One of the biggest drawbacks to Elemental Shaman dps is our inability to deal with movement. This has been mitigated by the amazing Gust of Wind on a fairly short cooldown, which makes it great for quick repositioning but doesn't help with any extended or frequent movement.
Most raids add more of these random movement mechanics as you progress through the instance and through the levels of difficulty.
For instance, compare Garothi Normal, Heroic and Mythic. All 3 have essentially the same mechanics but they are tweaked to increase difficulty by way of increasing movement. Normal and Heroic actually reduce movement as the fight progresses while Mythic starts at the same point but goes the other way!
The natural spread/stack flow of the fight fits quite nicely with Gust of Wind but, as it ramped up on Mythic, it became extremely difficult to maintain dps. Trying to fit in 15seconds stood still for Ascendance was impossible!
Which is where Icefury comes in...
30 second cooldown which buffs your next 4 Frost Shocks within 15 seconds.
Frost Shock is not used outside of PvP as it does virtually no damage and uses up our precious Maelstrom. This talent though, makes it hit like the proverbial truck :-)
The issue being that picking Icefury means that you have to forego Ascendance, our biggest cooldown. To make up the damage of Ascendance, you have to play Icefury near perfectly which is much easier said than done!
Playing perfectly means using Elemental Blast, Icefury, Stormkeeper on cooldown while maintaining Flame Shock, never capping charges of Lava Burst and never capping (or running out of) Maelstrom.
In an ideal world, I would have the buffed Frost Shocks available every time I need to move but without delaying any of the Icefury casts.
It's a hell of a juggling act! And, to be honest, I can't always keep it up at the dummies never mind in a real boss fight.
But I got to thinking... If I can't use Ascendance properly anyway, then I won't need perfect Icefury play to match or even beat that dps, right?
Having just got the tier 21 4-set, which both buffs and simplifies the Icefury playstyle, I'm tempted to give it a real go in our next raid.
It could go horribly wrong, I'll keep you posted!
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