Jat The fun work versus work work is a good way to put it. Before, it felt fun to play efficiently. It wasn't a power level thing - it was just fun to keep the mobs debuffed, HoT the tank, keep the 1 hour buffs on everybody, pseudo-CC by slowing adds for aggro and rooting them away from the group. None of this is actually gone, but it's much more of a chore to do.
Also with the new healing reduction cannibalize, you feel incredibly inefficient if you are taking any hits at all, so you really can't do the slow adds for aggro / root them away from the group thing efficiently anymore. And that slow would fall off now in most cases anyway, with the shorter duration. You lose that nice feeling from EQ / M&M before the duration change where you can have a few mobs in camp debuffed / set up for the next kill or two. That being said, the new slow duration / cost is a very noticeable bonus to your mana when your group is blendering a mob at a time with good CC. But again it is a decrease in fun because it's another low timer monitor for you to track, dependent on your group's DPS. Overall the changes feels like a lot of duck tape over duck tape.
For me, Shaman in EQ and Shaman in Monsters and Memories was fun because you felt like you had a lot of tools and optionality for being efficient. Monsters and Memories had enabled the heal yourself + cannibalize to come out ahead on mana gameplay at a much earlier level than EQ did, and it felt great (although was too much mana). But they seem to be cutting that style down / out as much as they can, and Shaman in its current state is substantially less fun to play, while also being a bit annoying to play efficiently. I wish they would settle on a design philosophy that still allowed Shaman to heal themselves and come out ahead with Cannibalize, in a way that is closer to old Cannibalize but finely tuned.
The new healing reduction cannibalize feels incredibly strong due to the high health to mana ratio, while also not being very fun to play around. Here's how you play efficiently at the moment. Consuming Pact continuously every 8 seconds on cooldown, while being extremely diligent about taking as close to 0 damage as possible. Any hit you take is a direct hit to your mana pool. Position perfectly to make sure you do not take any ranged attacks from adds due to healing aggro, or keep them blinded at the right times. Any damage you take is wildly worse than damage anyone else in the group takes. Continue hitting Consuming Pact every 8 seconds while managing debuffs / healing and your aggro. Stop once you are at risk of dying to a mistake from someone in the group - maybe at 15-20% health. Spend the next 2 minutes without pressing Consuming Pact, waiting for the 2 minute healing debuff to fade. Heal yourself once the healing debuff is gone. Start hitting Consuming Pact every 8 seconds again - it is important to condense the time where you're spamming Consume Pact down as much as possible, to circle back to the low health 2 minute wait step again. Delaying any Consuming Pact button press is quite inefficient as you elongate the % of time you have the massive healing debuff, delaying your ability to spike your health back up again with a heal, then using that health for more mana.
The above does not feel very fun. Your optionality / path for being efficient is very narrow. If you aren't doing the above, you will have a lot less mana than someone who is doing this. I wouldn't even describe it a risk/reward as others do - it's just literally making yourself the 'squishiest' member of the party most of the time, and the group should play around you never ever taking damage.
