More Elemental Buffs...

New patch, new buffs!
Not many this time so this will be brief.


15% buff to Earth Shock.
Pretty small buff to our single target damage, equating to about a 1% increase overall.
Earth Shock is in a pretty strange place at the moment. It is supposed to be our big Maelstrom spender but, unless it crits, it feels incredibly weak.
15% sounds quite substantial but I think it is just to keep it ahead of Earthquake in our single target rotation, which shows just how weak it is currently!


Stormkeeper tweaks.
The live version is an instant cast spell that buffs the next 3 Lightning Bolts or Chain Lightnings.
The new version is a 1.5 second cast that still buffs the next 3 lightning spells but ALSO makes them instant cast!
Now this is a change I really like!


It's not massive but it helps us in two of our weakest areas, target-switching and movement, while also adding some depth and decision-making to the gameplay.


The Stormkeeper buff doesn't really amount to a lot on Lightning Bolt so it can be used to manage movement a little easier with some planning. There's a lot of RNG involved in working out at what point using it for movement is a gain even if you end up missing out on a cast over the fight, I'll leave that to the mathemagicians.


It will definitely be useful though. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of the repositioning on Ursoc and running to cleanse on Cenarius but I'm sure there will be many more opportunities.


The main strength of Stormkeeper is using it with Chain Lightning, particularly alongside Lightning Rod. The synergy of these spells is incredible!


(Progressing on Nythendra Mythic in our last raid, I was lining up Stormkeeper for as many of the mind controls as possible. If I timed it perfectly, with my CL cast finishing just as everyone turned hostile, it was awesome!)


Shaman AoE - Also in a strange place at the moment.
 There are so many random factors that go into our AoE that it is either completely underwhelming or utterly devastating, and everything in between. I'll go into that more another time.


The other use of the buff is here, burst AoE.
Shaman has pretty good AoE after the last round of buffs but the ramp-up time means it has very few uses in raiding. Now we have burst AoE on a 1 minute cooldown, very handy for things like the MCs on Nythendra or the Bloods on EyeTree boss.


That is the trade-off of course, we can't use it for movement and save it for AoE phases so it will need some planning for each fight.
There's nothing wrong with that though, having real, impactful decisions to make is often what makes the game interesting.


Will the buffs make any difference?
The overwhelming opinion of the shaman community is that the buffs are nowhere near big enough to make us competitive at the top level. Added to that, the classes and specs floundering alongside us at the bottom of the rankings are receiving much bigger buffs.


I'm not at the cutting edge and do ok in my raid team so I'm just happy with the playstyle improvements.