Perhaps I'm reading too much into this but as I see it this patch hint quite heavily that the next beta-patch will address Elemental and Restoration talent trees and that we can assume that what we see now is in no way final (and thus it might be a bit pointless broadcasting your talent builds).

Why do I now believe this?

Well, first we have that Blizzard has started to add personal incentative to spec into talented raid/party buffs, just check Misery, Improved Moonkin Form, Improved Faerie Fire, Earth & Moon and Malediction. Second, there is no big difference between using all your talent point and just placing 51 in Elemental and 11 in Enhancement. Finally, the Elemental Tree is still very far from being as bloated as other talent trees.

Right, but the fact that it's on the second tier of the Enhancement tree lets us choose more "nice-to-have" talents, such as Unrelenting Storm, which probably would've been left out (or the one necessary filler point) by many people when picking the cookie-cutter 52/0/19 build from the last beta patch. The only disatvantage I see is for Resto Shamans, who may have to skip good talents to get those 5% crit and thus end up with having to pick a cookie-cutter build just like Elemental Shamans had to.

I wouldn't mind the remaining talents to be made more attractive, but I prefer this situation over having only 2 or 3 talent points to spend on things that hardly have any impact on your raid performance at all.

The Elemental tree is quite bloated, it is just very divided between clearly PvP and clearly PvE talents. unlike a Moonkin, Elemental Shaman do not have the ability to choose 1 spec that is good for both (though to be fair, my understanding is that Balance Druids have a different choice -- AoE or single-target is where their bloat occurs).

Here is an example of the bloat: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?sham...00000000000000

71 points spent, and couldn't even make it to Thunderstorm, when trying to pick up the PvP talents too.


As for the talent trees getting another pass to adjust Resto/Elemental, I won't be surprised if Elemental Focus is reverted back to an earlier build where it was procing off heal crits.

I have to agree on this. All talents, which could be useless with certain raid setup should have some benefit for ourselves, moonkins are good example, they took alot of nice stuff for their raid support talents.
Also, I wouldnt mind more mid-elemental talents and actually some sort of stat > damage talent (int to haste, crit to haste, etc)

anyway, Lyghtnyn did some tests on dummys and it stil looks like LB spam is better than LvB FlS rotationm reported 2.5k vs 2,2k dps or something like that

With updated talents + spells (there's a level 80 lvb now), LB spam = 2.5k, LvB rotation = 3k

With Totem of Ancestral Guidance (85 spellpower to CL, LB) and T6 4-set bonus (5% LB damage), a friend reported FS-4LB-LvB at 2320 and LB spam at 2017 dps. Since he often helps me test, I don't see any reason why those figures would be wrong, especially as they match spreadsheet numbers. Logical conclussion: Lyghtnyn either forgot to include something or fails at testing. Bink's numbers above me just strengthen this case. Hence: our spell rotation is fine.

(p.s.: shock, LB and LvB now all cost around 350 mana if I'm not mistaken? Talk about mana efficient... :p)

I was just in game and I can tell you it's still there. With thunderstorm it's slightly harder to go oom now but it's still now 'about right'(High gcd cost), we could use an ability similar to the new Paladin Evocation/Blood Rage -thingy. Once we're oom, we're finished.

New thundering strikes works great by the way, my 51/10/0 specc works pretty well.
About the knockback on thunderstor m (for those who which to know) is now back at 20 yards (somewhat), however the mobs seems to go in a straight line now, so if there's the slightest difference in the terrain, it will stop flying backwards. Also much harder to knock stuff over edges now.

While this might be close to splitting hairs about opinions and not facts, my point of reference regarding the amount of bloat was not so much the Druid's Balance tree as it was the Shaman's Enhancement tree. The way Blizzard label "bloat" then it is not the amount of talents, but rather the tough decision that there are too many talents you want to take, and too few points to go around. For me, who has zero interest in PvP, then this is not the case with the Elemental tree.

Addendum:
Felt a bit too much like I was crying over some percieved failure of the Blizzard developers to add PvE talents. Well, that was not my intention. I just wished to write out my reasoning why I believe Blizzard might tweak the Elemental and Restoration tree. Though, when I look at it a bit closer, then I realized that a such small change like the removal of cooldown on Lava Burst could in turn make Reverberation to a strong talent, which would add to the "bloat" effect.

Yea that's really an opinion thing. I enjoyed raiding TK and MH and Sunwell, but I also enjoyed BGs and Arena and world pvp. When I look at the Elemental Tree, I see wanting to sink 72 talent points just into Elemental to get everything I want. And then I want to sink another 20 into Enhancement to get everything I want. Unfortunately for me, Im not level 101 yet, so I have tough choices to make.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've got the impression that the buffing capabilities of Balance Druids and Elemental Shamans are quite similar now, but Moonkin Druids get serious AoE capabilities too, which Elemental Shamans still lack. Am I missing something and if not how is this considered balanced?

Eleshamans provide three buffs from their tree, moonkins five and they have competitive spamable AoE, and no, its not balanced, but hopefully, we will see some changes to Elemental tree in next few days.

Thats why are there respecs. Your are not doing mix of PvP and PvE build, when you are minmaxing. That may be the problem of Elemental tree imho, i can easily go 51/10 now and i wont even recognize any PvE improvement in raids at 80 level, if i wont put any other talentpoints into trees. there are simply no other choices for PvE, which would make a difference for me, and if i take PvP talents, i certainly wont have all needed for any serious PvP anyway. Also, we lack any talent with stat > dmg conversion, moonkins now got both int and spi > Spellpower, yet we still lack one similar talent. Hopefully, soon...

I couldn't agree more, but sadly it just reminds me of this post:
MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Really? Just give us Baron Geddon's version.

But as you can see there's some conflict here: Thunderstorm doesn't knock 'up' anymore, at all, not even the slightest. And by "not an aoe class" it means we're the only ranged class without a ranged aoe. Balanced? No. (I'm still thinking a ranged aoe, forked lightning'ish, would make a great 21 point talent, bake in Call of Thunder somewhere)

On the point of X -> +dmg conversion. I have more damage on my badge geared moonkin than my shaman, just thanks to Lunar Guidance, and seeing how int values are going to go through the roof I don't even want to think about the consequences this is going to have at 80. I've been praying for a 10% int -> +dmg (or similar) on Lightning Mastery, it would make great synergy with Ancestral Knowledge. I can (and I guess so can most people in this thread) think up a hundred good changes for our specc but we can't do much more than to point out our flaws, and I think has been done really well in the recent above posts. Scaling and AoE is two points I've pushed on in my "whine post" on the wotlk beta forums. It's issues that are very real.

CoE is 10%, E&M is 13%. E&M is superior.
Demonic Pact is still 10%, which makes that 2800, still a [too] high number. But I can tell you that from my experience in instances, DP and ToW stacks (bug?). We have to have great mana efficiency, or we would be useless, once we're oom we don't have innervate/evocation. Also the moonkin aura procc scales with critt and total mana, whilst EF only scales with critt.

They just adjusted E&M to encourage five points so now the debuff is increased by talent points. At 4 points it is 10%, at 5 points it is 13%. Using it is an overall RDPS increase by allowing a lock to use a damaging curse (Pretty much a wash with an unholy specced DK). Elemental shaman also get the only irreplacable utility in totem of wrath.


My thoughts are that your extremely effective spell interruption is considered valuable enough so that you weren't given a fully spammable aoe attack like Shadow Priests and Balance Druids. Caster druids and priests cannot do a school lockout interrupt in any fashion, and it's a very powerful ability that comes into play in every aspect of the game. No spec of paladin was given an spell interrupt as well.

To be perfectly frank: I would give you my WotLK hurricane for wind shock without hesitation.

EDIT: To the above poster: I don't know what EF is, but there is no moonkin aura 'proc' anymore it is simply a flat 3% to all haste ratings that is shared by ret paladins.

Additionally, I don't think I'd worry so much about getting a stat conversion talent. There are plenty of ways to develop scaling, and they haven't done the DPS balancing yet so the numbers are still in flux.

Elemental Focus
Moonkin aura procc;
There's one (Illidari Council) where Wind Shock is good. Want to count the fights where aoe is good?

You have to compare overall mana regeneration tools between the two specs, not individual talents. We also have access to Omen of Clarity now as well for clearcasting, innervate, and intellect as well as spirit based 5 second regen. Elemental shaman have Elemental Focus, their version of dreamstate, Water Shield, and potentially thunderstorm (Which scales from your total mana.)

I'm not sure it's significant if some of balance druid mana regen scales with gear, if elemental shaman have enough mana regen that they don't go out of mana.


AoE has more of a role in sunwell than spell interrupts do, but there are no boss encounters in BT or Hyjal where aoe is in any way relevant to the fight (Though it certainly speeds up the Hyjal/Mother trash). RoS also requires timely spell interruption.

I also forgot that Shaman have an offensive dispell, another mechanic that can be useful in a wide variety of situations. You shouldn't think that I'm trying to make an argument as to why shaman -shouldn't- receive spammable aoe, just a thought as to the reasoning behind that decision. Every balance druid that plays any pvp at all has asked multiple times for a spell interrupt, but there are some things they just won't cave on unfortunately.

Personally I feel interrupting in PVE is a skill-testing role to play that I would enjoy being able to fulfill while playing my chosen class/spec.

Actually, Illidari council is the one fight where it is arguably necessary, there are other fights where it is useful. ROS has been mentioned, as far as trash (which for comparison purposes is mostly where AOE comes in anyway) there are the caster mobs in Hyjal trash that can easily kill people if they are allowed to cast freely. Also, isn't wind shock off the GCD and isn't the 7 sec CD the shortest in the game? Between those two and being ranged, I think its actually a pretty nice ability. Imagine a boss fight that requires a lot of movement, we don't have to worry about always being within melee range and we don't have to change our cycle at all because the spell is off the GCD, finally, the fastest CD in the game means that it will be that much more likely to be up when necessary and it makes the possibility of getting back on track, if a rotation gets messed up, that much easier.

Edit: I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to have an AOE on top of that, but the other class that people look to for interrupts are Rogues, and they have about the same AOE that we have (mostly abilities on timers). I wouldn't be surprised if blizz designers intentionally tried to create those two niches.

well, as someone pointed out, Demolock needs only 2800 SP, which may or may not be easy to get with all raidbuffs, but the main point is: its scalling
also, its arguable, which of CoE and EaM is better, with EaM, warlock can dish out more damage with agony, so its only win:win situation
well, for ToW, there is also mutilate rogue talent, "Increases the critical hit chance of all attacks made against any target you have poisoned by 3% and reduces the duration of all Poison effects applied to you by 50%.", tier 9 or so.

even tho BL is powerfull buff, class shouldnt be balanced around it since it has hefty CD now.

but my main points are:

GC already said, that all casters should have some sort of viable AoE, Magma isnt viable AoE and other are on CD

Also, they were talking about talentpoint budget, which, technically, should be working, yet we can see alot of talents overbudgeted with points or the gain. Also, they started to buff talents, which could be obsolete in certain raid setup scenarios. Examples are all over the Balance tree, apart the moonkin form, all other raidbuffing talents got some sort of selfgain, and to lesser degree, moonkin form gained manaregen from crits. Also, its not only balance, Misery got it too, DK also, its only fair for other classes, including shamans, to get the same for their buffing talents, since Elemental is in question, ToW and Elemental Oath should get some sort of passive bonuses.

and the stat > dmg is purely personal thing tbh, it simply could add some scaling to our spells, but for PvE build, ill have atleast 6 points left with no use to my performance, id gladly take, lets say tier 7 talent, which would improve haste by 10% or our critchance (the one in char window) or something similar, or simply copypasted int > SP, much like almost every other caster have, also note, that, all top tier talents are improving only certani spells, not a single one of them is improving performance as whole, i would certainly rather have weaker spells and good scalling than high base damage, but worse scalling

5...minute..totems

/rejoice

And I think it's something like 15 yards built into flameshock for a 15 percent nerf to flametongue weapon's spellpower bonus (30 dmg? off the top of my head). Thoughts? Frees up a glyph I suppose, or maybe it'll be changed to something else.

I guess another bonus is an increase in our offhealing abilities due to an increase in earthliving weapon.



Edit: Glyph of Flame Shock - Increases the duration of your Flame Shock ability by 3 sec - meh?

Edit2: Oh god, Flametongue Weapon Ranks aren't adding spellpower

Basically yeah, frees up a Glyph for now. When Blizzard realizes 15 extra yards on flame shock is useless without 6 extra yards on Lava Burst, it'll make Storm Reach useful again.

They seem to have broken Flametongue Weapon on this build.

I'm really confused at the interaction between flametongue weapon and totem of wrath since the changes have been made. I mean... they have to stack, otherwise elemental shamans have no useful weapon enchant... or the elemental 41 pointer took a huge hit. Do flametongue weapon's spelldamage effect and ToW still stack?

It seems with Lava Lash that they're really pushing it [Flametongue Weapon] into enhancement... but it almost seems counteractive as the flametongue effect will soak up stormstrike charges that would be better used by either flame/earth shock, lightning bolt, or lava lash.

I guess... I'm really, really, really confused as to what the changes were meant to do...

2 totem recasts = 8 seconds, which means around 4 LBs/LvBs gained. That would be roughly 22.000 - 23.000 damage. Spelldamage lost is 31 (provided every elemental shaman goes into enhancement now), which is around 40 damage per bolt.We'd need around 7 minutes to catch up that 22.000 damage. Overall thus pretty much no dps change.

Main dps increase comes from Lava Burst, so yes, the Glyph's extra dot increase is kinda meh. However, it does provide some security in rotation and makes the spell theoretically slightly more mana efficient. I think I'll take 10% mana cost reduction on LB, tbh.

New build:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?sham...00000000000000

Arazan, they always stacked, flametongue is still a good enchant for elemental... well, when it'll actually work :p