Introduction
This guide is maintained by Weber, moderator for the Shaman Class Discord and long-time Shaman player. I have been maining Shaman since Siege of Orgrimmar, and I currently raid with Deposit Coin on Stormscale (EU), where we have maintained our world ranking just outside the Hall of Fame on a casual two-night schedule since I joined in Battle for Azeroth. You can catch me streaming my raids on Twitch, or contact me on Discord if you have any questions about the spec.
Enhancement is a high-intensity, proc-based melee spec that rewards you for quickly reacting to random resource generation, random procs and carrying momentum by minimizing downtime. Unlike many other specs, Enhancement currently does not have a big cooldown window or singular finisher ability that all our efforts lead to. This means that while there is less emphasis on perfecting one key moment, you have to keep a continued focus throughout the fight to do well.
The main strength of Enhancement is that it provides very strong sustained cleave and funnel without sacrificing in the single target department. However, its weakness is that, due to the nature of our resource and procs feeding back into each other, the spec needs a moment to get going and to then carry that momentum throughout the whole fight. Because of this, the spec is very vulnerable to losing uptime to boss mechanics.
Enhancements key contributions to a raid are providing the raid buff Skyfury, powerful offhealing through Ancestral Guidance, movement speed through Wind Rush totem and the best kick in the game in Wind Shear. In addition to these more broadly useful utilities, Enhancement also comes with a lot of unique niche utility that, while mostly not of use at all, can be encounter warping if applicable, such as removing fears via Tremor Totem or removing snares via Jet Stream. Enhancement also excels at AoE crowd control through Capacitor Totem, Guardian’s Cudgel, Thundershock, and Sundering, being able to lock down packs of mobs for much longer than most other specs in the game.
What has changed
11.0.5 Changes
The patch brings many changes for Enhancement, presumably because they didn’t make it into the initial expansion release. Among these are plenty new talents and some reworked ones, which generally seem to aim to lower the amount of keybinds needed to play Enhancement to its fullest.
- Flowing Spirits is a new passive choice talent as an alternative to Witch Doctor’s Ancestry, that replaces Feral Spirit with passive wolf generation
- Deeply Rooted Elements was changed to trigger from Maelstrom Weapon spenders instead of Stormstrike
- Thorim’s Invocation now reduces Ascendance to a 2 minute cooldown
- Stormblast now grants a second charge of Stormstrike
- Doom Winds has a new AoE aura effect
- Voltaic Blaze is a new proc for Flame Shock, which allows spreading the debuff without the use of Lava Lash
- Unrelenting Storm is a new talent that aims to give Crash Lightning some use as a single target filler
- Ice Strike now has two versions, the new one replaces Frost Shock on proc
- Molten Thunder is a new talent that gives you more frequent Sunderings
Stormbringer saw some minor changes to slow down the rate of Tempests that can be generated and to utility talents.
- Arc Discharge was reworked and now causes your next Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning to deal more damage and cast a second time after each Tempest.
- Storm Swell is a new choice talent as an alternative to Supercharge, granting Mastery instead of Maelstrom Weapon.
- Supercharge refunds 2 Maelstrom Weapon instead of 3.
- Nature’s Protection now grants permanent damage reduction.
Totemic, on the other hand, saw a large scale rework and is now a viable, although awkward to use, single target alternative to Stormbringer.
- Whirling Elements was redesigned:
- Air Mote now triggers from Maelstrom Weapon spenders
- Earth Mote now buffs Flame Shock/Voltaic Blaze
- Fire Mote now grants Hot Hand
- Totemic Rebound now triggers from Maelstrom Weapon spenders
- Reactivity now causes you to trigger Sunderings during Hot Hand
The War Within Changes
Going into the new expansion, Blizzard has done the bare minimum to preserve the two distinct builds Enhancement has had throughout Shadowlands and Dragonflight and leave their gameplay mostly intact. If you currently enjoy Enhancement, it is very likely you also will in The War Within. Your priorities will however be warped somewhat by the new hero talents, with both of them pointing the spec into very different directions by emphasizing different parts of the core kit.
Other than that the spec has received some minor changes and gained some new tools, among them:
- Skyfury, a new raid buff replacing Windfury Totem (which is now available to all Shamans)
- Increased range on Crash Lightning and Molten Assault
- Primordial Wave and Doom Winds having their cooldowns reduced
- Stone Bulwark Totem, a new powerful defensive ability
- Jet Stream, an AoE snare removal