The Elemental Shaman tier set puts a lot of emphasis on our baseline cooldown
Elementale del Fuoco. By reducing the cooldown and increasing the duration of the elemental, this synergizes very well with
Semi della Crescita Sfrenata (the Night Fae legendary) and could potentially allow for 100% uptime on
Elementale del Fuoco. This shouldn’t be particularly impactful to the rotation aside from the additional
Eruzione di Lava procs. However, it is likely we’ll start using
Getto di Lava during
Elementale della Tempesta now as well. This also may open the door to legendaries and talents we haven’t used much in the recent past, such as
Ascesa and
Elementi Profondamente Radicati (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
Elementale della Tempesta for AoE and casting
Getto di Lava during that may not be worth it. Granted, it would only take 3-4
Getto di Lavas to get a second
Tempesta 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,
Elementale della Tempesta emphasizes
Dardo Fulminante and
Catena di Fulmini; casting
Getto di 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
Elementale della Tempesta 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 Primordiale. This generally wouldn’t be an issue, but
Elementale della Terra provides non-trivial defensives between
Pelle di Roccia and
Accrescimento Vitale. In order to use these, you’d have to dismiss your
Elementale del Fuoco or
Elementale della Tempesta. 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
Elementale del Fuoco/
Elementale della Tempesta 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
Elementale della Terra issue.
On the surface,
Cura dell'Anima (2-Set) is quite simple: casting
Catena di Guarigione on a person with
Marea Benefica will buff the whole spell by ~30% from the increased crit chance. That does mean that you'll want to
always cast
Catena di Guarigione on a
Marea Benefica 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
Catena di Guarigione back to the forefront as its currently one of the lesser used spells, and along with it (potentially) the talent
Alta Marea.
There's quite a few synergies as its basically anything that
Catena di Guarigione 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
Catena di Guarigione 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
Marea Benefica in a way that you have access to your
Catena di Guarigione for multiple groupings of people.
Not a massive throughput gain unless synergies, the
Catena di Guarigione button and external mana are abused, but also not on the weak side. That said since you have to cast
Catena di Guarigione the set is prone to be weaker for very spread encounters.
Cura dell'Anima (4-Set) has an inherent synergy with the 2-Set which means they have to be looked at in combination. Every cast of
Catena di Guarigione reduces the cooldown of
Totem del Collegamento Spirituale 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 del Collegamento Spirituale 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
Catena di Guarigione enough times. But if
Totem del Collegamento Spirituale 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
Catena di Guarigione is consistently casted on
Marea Benefica targets), each cast of
Catena di Guarigione will reduce
Totem del Collegamento Spirituale by 5 to 6 seconds on average - or in other words it would take around 12 2-Set buffed casts of
Catena di Guarigione to reduce
Totem del Collegamento Spirituale by a full minute. That number can be influenced by luck (less/more crits), targeting issues (all
Marea Benefica targets are positioned awkwardly), mana issues (
Catena di Guarigione 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
Catena di Guarigione a lot and we had no preview of the new raid yet, but judging by old logs (which had a differently tuned and cheaper
Catena di Guarigione), you often see 5 to 6 casts of
Catena di Guarigione a minute, which means that the
Totem del Collegamento Spirituale 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 del Collegamento Spirituale 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.