The impact of the lava burst proc nerf has had a pretty significant impact not only in damage but also in playstyle. To be succinct, it is a core component of our kit. As an example, the change has impacted the number of earthshocks one would get in an encounter due to the loss of maelstrom generation. It impacts mobility as it forces players to hard cast more often. It impacts master of elements talent as we are not getting the opportunity to weave lava bursts between the spells. This is due to lava burst being on cooldown more often. The doldrums have the unfortunate affect that when spec’d to focus on lava burst damage, lightning bolt can do more damage through a fight sequence. It should also be mentioned that even at a base haste of 35%, a player can go through a full flame shock cycle and not get a proc. So while the nerf seems small, the impact has been significant. If this was done to protect the benefit of a legendary that we receive later, then we are losing out in the entire leveling experience. It is also poor design to take something away only to sneak it back in later within the same expansion. Sign here if you would like to see this changed.
You know that Elemental is broken strong right now, right? Like, doing 1k more DPS than other ranged casters strong.
Seems to be the general trend of class design the past X years.
In the nicest way possible, data from pre-patch is irrelevant.
I am well aware of that. But, in the nicest way possible, that most likely means Elemental will stay unreasonably strong or balance out to normal numbers.
In the nicest way possible (lol), pre-patch numbers do not carry over in any way to what will be live in SL, as has been the case for pretty much every other pre-patch leading into an expansion. It takes very little to review current beta data, and its also very easy to see why elemental is doing well right now.
Still, nowhere in the ballpark of “1k over all other ranged.”
Elemental is pulling ahead right now because of Azerite Traits and Powers. Yes, those will be gone in Shadow Lands. Are you suggesting that there will be some other negative impact to Shaman DPS in the expansion, because that is the only scenario where Elemental Shaman DPS will equal out to be trash and worthy of complaining about a change to a power…
For review, the OP is in response to the lava surge nerf in SL, which you then seem to think is justified seeing as “elemental is broken strong” right now in the pre-patch.
The impact to Shaman DPS is in the form of early-expansion stat scaling, traits, available legendaries, cov abilities, soulbind passives and conduits, etc. I’m not telling you that Elemental will be trash first tier, - because I agree it likely won’t be for a change - but rather that utilizing pre-patch data that includes old systems as any indicator of what the first tier/season will look like is just not a sound argument.
Although it feels like they are trying to push us toward the elemental/FS playstyle with Skybreaker’s and the conduit, it still feels more necessary for me to use Windspeaker’s because I feel a void from the lava surge nerf. Windspeaker’s provides some QoL.
I actually have to hard cast lightning bolts now… rip fun
So it was feeling worse than 10% and 13% with Igneous Potential. I did a couple of tests of about 10 mins each on target dummies. It averaged around 7% without Igneous Potential and 8% with the trait. There was also never a proc following a proc which you would expect to happen at least somewhere. Never happened. Possibly they put an internal cd on the proc and over-nerfed it somehow. I’d like to see if anyone else can come up with similar results.
Lava Surge is at an 18% proc rate with azerite traits. Lava burst is our main damage spell. Now with Lava surge at 10% that is almost a 50% nerf to the trait imagine how garbage our damage will be. Our legendries are trash too compared to other classes.
They aren’t trash, but they definitely aren’t as interesting as some of the other legendaries that some classes got. Our conduits on the other hand, they’re the definition of trash.
If you would like to discuss damage stats in comparison to other classes, this was not the intention of the post. What I am speaking to specifically is how a singular change in the core our kit disrupts the playability of the class. By core, I mean functionally what has been the cornerstone playstyle since legion. If they were looking to have us play a different way, then it should have happened last month, not the week before launch. In my opinion this change along with the stormkeeper change are designed specifically to counter PVP globaling. The best case PVP global scenario as an example: LB Proc -> SK -> EchoS > 1st charge SK -> LB proc -> 2nd charge SK -> LB Proc -> ES. You can see how the LB proc rate drop and SK changes are designed to provide interrupt windows and lower over output.
they bottom out. THey’re bottom half dps
Don’t know if that is his main character, but yes Ele is going to be much worse off with this reduction in Lava Burst. Ele can work, its just going to be worse start off in SL, and the stigma early in expansion will start all over again. Enhance looking alright, was having far more fun in that since the changes.
I am not sure how anyone can really say things are going to get better with the LBurst spec when the core component of it is really not functioning. To me though, this is shades of 8.0 to 8.1. Are we going to have to wait a full minor version to be relevant?
Probably 
Agreed, the proc rate feels so much worse now… I’m so sad they didn’t just tune the damage numbers of things, but instead gutted the playstyle. Lava burst is whats so fun, nerfing the proc rate is by far the worst way they could have named it imo… I really, really hope they revert it, but they seem to be too stubborn to do so, and barely listen to the community. I have several friends who say they won’t even play Ele if this nerf isn’t reverted, so clearly it’s a big deal to some people (myself included). Please Blizzard, revert this change and nerf them in another way that does not affect the core gameplay.
Must have some bad range. Idk about beta but sham is lowest for range.
The worst part is Blizzard did listen on many things, perhaps the greatest being that Elemental Shamans (most of them, I was more indifferent) hated fulmination in favor of Maelstrom bar. Blizzard did something big and made the revert back to BFA Ele shaman and many gave Blizzard praise. The problem is then we see the step back with things like nerfing proc rates.
It simply is not fun and I do not know why this change was made. I think Sap should last half as long because lets be honest its the most unfun thing to sit in a sap for 20 seconds, but of course things like that will never see a change… Ele lava burst procs tho