ENH Damage Needs a Buff

Running some tests on PvP Target Dummies, ENH damage breakdown is bad.

Lava Lash damage is bad, real bad. As a rotational ability with the longest cooldown, the damage is not worth it. I barely competes with the Flametongue damage. It should be one of our hardest hitting abilities. Baseline its 296 Fire Damage, it should be buffed to 800+ baseline. With flametongue active, this would make it the hardest hitting ability while still being under Stormstrike in damage considering the excessive spamming of Stormstrike based on spec. It would also allow for preferences of Hot Hands to be truely viable as some people prefer a more Lava Lash based spec.

Also, and this seems obvious, undo the 50% baseline nerf to Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Healing Surge, and Chain Heal.

Windfury Weapon could also use a slight buff as well.

Windfury Totem could also add some attack power.

I think this would resolve ENH damage issues.

Our damage breakdown should be Stormstrike>Lava Lash=Lightning Bolt> rest of our damage sources. Obviously the breakdown would vary based on spec, but that ranking is generalized for obvious reasons.

And, as always, buff our defensives ffs. Nothing to improve ENH in the new beta build released as of today.

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Check back in after 10 levels, because it feels okay to me right now. At least for grinding through trash and dungeons until SL.

I havent tested beta, so I cant speak on that as an expert. Looking at what is being played in PvP at least, ENH isnt. Its majority because of defensives, but also because the damage is not competitive with most other DPS specs as well. On top of that, our damage shouldnt be propped up by some lego.

Check the damage breakdowns using Details or something similar. The buttons pressed need to feel rewarding.

Enhancement is going to be bad during prepatch. It is a bit undertuned on beta with the systems that will help it in place, but not so far behind like it will be on retail currently.

It could use some buffs both on and off beta, but due to borrowed power, if they buff it I expect it to be something that doesn’t make their DPS really stand out on retail.

Even at level 60 played at the highest level enhance is getting out damaged by holy priests from raid parses by 11%

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Pve is different then pvp, op is right enhance damage is terrible rn. Everyone’s playing elemental for those fat meatballs.

It needs a buff to be viable to pvp rn it’s not at all

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It doesn’t help that we’re now insanely squishy. Doing M Expeditions, mobs that were marginally challenging before now require me to either ensure I have earth elemental up or no dice. I’d regularly go through my entire mana bar just trying to stay alive against 1 elite mob, no nevermind if there was a group. The playstyle isn’t bad but our survivability is not in the toilet, it’s been flushed and is jammed in a clog at the septic treatment plant.

Our heals should be buffed by charges and cost no mana/reduced mana per charge… which also begs the question, why do we even have CH when it does less than HS and costs more, but… can heal an ally for 500 hp. I could see it being useful but not without a significant boost to how much it heals.

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we all know they arent going to buff enhance… they will just nerf ele and call it balanced LOL

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I haven’t really played shaman since MoP, but I really want you guys (and feral druids) to get a buff too. At least in numbers.

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What borrowed power systems will benefit enhance more than they will benefit other specs such that it will close the gap we are currently seeing on pre-patch?

And don’t say covenants, because chain harvest will inevitably be nerfed/not allowed to be doubled in strength via MSW.

Are enhance legendaries massively better than everyone else’s? If so, presumably that won’t last either as blizzard is in the process of tuning and buffing legendaries.

If enhance is at the bottom in pre-patch and doesn’t get a buff, why will it perform better at 60 relative to everyone else than it is now? 50 and 60 are feeling pretty similar to me.

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The main Legendary boosting Enhancement DPS so much currently on the beta, for me at least, is Legacy of the Frost Witch. Venthyr also offers a sizable dps increase compared to the other covenants without me even touching Chain Harvest through Nadjia’s soulbind.

The class is in need of buffs and I want power moved away from Stormstrike, but they are not underperforming so horribly on Beta to the point of needing massive buffs in general. I think it isn’t unfair to say a lot of people moving to the non-Fury bar Enhancement will also be dragging the class performance down, as it is a very different spec in playstyle. I’d also wanna call it one of the more difficult melee rotations to really understand, but I can’t actually back up such a statement.

I find 2 of the conduits- chance of 3rd Windfury hit, Frost Shock able to give 2 MSW stacks- are actually pretty solid and do decent work in terms of quickening gameplay or making our damage better. And some classes have no good or only one good potency conduit options.

As for Enhance legendaries being better not lasting, that is yet to really be seen, and we’ll have to wait on those other legendaries being changed to see whether or not the current Enhance legendaries fall behind. They might even buff Legacy of the Frost Witch more, which would… be dumb in a lot of ways, but overall beneficial for our DPS.

yeah went from topping charts in pugs to now being middle in battleground dps. enh got nerfed hard with prepatch.

that was me in the last post. Updated my character so you can see what im working with. damage has gone to absolute garbage.

Not saying enhance doesn’t need help.

But prepatch numbers aren’t what should be consulted on balance.

Or at least we need to be a bigger buff to our buddies.

Yet it should be when concerned with other specs in prepatch that aren’t carried by essences and azerite traits.

Looking at the numbers you can see the damage distribution and looking at participation in PvP you can understand that they need a damage buff. Just read the tooltips, why is Lava Lash only doing 249 baseline and has the longest CD of our rotational abilities? It makes no sense. Test them out yourself on the PvP target dummies, look at the distribution of damage, it severely needs a damage buff when you compare them to other melee specs.

They also need to increase WF damage. it needs to feel like a threat when it procs. the fact its RNG, it really needs it. When we hit people with WF they need to be like “woh, yeah im steping back” maybe not that much, but noticeable. WF is an ENH shaman only ability. no other class has it…yet. so, it needs to have noticable damage

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I still stand by what I said.

Damage should be balanced at max level. Level 50 is not max level for these changes.

Once again, not saying damage buffs are or aren’t needed. But this would be like tweaking damage in BFA at 120 based on how classes operate at 110.

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Other than borrowed power, damage is mostly the same at 60 as it is at 50. This isn’t like alot of precious xpacs where things changed dramatically between 50 and 60.

Once you upscale gear by running end game content damage goes up due to more stats but i don’t see how that’s going to change relative performance between specs.

So to say 60 will be different than 50 is to say that SL borrowed power systems will benefit enhance shamans much more than azerite does relative to everyone else.

I don’t see why that would or should be the case when all the end game tuning is done. Meaning that enhance baseline needs a damage increase if it ultimately is expected to benefit similarly to other classes and specs from borrowed power (which should be the goal).

So I disagree with people dismissing pre-parch numbers. I think they are the best evidence we have right now based on the largest sample size of how revamped specs are performing and the easiest way to see how the revamps affected spec performance by looking at before pre-patch vs after relative performance of specs.

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I am not dismissing pre-patch numbers. I am saying that lvl 60 game play should not be balanced around lvl 50 game play. Or you will get an incomplete result.

Max level gameplay should only be balanced around max level gameplay. This includes any borrowed power.

You can’t ignore borrowed power. Borrowed power won’t effect everyone equally. Its never has. Ever. Even before borrowed power with tier sets, some specs got a larger benefit than others.

In order to balance you need to take into consideration every single source of damage. Otherwise, you balance now. And then you have to balance again to rebalance what you did now.