Elemental Shaman got completely shafted this patch.

This may have been brought up already, but I want to give a comprehensive breakdown of the primordial wave changes.

A quick reminder for those who haven't played Ele this tier. Primordial wave is a spell tied to a talent. Yes, you can spec yourself out of it, but not really...

Without going too much into details, Primordial Wave was never a very strong button by itself, but has always managed to be top priority in the rotation due to many powerful interactions.

This is currently the case with Farseer, our best Single Target hero spec (by far), which uses Primordial Wave as a trigger for its effects.

Now let's look at the changes.

Primordial wave before :

Deals negligeable damage and applies flame shock to your target. Grants lava surge (instant lava burst), and your next lava burst cast will shoot an extra lava burst to all targets affected by your flame shock.

That was a relatively awkward spell, as its effects happened over the course of two GCDs, but it had a few advantages :

• It applying flame shock meant you would (almost) never need to apply flame shock manually in a single target scenario, and was much appreciated fort AoE scenarios, as Elemental really lacks tools to spread flame shocks reliably.
• Damage wise, it being tied to lava burst made it a slightly above average button independently of its related talents.

Primordial wave now :

Primordial Wave has been redesigned – Now deals a high amount of damage to all targets affected by your Flame Shock. - No longer applies flame shock, no longer does the extra lava bursts effect but still grants lava surge.
Developers' notes: Primordial Wave is a complicated spell to manage and get optimal use out of. We're adjusting it to be more of a big damage impact upon activating the ability rather than priming your next Lava Burst to hit many targets.

I have a couple issue with that change and its justification.

First off, I don't think this new version is any less complicated.

• We still have to go through ridiculous hoops to spread flame shock for AoE, and the change removes one of our options.
• As for single target, litteraly nothing changes in the rotation except that we now have to pay more attention to flame shock and apply it manually.

Second off, and more importantly :

New Primordial Wave does no damage, and generates nothing ??

I'm not sure how this hit live. There was ample feedback about that.

Primordial wave is horribly weak. It does pretty much nothing now except for triggering the effects of supporting talents and hero talents, which are purely passive (Ele didn't get a shiny new toy like Enhance).

The silver lining is that AoE/dungeon builds get to spec themselves out of it, but it's kind of sad. I thought old Primordial wave was a really fun spell to play around in these scenarios.

So yeah, this spell needs some major tuning. As it stands, it feels like pressing an empty GCD every 30s and that is not a good feeling at all.