Why is it necessary for Flame Shock and Earth Shock to share a cooldown?

[Mahoraba]

There are odd claims, then there's this. Kind of hard to fathom how you arrived at that conclusion.

Hes half-right, Enhancement has had some significantly serious changes but Elemental has been horrible forever, much longer then just since Wrath.

[Omanley]

Looking at enh/general shaman improvements since wotlk:
-feral spirits separated spiritwalk (though wolves became uncontrollable and had their stun removed, and spiritwalk losing its movement imunity)
-totem nerf (not usable while silenced)
-throwable (talented) totems => almost useless, esp for enh. w/o cpt it would not have any justification at all to be taken
-totem cooldown refresher (talented), but only works on the short cooldown ones, which can be shortened even further with TR anyway (as well as the bigger ones)
-cpt and sbt => design failures
-purge => double nerfed => nerf lessened with glyph => glyph nerfed
-wind shear => cooldown increase (i know other interrupts as well, but we actually relied on 5-6 sec interrupts)
-gw: requires glyph and is meh even then. cant hold a candle to travel form in a hundred years
-still no gap closer, but at least we've got three "sprints" now. Ascendence pulls double duty as dps cd and has low uptime, like spiritwalk
-still meh survivability. our selfheal got better to say the least, but still no reset button like mages/rogues/pallies/hunters/shadows have them. there's to say not anyone has those, but not everyone is as easily drainable
-still no finisher
-enh still lowest uptime among pvp melees, but as long as there's measly damage shocks/UE, I guess we're fine *sacarsm*
-hex was the worst cc ingame, until they gave us cpt...(not counting bind elements, or that would be no.1)
-blizzards idea of imbues...huge dmg losses upon taking fb, which they expect to be taken ofc, just so players see some incentive to scramble for that little sprint from uf.
-AG is very good, I must admit.

Not gonna go and say blizz did nothing at all, but...basically enh is about popping cooldowns and draining people now, similar to how it was in wrath. Outside of our wrath wolves/mop ascendence, we're not to impressive in terms of dmg/burst, mostly because we're as easily controlalble as ever (acendence screams for cc). Our totems are even worse than they were in wotlk, with the only flip-side being that at least they made buffs into auras (thank god). Our cc is still horrible and we still lack many things that are widely avaiable on other, comparable specs, or in a much better designed fashion.

Many changes, yes. Few improvements though, with lots of nerfs and several liabilities design-wise. Had the urge to return to the game, but always reminded me that there's still so much to do on the class/spec. I just hope shaman is on of the classes getting an overhaul next x-pack. I dont care what's the x-pack's theme, wether it's about ponies or w/e, or rogues getting their next legendary or how many retarded new features they're gonna implement (pokémon? really?), so long as my enhance sees some love, I'd gladly return.

I can hardly remember what blizz did (positively) enh pvp-wise the last half year... something about feral spirits being unsnareable and sbt getting a slight buff...gotta tell you something of shaman development. Oh yes, they reduced spiritwalks cooldown. That was actually not to bad, reduced kited-time a little.

[Rafal]

I dunno I consider the interaction between flame shock and earth shock to be fun XP the only time its a real bother is when switching targets, but even then I think its fun.

Sometimes mechanics and game play are difficult for a reason, so making choices between one spell and another is interesting.

[Sodia]

Why not remove the initial damage and CD from FS ?? just for Elemental and make it close to bomkin Dots, enh can stey on the initial hit and 6 sec cd , more dots mor cryts from them more surge procs and i dont think this will have an impact in PvP .(optionaly they can incres the mana cost for elemental)

[oblivionx]

Overall the shared cooldown on shocks exists mostly because it always has at this point.

I guess their reasoning in vanilla was due to frost shock hitting like a truck, they didn't want access to the other instas while you kited. Frost shock was THAT overpowered in pvp back then; it hit hard and you can perpetually kite with it... so much so that they eventually added a Diminishing return to it for pvp. The big joke in vanilla was shamans having nothing but frost shock on their bar; jumpturn macros existed for it.

Come BC, well frost shock didn't hit all that hard and was just a snare for most part. Earth shock was used some, flame shock was still a anti-stealther tool. For the most part the "rotation" of a elemental shaman was LB until infinity, you didn't rotationally use shocks at all.

Now either in wrath or late BC they created wind shock from the interrupt they added to earth shock slightly before. This was unusable as it shared the cooldown with all other shocks. Mid wrath they made wind shear from wind shock. Also in wrath they put flameshock into our rotation with lava burst.

Come cata and they added fulmination and earth shock to our "rotation".

So the actual interference between shocks only really began in cata.

The interference or "choice that rewards pro play" (ie nonsense argument) was very late in wow.

Vanilla: frost shock was only thing you really used.
TBC: shocks were only used situationally and never rotationally.
Wrath: flame shock was forced into use and wind shock was made wind shear to eliminate the conflict.
Cata: earth shock was forced into use and the conflict between shocks rotationally began.
MOP: the conflict continues.

Really the only "issue" I have with it is why did they really have to add earth shock for fulmination. They could have just given us "fulmination".

Even so, I'm fairly certain that removing the shared shock cooldown would be pretty problematic for pvp as they currently stand. Mostly because frost shock is still extremely overpowered if it can be used every 6 seconds with the other shocks.

So in conclusion it was first frost shock that required the shared shock cooldown to exist, and likely still is. The interference between flame shock and earth shock only began in cata.

[Taalyn]

The shared CD isn't necessary but it also isn't unnecessary. I do see a fair reason for Frost Shock to be off the shared CD but FS and ES are fine. We don't need to multi dot, in fact no class needs to. When was the last your raid wiped to an enrage with all raid members alive and mechanics done flawlessly, but not enough players multi dotted?

[Volitar]

When was the last your raid wiped to an enrage with all raid members alive and mechanics done flawlessly, but not enough players multi dotted?

Ask Method that :P