Ascendance

Ascendance
Ascendance Level 100 shaman ability 3 min cooldown Instant Elemental Transform into a Flame Ascendant for 15 sec, replacing Chain Lightning with Lava Beam, removing the cooldown on Lava Burst, and increasing the damage of Lava Burst by an amount equal to your critical strike chance. Enhancement Transform into an Air Ascendant for 15 sec, reducing the cooldown and cost of Stormstrike by 80%, and transforming your auto attack and Stormstrike into Wind attacks which bypass armor and have a 30 yd range. Restoration Transform into a Water Ascendant for 15 sec, causing all healing you deal to be duplicated and distributed evenly among nearby allies.
Properties
Class	Shaman
School	Physical
Cooldown	3 minutes
Other information
Level learned	100
Related buffs
Ascendance Transformed into a powerful Fire ascendant. Chain Lightning is transformed into Lava Beam. Duration: 15 seconds Ascendance Transformed into a powerful Air ascendant. Auto attacks have a 0 to 30 yard range. Stormstrike is empowered and has a 0 to 30 yard range. Duration: 15 seconds Ascendance Transformed into a powerful Water ascendant. Healing you deal is duplicated and distributed evenly among all nearby allies. Duration: 15 seconds

Ascendance is a level 100 shaman talent. Its benefits vary by the shaman's specialization.

Lore

Shamans can ask the elements to Ascend them, making them become powerful but short lived forces. The ritual of ascension is not to be requested lightly however.

Gameplay history

Prior to Patch 6.0.2, the Enhancement version of Ascendance changed the shaman's auto-attacks and Stormstrike to deal pure Nature damage. This synced extremely well with [Mastery: Enhanced Elements].  [Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem] was commonly used to reduce Fire Elemental's cooldown to 3 minutes, making it match Ascendance's.

Combining those two with [Bloodlust], [Feral Spirit], [Stormlash Totem], and [Ancestral Guidance] at the beginning or during the burn phase of an encounter resulted in very high burst damage while also healing one's self and his or her allies.

Blizzard decided it was too much and began with increasing the Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem's reduction effect in Patch 5.4.0. It continued in Patch 6.0.2 with the re-working of Ascendance and the general nerfing of off-healing abilities across all non-healing specializations for all classes. (Stormlash was removed as part of the ability pruning process.)

Patches and hotfixes

• Hotfix (2017-06-14): Ascendance reduces the cooldown and Maelstrom cost of Stormstrike by 50% (was 80%) in PvP situations.
  
• Patch 7.2.5 (2017-06-13): Ascendance no longer generates 12 Maelstrom/second, and now reduces the cooldown and cost of Stormstrike by 80%.
  
• Patch 7.0.3 (2016-07-19): Now a level 100 talent. Mana cost removed. Cooldown increased to 3 minutes for all specs.
  • Elemental: now also increases the damage of [Lava Burst] by an amount equal to critical strike chance for the duration.
  • Enhancement: now also generates 10 Maelstrom per second for the duration.
    
• Hotfix (2015-07-20): Ascendance now has a 2-minute cooldown (down from 3 minutes) for Elemental Shaman.
  
• Patch 6.0.2 (2014-10-14): Ascendance for the Enhancement specialization now changes the shaman's auto attacks and [Stormstrike] to deal Wind-based physical damage that bypasses armor.
  
• Hotfix (2013-05-21): Fixed an issue for Restoration Shamans where Ascendance did not divide the amount healed by Restorative Mists among nearby allies properly.
  
• Patch 5.0.4 (2012-08-28): Added.
  

External links

Elemental	Enhancement	Restoration
Wowhead WoWDB	Wowhead WoWDB	Wowhead WoWDB