Huh. I like the idea of turning the elementals into temporary pets, akin to the Wolves, and the drastic difference in their various abilities. I daresay that with shamans still having one of the lowest health pools in the game, Primal Earth's powers may see almost as much use as Primal Fire's. Elemental Blast, as a point-and-destroy talent, is less interesting and Unleashed Fury is not that much better. If we're still going to dual Unleash as we do today, we can't really complain about lower LB damage but I agree that Windfury's UF is underwhelming, since Static Shock and Lightning Shield have always been underwhelming. Drawing attention to a talent or ability that contributes something like 2% of our overall DPS is about as inspiring as all of the talents they're getting rid of that increase damage of this or that spell by 1% per point.

But even more concerning (and this is slightly more OT for Joe's column), none of the three choices seem particularly compelling for those of us who moonlight as Resto. UF healing me will not inspire me to take that and then proceed to Unleash on the tank (which I rarely do now, given its rather mundane effect) as I rarely need to be healed to any great extent. Neither of the elementals serve a healing purpose. A 5% haste boost from Blast will be useful, but not on the order of lvl90 talent.

Overall, I think they're still not quite there with the makeup of our abilities.

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