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In reviewing the elemental tree I see legitimate content-specific roles for 5 and 10-man content, but I am leery about elemental in 25-man content. For 25-man content Elemental Shamans are receiving very few self-buffs to their damage or utility. Unless Lava Bursting the flameshocks of an enhancement shaman will be a large net damage gain, elemental shamans will be doing much the same damage they are doing now. Moonkin will provide an additional 6% nature damage from Nature's Fury, and enhancement will provide extra stormstrike charges, but unless those charges go to the elemental shaman, the net increase in damage output will be inferior to what many other damage dealers are getting. This is particularly problematic because 1) healing classes will already be in short supply, and 2) DPS slots will be tight with the increased effectiveness of other hybrids and the addition of Deathknights. In short, Deep Elemental gets little to no extra raid utility in WotLK, and their damage scaling is almost wholly dependent on new external buffs. Absent those buffs elemental shaman will be hard-pressed to compete for ranged DPS slots in 25-man content.
Would the following changes be a viable work-around for this problem?
1) Change Totem of Wrath to an Earth Totem.
2) Add an additional effect to Storm, Earth, and Fire that increases the range of Searing Totem by 3 yards per talent point.
3) Change Thunder to restore 5% mana to all party members.
#1 and #2 would allow elemental shaman to take advantage of their buffs to Searing Totem without compromising Wrath of Air. That should be worth ~130 DPS on a fully debuffed target. #3 would add a relatively small amount of additional synergy and would give Thunder a bit of raid utility which was previously lacking due to its long cooldown.
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