Elemental Shaman in the waning WOTLK days...

Some interesting concepts written by a knowledgeable Elemental Shaman...

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For single target (or very small groups)
• Standard rotation, FS (if not up) > LvB > CL > LB. CL is a minor increase, so it can be used in various ways to improve rotations, or not at all if mana is a concern without too much loss. Use frost shock when moving where possible, or flame shock if you're out of range for frost. That part's obvious enough.

• It's worth noting that Fire Nova is only worth casting for AoE. Not only is it prohibitively expensive mana-wise as a spammable spell, but it's also less DPSC than using a CL or LB instead. It can be a good filler to use if you're moving, your totem is in range anyway, you have the mana, and Frost Shock isn't an option, though.

• Your best totem for single-target is Fire Elemental, and it should be used at a time when it can hit the boss for a solid 2 minutes if possible. It's not worth it to glyph it unless the fight is REALLY good for it, but it should be used wherever possible. Second best is magma (yes, even through it's an AoE spell), and the third is Searing. Searing isn't too bad compared to Magma even though it does less DPS (mostly since it costs fewer GCDs to maintain, assuming you don't have to re-drop it).

• From here, your choice is where to stand. Your goal is to stay as close as possible to the boss, but also to minimize movement (and yes, those are conflicting goals)

• If you can stand in melee, you should stand in melee. This gives you the option of using all your fire totems, to turn on your melee attack for a little extra bonus with flametongue weapon swings after instants, and so on. This only works if you can do so without moving much - basically, anything you can do within the GCD of your flame shock is ok. Anything more is going to be problematic for this strategy.

• If you can't stand in melee, you should stand within 20 yards. Start off in melee if you can, but when the boss moves, just adjust yourself as best as you can to move within 20 yards. Doing this allows you to use Searing Totem (but not magma unless the boss happens to wander close enough to you).

• If you have to stay away from the boss entirely or the boss is being kited/moves around so much that you can't even stay within 20 yards reliably, then you should stick to searing, and do your best to keep it in range. These fights aren't so great for us.

• If you have to use ToW (which should only happen if there are 0 warlocks present for some reason, and thus should be VERY uncommon), then you just have to accept a hit to your DPS. There's no way around that, although most of the time, using ToW is going to be better than using fire totems for single-target.


For AoE
• Standard AoE rotation: Magma Totem (if it's not hitting things) > Fire Nova > CL > FS (on targets without it) > LvB > LB. If you're moving during AoE, Fire Nova or shock, but it's USUALLY more important during AoE to keep in range than to stand still - even if your AoE DPS improves the less you need to move. On AoE heavy fights, try to position yourself such that you'll always be close to where the AoE happens (same restrictions as above)

• Don't use ToW, even if you don't have a DP warlock. People always look at me funny when I say that, but the numbers don't lie - if you're fighting more than 2 or 3 mobs, your raid gets more out of Magma than ToW (and this is of course another reason why DP is so much better than ToW - they don't have to pick one or the other, so in AoE situations your raid gets the benefit of both. But I digress).

• Magma is the obvious choice. Even if there's movement involved, you're better off losing some CLs than you are losing some Magma uptime. Try to fill in movement by hitting fire nova before they get out of range of your current totem, and then nova again as you move out to CL position after re-dropping it, and use flame shock as a filler during the movement as much as possible.

• If you can't stand in melee range to AoE (due to a melee range AoE on the targets, etc), try to drop Magma where the AoE is going to happen beforehand and nova as much as you can. But you have to accept that this will not be a good fight for you. If you're for some reason the one responsible for ToW, this is a good time to use it rather than magma - although if possible, position it such that you can use nova on at least some of the targets.

• It's not really worth it to glyph for Fire Nova unless AoE is HUGE on the fight (to the point where DPS during the AoE phase is more important than DPS outside of it). It is worth it to talent for it on any fight where there's AoE, since you're likely only giving up some points in Convection.