Probable impact of implicit wait removal

You saw it right. @JimEvans in this discussion clearly states that:

Part of the problem is that implicit waits are often (but may not always be!) implemented on the "remote" side of the WebDriver system. That means they're "baked in" to IEDriverServer.exe, chromedriver.exe, the WebDriver Firefox extension that gets installed into the anonymous Firefox profile, and the Java remote WebDriver server (selenium-server-standalone.jar). Explicit waits are implemented exclusively in the "local" language bindings. Things get much more complicated when using RemoteWebDriver, because you could be using both the local and remote sides of the system multiple times.

So, while interacting with an element Explicit Wait is the mandate.

Now, as per the constructors of WebDriverWait:

• public WebDriverWait(WebDriver driver, long timeOutInSeconds): Wait will ignore instances of NotFoundException that are encountered (thrown) by default in the 'until' condition, and immediately propagate all others. You can add more to the ignore list by calling ignoring(exceptions to add).
• WebDriverWait(WebDriver driver, long timeOutInSeconds, long sleepInMillis): Wait will ignore instances of NotFoundException that are encountered (thrown) by default in the 'until' condition, and immediately propagate all others. You can add more to the ignore list by calling ignoring(exceptions to add).

So, WebDriverWait() by default ignores NotFoundException and the direct known subclasses are:

• NoAlertPresentException
• NoSuchContextException
• NoSuchCookieException
• NoSuchElementException
• NoSuchFrameException
• NoSuchWindowException

From the source code of WebDriverWait.java:

/** * Wait will ignore instances of NotFoundException that are encountered (thrown) by default in * the 'until' condition, and immediately propagate all others.  You can add more to the ignore * list by calling ignoring(exceptions to add). * * @param driver The WebDriver instance to pass to the expected conditions * @param timeOutInSeconds The timeout in seconds when an expectation is called * @param sleepInMillis The duration in milliseconds to sleep between polls. * @see WebDriverWait#ignoring(java.lang.Class) */

So, while using WebDriverWait you won't face NoSuchElementException. Incase the desired element is not returned till the WebDriverWait expires you will face timeoutException.