In hopes that the class council nerds read forum posts, I am dumping some relatively simple talent tweaks that I believe would be greatly beneficial to the performance of enhancement shamans as well as enhance the "class fantasy" of playing a warrior that incorporates spellcasting in melee combat by channeling the elements. The "elemental" half of the elemental warrior theme that enhancement shaman embodies is severely lacking. I've bolded the changes for people who lack either the time or patience to read the context and reasoning.
Elemental Devastation should work both ways and be moved to the Enhancement tree. Currently, it provides 9% melee crit when a spell crit happens and is 3 rows deep into elemental. This makes no sense as elemental shamans do not get in melee range if they can help it, and if they do get a melee crit it would not be substantial, to say the least. In it's current iteration, it also does not make much sense for enhancement unless they itemize heavily for spell crit, which currently would perform quite poorly in comparison to simply stacking melee stats. Elemental Devastation should provide 9% spell crit when a melee crit is dealt in addition to providing 9% melee crit when a spell crit is dealt and it should be moved to the Enhancement tree, swapping places with the Improved Lightning Shield talent.
You might be asking "what happens to the Thunderhead talent, then?"
Well, I think it should just be incorporated into the Improved Lightning Shield talent to make it more worth putting even one point into. The % damage increase per point should also be doubled.
Nature's Guidance should be moved into the Enhancement tree, swapping places with Guardian Totems. This talent being in Restoration makes very little sense other than incentivizing Elemental shamans to put points into the restoration tree. Personally, I think that the 30/0/21 Ele/Resto shaman build is too strong in a PvP setting and this change would serve the dual purpose of slightly nerfing that build while buffing the enhancement tree. Elemental shamans can get 5% spell crit, 3% spell hit, Nature's Swiftness, and 70% spell interruption avoidance on heals in the Restoration tree, which I think is way too convenient to have in their "off" tree when their main tree talents are already very strong for PvP. Contrarily, when considering where to put left over points after completing their main tree, enhancement shamans have to choose between Nature's Guidance and Totemic Mastery in the restoration tree and all of the spell damage oriented talents in the elemental tree.
Thundering Strikes should provide 5% spell crit in addition to the 5% melee crit. I believe this talent was changed to additionally give 5% spell crit in Wrath of the Lich King, and while I am aware that the Turtle WoW devs are hesitant to include changes made in future expansions, this is a simple change that in addition to the Elemental Devastation change would allow enhancement shamans to better utilize their full kit without diluting their stat distribution on gear.
Flurry should also proc off of spell crits and restore a percentage of your maximum mana on hit. Proccing off of spell crits is a change that is mostly just for flavor and would lead to a marginally higher Flurry uptime in a spellhancement build that uses Flametongue. Exact numbers for what the % of mana gained on each flurry attack would have to be worked out through play testing, as I don't think it's a good idea to trivialize mana management without requiring a high stat threshold (preferably obtained through reaching a very high average item level). If a class utilizes mana as a resource, then the threat of running out of mana should be part of the gameplay unless it is addressed with stats from items or consumables. Enhancement does burn through mana much too quickly in my opinion, though, and the goal of this talent would be to not only have their damage output scale with gear but also their capability to sustain their mana in longer fights. Higher flurry uptime from critting often would mean much more sustain.
While it doesn't necessarily follow the theme of "simple" changes, I'd also propose a new talent to be added to the tree in the third row. This talent would provide 4%/7%/10% less chance for your shock spells to be resisted. Itemizing for spell hit is simply not feasible for an enhancement shaman, and the only other class that is a true spell/melee hybrid - ret paladin - does not need to itemize for spell hit due to how their spells work.
The name could probably use some work, but it would look something like this:
New talent in third row:
Primal Intuition: Reduces your target's chance to resist your Shock spells by 4%/7%/10%, and reduces the mana cost of your Shock spells by 5%/10%/15%.
Enhancement and elemental trees both also need access to threat reduction in their talents. All damage dealing specs should have access to threat reduction. There is no good reason for them not to. Having baseline 20% less damage potential no matter your effort/performance/gear difference/RNG rolls because you get closer to going over the tank's threat sooner than other DPS who do have threat reduction does not feel good and does not make sense.
These changes holistically would enable Shock spells and spellcasting in general to be a more relevant part of the enhancement shaman's arsenal. Shaman players may also notice that these changes would likely make Flametongue (and to a lesser extent Frostbrand) a much more viable imbue option. Spellpower and melee crit to maximize Flametongue output would be an interesting way to itemize an enhancement shaman for sustained damage in PvE while Windfury would still likely be the better option for PvP due to the burst damage potential. The t2.5 set's stats would finally make sense for at least one spec while enhancement shaman stat scaling would be better and enhancement stat prio would be less... silly.
Elemental shamans might be thinking these changes nerf the elemental tree. The elemental tree is by no means too strong in a PvE setting and, if anything, requires PvE-centric buffs as well. However, with these changes you will still have the option of getting 3% spell hit and 5% spell crit outside of the elemental tree - you'd just get it from the enhancement tree now rather than the restoration tree. You would have to choose between 5% spell crit and Nature's Swiftness or 5% crit and 3% spell hit. Losing either 3% spell hit or NS is indeed a significant nerf for elemental shamans in PvE content, but other changes to the elemental tree/enhancement trees could be made to account for this. Something to keep in mind is that elemental shamans would also have the option of getting 10% spell hit on shock spells in the Enhancement tree, easily reaching spell hit cap for Shocks.
As a tangential footnote, a change that is not related to talents that I believe is relevant enough to mention here would be to make Frostbrand behave more like Flametongue in terms of it being able to be "miss"/be resisted. Flametongue attacks do not have to roll for spell hit chance and cannot be resisted. Frostbrand procs can be "resisted" as most spells are able to be. The spell that is most similar in function to Frostbrand Weapon, Seal of Command(ppm based proc chance of spell damage on melee hit) also does not bear a chance to "miss"/be resisted, and simply requires the melee attack which procs it to land. Having to roll three separate times for the auto attack to land *and* for Frostbrand to proc *and* for Frostbrand to not be resisted currently is a huge factor as to why Frostbrand is even less relevant than Flametongue (people who don't play shaman often don't even know this spell exists). If a more spellpower focused enhancement shaman build were to be enabled by Flametongue Weapon being made viable due to talent changes, then that build would have to use Frostbrand in many encounters in Molten Core, BWL, and I suspect the future Grim Batol raid as well. Seal of Righteousness, Seal of Command, and Flametongue attacks all do not have to roll for spell hit chance, so I think it would make sense to allow Frostbrand to benefit from that precedent as well.