Everyone puts enhance bottom of their BGB/PVP tier lists and im here to tell you… it’s not that bad.
I’m 2022 in BGB rn which, funny enough, makes me top enh 20 on the ladders (big fish small pond i know). I’m not really even a good player. I play on the steam deck. I crafted the wrong piece week 1. I’m a very casual, lay in bed and que bgs at night kinda player.
That said, even with the recent buffs, enh feels just barely viable. Dmg is decent and survivability is the best its been in a while (though still pretty mid tier) but a few things stood out to me as i was grinding bgs before bed, unintentionally climbing the ladders.
Heroism/Bloodlust
I’ve essentially treated the 1 min personal heroism pvp talent as a mandatory choice since its inception and then i realized, at higher rankings, people yell at me when i dont lust…
A few lovely words from the community and I decided I needed to sacrifice one of my few personal CDs for the sake of the team. Heroic, i know. But that choice just feels bad.
In my ideal world the pvp talent would be baked into baseline Heroism. It could work such that every 10 min your heroism affects the whole party and during that internal cooldown, your 1 min heroism only affects yourself.
Healing/Stormweaver
The introduction of stormweaver increased enhance’s healing capabilities 2 fold. It took some getting used to, I was a stormweaver denier at the beginning. Now I view stormweaver as an absolutely necessary talent. It makes us really strong in 1v1 and without the chains of dampening, the reality of being an off healer isnt far fetched.
When I’m playing BGB, I’ve tried to make a habit of not wasting any stormweaver procs. If I have a proc and I dont necessarily need much healing, I try to throw out a chain heal. I’ve already come to love the literal weaving of heals into our rotation playstyle but something about throwing out a chain heal as enh feels so good. That is until you see everyone hp bars didnt move.
Healing Surge has been buffed and i think it’s well balanced rn but chain heal has kinda lagged behind. I think a buff to chain heal would be a cool way to increase enhance’s value in BGB.
And super unlikely but i just have to say it. I think adding stormweaver to the spec tree could be one of the coolest things they could do to enhance.
Mobility
Enh really struggles with mobility. It makes up with good ranged capacity but at times, the game feels unplayable.
When the talent for gust of wind/spirit walk cdr got removed, it was baked into gust of wind but never into spirit walk. It’d be a great start if spirit walk should have a 40s cd. I’d go as far as to say, spirit walk and gust of wind should be separated in the class tree similar to the changes to earthgrab/windrush.
I’ve never really played with gust of wind bc i think the spirit walk root break is a must but it just looks really fun. I want to hit a fadeaway tempest. Having both options would go a long way to catch up with the mobility creep in the game.
Windrush or spirit walk need to be a true freedom. Removing snares only to be snared again 0.5s later is useless unfortunately. Previous iterations of windrush were true freedoms and I think it would bring it more in line in terms of power for a 2 min cd.
PVP Talents
Too many of enhances pvp talents feel mandatory. Having to switch a talent feels like you need to sacrifice a core part of your gameplay. If a pvp talent fundamentally changes the way the spec is played, I dont think that’s where it belongs.
- Heroism/Bloodlust (see above)
- Stormweaver (see above)
- Burrow (I think this belongs in the class tree. It’s something every shaman would be glad to have in any variety of the game)
- Grounding Totem
It doesn’t leave any room to play with some of the cool talents like static field, ride the lightning, totem of wrath, or counterstrike and the rest are too niche or outright useless.
I really like enhance and i dont necessarily think it’s in a terrible spot but, some changes still need to be made to make the spec feel more complete. In my opinion, the gamepley changes coming in 11.0.5 are a great start (i say gameplay bc i dont even wanna bring the ascendance discussion here). And it does feel like blizz has actually been listen to the enh shaman community lately so lets hope.