Not sure if people noticed but Hex was changed quite a bit.

The good part is that it lasts 30 seconds (in PvE) and has a 45 seconds cooldown now. The bad part is unfortunately quite bad.

It has no slowing effect at all and it may break on damage and the cast time was increased to 1.5 seconds. So instead of being like an almost instant 8 seconds stun, as it was in the alpha. It is not even on the same level as fear now, but instead it will work like a weak version of disarm/silence that may break on damage, with a long cooldown and a fairly high cast time. ( Hex - Spell - World of Warcraft )

Quite underwhelming for the ultimate level 80 ability of a character without any CC. Personally I had expected it to be the best CC in the game while it is active, due to its cooldown, cast time and being a level 80 ability.

That's true, but then, Ghost Wolf now breaks snares if you are Enhancement spec: Spectral Transformation: You have a 100% chance to remove all movement impairing effects when you transform into a Ghost Wolf, and your Spirit Wolves to have a 100% chance to be immune to all stun, snare and movement Impairing effects when summoned.

One would assume that Elemental and Restoration will suffer the side-effects of Blizzard pushing Enhancement so hard to be the premier talent build for Shaman. As Enhancement gains stun immunities, snare immunities et cetera, the Elemental and general abilities and talents have to be nerfed to keep Enhancement from running rampant through Arenas (Fire Nova totem stun nerfed to a slow, Hex nerfed, Astral Shift no longer grants damage immunity just damage reduction, et cetera, all to offset Enhancements new snare immunities).

Hopefully with some feedback Blizzard will remove that horrible travesty of a talent, Earth,Wind, and Fire, and replace it with a talent that actually defines the Elemental tree and makes people think "this is comparable to, or better than, MD+MQ." So, you know, get on the Beta forums and let them know that Elemental Shaman shouldn't have their class defining 45-50 talents be an extra couple yards range on their shocks. <_<

Grab a spreadysheet from the main Elemental theorycrafting page, like from Daidalos. Flame Shock is the highest single target DPS spell available to you as an Elemental Shaman in BT/SW gear. Most don't believe it, but when you actually do the math, and apply boss debuffs etc, that is how it pans out. The ticks doing 100% more damage is actually quite a large DPS increase. The best DPS lock in my guild said that it's already looking like one of the highest damage dealing dots in WoLK.

Dropping 1 FS on a target, and then timing a Lave Burst to fire off right before it ticks off should note a significantly major dps increase. Not even assuming an Enhance keeps a FS up for you to consume with Lava Burst. Keep in mind there is still a lack of +nature damage debuffs on bosses. With the bonuses from debuffs to fire, even the fact that 2.0 base cast speed coefficient should be beaten by LB's will be mediated by debuffs. The fact that is can be guaranteed to crit, pushes it over the top easily. Lava Burst is in no way just an Enhance spell. And FS is in no way as weak as some think it to be.

I've seen no evidence to imply other spells that get talented debuffs will be nerfed in WoLK. Yet everything across the board is getting major buffs, obviously indicating an expected overall improvement. Paralysis appears to be a PvE/PvP solution for Elemental Shaman. It heightens your damage, while also adding some CC for pvp purposes. Anyone thinking the debuff is intended for raid environments as its main purpose is not really looking at it from all angles. They are simply using one top end tier talent to cover 2 bases at once. Which is evident in other talents as well, such as Improved Fire Nova Totems.

Now we have what we should have had at level 60, a PVE CC, can Blizzard give us something new? I agree fully that for a level 80 skill it is not so flashy, only thing you can be happy about is that it's a curse (making it dispellable by Druid/mage/shaman(resto) instead of priest/paladin/warlock(pet)).

Storm, Earth, and Fire has pve and pvp applications. As I noted above, FlS dps is nowhere near as inadequate as people are suggesting. Do the math. As far as FrS, well, it's honestly less than impressive. ES on the other hand could be a big deal for certain encounters that require movement and/or range and consistent spell interruptions. They might have more fights similar to Council in the future where spell interrupts are a big deal. Always keep in mind, some mechanics changes are made with content changes. Looking at only the mechanical alterations to Shaman, you can't give a fair perspective on everything without knowing how different the content will be. I do think the talent needs some tweaking still, but I do not think it is nearly as bad as you have implied.

FlS was mathed out quite thoroughly in this thread. The highest DPS rotation using FlS did not take the talent SEF, it skipped that horrible waste of points and took MD+MQ.

You are entirely missing the point -- no one is saying that FlS has no place in a WotLK raid rotation (in fact, if you had bothered to read this thread in its entirety you would know that the highest DPS rotation uses FlS), what people are saying is that SEF is a terrible talent for it's location in the talent tree precisely because you get more benefits to a shock rotation taking talents besides SEF.

Why would anyone be expected to spend 50 points in Elemental to improve their shock rotation DPS, when they can spend 43 in Elemental and get better DPS results out of their shock rotation? That's the problem. At best, SEF is a 2-point talent somewhere in the tier beside ToW. The 45-50 bracket is supposed to be the bracket that defines the class. PvE Elemental Shaman in tBC all take LO, because that talent is class/spec defining. In WotLK there is no point or reason to take SEF for PvE. Hence, either Blizzard is seriously wrong in how it is valuing that talent, or they are purposefully placing PvP-only talents at the top of the Elemental tree and want Shaman to spec Hybrid. From the comments the game developers have made, I am going to guess that both are equally true in all likely-hood (but mainly, they want Hybrid Shaman running around).

I would never think they want Elemental to specc hybrid(in the elem/enhance sense, as stated above, it doesn't work). I do think so for Enhancement on the other hand just because the early talents benefit their few spells so much (including Lava Burst), with Elemental Devastation and the removal of Nature's Guidance I don't see how this could be any clearer.

MQ is there for Enhancement shamans, especially more so now with Maelstrom Weapons. The fact that we can use it has to be a miss from Blizzard, and just like a post above it's sad that how they still haven't fixed this.
Personally I wouldn't want to include a 20 yard spell in any of my rotations for PVE, and I'm hesitant about Lava Burst as it's almost not worth casting, as the 100% critt rate is not something I can guarantee being 30 yards away. That's why I claim it's an Enhancement (only) spell.
S,E & F could be replaced with something that would greatly enhance the use of Lava burst for Elemental Shamans (but that since you get the spell at 70+, that wouldn't really work now would it?) or something in the lines of defining the tree further, again just like above posts suggests.

The elemental tree is definitely too point heavy for PvP. With Call of Thunder, Lightning Mastery, Reverbation and even Unrelenting Storm (which you likely won't take) all at five points.

Even if you just take the very basics, you have to pick either astral shift, paralysis or toughness. As paralysis improves our main nuke and toughness makes you quite difficult to kite, so you can actually get away and nuke, astral shift has the lower priority.

Which is quite unfortunate, as the lower talents has a higher priority than the higher ones.

Graze: To respond to the earlier post you made about resto vs. elemental shaman gear, I think that it is Blizzard's intention to have specs share gear for drop purposes. Therefore, socketing and non-Armor slots (neck, rings, etc.) would be how to differentiate different specs.

It would be interesting if they moved further and implemented what you suggest, but I don't think they will. While Resto Shamen and Elemental Shamen can generally share gear (aside from +hit), the difference in gearing requirements for Moonkin and Trees (which by Blizzard's homogenization are almost certainly going to be sharing drops) is much greater (Trees don't generally care at all for crit).

Blizzard tries to let everyone benefit from hit for homogenization purposes (well, that's the point), so Trees got a talent to make crit viable for them at least a bit in WotLK.

I agree. Compare it to for example the Warriors 46 point talents which allows you to dual wield two handed weapons. How they can have two (great) one point 41p talents and then another amazing ability added with the 46 pointers is quite perplexing. Comparing it to a 2 seconds root on a rare proc makes it seem lacking to say the least, as it just lasts 0.5 seconds longer than the global cooldown.

Even adding all the effects to all shocks would be a bit lacking in comparison. That is a 25% chance 2 seconds root, 5 yd range increase and 50% damage increase on all shocks. With that added, it would still not be comparable to some of the other classes talents but at least it would be alright.

I get the impression they are thinking along the lines of 'Thunderstorm is so good we will make it cost 6 points' like they have with mana tide.

They should just add in the "earth and moon' effect from the moonkin tree to SEaF and give the owls something decent. A 5 point tier 10 talent for 1/2 a curse of elements is insanly poor, and I'm still hoping it's just left over from when it was going to be the 'let you wear healing gear' talent.

Together they can yeild 1 medicore tier 10 talent instead of 2 joke talents.

Compare either of these hybrid talents to the demo lock talent in the same position which willl yield over +200 Spell damage raid wide at 80 (guessing 2k SD) is probably fairer than comparing them to titan grip.

Edit: deleted.

Quit the tit-for-tat comparisons because they're meaningless. Blizzard tried to make an awesome talent by giving three awesome but mutually-exclusive bonuses, and tripped up. They're not trying to make shaman talents worse.

Also, 5/5 Titan's Grip has a 20% dehaste, meaning it is a flat white DPS decrease beyond some easily-achievable amount of AP. There's quite a lot of TCing going on to find out whether with specials it's a DPS increase at all, much less one that's worth its direct competitor, Sword Spec. So warriors didn't get a good 46-point talent at all.

I disagree that people shouldn't compare -- comparisons that are valid (caster vs caster) have a place as long as it doesn't become whining. Blizzard did trip up with SEF, and the way we know this is that; 1)it doesn't compare well with any other caster's 45-50 talent bracket, and 2)it TCs out as being a worse choice than not taking it and taking MD+MQ instead.

I completely agree that making caster talent comparisons to melee talent comparisons is a waste of time. Warriors did get a good spec in DW2H, it just isn't as good as they thought it would be -- and that has nothing to do with SEF being a bad little talent stuck up on a big pedestal.

When you look at other caster talents in that position, they somewhat define their class -- Destruction Warlocks, for instance, get a boost to their Fire spells in such a way that it will probably define their fire spell rotation.

Elemental Shaman get what amounts to Improved Reverberation, which is basically a talent for Enhancement Shaman to put extra points into, but mysteriously at the top of the Elemental tree for no rhyme or reason at all. That is a valid comparison, in that the talent fails to achieve Blizzard stated goal of making the top end Shaman talents the ones that "define the spec" for that Shaman.

Consider the talents that defined shaman at level:

60 -- Lightning Mastery, 1 full second off Lightning spells, class defining

70 -- Lightning Overload, instant-cast versions of Lightning spells, class defining

80 -- SEF ... some weird quasi-pvp shock talent ... not at all class defining, especially since MD+MQ does the DPS better, PvP gloves do the ES job, and if a player can't kite with FS now they still won't be able to kite after, it's a skill thing that a chance proc on hit won't fix for the player since it is entirely unreliable

Hmm, for pvp, I think I would go something like: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The uses of an aoe knockback are tremendous. You could knock a pillar humper away from the pillar, separate healers from their healing targets, aoe interrupt cast spells or interrupt while earth shock is on cooldown. That's in addition to the obvious use of giving you range from melee. It's a shame MD+MQ is so damn good solely because Thunderstorm would be a lot more fun.

Original post cleaned out and updated.

A question - did anyone check if this stacks with CoE? If so, Arcane mages are in for a treat and fire is going to perform really poorly. Just wondering.

I was actually thinking 56/15/0. That spec gives you AoE knockback, 10% reduction to fire, frost and nature, 6% reduction to physical, fear/stun shieldwall, AoE knockback and slow, slowing LBs, instant Ghost Wolf, good heals (due to spellpower system) and pretty decent attack power for emergencies. Down side is, you sacrifice Toughness and Mental Quickness (option 1) or Nature's Swiftness and Healing Focus (option 2).

Lava Burst in most cases. It has an assured crit on Flame Shocked target, which brings its single target damage up considerably. In groups (think MH trash), though, CL would be superior.

Quite different from how I'd spec. As I think both Toughness and especially Eye of the storm are necessary. I would go with something like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

6%, no? 2% per application, stacks three times, last I looked. Did it change?

I've been playing elemental this weekend on beta and I have to agree. Thunderstorm is an outstanding talent for solo and PVP play, but SE&F is just not that good. If it wasn't a pre-req for Thunderstorm I wouldn't take it. Going deeper in Resto or Enhancement for Restorative Totems or Toughness is a much more compelling option depending your focus.

I'm disappointed that it's dispellable at all, being on such a long cooldown. In PvP terms at least I was under the impression this was to be the 'save your trinket for this' shaman ability. At least druids are rarely seen in PvP (hoho somebody stop me).

edit: Another thought, has anyone tested whether druids can shapeshift out of Hex yet?

This is correct, I was mislead by talent having 5 points available. It is 6% damage with full stack. (This also means that moonkins will probably not max this talent, leading to somewhat delayed appearance of full stack in the fight, but this is being actively discussed in corresponding thread).