I reviewed some PvP talent data across a number of specs and I noticed something that really stands out with Enhancement Shaman and I think it points to a design issue worth discussing.
Across most specs, the PvP talents follow a clear trend: 3 talents dominate usage, then there’s a sharp drop off into situational or niche options. That’s what you’d expect in a system where players choose 3 PvP talents and there are clear “core” picks with some room for flex.
Here are a some examples:
- Windwalker Monk:
Turbo Fists (95.5%), Absolute Serenity (71.7%), Rising Dragon Sweep (66.8%) — then drops off hard (next is 36.9%). - Survival Hunter:
Survival Tactics (91.4%), Chimaeral Sting (80.6%), Sticky Tar Bomb (62.8%) — next is 17.9%. - Affliction Warlock:
Jinx (92.0%), Rot and Decay (72.0%), Nether Ward (43.3%) — then immediate drop to 12.0%. - Assassination Rogue:
Smoke Bomb (87.0%), Hemotoxin (69.3%), Dismantle (56.5%) — fourth drops to 48.8%, then < 10%. - Frost Death Knight:
Death’s Cold Embrace (72.5%), Strangulate (68.2%), Deathchill (63.5%) — next is 25.2%. - Arms Warrior:
Sharpen Blade (93.1%), Battlefield Commander (85.2%), Storm of Destruction (63.7%) — everything else is sub-40%, many under 10%.
Now look at Enhancement Shaman:
- Shamanism – 74.3%
- Burrow – 47.7%
- Grounding Totem – 47.5%
- Stormweaver – 40.4%
- Then: Totem of Wrath (27.4%), Counterstrike Totem (23.6%), Static Field Totem (22.4%)
Enhancement’s pvp talent distribution is much flatter. Instead of a tight top 3, you have 7 talents all used in a meaningful share of builds.
There’s shaminism and then the next 3 all have very close usage rates, and that’s because, frankly, they all feel essential. Each one provides a major component of our PvP toolkit:
- Shamanism gives you kill pressure.
- Burrow is your only real out vs setups.
- Grounding Totem is critical utility.
- Stormweaver gives you consistent throughput and off-healing.
Whenever you try to drop one, it feels like you’re missing a key part of ur kit. There’s no “luxury pick” like many other specs have and that creates no room to experiment with talents like totem of wrath, counter strike orstatic field totem, even though their usage rates are non trivial, suggesting they have real value.
Meanwhile, Electrocute (4.7%) and Unleash Shield (2.7%) barely see any play at all.
This all points to a deeper issue:
Enhance is an outlier in PvP talent flexibility.
We’re not overloaded with good options, we’re overloaded with mandatory ones. That’s a very different kind of problem.
If the goal is to offer meaningful choice, this ain’t it. Something has to give and one of the top 4 needs to go baseline or reworked into talents elsewhere in the tree.