4.3 PTR notes are up on MMO-Champion.

Some of the more important changes in the notes so far:

- Mental Quickness now prevents us from gaining spell power from any other sources than our attack power. This would rid us of having spellpower weapons be viable options.
- Wind Shear is now 25 seconds base with Reverb taking it back down to 5 seconds. I guess this is the PvP change to shear that the blues had been mentioning for a while.
- Call of Flames' increases to duration on Flame Shocks has been removed entirely.
- Flametongue Weapon now grants a straight 5% increase to magic damage, probably so we can still benefit from it while having Mental Quickness.
- Improved Lava Lash now spreads our Flame Shocks to four other targets.

At least in my opinion, we get a lot of added convenience so far with this patch. No more trying to juggle Flame Shocks to get the most out of our Fire Novas as Imp. Lava Lash takes care of spreading it for us for the most part. This also gives us a bit more burst AE since we'll have a 5-shock nova within three globals, 4 with UE. Still takes some setup time, but definitely an improvement to what we currently have. Not having to deal with spellpower weapons will also make our general TC a whole lot easier as well, which I'm thankful for personally. A concern utility-wise is the large CD on Wind Shear now. Reverb is going to be required for us if we're needed for any sort of interrupting in the 4.3 raid.

25 second base cooldown for Wind Shear seems unreasonable, considering that every.single.other melee dps class (that I can think of) has a 10 second interrupt without having to use two talent points. Feels unfair considering how important having that 10 second cd (or the lower WS CD) in the case of fights like Alysrazor has been in 10 man, or other fights I can think of in the previous tier like Halfus/Maloriak/Nef. It would make more sense to have the Reverberation talent baked into one of the Enhancement tree talents that we would normally take, to put Enh shaman on an even footing with other melee classes, and to make Ele Shamans more like other ranged classes that can interrupt (mage for example).

I am excited that we are getting a buff to our aoe. The current Flame Shock/Fire Nova mechanic has felt clunky and way too slow-building to be of use in most fights where aoe is required.

Feral spends two talent points to get a 10 second interrupt. The major difference is that ferals spend points in their own talent tree to get it (and it's out of reach of the caster/healer specs).

Ferals also don't have to sacrifice DPS to choose that talent, they have a number of utility talents to pick from.

I'm not sure if the blues have a good idea of where to go with Enhancement. They were pretty adamant about keeping spell power weapons a viable alternative just 1 patch ago, they've done a complete 180. Reverb seems a bit clunky. PVP players will obviously pick it up at the expense of a small amount of damage, so it's more a PVE change than anything. It's good that they're finally addressing a lot of the issues currently plaguing Enhancement though, especially the slow Flame-Shock-Fire-Nova idea of AoE so overall I'll see a lot changing for the better.

Seasoned Winds seemed like a perfect place to implement the cooldown reduction for Wind Shear for Enhancement. We would sacrifice some damage on Lightning Shield and get the added interrupt and resistance utility from that that mechanic. Its also a bit easier to deal with on our PvP builds as well. The current implementation destroys some of the better used spec setups.

That being said, they really, REALLY need to have the long cooldown be a Restoration only affair. They obviously have the tech to do so (looking at the Warlock tier 13 set bonus here). They could also have used this opportunity to 'unify' our interrupt with other classes by making Wind Shear a 4/10 interrupt. Fortunately, there is still time for things to be changed.

Edit: Some notes from the PTR:

New LB looks cool as hell.
I didn't notice an appreciable difference in damage output from live to ptr when using melee weapons.
The LL-FS spread function does not work on dummies.
The LL-FS spread spreads the CURRENT duration of your FS to 4 additional targets

Obviously, both are bugs, but I feel that the spread function is working exactly like Pestilence and should therefor apply a full dot duration to the spread targets. As it stands, you basically change your current rotation from using ES to using FS every cast to maintain maximum FS dot uptime on the most targets possible for AoE. Perhaps this is intended, perhaps not.

The spread works exactly like the Fire mage Impact proc. It spreads the current duration of your fire dots to nearby targets, so I'm guessing LL's FS spread is as intended and not a bug.

I like the most ideas behind these changes.

- easier and more competitive AE - however FS should be applied on the targets with full dot duration. Everything else would maybe result in a strange rotation. I wonder if you can spread FS to up to 8 targets.
- Searing Totem Stacks dont affect lava lash dmg as much as before, so this benefits fights with changing targets/PVP.
- Stormstrike Crit is not a target debuff, but a buff, so this benefits also changing targets/PVP

- Flametongue scales with gear - good thing, however this results in a dps loss for the moment.
- Reverb: I dont like how windshear has been changed here as we dont spec it normally. Enhancer is known for kick utility which we dont necessarily have anymore. They either need to change elemental precision (so wen dont want it anymore) or integrate wind shear also to an enhancement skill.

I think the class specific changes result in a dps loss overall, even with no spelldmg weapon equipped.
If the dps obviously looks the same on the PTR, dont forget the AP increase by 10% which buffs all melee classes.

A few things on top of my mind:
-I wonder if enhance will still benefit from the % spellpower raid buff from mages elementals and demo locks.
-lava lash is now 260% instead of 200% baseline multiplied by 30% from improved LL talent, besides leveling shammies I don't see how this affects anyone.
-I was hoping for some kind of buff to lava lash to make it hit harder on targets without searing stacks and remain unchanged on targets with it.
-I wonder if having FT/FT enchanted would stack the sp buff, might be useful in aoe situations.
-All pvp specs going deep resto for focused insight/ nature's guardian are gutted
-Orcs no longer double dip on blood fury
-Seasoned winds is still underwhelming in both pve and pvp.

- No scaling with external buffs.
- 30% change only affects leveling
- From what i understand this is a buff. Instead of hitting for 200% on targets with no Searing Flames Debuff, it hits for 260% - however targets with Searing Flames debuff (5) get 310% dmg. This makes it less annoying with different assist targets.

No, Improved Lava Lash will still increase the damage with 20% per stack at rank 2, just the passive 30% bonus from the talent will be baked in the ability itself. Which changes absolutely nothing from the current situation unless you don't take the talent.

On the other hand Ghostcrawler wrote this:
This implies that the change somehow improves our dps, but i don't see how.