Windfury Strike. Replaces Windfury Weapon, only useable with a two handed weapon.
18 second cooldown.
Lash out with your two handed weapon for 110% weapon damage, increasing your attack speed by 75% for the next three attacks. On the third attack, strike an additional 2 times for X bonus damage. Attacks made while Windfury Strike is on cooldown reduce its cooldown by 1 second.
This is how Thralls Windfury works in HoTS, and I think it’s a pretty good way to balance out 2h. It gives enh another button to push, it gives players a chance to react in PvP, and it rewards uptime on a target, giving enh more consistency in PvE and some burst downtime in PvP.
Thats exactly the point. It was a still fun yet “less than optimal” spec back in the day but the hope was that in SoD they we’re going to make 2H Enh a viable spec. Instead it was just skipped right over for the TBC DW version since it was already created.
They gave support and runes to some of the other “less than optimal” specs of classic like boomkin and spriest. Why not 2H Enh?
Windfury slot machine, was the biggest dopamine rush, it truly had its highs and lows. Hence the slot machine part…
But my issue with the Runes, TBC talent tree was changed to remove 2h shaman they completely removed the Talent in replacement of Dual Wielding, but this isn’t TBC this is Vanilla.
Like you’ve mentioned,
The whole point of SoD is to “Shake the Meta”, it literally was to complete specs that didn’t feel fully finished and make Viable, example Balance Druids mana issue, Shadow Priests as well, while they seem to be getting runes that really helped out their issues in Vanilla, Enhance Shaman isn’t really fixing the spec more so completely changing how it plays to how it was.
Enhance Shaman in Vanilla could have received help from Runes from other expansions like in TBC “Unleashed Rage” or “Shamanistic Focus” or from WotLK “Maelstrom Weapon”, theirs so much ways they could of kept 2h Enhance and really fix the issues it had.
They fixed Balance Druids, Wrath costing zero mana with a instant cast heal proc, Starsurge which also works with Wrath and Starfire Talents, essentially makes Starsurge free to cast, at a higher level Starsurge will get a reduced cast time and be able to proc a stun and Crit for 100% more damage.
I don’t know, they seem to with other classes in general fix specs issues that really plagued them without changing their core. Regardless how Enhance turns out we still have the Talent to equip 2handers essentially making it a dead talent with now Runes completely changing how the spec plays.
I’m saying this after watching the Q&A where it was asked about 2h Enhance and they replied with “they wanted it to be more like TBC but are open to feedback.” (which sort of confirms they don’t want 2h Enhance being a thing).
biggest problem i have is pally and sham we all about auto attacks, pally gets crusader strike, devine storm and exsersit. we get dual wield and lava lash. like what vanilla is 2handed sham. but even if you go dual wield you have to have 2 runes to get an off hand attack. plz save the its only to lvl 25, pallys get 3 attacks and access to wf we get 1 off hand attack. i posted in a diffremt thread. but none of my friends want dual wield as sham its a test right lets try to see if the devs were wrong to kill 2h in bc
They didn’t remove 2H from the spec, they made it baseline in TBC.
2H shamans are still supported by their talent tree, but DW is typically the best option. The issue for Enhance in Vanilla was never really their damage, as they do plenty, but their threat and mana issues.
Blizzard has said this too:
For Season of Discovery, Blizzard has focused Shaman’s Enhancement damage to be more focused on the Burning Crusade version, which is Dual wield focused with Lava Lash. Blizzard is listening to player feedback regarding that.
With Shamanistic Rage, mana will be far less of an issue. We can’t say for certain how threat will play out, but I don’t think 2H spec is dead in the water. On top of the fact that they could easily add in a new Rune at any time to buff 2H damage.
Couple of easy examples are (if Blizzard is listening):
While using a 2H weapon, your Windfury Weapon will no longer cause threat.
While using a 2H weapon, Stormstrike’s cooldown is reduced by 8 seconds.
While using a 2H weapon, Stormstrike’s critical hits cause your next Chain Lightning or Lightning Bolt cast within 12 seconds to be instant and free.
My issue is going 2h in phase 1, if nothing changes, 2h will not be a thing which is very odd considering that’s when the talent is available.
Phase 1, if you going Enhance tree it is for Tanking (Shield specialisation, 5% Crit, 5% dodge), Runes are insane power boost literally so strong they are going to tune the world around them so it still feels like a challenge.
The Rune “Dual Wielding” is insanely strong, 5% extra to hit with spells and melee is crazy, and they’ve future proofed it allowing Stormstrike to hit with both weapons and “Lava Lash” literally only works with an offhand weapon.
Currently if everything goes live from what we’ve been shown, Phase 1 has zero runes that support going 2h, now not saying things could change and currently we know really nothing for phase 2, but the Q&A response gave little faith and hope, Blizzard regardless of which version of wow we play, Era, Hardcore or Retail seems to be always “listening to feedback”.
You’d honestly be hugely setting yourself at a disadvantage not dual wielding it’s really like 10 talent points in 1, 5% chance to hit with your shocks and weapon and gives Enhance Lava Lash.
That is discounting the fact that 2H is not a bad choice already. I agree that in order to keep up with DW, it’ll need some additional support. Blizzard did their tried and true method of performing surgery with a butcher’s knife instead of a scalpel.
A lot of the Runes are worth 5-10 talent points worth of power. The whole idea behind original Vanilla was how things were budgeted and Blizzard kind of ignored that. It’s fine in a sense to see how the combat system of old would react to a modern version and how the playerbase evolves around that, but I think the expectation was to have minor talent and class balances that made the “meme” specs far less useless.
Talented like this with my above suggestions would be decent DPS for sure with 2H:
I agree, and they really have to some classes, look at Balance Druid, insane runes, Wrath is free, starsurge benefits from Wrath and Starfire Talents, they addressed the “oom” joke spec completely, Shadow Priest as well with more Runes supporting more dps spells…
But I think when it came to Enhance they went to far out left field, fundamentally changing how’s the spec feels and why a lot, myself included really went back to Vanilla to play a long lost forgotten play style a lot of players loved.
Like I’ve mentioned maybe phase 2 brings support for the 2h play style but in phase 1 it will be severely lacking not dual wielding with lava lash once again being a sub optimal choice.
The funny thing is, they didn’t really address how Spriest goes OOM. They gave it more buttons to press, but every other hybrid (thus far) in their DPS spec has some sort of mana regen or fix to their going OOM all the time.
I wouldn’t say it’s “out of left field” exactly. A lot of the changes being added are basically the changes added in BC, but some go a little beyond that.
We still don’t know all the runes and there is still a couple of weeks left before the release. We could see some changes we discuss now right away or within a couple of weeks after release.
Well with the current runes it could be all we get, currently they keep saying just over 100 runes at launch. 9 classes 12 runes per class, that’s 108 runes, just over 100 runes.
I do hope there is more, or changes happen but I guess only time will tell. But from face value on what we currently know 2h enhance isn’t a thing in phase 1.
I thought the total for P1 was 120 runes total. Like most things, that’s subjected to change I am sure. Either way, I don’t think it takes a whole lot to make 2H as viable as DW.
I think one of the bigger fixes that needs to happen is conversions like how Enhance and Druids still use Strength in Vanilla instead of Agility for Attack Power. They also need to give Druids the ability to use Polearms. There are several decent polearms in the game that are basically unused when they could make for great Druid weapons. Monstrous Glaive could be updated to Dodge instead of Parry and it would have been a great Druid weapon. Alas, we have the butcher’s knife over the scalpel again.
Not sure where you are getting your information from. 2H Shaman hits pretty hard for a hybrid. If you look at Patchwerk alone, outside of one Boomkin, the only two spec that was doing more damage for a hybrid were Elemental shaman by a minor difference of about 100 dps or so and Feral druids. Feral druids being so far ahead they were keeping up with/beating pure DPS specs even. This is excluding Warriors as they are by far the best performers as just about everyone is aware.
Even compared to pure classes doing1400-1900, 1127 isn’t an insane difference. Again, this excludes Warriors who are pushing 2600+.
It’s this kind of stuff that really makes me wonder why people are so obsessed with the meta BS when the margin isn’t really that big most of the time. The only issue is when it’s a really average or below average player playing one of these specs, they’d be better off as a pure DPS being average.
So i guess theyre only behind actual dps by like 1400… which is even worse than what i saw because of how well warriors scale.
Not trying to compare garbage dps to garbage dps. All those classes are awful, which i think is the point of the season and bringing other classes up closer to warrior.
It surprises me that they still haven’t commented on this despite saying they would listen to player feedback on the matter and the Reddit forums being absolutely full of players asking for 2h enh, there is multiple threads even on these forums too. The players obviously want a 2h spec…
Again, not sure where you are getting your numbers from unless you are looking at overall fights which is vastly going to favor different specs for different things
Top DPS warrior with 2618.8. We know warriors are the undisputed top, pretty much across the board. If we look at the #1 parses for every single DPS, the margin outside of warrior is not that big. This is looking at Patchwerk specifically since it’s the “punching bag” fight where you just stand there and go as hard as you can.
All hybrids are behind the lowest Pure DPS (Hunters) by 127 to 438.5 except Feral Druids which are ahead by 376.6. The top Feral does more than the top Frost Mage.
So if we toss out the lowest at S Priest being drastically behind by the most compared to Rogues (the second highest since we toss out warriors), the difference on the lowest Hybrid is 869.2. Mind you, these are fights that typically last about 1 minute and 30 seconds up to 2 minutes and 35 seconds.
Hybrids against Hunter DPS is a pretty small margin. It widens quite a bit after that, but it doesn’t make any fight unbeatable. Comparing any class to Warrior dps in Classic is kind of an unfair comparison. If anything the only specs lagging really far behind are S Priest to a fairly sizeable margin, Ret paladin slightly less, and Boomkin starts to close that gap. Ele and Enhance are on the higher end of Hybrid DPS.
Keeping in mind that these are the top players of their time and not an average. The top 5% it shakes up a little bit:
While the overall brings everything but Warriors, Fire Mages, and Rogues down a bit:
Keeping in mind that Pure DPS typically benefit from having Hybrid DPS in the raids. It sounds silly to me to say “comparing garbage dps to garbage dps” unless you’re looking only at it from a macro view.
Yes i only look at overall because it is by far the most important factor when looking at dps.
The bosses are going to die. That is a foregone conclusion. They are going to die fast. I frankly dont give a crap about your boss parses. 99% of the raid is trash.
We all know how boss parses and even overall parses can be manipulated to get a certain result.
More or less, yeah. Its fun to look at it closer though since a lot of people really only look at the top. Granted, the three classes (two are spec specific - one even being a hybrid) you expect to be far and away are, but the Hybrid dps itself isn’t like miles behind in dps overall. I was a little surprised to see S Priests being so low in DPS considering how much flak Ret gets, it’s ahead of S Priest. Although, S Priest brings a bit more value since you can toss one into the Warlock group and it’s free life tap city for them.