This is how I think Enhancement Talent Tree should look — Feel free to generate any feedback. tl;dr - tier 1: improve lava lash, tier 2: improve windfury, tier 3: personal defensives, tier 4: AoE, tier 5: totemic mastery, tier 6: damage and soft cc, tier 7: meaningful capstones.
A Talent System to Fix Enhancement
The current talent tree is a path that allows you excel at only one thing. You either spec into windfury and stormstrike, and get a lava lash wet noodle…or you spec into lava lash, and get a windfury/stromstrike wet noodle. This doesn’t feel like a good trade off when these are the only two melee abilities we have baseline in slands.
Instead, there should be a tier dedicate to each, that allows both to become nuanced and interesting, instead of being at the cost of the other.
Stormstrike and stormstrike related talents should be baked baseline into the spec. As the 31 pt talent option with the original class design, it is largely THE ability for Enhancement and needs to feel that way.
Other additional aspects that define the spec are weapon imbues, party buffs, and being a spellcasting melee (over half our damage dealt being magical). And don’t forget totems!
That being said — here’s an example of what I wish our talent tree looked like.
Some Notes on things that should be made baseline:
Anything relating to Stormstrike should be baseline, such as Stormfury: Windfury procs reduce cd of Stormstrike by 1 second. This should be a baseline ability.
Spirit Wolf should also be a baseline ability, as we are locked out of doing anything else while in this form…it needs to be stronger. Otherwise its a cheetah form except without the number of rolling dots and hots druids have access to that tick while they are in that form.
Lava Lash needs to go back to the incarnation that spreads flame shock on cleave (up to 3 targets perhaps?) Having a flame shock spread mechanic was iconic to lava lash, and also what made Fire Nova work in the first place. If need be, bake this mechanic into the Fire Nova talent.
Tier 1 - The Lava Lash Tier
This tier is dedicated to improving Lava Lash
Lashing Flames - Lava Lash increases the damage of Flame Shock on its target by 100% for 12 seconds
Moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1
Hot Hands - Melee attacks with Flametongue active have a 5% chance to reduce your lava lash cooldown by 75% and increase the damage of Lava Lash by 100% for 8 sec.
New - Reworked from WotLK
Searing Flames - Using Lava Lash grants Searing Flames, increasing the damage dealt by flametongue weapon by 8% for 15 sec. Each flametongue weapon attack grants an additional stack of searing flames, up to 5 times.
Tier 2 - Windfury Tier
This tier is dedicated to improving Windfury
New - Reworked from old Totem/Inspired by Heroes of the Storm Windfury Talents
Grace of Air - Windfury procs have an increased chance to generate Maelstrom Weapon Stacks
Forceful Winds - Windfury causes each successive Windfury within 15 seconds to increase the damage of Windfury by 50%, stacking up to 5 times.
New - Inspired by Heroes of the Storm Windfury Talents
Tempest Fury - Upon activation, your next weapon attack with Windfury Weapon imbue will guarantee a Windfury attack.
Tier 3 - Personal Defensive Tier
Spirit Wolf is made Baseline for Shaman
New - Reworked from old Totems and Glyphs
Stoneskin Totem - Summon and Earth Totem that puts an shield around the shaman, absorbing X amount of damage. Lasts Y Seconds. Z Cooldown.
Earth Shield - Protects the target with an earthen shield, increasing your healing on them by 10% and healing them for X when they take damage. 9 charges. This heal can only occur once every few seconds.
Earth Shield shield can only be placed on one target at a time but stacks with your other Elemental Shields.
(Due to the nature of generating Maelstrom Weapon and Fulmination, Lightning shield is now mandatory for PvP, thus requiring the ability to use both shields at the same time)
Moved from Tier 40 to Tier 30
Nature’s Guardian - When your health is brought down below 35%, you instantly heal for 20% of your maximum health. Cannot occur more than once every 45 seconds.
Tier 4 - AoE Tier
Moved from Tier 45 to Tier 35
Crashing Storm - Crash Lightning also electrifies the ground leaving an electrical field that damages enemies within for X nature damage over 6 seconds.
Hailstorm - Each stack of maelstrom weapon consumed increases the damage of your next Frost Shock by 35%, and causes your next Frost Shock to hit 1 additional target per Maelstrom Weapon stack consumed.
Fire Nova - Erupt a burst of flame from all targets affected by your flame shock, dealing X Fire Damage to up to 6 targets within range of your flame shock target.
Optional if not made baseline passive to Lava Lash
In addition, your lava lash now spreads flame shock to 2-3 additional targets within 5 yards of your current target, so long as that target is affected by flame shock.
Tier 5 - Mobility Tier
New - Heroes of the Storm Windfury Talents
Wind Rush - Having windfury weapon imbue active grants the shaman the Wind Rush effect, increasing their movement speed by 15%.
Feral Lunge - Lunge at the target as a ghost wolf, biting them for X Physical damage.
Wind Rush Totem - Summon a totem at the target location for 15 sec, continually granting all allies who pass within 10 yards 60% movement speed for 5 seconds.
Tier 45 - Completely Overhauled
Totemic Mastery Tier
As a shaman, having all 4 totems down should be part of our toolkit. Each race is given fantastic totem art, and totems are iconic to the class itself. Having all 4 totems down should be a staple of the spec, though not the focus.
This talent tier seeks to fix this, by providing Totemic Mastery options that should be available to all 3 specs.
Totemic Mastery: Primalist
Summon four totems that increase you and your allies’ combat capabilities.
Strength of the Earth - Increase the damage of yourself and allies by 3%
Windfury - Weapon strikes have a chance to proc an extra attack
Flametongue Totem - Spellcasts do an additional X fire damage
Rushing Water - Increase Haste by 3%
Totemic Mastery: Spirit Walker
Summon four totems that increase you and your allies’ defensive capabilities
Stoneskin - Increase the health of yourself and allies by 3%
Windwall - Reduce incoming damage from physical sources by 3%
Firewall - Reduce incoming damage from Frost, Fire, and Nature sources by 3%
Rushing Water - Increase Haste by 3%
Totemic Mastery: Far Seer
Summon four totems that increase you and your allies adaptive capabilities. X cooldown.
*Tremor Totem *
Grounding Totem
Earthen Wall
New - Cleansing Totem - Instantly cleanses 1 magic and 1 curse ability from allies within X yards.
The first talent seeks to be an offensive talent, with the second being defensive. The third is utility based, and gives players a way to have traditionally baseline totems outside of PvP, while allowing war mode players to essentially double up. A cooldown is added to Totem Mastery: Far Seer so as to maintain balance with having 2 of certain totems (one from the mastery, and one from the totem baseline).
These are by no way balanced, but serve as an idea for what a Totemic Mastery talent tier could look like.
Tier 6 - Damage with soft CC
Sundering is a great example of what this talent row could be. It is a soft CC, with interrupt capability, while doing song good damage
Crashing Storm moved to tier 35 AoE Tier
Stormkeeper Removed
This ability has no place in the enhancement toolkit as it was the iconic legendary ability for Elemental. Get it out of Enhancement.
Revived and reworked
Voodoo Totem - Summons a Totem at the target location for 10 sec. The totem hexes all enemies within 8 yards into frogs which are incapacitated and unable to attack or cast spells. Taking damage above the hex threshold or leaving the area will interrupt the effect.
The new damage threshold allows this to be competitive with the other two options by letting dots continue to tick and not break hex immediately.
New for Enhance/Reworked from Elemental/Inspired by Heroes of the Storm Thrall Enhancement style play
Earthquake - Slam your weapons into the ground creating a massive earthquake that pulses every 4 seconds. Each pulse lasts 2 seconds, slowing all enemies in the area by 50% and deals X physical damage to the enemy. Pulses 3 times. 1 min cooldown
Sundering - Shatters a line of earth in front of you with your main hand weapon, causing X flamestrike damage and incapacitating any enemy hit for 2 sec.
Tier 7 - Shaman Capstones
rework
Ascendance - bring back the MoP Stormblast incarnation. It was mean and meant business. Current Ascendance is largely lackluster for a capstone cooldown.
rework
Earthen Spike - Summons an earthen spike under the enemy deals X damage and launches the enemy high into the air vertically.
This is essentially a vertical version of thunderstorm that works against one person. While I know this sounds silly, the amount of classes that have the ability to negate fall damage actually make this not so bad. Demon Hunters can glide, Mages Slow Fall or Blink, Hunters Disengage, Rogues Shadowstep, Priests Levitate, Warlocks Demonic Teleportation, any Pandaren racial, Druid cat racial or Wild Charge, Paladin Divine Shield, Warrior Charge/Heroic Leap, etc. etc. Given that we added a class with a bit of verticality, it would be a unique and certainly capstone ability to use an earthen spike to launch people high up into the air.
rework
Elemental Spirits - add the healing aspect that Feral Spirits once had back in with this talent as an additional rider to what already exists. That allows it to be a powerful defensive or offensive talent.