The new runes in Phase 3 favor enhancement shamans so much that as an elemental shaman, I feel left behind.
Both the “Burn” and “Mental Dexterity” runes can be used by enhancement shamans, but “Mental Dexterity” can not be used by elemental since we do not have natural sources of attack power and it would be akward going to melee range to get the buff.
The Rolling Thunder rune is a great addition for PvE elemental shaman, but I fear that there will be no way to reach 9 stacks of Lightning Shield in a PvP setting because 1. It has a 30% chance of being procced on Lighning Bolt and Chain Lightning, our secondary spells and 2. Because you constantly get hit in PvP.
Elemental shamans have to this day no feet rune we can call our own. Spirit of the Alpha adds damage to enhancement shamans, not elemental.
Lastly, it seems shamans are going to get Feral Spirits. As far as I know, they scale with attack power, making it once again an enhancement shaman ability.
With all this said, I feel that I chose the wrong speciailization.
My suggested fix to the Burn rune would be if there are no 3 targets present then all 3 flame shocks go on a single target. Simple and makes it not a dead rune outside of AoE or cleave situations. Or make Flame Shock have no cooldown.
Ele kinda got shafted on the helm rune slot as it stands now.
Sadly I think it is going to stay like it is, 99.9% chance. And yes they finally looked at resto after ignoring it 2 phases and ele has been thrown a bone every now and then. It is what it is.
Looking forward I think Enhancement will scale much better than Elemental, if you aren’t adamant to play Elemental I say start gathering Enhancement gear in p3.
Spirit of the Alpha will in P3 increase damage done by the shaman by a flat 5% rather than grant attack power, so this way it also benefits Elemental.
The only issue is that you only have 2 tanks usually, so if you have multiple shamans in a raid, not all will be able to buff a tank (we only had 1 tank for Gnomeregan since 2 was not needed).
At the moment our 20man raid group is shaping up to have 4 or 5 shamans, so 2-4 of them will be doing 5% less dmg than they could have with the planned design.
Also, I don’t agree with the helm rune designs, because as it is designed currently, elemental shaman will be a melee spec on single target fights.
As it looks right now it is a 5% increased physical damage, so another kick in the wallnuts. Only the threat part is relevant to other specs aside Enhancement.
But the post itself says it is not extensive, so maybe Wowhead’s datamined changes are more accurate. We can only hope. But I don’t like that some shamans will be doing less dmg in cases where the count of shamans is higher than the count of tanks, even if it may be for enhancement only.
This has been the overall trend of SoD so far, restoration included in that quote.
There is a sort of solution for this… not the most ethical but… gotta do with what you have. Start buffing healers with Alpha if all tanks are covered.
Edit: that got me thinking, if a healer Shaman buffs a tank with Alpha and a chad Elemental buffs the healer with Alpha as well, does that mean the healer is an Alpha-Beta? Hmmmm
Edit2: Will the healer be Alpha-Beta or a Beta-Alpha, there is an important distinction! must go and do a big think about it now .
Your suggestion sounds great, would make the Burn rune much more attractive. Since we now have to use Earth Shock, it would indeed be a good addition if elemental shamans had a longer duration on Flame Shock in single target situations.
Yea, it is as you say, wih 99.99% chance nothing will be changed. It feels good that there are other people having the same worries. All we can do is point these issues to the developers.
Thinking about changing specialization at this point, although it is tough to do so since one has invested so much time into elemental.
Look at the somewhat bright side, a new phase means more levels and a chance to obtain new gear. It is the best moment to make a switch like this. As things stand right now Enhancement looks to be set quite well for the future: maelstrom, mental dexterity, runes that cover hit caps and so on.
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