I wanted to post this the the SoD PTR forum, but one was never put up…
The Tier 2 Elemental 2-set and 6-set work in concert. The first makes Clearcasting Procs occur more often, while the second turns them into a damage gain. Here’s the bizarre part though. The 6-set increases the damage of the spell that consumes the proc by 30% against NPCs, but only 5% against players.
So, what’s the issue? Well, there are several.
First, no other ability that I can think of in SoD uses different damage values for PVE and PVP (there probably is some weird example I’m not aware of). In fact, it’s something that has specifically been avoided. Different CC durations, sure, but not damage. It’s odd to add this one exception.
Second, providing a much lower value for PVP expressly acknowledges that powerful burst damage is one of Ele shaman’s biggest strengths in PVP. But a lesser value doesn’t fix that problem, just reduces it.
I must ask, why even make this the bonus? I don’t PVP unless I’m very strongly compelled to do so for PVE rewards, so I don’t have much experience to judge PVP strength from. I take the complaints I see about Shaman being OP in PVP with a grain of salt, mostly because they are insanely vague and refer to all shaman as one large amalgam; healing, bashing and zapping all at once, as if there was some secret way to be a restohancemental. But, for the sake of this post, I will assume that Elemental shaman are over-tuned in PVP.
With that assumption made, you have a spec that is very strong in PVP but incredibly weak in PVE. Elemental shaman are insanely weak single target damage. The only specs below them being Demonology, Arcane and Arms. Those classes can all play alternative specs while wearing the same gear and fulfilling the same role, performing much better as a result. Ele cannot. Balance and Shadow are both slightly above Ele, and suffer similarly. Both of them have have been buffed on the PTR, only by small amounts though.
The solution seems fairly straightforward. Give Ele something that will boost their damage in PVE with little, to no, benefit in PVP. I know that people on these forums often say “just do A”, not appreciating that A is much trickier to balance than they realize, or that it will have ripple effects. This problem really is that simple though. It’s just a matter of Ramp.
Provide some effect that has to be built up during combat but cannot be saved for future use. There are many ways to do this. A very simple example:
“Your lightning bolt and lava burst casts increase the damage your target takes from those spells by X% for Y seconds, stacking up to Z times.”
Do some testing to find a good balance of stack strength versus maximum stacks to ensure ramping isn’t too fast or slow. Make the duration long enough for it not to fall off during normal single target rotations, but short enough that it would fall in PVP if the shaman is kiting, healing, etc. Optionally, you could also only allow this to effect 1 target at a time.
Beyond Elemental Shaman, I would like to add that all casters are struggling to keep up on single target damage. Physical have started out ahead, and are scaling harder. The introduction of the ZG buff will only make this problem worse. It is a notable gain for Physical dps, but does almost nothing for Casters.