Elemental T10 4pc - The Good, The Bad, and...

Ok. I've spent a while doing some research and logic on the 4pc T9 bonus. This is both a summery of the last 2 days worth of discussion on this topic in about 9 different threads, as well as my own math and opinion on the subject.

For anyone living under a moon-crater-cave rock, here's the change:
In addition to lowering Lava Burst's cooldown, this bonus also no longer requires Flame Shock to be present in order for Lava Burst to be a guaranteed critical strike.

The Good Stuff
I should underline that despite what the alarmists would say, this change isn't an outright disaster. The good side:

• This corrects a potential problem with the bonus as it exists on live today. To be exact, it was possible (even likely) that you would actually get near-zero bonus from this talent due to it "clipping" the last tick of your flame shock. Since the timing is no longer so tricky to deal with, it means the set can provide close to its full potential bonus much more often.
  
• It is a small bonus for very ephemeral mobs (ie, those that will live <10 sec or so), since we can simply switch targets and immediately Lava Burst if it's off cooldown without needing to bother with Flame Shock first. For any mobs that live longer than that, this is negated by the fact Flame Shock is still our second best DPSC spell when allowed to tick a few times, so we'd cast it second anyway.

"But..."
Yes, there's a couple of those.

• First and foremost, this change has HUGE implications in PvP, moreso than the 4pc T9 did. This is both a good and bad thing - good for PvPers in a "rubbing hands together cackling with maniacal glee" sort of way, but also bad since a large percentage of PvPers would prefer not to have to get PvE sets for PvP (and a large number of their opponents would prefer not to have the above used against them). And, of course, we PvE types want to avoid the set being nerfed in the future because of PvP problems. From what the PvPers are talking about (mostly on AJ), it seems they're looking at using the 4pc in PvP becuse:
  
  
  • Obviously, more frequent LvBs - not a bad thing to start with, but not enough to use it on its own.
    
  • It allows immediate target swaps for burst combos without having to telegraph intentions with Flame Shock.
    
  • It removes Cleanse as a possible defense to Lava Burst, and in fact makes it harmful to cleanse flame shock since it has no real negative impact on the shaman, but still provides the bonus haste.
    
  • It frees up the shock cooldown to be used immediately after LvB, for instance allowing for a frost shock to further increase burst damage.
  
  
• Second, it really isn't that good a set bonus to begin with. Reducing the cooldown of lava burst is a good thing, but it's only so much of a good thing. Unlike this sort of change for a melee class that's mostly autoattacking and waiting for cooldowns, we're always in the middle of casting something - so in order for this bonus to have its full benefit, we have to ... well.. cast it. LvB isn't so much better than LB that we want to delay casts in order to squeeze more in - so even if it's a theoretical 1.5 sec reduction, it's actually not quite that since most of the time, we'll be in the middle of a cast when it comes off cooldown. (more on this in a bit)
  
• Using the 4pc effectively means casting more LvBs, but less LBs/CLs. As a result of this, the effectiveness of the 2pc T10 bonus is lessened. The effect is relatively small compared to the other problems, but it is, nonetheless, an overall hit to a set that wasn't spectacular to begin with.
  
• Even if it works now, it's still not something to get excited over. Getting the 4pcT10 doesn't feel like a real accomplishment, since it's only a small increase in DPS over not using it and just picking up off-set pieces. The bonus largely feels like more work for not much benefit, particularly when you glance over at some of the set bonuses for other classes.

Ok, so how bad is it?
It's a little mathy to explain how this all works, but basically, you can look at the effectiveness of a bonus as "how much spell power would I need to add in order to get the same bonus?"

I got into some numbers for how the other class' set bonuses would look if applied to us here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22418635065&sid=1&pageNo=3#41

One correction on the numbers there: Using a new method (I assume that we get full duration out of every FS, 2 LvBs, and average 9.556 LBs per rotation (yes, I know), I found that the set bonus could actually provide as much as 87 DEP using the same numbers.

However, this number is still a little more than half of the T9 4pc, and as you can see, as much as 1/4 of other class' T10 4pc bonuses in terms of DPS increase.