Which is better/easier to learn the fundamentals of for a noob shammy?
I would say ele just because ranged is more forgiving than melee, but if you have a clear preference for one or the other they’re not that far apart in difficulty.
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Ele by a mile… Enh has so many buttons that your head will spin . Plus the play style is a weird hybrid between melee and casters.
Ele may be easier to pick up sham basics… Enh if you like whackamole games for sure. Ele is a little whackamole too but more predictable then enh id say
Play them both and feel them out. You will.be surprised what you gravitate towards.
Since one is melee and one is ranged, the fundamentals are going to be different depending on which spec you choose.
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I’m mainly enhance but from what I’ve experienced ele feels impactful with most of your moves and overloads so each thing you do does work or works well with something else. Enhance feels a bit like each button press besides doomwind windfury and ascendance doesn’t do a lot and your reacting to procs of your storm strike refresh. Even then most of our damage comes from positioning and just staying in hit range of our enemies.
So ele if you want to chuck damage in chunks and enhance if you want to run around a bunch while pushing a bunch of buttons and keeping track of cooldowns to open up hard every minute.
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The only time I even enjoy Ele is when I get double LvB into ES crit. Otherwise it’s not really my style.
Enh all day every day (except when I Resto). I hate 4 button specs.
I find that Enhance is a lot easier and straight forward. Elemental has a lot intricacies whereas Enhance is just straight up using abilities on cool-down and dumping your maelstrom stacks. But, I find that Ele is really enjoyable once you get the hang of it.
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In term of ease, I would say its pretty equal. Enh you have to get used to the number of buttons to check and the maelstrom ressource, ele you have to keep track of your dots and plan ahead.
In terms of gameplay, it comes down to two factors:
- Melee or ranged? Some people simply prefer one over the other, and that will pretty much determine what they play.
- Big numbers or lots of small ones? Ele has spells that have lots of impact. They have Oomph. Enh does amazing burst, but you will end up sitting there wondering where their hp went cause you didnt even see a third of the attacks you just did.
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Go ele. All content unless arena, will be easier, because you can cast behind melee. If you want to do arena still ele just a little more learning involved
Enh does not play like normal melee like say a warrior or Pally. You need to kite like a caster , no instant cc, no real instant defensive except 1…
Paladins right now are a complete outliers, they are way overtuned healing-wise, which allows them to stick on target like no one ever did before. Everyone else needs to kite at some point. Warriors use their leap to break LoS, rogues and feral need to go for resets/restealths, monks use their teleports to open healing windows and Survival is ALL about kiting. And we do have an instant CC we can talent into, Sundering might not be a stun but it incapacitates for 2 seconds.
No one will argue our lack of defensives is not a weakness, its our major one, but our heals are pretty good. But I fail to see how the class differs fundamentally from other melees. Its not like you can stand back and nuke people, you still need to go in and hit them to generate MWs.
Enh only has 3 buttons, stormstrike, crash lightning, lightning bolt. Anything else is busywork for a few meager dps.
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Elemental, if at all.
Enhance is whackamole and your only “highlight” is using doomwinds to put up about half as much DPS as a paladin, dru, or firemage on a large group.
I’m getting pretty annoyed with how much blizzard seems to hate shamans overall.
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If you are leveling your shaman, I would say go enhance as it’s faster and more bursty especially if pulling multiple mobs. Ele is bursty too but it relies on longer CDs.
Once you hit 60 or if you’re already 60, then it’s up to you whether you want to play melee or range. That should be the number 1 question to ask yourself.
Elemental is in a better spot for raiding. Enhance is in a slightly better spot in M+ as Elemental doesn’t really have much AoE to offer. Earthquake is the signature AoE ability and it doesn’t do that much damage especially in a meta where mobs are kited all the time.
Like the above posts said, try both and see which one you like better. Both are fun. Neither are the Flavor of the Month, so you won’t find people begging you to join keys or raids.
Thank you, I tried them both out last night after doing a little research and found enh to be more the one for me. I am not super concerned with getting into keys, because I play in a group so always have some keys to do!
Sure you’ve chosen already but go ele. Enh relies fully on doomwinds lego and if that goes our spec goes unless they buff others which it looks like they might down the road. Ele has multiple legendaries and a few extra tools enh doesnt get for survival and the rotation is easier to get used to. (Lightening lasso, primal abilities, spirit walk, being ranged)
To be honest, I’m not a super hardcore player. I like playing random BGs, and doing mythic plus. I don’t mind a buff or a nerf here or there. I have been having a blast with Enh in BGs.
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For random BG’s I would consider Ele…tossing people off a cliff is kinda fun.
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