Here we go again..

[heyaz]

Come to think of it every classes have their OP days. From I can remember

Warriors = now
DK = upon LK release. Blood DK ruled arena for like 2 seasons.
Paladin = once a upon time, Seal of Command procs extra swing. Paladin can kill within HOJ stun. Bubble only reduce attack speed by 50%, not damage.
Hunter = now
Mage = Frost mage in Cata. Still today. I think it is BS mage can proc frost damage from another mage's freeze/nova.
Warlock = The end of LK with Shadow Fury and insane survival.
Rogue = can't think of when Rogues are OP.
Priest = The end of LK with disc healing. and Spriest super damage + mana drain.
Shaman = elemental was god in BC days. I was able to stand there just cast LB against a warrior. and let the warrior interrupt me all he wants. I would kill him with 50% hp left.
Druid = the end of LK, blizzard buffed bleed damage. Feral druid was doing crazy amount of damage in arena. They were getting 5 combo points. Instant cyclone. let energy get full. Burst down after cyclone expires.
MONK = yet to been seen

Here's some fun stuff I remember:

Warriors:
Vanilla: sword proc madness, instagib people left and right. 3k mortal strikes against people with 2900hp
BC: "Skillherald" - look it up if you don't remember
Wotlk: The brostorm era

DK's:
Wotlk: you could use /castrandom in arena and win
Cata: Blood DK's when vengeance worked in pvp. Hard counter all melee. 110k death strikes. Dancing rune weapon necrotics for 40k heal absorb. Yeah it was a gimmick and didn't work against mages, warlocks, or spriests, but still

Rogues:
Vanilla: the real stunlock. There used to be no pvp trinket and you'd die in an actual kidney shot not a blind vanish gouge smoke bomb repeat blah blah.
BC: combat rogues with mace stun. Legendaries
Wotlk: legendaries, FAN OF KNIVES OMG
Cata: legendaries

Mages:
Vanilla: double trinket pom pyro madness
BC: don't remember
Wotlk: shatter combos
Cata: shatter combos and 100 ways to freeze you

Priests:
Vanilla: Shadow priests hit... so... hard. Mind blast mindflay dead. They didn't really have any other spells.

Shaman:
Vanilla: Elemental shaman in tier 2 or higher. Double trinket, chain lightning, earth shock dead. period. Like quad boxing shaman, except this was One shaman.
Enhance shaman used 2h and a windfury proc was an instakill.

Hunters:
Vanilla or BC can't remember: pet enrage, solo clothies.
Wotlk: explosive shit
Cata: ???

Warlocks:
Vanilla: A brief and little known era with extreme spell coefficient on shadowbolt gave you 3k+ crits. Also, seduce+soul fire (there was no trinket so you were either undead, or dead)
others: several times affliction was dot and run. i mean really just run away and they died

Druid:
End of BC, End of wotlk insane bleed damage. Stacking cat bleeds and bear bleeds then running away

[zenga]

Just adding up the numbers...
My ten box team (8 shaman, 2 heals) might not one-shot an AFK opponent, with all cooldowns used.
Eight toons casting the same thing (your strongest spell, with specials/cooldowns), should one-shot anything; it is eight toons.

The current nature of the shaman spec is that mastery is part of the damage of a spell. If you say hardest hitting ability (which is elemental blast buffed by unleash elements) then you have to factor in the chance to overload (e.g. if a spell hits for 100 with a 50% chance to overload for 75% of the damage then the actual spell deals (100+100+75)/2 = 137.5 damage). Either way if 8x elemental blasts don't kill a target in 1 shot, then you are extremely unlucky that not a single one overloads. or you are doing something wrong gear/stats/rotation wise.

[Ualaa]

That particular team hasn't leveled yet.

Just analyzing the damage number people posted, times 8 shaman (which was the plan for the team).
Against the average health of a PvP geared opponent (again, as given in the earlier post, from this thread).
And it added up to, about 10k damage short of someone's full health.

[zenga]

That particular team hasn't leveled yet.

Just analyzing the damage number people posted, times 8 shaman (which was the plan for the team).
Against the average health of a PvP geared opponent (again, as given in the earlier post, from this thread).
And it added up to, about 10k damage short of someone's full health.

Ah misread it then. Either way the average overload damage should be factored in as it's an integral part of how the spell works.

[valkry]

Here's some fun stuff I remember:

Warriors:
Vanilla: sword proc madness, instagib people left and right. 3k mortal strikes against people with 2900hp
BC: "Skillherald" - look it up if you don't remember
Wotlk: The brostorm era

DK's:
Wotlk: you could use /castrandom in arena and win
Cata: Blood DK's when vengeance worked in pvp. Hard counter all melee. 110k death strikes. Dancing rune weapon necrotics for 40k heal absorb. Yeah it was a gimmick and didn't work against mages, warlocks, or spriests, but still

Rogues:
Vanilla: the real stunlock. There used to be no pvp trinket and you'd die in an actual kidney shot not a blind vanish gouge smoke bomb repeat blah blah.
BC: combat rogues with mace stun. Legendaries
Wotlk: legendaries, FAN OF KNIVES OMG
Cata: legendaries

Mages:
Vanilla: double trinket pom pyro madness
BC: don't remember
Wotlk: shatter combos
Cata: shatter combos and 100 ways to freeze you

Priests:
Vanilla: Shadow priests hit... so... hard. Mind blast mindflay dead. They didn't really have any other spells.

Shaman:
Vanilla: Elemental shaman in tier 2 or higher. Double trinket, chain lightning, earth shock dead. period. Like quad boxing shaman, except this was One shaman.
Enhance shaman used 2h and a windfury proc was an instakill.

Hunters:
Vanilla or BC can't remember: pet enrage, solo clothies.
Wotlk: explosive shit
Cata: ???

Warlocks:
Vanilla: A brief and little known era with extreme spell coefficient on shadowbolt gave you 3k+ crits. Also, seduce+soul fire (there was no trinket so you were either undead, or dead)
others: several times affliction was dot and run. i mean really just run away and they died

Druid:
End of BC, End of wotlk insane bleed damage. Stacking cat bleeds and bear bleeds then running away

DRUID: ALL of BC as resto for 2v2. Run with a war, rogue or lock, get glad, the end

[Nikita]

The funny thing is that if ele shamans had the stuff they have now back in s10, we would be pretty decent. On par with frost mages and rogues.

[Shodokan]

The funny thing is that if ele shamans had the stuff they have now back in s10, we would be pretty decent. On par with frost mages and rogues.

Ascendance would have been overpowered in cata.

Rogue: Vanilla, s2, s3, s4, s7, s9, s10, s11
Mage: Always good, not once were they bad
Warlock: s2, s3, s4 (sl/sl + rdruid), s5 (anti-dk), s8, s10, s11
Hunter: I dont remember them being OP pre wrath but s5 was broken with LnL procs, s6 african turtle cleave, s7-8 beast cleave, s9 KFC, s10 PHD, s11 PHD/thug/jungle/triple DPS, s12 anything
Warrior: Vanilla, s2, stunherald + mace spec, sword spec s3 (shaman+warrior+X wind fury totem cleave), s7, s8, s9, s10 kitty cleave was still good but not OP, s12
Ele shaman: Vanilla, s7/8 LSD, they always had at least 1 viable comp but were never OP, really good in 5's though.
Enhance shaman: Vanilla, s3 (i think, might have been s4), s7-8 beast cleave, s9 turbo cleave, s12 turbo cleave. Any time resto druids have been REALLY strong enhance has been good due to purge and a few other mechanics
Resto druid: s2-4. s7, s8, s9, s12
Feral druid: s2 (may have been 3), s7, s9 (fmp was very very strong), s10 (jungle, kitty cleave), s11 (jungle)
Paladin: s2 (holy), s4 (holy), s5(holy, ret), s6-7 (protret, protholy), s8(smourne ret), s9 (ret), s10 (ret), s11(ret)
Priest: Vanilla spriest, s2 (spriest), s6 (disc), I don't remember s7 priests, s8 (disc, shadow), s9 (disc, shadow), s10 (disc, shadow), s11 (disc, shadow), s12 (shadow)
DK: s5, s7, s8 (smourne), s9 (instant hungering), s10 (smokebomb cleave, scleave, ret/dk/priest, triple dps), s11 (triple dps, ret/dk/priest)

Almost every class and spec has been viable at all times to glad and tons of times where things are stupid OP but above is when i remember things are very very strong.

[heyaz]

The current nature of the shaman spec is that mastery is part of the damage of a spell. If you say hardest hitting ability (which is elemental blast buffed by unleash elements) then you have to factor in the chance to overload (e.g. if a spell hits for 100 with a 50% chance to overload for 75% of the damage then the actual spell deals (100+100+75)/2 = 137.5 damage). Either way if 8x elemental blasts don't kill a target in 1 shot, then you are extremely unlucky that not a single one overloads. or you are doing something wrong gear/stats/rotation wise.

Yeah with 8 shaman and unleash elements you should get darn close to a 1 shot with lava burst without overload. Without overload, probably not unless you are pulling over 50k lvb which is about 30%+ pvp power.

Elemental blast is kinda lame, but it's something when LVB is on cooldown and you decide you don't want the super elementals. But it has a 12 second cooldown also. You'd expect something like chaos bolt.
- It is not affected by unleash elements
- Has no guaranteed crit or any other interesting mechanic. Shaman fully geared have.. get ready for this - 10% crit (unless you're not reforging any of it and reforging haste back to crit)
- The buff is random to a stat; it doesn't prefer your highest stat, which is irritating

The primal elementals have issues too. They're awesome when they're up, hit decent, stun, annoy the hell out of people, etc. but when you start doing your round robin tremors, guess what, bye earth ele because I dropped a tremor. Fire eles are decent though and you shouldn't have a fire totem overlap.

About the only shaman thing that hits decent right now is Fulmination, but it also has no special crit mechanic, and it's a proc. I've been doing a lvb, lb, earth shock sequence for kills because at least one shaman is gonna get some nasty 60-80k fulmination. You can occasionally get lucky and 4x earth shock a guy down to 30% right off the bat. Then you got no flame shock up though

[zenga]

Elemental blast is kinda lame, but it's something when LVB is on cooldown and you decide you don't want the super elementals. But it has a 12 second cooldown also. You'd expect something like chaos bolt.
- It is not affected by unleash elements
- Has no guaranteed crit or any other interesting mechanic. Shaman fully geared have.. get ready for this - 10% crit (unless you're not reforging any of it and reforging haste back to crit)
- The buff is random to a stat; it doesn't prefer your highest stat, which is irritating

Elemental blast is most definitely affected by unleash elements since it's a fire, nature and frost spell at the same time (which also makes that you can cast it instant with Ancestral Swiftness).
It costs zero mana, which is not unimportant in pvp.
It can overload.
It provides a random crit/mastery/haste buff for 8seconds.

Taking all those into account, it's a spell I absolutely love and - contrary to you - I find it a very interesting mechanic compared to most spells in the game, a spell which fits the nature of the ele spec pretty well.

On an unrelated note: an Unleash elements/ instant elemental blast combo followed by an instant lava burst followed by a full earth shock ... if the earth shock or ele blast crits and if either the lava burst or EB overloads that is some pretty wicked damage. and not that hard to setup (wait for lava surge prock and full fulmination stack).

The problem of ele for me is their weak defense and lightning bolt hitting for nothing. Their weak defense is mainly because it's impractical (the required imbue dancing for example). Thing is that ele is very competitive in pve atm, and the damage scales really well with gear. So I don't expect any damage buffs soon (the damage I can do during ascendance in my gear on my main is absolutely sick).

What would work for me though:

- glyph for lightning bolt: the dmg is halved and the cast time is halved, and the chance to proc a ls shield stack reduced in proportion. This way it would become a real filler spell, and would have no repercussions for pve ( since haste won't affect it since it's under the gcd). Kinda like mass dispell glyph in cata. currently the risk of getting locked (or the waste of time by fake casting) does not really compare to the dmg it does
- astral shift should workd while in a stun
- ghost wolf glyph should become baseline
- lightning bolt ignores player armor (like chaos bolt)

There are really only a few tweaks needed to turn it from an underpowered spec into a very competitive contender. (talking from a solo pov)

[heyaz]

ah, did not realize ele blast counted as fire. in that case I'll try that out. With unleash elements and an insta cast (although I have always been an elemental mastery kinda guy) that's gonna be some sick damage.

On another note, survivability, first tier I can't quite figure out. Astral shift isn't castable in cc and is pretty short. Nature's Guardian is nice being passive but it's really just one more hit from any class and you're dead. Stone bulwark is scaling nicely with gear and (I think) pvp power as well, but... another cooldown to manage, another earth totem to overwrite when you get feared. :/

From a solo perspective (I've been playing the main one a bit) it's not horrible. From a boxing perspective the problem is not even being able to get a cast off or get set up because the cc comes in so fast and comes with damage as well. It's like my worst fear from wotlk - shadowfury but now every class has a much worse variant of it that does crazy damage as well.