Stay enhance. I have a feeling enhance shaman are going to be rare in WOTLK, and their dps is actually pretty solid if you can manage the rotation. Enhance has one of the most complicated rotations next to feral druid, and its really rewarding to play it and see yourself near the top of the meters because of it.
This is incorrect; mages get time warp and hunters get ancient hysteria.
I appear to be wrong, oh dear. My mistake.
1 Like
Incorrect, time warp was cata and so was hysteria flies away
2 Likes
sounds like wrath pve is a joke, so i wouldnt really worry about it. unless u are in a top speedrunning guild, i dont think your comp will matter much at all.
as for pvp we sound pretty good too
Enhance in wrath is one of the more complicated specs for PvE with high reward, the only thing comparable is feral druid.
Wotlk is the PVP xpac for shamans as well, both ele and enhance is insane. Ele is one of the best pvp specs s6-s8 and enhance will no doubt dominate s5 and still be good onwards.
1 Like
Itâs not a high reward. They have a very high skill cap/APM rotation for middling at best reward. You will never out-DPS averagely skilled high-DPS specs with similar gear.
2 Likes
Yes.
/Thread
1 Like
Just going to come in here and say that all the people hyping up elemental as being great, or insane, or the best pvp caster dps in wotlk⌠Are actually underselling how rediculous they are in wotlk pvp. Theyâre like current seal twisting ret with a windfury totem levels of âoh snap I just globaled that guy on accidentâ⌠Except being ele shamans they also cleaved a chain lightning into his two friends for 1/3rd of their health tooâŚ
Also they get tstorm again, so have fun @lumber mill or basically anywhere in eots.
2 Likes
Iâm excited for some shaman pvp (especially resto) in some of the later seasons. I want to get my hands on some enhance or ele gameplay early Wrath.
2 Likes
Precisely my experience. If mechanically challenging gameplay is rewarding to someone, then sure WOTLK enhancement is a great choice for them. Or, if mediocre jack of all trades is your thing, itâs also a good option (no sarcasm).
The GCD tax is real though, something like:
Lightning Shield â Flame Shock â Stormstrike â Lava Lash â Earth Shock â Fire Nova â Other Fire Totem + Lightning Bolt/CL at optimal Maelstrom stacks with Stormstrike debuff up (which could be consumed by other people I think) + maintain totems while moving and avoiding mechanics.
~<10 abilities, all contributing moderate-low damage output and should be executed on time
The noteworthy highlight of Shaman in PVE still remained its versatile hybrid utility. You could heal in a pinch, hard/soft CC where applicable and provide offensive and defensive group buffs.
This was also said about enhance in TBC, yet we are very competitive in dps.
Iâm going to have a blast with wraith being enhance. Canât wait.
2 Likes
This. Mained an enhancement shaman in WotLK and used to embarrass pure DPS classes on the regular. Canât wait to do it again.
Fire Nova in WotLK is no longer a totem. Instead it is a spell more like Arcane Explosion that is centered on your current fire totem. In non-AE situations, you (probably) wouldnât use it all. In AE situations, youâd be using it every 3 sec.
Your Lightning Shield will have 9 charges, but only a 6% chance to consume one. If we assume 1 attack/sec, it would average a minute and half to consume your entire Lightning Shield.
Maelstrom Weapon is about 25 ppm, which translates into a Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning every 12 sec. Weâll call it 10 sec to be conservative.
That means the abilities youâre using rotationally are two 6 sec CD (Shock, Lava Lash), one 8 sec (Stormstrike) and one 10 sec (Maelstrom Weapon).
At 0% haste and with unglyphâd Shocks, youâll certainly have some conflicts (where two abilities are available and you have to choose one or the other) but youâll only be consuming 2 * 1.5/6 + 1.5/8 + 1.5/10 = 83.75% of your available GCD time. If you glyph your Shocks or equip haste gear, this will go down.
You also wonât need to worry about timing Stormstrike since itâs a personal buff rather than a raid buff. So youâd need to deal nature damage 4 times in an 8 second window to consume it - unlikely given that your only sources of nature damage are Earth Shock (used every 12 sec), Maelstrom Weapon (landing every 10 - 12 sec) and Lightning Shield (procâing every 10 sec).
2 Likes
They are awesome till you face against a rogue, warrior and dk which is gonna be a good 80% of the wotlk classic pop.
1 Like
Wrath is the first expansion where there arenât any âmeme specsâ in even a joking sense of the term. Mainly because all but the 25H content(and in some cases, INCLUDING the 25H content) is so easy that bringing people along for the people and not the spec is viable.
You could do ICC with 3 prot warriors, 5 Dpriests and 17 Arms warriors if you wanted. Will it take slightly longer? Sure. But youâll clear it all the same.
2 Shamans⌠no more⌠no lessâŚ
as an enhance shaman fanboy (in wotlk) the class excels at small scale aoe dps, if your raid is dealing with 2-6 mobs at once and you dont need to run, you will likely top the meters, there is a high, and very rewarding skill cap, that will directly relate to your performance as-well.
The problem with the class is two-fold. Due to class homogenisation, that to some extent needed to happen, you only really need 2 shamans in the raid at most, of different specs, currently its optimal to have 5, there will be a huge oversupply of shaman players in wrath as a result, like there is an oversupply of warriors and rogues right now.
The other problem, which will snowball badly heading into ICC, is the downsides of the shaman class were never addressed originally, and our low health pools will turn the class into a serious liability for hardcore raiding, enh shamans in particular will have health pools FAR lower than even rogues in ICC content, with only 1 damage mitigation ability compared to rogues arsenal of defensive cooldowns, I still bitterly remember getting benched for heroic lich king attempts because the healers kept complaining about how squishy i was to my guild leader.
This was complained about alot on the shaman forums back then, it was âfixedâ, but we still had woefully low health compared to all other classes, and the class remained the red headed stepchild of blizzards incompetence forevermore until cata removed all class identity altogether. By the end of the expansion the shaman class was by far the least played.
TL:DR play it if you want, and if you know youâre a good player, but its simply not optimal, and you have plenty of time to reroll another class that will be in more demand, such as a priest/pally healer or range dps, as there will be PLENTY of deathknights to fill the melee dps and tank positions.
1 Like
Well, I thank you for the detailed and honest answer. Right now I am having fun with the shaman I am leveling, so I am resolved to stick with it. If I start to have problems during Wrath, I am willing to settle for Resto. I also have other alts that I can level, so it is not like I am locked into playing this class.
1 Like
by all means, play whats fun, but get those backup plans ready, a resto shaman is fine, but the healing toolkits of druids, pallies and priests were heavily buffed in wrath in comparison to resto shamans, so be aware that they werent exactly optimal either, but yeah, youâll always get a raid spot if youâre willing to heal so donât stress haha.
1 Like
I had a blast playing a dps shaman back in Wrath. It was so long ago, I donât recall the spec. I do remember running in behind the tank, dropping four totems and then beating the crap out of mobs with mace, shield and earth shock. Didnât do raids but in the pug dungeons I remember recount suggested I was always doing more dps than the tank.