My thoughts so far on pre-patch enhancement talents and baseline abilities so far. My throughput perspective is from a high mastery build. Long post incoming.
Talents
Row 1
Lashing Flames - Best single target by a good margin, ends up contributing about 7-8% of total damage, very consistent. Effectiveness falls during AoE especially if Hailstorm is taken.
Forceful Winds - Fairly weak single target, ends up being about 3-4% of overall damage. Only really does better in AoE than Lashing when Hailstorm is taken.
Elemental Blast - Single target falls between Lashing and Forceful, contributes about 5-6% overall damage. Weak in AoE due to similar damage as 3 target Chain Lightning but does not give the Crash Lightning buff.
Row 2
Stormflurry - Good overall design. When coupled with Elemental Assault provide a lot of Maelstorm stacks. Also provides additional Crash Lightning procs in AoE. Due to different interactions, slightly harder to pintpoint a hard % contribution.
Hot Hand - I like the idea and feel of the talent, but it suffers from the baseline weakness of Lava Lash. Has high AoE potential with additional Lashing Flames applications and more Crash Lightning procs.
Ice Strike - The most clunky of this talent row. I think this talent would be better off as a spell to be maelstorm spender to better synergize with Hailstorm, damage on it is also fairly low for its cooldown.
Row 3
Spirit Wolf - I really dislike this talent, the build up makes it feel horrible to use. The 20% movement and DR should be passive with no build up, and give it some kind of secondary effect like Maelstorm/Healing/Mana over time.
Earth Shield - With Lightning Shield back but only being able to have 1 shield up at a time this has become a somewhat weaker choice. Possible solution would be to have it give 15-20% damage reduction when used on ourselves.
Statics Charge - Boring talent, has some dungeon applications. Personally would rather see how utility totems are implemented changed. See other post Suggestion for Totems
Row 4
Elemental Assault - Good passive. Provides some rotational changes due to additional maelstorm especially when taken with Stormflurry.
Hailstorm - Excellent design. Transforms rotation, and actually feels good to use.
Fire Nova - Worst option on this row. Both in terms of raw numbers and the amount of effort. Set up time takes too long and it still preforms worse than Hailstorm. Currently need 5 Flame Shocks to make it do similar damage to a Hailstorm.
Row 5
Nature’s Guardian - Bland, but its a defensive option that we have so very little of.
Feral Lunge - Arguably the worst gap closer. Two things that would help with it would be to remove from the gcd like other gap closers, and leave us in Ghost Wolf after the cast so we can deal with target drift.
Wind Rush Totem - Its not a horrible talent, but its utility that requires us to sacrifice survivability.
Row 6
Crashing Storm - Horribly undertuned, especially with Crash Lightning now being on a 9 second cd instead of 6. Does about 12-14% of the damage that Sundering does. But you can only get 5 during 1 Sundering cd.
Stormkeeper - Suffers from the delayed satisfaction problem, but doesn’t actually provide enough satisfaction. Damage gained from the LB/CL damage increase is about the same that 1 Sundering provides, but take 2 more globals to achieve this.
Sundering - Feels good talent. Hits hard and has a non-stun short cc. But its a bursty ability that has better throughput than the non-burst talent.
Row 7
Elemental Spirits - Currently Flame Shock and Fire Nova don’t benefit from Fire puppies despite being fire damage. I like the concept of this talent but needs more ability interaction if interested in my suggestions for puppies see When are we getting the Feral Spirits fix? - #2 by Spoonfeed-lightbringer.
Earthen Spike - Seems to of been the ability that got forgotten about. Least impactful talent on this row in both throughput and awesome factor.
Ascendance - With the initial burst added to the cast it doesn’t feel as bad being on the gcd. But please give us glyphs that let us change its appearance to some kind of character glow, and some glyphs to change it to various different elementals from the expansions.
Abilities
Stormstrike - Its Stormstrike, its kinda been the core of the spec since Vanilla. Depending on talent and stat build its either the core of the rotation or a high priority filler.
Flame/Frost Shock - Please put these abilities on separate cooldowns, I would even be fine with these having a slightly longer cooldown to do so. Its would make Iceflurry a slightly more attractive choice.
Lava Lash - Needs a significant damage buff, with it being a 12 second cooldown it feels incredibly weak. Also with Lava Lash being weak baseline it reduces the effectiveness of Hot Hand.
Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning - With low mastery these feel pathetic, with high mastery they’re still disappointing. The 50% nerf to these when you added the maelstorm damage bonus needs to at least be partially reverted. Increasing their current damage by 50-60% would put them at a decent spot.
Crash Lightning - With current tuning feels underwhelming, only thing really going for it is high maelstorm generation for more hailstorms.
Windfury/Flametongue Weapon - Not sure if intended, but Flametongue currently procs from both MH and OH attacks including Windfury procs. With out Forceful Winds, flamerongue provides about 2.5-4 times more raw damage than Windfury, but Windfury has the benefit of being able to proc Maelstorm.
Healing Surge/Chain Heal - These need to have the 50% nerf reverted. Once these are back to normal effectiveness change Maelstorms effect on healing spells to 10% increased healing, and 10% reduced mana cost per stack. This way we can retain some off healing/post combat potential.
Lightning Shield - Its a dispellable passive that prevents us from using Earth Shield. Would be nice to see a pvp talent that significantly increases this damage to make it actually punishing to train us.
Now that the wall of text is done, It’d be nice to see someone’s assessment from a high haste perspective.