I adamantly feel that Astral Shift would be more useful if damage/healing taken while under it’s effects gave you an absorb shield or was usable while stunned… because flat dmg reduction isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially when it’s only 40%. We need an actual tactical defensive to go along with the utility based play of shamans.
-My proposed solution:
Astral Shift changed to Elemental Shift. (to match the theme of the talents.)
Elemental Shift: Causes you to take (40+5)45% less damage (base) for (8+4)12 seconds.
Talents to replace Planes Traveler and Astral Bulwark:
Earthen Bulwark - Take (45+15)60% less damage for (12-4)8(debatable) seconds, usable while stunned.
This would provide shamans with a bit more freedom in PvP situations where you’re going up against a comp that takes advantage of stun windows to use burst damage, allowing you to save your trinket for more tactical situations. Also provides a higher dmg reduction in pve so that your spending your MSW less often on healing, which is a heavy detriment to enhance rotation
Frost Coalescence - Take (45-15)30% less damage for (12-2)10 seconds. All damage you receive during Elemental Shift swells up restorative waters within you. When Astral Shift expires, the waters freeze, granting you an absorb shield for 50% of the damage taken while under it’s effects. Maximum 60%(debatable) of max health. Lasts 10 seconds.
This would aid in preparing for damage spikes where you would normally have to spam healing surge to survive, especially if your healer is having a hard time keeping everyone alive in a raid or m+ and you’ve already just used Astral Shift to mitigate some other form of damage. This talent would also aid in surviving in PvP situations where there is heavy damage being taken and dampening is causing our heals to become ineffective (which is pretty early on, to be fair). Taking this talent would mean that we sacrifice being able to survive stuns, having to sacrifice our PvP trinket and use this ability to get some more survivability while still being able to remain on the offensive. This talent could also add a skill cap, allowing you to cancel aura on Elemental Shift early to gain an amount of shield instantly to buy some time against execute abilities.
SIDE NOTE, IF THIS ABILITY WAS ABLE TO BE USED IN A STUN BASELINE: Earthen Bulwark could have a bonus effect. After sustaining damage equal to 35% of your health while under the effects of Earthen Wall, you cause an Earth Tremor, incapacitating targets within 5 yards for 2 seconds. Effect can trigger multiple times while Earthen Bulwark is active.
That is just an idea but I would HEAVILY consider this to beneficial in heavy cleave PvE situations and PvP. Would provide some control in M+/Raid situations where there’s lots of packs casting that need a bit more control and are doing heavy damage. Would also provide a moment of reprise or escape in PvP moments where you are being focused.
To summarize, I feel that in PvE situations we could sure use a bit more to our survivability, but not by an absurd amount. These changes could be seen as an indirect DPS increase due to being able to keep uptime due to not having to spend MSW or stop to hard cast a healing surge and hope it crits. I don’t want to be perceived as the class that cannot die. I just want to be able to say “I have X ability up, i’m safe FOR NOW.”
However, in PvP situations this is desperately needed, as Shamans are the primary kill target no matter the spec because we have no tricks or gimmicks. I feel that with the proposed changes previously mentioned, we would have a little more survivability, especially against classes with healing debuff effects (or simply 3 to 4 times more passive healing than us 
).
And to my fellow shamans reading, let me know what y’all think. It is truly about time that we got something worth while that makes us NOT feel bad about situations where we need to survive, but still keeps us in the “not OP” range. If we were given these changes to our defensives, it would finally put us in line as an above average spec in pvp and allow us to climb to higher ratings.
I’m just looking for equality in the class I love. I’m open to any and all feedback.
Thanks for reading.