Where are you running out of mana? As an elemental shaman in T5/ZA with about 200 haste, I haven't found myself running out of mana in any of the patched content (I used a mana pot once during a Kael fight) with a CL/LB/LB rotation. I have found thunderstorm VERY useful, however, in instances where there is a large amount of trash. I'm not doing this in Hyjal, but in H MgT on the trash before Vexallus we just had our tank grab all the mobs, then I fire elemental + Elemental mastery + thunderstorm and watched recount tell me I was doing godly dps. :-D

Well, it could have something to do with the fact i tend to off-heal alot too, but ive just started T6 raids so i have some T6 epics mixed in with alot of T5/badge ones. My mana dosnt go down fast, but im still never at full mana when thunderstorm is up so i use it anyways. im using FS/CL/LB/LB rotation and ive never run out of mana with thunderstorm yet so its working fine.

Say WHAT? Your gear msut be total crap then. I can go just over 3 minutes at maximum burn (save for heroism) with just my totems.

That's without a BOW or Replenishment or anything else to recover mana.

Mana tide/Mana totem + water shield (with both aditional glyphs) = no mana problems unless the fight goes too long.

To all the haters:

So far, Elemental are the nicest of the bunch.

They tend to hang back with the healer and if a mob comes looking to kill the healer I sometimes see a thunderstorm knocking it into my range.

Mages...

GAWD

Could you guys stop using BLAST WAVE?!?!?
I have a rotation. If I miss a move, I have to go to the next one or skip something and 2 of my moves NEED to be done. So your stupid knock back not only knocked them out of consecrate, but the last Hammer just failed to land and so my AE threat is now crap. Thanks. And when I have to stun the mob coming after you for going nuts on a mob I haven't managed to touch in the last 10 seconds thanks to your stupid knockback, you ask my why I can't hold threat.

So, for the love of the Light and all that is good, STOP EFFING DOING THIS TO ME!

/end tankadinrage

If you cannot get out of range to use Thunderstorm without knocking back the mobs, don't use it. EVER.

As a shaman and a MT, if you did that shit in my run or raid, you'd be gone.

As a raiding ele shaman, I-
a) don't use TS at all in raids
b) I didn't even spec into it because
c) we don't need it yet.

If you are running out of mana post-3.0.2, consider respeccing to take advantage of talents besides TS, or stack crit. At this point- with only 61 talent points to spare, you're better of not taking it to begin with.

Really. You're better off not taking it.

Better to be mana efficient than to blow extra talents just to get a moderately useful spell with a potentially dangerous knockback effect. Consider these talents to improve your longevity in a fight:

Unrelenting storm
Ancestral Knowledge (works nicely w/ US)
Shamanistic Focus (If you use shocks in your rotation for godsakes shave points to reach this talent)
Thundering strikes (Crit is

also consider glyph of lightning bolt- 10% off mana cost to your main nuke spell adds up to a hell of a lot in raids.