In this article I wanna propose shaman talent tree changes. Not deep ones, the goal is to help mitigating the builds' main issues with minor changes.
I respect people who want to shaman tank but my focus with the enhancement tree will be to make melee shaman a valid DPS. Tanking mostly remains a passion project for those who have this weird kink.
Main issues with the builds:
Ele: threat management, bad against high nat-rez opponents, bad with mana
Enh: bad damage, needs both hit and spell hit, online one melee attack, bad with mana
BL resto: perfectly fine
Deep resto: perfectly fine
In the below image I colored a bunch of talents. Dont get overwhelmed, they are mostly for me. Will only change some of them - they are mostly there to show my whole thought process if you are interested. White refers to the one I think is currently too strong. Green either means weak or overpriced talents. Blue one should be baseline as a level 60 ability (introducing an improved ghost wolf spell). Orange one has some merit but mostly feels like ???. Yellow ones are tanking talents mostly. I'll respect them and won't touch them. Red ones are clearly in the wrong tree.
Core changes for the talent tree I really recommend:
1. Double the effect of Ancestral knowledge and move it to the elemental tree. 10% mana instead of 5% doesn't solve the mana issues by itself but should help a lot.
2. Eart's grasp never worth's 2 talent points. Remove it and add a spell penetration talent for elementals.
3. Move improved fire totems and elemental devastation into the enhancement tree. This way the overall talent points in these 2 trees stay the same. Improved fire totems belong to enh because they are melee ranged totems.
4. Make improved ghost wolf's effect a baseline spell at level 60.
5. Remove thunderhead but include the 20% shield mana discount in the improved lightning shield.
6. Elemental weapons are a bit bloated at the moment. Give the enh shaman +5% melee haste as long as they have an active weapon enhancement.
7. Move nature's guidance into the enhancement tree. Currently they need to waste 5 talent points just to reach this in resto tree.
8. Add a new talent for restoration which buffs totemic recall, adding +5% mana return after totems per talent (+15%, resulting in 40% for totemic recall). That would be a useful talent on the 3 talent points emptied up by point 5.
(((Additional changes to the talent tree, if we wanna go deeper. I won't consider them as a proposal, just adding more insight. These changes, in my opinion would further help but are not essential. Listing them because I like them but dividing them from the core proposals to keep those short and concise:
1. Make elemental focus' clearcasting a 100% mana discount for 1 spell instead of a 40% for 2 spells.
2. Eye of the storm is very situational. It should always give you 70% resist to spell interruption if you have an elemental shield on.
3. To close up DPS numbers, weapon mastery should also give +1 2h mace skill per talent. This would also mean that enh shamans only need 3% for 9% melee hit. I don't consider this a problem since they also need +spell hit to DPS optimally.
4. To further buff enh and to make the usage of Bloodlust more rewarding, change its CD from 5 min to 3 min.
5. Make healing way also be affected by lesser healing wave. Big help for raids.
6. Buff restorative totems, specially healing stream totem. Maybe allowing bigger healing ticks based on a faction of your +healing.
7. Reduce the CD of mana tide totem to 3 min.)))
Not talent-related things I would advise:
1. Change tranquil air totem so it only reduces spell threat and has a 30% base threat reduction. Could be used in dungeons this way and would be overall stronger.
2. Add a final level to the earth shock which taunts. Hurts noone, makes shaman tanks happy.
3. Raise stoneclaw totem's threat and make it immune for 2 sec after summoning. Same, hurts noone, makes shaman tanks happy.
4. Give a nerfed version of water and earth shield to shamans from level 40.
5. Buff weapon enhancement duration to 15 min at level 60.
6. Further reduce Stormstrike CD (somewhere between 8-10 seconds).
7. Change Stormstrike debuff into a shaman buff.
How would these changes effect the shamans?
Ele ->
Slightly more mana and better agaisnt nat rez mobs. Is more inclined to use tranquil are totem, specially at leveling.
Enh DPS ->
Currently they lose key talents because they are spread out at other trees. Now they can get their hit without sacrificing interesting talents. They would probably reach to elemental tree for shock talents and they can also get the +mana talent there. They wouldn't be OP but could become somewhat viable. Earlier enhancement shamans had a row 3 problem - they kinda needed to waste 3 talents to get to 15 points =from PVE DPS point of view). All in all, they don't need to waste their talent points in filler talents anymore. Also, added melee haste + more frequent Stormstrike. I believe this would make them a C tier choice at raids based on DPS only. Very far away from fury warriors, of course.
Enh tank -> They have a single target taunt now and +hit is easily accessible. Stoneclaw becomes a somewhat valid AoE threat if it is on CD.
BL resto -> Somewhat nerfed since they have to give up the mana talent now if they wanna get to BL.
Deep resto -> Somewhat buffed. Better mana regen with improved totemic recall. Honestly, they don't need too many buffs.