My guess is that we will be forced to use tier sets, mana reduction relics and their "class trinkets" just to reach some level of sustainability with this change instead of having free gear choice. It's the Earthfury story all over again and I don't like it at all. -.-#

This is even worse due to the fact that we still get only one tier 4 pants/chest per week - what's up with that anyway? [/rant]

Edit: To illustrate my point a little better...

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30663 - Fathom-Brooch of the Tidewalker was deemed unnecessary because Elemental Focus would provide us with sufficient mana. This change kills our sustainability, making this trinket very desirable.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29389 - Totem of the Pulsing Earth was changed to a reduction of 24mp on test servers. That is still diminished by talents, giving an effective reduction of 22mp after Convection. While currently deemed trash, the efficiency boost will become highly desirable after the change.
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=37237 and http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=37237 - The 4-piece bonuses of our tiered epic sets all give sustainability bonuses. The big downside is that we get forced to keep a worse piece just for the set bonus and pick up higher tier loot for the bank till we reach 4 parts.


So in conclusion, instead of making our itemization more desirable in proper ways, they force us to take it just to be able to function at all. That balances things out for progressing raiders but leaves people without weekly access to tier 5 instances behind. This also makes sure that people with arena gear will not be able to function in a raid environment.

They do actually. These are the tooltips I get with 5/5 convection:

LB12 without totem: 297
LB12 with Totem of Lightning: 283 (difference of 14, relic tooltip promises 15)
LB12 with Totem of Pulsing Earth: 275 (difference of 22, relic tooltip promises 24)

Had a look at the PTR yesterday, relic definitely says 24.

Would try to test it out when I get home, but I'd need to farm another 15 tokens (why can't they change 1 token cost to 1g for the PTR?)

Personally, I think this nerf was always going to happen, as all elemental shaman had to do was stack int/crit/dmg
Now they have to look at regen as well, and the T4/SSC trinket regen options as well. (Has anyone established whether that SSC trinket works on heals too?)

Bug report it on the PTR and hope. I guess 2 mana per LB is not going to make or break, but it's the principle of the thing.

I don't see why that matters. Mages and locks and shadow priests aren't being forced to stack every possible caster stat either.

A change to water shield that makes it into passive regen is a common idea that would really go a long way to counterbalancing this nerf and helping out resto shaman as well (not to mention making it useful).

Those shield changes would be very welcome and certianly be nice additions.

I do not know any mages that stack spirit.. They may have a spirit set for grinding evocates but otherwise its rather low on their priority list of stats.

Yeah, most mages (including the mage threads here) will bemoan itemisation points spent on spirit as wasted. Hardcore mages will own a spirit-heavy staff with a spirit enchant to weapon-swap in at evocate time, but that's it. Mages stack damage and crit and take the int they get given. Warlocks stack stam and damage, and also crit and hit if they're destruction rather than affliction. Shadow priests stack dmg.

Actually, it's that last one more than anything. Ele shaman shouldn't be as good DPS as mages or warlocks anyway. It's fair enough that mages and warlocks are better, since shaman provide more buffs and utility. But to argue that ele shaman should have to focus on a wider variety of stats while shadow priests have their current mechanics is silly. If that was a real rationale, shadow priest mechanics would be changed too.

Some kind of statement as to what Blizzard want shaman to be capable of is really needed. It's a bit of an official forums complaint-post favourite to say that Blizzard never post to the official shaman forum, but it's true nonetheless. We don't know why the nerfed ele shaman. Is it because they don't intend ele to be raid viable? Is it because they legit thought it was scaling too well? No-one has any idea. I was probably going to end up resto again anyway once our focus is on 25-man instead of Kara, but I really feel for those who are currently raiding 25-man as elemental and taking gear accordingly and who may end up in the cold because of this.

You'll notice that on any mage items, there will be spirit. Probably a bit more than what we get, but they have that nice 1400% regen button, in addition to mana gems, as innate regen methods.

And IIRC Mages have a Spirit/4 divisor rather than our Spirit/5 for mana regen.