TLDR; Enhancement lacks synergy within itself to create more significant avenues of damage as a reward for proper play in your rotation. Unholy has just that (as well as a meaningful mastery) and I love it. Also, it’s been hard af getting groups to do dungeons and my IO isn’t terrible. I just want to play the game without class bias. Shaman has been my baby for years since I made one for pvp back in MoP and i’ll only use this toon for Healing from now on.
This is just a thought post, but it’s not fun trying to get in groups for M+ as Enhance. People ask what spec you are, even on weeks (like raging/explosive) where it would not hinder them. Not getting invited even though your RIO is decently high for mid level M+ (8-12).
There is such a high skill cap to play this class that mostly does not out perform in ST against others who have room in their rotation to fumble/switch up. Our single target is all centered around MAJOR rng and our aoe abilities (no matter HOW perfect your rotation is, you will suffer from downtime).
Now as enhance, we do have options to smooth out the rotation in the form of legendaries, but these are all fruitless efforts at making the class feel better because most of our abilities lack SYNERGY (not to mention our highest dps legendary is a CD based ability, Doom Winds). There are not as many viable avenues for damage outside of burst, and spending maelstrom is severely underwhelming.
HOWEVER, the reason I am quitting enhance for Unholy is because the rotation of unholy is SO much more controllable and meaningful. Festering Strike puts a dot on enemy. Outbreak places aoe dot (which flame shock REALLY should do after you lava lash MT afflicted by it). Scourge Strike bursts the wound for aoe damage. All these runes spent gain runic power. Your Death strike, Death Coil, and Epidemic all have a high chance to speed up rune regen (it’s like cutting your cooldowns in half AND you can extend the duration with further casts, there is no CD to this). All of your abilities ALSO do a good amount of damage, each button press feels valuable.
I’m not asking to be exactly like Unholy as an Enhance shaman, i’d just like to have this synergy and ability to amp my rotation in this manner without having to say to myself: “Aww sh*t, i didn’t get enough MSW stacks/procs or a SB proc so i guess i’ll autoattack for 4-6 seconds until something comes off CD…”
For enhance, each button DOES NOT feel valuable. My lava lash (without hot hand procs) hits for almost as much as my scourge strike/clawing shadows does on my 162 ilvl Unholy Dk. EVEN with flametongue active. A 10 second cd with no synergy to your rotation. It’s horrible. It’s like each talent in our talent tree acknowledges that our abilities are bad and we QUITE LITERALLY have to enhance them to be slightly viable.
Not amazing, but viable.
Half of our talents shouldn’t be talents. They should be baked-in passives.
ALSO our mastery is garbage. Stormbringer should have a WAY higher proc chance and Lava lash should trigger Windfury. There’s absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t if crash lightning does (when enemies aren’t in melee range) and you have to be in melee range for Lava Lash.
I can go on forever about how I feel betrayed by blizz because of how enhance feels right now but i’m gonna /endrant. Just wanted to share a strife. Hang in there Enhance brothers. I’ll be back when we get a buff.
Not trying to be rude or anything. But if your not happy with a class then changing should be what you do. I love enhancement and no not every button needs to have synergy. I love Enhancement because I know what it is and what we are supposed to be.
There are people that perfer the Legion/Bfa version and they do nothing but make post after post about how much they hate the current enhancement. But a lot of us love what it is. We have gone back to what we were a true Hybrid.
If you find pleasure out of unholy then I am happy for you. Do not try to force your self to play a class that you cant have fun with GL with your unholy I hope you enjoy it fully.
For me I actually enjoy enhancement way more than DKs. I can always press something. And the lack of required synergy actually feels good to me as I don’t feel forced to use a spell.
Although I agree with most of the contents of this post, I fail to see how our aoe/cleave rotation is bad. The crash lightning to chain lightning gameplay loop is incredibly rewarding, especially with doom winds and the hailstorm talent.
That being said, you’re 100% right that most of our talents should be baseline, including Elemental assault, Natures Guardian and Crashing Storm. Elemental Assault is probably the biggest offender of this, and making it baseline would go a large way to making the class more rewarding in single target.
Lava lash obviously needs a buff, and when it happens it will open up flexibility to use other talents. Spreading flame shock would also be a huge improvement.
I love Enhancement too, but this statement is horrible, every class and spec should flow, it shouldn’t be about just mashing buttons and the mob dies, it should feel great doing a rotation perfectly, playing your spec perfectly should feel rewarding.
That’s the problem, other classes/specs you get satisfaction from doing your core rotation, I must admit enhancement as much as I love the spec to death its literally just press buttons that arnt on CD…literally…
If people ask how do you play enhancement, just say “press every button and when with 5 stacks lightning bolt.”
Natures Guardian and feral lunge should be baseline, why on earth are we the only “melee” class to talent into a gap closer?, the talent option should be for a second charge.
I get all the flow I need and Lava Lash is on the last of my buttons to be hit. I am sorry but Blizzard made Lava Lash pointless without the hot hands talent. Which I do not run. Honestly I wish LL was removed from enhancement all together.
Again. People gonna be changing their tune once we are at the lava lash 50% crit conduit mark and it’s hitting 10-13k (scales with mastery) every other hit.
If for some reason you are an rng masochist…hot hands and lava actuators legendary will have it hitting even harder.
I’ve mained enh since BC and I was considering swapping to Unholy DK myself. It feels bad to have to play perfectly in order to do average damage, while other classes can play sloppy and out-dps me. It feels really bad to have to switch targets right now because of how many gcds we have to invest in ramp-up time, plus as a melee, we sometimes have to move to the target and we have limited options for closing gaps and for dpsing on the move if we don’t have stacks of maelstrom or frost shock is on cd. I don’t mind the procciness of the spec, that’s been like, a defining feature of enh since forever, but we need something that still does decent damage when the procs aren’t coming.
I’m holding on now out of a long-time loyalty to the spec, and because I legit don’t have the time to invest in catching up a second toon. And I have a hope that we’ll see a tuning pass maybe a week or two after we’ve opened all our conduit slots for soulbinds.
i don’t mind being a hybrid but a lot of our toolkit has unmeaningful button presses. it should feel GOOD to press lava lash, knowing it’s gonna be on a 10 second cd. it currently does not whatsoever. You press it, it does trash damage, then it goes on cd for 10 seconds.
I see so many shamans with doom winds makes me sad. Yes yes I know what icy veins says…
Those willing think outside box try, legacy of the frost witch. With elemental blast and both stromstrike talents. Use blast on CD , crash lighting aoe into chain lightning. Always resetting stromstrike with 3 seconds or more of CD remaining.
To me this play style craps on doom winds not only in dps terms but much larger dps windows due to sustained aoe outside a 12 second CD every min.
