What's the problem w/ Ele Shamans?

[Cragen]

You can make it work for MC

Nope.

Shaman vs Nature-based elementals is such a broken match, unparalleled.

Comparing to all other classes and all other schools of magic:

Holy: No Holy resistance in mobs (at .least that's how it should be). In WoW's entire history, only Maiden of Virtue was holy based, one single encounter for paladins where they can't really do much. Smiter priest DPS also benefits from this, and even vs Maiden of Virtue they could attack with shadow (which was the default DPS spec in TBC anyway).

Arcane: Except for the DM:W elementals that guard the pylons and patrol around Immol'thar, there are no arcane elementals in vanilla content. Only mage and druid use arcane damage (I guess hunter too, heh). Mage can just use fire/frost, and moonkin can spam wrath vs them, or hurricane.

Fire: Fire elementals exist in BRD, UBRS and MC. Classes affected are mage and warlock chiefly. The former can stick to frost and do fine, maybe Arcane AoE too. The latter can stick to shadow damage.

Frost: Frost-immune elementals appear very sparsely. BFD, Noxxion in Maraudon and that's basically it. Only mage is truly affected by them. Can resort to fire based spells and do just fine, as well as having arcane dmg as supplementary.

Shadow: There aren't any shadow elementals in the game. There are mobs with high magic resistances that are a problem, say the chromatic dragons of LBRS, but resist =/= immune, and one CoS evens the field just fine. Even shadow using demons like Balnazzar or the Dead Scar/Darkwhisper Gorge mobs (including Kazzak) can be hit with Shadow, so can the shadowflame user Nefarian, or Emperor Vek'lor. Warlocks and Shadow priests never run into an immune problem.

Nature: The lowest dungeon in the game, RFC, already puts a fourth of the mobs being rock elementals immune to it. Maraudon packs a number of nature immune mobs as well, Roccor in BRD and every rock elemental in Molten Core is as well.
Classes affected: Shaman and caster Druid. A moonkin can just stick to moonfire and starfire (which has a higher spell quofficient than wrath anyway).
A shaman?....
Frost: Frost Shock, every 6 seconds (5 seconds if reverberation 5/5), and auto attack with frostbrand I guess.
Fire: Flame Shock, autoattack with Flametongue and put fire totems down.

The damage dive is brutal from not being able to use lightning, since there's no other spammable spell. Shocks are a nice instant move but not being able to cast anything for 5/6 of the time is just absurd. Frostbrand proc (unreliable like all procs) and Flametongue bonus are minimal, and magma totem (highest DPS compared to searing and fire nova) might add something but not nearly enough. Another way that shamans get screwed badly in comparison to paladins (who can even use holy damage on the otherwise magic immune Emperor Veknilash).

Arcane immune: Mage just spams frostbolt/fireball anyway. Moonkin spams wrath.
Fire immune: Mage spams frostbolt. Warlock spams shadowbolt like he woud anyway, and shadow dots.
Frost immune: Mage spams fireball/pyroblast/fire blast.
Shadow immune: Doesn't exist.
Holy immune: Doesn't exist.
Nature immune: Druid spams starfire/moonfire. Shaman grinds his teeth and sighs at Blizzard's attention-level.

I remember it bugged me to no end when Hydross in TBC was nature immune and we had no alternative. I'd imagine its different now, but MC was the raid were 40% of the raid would just afk.
Best choice is just to play it as a hybrid. Nature immune mobs/boss, put on healing gear and heal for that fight, same as some fury warriors will off tank from time to time.

Its far from perfect, but it works. But honestly elemental in vanilla boils down to being a healing shaman without mana tide.
That was how I played most of vanilla until I started raiding Naxx hardcore and parts of AQ40. I'd be in my elemental/pvp spec but in my healing set and be perfectly fine. Partly because I had probably the best gear of all the shamans in my guild since I was a total nolifer at the time and never missed a single raid so I pretty much had first dibs on everything.

[Lionheart]

Something to note however is that Shaman Elementals were indeed considered late AQ40 and Early Naxxramas. The reason behind is that their Elemental Tree has been profoundly changed with the patch 1.11. Also, the mana cost for Lightning Bolt had been reduced by 17% (which is considerable) with this patch, many totem got their mana cost reduce and/or their time increased (which results also in less mana spent).

(A small anecdote here, like priests in patch 1.08, shamans got a free respec this patch 1.11)

So now, in Nostalrius, I believe all those changes are already in place which make the shaman elemental a tiny bit more competitive/playable.
Now two problems that have been quoted before is the lack of gear (you can try to assemble a pre-raid BiS gear for fun but truly, nothing will work properly) and the threat as shaman has an incredible burst potential.

-- 100% Crits with Chain Lightning on 3 mobs do no good for the tank in dungeon and Shaman don't have threat skill reducing their personal threat as Hunters, Rogues, Mages --

For the mana issues, I believe it can been indeed overtaken by consumables but you will need to farm/buy them.