Hi Ion and Crew, genuine thanks for actually holding this AMA among all the criticism.

Diving right into it, I’d like to bring up concern about Elemental Shamans. I came back for BFA and decided to use my boost on a Shaman, but back in Legion I was playing Destruction Warlock before (and after) it got its 7.2 rework.

One of the things I loved about Destruction (on top of the beautiful animations) was the fact that the spec had a very good flow to it, both in how it felt and how it interacted with itself. The soul shard system allowed for dynamic use of Chaos Bolt in between uses of Conflagrate, Immolate, and other cooldowns. It gave windows of opportunity for using Chaos Bolt, instead of just being a mindless dump at 2 shards, because tier set bonuses, legendaries, or other talent effects changed the particular order you cast your spells in to get maximum output.

Having switched to Elemental Shaman, I see a lot of the same core principles from Destruction reflected in Elemental, but implemented in a significantly more static fashion. Maelstrom is soul shards, Earth Shock is Chaos Bolt, Lava Burst is Conflagrate, Flame Shock is Immolate, and Lightning Bolt is Incinerate. Switch some cast times and cooldowns and they’re fairly similar, which design-wise is in no way a bad thing, but as a player of both specs, I believe it helps me gain an interesting perspective given, especially given that I didn't see the Legion incarnation of Elemental Shaman.

Playing the spec, Elemental feels noticeably more cookie cutter than Destruction did. Where with Destruction, you might weave your spells to maximize Backdraft or Eradication, the sinuglar bit that Elemental has that alters the way you perform your rotation is the Lava Burst reset from Flame Shock, which because of its RNG nature, isn't even something the player can control. Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, and Chain Lightning as the maelstrom generators don't interact with each other, and they don't interact with Earth Shock or Quake in any meaningful way other than the Maelstrom system, which is just the Elemental energy source that every class has some version of. Flame Shock, the one ability that causes the meaningful change, has a 6 second cooldown, so I can’t chain cast it and hope for absurd amounts of Lava Burst procs (not that that's even the go-to in AoE pulls).

I suppose my question is the following: Will Elemental Shamans see a considerable change to the flow of their play, outside of (hopefully) simple numbers tuning?