Quote Originally Posted by Kruschpakx4 View Post
so far the flametongue change is a dps nerf as long as you dont have ~16k spell power
Where do you get that number from? Because it is not correct. Flametongue currently provides 1k extra spellpower that doesn't scale, it's a flat number. Ele shaman spells don't scale too well with spellpower either. Getting 1% extra spellpower doesn't mean your damage will increase with 1%. It depends from spell to spell. Spell power coefficients are unique for each spell, and they basically contain the factor that your base spell damage will gain from extra spell power; for lightning bolt it's for example 91% and for chain lightning 77%, meaning that the lightning bolt damage profits more from extra spellpower than chain lightning does.

The change to flametongue makes it scale with everything (bar fire elemental & searing who are afaik considered physical attacks), since it's a flat 7% damage output buff (2% extra from talents). In my raid gear (mix between bis heroic and bis 378 gear) I would already profit from the change as far as damage from spells goes.

The big problem in pve is that a huge chunk of the dps for an elemental shaman comes from the fire elemental. The 2 piece set bonus for T12 raid gear is basically eternal fire elemental. The way the fire elemental works is that it takes a snapshot of your spellpower when it's activated, and it retains that value for it's entire uptime (even if you lose those buffs 3 seconds after it being cast). So flametongue weapon does have quite an effect on the fire elemental dps, just like trinket procs, tinkers, weapon procs & pots. With the 2p gone and no change in the patch notes gone for the fire elemental, it's gonna take indeed a higher number of spell power to maintain the same dps, based on the 2p & 4p T13 set. But that's basically only affecting pve, since fire elemental & raid gear are a non issue in arena.

So for pvp it's nowhere near the number you outline, though there is obviously a conversion point.