Turning to the Dark Side! (Elemental)

Restoration shaman are very strong healers, both for PvE and PvP, so why would you ever think of switching to another talent tree? Besides the usual complaint of grinding as a healer (Restoration shaman can grind effectively since we can take such a beating, it's just slow), it's just a lot of fun. Nothing is more exciting then popping Elemental Mastery (and Nature's Swiftness if you have it) before a Chain Lightning and watching two or three of your opponents drop at once, or seeing that string of numbers pop up above your head with a triple-Windfury crit and having your target's health melt away.

The Elemental and Enhancement trees are very strong in their own right and both bring some significant advantages to a raiding party. I'll extoll their raid-usefulness later, but for now I'd like to give some basic advice for those who'd like to make the switch. I'll concentrate on Elemental in this post, and create a separate one for Enhancement.

Talents
The first step to Elemental pwnage is choosing your talents. There are a number of "must have," quintessential talents that every build should have, as well as a number of additional options depending on your play style. (I've ignored Enhancement talents for now and will include Ele/Enh hybrids in a further post.)

• Essential: Convection (-10% mana cost), Concussion (+5% damage), Elemental Focus (clearcasting), Call of Thunder (+6% crit), Elemental Fury (increased crit damage), Lightning Mastery (reduced casting time)
• Good (PvE): Elemental Warding (reduced damage from Fire, Frost and Nature), Storm Reach (increased range), Unrelenting Storm (mana regen), Elemental Precision (increased hit chance), Elemental Mastery (mana-free crit every 3 minutes), Lightning Overload (chance for additional spell), Totem of Wrath (increased hit/crit), Nature's Guidance (Resto Tier 3: increased hit), Tidal Mastery (Resto Tier 4: increased crit), Nature's Swiftness (Resto Tier 5: instant-cast spell)
• Good (PvP): Elemental Warding (reduced damage from Fire, Frost and Nature), Eye of the Storm (pushback resistance on proc), Storm Reach (increased range), Elemental Mastery (mana-free crit every 3 minutes), Lightning Overload (chance for additional spell), Tidal Mastery (Resto Tier 4: increased crit), Nature's Swiftness (Resto Tier 5: instant-cast spell)
• Mediocre: Call of Flame (increased fire totem damage), Reverberation (reduced shock cooldown), Elemental Shields (reduced chance of being crit)

There are a couple talents that deserve a bit more discussion:

• Call of Flame: This talent is worthless if you're putting 41 points into the tree for Totem of Wrath (both fire totems). It can be a decent boost to damage output for a 40/0/21 or similar build, however.
• Eye of the Storm: The pushback resistance is good for PvP, however it does not proc on spell crits. Also, the reduced chance for crit from Elemental Shields is bugged (you don't get credit for something that would have been a crit, but wasn't due to ES), so it makes this talent less useful if you're taking both.
• Elemental Precision: Largely essential for raiders (both for the hit and reduced threat). The amount of hit rating is capped at 4% for PvP, so a point or two is all that's necessary at most.
• Elemental Shields: Note that this only affects melee and ranged crits, not spells. Also see the Eye of the Storm above.
• Lightning Overload: I don't know that it's been confirmed, but the general consensus is that the second lightning bolt causes reduced threat.
• Nature's Guidance: (Resto, Tier 3) The extra 3% hit is useful for getting to the 16% hit cap for raid bosses. Not a good use of points for PvP spec's.
• Nature's Swiftness: (Resto, Tier 5) This is often considered a "must have" for PvP since it significantly increased your burst potential. You cannot get both NS and Totem of Wrath, but it's a good trade-off for PvP where totems are less useful in general.

A few sample builds:

• 41/0/20: The primary raiding build. Some skip Storm Reach in favor of more mana regen, and there's some extra points to play with in Restoration depending on your preferences (I would choose Ancestral Healing since you'll have a very high crit rate, but very occasional healers can easily skip this).
• 40/0/21: Primarily a PvP build, this forgoes Totem of Wrath in favor of Nature's Swiftness. The 1 second reduction on shock cooldowns is good, although though others might prefer to put those points in Eye of the Storm or Elemental Shields.
• 30/0/31: Mana Tide is a great talent and this spec tries to get the best of both worlds. It's a decent PvP build (although Mana Tide can be hard to use effectively in PvP), but tends to be underwhelming for PvE since you're lacking key talents at the top of the Elemental and Restoration trees.

Gear
There are several good gear guides out there. The best is Skyhoof's Guide to Elemental Shaman Gear for Raiding, with a pre-Kara guide available as well. You can also use Binkenstein's shaman calculators to compare gear. In general, however, the stat choices for Elemental are pretty easy: Load up on +spell damage, crit and hit, with a smattering of Intellect and mana/5 wherever you can. A good guideline when comparing gear is:

1 +spell = 1 crit rating = 1.25 hit rating (until capped) = 0.5 mana/5 = 1.5 Intellect = 2 haste rating.

There are a couple stand-out pieces of gear that are worth mentioning:

• [Netherstrike Breastplate][Netherstrike Belt][Netherstrike Bracers]: These require 375 Dragonscale Leatherworking and are all BoP, but are amongst the best pieces of gear you can find for elemental.
• [Xi'ri's Gift]: A great trinket available at revered with Sha'tar.
• [Shiffar's Nexus-Horn]: An even better trinket that drops from the last boss in Arcatraz.
• [The Lightning Capacitor]: One of the best Elemental trinkets in the game. Most of your talents also effect its lightning bolts, too!
• [Shamanistic Helmet of Second Sight]: Nearly as good as some of the epics you'll find in Karazhan, this is a good quest item to shoot for early.
• [Stormsong Kilt]: Drops in heroic mode, but will last you well past Karazhan.
• [Gavel of Unearthed Secrets]: Lower City isn't the easiest to obtain exalted with, but it's well worth the effort. You won't be replacing it until you reach the Prince or spend some time in the arenas.
• [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond]: The newest Jewelcrafting recipe available in patch 2.3, this is now the metagem for maximizing your DPS (by as much as 1-2%!).

Edit 11/25: Added "[Chaotic Skyfire Diamond]