Enhancement Shaman Playstyle and Rotation Guide

• Stormbringer
• Totemic

General Playstyle

Elemental Tempo is the new centerpiece of the spec; It makes your Maelstrom Weapon spenders partially recover the cooldowns of Stormstrike and Lava Lash per stacks consumed. This means, even more so than before, that you want to spend as late as possible without wasting any Maelstrom Weapon. Only spend at the minimum of 5 stacks if you have nothing else to do.

It is key to keep your Crash Lightning, Stormstrike, and Lava Lash on cooldown as often as you can. If you don’t cycle your strikes aggressively enough, you will get fewer cooldown refunds from Elemental Tempo and thus generate less Maelstrom Weapon down the line, eventually finding yourself with all your abilities on cooldown and without the resource to bridge the gap by spending it. Since Maelstrom Weapon is exclusively generated by attacking and using abilities, the spec is, more so than others, heavily punished by downtime away from your target.

Voltaic Blaze is mainly a filler button. Outside of setting up initial Flame Shocks, it should only be used after you have exhausted all your melee strikes.

Hot Hand

Hot Hand has been changed in Midnight to provide less cooldown reduction, instead of one global between Lava Lashes and other abilities, there are now two globals UNLESS you reduce its cooldown via Elemental Tempo. In your Doom Winds window this essentially still works out as one global for the whole proc because of Thorim’s Invocation, outside of cooldowns you will have to take note of when you can spend Maelstrom Weapon and queue another Lava Lash right after.

Thorim’s Invocation

When using Thorim’s Invocation you need to take note of whether it is currently primed to Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning and occasionally fix it by spending your Maelstrom Weapon, preferably before pressing Doom Winds. This will also use Tempest automatically for you and then prime for single target or AoE depending on the amount of targets hit. Ride the Lightning does not affect which spell will be fired by this.

Tab Targeting

Between Lightning Rod and Lashing Flames the spec has two effects that in the past you had to carefully choose your targets for.

However, in practice Chain Lightning will apply Lightning Rod to a secondary target if the main target already has it and the ones triggered by Ride the Lightning count, so no active maintenance of it is needed.

Similarly, Lashing Flames is applied by Sundering, including the ones triggered by Splitstream, so active management of it is very rarely relevant.

Cooldowns

As with many other specs, Enhancements cooldowns were consolidated or pruned in Midnight.

Doom Winds takes the role of main cooldown. On a 1 minute cooldown it massively increases your resource generation through Static Accumulation and extra Windfury Weapon hits. It also makes your Crash Lightning and Stormstrike additionally spend Maelstrom Weapon for you through Thorim’s Invocation, which means that you should use these instead of spending with Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning for the duration.

Ascendance now replaces Doom Winds, turning it into a 2 minute cooldown. Additionally, you get random Doom Winds procs when spending Maelstrom Weapon outside of Ascendance.

Alternatively, you can choose Deeply Rooted Elements to forgo your reliable burst window entirely, but the random procs will give you Ascendance instead.

This means that you get to choose between a 1 minute burst, a 2 minute burst or entirely random burst moments, which can be handy if certain fights require you to have damage at certain moments.

Sundering is essentially old Primordial Wave on a 30 second cooldown. Use it right after Doom Winds and then once on cooldown.

Surging Totem has been changed from a maintenance totem to a 1 minute cooldown which empowers almost all of your other abilities. Use it right before Doom Winds to keep them synced up.

When you activate it you get three elemental motes that you should aim to consume as soon as possible. Whirling Earth doubles the damage of Sundering, Whirling Air quickly stacks up Surging Bolt and is consumed by spending Maelstrom Weapon, and Whirling Fire grants you a guaranteed Hot Hand proc from using Lava Lash.

This means that your typical sequence to proc all three motes and go into your Hot Hand window will be:

1. Surging Totem
2. Doom Winds
3. Sundering (to consume Whirling Earth)
4. Lava Lash (to consume Whirling Fire)
5. Crash Lightning (to consume Whirling Air via Thorim’s Invocation)

If you are not in Doom Winds because you are playing Ascendance or Deeply Rooted Elements, you will have to manually trigger the Whirling Air with a Lightning Bolt right after Sundering.

Defensives

The Midnight rework has left the spec in a dire state defensively, as Stone Bulwark Totem was removed without compensation and Earth Elemental has been nerfed. Prepare to be diligent with your tools and ask for externals (which you unfortunately can’t track yourself anymore with the addon changes) on fights with frequent damage events.

Astral Shift is your main wall on a 90-120 second cooldown. While it is very potent, the long cooldown may leave you unable to cover all damage events in a given raid counter with it.

Earth Elemental with Primordial Bond is your only other defensive option, however, it no longer provides any damage reduction, which leaves you with a lacklustre increase to your maximum health. Additionally, you have to give up your ability to cover for tank mistakes, as Primordial Bond now makes Earth Elemental unable to taunt or get aggro whatsoever.

Earth Shield and Healing Surge are your main options if you need a heal in a pinch, but they are somewhat weak considering that you have to make active use of them instead of damaging abilities. Healing Surge no longer spends Maelstrom Weapon, so at least you don’t have to spend your main resource to heal yourself. You also no longer have to reapply Earth Shield, as it does not consume charges if using Therazane’s Resilience.

Healing Stream Totem heals for a minuscule amount and is basically not worth using ever.