You’re thinking too small! Hear me out.
-Earthquake should be baseline. EQ Talent is now central (replaces Elemental Fury - Old EF is now baseline ele sham) and becomes a choice node: Volcanic Quakes- On the fire side you spend the same resource cost as earthquake to charge the air around you with cinders, same radius as starfall, causing flameshock to be placed on all mobs in the area (flame shock dot is essentially the same thing as a starfall already) and flame shocks can now stack their damage (same as ignite fire mage or starfall druids). This provides a way to spend in order to spread flame shock for fire builds, encourages fire to spam (V)EQ, and removes the constraint of the small aoe circle of EQ. Then on the Lightning side you choice node Lightning Rod (delete lightning rod talent) and (new) Quaking Storms: Lightning modifier to EQ- Charge the air around you causing ST lightning to fall randomly and apply lightning rod on a target. This can be like 100% chance to happen to one mob, 15-20% chance to happen to additional mobs w/ Mastery to proc spread more rods quickly, and then as you keep spending you will call down more and more lightning rods/dealing minimum Lightning bolt dps and cleaving Lightning dmg, then when rods are on all targets Lightning shaman will be encouraged to use Elemental Blast. This needs to be an uncapped ability!
Former Lightning Capstone (lightning rod) becomes a REWORKED Stormkeeper: After spending 300 maelstrom your next Chain Lightning will trigger as if (old)Storm Keeper was pressed, does not put SK on cooldown. (boomkin get incarn at 600 and StormKeeper is no incarn! And that isn’t even a capstone talent for them- so keep the maelstrom cost CHEAP BLIZZARD!)
-Central Capstone needs to be primordial wave into elemental blast causing elemental blast to consume all maelstrom and cleave onto all targets affected by (new) Lightning Rod and/or Flameshocks (like Lava Burst is currently doing)This is not a choice node. It will always work with both builds.
-Ascendance needs to be a 1min CD (like retPal wings) put in the center of the talent tree and then worked into increasing crit when casting lightning or increasing haste when casting lava burst(NOT A CHOICE- Flat statement).
– New DRE is a talent UNDER Ascendance, and works same passive as Oath of Far Seer’s 8% haste and Duration extension to Ascendance from Further Beyond. (the RNG playstyle of elemental shaman is half the reason they can’t tune elemental shaman correctly, so take out the RNG. Give us a big 1min flat “im goin in” button, and then DRE rng to extend it while in Ascendance and Haste proc us when outside of it.
-Echo Chamber and Mountains Will Fall gets moved up to Parallel the old Flow of Power and Choice node above it (which are now EQ choice node) and Swelling Maelstrom.
Delete Icefury.
-New* Elemental Equilibrium Imbuement! "after Casting Lightning spells cause the imbuement to RNG mega buff Frost Shocks (mobility QoL for Lightning Shaman) AND after Casting LB rng chance to auto cast Elemental Blast without consuming maelstrom as if maelstrom is full value. This can go where Power of the Maelstrom is now. Delete or bake in Power of the Maelstrom to shaman baseline kit.
-New* CLASS SIDE* chain heal becomes baseline and adds new talent in that spot is Earthliving Weapon(from resto tree). Resto Tree’s Earthliving Weapon would then read, if already known increases the proc rate of Earthliving Weapon by 20% or something gnarly. A DEEP talent and a chirping rune should NOT have the same hps value.
-Move Flametongue Weapon up to replace Fire Elemental. (allow multiple weapon imbuements, one for MH, one for shield. This encourages our itemizing and stops shamans rolling on staves) Lightning shaman can then run new Elemental imbuement + Earthliving Weapon(convert dmg to hot on party % off crit, this will give Crit build Lighting a support to their stat prio, and be a hard choice for is the Fire shaman going to pump his numbers, or help his healer.)
Move Fire elemental down to capstone, bake Skybreakers into Lava Elemental and buff the ever living crap out of it.
Move Storm Elemental down to Old Echoes of Great Sundering spot, and BUFF the crap out of it. ELEMENTALS should feel like a ‘im peaking!’ and not how they are right now
Now we have ZERO radius issues, the spell effects are still shaman // make sense. You delete frost weaving. You will always have a reason to hard cast elemental blast even if you are fire spec in single target mega nuke//Funnel. Delete old Elemental Equilibrium and make that baseline shaman kit to encourage build diversity but not require it.
Rolling Magma can be renamed to Rolling Elements and expand to PW: applies Lightning rod to target and casts ST Lightning Bolt on all (like enh does) or Lava Bursts will triple cast (current tier) after PW hits a target ALREADY affected by flameshock. This gives Lighting boys a nice 2nd capstone, and encourages fire shaman to spread flameshocks (by spending maelstrom on new Volcanic EQ) before pressing PW and not just using it as a 2nd flame shock (way to tag a 6th mob).
“What utility does an elemental shaman bring to the group”
HOTS w/ EarthLiving Weapon. Uncapped AOE. and Killer ST.