Shamanistic Rage vs Astral Shift

I felt the recent loss of Shamanistic Rage from the enhancement shaman toolkit deserved its own post, so here I am. While it has been replaced with astral shift, i must say i am gutted. The ability is iconic of an enhancement shaman, and will be sorely missed. There are several aspects i'd like to discuss regarding the ability vs Astral shift. Firstly in terms of class / spec identity, astral shift simply cannot compete with thr idea of the shaman going berserk and fighting through the pain per se.

Secondly in terms of gameplay and class balance, im concerned at the trade off for sham rage with astral shift. Sham rage was particularly useful not because of its damage reduction potential (30%) but for its uptime of 15s and cooldown of 1 minute. The trade-off being a 9s loss of uptime, 30s cooldown increase, for a measly 10% more damage reduction. This of course means that we are more survivable to a single period of damage rather than a larger spectrum of damage intake.

Regardless of balance tuning for the defensive cooldown of enhancement shamans, it would be nice to keep our iconic ability, and have that tuned accordingly. I must say I am eager to find out if the dev team has some other plans for shamanistic rage, hence the removal. I'd like to hear everyone elses thoughts and opinions (including those blues, I know you're there). Anyway till next build, lets hope for the best.