Enhance Physical Build needs Help!

Enhance Physical Build needs buffs to atleast be competitive against the meta Elementalist Build in PvE. It’s not even close in comparison in terms of damage especially in M+.

Back in Alpha/Beta Doomwinds was 1min cd then nerfed to 1.5min, then the spec was further nerfed overall and slowly buffed but the issue was Doomwinds stayed nerfed and now is never picked.

It be nice to see Doomwinds nerf reverted back to 1min and possibly extend its duration from 8sec to 12sec.

I love the fact that Enhance has 2 builds and play styles that cater to players preference but the Elemental build just trumps the Physical build in all aspects in ST and AoE.

Another Suggestion maybe make Doomwinds generate Maelstorm weapon procs, or a 50% chance that every Windfury hit generates maelstorm in the Duration window.

It’s just a shame how awesome Doomwinds was is now a avoided Talent.

6 Likes

Make doomwinds a passive that amps your windfury attacks after spending maelstrom based on the amount of maelstrom spent.

You could either buff the damage or make it guarantee x additional amount of windfury attacks accompanying your next stormstrike or crash lightning. Make talents synergize better. This would go well with both stormflurry and LotFW.

Alternatively Doomwinds could have been another alternative maelstrom spender.

Any solutions that remove some amount of keybindings is a double-win.

2 Likes

Put doomwinds CD back to 1 min please.

9 Likes

So we nerfing the physical build ST to give it more AE?

A big part of the problem here I think is how the Feral/Elemental Spirits change adding damage amplification to the wolves has so strictly divided the spec tree based on which dogs you’re running. Our only Physical damage tools are Windfury, Stormstrike, Sundering, and Doom Winds. Out of those, one is passive (and takes 3 talents to full buff), two are cooldowns, and the only actual rotational attack is strictly single-target - even the talents that give it cleave do so as Nature.

Either the Enhancement tree needs more Physical attack options (particularly sustained cleave/AoE options) so it exists more than once per Doom Winds cooldown, or the Physical/Elemental damage divide from Feral/Elemental Spirits needs to be removed so Stormstrike-centric builds can benefit more from the existing non-Physical talents already in the tree.

I’m more in favor of the latter, as this would also open up more flexibility for Elemental builds. Currently, both Physical and Elemental enhancement are in a frustrating place where our entire tree is locked in on the Physical/Magical divide with no more wiggle room than moving, like, two points between strictly ST vs strictly AoE talents per encounter/affix. This has left us stuck in one of two extremes: either a boring as sin Physical build where half your damage comes from passive auto-attacks, or a convoluted Elemental build where you need to juggle a dozen balls at a time and - oh, they can change their priority in midair. The physical/elemental divide denies players any ability to build to a middle ground of complexity for their personal comfort because all the passive stuff is strictly Physical, and all the active talents reinforce Elemental.

Even the ST build is behind on dps, through looking at raid logs and overall. Terros is a great example. Enhance just rated more highly due to the fact their are more parses/players playing Enhance currently but it’s dps is behind a lot of other specs rated lower…

And even so in a pure ST fight close to 100% melee uptime, and players are still choosing primordial wave and multiple talents outside of the Physical Build.

Simply because it’s not tuned properly. The nerfs hit the Physical Build hard, Doomwinds hit the hardest, but then with recent buffs the Physical build was basically left out and let the Elemental side of things take a huge leap in viability.

I asked Method Raider Jax who plays Enhance and currently the number 1 Enhance in PvE content his take and his response “why would you? It does ridiculously worse dps”.

The whole implementation of these new talent trees was to have different builds, while yes there will always be a “Meta” build but definitely should be miles apart in terms of dps output.

It’s bad enough a lot of our performance and output is locked behind Deeply Rooted Elements proc. We need more consistency outside a 7% proc rate.

Adjusting Doomwinds back to 1 min and possibly extending its duration to 12 seconds will help and be a great start.

3 of the top 4 Teros parses (regardless of spec/class) are enhance shaman using physical build.

Then those players are wrong, outside of some very specific secondary stat combos. One build outside of the top 100 enhance builds for Teros is not the physical build.

Not in single target. Every single bit of evidence disagrees with that statement.

I think you have a different perspective of what the physical build is, not a variation of both. Cause the top parses are not pure physical more so a combination of both builds.

I’m still playing the physical build (with DRE) even in M+. I just prefer the playstyle over the elementalist I know I am doing less dps.

Id like to see doom winds cd reduced to 1 min and either remove the damage in total and take it off the gcd, or bump up the damage and make it an aoe.

Another thing that could help it is consolidating a couple talents, we are much more starved for points than the elementalist side. Maybe combine or lessen the points in some way for legacy of the frost witch, stormblast, and elemental assault. But this may buff single target damage too much so you’d need to tweak them in some way to buff aoe but not break ST.

2 Likes

I’ve been thinking a lot on how to make the Physical Build work, and after seeing the 10.0.7 changes for Resto making Water Shield baseline, why doesn’t Wind Fury Totem become baseline, it seems ridiculous we have to talent into arguably the most iconic spell for Enhance and use a Talent point.

Here’s my suggestions,

  • Windfury Totem becomes baseline and learnt at lvl 12.
  • Elemental Assault is moved to Wind Fury Totems position, changed from 2 points to 1 point and gives the full effect, so now Stormstrike with one Talent gives 20% increased Stormstrike Damage and 100% chance to generate Maelstorm.
  • Doomwinds returns back to 1 minute and lasts 12 seconds.
  • Alphas Wolves needs to be tuned a little higher in dps, currently even in AoE they picking Elemental Spirits as Elemental build vastly better.
  • Elemental Spirits needs to change, it should summon Elemental Wolves depending on your Talents involving Lava Lash and Ice Strike.

Example, Stormstrike is baseline, so baseline it will only summon 2 Storm Wolves, selecting Lava Lash now spawns 1 Storm and 1 Fire Wolf, if Ice Strike aswell is Talented you get a chance to spawn 2 Elemental Wolves of Each Element but cannot be two of the same. This then helps alleviate the RNG behind it and can then benefit the Physical build as we can then focus on purely getting Storm Wolves which works with the Storm Blast Talent, and generally help our AoE with Chain Lightning.

If elemental spirits is going to drop the physical damage buff from feral spirits then it needs to be a choice talent node with the baseline feral spirits and we need a new capstone talent.

Make it enhance both or make it a choice node.

1 Like

Doomwinds need to be shorter CD and/or not on GCD

Having a skill that is a 10 second buff ,on GCD and requires 100% melee uptime to get value seems subpar?

1 Like

I wish it was 10 seconds, it’s only 8 :pensive:, Windfury Totem aswell needs to be OGCD.

2 Likes

To say nothing of it being ridiculous that it’s the only group buff in the game that has to be talented into, while also being the most niche.

I’d go so far as to say it should just be a class-wide baseline Haste aura.

4 Likes

While I’d love that, I think it becoming baseline would be a great start. They made Water Shield in 10.0.7 baseline for Resto Shaman, I Think Windfury Totem most definitely should be too.

HOW ABOUT WE GO EVEN FURTHER AND JUST MAKE WINDFURY TOTEM AN PASSIVE ALWAYS ON AURA?!?!?

But no, let’s reserve that right for mana spring totem…a talent NO ONE FREAKIN USES…

I seriously despise whoever designs shaman sometimes…The new talent tree locations are horrendous as well…

2 Likes

Please explain what you feel the physical build is.

Just out of curiosity, I checked the top parse for enh Teros.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/31#boss=2639

I compared it, for giggles (since I knew the answer) to the builds labeled “physical build”

Then to make sure I wasn’t missing something. I compared it to the listed physical build from the shaman discord server.

BcQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIJJHAkcARSSSQSiECAAAAAAAAAAAAAlIEhEUEQSJJJlAQkkgC

So once again. What top parses are you referencing which do not follow the physical build…but are a combination?

He makes things up all the time

I just feel like there’s so much room for improvement making the build be actually Viable and competitive.

With a few changes to the spec tree. Like for example we have no MSW spender for the Physical side, this could be remedied by making Elemental Blast a choice node with Earthspike.

  • Earthspike
    Talent
    2.75% of base mana / 90 Maelstrom 40 yd range
    2 sec cast 12 sec recharge
    Requires Shaman
    Requires level 15 (Enhancement)
    Sunder the earth, impaling the enemy for dealing (175% of Spell power) Physical damage . Earthspike increases the Physical Damage the Target takes by 10/15%. Instant cast with 5 or more MSW stacks.

  • Windfury Totem should be made baseline and an aura effect like what they did with Mana Spring, huge quality of life improvement.

  • Hailstorm should be moved to where Windfury totem is, making Ice Strike lead to Hailstorm rather then Flame Lash and Molten assault, makes zero sense Hailstorm is gated behind fire abilities.

  • Doom Winds should be reverted back to being 1 minute cd and last 12 seconds, currently it’s very under performing.

  • Feral Lunge I’d love to be baseline, we are the only melee without a gap closer, the Talent node should then make it have 2 charges.

  • personally I think Elemental Weapons, Elemental Assault and Legacy of the Frost Witch, should be changed to 1 point nodes giving its full effect.

Changes like this firstly will give the physical side a MSW spender, Doom Winds be viable, Ice Strike leading to Hailstorm, why Hailstorm is on the fire side is beyond me and just massive quality of life improvement on Spec tree in general. Not to forget to mention create more flexibility in builds.

I’d also like to see Deeply Rooted Elements have some bad luck protection, like it’s 7% but then accumulates 7% until it procs then resets back to 7%, having RNG attached to a dps’s perfomance feels horrible. This way it will be a little more consistent.

1 Like

The thing with your changes…is that it doesn’t actually address the weakness of the phys build. You dont fix the phys build (one of the top single target builds in the entire game) by giving it more single target. It needs AE help.

Also, you cant move hailstorm. It absolutely has to be tied to fire nova…or else you can get both.

2 Likes