Hello all! This thread contains feedback about changes, some remaining issues and suggestions for both base and hero trees of Enhancement Shaman. This feedback is split into initially hidden subsections for better readability.
Enhancement Shaman feedback
Spec got several improvements in 11.0.5, but still has unaddressed issues that can affect its gameplay and performance and could be addressed in addition to damage tuning.
1. Storm builds issues and improvements
Improvements to Doom Winds and Ascendance as 2 min cooldown when fully upgraded is nice, but some issues remain unaddressed - Stormstrike issues, Ascendance base competitiveness issues with Deeply Rooted Elements etc.
1.1 Stormstrike issues and improvements
Stormstrike has several unaddressed issues - it can be reset by multiple sources (cooldown expiring, Stormsurge procs, Legacy of the Frost Witch resets etc) and these resets can overlap and lead to lost usages. Additionally, Stormstrike dealing only Physical damage makes little sense when damage type with literallly same name already exists and leads to its diminished scaling with Mastery, especially during Doom Winds when part of its proc chance bonus from Mastery can be negated. The concern of making all of its damage Nature or Stormstrike is understandable - it would both make it mega scale with Mastery and reduce value of Ascendance armor negating bonus, but there are compromise solutions - since Stormstrike already does 2 hits with 1 being stronger and 1 being weaker (off-hand attack) the weaker hit could be converted to Stormstrike damage without much issues - it would slightly improve its Mastery scaling and allow to get at least some base lightning damage from lightning-infused attack, but still keep Mastery scaling in line (it would increase only 33% of its damage part), scaling with Feral Spirits (since Stormstrike damage is Physical + Nature it would still get scaled by them) and Ascendance armor negation bonus useful.
Suggestions:
- Make Stormstrike have 2 charges either baseline or via one of its upgrade talents, for example Stormflurry. That would help address the resets overlap issue.
- Make off-hand attack from Stormstrike deal Stormstrike damage instead of Physical.
1.2 Ascendance / Deeply Rooted Elements issues and improvements
Manual Ascendance got better, but still has issues - baseline it is not competitive with Deeply Rooted Elements (that provide both bigger uptime and more initial bursts) and Thorim’s Invocation that affects both cooldown of Ascendance and duration of Deeply Rooted Elements does not change that much. Deeply Rooted Elements also still has issue where its proc is tied exclusively to Stormstrike and that can lead to rotations of primarily 1 button spam and ignoring of some other abilities. These issues could be addressed.
Suggestion:
- Reduce base cooldown of manual Ascendance to 2 minutes and restore damage bonus to Lightning Bolt / Chain Lightning as part of Thorim’s Invocation. Such change would make manual Ascendance both more competitive with Deeply Rooted Elements and not require being fully upgraded to become usable frequently enough.
- Make Deeply Rooted Elements also proc from Lava Lash, Ice Strike, Crash Lightning and Sundering and if needed adjust their proc rate to compensate. That would make them compatible with much more diverse rotations.
2. Elemental builds issues and improvements
Enhancement elemental builds were also improved, but still have unaddressed issues - several fire talent issues, Ice Strike being only a proc issues, random element of Elemental Spirits that can summon wolves of unfavored element especially for Stormbringers etc. These could be looked at and are analyzed below.
2.1 Fire talents issues
Several fire related talents in Enhancement tree have unaddressed issues - Fire Nova is still not competitive enough with Hailstorm, Hot Hand’s 2 point cost is overpriced after the nerfs, Lashing Flames still has clunky mechanism of spreading via requiring Shaman to hit each target separately for that etc. These issues can be addressed.
Suggestions:
- Make Fire Nova in addition to current effect also consume X seconds of Flame Shock from main (currently selected) target and deal their damage instantly, potentially even with Y% increased damage. Such tweak would add some main target value for it and bring it more in line with Hailstorm. If needed for competitiveness - also increase base damage of Fire Nova.
- Reduce Hot Hand to 1 point investment with full or according effect. That would both make its cost better match its value after the nerf, remove weird scaling with talent points investment where it is not symmetrical with points invested and make right part of Enhancement tree more talent point investment balanced with left part of tree.
- Add a limited mechanism to quickly and reliably apply Lashing Flames to several enemies. That could be for example via Lightning Bolts from Primordial Wave if Lashing Flames is learnt - it is limited (so manual application still has value), can make Primordial Wave more competitive after nerfs to both Primal Maelstrom and Splintered Elements and would be in line with Elemental Shaman’s Primordial Wave that already has additional effect in form of Lava Surge proc.
2.2 Ice Strike issues
Adding Ice Strike as a proc and making it ranged can be decent, but also made it very unreliable since you often cannot align it with Frost Shocks or controllably use as a MSW generator. Some people would still prefer passive version, so it should be kept as an option, but there should be a more controlled alternative choice as well for people who still want to have more control over it.
Suggestion: Make Ice Strike as a passive proc a choice node with Ice Strike as active ranged ability with X seconds cooldown (for example 12 seconds that decently align with both 6 seconds cooldown of Frost Shock that is boosted by it and 12 seconds base cooldown of Crash Lightning that boosts Ice Strike).
2.3 Elemental Spirits issues
There are currently 2 main issues with Elemental Spirits compared to Feral Spirits. First - they require additional investment of 2 points to get compared to Feral Spirits and that reduces build diversity of elemental builds in third gate. Second - they are still random element and can easily summon wolves of unfavored element and drop potential damage output without player’s fault, especially for Stormbringers. Both issues could be addressed.
Suggestions:
- Make Elemental Spirits a choice node with Feral Spirits directly. They already have pros and cons to each other, so such choice is reasonable.
- Give players a way to better control element of summoned wolves. That can be done via already implemented for Flowing Spirits mechanism - element of summoned wolves would match the element of last ability used if any and if it was Physical or no abilities were used - could still be random. Such mechanism both gives ways to better control element of summoned spirits (for people who want that) and still summon random element wolves (for people who want that).
- Replace Elemental Spirits capstone spot with a single-target focused alternative to Alpha Wolf for all spirits (Feral Spirits / Elemental Spirits / Flowing Spirits). That could be for example Tenacity that would increase damage of wolves themselves each second they are active by X% up to Y%, providing a decent single-target damage boost for them and being compatible with all 3 kinds of wolves.
3. Mobility, survivability vs throughput and crowd control issues
Enhancement Shamans also have unaddressed issues with mobility (which is lower than many other melee specs), survivability vs throughput (when survivability requires sacrificing damage output in PVE) and crowd control abilties (which are hardcasted / channeled, disruptable and often badly compatible with their damage profile). These issues could be addressed to both improve Enhancement’s performance in PVE and make them more competitive and move them out of C tier in most tier lists in PVP.
3.1 Mobility issues
This situation got better with making Feral Lunge baseline and reducing cooldown of Gust of Wind to 20 seconds, but that still was not enough, especially since other melee specs also got mobility boosts from their hero trees while Enhancement Shamans get very small mobility boost from Stormbringer and no mobility boost from Totemic. Feral Lunge’s cooldown is still too large for its effect when most other melee gap closers have either lower cooldown (like Charge) or additional effect like rooting affected enemy ( like Harpoon). Also while Gust of Wind got bonus from Go with the Flow incorporated baseline Spirit Walk did not and that both reduces its competitiveness as a choice option and makes Enhancement Shamans heavily affected by roots. These issues could be addressed.
Suggestions:
- Reduce base cooldown of Feral Lunge to 20 seconds (to match both Gust of Wind and gap closers of many other melee classes).
- Reduce base cooldown of Spirit Walk to 40-45 seconds (to match boost to Gust of Wind and reduce root affecting issue).
3.2 Survivability vs throughput issues
While damage mitigation issue was reduced with addition of Stone Bulwark Totem, one major issue still remains - Enhancement Shamans still have to pick between survivability through healing and damage output from MSW stacks in PVE when similar issue was addressed for most other classes and even Enhancement Shamans themselves in PVP. This issue could be solved in PVE too.
Suggestion: Move Stormweaver PVP talent to Enhancement’s talent tree as an optional talent and if needed tune its value in PVE and keep similar in PVP via PVP modifier. This solution would help Enhancement Shamans both in PVE (where they would be able to sacrifice less throughput to heal) and in PVP (where they would get free PVP talent slot that already has steer competition for them or access to Stormweaver if they could not afford taking it earlier).
3.3 Crowd control issues
Enhancement Shamans also have unaddressed issue where they have too unreliable or niche crowd control abilities for a melee spec - they are hardcasted or channeled (so easily disruptable) or delayed / breakable (Capacitor Totem) or attached to throughput and can mess diminishing returns for their party (Sundering etc). Most other melee classes don’t have such issues and usually can just press a button and get immediate effect (which is also often not dispellable too) and as a result this crowd control issue affects Enhancement’s performance (especially in PVP) and contributes to it being low ranked there. It could be addressed.
Suggestions:
- Make Lightning Lasso a choice node with instant melee range Earth based stun - such alternative would still have pros and cons to Lightning Lasso and be much more fitting for Enhancement Shamans who would prefer to hit controlled enemies with melee attacks and MSW spenders instead of channeling their stun and would still keep access to Lightning Lasso for both Enhancement and other Shaman specs if they prefer it. It would also provide more choice options for other Shaman specs too.
- Make Hex affected by Nature’s Swiftness for Enhancement Shamans only and if needed for balance affected Hex could also get reduced duration to compensate. That would give them limited access to instant ranged breakable crowd control many other melee specs already have and can make Nature’s Swiftness more competitive for them as a capstone option (as currently it is not since they already have access to instant damaging / healing spells via MSW stacks).
4. Undertuned / too niche / not competitive enough / improvable talents
Enhancement Shamans also have several too undertuned or too niche talents both in Enhancement and general talent tree that could be improved. Aside from mentioned above, these involve:
Stormblast - provides very low value even for Mastery builds and even lower value for non-Mastery builds. Could use a boost for competitiveness.
Suggestion: Make it cause all Stormstrikes to deal X% additional damage as Nature damage and if needed for balance this value can be lower than current 25% and be increased to 25% for Stormsurge affected Stormstrikes only. Such change would make this talent more generally useful and competitive.
Primal Maelstrom / Splintered Elements - might have been overnerfed and can make Primordial Wave not competitive enough with other third gate talents. Consider their tuning.
Thundershorm / Thundershock - requires additional investment for Enhancement Shamans in general tree just to get a compatible with their profile version and limits combo options for all 3 specs, since they cannot access combo of Travelling Storms and Thundershock that was usable when Travelling Storms was a PVP talent. Could be improved with that in mind.
Suggestion: Make Thunderstorm a choice node with Thundershock (both as 30 seconds cooldown) and make Travelling Storms just upgrade both - make them usable on allies and reduce cooldown by 5 seconds. Such choice node would be reasonable (as a choice node between knockback and knockup that already have pros and cons to each other), would make talent point investment for Enhancement to get a suitable version similar to 2 other Shaman specs and increase combo possibilities for all 3 specs.
Totem of Wrath PVP talent - unlike Elemental and Restoration Shamans Enhancement Shamans neither use a guaranteed crit ability nor have much crit synergies, so current effect of Totem of Wrath is not useful for them much, especially since the totem is also breakable. That can make this PVP talent not competitive enough for them and could be addressed with creating an Enhancement specific version of it that would be more compatible with their profile.
Suggestion: Create an Enhancement specific version of Totem of Wrath that would increase damage done by melee attacks and abilities instead of crit damage. Such effect would be more useful for Enhancement Shamans and their melee allies than crit damage boost and can be more competitive with other PVP talents, but is still niche and not mandatory to take (for example for Enhancement builds that rely on their MSW spenders more than on their melee attacks).
Ride the Lightning PVP talent - its Chain Lightning part was buffed, but forked lightning part was not and that can reduce its effect and viability. It could use a buff too.
Enhancement Stormbringer feedback
This spec was decently improved lately, but still has several unaddressed issues and improvable / not competitive enough talents. General issues with Stormbringer were covered in Elemental Shaman feedback post linked in this thread, so this part would focus on Enhancement Stormbringer specific issues.
Several talents in Enhancement Stormbringer tree still have oversights, clunky mechanics or potential improvements and could be looked at. These include:
Stormcaller - does not affect storm related physical abilities and that reduces its synergy with Enhancement storm builds. Could be addressed.
Suggestion: Make it also affect Stormstrike, Windstrike, Windfury Weapon and Doom Winds.
Lightning Conduit - idea is interesting, but its primary effect is unreliable (can proc when you don’t need it and not proc when you do need it) and secondary effect is controversial - throwing enemies away when Reincarnating sometimes can be useful, but sometimes can be harmful like when you Reincarnate in middle of pack and throw them away and hear some strong words from the party or even via throwing ranged enemies away after Reincarnating and having to chase them again. This talent could be improved.
Suggestion: Make this talent provide constant small movement speed bonus (opposed to active ability based and higher bonus from using Tempest) and make it provide several seconds of Astral Shift instead of Thunderstorm when using Reincarnate. Such effects are much more reliable, useful and would not have mentioned drawbacks.
Supercharge - has a fixed refund value that both can promote <10 MSW stacks spenders usage to get more refunds and is not very compatible with Static Accumulation bonus. Could be improved with that in mind.
Suggestion: Change it to just provide X% chance to refund Y% of MSW stacks spent and stack with Static Accumulation. Such change would make this bonus more scalable and compatible with other talents.
Surging Currents - while its bonus is now more compatible with Enhancement’s profile, 20% bonus might be too low for being attached to a spell that requires a lot of build-up. This bonus could be increased.
Enhancement Totemic feedback
This tree got a lot of changes in recent build and while some of them were positive, many other were controversial or don’t make much sense thematically. They will be analyzed in talents review section, but there are also some other unaddressed issues with the tree.
1. Surging Totem’s area management issues
Surging Totem requires enemies to stay within its area to continue dealing damage and that can cause issues both in PVE (where enemies can be constantly moving like chasing the tank) and in PVP (where ranged enemies would simply run out of its area as soon as possible to prevent being affected). Totem can be relocated via Totemic Projection, but that has long cooldown, no visible area for new position of Surging Totem when relocating and also brings other totems to it and makes them susceptible to cleave or being broken. As such, Surging Totem could get an additional management mechanism with that in mind.
Suggestion: Borrow mechanic from Shadowlands Vesper Totem and make Surging Totem ability while active be replaced by a short cooldown off-GCD ability to relocate it within 40 yards with new area for Surging Totem also being shown. Such ability 1) would make its management easier and more reliable and 2) would allow to not harm other totems positioning when relocating it.
2. Undertuned / too niche / improvable talents
Many talents in Totemic tree have too niche, low or controversial effects and could be improved. These include:
Lively Totems - while merging of Searing Totem effects into it is nice, it is still very RNG based and can deny you both of its effects with bad RNG period. It could be improved with that in mind.
Suggestion: Make Lava Lash guaranteed to summon a Searing Totem and limit them in other way - via internal cooldown or making new summoned totem replace old or some other option. Such change would still keep Searing Totems and Hot Hand in line, but allow to use bonus from Lively Totems much more reliably.
Oversized Totems - provide niche value and their totem health increase bonus does not help much totems with 4-5 health (that would still be one-shot) and totems with 4-10% of your health (that would still be broken in same 2-3 GCD). It could get an additional effect that would better affect such totems too.
Suggestion: Make it also enable a totem destruction backlash effect like “enemy that destroys your totem takes X% of Spell Power Nature damage and has damage and healing output lowered by Y% for Z seconds”. Such effect can be useful for all totems and can provide good value even for squishy totems like mentioned above.
Swift Recall - does not affect all totems like Oversized Totems and its cooldown reduction effect can usually occur only once per totem anyway, so is low for higher cooldown totems. That can make its effect too niche and not competitive enough and could be addressed.
Suggestion: Make it affect all totems and just reduce their cooldown by X%. That would make its bonus more generally useful, not attached to niche conditions and decently scalable.
Wind Barrier - provides too low value for its cooldown, especially compared to defensive nodes of many other hero specs. Needs a buff.
Supportive Imbuements- provides too low value and is very inferior to Restoration’s version that provides whole new imbue and imbue slot. Enhancement’s version could be brought in line too.
Suggestion: Replace its effect with enabling 1 new imbue and imbue slot for Enhancement too. Such imbue could be Frostbrand Weapon (already existed in the game and is a currently missing for Shamans ice themed imbue) and imbue slot addition could be allowing Shaman’s main hand weapon to have 2 different imbues. Such imbue would be thematic, useful both in PVE (where it can provide additional bonus from Elemental Weapons) and PVP (where its snare procs can help Ehnancement’s melee uptime) and more in line with Restoration’s version.
Whirling Elements - since cooldown of Surging Totem was increased and Enhancement Shamans are still masters of all 4 elements (which are represented by Lava Lash, Ice Strike, Stormstrike and Sundering etc), this node should emphasize that and provide 4 different elemental motes too. Currently missing Whirling Water mote could for example provide a proc or reset cooldown of Ice Strike and increase damage of next Ice Strike or Frost Shock by X%. Such bonus would be fitting, help with Ice Strike management and would be in line with Whirling Fire that boosts exclusively Fire abilties.
Whirling Earth - its bonus is thematically strange (as Flame Shock is more Fire ability than Earth) and might be not needed much with both Molten Assault and new currently not implemented yet talent for Enhancement. Consider returning it to its old effect or at least making it more Earth themed.
If you have additional suggestions, you can post them in the comments. Thank you for reading!
Links to other Shaman specializations posts:
Elemental Shaman - 11.0.5 Elemental Shaman Feedback And Suggestions
Restoration Shaman - 11.0.5 Restoration Shaman Feedback And Suggestions