Yesterday I tried enhance and tried the primal primer build. Lash lava lash proc I’d get around 28k crit was a sort of rare but still good procs on that , but all I could do when I’d run into a group was probably get 2 stormstrikes off or a lava lash proc and lay down counter strike totem for my team then get heavily focused and run away without Astral shift, I tried a lot of different builds but noting. Am I playing it wrong or is it complete crap? I main ele and love it way more but used to main enhance back in the day and loved it but idk if I’m playing it wrong or not.
It’s crap.
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I will be trying it out. Recently did Enhance in PvP to try something different then Ele (and the fact that my gear happened to also have Natural Harmony AND Primal Primer traits on all 3), so going to test it out. In PvE it was really refreshing to play, and hoping it is decent went PvPing today.
Of course this will be a mixture of just random BGs/Epic BGs.
From my enh experience in bgs and wpvp, you can get melt really fast so you do a lot of kiting to heal up. Getting pack spirits and full ghost wolf build helps a lot for solo play.
When you get those landslide proc with stormstrike proc, you can pump someone hp pretty hard. But if you dont proc, then the dmg ain’t really there.
Enh ain’t in the greatest spot after his pvp nerfs
Enhance can still perform. i’m often top KBs and less often top DPS. KBs because we excel at single target damage. Particularly against casters because of purge. And curse dispel for warlocks, etc.
I still think blizz has their head up their *ss because enhance is not balanced with other classes. Takes a better enhance to beat a worse of various specs.
Please undo the healing nerfs to enhance. Blizzard increased the ratio of stam to agi in 8.1.5 so healing surge now heals for 6.7% in pvp. Heals are such a large investment in globals, maelstorm and mana for so little return now. Please revert the healing nerfs in pvp to enhance.
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It is not hard to see the statistics. No Enhance is doing high end PvP.
None.
How hard is it to just do some tweaks or acknowledge that a class with 1 defensive didn’t need a 33% nerf to our only other defensive (healing surge in pvp is a terrible now) . After the stamina increase it’s particularly attrocious. Other dps classes have flat % heals that scale with stamina. Ours does not.
There’s maybe really only 2 things you need to do to make enhance great again - revert the healing nerfs in pvp and increase the crash lightning damage some so our AOE is more competitive with other classes. I also wouldn’t mind seeing astral shift useable while stunned and the cd on it brought down to 1 min.
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Clsss/spec design is the most important thing in the game. And players provide alot of feedback to help improve it and it’s very frustrating when nothing comes of that. For many years I had alot of confidence in blizzard as the best gaming company out there. i still do when it comes to content. But I don’t know what’s going with class/spec design this xpac and the lack of interaction with the community is really disheartening.
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Melting extremely fast is a problem, and the damage can many times be unreliable. Getting no procs hurts damage a lot, and maelstrom costs are too high imo. 40 for Lava Lash? So much for so little even with primal primer unless you have a Hot Hand proc (and you get fewer since I believed it was nerfed in Legion because the proc chance was too good for a specific set of legendaries).
I always thought Shaman was decent against casters with the 12 second interrupt /purge and tools you can talent into such as Grounding totem. That part stands true. However the issue comes with fighting melee opponents, something Elemental already has issues with as a caster.
Being the worst of the melee DPS (seems like that) feels bad. When you get procs and everything it feels great… and thats how it felt in Legion as well. But if you do not get procs then with the gutted healing expect to lose a Melee vs. Melee fight.
I actually just 1v1ed with a fury warrior in Eye of the Storm. With Primal Primer, I had to get all my buffs rolling, get stacks on him, and then pray I got enough procs to keep going, unfortunately that didnt happen. And what limited damage I could deal to him was mostly healed. I will not claim to be amazing at enhancement, but it was literally no contest against this Warrior. I fell into the healing trap where I tried to heal with my defensive on CD… silly me because it actually made things worse since the healing is horrible. If you want to heal, take Spectral Recovery and run around, significantly better and more reliable then Surge.
Im still having fun with Enhancement, the problem is its just a worse Ele imo, as it has been all of BFA. Kind of sad.
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Get what your saying. 2 weeks ago I decided to try enh back out. Since the legion rework, haven’t enjoyed playing it. Too much emphasis on SS procs made it feel like 3 button fdk. When I saw resurrection of the LL build, figured I’d give it try. Honesty really enjoying it. Feels more like cata game play.
Build- 2/2,3/1/2/1/3/1 with Shamanism, SR and one flex talent, I prefer grounding mostly.
Az-1xAR, 2-3xPP, 2-3xNH flex-1xTF if WWF. Atleast 2 better 3 PS. Vers then mastery.
A few observations;
-even with Swelling waves, HS is a waste of a gcd most of the time while engaged.
- Max gw talents are best mitigation right now.
-build is best dmg profile vs plate classes.
-dmg will be low outside of BL and/or FS.
-burst is extremely high during BL especially with FS.
-rogue is the derpist class in wow.
-synergy between AR and BL is pretty insane.
-purge spam on you negates any defensive value of gw talents.
-despite all the inherent problems with this build, I prefer it to MoP, WoD and legion enh.
Imo build has potential.
Be prepared for 25k lava lashes and 14k stormstrikes that get absorbed or self healed by a straight dps class that out damages you 2 to 1 as you struggle to keep maelstrom up so you can heal yourself for 10k.
You pop it all and catch em off guard or you die.
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Enhance is terrible in arena right now, ele is much better due to lightning lasso. But I’m enhance main so let’s suffer together.
In regards to primal primer build, it’s great in pve but bad in pvp, I’ve tested it a bunch. Basically with the -50% on azerite traits, even with 3 primers your lava lashes are only better than stormstrikes when you get a hothand proc(not often enough to justify losing 3 other traits). In pve I can get hothand procs around 100k-140k. In pvp the highest I’ve gotten was like 50k with double fire wolves+dark iron+trinket. It’s better to go fishing for landslide procs, which happens more often and I’ve hit 50k just mainhand stormstrike in pvp.
You NEED 1 roiling storm at least for the free proc every 20s, rest is preferance. I’m testing 3 harmony 3 roiling for big landslide burst and it doesnt seem the best for overall dmg but I get the biggest landslides especially when I get a fat crash lightning modifier.
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I always appreciate reading your posts on Enh. Assuming you could pick your ideal trait combo, what would you use and what build would you use?
Since BFA started, I think I’ve tried 3 different builds (standard with lightning shield, FFW, searing assault, and ascendance; strength of earth; and pp build). I enjoy PP build the most in pve, but it’s less than ideal for pvp, as you mentioned. I think the thing that bothers me the most is the large amount of nerfs in the last few months.
Roiling, SoE, & PP all nerfed.
8.0 pvp talents nerfed.
Healing and mana regen nerfed.
As soon as a viable build is established, the traits get neutered it seems. I love my enh, and definitely think we need some love from Blizz.
Ya I was practically bis for the fire build and the 50% azerite nerf in pvp made me cry.
For most specs, traits that give you an effect on top of a stacking number are great to have 1 of. I already alluded to the 1 of roiling storm for the free proc every 20s effect. Thunderaans fury also has that static totem proc chance that isnt affected by the 50% nerf, only the stormstrike dmg buff is affected. You need to play forceful winds with thunderaans though and I love landslide too much. Id only actually want forceful winds with thunderaans in cleave mirrors probably.
Ancestral resonance mastery buff is nerfed by 50% but the lust duration increase effet isn’t (+5seconds in pvp) so that can be a sweet pick also. The best build/traits/talents combo though is relative to your comp and matchup but as I said, im testing triple harmony triple roiling. So far I got a 50k mainhand SS and 19k offhand that same stormbringer proc and that + 40k sundering landed an accidental kill vs a r1 mage so that alone will make me keep testing the 3 x roiling worth or no. It’s only roughly 1k dmg per trait in pvp on stormbringer procs, so thats just 6k bonnus with a landslide proc, round it up to 10k bonnus if you get a fat crash lightning 1st.
I feel like crash generates enough stormbringer procs in arena though where it just MIGHT justify yolo triple roilings for burst value.
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The 3 x NH is why you’re using Hailstorm and Elemental Spirits? Doesn’t Blouderfist have better synergy than Lightning Shield if you’re fishing for Landslide procs? I always thought Lightning Shield was primarily for the maelstrom generation effect that was sadly removed.
Harmony is why I’m using hailstorm. I think its worth the dead global in your rotation to have so much more stats+the frost dmg proc to make everything else burstier. It’s worth it in pve and in pvp you’re often not melee range and/or need slows so that’s a no brainer for me.
I’m logged out in pve gear/spec/traits though. Wolfs sim better in pve for the once in a while you get lightning wolves, your stormstrikes can crit over 100k. For pvp I’d maybe take wolves in a cleave mirror for but everything else I like ascendance as an extra win condition.
Ascendance is a great talent pick when the meta is either super fast(1min games) or super slow(10min games) which is the case currently. Also excellent vs all the plate wearers as it ignores armor and they are livelords otherwise with crucible gear. Not to mention you can kill a target that blinked/gated away.
For 100% uptime fights where you single target and dont cleave (destro/boomy/sp), earthen spike is probably the play but I disslike the maelstrom dump of keeping it up. Similarly, good uptime fights I’ll spec lightning shield and bad ones I’ll go boulderfist(since it’s 20yard global dps buff) if I remember but I usually just forget.
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This. It’s completely crap in pvp. It’s worth mentioning that you can still get top dmg in BG’s if you can survive, but you’re only chance to survive is to utilize Ghost Wolf+Pack Spirits or if you have a pocket healer.
I played random bgs with my Enhancement Shaman, Ret Paladin, and a DH.
Some observations:
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Enhancement brings the most tools. Group slow, purge, hex, aoe stun, water walking, Earth Elemental, Bloodlust… etc. etc. If you know how to use these tools, the other melee dps classes will honestly feel lackluster. DH has some stuff, but Ret feels ridiculously lame.
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The trade off is that Enhancement Shaman are soft… like hot butter soft. My DH and my Ret have like double the survivability. Shaman also gets focused more than the other melee because people seem to know how soft we are.
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In Legion, astral shift and our self heals made us awesome duelists in random BGs. In BFA, i seemingly get my butt handed to me in ANY 1 on 1 with another melee class.
These observations are for random BGs, not ranked and not arena. I stopped doing pvp about 3 months ago, so maybe a lot has changed since then. But honestly it was pretty crappy experience playing Enhancement knowing you couldnt actually kill anything. You make a difference, but not one that has instant gratification returns.
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I like strength of earth for pvp. I run 3 SOE, 1 AR, 1 RS, and 1 NH. For talents I run 1, 1, 1 or 2, 3, 1 or 2, 3, and 2 or 3. I don’t like the lava lash build because it seems built for pve as it’s balanced around having high uptime on targets which is hard to sustain in pvp.
For pvp talents I like swelling waves as I do think it can still make a difference. Shamanism is a given. Third one I vary depending on what I think is the top priority based on the situation (e.g., in WSG I go with the ghost wolf talents whereas in arathi I’m more likely to go with grounding or ride the lightning).
For defensives I prefer the shield over ghost wolf because I try to minimize my time in ghost wolf since you don’t contribute when you’re doing that. I focus on casters - healers typically but also fire mages because of pyro and locks because of all the cc and chaos bolts.
Generally casters want to kite you so I like strengh of earth because I can combine it with our flame and frost attacks and so can sustain pretty good damage while being kited up to 20 yards out. Also, since it’s nature damage it bypasses armor.
Enhance can perform extremley well in your typical random bg if your good because the average random bg player isn’t necessarily that good. Once you go to competiive ranked pvp, people would rather have somebody else. Blizzard calls that a perception problem. Seems more like reality.
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Good feedback Zezu. I did have a few questions for you.
WIth 3 x SoE, any reason you’re not running with Earthen Spike instead of Ascendance? It seems like it has much better synergy with the SoE, especially when running Boulderfist, Landslide, and Overcharge.
How do you feel about Overcharge in general?
I think Feral Lunge should be baseline. I love the ability, but I can’t give up the heal. Especially considering how squishy Enh is, it feels mandatory. Do you find it’s worth sacrificing Nature’s Guardian for FL in a pvp setting?
Since you mentioned going after kiting casters, I’m guessing Ascendance and Feral Lunge help support that aim.
Lastly, grats on being the only person I’ve seen able to rock the pink pvp Doomhammer skin. Nice mog!
Thanks Nomak for your very nice response.
Answers to your questions -
I have been historically running earthen spike because I like the frequency and synergy with the build I’m using as you mentioned and that’s why I indicated 2 or 3 for my last line of talents.
I’ve been experimenting with ascendence lately which is what I have often used in previous xpacs because of how bursty it is. The feral spirit talent suffers from the same thing as the lava lash build in pvp - it’s dependent on high uptime to get the most benefit and if you orient to enhance’s strengths which I belive is going after casters and kiting melee rather that trying to go toe to toe with warriors and rogues then the kiting reduces it viability.
Ascendence is trickier than earthen spike because you can get cc’d and lose alot of the benefit but I think like other aspects of playing enhance well it’s a question of situational awareness and proper timing of your use of other abilities like capacitor, grounding, hex and your pvp tinket to give you guaranteed uptime on the ability. If you time your use of ascendence right it’s really devestating. Also, the range on it, when combined with other aspects of the stormstrike/SOE build can make it extremely deadly, especially against casters.
I run feral lunge over the heal in bgs. And I really like overcharge in pvp for similar reasons. It all combines to being able to put out alot of damage while chasing people down. Often the most intense kiting comes when people are in trouble and at that point having serious ranged burst and closing ability lets you finish them. I find the 20% heal often doesn’t really save me whereas feral lunge can for two reasons - one, it let’s me close to stop a caster for burning me down and instead burning them down and two it allows me to kite melee that may be chasing me down. Also, if you close with feral then you can finish with sundering. It’s really our version of execute.
In arena I still like overcharge for the ranged damage but feral lunge is a tougher call because of how hard you can get focused. But if you run with someone that can save you like a mistweaver, then it’s still very tempting to use feral lunge. The biggest thing about pvp is landing kills and enhance can do that very well if you use all its tools right.
My general philosophy with enhance is that the best defense is a good offense and focusing on our strength which is caster killing with a great interrupt, purge, grounding, and alot of physical damage which is best dealt to low armor targets. It’s also a very useful role to play because shutting down healers is just a key part of controlling pvp fights.
In closing, one piece of advice I would give is that I think enhance is optimally played when you have good addons. Enhance has so many cooldowns. I personally use tell me when and set up my abilities directly to the right and left of my character so I can see what’s ready even out of the corner of my eye while focusing my target. I also add sound alerts to the key ones so I know when longer key CDs like bloodlust or trinkets are back off CD.
Aside for CD awareness, I also use it to tell me when me or anyone else has been cursed, feared or charmed so I can dispel it, to tell me when my target has magic buffs that I should purge, and to flash my screen when health drops below a certain level so I’m always aware when it’s time to start thinking about my health.
Neat plate, and healers have to die I also strongly recommend. I actually use like 20+ addons but those seem to make the most difference for me in pvp.
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