Shaman buffs Incoming...

Just a quick post about the upcoming changes in the balancing hotfix this week...

As you (and everyone else who would listen to me) know, I thought the Elemental Shaman was 'slightly underpowered' going into the first raid.
Well, it looks like Blizzard agrees  :-)

World of Logs released their rankings based on the first week of raiding with only Frost Mage and Subtlety Rogue sat below the Elemental Shaman.  Those can be explained to a certain extent by the fact that almost all of the top players for those classes will have switched to the incredibly powerful Fire and Outlaw specs, an option not really open to the Elemental Shaman.

Anyway, quite substantial buffs coming in which go some way to bridging the gap to around the middle of the pack.  Other specs in the lower half of the rankings are also receiving buffs so we might not actually climb so high up the rankings but the difference should be a lot smaller.

The buffs are interesting because they illustrate the synergy between certain spells in the Shaman toolkit.


Chain Lightning damage increased by 23% - A flat damage buff, which is always nice.
Chain Lightning maelstrom generation increased from 4 to 6 per jump - it might seem like a small point but this has a big impact on AoE ramp-up time.  At 5+ targets, even if you are horrendously unlucky with Mastery procs, it only takes two casts to generate enough maelstrom for an EQ Totem.


In practice, there will always be Mastery procs and it should take even less time to get those EQ Totems out... If you are really lucky with procs, it can take just one cast of CL to reach the 50 Maelstrom required.
And to help out... Mastery effects increased by 12.5% - I am going to assume this is on the proc chance rather than the damage as that seems more in line with Blizzard's normal thinking.


Already, it is fairly clear that these buffs are greater than the sum of their individual parts.
More CL damage translates to more overload damage, happening more frequently due to the Mastery buff and generating more resources thanks to the maelstrom buff.
A substantial increase in our AoE dps already but it also increases the power of our artefact trait and the viability of some of our talents.
The artefact trait boosts the damage of our Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt so an obvious increase there.


The talent options are also quite interesting...
Lightning Rod was already good on cleave fights, also applying a portion of CL/LB damage to the affected target.  It's difficult to maximise it's effectiveness during play, I think it could do with a small increase to it's duration, but more CL damage obviously means more damage is transferred.


I am wondering if Aftershock, which refunds 25% of all Maelstrom spent on any cast, becomes more viable on fights which have enough AoE to merit EQ Totems.  In theory it should be good, but practical uses of it might be few and far between due to the nature of raid fights.  Sustained AoE is just not really needed right now.
It might work out to be a better choice in Mythic+ dungeons though, where trash packs are generally more dangerous than bosses and sustained AoE is needed much more often.

The final two buffs relate to our single target damage, 23% increase to Lightning Bolt and 5% increase to Lava burst. 
We had decent burst but it relied on using 3 specific talents and stacking all cooldowns (Elemental Mastery, Primal Fire Elemental and Ascendance).  Outside of these cooldowns, we felt particularly weak so these buffs go some way to addressing that issue.
The Lightning Bolt increase benefits from the same synergies as CL which means Lightning Rod becomes even more viable, particularly if you can't guarantee a 15 second window with no movement for Ascendance.
Lava Burst on the other hand, doesn't really synergise with anything, not based on damage anyway, so this is just a straight buff to our single target damage.

Overall, the buffs are extremely positive.  It won't catapult us to the top of the rankings but, if all of the class buffs work as intended, there should be a lot shorter distance between top and bottom.

I'm looking forward to testing it out in tonight's raid!

See you soon!