I was really hoping the new Elemental Focus would affect healing spells as well (since it synergizes well with Tidal Mastery) and become the Shaman's Divine Illumination-esque talent. The change is still awesome, but I can't help but be a tad disappointed.

Has anyone confirmed that each jump of CL can proc the new EF?

Subscience, yes. Each hit of CL can proc new EF.

Just ran a quick and dirty test on Dr. Boom.
Was able to maintain 600dps for at least 12 minutes with rank 8 LB and upranking to CL on crit. I think I could have lasted till at least the 13 or 14 minute mark, but some priest thought I was braindead and killed the mob for me while I still had 25% mana.

640 +nature
32% crit with LB

EF IS AMAZING.

I guess that's fine if you're using lower ranks to save mana, but what about rank 12 spam? Clearcasting procs when lightning bolt lands, and given its slow travel speed you're probably better off just spamming LB if you're at max range instead of switching spells on (late) clearcasts.

You'll have issues upranking CL on some boss fights won't you? The LB needs to land before you get a CL going. By the time it lands you should have been midcast on your next LB. On Gruul (or any boss fight that requires you to kill asap), I would think spamming LB would be better instead of waiting for clearcast.

From my experience last night it's nearly impossible to try and make DPS gains by upranking to CL on clearcasts. At +600 damage and 25% crit, the breakeven point is a reacton time of ~0.43 seconds, so unless your standing on top of the mob (and even then I think it's questionable) it's a futile effort.

Yes, the sting in the tail is that unless you proc clearcasting on a shock or CL, or you're casting at point blank, or you proc clearcast right before dropping totems or moving or doing something other than casting, waiting to see the clearcast is not a dps boost. Such is life. The extra mana you're saving from the extra clearcasts should let you throw some extra shocks and maybe clearcast -> CL off those

That's pretty awesome.

My very rough, back-of-the-envelope calculations indicates about 18dps from having this trinket equiped. This is with shock spamming, Flametongue on a fast offhand, and 7% spell crit (about what I have in Enh gear). Does anyone have a link to the discussion about how much other casters gain from it? I vaguely remembered a thread about this, but search turns up nothing.

18dps is pretty weak, since having flametongue on a fast OH is still less than optimal, even with the incoming dual WF nerf, wf5/wf5 will still be significantly better with a remotely decent set of gear.

after the nerf to the lightning capacitor, an elemental shaman with 30% lightning crit would get around 25dps from the trinket while spamming lightning bolt, although that's before trinket crits.

Considering that upgrade has no additional mana cost, that's still pretty good.

Does it take gear crit into account?

Coriolis, see the Elemental/Resto thread. In general, 30+/0/30+ specs are terrific for providing support in 5-mans and KZ. Full elemental damage specs can put out comparable numbers to other DPS classes, but mana longevity is still an issue. The change to EF is mammoth and equates to a 20-25% decrease in LB cost for well-geared elemental shamen. This will certainly help elemental shamen last in long fights, but I'm hesitant to fully commit to elemental damage builds just yet. My personal opinion is that the best elemental builds are similar to balance/resto hybrid druid builds in that they offer healing and damage viability and play to the strengths of the class as a support character.

However, I will say that several posters have attested to the "hurt" that elemental shaman can put out.

We had an Elemental Shaman (specced ToW) with very good gear in our Karazhan run last night. While DPSing, he was #1 on the meter, no aggro issues, and didn't seem to have mana issues, though I didn't see how he fared on bosses. His effective LB crit rate while clearing trash was over 50%, so imagine how much mana he's saving. He keeps saying he's worried that Shaman are next in line for nerfs because of the EF change. =P

have you checked out this thread? [Shaman] Elemental vs Restoration

that's 100+ posts worth of elemental/resto hybrid discussion, if that's the kind of thing you're looking for.

edit: yeah, what Vernichter said.

Yeah I know of that thread but most of it was written before the EF change and I'm really looking for real numbers for the damage achievable now with the EF change, on a shaman well-geared to take advantage of it (i.e. alot of crit and +damage). I know about the "utility" a mixed spec brings, however if I have too low damage or too much mana issues, to the point that I heal in nearly every raid fight I'd rather just spec resto. Basically if I know how much damage a 40 point spec does I can see if that's worthwhile to spec in to my mind.

Most likely I'll just respec and try out for myself but I'm a bit lacking in the gear atm and looking at the talents and skills this seems to me like a spec that will scale *very* well with +damage and +crit, but may be pretty lackluster with crappy gear.

Oh and quasar, any idea of how he did on actual boss fights? Trash dps tends to be not limited by mana which I think is the major issue of the spec.

Silly Wabbit, can't you tell from the thread title that this thread is for enhancement whining only :-P

Serious question though, since I'm at work and won't have WoW available for a few days anyway, woe is I, when the EF procs does the free spell that follows put you inside the 5 second mana regen rule? I never really thought about how this worked when it was just a 10% chance, but now that we have upwards of 30% clearcasts I figure this could really add up.

A clearcasted spell does not trigger the 5SR. So yeah, stringing crits not only gives you free shots, they can get you some regen as well. Use Elemental Mastery for a guaranteed pair of free nukes!

I considered that, but you'd have to stop casting a bolt mid cast in order to do that, unless against my intuition, you can actually pop EM mid cast???

No, use EM. Free crit, triggers a clearcast, your next bolt is free. Two free shots.

Heh, I feel silly, don't know why I missed that. This is good news the above scenario would give you more than 2 free spells it would give you 2 free spells + one tick of out of casting mana regen. Raid buffed that should be good for 150ish mana?

I'd say it'd be used in the same way NS is. LB, EM, LB.

Of course, if the first LB crits then you will waste a clearcast, but it's better than wasting time waiting to see if it crits or not.

Before the patch, I remember that EM and Clearcast wouldn't both be consumed on the same cast. I'll take a look tonight and see if the CC buff is consumed in preference to EM or vice versa.