Elemental Shamans may live to see 25-mans yet.. maybe.

[Iliessa]

Since I recently got my Elemental Shaman to 70 I decided that reading some forum posts about their new Lich King talents, and what they looked like to those who have been playing the Shaman class for years. I was heartbroken. I took to the Elitest Jerks forums hoping they would say something different, but the unanimous response across the board was "FIX ELEMENTAL SHAMANS!".

Admittedly balanced in solo settings (maybe even OP) and equaled in 5-mans, the Shaman doesn't seem to have any issues at first glance, but put them in a raid setting and they fall short every single time. They are the only caster DPS that does not have a scaling stat, such as their Intellect increasing their Spell Power. This means any gear upgrades only increase actual damage output by a fraction of what the other casters are getting. The other main concern is that the Shaman doesn't bring anything unique to the raid buff list, and most of their buffs are overwritten by other classes buffs. To put it simply, if you were to look at the list of buffs on the Elemental Shamans screen and compare that to the list of buffs on a Balance Druids screen, the Shamans buff list would be much shorter. This is what one beta tester had to say about the DPS comparison in early October:

Warlocks are doing 49.8% more DPS.
Mages are doing 42.7% more DPS
Balance Druids are doing 30.4% more DPS.
...
A Warlock player, for instance, would literally have to be AFK for 50% of the fight for a perfectly played Elemental Shaman to keep even.

For the full post regarding the above quote visit: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10960876099&sid=1

Although a GM never responded to that thread, they did finally respond to others like it. Ghostcrawler had this to say on November 5th:

[blizzard]We’d like to give Elemental either a talent that converts Int to spell power or gives a better spell power to damage conversion (or both). We just don’t know yet if we’ll do this through existing talents or new talents. I’ll announce it when we know. [/blizzard]
A link to the above post: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12065284043&sid=1&pageNo=16#301

And on November 7th from the same person:
[blizzard]We think Storm, Earth and Fire is a good candidate for getting in some of the extra dps or scaling in to Elemental that I have mentioned a couple of times. [/blizzard]
Link: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/12454616191-elemental-tier-10-worthless-lava-burst.html

So if anyone else out there has an Elemental Shaman and was concerned about this DPS issue, at least we know that the matter is being looked in to. I didn't finally hit 70 on my favorite toon just to find out that the expansion coming out 1 week later was going to make her full of fail. I do that well enough on my own. 

If you had not read the wall of text that was the first link I posted here, then this fun fact may either amuse you, or make you cry....

Quite a while back, I was playing a young Horde on Tichondrius (PvP) when I went into Orgrimmar and found a pile of dead Shamans at the base of the flight tower, and more were flinging themselves to their deaths in a steady stream. They were protesting, among other things, the lack of CC in the shaman spellbook. They had been begging for a CC for 2 years or longer. It is the main reason why Shaman get turned down from joining 5 mans for the daily heroics. It took these Shamans approximately 15 minutes - after I showed up - to crash the entire server.

Blizzards response?
Shaman get a spell called 'Hex' as their CC. According to what I read on these forums (which may have changed by now, but I doubt it) the spell Hex has a cast time, a 45 second cool down, and is not only dispellable but for you pvpers out there.. it is also trinketable.

[Geos]

Elemental shamans dont fall short dps wise, players do! My ele sham is capable of 1500 dps in his badge gear! I don't need another of my toons getting way OP and me starting to like it than taking a nerf bat to the face AGAIN!

[Nasanna]

This is the great thing about WOLK. Blizz seems intent on balancing all specs to have similar dps, bring similar buffs, give all dps some kind of CC, and make all trees somewhat pvp viable. Good to see these changes Thanks for the update!

As for hex, all CCs should be trinketable. And it sounds like hex will be similar to a hunter trap- the spell lasts for a minute (or whatever) and has a 45s cooldown. Just hopefully it doesn't get resisted...

[Iliessa]

Elemental shamans dont fall short dps wise, players do! My ele sham is capable of 1500 dps in his badge gear! I don't need another of my toons getting way OP and me starting to like it than taking a nerf bat to the face AGAIN!

Yes, Geos we all know you are the ultimate Lord of All Things.    <3

But seriously, I just wanted to clarify that the information about the Elemental Shaman DPS in my original post was taken from Beta tests at level 80 in raid appropriate gear - on par with the others in the group, not the current level 70 Shamans in badge, or any other raid gear. The DPS hit does not appear to be noticeable when soloing or in small raids - even 10 mans are passable. It doesn't take it's toll until you are level 80 and in a raid group of 25 people. I do 100% agree with you, though, player ability has a LOT to do with DPS.

Fortunately it looks like Blizz has admitted this is an issue and is thinking about correcting it. That's a step in the right direction.

Also, I have been reading more about Hex and it doesn't sound as bad as it first did. At least, not when you take the other CCs into consideration. I agree with Nasanna that it should be trinketable like the other CCs are. That's only fair. I think the 45 second cooldown is a little long, though, at least for PvE. If they dropped the cast time from 1.5 seconds to .5 like polymorph, and maybe just a 30 second cooldown like hunter traps I think I would stop seeing all the Hex hater threads on the Shaman forums. What's so awesome about it is that unlike polymorph, the victim does not regain their hp while shifted, and damage does not break it. That itself is full of win.

EDIT: I was slightly misinformed. Found out that damage has a chance of breaking Hex, just like a warlocks fear.

[Tolwen]

Can druids in forms be hexxed?

[fiere redfern]

As far as I can tell, we druids will be immune to Hex in the way that we are to the mage's Polymorph, since it'd turn us into a frog instead of simply freezing us like a hunter trap would.

[Iliessa]

[blizzard]We are making some upcoming changes to the Elemental shaman tree. Our goal was to streamline a few of the utility-based talents while giving shamans a little more damage scaling in later tiers of gear.

    * 1) Unrelenting Storm â€" reduced from 5 points to 3 points. Bonus is 4/8/12% of your Intellect returned as mana.
    * 2) Elemental Warding â€" now reduces all damage (not just Nature, Fire and Frost) taken by 2/4/6%
    * 3) Elemental Shields â€" this talent has been removed, since its effects were combined with Elemental Warding.
    * 4) Storm, Earth and Fire â€" reduced from 5 points to 3 points, but keeps around the same net benefit. In addition to current effects, also increases Wind Shock range. The damage bonus to Flame Shock has increased to 60% at 3 ranks. Storm, Earth and Fire has been moved up the tree as well.
    * 5) Shamanism â€" this is a new 5 point talent in the old Storm, Earth and Fire position. Your Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst gain an additional percentage of your bonus damage. We have not finalized the numbers, but it will probably be something like 10% for Lightning Bolt and 20% for Lava Burst at max ranks.

These changes will be available in the next minor content patch, and are in addition to the AE changes mentioned previously. [/blizzard]

And this is my happy face --->