Elemental Shaman has been an incredibly fun spec during WOTLK up to this point, despite its consistent middle-of-the-pack performance. This has drastically changed in ICC, and one of the primary factors is the frequency with which the Elemental Mastery cooldown makes us hit the GCD cap when stacked with any other haste buff. In practice, using EM with other haste buffs active at current gear levels results in somewhere between a 0-5% haste increase, instead of the intended 15%. This is a problem for a few reasons:
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Most specs are able to stack their DPS cooldowns with other major haste buffs (Bloodlust, Engi gloves, etc). Pressing major cooldowns during lust is fun! Avenging Wrath, Berserk, Summon Gargoyle, etc. all feel great to press during lust. But if Elemental Mastery is stacked with these cooldowns, it often adds less damage than if we waited until lust was over.
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Our Tier-10 set bonus centers around using EM as soon as possible to start benefiting from from the cooldown reduction. This creates a frustrating interaction: you want to hit EM as soon as it becomes available, but waiting until Bloodlust ends might provide more damage due to the GCD cap.
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The ease with which we hit the GCD cap is a major ceiling for our damage. We’ve effectively stopped scaling with Haste, and already get no benefit from Crit on Lava Burst and Fire Elemental Totem. We have fallen from middle-of-the-pack to nearly last place on damage, which has caused even 99-parsing Ele Shamans to have difficulty getting invites to raids.
This problem could be partially addressed by updating Glyph of Elemental Mastery to (in addition to its current effect) also reduce the GCD cap to 0.75 seconds during the duration of the buff.
As with all Ele shaman changes, we know it’s important to consider PvP impact, as the spec is already strong and well represented in 3v3 and 5v5. This suggestion would have little to no impact in PvP, as it doesn’t make the Glyph strong enough to be a guaranteed pick in that setting. If it were picked, it would come at the cost of our defensive options, Glyph of Thunder of Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem. There would only be any PvP impact when either Bloodlust or Lava Flows are active in addition to EM, and only while this Glyph was slotted. In addition, all 3 of these buffs are purgeable. These factors combined should make a minimal impact on PvP.
This change would begin to solve the issues noted above and would be a quality of life improvement for the spec. The numerical impact would be very moderate (roughly 350 DPS, or 2.3%, based on our sim), and there is ample precedent for something like this with the changes to Feral and Ret. In fact, both the Feral and Ret changes had a much larger impact than this would, and they are in the top 1/3rd of damage specs currently.
There is also some technical precedent for a buff of this kind in the Priest T1 set: https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/spell=21973/prophecy-flash-heal-bonus
Some alternative buffs we’ve considered asking for are:
- Glyph of Elemental Mastery adds the 15% Fire, Frost, and Nature damage bonus that it provides in Cataclysm.
- This would be a slightly larger damage buff (roughly 430 DPS, or 2.8%), but also makes the Glyph more attractive in PvP. If we went this route, we’d expect that the damage bonus have no effect in PvP, the same as the Glyphs added to Retribution and Feral.
- Glyph of Lightning Bolt gives 10% instead of 4% damage
- This would be roughly 600 DPS, or 3.9%, buff in PvE, and would set up Glyph of Lightning Bolt to be on par with other primary-filler Glyphs in Cataclysm like Glyph of Mind Flay and Glyph of Wrath.
- Glyph of Ghost Wolf allows Ghost Wolf to be used indoors
- This is purely a QoL buff. Ele Shaman has the least mobility options of any caster in Wrath. Blink, Demonic Circle, Cat Form+Dash give large on-demand mobility, while Shadow Priest has many instant GCDs, including spammable Imp. Devouring Plague, to cast while moving. Ele Shaman has none of that; we can cast one Frost Shock, and after that we have nothing to cast for 3 seconds if we must keep moving. This also has close to zero impact on PvP as Ghost Wolf is already usable in all Arenas and most Battleground areas.
I’d like to note that even if all of these buffs were implemented, we’d still be well below the damage of specs like Feral, Unholy, Fire Mage, and Affliction.
