Enhance PvP Question

Classes Shaman
1

Heya All,

So I been slowly grinding out BGs for Honour gearing and the Gryphon Soul Shape (fingers crossed it drops soon).

While I know my gear is still desperately lacking, what is our role in PvP?, currently all I do is buff the strongest Ally with Lust, Skyfury and CD Reduction, because the second I go into combat I evaporate instantly.

I’ve asked around ingame for assistance and many just said go Ele or Resto…but I’m trying hard to get the feel for enhance in PvP.

Enhance has the gameplay of a Rogue trying to pick people off in melee, without the stealth, the power of a Paladin with a lot of magic melee, without the survivability, a pseudo caster/healer without the mana. Not to mention our real only defensive is just Astral Shift.

I don’t understand it, I’m a Warlock main, I’m so use to being stunned and able to unending resolve to survive, which isn’t possible as Shaman, I’m literally evaporating in every stun I get.

I need a few tips from you guys…does it get better with higher gear? Is it strictly a ilvl issue?

2

Always a gear game when it comes to pvp. The more gear you grinde out the longer you will live and the more dmg you will do. Your goal isn’t to just drop some totems and hero.

Look up turbo cleave videos to get a little better grasp on role. Do you even have doomwinds from spires? Best of luck to ya and hope it gets better for you.

3

I hated to hear this answer too but it really was gear to survive more than a few hits to the face.

If you can, throw up your earth elemental if you have the conduit that increases your hp when earth else is around and have ghosts run out immediately but other than that we just try to run in and blow someone up while interrupting and purging as we can. Ranged interrupt every 12 seconds is nice and if we open up on someone with a few storm strike procs and some doom winds to scare them.

As a role in our pvp I think its to finish off speedy targets. If we can ascend (preferably before they run) and they try to run away from us we get to chuck our melee as a ranged attack. So targets that would have left execute range for our warrior buddies can be finished off and interrupted by us.

I was told to just be super aggressive and it wasn’t working out for me until I got to like ilevel 200. Then suddenly I was able to start hitting worth some significance, throw some heals out, chuck a few spells, and chase down enemies.

Just because you are running against higher gear enemies you won’t feel like you can run any real good role in PvP but it gets better as you get up there sir.

Don’t stop lusting friends and ascending to finish.

1 Like
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Gear is the biggest issue usually. The power creep goes up exponentially from 200 ilvl - 226, it’s not even remotely linear.

That said, a couple of things I’d do based on your profile:

  • Run the emblem trinket (increases max hp by X% on use). This is far more useful in pvp situations than the agi on proc trinket.
  • Your stat priority is vers > haste > crit > mastery. Haste = more hits when attacking = more maelstrom procs for healing.
  • Slot the earth elemental defensive conduit and the healing surge conduit. That means you’ll be able to pre-use earth elemental to increase your max hp by a massive amount, and your healing surges will heal you for more.
  • Covenant = venthyr > all others for pvp. You can use chain harvest as a healing cd with low mana cost, and it hits like a truck. Maelstrom procs make it instant.
  • Pvp talents = run Shamanism / Swelling Waves / Grounding totem. Grounding waaaaaay too useful and swelling waves means more efficiency in your healing. The other ones are honestly niche or not very good.
  • Talents = swap out spirit wolf for earth shield (more self healing), it’s the best shield to use, lightning shield even with the recent buff tickles in pvp.
    *Legendary = you really really really need Doom Winds (craft on helmet from what I’ve seen). It’s bonkers, but you need to time its use.

As for playstyle, I’d pre-pop wolves when going into combat or against stealthies. Wolves do crap for damage but they give you good maelstrom without needing to hit someone. Same deal for earth ele if you think you’re going to be slapped.

You never use maelstrom procs in pvp for damage. You only use them for healing, and preferably self-healing due to talent / conduit selection. Careful with popping off multiple heals cause you get ~4x heals before going oom as enhance. This is where venthyr is helpful - it gets you a chain heal effect for ~1000 mana.

Burst rotation (if you have doom winds legendary):

  • Bloodlust
  • Windfury Totem
  • Ascendance (typically want to be in melee range for the ascendance explosion dmg)
  • Stormstrike/Windlash
  • Crash lightning
  • Utility / etc. (lava lash does not proc windfury so do not bother using it during doom winds window)

Last thing I’ll say is enhance is strong, but it really only shines in smaller group scenarios such as 3v3 arena. It pairs best with an arms warrior and healer (turbocleave), where your kill attempts are set up around the warrior stormbolting --> lust --> damage cooldowns. Arms covers a lot of your physical weaknesses with intervene. Other variations can work, but that’s the strongest.

3 Likes
5

Thank you all for the reply!, ok ok I’ll keep smashing out trying to gear up, I’ll be honest in 16 years of playing WoW I’ve only played range, this is my first time melee and it’s like a brand new game…

Thank you all again.

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Don’t forget to use ghost wolf to cover ground if you have to move more than a few yards. It’s instant cast so after keeping flame shocks up if your running to or from someone just ghost wolf on over. You can cast from ghost wolf and it will pop you out of shapeshifter.

7

I’d also add, make a mental note of the talents that you did not use . . . some are very easy to forget.

Spirit Walk
Capacitor
Hex
Earthbind
Tremor (Especially when a priest starts to charge you)

Make sure to shamanism bloodlust your partner as well, easy to forget.

Then take a note to purges you could have done after the match that aren’t usually covered by other magical debuffs, especially things like Divine Favor
and Dark Soul. Purges use mana though, so be very selective here.

Use every match to think of how to improve.

Earthshied vs the Spirit Wolf
Nature’s Guardian vs. Feral Lunge

Almost always Earthshield and Nature’s Guardian. However, don’t be afraid to try the others . . . depending on comp and your own playstyle, it may be a better fit. I think it is like 90% / 10% on top players on those choices.

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I think, as far as battlegrounds are concerned, enhance is still very much a supportt character.

Find your Shamanism buddy and just sidekick them. Your utility is amazing for allowing other classes to shine.

You can purge which only other melee DH can do. You can AoE or single target snare at range, which is huge for controlling the fight zone and helping other melee stay sticky without needing to spam their snares. You have the luxury of a ranged toolkit, which means in the heat of battle you can place that cap behind a hard casting healer and catch a stun (bg only) or land that hex while they are trying to deal with your windwalker/ret/boomkins rolling them.

You have the shortest interupt and grounding totem, which can negate lots of good spells and keep people up.

You provide extra attacks to other melee, which turns into resource for certain classes. You offer a free HoT that can heal multiple people. You have powerful offheals that are instant and can bring an ally back from death.

To top this off, you have some of the strongest burst at range allowing you to chase well or kite well.

Be bait. Enh are known to be squishy…so use that and lure enemies into bad position and crap on them with your team. That rogue will be sad when you pop out of his stun and chain harvest him for 25k and heal yourself and allies the same amount as he woefully realizes he shadowstepped you into the middle of your team while you were ghost wolfing.

Peel for your healers with your range snares/cc. And enh can easily go from frost shocking someone off their healer, to instant healing someone else 40 yd in the other direction, to grounding a chaos bolt, interupting a convoke, purging a dps cd/buff/hot, and then nuking down someone 40 yd in other direction with ascendance/doom winds. This is a lot of impact on a battle.

The main issue I feel with enh is not enough gcds to use purge, unlike Ele who can really maximize it.

But to me. Being a sidekick to other mdps is one of the more satisfying ways to play for bgs.

In arena, your job is to just blow someone up as fast as possible during cc chain.

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Actually Atrioch brings up a really good point. Like 90% of the time you want earth shield + nature’s guardian.

If you’re not confident in using grounding totem to stop mindgames (venthyr priest covenant ability), then you may want to consider swapping out of nature’s guardian. A mindgames when you’re at ~50% with nature’s guardian is basically instant death.

Something like: affliction warlock / frost mage / priest could warrant using feral lunge for mobility (enhance has meh mobility compared to other melee).