It seems all of our discussions regarding the PTR are taking place in other threads not appropriate for the conversation so I'll make this thread to discuss bugs/changes/developments for Elemental in 3.1

Changes

• Bloodlust/Heroism: Cooldown reduced to 5 minutes, but Sated and Exhausted now last 10 minutes.
  
• Frostbrand Weapon: Damage increased by approximately 20%.
  
• Poison Cleansing Totem and Disease Cleansing Totem have been merged into Cleansing Totem. Cleansing Totem pulses every 3 sec, down from 5.
  
• New Talent: Booming Echoes: Reduces the cooldown of your Flame Shock and Frost Shock spells by an additional 1/2 sec., and increases the direct damage done by your Flame Shock and Frost Shock spells by an additional 10/20%.
  
• Tremor Totem: Now correctly pulses every 3 sec, up from 1 sec.
  
• Toughness: No longer increases your armor. Instead, this talent now increases your total Stamina by 2/4/6/8/10%.
  
• Thunderstorm is now useable while stunned.
  
• Lava Flows now Iincreases the critical strike damage bonus of your Lava Burst spell by an additional 6/12/24%, and when your Flame Shock is dispelled your spell casting speed is increased by 10/20/30% for 6 sec.
  
• Lightning Overload changed from 5 to 3 ranks, now Gives your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells a 7/14/20% (Up from 4/8/12/16/20%) chance to cast a second, similar spell on the same target at no additional cost that causes half damage and no threat.
  
• Elemental Mastery has been changed to - When activated, your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning or Lava Burst spell becomes an instant cast spell. In addition, your Fire, Frost, and Nature damage spells a 15% increased critical strike chance for 15 sec. Elemental Mastery shares a cooldown with Nature's Swiftness. Instant, 3 min cooldown
  
• Storm, Earth, and Fire : Earthbind Totem also has a 33/66/100% chance to root targets for 5 sec when cast and the periodic damage done by your Flame Shock is increased by 20%.
  
• Elemental Reach now also increases the range of your Flame Shock by 7/15 yards.
  
• Stoneclaw Totem has been changed to display the amount of damage absorbed. (990 damage for Rank 9)
  
• Totem of Wrath range has had both componenets set to 40 yards.
  
• Earth Elemental Totem: The summoned Earth Elemental should now have significantly more health and slightly more armor.
  
• Fire Elemental Totem: The summoned Fire Elemental should now have moderately more health and mana, and its damage scaling has been increased. In addition, the Fire Elemental’s spells now cost less mana.
  
• The damage threshold for Fear, Psychic Scream, Hex, Intimidating Shout, and Turn Evil to break early has been significantly reduced
  
  

Removed

• Condensing Mana Spring and Healing Spring Totem. Per GhostCrawler: "We have another idea for the mana totem."
• Storm, Earth, and Fire: Also affects the DD portion of Flame Shock by 20/40/60%
• Chain Lightning in 3.1
  We aren't changing Chain Lightning for 3.1. We originally wanted to make CL more clearly an AE spell, which meant improving the number of targets. But we think it has a decent niche as is. There are bigger fish to fry.
  
  CL has a shorter cast time, so it's fun (for some shamans at least) to try and use it to fill in short gaps based on haste, procs, movement, etc. even on single targets. Being able to mix and match LB and CL the right way is one manner in which great Elementals can distinguish themselves from good Elementals.
  
  After doing some more research, confab'ing with some pro shamans, and reading lots of forum posts, we decided this was probably a sufficient niche for CL and trying to push it into a purely AE role would mean a loss of fun for some shamans. The cost didn't seem worth the beneft any longer so we scrapped the plan. You can chalk this up to an example where your feedback counted in making that call.
  
  An alternative is something like encouraging more Flame Shocks after Lava Bursts or whatever to try and make the rotation more interesting. That's not something we're going to mess with for 3.1 but might be something to consider in the future.
• Storm, Earth, and Fire changed toReduces the cooldown of your Chain Lightning spell by .75 sec (on all ranks, down from 0.75/1/2.5sec),

Known Bugs

Shamanism

Currently not affecting Totem of Hex.

Glyph of Totem of Wrath:

Currently allowing dual spec users to swap specs, apply the buff, then change to another spec while retaining the buff.


Glyphs

• Glyph of Hex: Increases the damage your Hex target can take before the Hex effect is removed by 20%.
• Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem: Your Stoneclaw Totem also places a damage absorb shield on you, equal to 4 times the strength of the shield it places on your totems. *not affected by Talent Earth's Grasp*
• Glyph of Thunder: Reduces the cooldown on Thunderstorm by 10 sec. *Now a Major Glyph again*
• Glyph of Totem of Wrath: When you cast Totem of Wrath, you gain 30% of the totem's bonus spell power for 5 min.

I've had a change of heart, thread opened. Keep it focused on 3.1 changes and PTR testing, PvE and PvP. Don't turn this into a "my spec will be" thread. For detailed PvP discussion, there's another Elemental thread on the topic.

Am I the only one that am concerned about viability of loot for us coming out of Ulduar? Looking over the latest list over at MMO: PTR Testing, Compiled Loot List, Blue Posts , I only see a belt and a pair of gloves as caster mail without MP5. And just about all of the generic items (jewelry, trinkets, cloaks, weapons) are Spirit-based.

I kinda feel like our spec has been somewhat forgotten about with itemization.

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as well at first glance but I'll give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt and wait for a more complete list.

Ghostcrawler has already stated the loot is far from complete and we have a somewhat unique itemization as most other classes benefit in some way or another from Spirit.

I've had little hope for seeing loot above the 226 item level being perfectly itemized for us much like it is now with items above 213 Ilvl.

The new gemmed 226 gloves look amazing for us so far but of course the socket is blue which I was hoping would give way to yellows and reds. Of course we didn't see gemming like that until Sunwell in BC so I suppose it is too much to hope for now.

If I see too many more pieces of elemental gear with blue sockets, I'm going to drop leatherworking for jewelcrafting while the prices on goods are still cheap. I shudder to think of all the spellpower I've missed by waiting on a switch to jewelcrafting, and I was hoping the with the release of epic spellpower gems we'd (23 spellpower instead of 19) be able to bridge the gap between Jewelcrafting and the rest of the crafting professions.

Thanks, I missed removing that.

Thank God. I was pretty upset about that.

I'm willing to wait and see on the shield (what other option do I have?), but I'm skeptical. If it's a minor tool in the toolbox, then sweet. But as of yet every change proposed to elemental shaman to "fix" us for PVP competitiveness has been a swing-and-a-miss. I remain skeptical.

I've been following the mined items they've been showing on mmo-champion, and there's somethings that don't make sense, like totem of hex being exactly the same as: Thunderfall Totem but I'm sure that's going to get fixed/changed.

Aside from that it looks like we're going to have a small selection of mp5-free mail but might have to rely on some of the sparse but attractive spirit free cloth like Bracers of Unleashed Magic to fill in our non-set slots.

On a different note, does anyone know if the glyph of thunder is major or minor?

Its not just the elemental totem, every class unique item is exactly the same as naxx level gear with improved stats.
Even the trinkets dropping are improved copes of the t7 level gear, all that remains now is to see the set bonuses being the same.
The lack of creativity is quite disappointing,

I'm kind of curious how the Stoneclaw glyph works.

When you use stoneclaw totem and it gives you the shield, does the shield stay on you when you drop say, Tremor.

also 2 other things.

If stoneclaw is destroyed (by some pet-totem-stomp-macro) does the bubble stay on you.

And lastly does getting out of range of the totem make the shield go away.


Oh and how long is the duration. Most of my questions are basically asking the same thing but oo well

(went on the ptr by the way..no glyphs up on the AH)

If you've ever seen the loot on any ptr regarding totems (or wotlk beta), you would realize that they use placeholders.

Isn't it a bit early to complain about loot?

Ele itemisation has been at least halfway decent since patch 2.3 when we got the badge items. I can't believe Blizz just forgot a specc or decided to deliberately sideline it.

It is a little disturbing that Ele loot may be put into the game later than other speccs, and its also not ideal that we still don't seem to get decent Emblem loot, but I really think planning for a "loot apocalypse" is foolish and a little premature.