dont believe the hype, yes, most of those things are buffs, however, the reduction of lightning bolt and chain lightning cast times is a serious nerf to DPS that IS NOT compensated for by the lightning overload buff, i dont have the math handy ATM, im sure someone else can get into that.

do not believe the hype that this is all good, they are giving with the right hand and taking away with the right.

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In regards to the changes with water shield, yes this is nice.

In regards to the changes to lightning bolt?

Do not want. We should have kept our mouths shut about our problems with building too much threat. Their solution was not to give us some sort of threat reduction talent or aggro dump, but rather to nerf our damage. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the itemization was there for shaman to reach higher amounts of +dmg, but it kind of sucks. We're gonna have to get around +950 to do the dmg we were doing at +850, and it's much more difficult to go from 850 to 950 than it is from 500-700.

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I've got the math handy at the moment.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pWrxu1WkBtmUdbmig9sP-Mg

Slight DECREASE to our DPS. Hopefully they'll see this (if it really was their intent to increase our DPS like Eyonix said) and make necessary changes.

On the plus side, we're going to have MUCH better mana efficiency.

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Most of it are welcome buffs except the shorter LB cast times. As someone pointed out that lowers the coefficient leading to less dps. Especially as you get better + spell damage gear

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Eliah, when you say five-minute rule, I assume of course that you mean five-second rule. Apart from that, yes, this is looking like a slight nerf for Shaman DPS.

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Does the reduction in LB casting time to 2 seconds mean that with talents it will now be a 1 second cast? That would be insane! On a plus side, it would be great for us be able to cast our main damage spell in PvP finally instead of just using shocks :)

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They're reducing the talent as well. For an Elemental shaman LB will still be 2.0 sec. and CL will still be 1.5 sec.

The reduction of cast time is mainly a buff for the Resto shaman with +healing now giving 33% +dmg/healing.

I'm going to wait for the PTR to reserve judgment, however you can't ignore some of the math on the shaman forums.

My only hope is that the buff to Lightning Overload will compensate the slight damage nerf with a buff to burst damage.

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I can't believe that I am going to have to give up some of my survivability to try and make up for a nerf to my dps that will STILL be lower then it currently is. (assuming the math is correct)

So, lower DPS and even worse survivability. My survivability is already quite a joke with so little cc and or anti-cc.

Massive nurf for ele pvp shammy, I'm not even sure if going ench will be much better.

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2 Baluki`s post

If Blizz will buff LO just little more - the DPS will suffer only minimum changes.

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here`s the math:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p7HJepGdKhGOoi0Zi1UFeVg

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Looking at this from a Resto Shammy, the water shield improvement looks sweet for mp5. Be able to cast ES on tank and WS on me and get free mana every minute, with mana spring increase and mana tide I should never run out of mana, even spam healing!

With the lower cast time on LB, it actually might boost my dps so that I might kill a regular mob in under 5 minutes!!!!

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The huge buff to LO should compensate for the loss, which Eyonix has pointed out. I mean, you're halving the damage and quadrupling the chance to proc LO. Mathmatically, you're doubling your damage from LO. Basically, here's what happens:

-Sustained damage is decreased slightly.
-Burst damage is increased greatly, by more than the decrease to sustained damage.
-Overall, DPS goes up, threat goes down.

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I predict a hidden 3 second lightning overload cooldown, in the standard Blizzard ninja-nerf style.

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To me this looks like a MAJOR nerf to PVE Elem shammies, a break even for PVP Elem shammies, and a HUGE boost to PVE/PVP Resto shammies.

Unfortunately, the game does not allow Elemental Shammies to actually gear up in the 70 man raids. Sure, Tier sets are fine (even tho the t4 and t5 set bonuses are very questionable), however, an Elemental PVE shammy will end up wearing cloth most of his/her life.

To me the math seems simple:

I currently have +1000 spell damage -> hit LB for 1700.

With the LB nerf:
0.5s/3.5s * 1000 spell damage = 143 spell damage per LB lost (means I know hit for 1557).

Lightning Overload buff:
New: 20% x 0.5 = 10%
Old: 5%
Difference: 10-5 = 5%

Now combining the two:
1557*1.05 = 1635

SUMMARY:
NOW: 1700 damage
FUTURE: 1635 damage

hmmmm...i guess it is a typical Elem shammy buff....cuz it's pointed downwards.....

i hope we get nerfed one day...then i might wake up and actually win a mail piece of caster gear in a raid dungeon.

we r going to see a lot of hybrid classes form because of this.....20/0/41

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15 - your math is flawed. You're taking the 'difference' between the Lightning Overloads and using that in what the new value of your LBs would be. Instead of 5% it should be 10% (not the difference).

So with a base damage of 1557, and a roughly 10% damage increase with LO, that leaves your LBs somewhere around 1712 damage.

Old: 1700
New: 1712

Seems good to me. Same damage, less threat.. I like it.
Someone else correct me please, if it is indeed my math that's flawed here :o lol

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16 - Actually my math was correct.

The 1557 is the new damage caused by LBs only (it does not take into account LO).

The 5% is the increase in damage gained from LO (10%-5%). If you apply the 5% increase in damage to the new LB damage (1557), you get:

1557*1.05 = 1635

You can look at this anyway you wish, but it ends up being a dps nerf.

It's probably great for pvpers tho, since you would rather the extra burst damage over a higher sustained damage.

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i agree it's very frustrating playing elemental for 70 raids. it basically makes you respec in order to win usable gear and not be squishy.

but for pve, it's not a bad trade. the only aggro dump we have right now is self res. and that's a painfull way to dump aggro =). so having lightning overload proc more and net us no aggro, that's like free damage from a tank's perspective.

I will hold on judgement untill i get a feel for it come the next patch. if the dps bothers me that much i'll go group up with a boomkin for 5% crit =)

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I see no reason to nerf any of our damage. I run +1210 spell damage and 37.28 crit when raid buffed.

Take a Mage with +900 spell dam and 33% crit and they can easily out dps me as things are now.

I would perfer to have damage I can count on, rather than some questionable proc from LO.

I think a bigger help over nerfing our DPS:

1. Give us a talent with 70% chance not be intrupted while casting LB or CL.

2. Include Nature damage into Curse of Elements!

3. Our "buffs" are tied to a 30 yrd max totem and should be far greater than any casted 30 min buff that moves with you!

4. Increase totem health, fast weapon wielders can litterly kill our totems faster than we can drop them with GCD.

Shaman's really really really do not need any more Nerfs, or you might as well take all but the Restro tree out of the game.

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So they messed up Enhance with the no windfury proc on totems, and now theyre messing with damage output on Elemental. I've been resto for so long, and finally got geared up to switch out and not all other options are getting kicked in the ribs. The water shield is nice for resto, but the rest is not so great. Shamans are a bad class to pick.

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