A slightly biased Water Elemental FAQ v.2

**Alkhara Majere** · 05-02-2007

Lhivera's Slightly Biased Water Elemental FAQ (Updated Jan 18, 2007)

Many questions about the Water Elemental are being asked over and over in new threads, sometimes several times a day. This is an attempt, certainly futile, to end them once and for all.

I'll state up front that my answers contain a fair amount (in some cases, a downright excessive amount) of opinion. Happens to be the mood I'm in. If you have additional questions about the Water Elemental you'd like me to answer in this opinionated fashion, please feel free to post them in the thread.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Basics

Q: What exactly does the Water Elemental do?
Q: Does the Elemental scale with my gear?
Q: How much damage does the Water Elemental do?
Q: How does the ranged Frost Nova work?
Q: Can I use Cold Snap to summon two Water Elementals at once?
Q: Does the Water Elemental benefit from any of my talents, like Frostbite, Shatter, etc.?
Q: Can the Water Elemental be banished?
Q: Is the Water Elemental immune to any kind of damage?
Q: Can I name my Water Elemental?

Version History, Bugs and Problems

Q: How has the Water Elemental changed since its introduction?
Q: Why does my pet bar sometimes fail to appear?
Q: Why does my Elemental sometimes stand around like a dummy refusing to fight?
Q: Why does my Elemental spawn without full health and mana?
Q: Sometimes, after casting my Elemental's Freeze spell, I get stuck in a mode where I can't cast any spells; I keep getting an "Another action is in progress" error. What's up, and how do I fix it?
Q: Why does my Elemental always spawn in defensive mode?

Water Elemental Controls, Macros and Add-Ons

Q: Is there a way to make the elemental focus-fire my target?
Q: How do I macro the water elemental's Frost Nova?
Q: Can I macro the pet behavior, like setting it to Passive when summoned?
Q: What are the Water Elemental's default keybindings?
Q: Are there any Water Elemental-related UI add-ons?

Shameless Water Elemental Opinion and Punditry

Q: Is the Water Elemental any good?
Q: Why can't our pet be a permanent summon, like a Warlock pet?
Q: But really, why can't it be permanent? Hunter and Warlock pets are!

The Basics

Q: What exactly does the Water Elemental do?
A: The elemental is a ranged DPS pet. It casts Waterbolts that do Frost damage every 2.5 seconds, and can cast a ranged Frost Nova every 25 seconds.

Q: Does the Elemental scale with my gear?
A: Yes. The exact numbers haven't been given to us, but through testing it appears to receive 40% benefit from your +Frost damage from gear and buffs. Thus if you have +500 Frost damage, the elemental will get +200. Note that due to the 2.5 second cast time on its Waterbolts, it receives about 71.4% benefit from damage gear, so the actual increase would be approximately 143 damage.

It appears to get 30% benefit from the Intellect and Stamina on your gear and buffs, and it gains 7.5 health and 5 mana per point of Stamina and Intellect, respectively. Thus, if you add 100 stamina and 100 intellect to your gear, the Elemental would gain 30 stamina and 30 intellect, which would add 225 health and 150 mana.

Q: How much damage does the Water Elemental do?
A: At level 60, its Waterbolts average 407 damage. At level 70, they average 522 damage. They crit for 150% damage. Thus with +500 damage gear, it would average 550 at level 60, and 665 at level 70.

Q: How does the ranged Frost Nova work?
A: You click the spell on the elemental's pet control bar, then target the Frost Nova as you would a Blizzard or a Flame Strike. You can use the ranged Frost Nova (actually named "Freeze") while casting another spell.

Q: Can I use Cold Snap to summon two Water Elementals at once?
A: No. Cold Snap will reset the elemental's cooldown, but if you summon a second one while the first is still active, the first will despawn.

Q: Does the Water Elemental benefit from any of my talents, like Frostbite, Shatter, etc.?
A: Not directly. Indirectly, the elemental benefits from the following talents:

Cold Snap (which can reset its cooldown)
Ice Floes (reduces the Cold Snap cooldown)
Frost Channeling (reduces summon cost)
Elemental Precision (reduces summon cost)
Winter's Chill (the elemental cannot apply Winter's Chill, but its crit rate is improved by the debuff)

Additionally, the Elemental increases your opportunities to use Shatter by giving you a second Frost Nova on a separate cooldown.

Q: Can the Water Elemental be banished?
A: Yes.

Q: Is the Water Elemental immune to any kind of damage?
A: The Elemental is immune to Frost and Poison.

Q: Can I name my Water Elemental?
A: No. Which is a great pity, because I'd name mine "Squirt."

Version History, Bugs and Problems

Q: How has the Water Elemental changed since its introduction?
A: While the Elemental has not changed much since release, it did go through some changes between its initial introduction on the 2.0 test servers to present.

2.0 Closed Beta: The Water Elemental reportedly was a permanent pet. Summoning it required an Arcane Powder, a high mana cost (in the neighborhood of 1700 mana), and a ten second cast. In short, it was very much like a warlock pet. Its damage output was significantly lower (perhaps 75-80 DPS). There were rumors that it also had a group mana regeneration aura. This version had some basic problems with its design, which are discussed in the Punditry section, below.

2.0 Open Beta: By the time open beta rolled around, the Water Elemental was close to its current form. It had a brief implementation as a summon with 1 minute duration and a 5 minute cooldown, before finally settling into the current version with a 45 second duration and a 3 minute cooldown. During the open beta, pet scaling was implemented for the Elemental, allowing it to benefit from the mage's intellect, stamina and spell power.

2.1: Problems with the pet scaling have been addressed; the Water Elemental will, when 2.1 goes live, receive an immediate "heal" to full health and mana, just as Warlock and Hunter pets do. Additionally, it is more quickly responsive; it accept a command to attack the instant it is summoned.

Q: Why does my pet bar sometimes fail to appear?
A: This bug actually affects all pets, not just ours -- hunters, warlocks, even priests and engineers (using Mind Control) experience this bug. Blizzard has suggested that UI mods are the culprit, but many people have reported experiencing the problem while no UI mods are installed. Until it's figured out, you can create the following macro which should force the pet bar to appear:
/script PetActionBarFrame:Show(); PetActionBarFrame.locked() = true;
Q: Why does my Elemental sometimes stand around like a dummy refusing to fight?
A: There appear to be two causes for this problem, best explained by Faxmonkey:

Q u o t e:
One bug causes the pet to be friendly to the opposite faction, but the pet will still follow you around and you can still get him to cast Freeze (which will hit the opposite faction -- similarly, they can only damage your water elemental with AoE because he shows up as friendly). In this bug, you can order your pet to attack a player of the opposite faction, but he will only follow that player around (if the player moves out of range)and not actually attack him.

The second bug is terrain-related like the blink bug. The water elemental effectively "evades" on the spot he's cast. He will not move from that spot. He will not follow players you tell him to attack, he will not follow you. He will not cast freeze. Sometimes this issue can be corrected by moving back and forth and the pet will eventually teleport to you. This same issue will affect warlock pets, but as warlock pets are permanent, they are not summoned in as wide a variety of spots as mage pets so this issue is much rarer for them. Additionally, warlock pets are not time limited so losing 30 seconds to a pet that temporarily won't move isn't quite as big of a deal as it is to a mage.

Q: Why does my Elemental spawn without full health and mana?
A: NOTE: This problem has been fixed in 2.1. This question will be removed when 2.1 goes live. This problem appears to be related to pet scaling; the Elemental spawns with its base, unscaled health and mana. The problem was recently solved (in patch 2.0.3) for Warlock pets, which now receive an immediate "heal" to full health and mana after spawning, but this fix has not yet been implemented for the Elemental.

Q: Sometimes, after casting my Elemental's Freeze spell, I get stuck in a mode where I can't cast any spells; I keep getting an "Another action is in progress" error. What's up, and how do I fix it?
A: This usually seems to happen when you're targeting the Freeze reticle as the Water Elemental dies or despawns. You're stuck because the game still thinks you're trying to cast Freeze, which you can't. It can usually be fixed by spamming your ESC key a few times.

Q: Why does my Elemental always spawn in defensive mode?
A: Nobody knows. It is a problem, however; in PvE especially, you almost always want your pet set to Passive so it doesn't take, to put it politely, unexpected actions.

Water Elemental Controls, Macros and Add-Ons

Q: Is there a way to make the elemental focus-fire my target?
A: You could make a variety of macros depending on the behavior you want. I use this one:
# showtooltip Frostbolt

/cast Frostbolt

/stopmacro [target=pettarget, exists]

/petattack
If the water elemental is idle, then on my next Frostbolt cast it will begin attacking my target. If the elemental is already occupied, it will continue attacking its current target. This allows me to switch targets if needed while letting the elemental continue to attack the previous target.

Q: How do I macro the water elemental's Frost Nova?
A: As long as you haven't moved your pet buttons around, you can use the following in a macro:
/click [pet] PetActionButton5
Here is a more complete example that combines the Summon button and Freeze button in a single macro (thank you Shnoogie):
# showtooltip Summon Water Elemental

/click [pet] PetActionButton5

/stopmacro [pet:water elemental]

/stopcasting

/cast Summon Water Elemental

Q: Can I macro the pet behavior, like setting it to Passive when summoned?
A: Not exactly. The pet doesn't spawn instantly, so you can't issue commands to it in the same action as summoning it. You can, however, set up a "click-twice" macro like the following (just adapted from Shnoogie's, above):
# showtooltip Summon Water Elemental

/petpassive

/stopmacro [pet:water elemental]

/stopcasting

/cast Summon Water Elemental
The other stances can be set with /petaggressive and /petdefensive.

Q: What are the Water Elemental's default keybindings?
A: As follows:
control-1 attack

control-2 follow

control-3 stay

control-4 waterbolt toggle

control-5 ranged frost nova

control-8 aggressive

control-9 defensive

control-0 passive

Q: Are there any Water Elemental-related UI add-ons?
A: One in particular; feel free to post links to others and I'll add them to the list:

Elemental Flux: Adds a very compact, movable, scalable and stretchable countdown timer that tells you how long the Elemental has before it expires. It doubles as a casting bar for the Elemental's water bolts.
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...entalFlux.html

Frosty: Bars to count down Elemental's duration, cooldown, the Freeze cooldown, and a waterbolt casting bar. Also tracks stats for the Elemental's damage. Much more feature-rich than Elemental Flux, but also uses much more screen real estate.
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...ntalAddon.html

Shameless Water Elemental Opinion and Punditry

Q: Is the Water Elemental any good?

A: The Water Elemental is a spectacularly strong talent. It provides exactly what Frost mages need: burst damage. It isn't really anything like other pets. Hunter and Warlock pets complement their classes; they provide utility and functionality that the parent class lacks. Hunters need range to be effective; pets provide that range by tanking. Warlock pets provide buffs, crowd control, and melee DPS.

The Water Elemental, on the other hand, supplements our class. It helps us do more of what we already do: DPS and crowd control. You can think of the Water Elemental as the Frost Mage's Arcane Power, except it provides about 40% more DPS rather than 30%, for up to 45 seconds instead of 15, with zero added threat instead of 30%, and at a lower mana cost.

In short, my feeling is that if you're putting more than 21 points into Frost, you'd probably better go all the way to 41. Frost only got two DPS improvements in the new talent trees: Empowered Frostbolt, which isn't terribly strong (it's good, but it's no Shadow and Flame), and the Water Elemental. For PvE content, at least, a deep Frost build will need the Elemental to put out viable damage.

Q: Why can't our pet be a permanent summon, like a Warlock pet?

A: There are a few reasons for this:

1) "Because we're not a pet class." While this reason is often cited, I reject it. Looking at the changes made to the other trees, the Frost tree has clearly been rebalanced around having a pet; it represents approximately 10% of my damage output in raids, which is a huge portion.

2) "Because it would be overpowered." Well, not really. If the Elemental were permanent, its damage would of course be scaled back. Second, as I shall explain below, this would arguably reduce the power of the elemental, not increase it.

3) "Because it would make the pet worse, not better." This is the real issue. Blizzard actually tested the Elemental as a warlock-style pet. It took 10 seconds and 1400 mana to summon, cost an Arcane Powder, and did about 1/3 its current damage. The problem was, most of the time, a Frost mage didn't need an extra 80 DPS. And in situations where the mage did need extra DPS, 80 wasn't enough.

So, advantage number one of a temporary summon: it gives us more of what we need when we need it. Burst damage has always been one of the areas where a Frost mage falls down in raids; being able to bust out 240 DPS on demand (for up to 90 seconds with Cold Snap) is infinitely more valuable than having an extra 80 DPS all the time.

The other big advantage to a temporary summon is that it actually allows us to get more use out of the Elemental in many situations. First, you need to remember: permanent summon means a long casting time (10 seconds) and a reagent cost. This means you can't summon the Elemental while in combat. So now consider the following situations:

- Permanent Elemental: A hunter sees you coming in with your Elemental; at 41 yards, he plugs it with three quick shots and takes it out. No more Elemental for you until the fight's over. Temporary Elemental: you summon the pet as you engage.

- You're fighting Heigan, and you move off the platform into the first Dance phase. The first splash instantly kills every pet in the raid. Permanent Elemental: no more Elemental until the fight's over. Temporary Elemental: summon a new one when you hit the next platform phase.

- You're fighting Maexxna, and after her second web explosion, all the pets are dead. Permament Elemental: do without it for the rest of the fight. Temporary Elemental: summon a new one after the web explosion.

These are just a few sample situations, but the general idea -- pets die very early in many encounters -- is very common. The simple fact is, our current, temporary Elemental is more available when needed then a permanent version would be.

Q: But really, why can't it be permanent? Hunter and Warlock pets are!

A: OK, so the above explanation wasn't enough for you. Fair enough. Here's another reason: the Water Elemental's DPS kicks the everliving crap out of Hunter and Warlock pets. For two anecdotal advantages: a warlock friend and I tested out our new pets against mobs in the Eastern Plaguelands. His Felguard took, on average, 35-45 seconds to kill a mob. Took very little damage in the process, and it holds aggro like a champ.

My Elemental took 12-15 seconds to kill the same mobs.

On a recent Patchwerk fight (recent as of this writing), we had four hunter pets and my Elemental. The Elemental placed second -- barely edged out of first -- in pet damage dealt. This is in a fight in which the pets are at zero risk; they're able to DPS for the full duration of the fight, around 6 minutes. I used the Elemental three times, for a total of 2 minutes, 15 seconds, during which it outdamaged three out of four hunter pets that DPSed for 6 minutes, and nearly matched the fourth.

The very high DPS of the pet, the extra survivability it gains due to its 35-yard range, and its instant summonability in combat, all add up to a pet that would ironically be overpowered and less useful if it were permanent -- overpowered because that's just too much damage for a permanent pet to put out, and less useful because once killed (which will often happen in 45 seconds or less anyway), you can't use it again in a given fight.

Guide by Lhivera of Aggramar

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**krlhnz** · 05-02-2007

*flame**flame*
well i just cant do it

its awesome

+rep

**Alkhara Majere** · 05-02-2007

I have to say it.

420 rep.

Weeeeeeeeeed

**Zaldion** · 05-02-2007

Good guide but I would perfer the watered down version of the water elemental (no pun intended) and I'll take the damage reduction..1/3 of the damage lets say but all other stats transfer 100% or perhaps while you have pet active YOU hit only 2/3 normal but pet gets to hit for current damage and it also siphons some of your crit chance and spell damage.

**Resiroth** · 05-02-2007

"Good guide but I would perfer the watered down version of the water elemental (no pun intended) and I'll take the damage reduction..1/3 of the damage lets say but all other stats transfer 100% or perhaps while you have pet active YOU hit only 2/3 normal but pet gets to hit for current damage and it also siphons some of your crit chance and spell damage."

Hmmm, no. right now water elementals are doing 1k a hit which is plenty and guarenteed crits and ranged frost nova. It's not overpowered but it certainly doesn't need to be buffed. It already scales quite well and with coldsnap an icemage can be a truely formidable opponent. It would have to do 300 damage a hit ( 3 second cast ) as a permanent pet to be considered balance and that's a nerf really since most times burst dps is better than a constant dps ( in anything but long boss fights in certain situations ). BTW very nice guide.