Enhancing Enhancement

Community General Discussion
1

The Enhancement Shaman concept is one of my most favorite themes. The idea of a warrior using elemental force in their weapons in destructive force is a thrill. It has in my opinion one of the best graphic abilities with Crash lightning.

That being said, it should not come as a shock to most how…subpar it plays. Enhancement is almost shunned at this point with good reason.

Enhancement shamans suffer the most in terms of survival and their rotation.

For those that dont want to read through the specifics, the suggestions are listed below.

Defense:

Shaman uses Mail, sharing this with the only other class being Hunter. Now for offensive purposes, we have:

Marksman Hunter
Survival Hunter
Beastmaster Hunter
Elemental Shaman
Enhancement Shaman

These all use mail. Of these, 3 are based on ranged capability and keeping the enemy at bay. This leaves Survival Hunter and Enhancement Shaman for melee play. Let’s take a closer look into this.

Survival hunters do well in surviving (pun unintended) with the ability to direct damage to their pets as well as heal that pet mid-combat and finally have a passive to bolster both of their health regeneration.

Enhancement Shamans do not have the ability to direct damage elsewhere except when able to temporary summon an Earth elemental (1 min summon. 5 min cooldown).

The majority of the time, the Enhancement Shaman will have to make use of:

Astral Shift (reduces damage by 40% for 8 seconds. 1.5 min cooldown)

Healing Surge (Heals you or another. 2 second cast or instant but 20 maelstrom. Costs 22% of your mana)

Earth Shield (if selected) (will heal you for a percentage for the next 9 hits you receive. Cooldown between each heal activating)

The way it is reading is that the Enhancement Shaman is thrown into the thick of battle with mechanics based on trying to stay alive by keeping up the pace to keep their health up. This wouldnt necessary read as a bad thing, but the mentioned above are simply not enough to mitigate the squishiness of a mail wearing class with no form of armor/defense boost.

Offense:

The current idea behind Enhancement Shaman is to build maelstrom for Stormstrike attacks. If that is on cooldown, then Lava Lash.

You can ‘enhance’ your damage by applying Flametongue and Hailstorm (talented), which gives you a buff that causes your attacks to deal extra fire/frost damage for 16 seconds.

Crash Lightning, which strikes all in front of you, causing Stormstrike to deal enhanced damage on its next hit based on how many were struck. If you strike more than 2 targets, your stormstrike and lava lash deal an increased amount of damage for a few seconds. Also a form of buff.

This reads well but plays terribly when you consider the survival aspect of an enhance Shaman.

Rotation:

The rotation of an Enhancement Shaman comes off as wonky and unsatisfying. You try to keep flametongue and frostbrand on the target, build up your windfuries and maelstrom, strike with crash lightning while attempting to get more than 1 target hit, use your stormstrikes and lava lash while during all this trying to stay alive with limited heals.

For all of this, the result ends up being lacklustre when compared to far more manageable and effective rotations.

Suggestions:

(Implement one, more or all)

Make the flametongue buff reset with each Lava Lash. Reduce the buff’s time.

Remove Hailstorm as a talent and ease the rotation, as well it will make the spec more central to a theme. Enhance flametongue buff’s damage.

Make Earth Shield baseline and reduce damage from physical attacks by a %

Make Crash lightning enhance lava lash damage without it needing to hit 2 or more targets.

Dramatically reduce the Healing surge mana cost should maelstrom be used.

Consider returning the Stoneskin totem and/or Stonetalon totem.

These arent sweeping changes, because anything dramatic is likely not to happen…as much as I would love to suggest a whole rewrite for the spec.

2 Likes
2

TL;DR, make enhance a tank spec plz.

3

You could fix the rotation by just making FT and FB off the gcd.
That would legitimately make it flow so much better.
Just make them share a gcd with each other, or give them a severely reduced gcd.
Pressing both of them feels like you’re taking yourself out of combat temporarily, and something that’s supposed to be a elemental warrior in the fray shouldn’t really have that feel.

4

This is definitely the feeling you get. You need to take a pause to place FB and FT on and proceed from there. FB also needs maelstrom so you have to use a rockbiter first.

5

You mentioned SV hunter as surviving better thanks to misdirect–very true. Without it up, I feel incredibly flimsy compared to any other class I play. In PvP, stuck kiting at times instead of staying in melee range.

I think the issue is related to mail armor. Too weak compared to plate, plus the classes it’s given to have no spells to really up their defense–just temporary immunities/slows/snares/speed boosts to escape with. Unlike a leather wearer, no real dodge skills either. So it’s truly just trying to play like a plate class in weaker armor.

SV, I can kite at least as needed. The melee attacks can go ranged on a timer. A shaman though? What, slow, heal up, come back and try again, rinse and repeat? A good strat in situations, but no fun to have to rely on regularly. And the ones who don’t go splat, from what I’ve seen!

Buff mail. Or give mail wearers more dodge. At least the melee ones!

1 Like
6

That’s another massive offender.
The entire spec has a theme of really quick, frontloaded bursty options, and then there’s these two spells you have to use to do meaningful damage that just are out of place.
Another big problem is maelstrom generation in general. It doesn’t flow well, either you’re overflowing with it, and struggling to get rid of it, or you barely have any at all.
I’m glad that Frost Shock is returning to Enhancement though, I doubt I’ll be using frostbrand outside of priority slow adds, and sticking healers in PvP.

7

I think they’re cool too, really any dual wielding class is cool except demon hunters

8

I recently tested with leveling up an Enhance shaman. Tragic doesnt begin to define it. The majority of passives that are essential dont even arrive until much later. Maelstrom regeneration is a nightmare until you get windfury which slightly enhances it.