yeah, I didn't cast it because I stopped swinging and I figured my heirloom weaps> Burst anyways. It just feels wierd to not have that 4th button now that I don't need to cast Lightning shield.
It was kind of weird when I tried out Enh a few days ago after playing a prot warrior, hunter, and as elemental, I'd always be spamming something (devestate, steady shot, lightning bolt). But as Enhance there was a lot of down time and it just seemed... wrong somehow. Gotta be mashing buttons at all times!
Seriously? Elemental is always pressing something, sure, but it's always pressing something the way vanilla Frost mages were always pressing something.
ie - it's spam lightning bolt as a boring filler between the rare instances of doing something interesting
Seriously? Elemental is always pressing something, sure, but it's always pressing something the way vanilla Frost mages were always pressing something.
ie - it's spam lightning bolt as a boring filler between the rare instances of doing something interesting
Due to the way abilities chain it feels a lot like old enhancement did in the way you always have opportunities to maximize DPS. Both specs have to manage flame shock duration on mobs, and both have a random element (maelstrom/lava burst procs.) Outside of their longer cooldowns that don't much interfere with normal rotations, elemental has an additional opportunity/cost in managing fulmination use with flameshock refresh due to the shock cooldown. Same deal with their searing totem placement since unless you're refreshing it during a mandatory movement portion of a fight it's costing you damage from LB and since you're not constantly sitting on the boss' ass with free GCDs you also have to make sure you're putting it in proper range for fights that are movement heavy.
TL;DR the GCD-tight rotation of elemental is closer to late WotLK enhancement play than the current, rather dull, enhancement rotation.
That's because it's not. Elemental has a lot of shit going on. I didn't even talk about managing wind shear queues properly to not lose DPS while interrupting. Enhance doesn't channel shit, interrupts ain't no thang.
Properly maximizing elemental's DPS involves a few different things:
Keep flame shock up, duh
Lava burst as often as you can
Fulminate as often as you can
Use unleash weapon when you're moving and spiritwalker's grace is on cooldown
Use fulmination if you have 7+ stacks of lightning shield and you're about to have 6 seconds left on the duration of flame shock, because at that point it's higher DPCT, but you get more overall from dumping at 9 when possible, but you can't sacrifice flame shock uptime for that.
For any fight with AoE (which is too goddamn many for my taste) you need to be aware of how your three AoE skills work together. You need to chain lightning to get mana back and hopefully proc clearcasting before starting to earthquake, and try if at all possible to properly position a magma totem, since with a magma totem layered inside an earthquake, you can put out a lot of AoE damage. To supplement this, though, you'll need to keep your mana high before and after the AoE, because our AoE, even with mana returns from CL and clearcasting reducing the cost of earthquake, can quickly buttfuck our mana. This means using thunderstorm on cooldown, which you don't need to do in single-target fights. I also tend to dump a lot of the lightning shield charges I get from casting chain lightning on large groups into either significant targets or the boss, but I'm not sure if that's the EJ way. It just seems appropriate to me.
For single target fights, it's the last two things that take some skill to do, and lava surge added to that does really keep the rotation from being too stale. It's not super-hard, but it's engaging enough, I think. Honestly, I appreciate simple rotations for the added awareness they can bring.
And as for our AoE, we probably have one of the most complex set of AoE abilities. Most classes have one or two abilities that they just spam the living fuck out of, where we have four or five that we need to control the interplay of well to both do good AoE damage and come out of it with any mana at all.
While any idea causing damage to be spread around would be neat, it wouldn't work for one simple reason:
It allows you to damage and possibly even kill members of your own faction without their consent or control.
The griefing in BGs would be insane.
Plus, it would act as a way to render any CC that's broken by damage useless for the duration, giving shaman an AoE CC dispel.
Beyond this, even if you're not trying to grief, a Spirit Link cooldown functioning as suggested in this thread would suck for trying to save tanks.
Heroic Chimaeron:
"Feud tank needs a cooldown for this DA!"
Shaman says, "I'll save him!"
Shaman casts Spirit Link on the tank.
Tank gets hit, damage is split to a couple other players, who are now low on health.
Green goo comes down and gibs the two people linked to the tank.
"Nice job, shaman cooldown!"
While any idea causing damage to be spread around would be neat, it wouldn't work for one simple reason:
It allows you to damage and possibly even kill members of your own faction without their consent or control.
The griefing in BGs would be insane.
Plus, it would act as a way to render any CC that's broken by damage useless for the duration, giving shaman an AoE CC dispel.
Beyond this, even if you're not trying to grief, a Spirit Link cooldown functioning as suggested in this thread would suck for trying to save tanks.
Heroic Chimaeron:
"Feud tank needs a cooldown for this DA!"
Shaman says, "I'll save him!"
Shaman casts Spirit Link on the tank.
Tank gets hit, damage is split to a couple other players, who are now low on health.
Green goo comes down and gibs the two people linked to the tank.
"Nice job, shaman cooldown!"
Just because one gimmick fight would make it useless, doesn't mean its a bad idea. Consequently shamans are the best healers of that fight cause you know, deep healing mastery. So whatever.
Edit: A better criticism of spirit link would be that alot of the fights where developers want you to split damage, they make so the damage is split like spirit link. I.e. Double Dragon, hey need to group up to split damage. Spirit Link would be redundant.
Just because one gimmick fight would make it useless, doesn't mean its a bad idea. Consequently shamans are the best healers of that fight cause you know, deep healing mastery. So whatever.
Edit: A better criticism of spirit link would be that alot of the fights where developers want you to split damage, they make so the damage is split like spirit link. I.e. Double Dragon, hey need to group up to split damage. Spirit Link would be redundant.
Except it's not just one gimmick fight. A lot of bosses have the potential to throw out heavy damage on random raid members (golem council, Maloriak, Captain Planet, probably more heroic mechanics I'm not aware of). Having those targets possibly being Spirit Link targets at the same time would be a huge liability. Having one tank cooldown be something that potentially gets other raid members killed feels pretty last resort.
Also, priests are the best healers for heroic Chimaeron, FYI. Deep Healing is nice, but it's not really a difference maker like priest cooldowns/PWS on mortality phase and just increases throughput nominally.
Yeah, the way raid encounters seem to be designed now, hypothetical spirit link doesn't seem like it would be very useful. Raid damage is already spread out. Distributing a bunch of damage that should be going to the tank around the raid doesn't seem terribly likely to do anything other than get somebody else spiked and killed.
If anything spirit link would wind up making you less efficient. If one target's taking damage you can heal it fairly efficiently even if you need to do it fast; if five targets need to be healed up all at once, suddenly you're not able to be very efficient about it.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Eminates a rainbow from each of your hands to the target. while channeling this spell, it heals the target for 5% hp a tick for 15 seconds and reduces damage to target and nearby raid or party members by 25%.
Two members of my weekly 10m use that shit constantly on trash. They actually formed an almost perfect McDonald's style double rainbow arch on the first pull of BoT today.
Then they forget they have them on for bosses and wonder why their output is so low.
Son of a bitch.
JAEF on
0
Options
GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
* Earthquake base damage has been reduced by 40%.
* Fire Nova now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards. Cooldown reduced from 10 sec to 4 sec. Now Ignites your Flame Shock spell on any nearby enemies, causing each of them to emit a wave of flames that deals 647 to 724 Fire damage to every other enemy within 10 yards.
* Improved Fire Nova has been replaced with Seasoned Winds - When you successfully prevent an enemy spellcast with Wind Shear or Grounding Totem, you gain [if (PL<=70) then PL else if (PL<=80) then PL+(PL-70)*5 else PL+(PL-70)*5+(PL-80)*7] resistance to that spell's magical school for 10 sec. (PL = Player Level, and if you're wondering, that's basically the same resist aura as any other spell)
Restoration
* Purification now increases the effectiveness of healing spells by 25%, up from 10%.
Earthquake also isn't channeled anymore, but a 2.5s cast. it lasts for 10s and has a 10s CD.
Imp. Fire Nova is an Enhancement talent, Bibi got the category wrong.
New Fire Nova seems nice. Seasoned Winds talent is a bit weird, I wonder if it stacks with Resistance Aura/Totem or not. I can't see anyone taking it, if it doesn't stack. And even then it's very situational.
Seasoned Winds is a PvP talent. You'll already have resists in a raid. I do like the way they're changing how we AE though, it's pretty cool.
JAEF on
0
Options
GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
edited February 2011
But SW has tons of competition for PvP talents. If it stacks with the totem, it might be nice, because people probably won't push their spellpen that high.
(edited, because I remembered that there isn't a Holy resistance stat)
* Earthquake base damage has been reduced by 40%.
* Fire Nova now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards. Cooldown reduced from 10 sec to 4 sec. Now Ignites your Flame Shock spell on any nearby enemies, causing each of them to emit a wave of flames that deals 647 to 724 Fire damage to every other enemy within 10 yards.
* Improved Fire Nova has been replaced with Seasoned Winds - When you successfully prevent an enemy spellcast with Wind Shear or Grounding Totem, you gain [if (PL<=70) then PL else if (PL<=80) then PL+(PL-70)*5 else PL+(PL-70)*5+(PL-80)*7] resistance to that spell's magical school for 10 sec. (PL = Player Level, and if you're wondering, that's basically the same resist aura as any other spell)
Restoration
* Purification now increases the effectiveness of healing spells by 25%, up from 10%.
Earthquake also isn't channeled anymore, but a 2.5s cast. it lasts for 10s and has a 10s CD.
Imp. Fire Nova is an Enhancement talent, Bibi got the category wrong.
New Fire Nova seems nice. Seasoned Winds talent is a bit weird, I wonder if it stacks with Resistance Aura/Totem or not. I can't see anyone taking it, if it doesn't stack. And even then it's very situational.
I thought that Purification changed had already been applied in a hotfix.
I say that, but there seems to be a slight debate / confusion on the EU realms at least, as to whether the hotfix is on every realm.
Of course, how silly of me. Here are the for reals English notes:
Shaman
Fire Nova has been redesigned and decoupled from shaman Fire totems. Instead, it now pulses that same area-of-effect from each target that is afflicted by the shaman's own Flame Shock debuff. It now damages all enemies except the target hit by Flame Shock. The ability's cooldown has been reduced from 4 seconds, down from 10.
Magma Totem now lasts for 60 seconds, up from 21.
Stoneclaw Totem's area-of-effect threat pulse no longer affects critters.
Talent Specializations
o Elemental Combat
+ Earthquake is no longer a channeled spell. It now has a 2-second cast time, lasts for 10 seconds, and has a 10-second cooldown. Its damage has been reduced by 40% from its channeled version.
o Enhancement
+ Improved Fire Nova has been redesigned and replaced by a talent called Seasoned Winds. When an enemy spell cast is successfully prevented with Wind Shear or Grounding Totem, the shaman gains magical resistance (in an amount equal to what a protection totem/aura would grant, stacking with such buffs) to the spell school(s) of the interrupted spell (except for Holy spells), lasting 10 seconds.
* All non-damaging interrupts off the global cooldown will now always hit the target. This includes Pummel, Shield Bash, Kick, Mind Freeze, Rebuke, Skull Bash, Counterspell, Wind Shear, Solar Beam, Silencing Shot, and related player pet abilities.
Fuck everyone who said it was OK for interrupts to be missable. Even Blizzard thinks you're a goose.
Of course, how silly of me. Here are the for reals English notes:
Shaman
Fire Nova has been redesigned and decoupled from shaman Fire totems. Instead, it now pulses that same area-of-effect from each target that is afflicted by the shaman's own Flame Shock debuff. It now damages all enemies except the target hit by Flame Shock. The ability's cooldown has been reduced from 4 seconds, down from 10.
Magma Totem now lasts for 60 seconds, up from 21.
Stoneclaw Totem's area-of-effect threat pulse no longer affects critters.
Talent Specializations
o Elemental Combat
+ Earthquake is no longer a channeled spell. It now has a 2-second cast time, lasts for 10 seconds, and has a 10-second cooldown. Its damage has been reduced by 40% from its channeled version.
o Enhancement
+ Improved Fire Nova has been redesigned and replaced by a talent called Seasoned Winds. When an enemy spell cast is successfully prevented with Wind Shear or Grounding Totem, the shaman gains magical resistance (in an amount equal to what a protection totem/aura would grant, stacking with such buffs) to the spell school(s) of the interrupted spell (except for Holy spells), lasting 10 seconds.
The nature of 10m raids, depending on your composition, can mean that yes, as the third healer with your tank/melee having to move due to arcanotron pools or toxitron clouds/slimes that yes, it is critical that you throw out an interrupt on Arcanotron to get him out of the pool he just laid under himself and other healers exist in your raid that no, no one's going to eat shit in the 1.6 seconds it takes you to windshear and recast whatever you were casting. Resto also has two wonderful instant cast spells (riptide, unleash elements) that you can use if you're expecting to have to use wind shear shortly so that you're not actually interrupting your healing at all.
Many, many situations during the Cho'Gall fight in 10m can demand that you drop whatever the fuck you're doing and wind shear, both with worships and with eyestalks in phase 2. If you feel that's simply "too much" for you to be expected to do, sorry, but you're a subpar player and your raid is poorer from it.
So then blizzard made interrupts based on hit because...?
Nearsighted design. Any arguments based on status quo are pretty terrible.
Its been this way forever, so at what point does the status quo discount apply?
Apparently not until past the 6.5 year mark at least. ;-)
In fact, if you take Blizzard at their word, i.e., bring the player not the class, then you shouldn't need an extra interrupt from a healer as Shamans are the only healers with one (can holy pallys get one or is that part of the other talent trees?).
Also, Blizzard could simply give spell hit to resto shamans through resto talents so that their interrupts would be hit capped, just tack it on to riptide or something equally as deep in the resto tree. I mean Blizzard is giving hit to dks as a base part of their class.
All of this evidence suggests that Blizzard made a conscious decision not to make interrupts automatically hit. Where they thought that hit was vital (most recently dks) they made a change in the first content patch of the expansion. That design philopshy doesn't sound that nearsighted to me.
Though I must say, I kind of expected some kind of note to address unreliable healer CCs. Perhaps something about CCs that have a cooldown can't fucking miss and won't break early on their own? Fucking heartbeat resists...
Dranyth on
0
Options
GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
edited February 2011
So, the resistance from Seasoned Winds does stack.
This makes it useful for PvE when the boss has multiple abilities in the same school and only some are interruptable. The talent won't be in a general-purpose-build, but maybe for special occasions.
I'm still not sold on it for PvP, either. It's obviously useless against melee classes and also against Priest and Paladin healers and that spans a sizable number of comps. It's pretty good against single-school casters (interrupt that mind flay and resist the fear; interrupt that regrowth and resist the cyclone).
But it really only has a benefit if the shaman is a target in the next 10 seconds. I don't play Arena as Enhancement, so I don't know if they get focussed. I guess, if just the existence of this talent forces casters to play around it, that might be a nice buff to Enhancement.
The resistance from Seasoned Winds just seems a bit of a step back as a game mechanic; it's still going to be "random" as to whether it actually has an effect or not, and considering things like Mace Stun / Blackout were removed because of their RNG, this resistance mechanic seems to be contary to that (albeit, the 2 removed were offensive in nature, whereas this is defensive).
I love the Windshear change though, but if I'm allowed to be selfish speaking as a resto shaman alone, I'd rather have gotten the +hit from some talent in the resto tree, so that my Hex's and Bind Elementals were more efficient / reliable.
Seasoned winds is effective vs frost mages, shadow priests, elemental shaman (if they ever become viable in PvP), warlocks, and moonkin. In the current raid tier it's potentially decent for Omnotron, maybe Power Rangers and great for Cho'Gall.
Man, I'm super glad that they're making us spam the shit out of fire nova, and also drastically reducing earthquake's damage, and neither have had anything mentioned about a cost reduction.
I really hope it doesn't go live that way. I rape my mana doing AoE enough as it is. I like the idea of being able to layer on 4 kinds of AoE, I just hope they don't make it so doing that once costs me 30,000 mana.
I can see the Earthquake change going live without a mana cost reduction. Consider:
A) It's fire and forget
b) It's a 10s duration, up from 8
c) Magma Totem is now 60s duration, so you won't be redropping that at any point during an AOE phase
d) The average raiding elemental shaman has more than enough mana to power their rotation effectively through an AOE phase right now due to the clearcasting change. Sometimes that means you have to cast Chain Lightning to get yourself some more Clearcasting, and that's OK.
Basically I think it's a good idea, so long as Fire Nova doesn't cost a billion mana. I think that we'll see Ele shaman lose tons of mana during an AOE phase and run it all back up in a single-target phase.
If I remember right off the top of my head, fire nova costs about 5500 mana right now. Casting that every 4 seconds will quickly get out of hand, on top of the cost of earthquake.
Keep in mind that we'll have to be doing both to deal even semi-competitive AoE damage. I'm all for fire and forget earthquake, but its cost was out of proportion with its damage before. Now add in that you can't stop channeling and move it when adds move out of its radius, you'll just have to wait out the cooldown, and it doing 40% less damage, and I can see myself once again considering just not even fucking getting the talent.
The nature of 10m raids, depending on your composition, can mean that yes, as the third healer with your tank/melee having to move due to arcanotron pools or toxitron clouds/slimes that yes, it is critical that you throw out an interrupt on Arcanotron to get him out of the pool he just laid under himself and other healers exist in your raid that no, no one's going to eat shit in the 1.6 seconds it takes you to windshear and recast whatever you were casting. Resto also has two wonderful instant cast spells (riptide, unleash elements) that you can use if you're expecting to have to use wind shear shortly so that you're not actually interrupting your healing at all.
Many, many situations during the Cho'Gall fight in 10m can demand that you drop whatever the fuck you're doing and wind shear, both with worships and with eyestalks in phase 2. If you feel that's simply "too much" for you to be expected to do, sorry, but you're a subpar player and your raid is poorer from it.
So then blizzard made interrupts based on hit because...?
Nearsighted design. Any arguments based on status quo are pretty terrible.
Its been this way forever, so at what point does the status quo discount apply?
Apparently not until past the 6.5 year mark at least. ;-)
In fact, if you take Blizzard at their word, i.e., bring the player not the class, then you shouldn't need an extra interrupt from a healer as Shamans are the only healers with one (can holy pallys get one or is that part of the other talent trees?).
Also, Blizzard could simply give spell hit to resto shamans through resto talents so that their interrupts would be hit capped, just tack it on to riptide or something equally as deep in the resto tree. I mean Blizzard is giving hit to dks as a base part of their class.
All of this evidence suggests that Blizzard made a conscious decision not to make interrupts automatically hit. Where they thought that hit was vital (most recently dks) they made a change in the first content patch of the expansion. That design philopshy doesn't sound that nearsighted to me.
So how 'bout that design?
You still don't get my original point do you? I am not going to bother explaining it again.
Adds moving was always an issue. The cost of Earthquake raped you in any situation like that, but it's similar for alot of classes.
The way it is now, you're always gonna be casting it on clearcasting proc. And if Fire Nova becomes an issue, put that on Clearcasting too. But I doubt it will. There's gonna be plenty of time for CL fillers on cooldown with the new change.
Posts
ie - it's spam lightning bolt as a boring filler between the rare instances of doing something interesting
TL;DR the GCD-tight rotation of elemental is closer to late WotLK enhancement play than the current, rather dull, enhancement rotation.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Keep flame shock up, duh
Lava burst as often as you can
Fulminate as often as you can
Use unleash weapon when you're moving and spiritwalker's grace is on cooldown
Use fulmination if you have 7+ stacks of lightning shield and you're about to have 6 seconds left on the duration of flame shock, because at that point it's higher DPCT, but you get more overall from dumping at 9 when possible, but you can't sacrifice flame shock uptime for that.
For any fight with AoE (which is too goddamn many for my taste) you need to be aware of how your three AoE skills work together. You need to chain lightning to get mana back and hopefully proc clearcasting before starting to earthquake, and try if at all possible to properly position a magma totem, since with a magma totem layered inside an earthquake, you can put out a lot of AoE damage. To supplement this, though, you'll need to keep your mana high before and after the AoE, because our AoE, even with mana returns from CL and clearcasting reducing the cost of earthquake, can quickly buttfuck our mana. This means using thunderstorm on cooldown, which you don't need to do in single-target fights. I also tend to dump a lot of the lightning shield charges I get from casting chain lightning on large groups into either significant targets or the boss, but I'm not sure if that's the EJ way. It just seems appropriate to me.
For single target fights, it's the last two things that take some skill to do, and lava surge added to that does really keep the rotation from being too stale. It's not super-hard, but it's engaging enough, I think. Honestly, I appreciate simple rotations for the added awareness they can bring.
And as for our AoE, we probably have one of the most complex set of AoE abilities. Most classes have one or two abilities that they just spam the living fuck out of, where we have four or five that we need to control the interplay of well to both do good AoE damage and come out of it with any mana at all.
some fucking Boomchicken knocks them out of the radius
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Heroic Chimaeron:
"Feud tank needs a cooldown for this DA!"
Shaman says, "I'll save him!"
Shaman casts Spirit Link on the tank.
Tank gets hit, damage is split to a couple other players, who are now low on health.
Green goo comes down and gibs the two people linked to the tank.
"Nice job, shaman cooldown!"
Just because one gimmick fight would make it useless, doesn't mean its a bad idea. Consequently shamans are the best healers of that fight cause you know, deep healing mastery. So whatever.
Edit: A better criticism of spirit link would be that alot of the fights where developers want you to split damage, they make so the damage is split like spirit link. I.e. Double Dragon, hey need to group up to split damage. Spirit Link would be redundant.
Also, priests are the best healers for heroic Chimaeron, FYI. Deep Healing is nice, but it's not really a difference maker like priest cooldowns/PWS on mortality phase and just increases throughput nominally.
If anything spirit link would wind up making you less efficient. If one target's taking damage you can heal it fairly efficiently even if you need to do it fast; if five targets need to be healed up all at once, suddenly you're not able to be very efficient about it.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
That wouldn't really work too well. I mean it's not a bad idea, but what we need is a tank save CD, not a throughput CD.
Steam: pazython
Not that it's going to be that, but w/e.
Steam: pazython
Double Rainbow, All the way.
Eminates a rainbow from each of your hands to the target. while channeling this spell, it heals the target for 5% hp a tick for 15 seconds and reduces damage to target and nearby raid or party members by 25%.
"What does it mean?!"
Then they forget they have them on for bosses and wonder why their output is so low.
Son of a bitch.
Earthquake also isn't channeled anymore, but a 2.5s cast. it lasts for 10s and has a 10s CD.
Imp. Fire Nova is an Enhancement talent, Bibi got the category wrong.
New Fire Nova seems nice. Seasoned Winds talent is a bit weird, I wonder if it stacks with Resistance Aura/Totem or not. I can't see anyone taking it, if it doesn't stack. And even then it's very situational.
(edited, because I remembered that there isn't a Holy resistance stat)
Those changes
I AM SO HARD RIGHT NOW
I thought that Purification changed had already been applied in a hotfix.
I say that, but there seems to be a slight debate / confusion on the EU realms at least, as to whether the hotfix is on every realm.
That would be "Yes, the spell resistance stacks".
So how 'bout that design?
Though I must say, I kind of expected some kind of note to address unreliable healer CCs. Perhaps something about CCs that have a cooldown can't fucking miss and won't break early on their own? Fucking heartbeat resists...
This makes it useful for PvE when the boss has multiple abilities in the same school and only some are interruptable. The talent won't be in a general-purpose-build, but maybe for special occasions.
I'm still not sold on it for PvP, either. It's obviously useless against melee classes and also against Priest and Paladin healers and that spans a sizable number of comps. It's pretty good against single-school casters (interrupt that mind flay and resist the fear; interrupt that regrowth and resist the cyclone).
But it really only has a benefit if the shaman is a target in the next 10 seconds. I don't play Arena as Enhancement, so I don't know if they get focussed. I guess, if just the existence of this talent forces casters to play around it, that might be a nice buff to Enhancement.
I love the Windshear change though, but if I'm allowed to be selfish speaking as a resto shaman alone, I'd rather have gotten the +hit from some talent in the resto tree, so that my Hex's and Bind Elementals were more efficient / reliable.
I really hope it doesn't go live that way. I rape my mana doing AoE enough as it is. I like the idea of being able to layer on 4 kinds of AoE, I just hope they don't make it so doing that once costs me 30,000 mana.
A) It's fire and forget
b) It's a 10s duration, up from 8
c) Magma Totem is now 60s duration, so you won't be redropping that at any point during an AOE phase
d) The average raiding elemental shaman has more than enough mana to power their rotation effectively through an AOE phase right now due to the clearcasting change. Sometimes that means you have to cast Chain Lightning to get yourself some more Clearcasting, and that's OK.
Basically I think it's a good idea, so long as Fire Nova doesn't cost a billion mana. I think that we'll see Ele shaman lose tons of mana during an AOE phase and run it all back up in a single-target phase.
Keep in mind that we'll have to be doing both to deal even semi-competitive AoE damage. I'm all for fire and forget earthquake, but its cost was out of proportion with its damage before. Now add in that you can't stop channeling and move it when adds move out of its radius, you'll just have to wait out the cooldown, and it doing 40% less damage, and I can see myself once again considering just not even fucking getting the talent.
You still don't get my original point do you? I am not going to bother explaining it again.
The way it is now, you're always gonna be casting it on clearcasting proc. And if Fire Nova becomes an issue, put that on Clearcasting too. But I doubt it will. There's gonna be plenty of time for CL fillers on cooldown with the new change.