The ideas in this post are sound but I think we need to start with the most basic of questions: What is an Enhancement shaman, and how is it different from an Elemental shaman?
I’m going to assume we’re shooting for two distinct things; otherwise we’re just talking about a melee v. ranged spec of the same basic idea. To explain what I mean, there are people that play Enhancement that want the Flame Shock → Lava Lash → Fire Nova spread mechanic back (I’m in this group). But others say that makes us a Fire mage. And others point out that Elemental is currently tuned in large part around Lava Surge procs.
Then there are the ones who want to see Enhancement be a lightning-based build. But then some people point out that Elemental’s other focal-point build is Stormbringer → Chain Lightning.
And then there’s the third option, that Enhancement is supposed to be about imbues on the actual weapons (i.e., enhancing them) and our core identity is related to Windfury and massive, periodic amplification to our attack speed. (And if you have the shaman class mount, when you’re in Enh spec, your mount becomes wind-oriented.)
Let me address the third possibility first: If that’s going to be our identity, we’re going to have to tune damage around both attack speed and raw weapon damage, and our AoE is going to have to have a tie back to that (maybe Windfury procs on the weapon become the spread mechanic for a flame and/or lightning DOT). This will make the spec very fast-playing but also very proc-heavy and early in xpacs, we’ll be trash because we won’t have the weapon drops we need. So Blizzard will have to be mindful of that when thinking of its Blacksmithing profession (i.e., crafters will always have to be allowed to make decent-to-good weapons, no questions asked).
If our core identity is one of the other two, then we’ve got to get some differentiation between Enh and Ele beyond just the delivery method of the damage. But if we’re going to let both specs have access to major fire and lightning spells, they have to actually be meaningful. Getting rid of the AoE cap will help Enh greatly there (right now I hate pushing the Chain Lightning button at any time).