Currently in BFA enhance shaman is the worst melee spec in pvp, by a fair amount. Every other melee class is in the top 50 ranking, while enhance is not even in the top 200.
The following are videos made by the very experienced pvp community about the current state of pvp in Shadowlands.
This video shows the top 10 viable compositions for 3v3 arena and enhance is not in any of them, even ret feral and survival has made it in atleast one of those teams.
This video discusses the top tier melee dps for Shadowlands, the subtlety rogue. The main point there is subtlety rogues have a complete “toolkit” for pvp.
I understand that the enhance community would like to see a buff in our survivability, and correctly so. However, when it comes to high end pvp and judging from the feedback of all the high rated enhance shamans, we need reliable CC. We are the only melee dps spec without an instant CC, and every high rated player knows that controlling the enemy team is the most powerful toolkit in pvp.
We really need to have some sort of instant CC. Could you imagine if rogues CC’s were changed to what enhance CC’s are right now? Blind being a 1.7 second cast time, and their stuns changed to “explosive barrel” where it detonates after 2 seconds and stunning all nearby enemies. I would guarantee rogues would be bottom tier just like the enhance shamans.
A simple balance fix for enhance shamans would be to make our cap totem instant, and our hex benefit from 5 stacks of MSW.
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I feel Enh performs best when it is the king of melee pressure and high DPS.
That said, I don’t care about cc as much as I do survivability.
Completely understood.
You have to remember though that CC is a very strong tool for survivability. Imagine if a Ret pali pops his wings on you and you don’t have a major defensive cd, as a rogue you can kidney shot him for 6 seconds and allow your healer to heal you to full. As enhance shaman however we can only drop our cap totem in which the enemy can swap and kill the cap totem in a global. If we had an instant stun (like all melee classes in the game, except enhance) we could use it as a defensive tool when the enemy team pops their big burst.
Wizard cleaves do this all the time. Against a high rated wizard cleave team, if you pop ascendance they will spam sheep or fear on you, so your 3 minute burst is totally neutralised, and your chances of winning is also neutralised. This is why mage/warlock has won the last 4 arena tournaments in NA, because CC is used for both offensive and defensive. Enhance shaman just lack this ability and is also the reason why we are at the bottom tier.
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It would be a real shame if enhance is bottom tier in PvP again due to lack of sufficient PvP utility/survivability after the work that went into the redesign. Particularly after underperforming for most of BFA.
The spec is really fun to play now once you get used to it and feels rewarding when executed well. I’m probably gonna main it again regardless of what happens just because of how fun it is.
I personally don’t want it to be S tier/flavor of the month poweful. I would just like it to be solid middle of the pack w/some good comps.
Same streamer ranking dps specs in terms of how fun they are to play ranks enhance S tier on that metric:
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I’m with you Zezu, I really enjoy playing enhance shaman as well. It’s a unique melee bruiser with elemental magic. It would be a real shame to see it at the bottom of the tier after the work that went into the redesign.
I’ve seen that video too, I believe he made that video before the wave of pvp testing. After the community ran testing in pvp and arenas, it was clear that enhance shaman was still a bottom tier spec, but when it comes to having fun he had placed enhance shaman as an S tier spec.
Like you Zezu I’m also going to main enhance in Shadowlands because its a fun spec, but if it remains an uphill battle in pvp I will probably level a rogue or warrior alt just to climb with and play the enhance for pve. It’s quite depressing as I really want to stick with enhance shaman.
its not like our pvp talents really help at all… they are all kinda meh and none stick out to me like other classes and specs do.
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I like a number of the enhance PvP talents - shamanism, grounding totem, swelling waves, spectral recovery.
Ride the lightning really needs to be reverted to the old chain lightning version or reworked to not break CC and to always hit your current target. Ideally, though, i’d rather they just scrap having a lightning damage PvP talent all together and make enhance damage competitive w/o it so we can focus on utility/survivability talents for PvP.
Thundercharge and shamanism should be off the GCD.
Ethereal Form should be scrapped or reworked into something else. How about replacing it with a talent that reduces astral shift CD to 1 min and makes it useable while stunned?
Counterstrike totem needs more health. Nerf the damage or up the CD as necessary but make it something that is harder to kill and gives people pause in attacking the shaman. They can always retreat from it/nuke it from range.
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meh. grounding should be baseline. swelling waves feels meh because i can only get like 3 or 4 heals off anyways. lust should be baseline for enhance. spectral recovery is kinda worthless it feels.
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Survivability shouldn’t be tied to an ability that prevents us from attacking/casting (ghost wolf). Even Paladins can attack and heal while in immunity shield.
No other class sacrifices casting/attacking for mobility or damage reduction.
Remove damage reduction from ghost wolf - bring back Shamanistic Rage and Stone Bulwark Totem to the DPS specs.
This is more than enough to make them viable (Enhance specifically) as seen in the past.
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This is no surprise. When you look at the counter-intuitive design of the class and how it is designed nothing like the rest of the melees, it becomes glaringly obvious as to why it is at the bottom.
The enhancement shaman (i don’t know about the other 2 specs) is basically still in BC or Cata Era of Hybrids. It’s trapped there. The same design that melee and especially hybrid had in BC and Cata is the same design the ENH Shaman still has, and no other melee has.
All the ENH sham abilities are gimped versions of either ELE / RESTO or some scuffed version of a real ability another class has. If you want examples, first you need to tell me which ability you want to discuss, I have no plans to convince you of this obvious fact class wide. Once you see, ability by ability, how backwards ELE SHAM is, you’ll come to the same conclusion.
I like spectral recovery for war mode world quest stuff to move faster and passively regen between packs.
Would be really nice if they just baked spectral recovery in baseline to ghost wolf though. 40% speed feels alot better than 30% and passive healing while in GW would help while kiting/chasing/dodging mechanics. Particularly now that enhance can only really heal w/MSW stacks.
Shamanism seems like a natural fit for a PvP talent since enhance needs regular bloodlust for PvE.
Same streamer. Melee DPS PvP tier list from Sept 8th. Enhance is one of the bottom 3 specs due to survivability (he puts most specs as A tier). Full list of 17:30. See commentary on enhance starting at 3:14.
The two other specs at the bottom seem like they’re mainly there because they pale compared to other spec options the class has that fill the same melee dps role better (arms > fury, subtley/assas > outlaw).
So, basically, looking at classes that have melee DPS specs, enhance is alone in its own bottom tier as the worst melee PvP class in the game due to its poor survivability.
Ethereal Form should be reworked to the original astral shift, 30% DR when stunned and feared
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Basically Shaman folds under pressure due to terrible DR and terrible clutch & pressured healing. HW on live right now required a GCD and let me tell you, if you aren’t overgeared even in PvE on multi encounter pulls its rough waiting for that 2nd or 3rd gcd and the subsequent swelling waves. There’s a lot of over healing after 3 if you weren’t at 20%. And that’s kind of the thing. You’re not reacting to your environment
You’re watching your health bar, seeing if you need to spend another GCD or 2 and you can’t do anything else because it will trigger your GCD. You’re also on the clock while your defensives tick, but unlike other classes your locked in this stopwatch HW GCD hell window.
It feels awful and your astral shift has to be 8 seconds because you’ll be spending your GCDs on HW. You won’t actually be gaining ahead on the enemies health like say with a DK popping lichborne and deathstriking spamming you with a full resource bar. You won’t be hotting and swapping back into bear or feral to continue dps, you won’t be bubbling or stunning and throwing instant heals. And if a warrior or dh or rogue is on you they are going to nerf your heals [the DEV’s helped them out by nerfing our heals before that trio nerfs your heals].
With all this, you’re gonna fold and you’re gonna fold hard. What, are you gonna SG and wolf form to the other side of the map to go hard casting heals? You won’t make it it that far.
I want enhance survivability so i can do bgs again
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