Good NEWS!

" Upcoming Shaman Changes



Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
  • Tidal Waves -- Riptide now also procs this effect.
  • Riptide -- We're going to increase the initial healing component.
  • Storm Reach -- now called “Elemental Reach” and includes Lava Burst.
  • Improved Fire Nova Totem - Increases the damage done by your Fire Nova Totem by 10/20%, and your Fire Nova totem has a 50/100% chance to stun all targets damaged by your Fire Nova Totem for 2 sec.
  • Thunderstorm -- We will probably boost the mana return to 8% of total mana. That seems more in line with similar effects. We talked a lot about buffing its damage, but decided that may not be a good idea. With its short range, it isn't a great rotational spell for a raiding Elemental shamans, and making you run up to hit a boss and run back is giving up a lot of cast time. Instead we're going to try to keep the damage and knockback more situational (in PvP it will get used a lot) and make the mana return the big PvE raiding focus.
  • Maelstrom Weapon -- We have a concern that the proc per minute frequency is too often. According to our numbers, it's balanced for a two-handed weapon and a bit generous for a dual-wielder. However, this would be a nerf to Enhancement dps overall that we'd have to make up elsewhere, and it seems to be a fun change shamans are enjoying. So we're going to let this ride for now. It's something to keep an eye on, but we aren't going to change it yet.
  • Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt -- And now for a few words on Elemental damage. One of the things we were trying to do to make Elemental dps more interesting was to have a Lava Burst + Flameshock variant. We also themed some new deep talents to support this play style. The problem is that lightning still seems to do more damage than fire, which in turn makes the new talents feel lame because they benefit fire and not lightning.

Now we think that Lava Burst is doing appropriate damage for its cost and if anything Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning are a little too good. (Remember they benefit from Curse of the Elements and similar spells now.) However, nerfing lightning would make it harder to level as well as making 3.0.2 kind of brutal for Elemental shamans, since Lava Burst is level 75. Hurting lightning would feel like a flat out nerf, and even though you'd partially make up for it at higher level, overall we think this would feel, um, yucky. So no big changes to lightning spells.

We talked a lot about just buffing Lava Burst and a deep fire-based talent or two. This will make Lava Burst too good on paper, but it might work out okay in the game itself. We'll just have to see. We aren't 100% sold on this course of action, so I'll update when we decide for sure.

Once again, these decisions were the consensus of our design team, so please don't give me the credit. In fact, if there are any changes you specifically don't like -- those I had nothing to do with"
LOL

There is also a reply on this post to explain these changes furthermore.

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
If I understand your question correctly, the coefficients on beta are the "real" coefficients. My comment was that we won't nerf those back down to make Lava Burst more attractive.

When I said Lightning Bolt may be too good, I meant that for its mana cost and compared to other spells, it gives you a lot of damage. When you're designing spells, you can't just keep buffing everything all the time or you end up with rampant inflation. If things are too low, you buff them and if they are too high you nerf them. (It's awesome that those two verbs do so much work in game design discussions.)

So when comparing Lava Burst to Lightning Bolt, our initial answer was not to buff Lava Burst. Lightning Bolt was already a little high when you consider all the talents that affect it and more buffs that now exist that didn't in BC (CoE for one). Buffing Lava Burst would just give shamans two spells that provide too much damage per unit mana. But in this case, that is still the route we want to take for the reasons I tried to explain above. Nerfing LB to match Lava Burst would have been fair on paper, but sucky in the game. Balancing everything with a formula and budget can get you a long way but you also need to know when to put them aside. The risk is that Elemental *might* be too good. But we'll take that chance for now.

We think we have Elemental's dps to a pretty good point now. There are some classes that are doing too much dps in your beta build, which may be one of the reason you feel low. But in our tests, Elemental is above the tanks and healers and on par with everyone who isn't broken.