Basically as long as we can use Magma Totem, we're going to have to be balanced relative to other casters assuming we do use it.

Since it ticks passively while we do whatever else, and we have some filler time between Earthquakes anyway, the optimal AoE stat (for many targets that aren't going to die inside of 1 earthquake anyway) is going to be to ghost wolf in, drop Magma, Earthquake, then during those 5 sec before the next earthquake, fill in with Fire Nova, chain lightning, etc.

For 2-3 targets, it seems the ideal will just to do normal single-target rotations, but also hit CL on cooldown. AoE (for all classes) is becoming prohibitively expensive, and the damage has been cut drastically relative to what we see on live. So it's likely they want you to CC things and single-target much more often, rather than AoE being the optimal strategy for 3+ targets, like it all too often is now.

I was under the impression that Earthquake is balanced more around its ability to interrupt/knockdown than our ability to cast a magma totem before channeling? To use your analogy is Blizzard balanced around Flamestrike?
Not being in beta I can't comment on the current state of abilities and balance, but as things stand I can see small pack AE 3-4 mobs (if no cc needed) being Magma, Chain Lightning and Fire Nova where the Improved Fire Nova talent can be useful.
Large packs Magma and channeled Earthquake which effectively locks us from using Fire Nova in it's improved state. They have afterall put in AE dmg limits?
I wouldn't be surprised to see Improved Fire Nova and Call of Flame somehow getting combined at some point and if they did i'd suggest a single point talent to augment Earthquake that placed a magma totem in the centre of the channeled target area. That would mean we had a high dmg targeted channeled ae with no movement needed.
Hmm, thinking about it a glyph to augment Earthquake would be preferable, as that would be easier to alter per encounter as less other fire totem conflicts.

The tooltip on Earthquake says it has a daze effect now instead of knock-down. Is this correct?
And as a side note to that, it takes AE kiting to new heights along with Earth binding totem.
Not to mention AE grinding together with magma totem and impGhostwolf

Is it just a bug or Eye of the Storm no more lower casting time on Lava Burst?

//EDIT: Thanks Jessamy for correcting me ^^

I don't think that that will be a huge concern. It keeps the talent tree buffing LvB so it's a spell you want to cast, while Feedback allows our only selfish buff a chance to be better without lowering the cooldown to match other classes. It makes the priority system evolve over a period of gearing, and barring it fully evolving from a FS -> LvB -> LB till LvB comes up, it makes it a bit more of a dynamic system for the LB's in between the LvB's.

This post is correct. Just noticed that LvB no longer has any cast time reduction from talents or passives in the current beta build, putting its effective cast time at 2 seconds, up from 1.5.

Base damage was increased slightly, from 1323-1685 on live to 1385-1748 on the current beta build (although this number could be fudged slightly, as gear and talents seem to be affecting the damage value shown, and I got the beta damage value with no gear, but fully talented).

More information as I do some testing, but this seems a pretty important change if it's intentional.

I've got a question regarding Unleash Weapon and Flameshock:
If you use UW (Flametongue ofc) and cast a Flameshock, does only the initial damage or the initial and the periodic damage benefit from UW-effect?

I got some ideas to solve the haste and scaling issues for elemental shaman.
It would be done through changing the way lava fows and lava surge work.

For lava surge the change is easy: give each thick of flame shock a 100% chance to reduce lava burst CD by a fixed amount of time.

For lava flows i would change it to work this way: "Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Lava Burst spell by a percentage equal to you spell crit %, and when your Flame Shock is dispelled your spell casting speed is increased by 30% for 6 sec.".

What this will give to elemental shaman?
Better scaling through haste, cause it will give the chance to cast more lava burst (as it is with the current implementation) but without random procs. I think 1 sec for each thick of FS could be a good amount.
Also "double lava burst" in pvp could make someone cry for nerf, just as it was back i vanilla for "double wf procs" with the current system.

Better scaling through crit, since it would affect lava burst damage.

Potential issues:
If the amount of haste goes "out of control" as in WotlK the rotation could end up being too much boring. Anyways assuming blizzard will avoid the same mistakes, is should not happen in cataclysm.
For pvp dispelling FS would gimp elemental shaman more than now, but having a 30% haste in cataclsym should be even more powerful than now because of less haste spread through talents and gear.
It's worth to note that both these problems exist with the current cataclysm implementation.

Lava burst could do more burst than now only when we will reach an amount of crit > 24%.
While this is true we have to keep in mind that all increases in % to crits are additive(just like many increases in this game) so the overall increase in damage is at best half effective as one could think(if you go from 200% to 250% you increase your damage output by 25%) and again, since crit should be kept at lower levels this expansion, this would not be really a problem.

I left this game a couple months ago, but it looks like i can't leave the "theorycrafting world of warcraft" XD

Sorry I can't find the blue post to refer to but this is whats currently on mmo:

Assuming you are at 9 charges and use earth shock, I wonder how much each off these 6 consumed lightning shield charges will grant to the shock. Since earth shock does not benefit from haste it would add an element that only benefits from sp and crit.

I guess using earth shock whenever charges are filled up will become part of our rotation. Together with the rng of lava surge and the rng of the orb generation our rotation will become purely priority based.

I wonder if the lightning overload procs of lb and cl will also generate orbs. I think they should.

While haste does not affect earthshock directly, it still would indirectly affect its damage by charging up shield faster.

From PvE point of view, the Beta build 12803 locks Elemental firmly into a 34/7/0-build. There is 1 point that is slightly free. You can freely place it in a tier 1-3 talent, but it must be placed and it must be in the Elemental tree. If we should have more flexibility then the number of dps-increasing talents have to be reduced.

The problem, as I see it, is that most talents from tier 3 to tier 7 are good old fun talents that change our spell rotation and make it more interactive. I for one don't want them to remove any of these talents. However, the same good old fun talents are also the ones that eat so many talent points that we have only 7 points left to place outside the Elemental tree. If we wish to have flexibility, then logically some of the fun talents need to be changed, otherwise the only flexibility we will have is in tier 1-3 when we try to go through the tier 3 bottleneck.

To walk out on thin ice and throw out a solution, then one possibility is to remove Storm, Earth and Fire. The 60% damage increase to Flame Shock could easily be baked into Lava Flows. The rooting effect of Earthbind Totem is one of the stronger parts of the Storm, Earth and Fire talent. It could probably manage to be its very own talent.