Still red headed step child coming 9.1 with almost no purpose in a sea of melee? Morgan day had mentioned he wanted to see everyone have something unique that makes them WANT to bring every class to the raid… What would enhancement shaman bring… what do they currently bring… if anything worthy?
1 Like
Windfury Totem has no counterpart from any other class.
6 Likes
Hmm ok but does it allow you to be brought into raid over other melee given same equipment and skill? Or is it o hey they have this thing… but its not really a big deal?
I think in a raid where it’s more comfortable to bring melee DPS you’d want an enhance shaman at current intended tuning. However they’ve also got to fix the bug with melee swings resetting, which is costing them a decent amount of damage.
5 Likes
It depends on the raid comp.
Generally, if you have any type of warrior in your group, bringing an enhancement shaman will help out.
The extra attacks generate extra rage which directly impacts defensive and dps capabilities. More rage for a tank, means more times they can use certain cooldowns…and same for dmg, more executes.
Any class that has a something extra that happens on melee attacks is a good reason to bring windfury.
If you are just looking at damage meters, you likely won’t see its direct impact. But I’ve gotten plenty of groups just due to having Windfury. There are always people that will understand the impact it brings.
2 Likes
-
We need an execute. Doesn’t matter what goodies we get when we don’t do as much damage in (frequently) the hardest part of a boss fight.
-
We need a raidwide impactful buff. (or 2 or 3)
Windfury totem is fun, but it is really only significantly impactful to Arms warriors.
Compare that to:
+5% Magic Damage
+5% Physical Damage
AMZ (even post nerf, just means more DKs)
AP Buff (Physical Damage buff to everyone not just long swings.)
Etc etc etc
3 Likes
in most melee raid comps heck yeah we do 
bring good utility as well as decent damage / windfury totem / windrush totem / very high c/d burst / off healing insta if need be , self res
if anything just buff damage a bit but over all enh are really favored in raids
2 Likes
In addition to Windfury Totem (our unique raid buff), we have access to Windrush Totem, and the shortest CD kick in the game. Also, unlike the DH or monk buff, if you have two melee groups, you can get use out of two Windfury’s (not so much a benefit if you only have one enh shaman tho, and we’re not exactly common…) It’s definitely worth having an enh shaman in your raid group… but, we’re not meta. We probably will never be meta, so enh really isn’t a class for players or groups that are chasing the meta.
1 Like
We are not favored in raids.
WF totem is just a small damage buff to melee classes (like 1.5% or something) and is really only impactful to Arms warriors who have long swing CDs and generate their resource with them.
Compare that 1.5% damage buff to:
DHs with Darkness (raid DR), Immunity, and a 5% Magic damage debuff
DKs with just as good of Cleave, and AMZ, an Execute (UH) as well as a battlerez, death grip, etc…
Rogues with immunity and execute
Monks with 5% Physical damage buff and ring of piece
Warriors, also with a 1-5.2% buff through AP, but also an execute
Basically the Melee (5ish spots)
Will consist of:
at least a DH if one of the tanks isn’t one.
1-3 UH DKs
at least one Monk if one of the tanks isn’t one,
And the remaining 1-3 spots will go to warriors or rogues… because Execute.
Blizzard needs to give us an execute at bare minimum, as well as a raid utility like % haste buff or an expansion of Astral Shift to give everyone a 20% DR or something before we’re considered.
Those other tools can be brought by Resto or Elemental.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE enhance. I love the theme, I love being melee, I like all the stuff we can do…
But none of our stuff is impactful that cannot be brought by a ranged/healer shaman.
Even if we did 10% more damage than the rest of the melee, we probably still wouldn’t be present much in progression.
1 Like
All the “utility” people are mentioning as if its some sort of strong or particularly useful utility that makes a raid leader think “yeah we definitely need to bring an enhance shaman no matter what” need to realize that its mostly irrelevant utility and/or something another class can bring.
Why bring enhance for wind rush totem(which is very situational) when you can bring a Resto or Ele? Or when you can just have a Druid stampeding roar?
Short CD kick doesnt really matter in raid, most melee have near the same CD on their kicks anyway and Resto/Ele also have shear.
Windfury totem could be useful if the meta wasnt so ranged heavy and more melee classes were at the top instead of most of the top tier specs being ranged. Its also just not terribly valuable for anything but Warriors. The meta would have to shift towards melee and more melee would have to become top tier, on top of WF getting a small buff in order for a RL to think “yeah, we definitely want an enhance for WF totem”, but until that happens itll be something people will easily not even give a second thought to going without it.
Off Healing in raid isnt very valuable at all, usually the most youll do is throw a heal on yourself to help your healers out/stay alive. Theres slightly more value for it in something like m+ but even then its not something people care too much about having or not.
Ankh…yeah, think everyone knows how “valuable” this “utility” is. Its a meme.
Bloodlust- no longer terribly important since multiple classes can provide it.
None of this utility is something a RL will say “we NEED this” and specifically bring an enhance for it at the cost of enhance being one of the worst performing specs(and it looks like it will fall even further given all the specs at bottom with us have received buffs), its much better to simply bring a top performing spec instead. As of right now, there will be absolutely zero reason for any RL to even consider bringing an enhance for Mythic progression in 9.1(unless theyre just extremely good players and you still bring them for that reason), especially with limited melee slots, youd actively be hamstringing your raid by not bringing a spec thatll do 10-15% more damage and possibly provide other more useful utility at the same time. Even if we received a massive buff for 9.1 that brought us from bottom of the bottom up to above average (and the chances of that happening as as close to zero as you can get), there still wouldnt be much reason to bring an enhance in one of those limited melee slots.
2 Likes
If you’re chasing mythic world firsts, you’re legit playing a different game than most players. You have multiple toons that you can swap out so you have the best tools and the best dps for each encounter. It’s probably accurate to say that we won’t see enh shamans in the mix for world first M+
But that doesn’t mean that enh shamans don’t have a place in a raid environment. Like, my very average guild is 10/10 heroic and 3/10 mythic. I regularly out dps more meta classes because I’m better at being an enh shaman than they are at being a mage or whatever. Our druids have all fallen to mid-patch attrition, so that wind rush happens to be very important for our situation.
It’s not wrong to say that enh doesn’t have anything that guarantees that you need an enh shaman to progress, but it is wrong to say that enh doesn’t bring anything/enough to the table to be worth a spot.
9 Likes
I see… so next expansion we might see a fix since we need a new skill…?
Depends what you want. If you want to be a mandatory 1 of in every world first raid roster, the spec would need more than what could be achieved in a patch, or to be hilariously overtuned.
If you want to be a strong dps choice in a raid that allows for large amounts of melee, I’d say all it needs is the bug fix to melee swing times and the raid environment to suit that situation. We’re planning to run an enhance shaman next tier for our mythic progression.
If you wanna do heroic and some mythic and not get laughed at, spec’s fine now, though the swing timer bug still needs to be sorted out.
2 Likes
I’m sorry you feel that way mate ;/
not sure what to tell ya you seem to have it where enhance is just awful , but i disagree best of luck to ya
3 Likes
Hence why I only brought up Windfury Totem, the only actual answer to OP’s question.
need
back
At no point did I say Enhance was awful. (In fact, as I stated, I love enhance.)
I just said that the other Melee specs have tools to bring to the raid that are much more impactful than ours- so ours needs something like that as well if we want to be favored in raid.
No.
1 Like
The only thing we bring to raid is Windfury and the only real spec that benefits significantly would be Arms Warrior.
In my opinion. They need to give enhance the same debuff demon hunters give. This would give us two offensive reasons (windfury and spell damage buff) to come to raid whereas DH gets an offensive and defensive (spell damage buff and darkness).
I also think they need to buff crash lightning damage. It’s essential to our rotation, but it doesn’t feel like it does anything outside of buffing SS damage. If that’s it’s whole purpose then it needs to really make SS clap.
what we need is a bug fix i would say or is that dps loss okay and i know it ain’t been fixed it was stated today again probably for reasons like say something.