[Suggestion] An Overhaul for Elemental Shaman

[Deleted]

Hello everyone.

I'm a long-time EleShaman player who has gotten a bit fed up with the spec lately, I want to clarify that this post is not rant or at least that's not my intention. My goal here is to showcase the weak points of Elemental Shaman and suggest some improvements for the next expansion.
Yes, you are right if you guessed the reason behind is Mythic ToS, because that raid has been merciless with Elemental since it just displayed the many flaws of this spec to their full extent.

Despite the release of Antorus and the new hopes for Elemental Shaman to be on-par with the rest of the DPS (though it will be just damage-wise), the expansion announcement got me really hyped and has drawn all of my attention. I can't help but continuously think about what I would like to see implemented for our beloved spec, since a part of me just can't accept that this spec is complete and polished as it is. That being said, here is my bit of insight:

Most of us who play Elemental Shaman, still play it simply because at some point we fell in love with the class and this spec in particular, not because it is the flavor of the month or a must-have in a raid roster. The animations, the visual effects, the lore and background that is behind it, totems and elementals... all of that is just awesome and I have to admit that still to this day I can't get tired of seeing my foes fall victim to my lightning spells and bolts of lava.

But when it comes to competitive raiding, awesomeness is not enough of a reason to have a spot in your raid. When your raid leader has to set up a roster for the next boss he will ask himself the following questions regarding DPS spots:

• How much damage is that spec able to do?
• What does it bring besides DPS?
• How good is this spec's survivability?
• Can I ask him to deal with a particular mechanic and still be able to provide good DPS?

Those are probably the first 4 questions that will come to his mind and the main criteria he will follow to set up the raid.

Regarding the first question, Elemental Shaman has a problem since he is not designed to excel at single target damage. Instead, Elemental's Shaman niche situation is AoE-Cleave, our powerful Chain Lightning and Earthquake serve this purpose. The issue here is that this niche happens to be an already crowded one. Warriors, Demon Hunters, Death Knights, Fire and Arcane Mages among others also have an outstanding and bursty Cleave damage that competes with Elemental's.

So why not to bring a dps that excels on a more distinct and unique situation? Like 2 target bosses (perfect for Destro and Frost Mage), multidoting on spread targets (Shadow Priest and Balance Druid, Elemental just pales so much in comparison), execute-heavy bosses (Warriors, Shadow Priests, MM Hunters). All of this in order to have a more balanced set up which can deal with every possible situation that could come up.

The worst thing is, aoe-heavy bosses tend to be amongst the first 2/3rds of a raid. And these bosses are generally way easier than the last ones. So bringing a perfect DPS to one of this fights is not so important because that boss won't take many attempts anyway.

That being said, simulations are showing that Elemental Shaman will be in the upper-half of the charts and will do a good amount of damage on single target. The thing is this simulations are run using a Patchwerk-style combat, where there's no movement to take into account or mechanics to care about.

So the next point is talking about Elemental's mobility. To get this clear and short, I'll just say that Elemental Shaman is a fat-ass turret. Besides Demon Warlock, I have not seen a ranged DPS suffer so much when movement is required. This is probably his biggest and most frustrating flaw, and I understand not all specs should have the same facilities but it just feels unfair to have your DPS so penalized when you have to move while other casters are able to keep up.
The main reason behind this issue is because other ranged dps have more tools to cope with movement: either with better and faster skills (blink, disengage, demonic circle) or most importantly because they are able to hold resources, like procs or charges to use them on demand, exactly when they need it and not hurting their dps when doing so.

To illustrate this let's do a comparison with Balance Druid, a spec that shares a lot in common with us since we are both hybrids and while that word doesn't mean much nowadays in WoW, that spec is still a good mirror we should look ourselves at (it also happens to be my main in Legion, so I know how it works).

The biggest advantage Balance's rotation offers is that you have more control of your Astral Power and you can't even spend it all in one spell, in contrast with Earth Shock, Starsurge only spends 40 Astral power, and that allows you to sit at 80 Astral power all the time so when you have to move you have 2 instant spells to cast on demand, even more with t20 or legendary helm. He also has 2 dots to maintain, so that's 2 more instants he can choose when to refresh (during the last 30% of the duration of course) and doesn't have to pay any attention to something like Elemental Focus that wouldn't allow him to spam the dot if it was necessary.

On top of that he can choose a talent that lets him cast on the move where he placed a Starfall for its whole duration. It is so strong and convenient that Balance Druids pick that talent for single target eventhough it's an AoE talent. The thing is, if you pair this with the legendary bracers that grants him free Starfall procs and allows him to have 6 tier pieces, turns out this spec is almost unaffected by movement and has so much freedom to cast on the move it results in a DPS gain when comparing to other more unforgiving and complex builds.

Now our Elemental Shaman isn't able to hold Lava Surge procs for so long because it's a great dps loss and can't choose when is that instant available, and as I said Earth Shock consumes all Maelstrom, leaving you nothing to do once you've casted it. The only talent that gives some freedom to Shaman on the move is Icefury, which I like a lot and inspired me for some of the changes I have in mind and I'll write below.

Regarding that second question we mentioned before "What does it bring besides DPS?". Well, that's a tough one to answer for an Elemental Shaman, we don't really bring any utility that is particularly good or exclusive to our raid.
Lightning Surge Totem? sure it's good, but AoE stuns are really common among DPS and in most bosses is not even usable.
Thunderstorm's knockback? Well that's rarely useful, and Typhoon or Ursol's Vortex gets the job done quite better, so nothing special about Thunderstorm.
Earthbind Totem? Don't make me laugh.
Wind Rush Totem? I must admit this one is actually useful, but just like Thunderstorm, this spell is overshadowed by Stampeding Roar.
Ancestral Guidance? It was incredibly powerful during Mists of Pandaria, when being hybrid actually meant something. Right now a couple of items with Leech will do more healing than this talent.

As we can see none of these spells provide a significant boost to our raid, and pale at the sight of immunities from other classes, raid-cooldowns like Darkness and Commanding Shout or useful tools like Demonic Gateway or Innervate.
On top of that, our most useful cooldowns are also accesible for the other specializations of Shaman, so why bring an Elemental Shaman if our Resto Shaman is already giving us the same and even more?

Now it's time for the question: "How good is this spec's survivability?". I think this is the last nail in the coffin for Elemental Shaman, other ranged DPS have some kind of noticeable passive healing, passive damage reduction, or more survivability via talents; some of them even have immunities and each raid we can confirm how important those are to cheese mechanics and eventually kill the boss.

So why should I bring a spec that is less likely to survive than others and can't reliably soak damage? And we should mention too that the less mobile you are, the more chances you have to die to avoidable damage.

And finally the fourth question, "Can I ask him to deal with a particular mechanic and still be able to provide good DPS?" is easily answered. As a result of the 3 first points, let's just face it, we cannot be assigned to deal with particular mechanics, simply because we don't have the tools to do it in an efficient way.


Now that all the problems have been showcased I'll start with the ideas and the overhaul I have in mind for Elemental Shaman:


First of all I have to say didn't like the philosophy behind WoD and Legion general changes for classes. The idea was to prune many of the abilities and passives the classes had in order to achieve more uniqueness or class indentity. As a result what happened is that our classes got "dumbed down", they were left with so little abilities and passives that the playstyle was way simpler and even boring. They did this too because they wanted to leave some room for new abilities to be added in the next expansions so now it's time for them to deliver.

This are my changes:

Elemental Blast is now a baseline ability.
This talent has been our main choice for a good part of the expansion, now when I don't pick it I find that our rotation is lacking something, pressing lightning bolt (LB) for days waiting for a Lava Surge to proc feels boring and monotonuous. I really like the depth this cooldown adds to the rotation and of course how awesome it looks.

Lava Burst now has 2 charges and Lava Surge procs grant 1 charge.
BM hunters got a second charge of Dire Beast mid-expansion because of how smooth the spec felt with it (before that change you could only have this second charge if you got the legendary shoulders), this sets a precedent and I think it's very likely we are going to see this change in BfA. Because let's face it, this QoL change feels mandatory.

Gust of Wind is now a baseline ability and no longer shares a global cooldown.

Ascendance is now a baseline ability. Imo this ability is way too cool to have it gated behind talents, it should be baseline as it was during previous expansions.


New passive: Frost-Bound Power. Every 8 seconds gain a charge of Frost-Bound Power, making the next Frost Shock cost no maelstrom and deal 250% increased damage. Maximum of 5 charges.
I think a passive like this is a must in Elemental Shaman, because it would help tremendously the lack of options this spec has when it comes to deal damage on the move. With this you can effectively hold some charges to use them exactly when you need them. Also with this we get to see some Frost spells in our rotation by default, I find it funny to be a Master of the Elements but then only use lightning and fire to deal damage.


New spell: Lightning Rod Totem (LRT). No CD, 40 yd range. Summon a Lightning Rod Totem that is atackable only by you. Any damage done to the LRT will be absorbed and it is immune to harmful effects. Damaging the LRT with a single-target spell will grant you a Lightning Shield, giving 20% damage reduction to the next source of damage.

First of all, this is not a Prismatic Crystal or a Soul Effigy (An attackable target that stores damage and theN releases it). LRT serves the next purposes:

-It's an attackable target during boss intermissions so you can keep building maelstrom and don't lose temporary buffs.
-It works as a link for Chain Lightning to hit moderately spread targets that wouldn't be hit otherwise.
-It gives a Lightning Shield. Reducing 20% of the damage from the next attack done to you, so it's a good tool if you expect to have a big spike of damage soon, and not so great if you are affected by a DoT effect because ANY source of damage will consume the Lightning Shield.

Also worth noting that LRT is immune to harmful effects, meaning you can't use Flame Shock and expect to get Lava Surge procs from it. I understand if this spell doesn't appeal you, or seems underwhelming for now, let me tell you that you can enhance it via talents that will give it much more flavor and depth:

_________________________________________________ TALENTS ________________________________________________


TIER 15 Blessing of Smolderon / Blessing of Thundaraan / Blessing of Ahune

• Blessing of Smolderon: Lava Burst now extends the duration of Flame Shock by 2 seconds and spreads it to a nearby target. If there are 3 or more targets affected by Flame Shock its periodic damage always critically strikes.

• Blessing of Thundaraan: Casting an Earth Shock beyond 75 Maelstrom grants you Blessing of Thundaraan, for the next 5 seconds you are surrounded by a tornado that increases your movement speed by 30% and allows you to cast Lightning Bolt on the move.

• Blessing of Ahune: Your frost damage spells give you a shield equal to 30% of the damage done.

__________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________

TIER 30 Wind Rush Totem / Call the Thunder / Might of the Frostwolves

• Wind Rush Totem: Exactly as in Live servers.

• Call the Thunder: Reduces the cooldown of Thunderstorm by 15 seconds and no longer deals damage. If your Lightning Rod Totem is active when you cast Thunderstorm, you are teleported to Lightning Rod Totem's location.

• Might of the Frostwolves: Ghost Wholf grants an additional 20% movement speed and any damage you suffer when Ghost Wolf is active will grant you a stack of Frost-Bound Power. This effect has a 1.5 second cooldown.

__________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________

TIER 45 Electric Discharge / Enthralling Currents / Static Overload

• Electric Discharge: *Only usable when overcharged. Once your Lightning Rod Totem has absorbed X amount of damage it is considered overcharged* Detonate your Lightning Rod Totem to stun nearby enemies for 5 seconds. Relocating the totem will reset all the damage aborbed.

• Enthralling Currents: While standing next to your Lightning Rod Totem harmful spells that target you are redirected to your Lightning Rod Totem. This can only occur once every 20 seconds.

• Static Overload: All party and raid members now are able to attack your Lightning Rod Totem. They can only get one charge of Lightning Shield every 90 seconds.

__________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________

TIER 60 Aftershock / Chaining the Elements / Elemental Fusion

• Aftershock: Your spells refund 25% of the Maelstrom you spend on them. They have a 10% chance to return the full cost.

• Chaining the Elements: When you succesfully cast 3 spells from different schools in a row you gain a stack of Master of the Elements, increasing your Elemental damage by 3% for the next 15 seconds. This effect stacks up to 5 times.

• Elemental Fusion: Flame Shock periodic damage now generates 3 Maelstrom and every time it deals damage the cooldown of your Fire Elemental is reduced by 2 seconds.

__________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________

TIER 75 Lava Imbued / Icefury / Elemental Mastery

• Lava Imbued: Increase the damage of Lava Burst by 10%. Lava Burst now has 3 charges and you can hold up to 2 charges of Lava Surge.

• Icefury: Hurls frigid ice at the target, dealing X amount of frost damage and granting you 4 charges of Frost-Bound Power.

• Elemental Mastery: Exactly as it is on Live servers.

__________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________

TIER 90 Incorporeal / Unheed the Call / Grasp of the Earth

• Incorporeal: Doubles the effectiveness of Astral Shift for area-of-effect attacks.

• Unheed the Call: You can no longer use Reincarnation. Increases your maximum health by 10% and reduces all damage taken by 10%.

• Grasp of the Earth: (A hand spawns from the ground, like those from Kromog and Kromrok) Roots the shaman to the ground for the next 6 seconds, reducing all damage taken by 70%. While rooted the shaman is immune to knock-back effects. 3 min CD.

__________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________

TIER 105 Stormkeeper / Trembling Grounds / Storm Elemental

• Stormkeeper: Raise your weapon to the sky. Your next 3 casts of Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning will be instant and will deal 100% increased damage.

• Trembling Grounds: Earthquake now consumes up to 100 maelstrom, increasing its damage and frequency of knock-downs. Earthquake radius is increased by 30%.

• Storm Elemental: Calls forth a Storm Elemental that creates a vortex around him. Enemies inside the vortex are dragged into your Storm Elemental and will recieve heavy nature damage. While Storm Elemental is active you lose 15 Maelstrom every second and lasts until your Maelstrom reaches 0. 5 min CD. 30yd range.

__________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________

TIER 120 Primal Elementalist / Echo of the Elements / High Ascension

• Primal Elementalist: As it is on Live servers.

• Echo of the Elements: Reduces the cooldown of Elemental Blast by 2 seconds and it has an additional chance to cause Elemental Overload.

• High Ascension: During Ascendance your Flame Shock deals damage 100% faster. Every 10 Maelstrom you spend during Ascendance extends its duration by 0.25 seconds. Lava Beam can now benefit from Lava Surge procs.

[jallfo]

Hey bud still reading through all of this. Just wanted to say it’s always awesome seeing someone so passionate about this stuff. Lots of fun ideas here.

[Deleted]

shamans having bad survivability is my favorite meme

[Tiev]

I can't say that I'm an expert on shamans so I won't pretend to keep up with the changes and all that you mentioned. However, this seems very well thought out so I hope people read and discuss this.

[Cyanu]

your suggestion about the Frost-bound Power system is AWESOME and congrats for coming up with it (as an off-topic i also feel that enha could use some extra water/frost spells and both specs even more so on the utility department), i truly hope this will be implemented

i'm a bit skeptical about the lightning-rod totem though, might feel a bit too clunky to have to constantly manage it for dps/mobility/survivability reasons + it must be a bit of a targeting nightmare tbh, would probably need ~3 extra macros (and keybinds) just to manage it

personally i would like to see Chain Lightning reworked, it feels very odd to me that this spell has no CD, imo it should see a considerable damage and CD increase while becoming an instant, maybe even it could cost maelstrom instead of generate it least it becomes too good

[Deleted]

It can be seen that you put a lot of thought into your suggestions and the problems you see with elemental shaman are spot on. However even if you have a few good ideas, there are some which are simply clunky as hell and there are a lot with which you are overcompensating too much.
I'll try to go through most of them in order to give you feedback. I'll bundle some according to the way you presented tem and some which just belong together:

Mobility: yes we are missing some mobility, but let's put everything here you want to give shaman. Gust of wind baseline, an icefury mechanic which is decoupled from a cast AND maelstrom, short term lightning bolt on the move with relatively little preparation, EotE Baseline, a teleport OR raid speed utility. Adding the Frost shock mechanic alone would give us something to do while on the move and ensure our dmg does not fall off completely. I also like the ghostwolf gives stacks idea as that would make going into ghostwolf less punishing. Everything else is way over the top.

Making abilities baseline I agree with a lot of these, especially playing without EotE and Eleblast feels clunky. Ascendance does not need to be baseline in my opinion but ok that's subjective. Of course damage balancing would need to be done if we get so much baseline stuff.

Lightning Rod Totem No, just no. Nearly everything concerning this would make playing clunky as hell. Needing to damage it for your stun? And i thought the rampup of lightning rod was bad. Having to damage it to gain defensive? May need a rather annoying setup depending on boss abilities. Making it Grounding totem while you are next to it? Just give us Grounding back and make it only affect us instead us having to either relocate ourselves our the totem all the time. While on the subject i really really hated relocating totems and would not like to see that make a comeback. Teleportation? That's just the monk/wl ability...don't know why shaman would need that. Other classes being able to hit it? Even not taking into account that the whole raid would get a 20% dmg reduce every minute which would blow priest pala and resto shaman's dmg cds out of the water, you really want to open pandoras box for classes which gain single target damage from cleaving? Depending on the setup, this will net the raid ridiculous amounts of damage.

Survivability This is the area which I see shaman most lacking in. It's ok to be turret if the damage is there(which seems to be the case this patch), but also being a glass cannon at the same time leads to elemental shamans sit out on many of the harder bosses. I honestly like the choices you present in your Tier 90 talents. You can choose if a passive dmg reduction a stronger cd or a second cd fits your needs for the boss best. I especially like the ankh replacement as it has always baffled me that ankh is supposed to be part of our survival kit but does not reset after a pull as other cds do. Just cut the 20% from the lightning rod thing as that would also be overkill together with the shield from ice spells.

Random talents I have something to say about which is not yet mentioned I really like Changing the Elements. Although it might complicate the rota I also never understood why the different elements where so underrepresented in the elemental shaman. I also really like the idea of elemental combos of some kind where you use spells together to achieve an effect (e.g. Chain lightning setting guys on fire if you target a mob with flameshock instead of lavaburst, as you loose too mich maelstrom/ae damage otherwise; or cl building up a charge which you can then funnel through a single mob with earth shock by "grounding" him, stuff like at)
Most of the other stuff looks solid, some would need tuning of course(the ascendance duration prolonging sounds really op in an ae situation like mythic+)

All in all some solid ideas, a lot of overcompensating where 1-2 out of 4-6 added/ changed abilities would suffice. Just scrap the lightning rod totem, nearly everything concerning that sounds horrible.

[Deleted]

It can be seen that you put a lot of thought into your suggestions and the problems you see with elemental shaman are spot on. However even if you have a few good ideas, there are some which are simply clunky as hell and there are a lot with which you are overcompensating too much.
I'll try to go through most of them in order to give you feedback. I'll bundle some according to the way you presented tem and some which just belong together:

Mobility: yes we are missing some mobility, but let's put everything here you want to give shaman. Gust of wind baseline, an icefury mechanic which is decoupled from a cast AND maelstrom, short term lightning bolt on the move with relatively little preparation, EotE Baseline, a teleport OR raid speed utility. Adding the Frost shock mechanic alone would give us something to do while on the move and ensure our dmg does not fall off completely. I also like the ghostwolf gives stacks idea as that would make going into ghostwolf less punishing. Everything else is way over the top.

Making abilities baseline I agree with a lot of these, especially playing without EotE and Eleblast feels clunky. Ascendance does not need to be baseline in my opinion but ok that's subjective. Of course damage balancing would need to be done if we get so much baseline stuff.

Lightning Rod Totem No, just no. Nearly everything concerning this would make playing clunky as hell. Needing to damage it for your stun? And i thought the rampup of lightning rod was bad. Having to damage it to gain defensive? May need a rather annoying setup depending on boss abilities. Making it Grounding totem while you are next to it? Just give us Grounding back and make it only affect us instead us having to either relocate ourselves our the totem all the time. While on the subject i really really hated relocating totems and would not like to see that make a comeback. Teleportation? That's just the monk/wl ability...don't know why shaman would need that. Other classes being able to hit it? Even not taking into account that the whole raid would get a 20% dmg reduce every minute which would blow priest pala and resto shaman's dmg cds out of the water, you really want to open pandoras box for classes which gain single target damage from cleaving? Depending on the setup, this will net the raid ridiculous amounts of damage.

Survivability This is the area which I see shaman most lacking in. It's ok to be turret if the damage is there(which seems to be the case this patch), but also being a glass cannon at the same time leads to elemental shamans sit out on many of the harder bosses. I honestly like the choices you present in your Tier 90 talents. You can choose if a passive dmg reduction a stronger cd or a second cd fits your needs for the boss best. I especially like the ankh replacement as it has always baffled me that ankh is supposed to be part of our survival kit but does not reset after a pull as other cds do. Just cut the 20% from the lightning rod thing as that would also be overkill together with the shield from ice spells.

Random talents I have something to say about which is not yet mentioned I really like Changing the Elements. Although it might complicate the rota I also never understood why the different elements where so underrepresented in the elemental shaman. I also really like the idea of elemental combos of some kind where you use spells together to achieve an effect (e.g. Chain lightning setting guys on fire if you target a mob with flameshock instead of lavaburst, as you loose too mich maelstrom/ae damage otherwise; or cl building up a charge which you can then funnel through a single mob with earth shock by "grounding" him, stuff like at)
Most of the other stuff looks solid, some would need tuning of course(the ascendance duration prolonging sounds really op in an ae situation like mythic+)

All in all some solid ideas, a lot of overcompensating where 1-2 out of 4-6 added/ changed abilities would suffice. Just scrap the lightning rod totem, nearly everything concerning that sounds horrible.

Hey, I wanted to thank you for leaving your opinion.

Of course I understand when you say that if we put all of these changes together then Shaman would be way overpowered. Eventhough I tried to show them as balanced as I could, bear in mind that what I did here was to throw ideas hoping any of them could be developped in the future, paying more attention to the concept than the numbers.

Regarding Lightning Rod Totem, I knew this spell would be the most controversial and I understand all the criticism. My intention here was to give Elemental Shamans some raid utility, a spell to use carefully and strategically and that felt unique; rather than a boring and flat, give all party members X buff for 6 seconds, 3 min cooldown.
We should know that raid utility is what ultimately buys you a spot in a raid. If you do the same damage than a Balance Druid, well then i'll just get the Balance Druid because Innervate is a powerfull cooldown that can make a difference. That's why I came up with LRT.

And to sum up, it's not as strong as some of you might think, since it's immune to harmful effects you can't put dots that would grant you resources or procs on it and shouldn't be a dps gain in 90% of the cases. And the Lightning Shield it gives just reduces the damage from the next source of damage, so unless there's a huge 1-time big explosion coming in, it's not so powerful, because most of the time damage comes in continuously.

[Kazgrel]

Fitting that such a thread would crop up after Celesturd got moved over onto Hearthstone. It's almost a glimmer of hope...

[Deleted]

Hey, I wanted to thank you for leaving your opinion.

Of course I understand when you say that if we put all of these changes together then Shaman would be way overpowered. Eventhough I tried to show them as balanced as I could, bear in mind that what I did here was to throw ideas hoping any of them could be developped in the future, paying more attention to the concept than the numbers.
Yes, I tried to adress that by saying the damage stuff needs to be balanced accordingly. However, I think you tried to give a complete model of your "new
ele shaman". The damage stuff can eAsily be fixed but for movement/survivability/utility, if you just have a bunch of different options they would either all need to be nerfed to oblivion, leaving you with a bunch of garbage none of which is usable or it would simply be op.

Regarding Lightning Rod Totem, I knew this spell would be the most controversial and I understand all the criticism. My intention here was to give Elemental Shamans some raid utility, a spell to use carefully and strategically and that felt unique; rather than a boring and flat, give all party members X buff for 6 seconds, 3 min cooldown.
We should know that raid utility is what ultimately buys you a spot in a raid. If you do the same damage than a Balance Druid, well then i'll just get the Balance Druid because Innervate is a powerfull cooldown that can make a difference. That's why I came up with LRT.
And here is the big difference between our opinions. Classes do not get taken because they have utility. Classes get taken because they have a unique selling point. This of course CAN include utility for certain bosses. This can also include among other things: raw Survivability, burst survivability for soaking, raw dps (st/ae/multidot), burst dps(st/ae/multidot), dps while moving(st/ae/multidot), self utility (e.g. good movement cds) and raid utility (e.g. a raid wide defcd) It all depends on the boss you are currently facing. And here comes the thing...some of those things can be brought by several classes at around the same level and some can only be brought by a very specific spec/class. The more bosses demand your class's trait the more often you get taken. Some traits are needed for a very large amount of bosses(e.g. good single target dmg) and some are required for very specific bosses only. If your class has good traits then good for you if your class only has stuff which other classes can bring even better or if those classes can bring more traits then you have a problem.
In the case of ele, for most of the add-on you were mostly the stationary ae glass cannon.... Other classes could do about the same(or more) damage but also brought other traits( like survivability, movement etc.) just as your boomkin example.

And to sum up, it's not as strong as some of you might think, since it's immune to harmful effects you can't put dots that would grant you resources or procs on it and shouldn't be a dps gain in 90% of the cases. And the Lightning Shield it gives just reduces the damage from the next source of damage, so unless there's a huge 1-time big explosion coming in, it's not so powerful, because most of the time damage comes in continuously.
Except in the case of many, many bosses, it's the burst damage that kills you and that ability would be perfect for stuff like that, as there are very little raid wide defcds left in the game(pala, disc and restoshaman)

Just to reiterate, I find some of your ideas very good and I can definitely see potential in most of the ideas, but I was angry enough about wl being the class which brings "everything" (survivability,ae,st,multidot,unique utility) to the table for a long time and I don't need ele shaman becoming the same.