Personally I think this is more negative than positive. Here’s my initial thoughts seeing these the first time.
Flowing spirits- Awesome except this should be a new node. This is going to go one of two ways, it’s proc rate is decent and thus MSW is greater than WDA so it’s way better and WDA never gets used again, or it’s proc rate is so low its damage boost doesn’t make up for the lost MSW generation. Really just wish this was a new node instead of a choice.
Lightning Spark- Sounds cool EXCEPT it’s now one more proc to monitor and we already have so many. The flame spread portion seems pretty useless. We aren’t usually opening with chain lightning and since it’s only a chance at becoming Tremor Shock, it’s not something you can depend on to stack the flame shocks. Once flameshock is applied you’ll use lava lash enough to keep it up on max targets. Pretty much all builds run lava lash now exactly for this. Unless it’s 100% dependable every pull to apply the flame shocks that portion is near useless.
Molten Thunder – Okay I guess, but with TWW M+ dungeons being mechanic fests the AOE incap is pretty useful at buying time for a interrupt. Also once again another proc to monitor. Staring at bars or weakauras playing proc/cd whackamole isn’t fun gameplay imo.
Ice Strike- Decent change, gets rid of some button bloat, but AGAIN it’s another proc to monitor. Is this some secret experiment to see how many procs people can handle before they go insane?
Doomwinds- Seems good, it’s nothing but a buff so nothing to complain about.
Arc Dishcharge- I like this way better than the choice node. Plus not having to cast chain lightning twice is very nice.
Thorims Invocation- Big nerf it looks like, losing 20% damage on our biggest damage dealers is a lot. Not sure the increased ascendance or DRE is going to make up for that big of a nerf.
Supercharge- Massive 33% nerf.
Chain lightning crash lightning CDR- 50% nerf, not sure this needed such a huge nerf
Crash Lightning’s range- WHY? You just buffed it and it felt good, there are plenty of packs with casters that don’t group into a tight ball and being able to actually hit them all is great.
Molten Assault range- Same thing, why did this need nerfed? It was basically QOL and this nerf just makes gameplay worse.
Primal Maelstrom- Massive nerf that was really unwarranted. A lot of builds weren’t even taking this with the splintered elements nerf. This makes Primordial wave feel REALLY bad to use. Having it generate 10 MSW was great for openers, now you can’t use it like that making all it’s sub talents not really worth the talent points.
Witch Doctors Ancestry- 50% CDR Nerf and this seems due to Stormbringer, which makes zero sense to nerf a spec talent due to a hero talent. This just makes totemic even worse.
Flametongue Weapon damage increased- Buff it by 200% and maybe it would matter. Flametongue does so little of our damage that 20% is nothing. It’s sole use is procing Hot Hands and existing for Elemental Weapons. Make Flametongue actually useful or remove it from other talents so we aren’t held hostage from using other weapon buffs that are actually good/useful.
New Ascendance forms- Look hideous and massively break class fantasy. I really hope we can choose the old form or no form at all. This is an RPG and I want to play my character, not some elemental banshee clown.
Totemic Changes-
Totemic Rebound- MASSIVE nerf killing build diversity. This talent alone allowed storm build to be used with Totemic, this change completely guts that. Also we use spenders FAR less often than stormstrike so keeping the surging bolt damage the same is a ginormous nerf. On top of that it’s still only a CHANCE?
Imbuement Mastery- Big who cares? Oh we get to do flametongue damage to everyone? But flametongue doesn’t really do damage so a useless talent. Also with the gutting of stormstrike in totemic rebound storm build won’t be used with totemic and thus the windfury buffs aren’t really good either. Only storm builds truly benefited from this talent and with storm gutted this talent either needs scrapped or reworked to make imbuements actually good.
Whirling Elements- Why is the earth benefit for flame shock? This is also a big ??? given you’re adding Tremor shock. Also the number needs buffed because at 22% spell power that’s 88% spellpower, Chain lightning does 73% base. So for a capstone to do barely more than a base chain lightning is pretty bad. The surging bolts are better than the previous version but still meh.
Totemic still isn’t attractive to me because you need to plop a totem down every 24s, not fun gameplay for melee, and it locks you into several class talents. It really feels like you’re trying to force totems to work and they really don’t with enhancement. Same goes for imbuements.
Class talent tree still has several talents that are mostly or completely useless for enhancement. You removed flurry because it wasn’t useful for ele/resto but you left the caster ones for enhance? There is nothing really fun or interesting in the class tree where other classes have some cool class changing abilities. Meanwhile we get 15% better imbuements, that are bad.
Storm build needs some buffs. It’s currently way worse than elementalist in M+ and these new changes seem to make this all worse. Buff stormstrike damage and make it actually stormstrike damage. That’s an easy win that’s been asked for for a long long time.
All the MSW talents are basically required at this point. When you’re forced to take talents it’s no longer you choosing and that feels bad. Either bake them into the spec or add some competitive talents. Personally I think having any resource based talents is a huge balance issue since you either generate more than enough making them useless or not enough making them mandatory(rogue suffers heavily from this).
Overall a few wins, a bunch of what?Why?, and a whole lot of losses. If this is a rework it’s like a 3/10, it doesn’t accomplish much and just adds to proc/wa overload and RNG(because we didn’t have enough of that already).