edit because I was wrong.

Having an Arena point cost on everything kind of slows down the honor gear for sure. Though I had planned to drop out of the arena system entirely and limit my participation in the game to Battle grounds and 5-man dungeons in Wrath. I guess there is no point in even bothering with the expansion now then.....ah well there is always Warhammer.

I'm glad you worked that out for me - my brain isn't working particularly fast this morning

Thank you!

Hmm I hadn't considered the threat benefits from light in that fashion.

Tell me it isn't true

I posted this on the Beta Forums. elementals are done for now unless things change. We have no idea IF things are going to change though because there is almost a complete lack of feedback coming from the Developers. There have been a TON of great ideas posted from Beta testers but it's pretty much all ignored as i state below..
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Sorry i didn't grab who posted this list below... copied it and went off doing something else before coming back to post. You know who you are though :-)
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they removed the live coefficient from .78 to .71 like every other caster, but allowed curse of elements and the like to work on nature.

OK, so far not so bad, then they gave us random talents that helped increase LB damage, whee, we were almost able to hang with mages in dps, LvB hit hard and FS,LBx2,LvB was viable.

they nerfed LvB and the rotation was lower DPS than LB

They nerfed LB coefficient talents, but the new rotation was still only similar dps and much more mana intensive.

they increased base damage of LvB with a level 80 version and lowered mana cost, new rotaion was finally worth doing and mana was not killing us anymore.

For reasons yet unknown they once again nerfed LB by removing the talented coeffiecient buff.

Oh and somewhere along the way CL became really really expensive to cast and is no longer something anyone can sustain in a rotation outside of EM/CL.

So what we have now, is a rotation that is significantly weaker DPS than what we would have on the live servers with straight LB spam, dps meters beta vs. live will once again need to be run, but given that we lost 9% hit as well... it's just over, stick a fork in us.
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Nice and concise list of what has happened to Elemental Shamans. I played a hunter for 150 days and even made Field Marshal on him. Then I leveled my Shaman and fell in love with the class. I made my Shaman my main and was all set to keep him my main for WotLK but now i'm going back to the Hunter or maybe the recently leveled mage(or quiting WoW altogther) Unless something changes drastically before WoTLK. To see yourself doing less damage in Beta than on live Is not fun. Knowing that at end game you will be lackluster at best, knowing that you won't be competitive is just too much. Why bother leveling a shaman at this point If the math shows that you won't be competitive? And for the people who think this is hyperbole it's not. It's simple math. Other classes get talents that scale their damage. Elementals at this point do not. As gear gets better our damage goes up a little while other casters damage goes up much more. As it stands now as the expansion progresses Elemental Shamans will fall further and further behind. Given the lack of communication we have no reason to believe this isn't where we are headed now.

What makes this a breaking point for some people is the total lack of communication coming from the developers. IF they are changing our class this radically then a statement of intent is REQUIRED. Otherwise we have no idea how and what to offer feedback on. Players are giving feedback based on what our spec HAS been and given the dramatic changes to our Spec (removal of spell hit, removal of all Spell Damage coefficients) we are no longer that Spec. So without a clear statement of Intent we have no clue where the Spec is going and where we should be giving feedback. In other words we are now wasting our time.

This lack of communication shows a disregard and disrespect on the part of the developers toward the player base. Blues can dissemble all they want but it's obvious that the Shaman forum recieves much less developer feedback than any other class. If Blizzard doesn't care than why should the player base? And you can't say the player base hasn't been providing calm level headed feedback either. To be met with such silence on top of such radical change in our Spec is disrespectful.

If Blizzard does care about the Shaman class and customer feedback then something is wrong on THEIR side of the street and It's probably time to replace whoever is in charge of Shaman development.

But for me, I'm done. I've tried to make suggestions that I feel would make us better spec. I want to help, but to watch as we get destroyed as a spec with no Information coming from the developers makes it just not worth it any longer.

No its still 3 energy, they just changed the scaling of lesser ranks, making it more confusing, but no affecting a 3/3 investment.

Sorry all, I failed, I posted contructive well thought out posts on our problems. I posted ranting and ravings of a lunatic, I posted inquisitive and thoughtprovoking dialouges on the subject of playing an elemental shaman. I tried to understand the developers mind. All I have left is snark and contempt on the beta forums.

I failed miserably. This reminds me so much of the 2.3 patch it isnt funny, will we be brought back in line with other classes at the last moment again? I have a bad feeling about this time around.

If anyone wants to take a crack at writing something up for the Beta forums I can post it; as for myself I am done, it is simply too much aggravation anymore.

Man I don't know....Arcane situation is pissing me off. I think I corrected that in the tree. I was thinking about extending my arcane play in the new content patch. The things I keep seeing here and around are just pissing me off about arcane. I may go back to fire after 2+ years of staying away.