Give Ellys quicker Primordial Wave + LB cleave like Enha has
Allow Icefury builds to do light cleave
Survivability; Instant Healing Surge with high Maelstrom similar to Enha
Elemental dies quickly in M+ higher keys. Elemental ramp-up time for AoE is too long on e.g. Broodkeeper. Tanks kiting adds/trash disables half of Elly AoE dps.
Elemental sims high and does high target dummy ST as well as AoE. Problem is, VOI and M+ is not like sims/dummys. Adds move. We take hits from circles on the ground. There is always a WW monk who cleaves down adds before 1/2 of Elly AoE rotation manages to go off.
We all love Elemental and would like to play Elemental. Problem is, Enhance outperforms badly so we reroll (some of us against our will) to Enhance. And its your fault Blizzard, but you can fix it!
In my experience of high keys and VOI, its not raw Elemental output that is the problem necessarily. Its the damage profile, long ramp-up time on AoE, inability to do ST and AOE in same talent specc as well as piss-poor survivability.
These things should be changed to make Elemental more competitive and viable.
Everything you said is true and there was an attempt at solving the ramp up for aoe in mythic+ by introducing a viable lightning build ( which still heavily relies on ST CD but ok) but as this build proved to be underperforming in both raids and mythics, Blizz found the obvious solution: ignore it entirely.
We have an average fire elemental build, that heavily relies on spreading flameshock and hoping for RnG, and a half-arsed attempt at a bloated lightning build that does nothing in PvE but tease the idea of an elemental shaman that actually uses lightning…
And now the patch notes tell us that shaman needs no changes… sigh
