Ascendance

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

Lore
Shaman who have spent their lives dedicated to the path of Air, Water or Fire can beseech the elements to Ascend them, as a more co-operative, though temporary, form of ascension, that making them become powerful but short-lived forces. The ritual of ascension is not to be requested lightly.

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.)