Let me just preface this by saying that I recently decided to level a Dark Iron Dwarf from scratch to get the heritage armor and I decide to level as an Elemental Shaman. Because of the general Dark Iron aesthetic I wanted to focus more on the fire side of things, namely Lava Burst, and I was left scratching my head regarding its current state.
With the existence of the Lava Surge proc and the various ways of triggering it, especially the Primordial Surge talent, you almost never have to cast Lightning Bolt and when you do it’s more of a nuisance than anything else. In other words Lightning Bolt almost feels like an afterthought or some kind of a vestigial leftover from a bygone era of shamanism.
Since the Elemental talent tree is already mostly divided up into to a lighting (left) side and a fire (right) side why not just go all the way and make two separate and distinct builds out of it? The class fantasy of using all the elements is a fun one but it’s virtually nonexistent atm given the Lava Burst power creep. It almost feels like Lava Burst was intended to be the ST maelstrom spender rather than Earth Shock and for some reason that was changed but in a very half baked way which has lead to the current status quo.
Aside from that, frankly, the entire Elemental spec tree could use a major overhaul much like virtually every other spec tree that isn’t Evoker. I really hope they shake things up in TWW because the way talent trees launched in DF was abysmal across the board and very little has been done to address that over the course of this expansion.