Well, Daidalos, there's a whole lot else they could do. I mean, Lighting Overload isn't exactly your traditional scaling talent and it does its job great. Basically, what they need to consider is two problems:

1. haste scaling. As much as I'm aware, Elemental Shamans are currently the only caster class with a cooldown spell in its primary (relatively short) rotation. Since the damage difference between LvB and lighting spells is pretty big (something like 30% at T7 gear), any delay in casting it causes massive dps fluctuations, resulting in what Binkenstein and others found as dps drops at certain haste levels. Ironically, when I was going through T7 gear, I noticed that we're naturally left right in the middle of one such drop (at 19%), which creates greater difference in dps between boomkins and shamans than usual. There are a few solutions to this issue. One possibility is reducing cooldown through haste, Blizz could change LvB to act something like "light pyroblast", i.e., longer cast time with no cooldown, where LB and CL crits give it a chance to be instant, then something similar to Maelstrom Weapon (LB and CL crits reduce its cast time, again no cooldown), or a buff you get when critting with LB, increasing LvB's damage (a buff that only stacks like 5 times, after which you have to cast LvB, so even if you cast one extra CL or LB, you don't lose damage), etc. There's about a billion other solutions I could brainstorm now, but you get the point.

2. Scaling in general. I've been playing around with various stat values in the spreadsheet. In essence, it is my belief that getting an int to spellpower conversion won't really solve the issue. Looking at boomkin talents that convert both int AND spirit, they ultimately only bring a bit more than half of the damage difference at T7 gear level. There's no ideal solution, because we have a much higher base damage than boomkins do. At 25% LB coefficient increase, we get within 5% of Boomkin value, the rest of the way covered by haste scaling fix. However, even at that value, Boomkins will ultimately scale better at higher gear level (note: such gear levels will most probably not be available in wotlk, so it's not a short term issue). However, judging by Blizzard's actions, I sincerely doubt they want to increase lightning damage over Lava Burst. Either we have to think in terms of general spellpower increase, or a bonus to LvB and lightning spells, with LvB taking the greatest boost.

What would be the effect if the flame shock glyph allowed the DoT to be renewed by LvB? Loss of the direct damage portion of the spell, obviously... I'm more curious about how it would affect the rotation and problems with haste / CD's.

Minimal, because haste issues aren't related to Flame Shock and the spell has considerably smaller dot component (around 700 at T7 gear vs. 1700 for moonfire).

Yeah I've been kicking around some ideas on how to solve the rotation issue scaling with haste. Personally I what I like the most is remove the Lvb cooldown and nerf the base damage of LvB then give a stacking buff from LB or CL so that the next LvB has 10/20/30% more dmg (or whatever exact numbers are needed so that LB is preferrable over Lvb until 3-4 stacks) This way we won't be spamming Lvb but the rotations won't change according to the amount of haste we have. It would alwyas be a FS LB LB LB LvB (or whatever is the best rotation)

How about making FlS scale with haste (increase in DPS through haste) and having LvB renew it (avoids the annoying shorter DoT time, thus having to renew it more often)?

I'll be the first to admit, I haven't looked at the exact numbers here, but would this even be viable with tweaks to FlS, possibly removing the direct damage component and buffing the coefficient?

No amazing new mechanics or talents to implement, literally just change the tooltips of two spells. Only problems I see are that clipping ticks with the refresh creates DPS "steps" from haste rather than a smooth scaling line. However, the major problem would come from spriests and locks QQing about their DoTs not scaling with haste ^^

Making LvB cooldown shorter with haste or making dots tick faster/for more with haste would be major changes to the game mechanics and its very very unlikely they would implement such changes just to give us a dps increase.

Could you define what you mean by smart wait?

A calculation to determine whether to wait for the LvB cooldown or not.

Your smart wait on the graph would be difficult to determine in actual combat?

Reasonable change for pve, but terrible for pvp.

The best solution would chnage the LvB CD to move with haste. It may not be possible technically due to the way the code is written, but whatever.

Generally you'd calculate this beforehand, but that's one of the reasons why I'm leaning towards the "screw waiting for cooldowns" rotation.

There is no current in game mechanic that alters the cooldown of a spell in a dynamic manner (all talents offer a fixed value reduction, though there are some proc based fixed value reductions) ... haste can vary a lot in any fight (drums, heroism/bloodlust, temporary gear proc etc) so the cooldown would need to be continually re-evaluated ... given no such mechanic exists to date would mean the chances are that there would be unexpected problems or interactions (eg bugs) would be much greater than leveraging an existing game mechanic

The best suggestion I have seen is the integration of a "LB bonus buff when LvB crits,where said buff is longer than the cooldown on LvB" ... exactly what the LB bonus would need to be balanced but this would ...
1) actively encourage the use of FS/LvB into a rotation
2) remove the need to balance another cooldown (CL) assuming that the LB buff was sufficient to be better single target than CL
3) scale with haste as it would support more casts of LB (with the buff) before having to refresh with LvB

The obvious candidates for the LB bonus would be a percentage damage increase, spellpower modifier or an increased chance to proc overload.

I dont see the problem... a lot of talents that provide scaling are depending on spellpower and that varys a lot too. So if it is possible to monitor spellpower during the fight and alter the damage of a spell by it, there shouldn't be a problem to monitor haste and let it alter a CD.
The bottom line is, that all those things are variables and through talents Blizzard can let these variables influence each other...

I like something along the lines of Eclipse for us:

Storm Earth and Fire: Increases the Periodic Damage of your Flameshock Spell by (10-50%). In addition, when you critically hit with Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning you gain a Storm buff which increases the damage of your next Lavaburst Spell by (2-10%) and Stacks up to 3 times, and lasts 10 seconds. When you Critically hit with Lava Burst you gain a Fire buff which increases the damage of your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells by (3-15)%, this affect lasts 8 seconds and has an 8 second cooldown.

In this way you perserve both, Lava Burst wants to be cast once every 8 seconds, regardless of cast time, and in between you want to cast as many Lightning Bolts and Chain Lightnings as possible to stack up the buff. Keeping the Flameshock buff is just there because of the Glyph, honestly, I could live with or without it.

Because the global cooldown moves dynamically from 1.5 seconds to 1.0 seconds with haste value, I don't really believe the above is the case. It may be hard for them to code a haste-variable spell cooldown, but they certainly can do it.

I never said it wasn't possible ... all I was saying that no such mechanism to my knowledge exists today ... which would imply that they need to code a new mechanism, that is going to be harder (and more prone to bugs) than using an existing mechanic ... in my experience Blizzard don't take the hard path unless they're forced to ... and there are many ways to "solve the haste problem" our current rotation has besides introducing this mechanism

To add to this conversation I would like to note that there are several Cool Down effecting talents in the game currently which leads one to believe that the foundation for such a change is already available. Firey Pushback from the mage fire tree and sword and board (I think that's the one) from the Warrior Prot tree both modify the cool down of abilities based on conditions.

The problem is that neither of these talents dynamically change the cool down of an ability when it is on cool down. In order for haste scaling to be effective you must be able to reduce the cool down even if it is already counting down. Both of the talents I mentioned effect the cool downs in relatively simple ways. For sword and board the cool down is refreshed (allowing the spell to be used) and for Firey pushback, the next Pyro you cast has a shorter cast time but also has a cool down where it didn't before the ability activated.

So Cool Down manipulation is available, but currently it changes cool downs in relatively simple ways. I cannot think of any mechanic currently available that changes cool downs by a varied amount based on second variable (in this case spell haste).

*edited to add the 3rd paragraph to complete the thought.

Whoa wait... why should the cooldown of a spell be dynamically altered? I mean I guess that would be nice... but just like haste procs' affect on cast time, they have their benefits and drawbacks... If you are already mid-cast and your proc goes off, it doesn't speed up the spell you are currently casting... However, if you start casting a spell, and your proc buff wears off, the spell currently charging is still under the effect of the haste buff.

I would assume the benefit/drawback when applied to cooldowns would be more weighted to the drawback side if this was implemented, but it would at least be nice to have haste scale at all. Mainly straightening out your static haste from gear for starters.


Edit: so as not to double post...
What if they built the LvB crit mechanic into Lightning Bolt instead of FS, and gave us a FS talent to increase our fire damage to that target by x% while FS is applied. Say every LB gives a 10% chance to crit to LvB, stacks 5 times, remove cd from LvB. And if LvB crits, it consumes the LB buff on the target.

Too complex? Too different for Blizz to even want to consider (having to scrap their genius new synergy btwn FS and LvB)?

I know there's a couple different camps on the idea of CL as a part of our rotation, I'm in the camp that I'm o.k. with it not being in main rotation unless there's multiple mobs (and no CC)... so I know some will disapprove of this essentially removing CL from the rotation.

Thoughts?

I'd totally prefer making CL only worth casting when there are multiple mobs (or bring back no CC breakage!). It annoys me currently that I can do my max rotation just because there's CC nearby. In my eyes, it would be like mages using Blizzard in their single target rotation because it offered a slight increase in DPS ever 3.5 seconds...

Off topic: Any ideas why they implemented all those spells not breaking CC a while ago if they were just going to take it away again? Was it just too EZ mode for some people?

EDIT: Apologies. Poster two down reminds me of all the other classes with this problem!

The cooldown for spells occurs the moment the cast is finished, meaning isn't an issue with procs occurring halfway through a cast. Overall, we're more concerned with static haste or longer haste effects (Bloodlust). Having the cooldown lowered via the same mechanics that affect the GCD is an obvious, and effective, solution to this problem.

I do think your solution is too complex. Implementation requires three major steps each of which could potentially introduce new bugs. 1) Overhaul Lava Burst, 2) Add new functionality to Lightning Bolt and 3) create a new stacking buff. It's possible that modifying cooldowns to be affected by haste would be complex, but at face value it doesn't seem to be much of a step beyond how the GCD is implemented.

Fire Mages do currently use Living Bomb in their single target max DPS rotation with the added disadvantage that they need to figure out where all the CC'd mobs will be in 12 secs time. Ret Pallys use consecrate in theirs, DPS warriors use Whirlwind in theirs and Survival Hunters use Multi-Shot in theirs (I believe). I'm not arguing that I think it is good to have multi target spells in your single target rotation - just that we are far from being alone with this problem.

If they do decide to overhaul some of the talents then I want an added bonus to the overhaul. Boomkin get a cool moon over their head as an effect therefore I want lightning to strike the elemental shaman which then denotes us getting said talented buff.