Primal Strike and Frost Shock

     So in the past I've written about my issues with certain classes. There are three things I don't like in a class: 1. Dead Space, which is just watching auto attacks as a physical class, or spending to much time casting filler spells as a caster. 2. Deviation from the class theme or ignorance of it. 3. Unused spells. That being said all I find all three of these in the shaman class. There are two shaman spells that I'd really like to see used. Frost Shock and Primal Strike.

     My preferred spec as a shaman is Enhancement, that being said I still find it the most entertaining spec. With that being said there's an issue with Enhancement that I'd hoped would have been remedied with Cataclysm, that's dead space. The shaman rotation is exciting however the number of shaman abilities is actually fairly limited. It boils down to Shock, Lava Lash, and Stormstrike. Since all shaman shocks are on a shared cooldown you only get one every 6 secs. This plus the cooldowns on other abilities results in a lot of dead space. With Maelstrom Weapon procs and the new Unleashed Elements have lessened it a bit but i still find myself in periods where all my abilities are on cooldown. I'd hoped that Primal Strike would have added an additional ability to fill some of that space, unfortunately it shares a cooldown with Stormstrike.

     I've talked about this in the past but I've always felt that shamans rely to much on the element of Air with some Fire. Water and Earth are somewhat absent in shaman spells. Healing spells focus almost entirely on water, while elemental as a better spread with Lava Burst and Earthquake. Still frost damage is almost no existant outside of PvP. There are two abilities in the shaman toolbox that deal frost damage Frost Shock and Frostbrand Weapon. These two have been pretty much locked down as PvP skill, for frostbrand weapon I can tolerate it, but I'd like to see a much greater variety of use with shaman shocks. This applies to both elemental and enhancement. Frost Shock would fit will with Restoration and restoration subspecs. Focused insight could be a good place to imply the use of Frost Shock. Fulmination could work with both Earth and Frost Shocks. As for enhancement an early tier enhancement talent that would increase the damage of one damage type after a hit from another type. This would promote alternating between Earth and Frost shock. 

     My idea for Primal Strike is much more developed. Primal Strike shares a cooldown with Stormstrke, this is the problem. Instead we create a new proc, Grounding Strike. Grounding Strike would work off the same mechanics as the Druid talent Sunfire. Sunfire causes Moonfire to become Sunfire during Solar Eclipse procs. The proc would take one point out of Static Shock, and would require 2 points in Static Shock. Everytime your Lightning shield dealt damage through static shock it would have a chance to proc Grounding Strike. Grounding Grounding deals primal strike damage, plus nature damage equal to three lightning shield charges and applies two maelstrom weapon stacks. This ability would trigger no cooldown and reset the cooldown on primal strike. It would have a short internal cooldown of about 3 sec or so.