Lava Lash, Weapon Imbues and searing flames

[Omanley]

Hah! Not so much. Imbues lasted 5 minutes in vanilla.

5 minutes is much, much longer than 15 seconds (UE's cd), and long lasting is relative anyway. I draw the line at either 30s, or 1m maybe. Everything that lasts longer can be safely considered a buff instead of a dps ability.
And paladin blessings didn't last longer. It was inexperience on blizzard's part to have them on 5m on release, and it's inexperience now that they aren't yet simply passive, to reduce ability bloat.

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Unleash flamefrost/wind is not an active damage loss

It is to a degree. UE:WF gives a haste buff, and nothing benefits from haste more than our passive auto hit and imbue procs, so a buff to that haste proc means a buff to passive damage as well. UF:WF is also an unknown atm. The new version could be a passive boost as well (previous allowed auto hits to proc static shock), maybe even stronger than the last, who knows.

The uptime of searing flames was a lot higher as well, due to use of fire elemental 1 min / 3.5 mins uptime where it stacked to 5 a lot sooner

True, but it wasn't on 5 charges all the time, even during FET. It is still a buff to passive damage.

- on top of this LL's relatively low priority meant it often was being held.

On this part I'll take your word for it, as I haven't played for a while. But isn't LL highest prio after UE/FS and SS? Cant imagine it being held for long ever.

TL;DR Flametongue is not an overcompensation

FT will deal more damage than before, hence a buff. SF provided 40% increased FT damage while we had 5 charges, which was not the case all the time. FT now gets 40% increased damage baseline, hence it's a buff. Since the buff was aimed to compensate for the loss of SF, it is a overcompensation, since FT will deal more damage as it did before, simple as that.

So still, all in all our active damage is being increased to compensate the removal of passive damage sources.

The only passive source(singular) that was removed was Static Shock though (did I miss something?).

It's hard to say "wait till beta" when the only thing that will cause higher % passive change is the numbers changing from current. Ofcourse they will but, right now active is the way its going outside of our pet damage.

Pet damage counts as well though, they appear on your recount and are part of your dps chart pie. Storm Elemental Totem, Searing Totem, Feral Spirits, they all are passive damage and get recognicable buffs. Blizz may look at the passive/active distribution and decide on buffs/nerfs on either end to reach their goals. They may, for example, reach the conclusion that wf would be ok with 90% weapon damage, or that msw spells (esp EB) hit for to much with the new perk. Or that SS/LL provide to much burst with EotE and improved Lava Lash... to much uncertainty to reach conclusions now after the first look.
Obviously my POV isn't able to see as much dmg-source-wise, as I'm inactive, but even then, things are , as they love to say, subject to change.

[Raiju]

On this part I'll take your word for it, as I haven't played for a while. But isn't LL highest prio after UE/FS and SS? Cant imagine it being held for long ever.

UE/FS, SS, and LBx5

[Blithe]

I for one am glad they removed Searing Flames, it was way too clunky a mechanic. That being said, RB to me has always been a 'defensive' kind of mechanic like Defensive Stance, you switch to it if you feel you're going to be taking a lot of damage and then switch back, but it's also quite clunky being a weapon imbue where as it makes a hell of a lot more sense as a stance, or seal, etc. I feel the same as FB where its only real use is in a PvP scenario when you'd like to slow the class. I personally think we should just get FB as a passive, like how every other melee has their 'automatically applied' snare as a passive.

Unleash Elements and Unleashed Fury should be scrapped, too. They just don't feel right anymore, and haven't since early Mists (FB movement speed increase was the only effect I liked anyway), I wouldn't be surprised if they were replaced.