The big ability that most players will miss here is the loss of Call of Thunder from the fifth tier. With this ability gone you will be losing 5% crit across the board. While this could seem hard to take, it is being made up by our new mastery aion gold ability that boosts our spell crit. So while you will miss it initially, it should be made up through our mastery abilities.
The same initial dismay over losing Lightning Overload should not last long. It is replaced by Elemental Overload which increases the damage dealt by any spell that is overloaded by up to 20%. Again through mastery in the elemental tree we will essentially gain a better version of Lighting Overload that will allow any direct damage spell to proc a lesser free version of itself. Hurray! This can add up to some extra damage by proccing off of your shocks and more.
Next up we lose Totem of Wrath, but gain an even better ability with the new Wrathful Totems talent. This talent allows your fire totems to increase the spell power of your party and raid members within 100 yards 10% essentially replacing your totem of wrath with any fire totem. Wow! Pick whichever fire totem you want and still get a spell bonus? Three cheers for Blizzard!
Elemental Shamans also gain two boosts to their AOE ability. The first is the new talent called Earthquake which is an AOE that does DOT to anyone that remains it it. It will last 10 seconds and has a chance to know down targets in the affected area. Shaman also gain Lava Surge which allows your Flame Shock DOT component to have a chance at resetting your Lava Burst abilities cooldown. Both of these added together grant a Shaman significantly more AOE damage capability.
Elemental Shaman appear to gain quite a bit with these changes. They gain AOE, more freedom in totem choices, and extra overloaded spells. The loss of certain talents seems to be covered off by the new mastery abilities, so it looks like a net gain for Elemental Shaman.
Enhancement
At first glance enhancement looses a number of key abilities. However when you look closer they have been shifted into the Enhancement Shamans mastery abilities. Those abilities grant extra melee damage, melee haste, and nature damage.
Thundering Strikes is gone so the 5% crit that it granted is gone. Deeper in the talent you lose Mental Dexterity which granted extra aion kinah attack power. Lastly you lose Weapon Mastery which means losing 10% extra weapon damage. This will all hopefully be regained through the mastery abilities that you gain as Enhancement, but no final numbers have been provided yet for the mastery numbers.
In regards to totems, Earth’s Grasp is gone, as is Guardian Totems, and Earthen Power, however deeper in the talent tree you gain Totemic Vigor which adds up to 10% of your health to your totems which can really increase their survivability, especially in PvP. This will mean that they are not easily knocked out by a weak AOE blast.
Shamans also see a few new talents such as the tier one Focused Strikes talent that increases the damage dealt by your Primal Strike and Stormstrike abilities by up to 40%. This grants a big increase in damage right off the bat as Enhancement.
Enhancement Shamans also gain a little extra speed with the addition of Ancestral Swiftness which can add up to 15% extra movement speed. This extra speed can significantly increase your damage output in fights that require movement as you can get in and out of melee range quicker.
You will also gain a little extra damage due to Searing Bolts and Seating totem being able to set targets on fire. This is through the Searing Flames talent which places a DOT effect on anyone set aflame.
Lastly Lava Lash gains a little help through the new talent Improved Lava Lash which increases the damage of your Lava Lash aion gold ability by up to 30%, and by an additional 20% for each of your applications of Searing Flames on the target. It does consume those applications in the process, but it means that you can cause some significant extra fire damage in burst amounts.
Other than that several abilities move around in the talent tree but stay essentially the same.
Overall the tree maintains its flavor while seeming to gain a little damage. However, that will only be able to be determined for sure once the mastery numbers have been determined.
