6. Typical PvE talent setup

The Restoration tree has no viable benefits for Elemental in the early tiers, so you'll be sub-speccing Enhancement.

Here's an Elemental sample tree. You have two points remaining, which can be used for either Improved Ghost Wolf (if you PvP), Improved Fire Nova (for extra AoE damage), or a few points in Convection (if you're having mana problems).

7. Talent overview:

Elemental talents in italics are considered expendable. You're free to move those points around as you wish. Talents that are struck out are ones you should avoid. For Enhancement, we'll only be discussing ones that are viable talents for this spec.

Elemental:

• Convection: A small decrease in mana cost of spells. We only partially fill this one up, or not at all, as the points are better used elsewhere.
• Concussion: A must-have set of damage increases to your bread-and-butter spells.
• Call of Flame: A solid damage increase to Lava Burst and our newly-useful Fire Nova.
• Elemental Warding: Not a necessary talent for DPS, but it's one of the few non-PvE/PvP-specific talents in a tree not known for bloat, and that 6% is handy in a pinch.
• Elemental Devastation: This is a purely Enhancement talent. As Elemental, you'll never be using your weapons to melee. Don't put points into it.
• Reverberation: As Elemental, Flame Shock is the only Shock spell you'll be casting regularly; its direct damage is negligible and you lose DPS from the DoT when you recast it and clip it before it's over. To that end, this talent is unnecessary.
• Elemental Focus: Vital! Clearcasting, the proc from this talent, is incredibly important in reducing our mana consumption. Each time you get a crit with a spell, the buff will refresh; with high enough crit rating, you can have almost 100% Clearcasting uptime, making all of your spells much, much cheaper.
• Elemental Fury: Another no-brainer, this talent doubles the damage bonus of our critical strikes.
• Improved Fire Nova: Given Fire Nova's newfound usefulness and the lack of other, more compelling talents to throw two points into, this talent is a fine choice.
• Eye of the Storm: I originally had this listed as a don't-grab, but many readers disagreed with me. If you find your casts getting pushed back often enough to merit a change, this is a fine choice for a few talent points.
• Elemental Reach: A range of benefits to your basic spells. Grab it!
• Call of Thunder: For one talent point, you get an additional 5% crit on your main damage spell. Definitely worth it.
• Unrelenting Storm: Sort of in the same boat as Elemental Warding -- not a necessity, but there's little else to put your points into, and additional mana regen on top of Clearcasting and Water Shield can't hurt.
• Elemental Precision: Necessary both for the increase to our spell hit and threat reduction.
• Lightning Mastery: Reduces our base Lightning Bolt cast time to a maximum of 2 seconds, which is further reduced by haste. Necessary for a proper rotation.
• Elemental Mastery: Elemental's only on-click cooldown, EM is best used early and often. If you have a lot of haste, you might consider not popping it during Heroism due to decreased benefit from the spell's new haste buff, but as you run heroics or early raids, you may find the DPS boost pretty reasonable when used in conjunction with your other cooldowns.
• Storm, Earth, and Fire: Besides helping with AoE (Chain Lightning cooldown reduction) and emergency add rooting (roots on initial Earthbind Totem cast), SE&F also dramatically boosts your Flame Shock DoT damage, making this a vital talent.
• Booming Echoes: As Elemental, your use of Frost Shock will be extremely limited, but the direct-damage boost to Flame Shock is at least worthwhile enough to merit popping points into this talent.
• Elemental Oath: Vital! This talent is the equivalent to Moonkin Aura, providing you and your party members an additional 5% spell critical chance, but beyond that, it also grants you 10% more spell damage while Clearcasting is active. Like Elemental Focus, the buffs from this talent are nearly always active, depending on your crit rating.
• Lightning Overload: If you've leveled as Elemental (why?), you know how neat this talent is when you get it. At the level cap, though, it's really just another DPS boost, albeit one you'd be crazy not to get. The second bolt that procs is threat-free, which is a nice touch.
• Astral Shift: A pure PvP talent. Not worth getting in a PvE build.
• Totem of Wrath: Get it. Performing the same functions as both Heart of the Crusader and Demonic Pact, this totem will be your bread-and-butter Fire totem unless you happen to party/raid with a very geared Demonology warlock.
• Lava Flows: Though the first portion of the talent is undoubtedly PvP oriented, the additional Lava Burst crit damage makes this a must-grab.
• Shamanism: An obvious necessity.
• Thunderstorm: A great source of emergency mana regen and a surprisingly useful skill if adds get loose. You can always glyph it to receive some bonus mana recovery and remove the knockback completely. If you're a big baby.

Enhancement:

• Enhancing Totems: If you don't regularly party or raid with death knights, this can be a useful talent to help your melee friends with a boosted Strength of Earth Totem. Definitely not a necessity, though.
• Ancestral Knowledge: Can't argue with 5% more intellect. Grab it.
• Thundering Strikes: Doesn't just boost melee crit -- it's all attacks, including spells. A necessity.
• Improved Ghost Wolf: If you do world PVP, this is a nice pickup for those shamans constantly on the move. If you have extra points lying around, that is. Remember that it doesn't work indoors.
• Elemental Weapons: An additional 30% spell damage on Flametongue Weapon, the only weapon enchant you should rightfully be using as Elemental.
• Shamanistic Focus: Given that you'll only really be casting the Flame edition of your Shock spells, this talent normaly wouldn't be worth it -- but at only one point, it's a welcome addition to your talent repertoire.

8. Leveling as Elemental

In a word? Don't. It's incredibly tiresome and only picks up at two points: The first is when you first get Lightning Overload, and the second is when you get Lava Burst. Even with Lightning Overload, though, you'll essentially be pressing your Lightning Bolt button over and over and over for 74 levels until you get Lava Burst. It's not pretty, it's not fun, and it's certainly not engaging. Level as Enhancement.

If, for some reason, you feel that you absolutely must level as Elemental, then you're at yet another disadvantage, because the shaman-specific Mystical Pauldrons of Elements and their companion chest are loaded with mp5 instead of more useful stats. Want to go to cloth? Too bad! Everything else has spirit on it. Given the mana issues that players of this spec encounter early on, though, you could do worse than some mp5. You could just certainly do better.

As far as weapons are concerned, while you'd normally go for mace and shield at max level, you're better off using a Dignified Headmaster's Charge to level with. Feeling concerned that your spec is one of the only ones that doesn't really have leveling gear to support it? Just wait until you get to 80, my friend. Just wait.

Where talents are concerned, just fill in your Elemental tree first and then move down Enhancement. Nothing in Enhancement is necessarily a mandatory leveling talent.