be using a 5xLB filler rotation between LvBs, which gives you a fairly high uptime for this bonus. In the end, it is about as effective as the 2pc bonus, as Electrified typically makes up 2-2.5% of my total damage.

Seriously, having 4pc T8 is nearly 10 times better than 4pc T7 (4-5% dps gain over a 0.5% dps gain). This is on top of the better itemization and basic stat gains!

TLDR version: Fuck T7. Get set bonuses on T8 ASAP


Gems
Grab a headpiece with a meta socket ASAP, and don't let go of it. Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (CSD). Seriously. Just do eeet.
If you're a jewelcrafter, congratulations, you just won the lottery! CSD's gem requirement is crazy easy to meet with Dragon Eyes. Start off with Rigid Dragon's Eyes until you reach hit cap, then make the most out of Runed Dragon's Eyes. Make sure to throw them in those crappy blue sockets, hurray free socket bonuses!
If you're not a jewelcrafter, chances are you'll need to take a hit and put a couple Glowing Twilight Opals, Royal Twilight Opals, or Vivid Forest Emeralds into your gear to meet CSD's gem requirement (at least 2 blue gems).
As of 3.2, we jewelcrafters are like the rest of you normies and can't rely on prismatics for free meta activation and socket bonuses. When the next content patch hits, just pretend you're not a jewelcrafter even if you really are.

Once you have your CSD activated, fill everything else with a Runed Scarlet Ruby once you're hit capped. If a socket bonus isn't spell power, don't even give it a second thought. If it is a large spell power bonus (like +7 SP), it's usually only worthwhile if you're dealing with red and/or yellow sockets and you need gems to get you to the hit cap.


Enchants
Pretty straightforward, since there's usually pretty limited options. The Stats and Gearing section above should make the choices pretty clear.
Cloak - Greater Speed or Lightweave if you're a tailor
Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower or Precision
Boots - Icewalker
Bracers - Superior Spellpower or Fur Lining if you're a leatherworker
Weapon - Mighty Spellpower
Shield - Greater Intellect
Head - Arcanum of Burning Mysteries
Shoulders - Greater Inscription of the Storm or Master's Inscription of the Storm if you're an inscriber


Patch 3.2 Changes
Patch 3.2 has introduced some sweeping changes that will completely change how an Elemental Shaman plays and gears. First off there's... uhmmm... hmmm... well, there's the new totem bar so you can place all your totems in 1 GCD at the start of a fight instead of before the fight in raids... And there's... uhhh, 5 yards more on shocks! Woohoo, Flame Shock is now the longest range attack if we're wearing the PvP gloves! (that's gotta count for something right?!)

Seriously though, the only thing that should change is plugging Wind Shear into a focus target macro now that it's not linked to shocks anymore and to consider glyphing Glyph of Lava over Glyph of Totem of Wrath if you can get over the 3200 SP mark without the ToW glyph's self-buff.


Mods
* TotemTimers (download from Curse) - Useful for any type of shaman, this will let you clutter your screen with totem bars that'll declutter your action bars and make you the swiss army knife of the raid. Comes packaged with a weapon buff/shield monitor and a lot of helpful features such as timers (duh) and counters for how many raid members are out of range for each totem.
* OmniCC (download from Curse) - Puts obnoxious cooldown timers on your action bars. This is clutch for timing your spell rotations.


Resources
Elitist Jerks Shaman Forums - Binkenstein and Ezareth are some of the most knowledgable (and uber-nerdy) Eles out there. If you're a numbers geek like me, there's plenty of number crunching going on in there.

great post, hermes. i'd like to see these home-grown guides for every class. i believe the gauntlet has been thrown for a DK guide, arth

i really did make a mage post way back when. maybe ill actually update it

Awesome guide Hermes, I'm still a bit indecisive if I'd rather stay enhance or go ele on mine once he reaches 80, but he's definitely leveling enhance (considering he's geared like that and I'm not pulling another spec change with less then stellar gear, like my druid).

Will be making a comprehensive doomkin guide to follow suit. Hopefully they make some changes soon (specifically for innervate, would love to see a CD reduction). Overall, love the post!

great job hermes,I'm sure all of our shaman can snag a few pointers from this guide

also,I should update the warrior one I made awhile back

Updated this guide with a section on set bonuses, go read it for additional enlightenment and unnecessary cursing!

Added some PvP sections that cover battlegrounds and arenas.

Added a miniscule section on 3.2 with sarcasm in place of profanity.