Sigma
is intended as a talent choice that creates some gaps in your rotation, by replacing your no-cooldown resource builder with something that’s overall stronger, but has charges. In 7.1, the recharge time isn’t long enough for those gaps to ever actually happen, especially with the most popular Enhancement talent build adding several more active abilities to your rotation. Its power level was also simply too high, and in this case, we’d rather let this talent have its intended effect on the pace of your rotation and buff the spec as a whole to compensate.
Our intent is that if you want to use an ability every GCD, you should choose one of the other options in that row.
should result in an overall more methodical pace that is more about having a little time to plan upcoming abilities. When
is the hands-down best option in that row, that doesn’t feel like much of a choice, and as we continue tuning for 7.1.5, we hope to address this by bringing it in line with the others.
While I can appreciate that there was an original design intent behind Boulderfist, the spec as it currently exists on Live is as enjoyable to play as it's ever been since I rolled my Shaman back in BC.
We've heard it reiterated over and over (and over) again by the developers that if something about a spec felt too mandatory, it would just get rolled into the spec. I play this spec as my main because it is fun; if I cared strictly about maximum overall damage output, I'd focus on my Rogue instead. Changing a mechanic like this runs counter to the design philosophy that's been so oft repeated.