I"m not really disagreeing (since it will be 100% crits on LvB) but don't forget the 10% to LB from LO and the scaling of LB with crit. The scaling with spellpower will be pretty even as with haste but with crit Lb gains a fair amount (assuming we stack crit ).

It might end up that with LvB and FS being in our rotations we won't stack nearly the crit we do on live (as DEP it will drop a good deal) and we will go more for haste and spell dmg but that brings up the question of mana. I don't think anyone has hard answers on this at the moment but its something to think about.

It's true that Lightning Bolt scales with Crit while Lava Burst won't due to its effective 100% crit chance. I don't really think that scaling, even combined with LO, will be much of a problem.

Lava Burst effectively has a +118% modifier, while Lightning Bolt at the extreme best will have a +10% multiplier (LO) and a +50% modifier (crit chance). Unless your gear upgrades have criminally low increases in Spell Power Lightning Bolt won't be outscaling Lava Burst any time soon.

Latest in the line of "coherency changes"(my interpretation) is the WoW Forums -> Stormstrike not working with loss of Stormstrike as a damage enhancer.

Seems like their current balancing cycle is focused mostly on balancing from the bottom up. Fixing basic ability interaction before they tune the numbers. Had these changes occured earlier it would of course had been a bit less discomforting.
I can't shake the feeling that all the baseline changes will leave less than enough time to tune the endgame numbers and will result in the whole "whine, waiting, promises, waiting, highly anticipated but delayed changes for basic viability" cycle of blizzard tuning once the endgame errors have been identified by the players but yet to be acknowledge by blizzard.
The changes with Lightning Overload and the changes to casttime reduction on LB and CL left a bit of a sinking feeling when it comes to the validity of Blizzards own spreadsheets. (with even napkin math from wowforum visitors trumphing inhouse calculations)

Many of the implemented talents and abilities have so far been heavily tuned down (without "high DPS" warnings that we see for DK or that we saw for enhancement in TBC beta) but rather with promises of balance down the line.
Somewhere they will need make sure the DPS viability for elementals and enhancement for lvl 80 itemlvl 230 characters will be in place and I'm eagerly waiting for next beta patch notes to see where the numbers will show up.

Lightning Bolt modifiers in current build:

71.4% coeff (2.5/3.5)
+5% concussion
+10% spell power from SEF
+10% damage from LO
+10% spell critical from CoT and LM

Lava Burst modifiers in current build:
57.1% coeff (2.0/3.5)
+5% concussion
+6% call of flame
+18% critical damage bonus

Yeah, I'm sure it doesn't scale worse than Lightning Bolt.

Sarcasm doesn't really go over all that well when you are wrong, get my drift?

Well, I've been playing around with shaman, testing grinding and a few other things. A few notable things:

1. Thunderstorm crits for A LOT. WIthout any totems, any boosts, just flametongue on me and with level 70 gear, that thing crits for 4k on a single target. Couple that with Hex, Flame Shock and Lava Burst and we'll be seeing 10k controlled bursts without using a single Lightning Bolt or stun totem :p There's definitely a lot of pvp potential there

2. LB nerf took away about 200 dps. Part of this dps was compensated for with unscaleable buffs. Therefore, we can expect a great haste value in wotlk again. Further calculations will be needed, of course.

3. latest changes moved part of the Flametongue spellpower to ToW (net gain is 74 spellpower). This boosts our raid support, but what's more important, it makes ToW a worthwhile spell to drop while soloing. Overall, I'll call this a good change, though obvious totem issues limit its use a bit.

4. as ofancow said, MD+MQ was killed. We expected it, nothing to see there, let's move on. In more important news, though, Lava Burst's coefficient is going from 57.14% to 71.43% while retaining the same cast time. The scaling pushes LvB quite a bit beyond Lightning Bolt, increasing our damage and making FS-4LB-LvB the most powerful rotation.

5. Mana is not the issue. Really, between mana regen from one of the mana battery classes, 100 mp5 on water shield, 85 mp5 on mana spring + hybridization of gear with quite a bit mp5 on it and of course shock mana cost always reduced by 40% thanks to controlled crit, there's no issue really. At level 80, my LB costs 390 mana (-10% LB mana cost glyph, if you choose to have it) and the nicely spread periodic crits allow for loads of mana cost reduction as it is.

6. Elemental tree alone now gives no less than 10% new crit (2% on flametongue glyph, 3% on ToW, 5% on Oath), which, combined with Call of Thunder, gives us 15% base crit, 2% more than we had in TBC, with the additional catch that no less than 10% of this crit affects shocks too (previously only ToW did). If we go for 52/0/19, that's additional 4% on lightning spells. I'll need to run the numbers, but I don't think stacking crit will pay off, tbh. Haste and spellpower are the way again, but break-even point still needs to be calculated. Working on it, as are Daidalos and Binkenstein as well, no doubt

7. one more important thing to note: Lava Burst consumes Flame Shock the moment it leaves the player's hands (logical as crit is calculated then, but I don't think there was a confirmation yet), so travel time has no meaning. Also, if Flame Shock is used right after Lava Burst, it does not get consumed by the already traveling Lava Burst. Just thought it would be nice to know.

I'm sure I forgot a few things. I'll add more when I remember.

Are you sure?

re #6. i agree, and as in tBC once again crit will not be a valuable DPS stat for Elemental builds, as; 1) LB has a 100% base chance to crit when used in a rotation (so it gains 0 benefit from crit stats), 2)crit as a form of mana efficiency will have reduced benefit as LaB ensures 1/3 - 2/7 EF uptime even at 0% crit rating, let alone the results after factoring in base crit + crit talent + gear crit stats. As for haste, I'll be interested in seeing how no less than 3 cooldowns in the rotation will affect it. FlS gets no benefit from haste, and as the CL problem showed, CDs often hurt rotation net DPS when haste is bundled in.

re #7, thanks for the info. That is actually pretty beneficial since there no longer has to be a buffer cast between LaB and FlS casts (though casting CL might still be beneficial during the EF proc to save mana, depending on how the multiple CDs and haste interact).

So, more fast spells with high base damage and crappy scaling?

I had gotten my hopes up on having some competitive scaling, not being the shadow priests of wotlk.

And they still haven't spoke about the range issue. Travel time's out of the equation though (it seems) and that's nice.

Well, rotation is 10.46 base now (remember, we get 5% haste from wrath of air). This means we're only a wee bit from losing the second flame shock tick, so it's safe to assume it'll be gone too. FlS does get affected by haste, but only as far as global cooldown is concerned. Our full rotation is still miles from longest cooldown (8 sec), so stacking haste there won't have an effect other than lost Flame Shock tick.

2/(3.5 * 1.5) > 2.5 /(3.5 * 2)

I.e. this change will actually result in a DPS improvement for Elemental Shamans in comparison to a 2.5 sec cast spell, though we will not see the huge numbers. The biggest negative impact this typo had from Koraa, was for Enhancement Shamans. From being able to instant-cast a 2.5 sec spell, they are back to only instantly cast a 2 sec cast spell.

I completely disagree with this, if you factor in a large amount of haste , you need to bundle the dmg done by flame shock and lava burst and offset them to the dmg done by lb spam in that same time span.
The more you hack into the dot timer, the less impressive the dmg the combo brings gives.

I call bull shit on :

A temporary solution leaving no scaling options whatsoever, elemental shaman gear will have crit on it's base stats it's only a matter of time until it will be out scaled unless they put some really excessive numbers on lava burst.

You're right, 25% faster is quite a bit better than 25% coefficient.

I have to wonder what the new base damage is going to be. Koraa did say a significant increase.

Not really. Since we're discussing this, I may as well throw a few formulas in.

Calculations (note: I'm including meta gem):

LB:
(((765 + ([spellpower] x 0.7857)) x 1.05) x ((1-[LB spellcrit]) + ([LB spellcrit] x 2.09)) x 1.1) / (2 / (1 + [haste value]))

LvB:
(((1010 + ([spellpower] x 0.57)) x 1.11) x ((1-[LvB spellcrit]) + ([LvB spellcrit] x 2.33)) / (1.5 / (1 + [haste value]))
(note: obviously, LvB spellcrit is 1)

Flame Shock DD:
(((500 + ([spellpower] x 0.15)) x 1.05) x ((1- [FS spellcrit]) + ([FS spellcrit] x 2.09)) / (1.5 / (1+ [haste value]))

Flame Shock Dot:
((556 + ([spellpower] x 0.39)) x 1.05) x 1.5 / 4 x 3
(divided by 4 and multiplied by 3 to get three ticks instead of four.

At 2000 spellpower, 30% spellcrit (+9% on LB) and 5% haste, this equals:

LB: 2018.76
LvB: 3893.66
FS: 2357.64

As you can see, both LvB AND FS provide more dps than pure LB. Even if the calculation is wrong and Lava Flows only provides 18% crit damage increase instead of 24% (I didn't check ingame after last patch, but all online talent calculators give old 24%), that would still mean LvB equals 3793.39 "dps".

Or, if I restate it:

LB spam: 2018.76 dps
FS-4LB-LvB rotation: 2323.63 dps

I don't know about you, but in our school, 2323.63 > 2018.76

It was said that it can only be used by the caster, i.e. the enhancement shaman.

Naithara, I did not suggest that LB out damages Lvb/Fs, I will try to be more clear to avoid people thinking I can't count ^^.
LvB is simply the highest dps spell at base 1.5 sec cast, you will want to maximise it's use , thus stacking haste to the point of the maximum rotation on it. With a mere 13.6% haste, you can shave off the third tick by adding a CL.
The better the gear the less Fs will do and scales horribly with haste.
But none of this will push our dps to a competitive level, thus I wonder about the scaling and the impressive dmg our new rotation would bring to put us on equal footing between caster class's. I question the fact that the Fs LvB combo would bring us the dps needed to compete , as the better the gear the more you shave off the scaling off 1 component, not that it does less than other LB spam.

Due to the nature of LvB, you also miss out on a lot of raid scaling, you gain less than others from mage and retri paladin buffs. Missing out on 13% crit kind of kicks in hard.

So i guess we are back at stacking +dmg only ala shadowpreists?

At 3000 spellpower, 45% crit (54% on LB) and 25% haste, which I believe is the absolute maximum anyone will achieve in this expansion, the damage difference between LvB rotation and LB spam is still 147 dps in favour of LvB. If we drop spellcrit to as little as 40%, the difference jumps up to 175 dps. The ONLY way this could possibly turn into LB's favour is if we once again had 4-set T6 bonus and Ancestral Guidance-like totem, favouring LB, but not Lava Burst. I have a strong feeling it'll be the opposite...

P.S.: Just for the kicks, I plugged 10.000 spellpower, 45% crit, 50% haste into the sheet. LvB leading by 40 dps Really, people, don't panic, the scaling is fine.

Lets show an apples to apples comparison.

LB:
.714285714+.10 (SEF)= .814 coef
.814 * 1.05 (conc) = .855
now adding in crit from talents
.855*(1- (.03+.05+.05) + (.855 *2* (.03 + .05 + .05) )
.855*(.87)+ .855(2*.13)
.74385 + .2223 = 1.078
adding in LO
1.078 *1.1 = 1.1858
modifier per 2 sec
1.18/2 = .5929

LvB
base coef = .5714
.5714 * 1.05 = .6
.6 * 1.06 = .636
with 100 crit chance and 18% additional crit dmg
.636(0) + .636(1.0 *2.18)
1.386 final modifier
modifier per 1.5 sec =
1.386/1.5 = .924


So you can see you will need very high amounts of crit for LB scaling to equal LvB scaling. To be fair in comparing using LvB vs not using you should also include FS dps scaling but I'll get to that when I have more time. I was just pointing how well LvB scales with 100% crit.

Edit: Cleaned up the math a little to make it more clear and fixed a few errors. leaving LvB crit modifier as 2.18 for now can correct if need be.

I was basing it on what others had said about the talent tree being wrong (I've been really busy lately and haven't gotten any in game time). I think the point still stands however since if it is 24% it only makes LvB scale better. I also left out CSD but obviously that only strengthens LvB. One could make the argument for using 4pct6 if you have boot belt bracer etc so I just wanted to stay away from the gear debate and only go off talents. Certainly there will come a point where the stats lost in 4pct6 aren't worth however CSD will always be worth it (unless some other amazing meta is introduced) it but for now I'll leave it as is.

Then you see what a mage does at those gear levels.

And I'm also one of those that believes that haste only has a negative effect when working with cooldowns such as LvB, I've seen it with Chain Lightning. It could be so again. I work with a small cooldown bar next to my castbar and I never get decent a match on my CL, FlS, LBs, CL, LBs, CL, FlS rotation.

I'm also a little curious on what the actual rotation might be like, I'm thinking because FlS seems so "weak" now, and LvB so "strong", it might be worth it to throw it every possible cd?

Cast LvB as soon as the cooldown is up, Flame shock directly after, and fill with LBs until the LvB is ready again. How does reverberation mix into this? I'd appreciate if I could get some numbers on this. Perhaps some testing, I'm not 75 yet so I can't try LvB out myself.

The new meta replacing CSD is also called CSD and has the same 3% inscreased crit damage http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=41285 and has scaled crit rating making an equivalent.

So now that Mental Quickness is unreachable, is the general concensus to go back to a 51/0/20 build?

So, I've been looking for a reason as to why people aren't including Chain Lightning in their damage calculations, and I haven't really found out why. I apologize if I've just missed it discussed in this thread, though I've looked pretty thoroughly. Either way, my question still stands: Why aren't people including Chain Lightning in their DPS rotations? Has something changed significantly in the expansion, or would it still be putting out more DPS than LB, as it does currently in TBC?

There are several examples using chain lightning in this thread.