The Elemental Shaman tier set puts a lot of emphasis on our baseline cooldown
Elemental do Fogo. By reducing the cooldown and increasing the duration of the elemental, this synergizes very well with
Sementes do Crescimento Desenfreado (the Night Fae legendary) and could potentially allow for 100% uptime on
Elemental do Fogo. This shouldn’t be particularly impactful to the rotation aside from the additional
Torrente de Lava procs. However, it is likely we’ll start using
Estouro de Lava during
Elemental da Tempestade now as well. This also may open the door to legendaries and talents we haven’t used much in the recent past, such as
Ascendência and
Elementos Profundamente Enraizados (no promises).
While we don’t have exact numbers to share, this tier set does seem to be quite powerful on single target. If I had to estimate, I’d place it between a 10% and 20% DPS increase. This becomes a little more complicated (and awkward) on AoE, as we typically play
Elemental da Tempestade for AoE and casting
Estouro de Lava during that may not be worth it. Granted, it would only take 3-4
Estouro de Lavas to get a second
Tormenta use which will likely be quite good if the AoE lasts long enough.
There are a few noteworthy issues with this set bonus as it stands. For example,
Elemental da Tempestade emphasizes
Raio and
Cadeia de Raios; casting
Estouro de Lava, especially on AoE, is going to feel weird and may not even be worth it. Personally, I’d like to see the bonus change when talented into
Elemental da Tempestade to be tied to Lightning abilities or maelstrom spenders. Another major issue with this set is that we can only have 1 elemental out at a time while using
Elementalista Primevo. This generally wouldn’t be an issue, but
Elemental da Terra provides non-trivial defensives between
Endurecer Pele and
Acrescência Vital. In order to use these, you’d have to dismiss your
Elemental do Fogo or
Elemental da Tempestade. This has the potential to cause a very large damage loss. Additionally, as a spec, Elemental is already very consistent and generally lacks burst damage. I would personally like to see this set bonus changed to enhance
Elemental do Fogo/
Elemental da Tempestade rather than extend it if it’s going to be focused around that cooldown. This would allow Elemental to have a more noteworthy burst window while also reducing the impact of the
Elemental da Terra issue.
On the surface,
Cura da Alma (2-Set) is quite simple: casting
Cura Encadeada on a person with
Contracorrente will buff the whole spell by ~30% from the increased crit chance. That does mean that you'll want to
always cast
Cura Encadeada on a
Contracorrente person as now if you're not doing that, you're losing potential throughput, which restricts your target options by a lot. This set bonus should bring
Cura Encadeada back to the forefront as its currently one of the lesser used spells, and along with it (potentially) the talent
Maré Alta.
There's quite a few synergies as its basically anything that
Cura Encadeada already interacts with. Examples:
Overall this set seems fine, while its just a straight buff to a spell it nonetheless makes you change around your gameplay a little by encouraging
Cura Encadeada usage. The dependency on only being able to cast it on specific targets is not great, but easy to deal with and might make you strategically place
Contracorrente in a way that you have access to your
Cura Encadeada for multiple groupings of people.
Not a massive throughput gain unless synergies, the
Cura Encadeada button and external mana are abused, but also not on the weak side. That said since you have to cast
Cura Encadeada the set is prone to be weaker for very spread encounters.
Cura da Alma (4-Set) has an inherent synergy with the 2-Set which means they have to be looked at in combination. Every cast of
Cura Encadeada reduces the cooldown of
Totem do Vínculo do Espírito by 0 to 8 seconds, depending on how many hits are critical strikes. Simply reducing a mitigation CDs cooldown duration inherently doesn't lead to a lot of gameplay impact or anything exciting really. If your raid leader starts to assign your
Totem do Vínculo do Espírito to events that are less than 3 minutes apart, that is when you'll feel it the most as you're forced to look for opportunities to cast
Cura Encadeada enough times. But if
Totem do Vínculo do Espírito isn't assigned (new boss, less structured raid or m+) and cast rather freely you might get an opportunity every now and then to use it early, but most of the time it'll likely have no impact at all.
Looking at the high amount of crit we're going to have next season, combined with the 2-Set crit bonus (assuming the
Cura Encadeada is consistently casted on
Contracorrente targets), each cast of
Cura Encadeada will reduce
Totem do Vínculo do Espírito by 5 to 6 seconds on average - or in other words it would take around 12 2-Set buffed casts of
Cura Encadeada to reduce
Totem do Vínculo do Espírito by a full minute. That number can be influenced by luck (less/more crits), targeting issues (all
Contracorrente targets are positioned awkwardly), mana issues (
Cura Encadeada is expensive) and there simply being nothing to heal.
The 4-Set bonus has synergies with anything that provides crit, so depending on covenant or legendaries you might see some difference in reductions but its too many small things to list out, with most of them not being too impactful.
It's hard to tell how much reduction you'll see though, as we're currently not using
Cura Encadeada a lot and we had no preview of the new raid yet, but judging by old logs (which had a differently tuned and cheaper
Cura Encadeada), you often see 5 to 6 casts of
Cura Encadeada a minute, which means that the
Totem do Vínculo do Espírito cooldown with 4-Set should usually be around the 2 minute mark instead of 3 minutes.
Overall I'm not a fan of the 4-Set bonus and would've rather have seen something else. While it can be useful and may sometimes save a pull in m+ while also letting you use
Totem do Vínculo do Espírito more frequently in raids, most of the time it won't add anything of value - and a situational tier set bonus does not feel great. Realistically this bonus may only see usage on a couple of fights per tier in actual gameplay, as they tend to space heavy raid damage out.