#0 - Nov. 7, 2008, 9:23 a.m.
For 5 talent points:
Reduces the cooldown of your Chain Lightning spell by 2.5 sec, your Earth Shock's range is increased by 5 yards and the periodic damage done by your Flame Shock is increased by 50%.
As a tier 10 talent it provides a near 0 dps upgrade and next to 0 utility upgrades. Compared to every other caster tier 10 talents that range from at least 5% dmg increase + utility, 50% additional crit dmg, 15% higher dmg coefficient + utility, the elemental tier 10 offers no dmg increases:
Chain lightning is rarely used and never spammed in a dps setting, especially in early tiers of raiding where we don't have the mana to support its high mana cost. In an arena setting, it is never, ever spammed on cooldown because the mana cost is too high and it breaks CC. Earth Shock has mainly been set aside at this point in favor of Wind Shock, so an additional 5 yds as a tier 10 talent is near worthless. Since Wind Shock is our new main interrupt, Earth Shock will almost never be used as its much more important to focus shock a heal or CC (Earth Shock is also still on the GCD whereas Wind Shock is not). Obviously Earth Shock is nearly never used in pve, and 5 yds would not benefit it anyway. Flame shock's DoT component is so incredibly weak that 50% is not even noticeable. In any pvp situation it is only ever used to keep rogues from restealthing/bandaging, and now with lava burst, which consumes the dot effect negating this talent anyway unless glyphed. This tier 10 talent needs to offer some significant dps/utility boost, and does not.
There has also been a lot of talk of how elemental will be balanced around Lava Burst, which in pve is fine. In pvp however, having to use flame shock in conjunction with lava burst is almost never feasible. Wind Shock as our absolute main source of utility will take precedence every single time. It is just 1000x more important to interrupt that incoming 10k holy light or incoming CC. Maybe unlink flame shock from the shock cooldown as a solution?
