Midnight Enhancement Shaman Feedback And Suggestions (PVE and PVP)

Classes Shaman
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Hello all! This post contains analyzis and feedback about changes to Enhancement Shaman talent trees and gameplay in Midnight. As there will be a lot of feedback, it will be split into subsections for better readability.

Enhancement Shaman talent tree / gameplay feedback

Generally present issues:

  • Still contains several talents that are either overpriced or weirdly located or undertuned and could use buffs / improvements.
  • Ice element is absent in the tree, there are literally no talents that represent it and that is not fitting for a master of 4 elements.
  • Merge of Doom Winds and Ascendance is questionable (you now can play as 1 min CD spec with no major cooldown or 2 min CD spec with no minor cooldown and no inbetween).
  • Removal of active Feral Spirits and significant nerf to their effect from proc version is questionable too and can make their passive not even worth picking.

Possible solutions for mentioned issues and detailed feedback about some talents:

  • Hot Hand: with nerf to its cooldown reduction effect no longer deserves 2 point investment cost, makes most right tree path not balanced in point cost with most left tree path and sticks like a sore thumb in whole upper part of tree where it is the only 2 point cost talent. Please consider reducing it to 1 point investment with full current effect to address all these issues.
  • Stormflurry: Was overnerfed and on average provides 8% damage increase and only to Stormstrike which is too low. Should be buffed again.
  • Doom Winds / Ascendance: Good to see them buffed, but Doom Winds being replaced by Ascendance is not good as promotes either 1 min cooldown builds with no major cooldown (no Ascendance) or 2-3 min cooldown builds with no minor cooldown inbetween (no manual Doom Winds). Please consider reverting these changes, restroring initial lightning burst of Ascendance and just allowing to pick Doom Winds and Ascendance separately if player would want to. If you want more variety and options, manual Doom Winds could become a choice node with current Ascendance proc version of it (MSW spenders have X% chance to activate Doom Winds per MSW stack spent), so that players can pick between manual and RNG proc Doom Winds and manual and RNG proc Ascendance and pick the option(s) that are most suitable for them.
  • Feral Spirit: Is currently undertuned (8 seconds of wolf every 30/ 60 seconds with minimal damage increasing bonuses) and should receive buffs to both its duration and damage bonus.

Suggested (re)additions to the Enhancement Shaman talent tree or specialization:

  • Ice Strike as offensive cold attack to represent currently absent frost element in the tree. Even though some people did not like it, frost themed attack should still be present in Enhancement tree and just be positioned and tuned well enough to be optional, so that people who would want it can take and play with it and people who wouldn’t - can skip it.
    Suggestion: Return Ice Strike as active ability with 15 seconds cooldown (which aligns with cooldown of Crash Lightning) that deals Froststrike damage to target and enhances next Frost Shock to deal X% increased damage and strike 5 additional targets (so merges functionality of old Ice Strike and Hailstorm into 1 button) and locate in currently free central spot in 2nd talent row. Such effect and position 1) make it optional, so people who don’t want to use it can skip it 2) would align its cooldown with Crash Lightning cooldown to receive benefits from it with no additional micro management required 3) make it easy to use as Ice Strike → Frost Shock combo every 15 seconds that is fitting for both single-target and AoE (Ice Strike would receive buff from Crash Lightning for cleave damage and buffed by it Frost Shock would also cleave to other enemies nearby) and 4) can be tuned to the level where it can be skipped and replaced by picking other talents without suffering a dps loss, so people who don’t want it would be able to skip it, take something else and perform at comparable level.
  • An Enhancement only addition to baseline effects or their talent tree to increase survivability. With all the losses in general tree Enhancement Shamans might become too squishy and could use some spec specific mitigation or survivability boosting effect to account for being a melee specialization.

Suggested changes to Enhancement Shaman PVP talents:

  • Totem of Wrath: Has low value for Enhancement Shamans specifically since they are much less crit reliant than Elemental and Restoration Shamans. Consider tweaking its effect for Enhancement Shamans only and make their version of this totem provide increase to melee damage instead. Such change would make it fitting for Enhancement Shamans and their potential melee partners and competitive enough with other generally useful PVP talents like Shamanism.
Enhancement Stormbringer talent tree / gameplay feedback

Generally present issues:

  • This tree can be a good opportunity to introduce lightning focused builds for Elemental and Enhancement Shamans, but currently it just provides mostly passive boosts and occasional single use ability replacement every X seconds. That can be improved and suggestions how to tweak some of these talents to make Stormbringer builds for both Enhancement and Elemental Shamans much more synergizing with lightning and storm thematic were posted in Elemental Shaman feedback post that will be linked below (to not repeat feedback).
  • Arc Discharge change is odd and makes its use case applications more narrow and Aoe focused (especially since Elemental Shaman’s analogue still applies to both Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning). Maybe its change should be reverted.
  • Tempest generation and Awakening Storms becoming RNG based makes its generation much more inconsistent and can cause issues with bad RNG windows. That can be improved.

Possible solutions for mentioned issues and detailed feedback about some talents:

  • Tempest / Awakening Storms: Since new generation method is very unreliable and subject to bad RNG windows without getting a single proc, consider either reverting it back to number of MSW stacks spent or at least adding a form of bad RNG protection to it.
  • Arc Discharge: As change to affecting Chain Lightning only made it too specialized and makes the same mistake as in War Wihin beta - consider reverting this change and making it affect both Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning again and if needed tune its values for Lightning Bolt specifically to compensate.
  • Supercharge: Still has compatibility issues with Thunder Capacitor where overlap of their effects can cause excess MSW stacks that would be just lost (for example if 10 MSW Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning would trigger both effects it would refund 10 stacks from Thunder Capacitor and 2 stacks from Supercharge, but since MSW cap is 10 two stacks from Supercharge would be just lost). Consider changing effect of Supercharge for Enhancement Stormbringers to something else to avoid these compatibility issues.
Enhancement Totemic talent tree / gameplay feedback

Generally present issues:

  • Planned increase of Surging Totem’s cooldown to 65 seconds can make its benefits too rarely usable in PVE (only every 2nd Sundering would trigger a Tremor / if totem is destroyed by a mechanic etc) and too easily negatable in PVP (as enemy players can just kill the totem and Enhancement Shaman would be left without their hero tree mechanic for remaining 45-50 seconds).
  • Still has too weak utility and defensive nodes (6% HP shield every 30 seconds when for example Templar Paladins get 10% of HP shield every time they use Wake of Ashes which baseline has similar 30 sec cooldown etc).

Possible solutions for mentioned issues and detailed feedback about some talents:

  • Surging Totem: As increasing its cooldown to 60+ seconds would cause a lot of additional issues mentioned above, please keep it at 30 seconds baseline cooldown and increase its base duration to 30 seconds with condition of only 1 Tremor Totem being active at a time. Such cooldown and duration values 1) allow to align Tremor Totem with each Sundering (that also has 30 sec cooldown) like they are supposed to be and without requiring any additional talents in general tree and 2) make totem cooldown reduction talent in general tree not mandatory to take, as it would drop cooldown of Tremor Totem below its duration and 1 limit cap would make that have no actual offensive value, so Totemic Surge would be just an optional pick for people who would worry or feel that their Surging Totem can be frequently destroyed by mechanics in PVE / enemy players in PVP.
  • Elemental Attunement: Is just a generic stat increase node. Please consider replacing it with a more interesting / synergizing effect.
  • Wind Barrier: Is too undertuned like mentioned above, so consider buffing it to match other classes analogues (like mentioned above 10% of HP shield of Templars).
  • Swift Recall: Provides too low value, especially since some of these totems were merged into choice nodes or have baseline 1-2 minute cooldown with 5 second reduction being negligible. Consider buffing its values.

This sums up my feedback about Enhancement Shaman changes in Midnight for now. If you want to read my feedback and suggested changes to Shaman’s general tree - check them in an according part of Elemental Shaman post linked below to not duplicate feedback in 2 posts (as changes to general tree suggested there apply to Enhancement Shamans as well). If you have something to add - you can post it in comments below. Thank you for reading!

Links to posts with feedback about other Shaman specialization(s):
Elemental Shaman - Midnight Elemental Shaman Feedback And Suggestions (PVE and PVP)

4 Likes
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I really don’t get why they decided to combine Doom Winds and Ascendance, and utterly kneecap you if you want only one or the other.

I thought the point of the talent trees revision in Dragonflight was about giving us build agency, now it seems Blizz wants every class to fit into a single viable build.

4 Likes
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Yeah, having your 2 minute CD activate your 1 minute CD seems odd.

I think getting rid of Ascension and replacing it with a 2 minute CD Feral Spirits (and get rid of the passive proc Feral Spirits) would be better for the gameplay and more iconic to Enhancement.

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I know it can be difficult to design the flow of multiple elemental loops into a rotation but I do feel that Shamans need a bit more frost available to their kits… because we’re a master of the elements. Maybe adding a few more optional frost-themed talents to our Class tree could be an acceptable route. I think it would also be appropriate to change something like Earthgrab Totem to have an icy aesthetic… but I can see that being too similar to a Hunter’s Frost Trap.

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Feedback about latest changes to Enhancement Shamans in alpha:

  • Stormweaver effect being now baked intro Raging Maelstrom is a good change that would finally solve conflict between spending MSW stacks on damage or healing for all game modes.
  • Keeping and adding bigger nerf to Thorim’s Invocation in PVP in Midnight seems excessive as it was not even tested there much yet. Please remove this PVP modifier and apply only if needed after more testing is done.
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I would like to have some frost damage in the spec. My idea is to have ice strike/hailstorm be choice nodes with voltaic blaze/fire nova. They could work them to be exactly equal on dps so it’s purely an aesthetic choice. The ONLY difference is that it would take two globals instead of 1 (flame shock, lava lash vs voltaic blaze). They could make it so that ice strike/hailstorm has very slightly higher maelstrom generation – (ice strike generates two, hailstorm generates two), to account for this lost global

That said, from what I’ve seen the voltaic blaze animation looks pretty cool in Alpha so it’d have to be a much better hailstorm animation than currently exists (they could make something like an actual hailstorm, a similar animation to that frost mage spell).

And does anyone know if you will lose a guaranteed hot hands proc if you “spend” the fire mote from totemic while hot hands is active?

1 Like
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Im just glad Primordial Wave is gone. So over having it shoved down our throats.

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The Shaman class talent tree capstones currently feel quite underwhelming for Enhancement. Rolling multiple buffs into one button is convenient, but the resulting capstone essentially amounts to a static 3% Agility bonus, it doesn’t meaningfully impact our rotation, defensives, playstyle, or even a single spell. It’s a passive bonus that will just end up being tuned around rather than changing how we play.

The reduced totem cooldown capstone, while impactful in longer encounters, also feels uninspired. Meanwhile, Spiritwalker’s Grace and Nature’s Swiftness still have no real use for Enhancement. Overall, the later parts of the class tree feel uninspiring and don’t address core issues with the spec.

That said, I do like the class tree layout, and the updated Wind Veil (reducing all spell damage) is a great improvement.

Healing and Defensives

Enhancement’s self-healing continues to lag behind other classes that benefit from strong passive healing. In many cases, other specs can match or even out-heal Enhancement without spending globals. Our healing is bursty and on-demand, which is good, but it comes at a steep damage cost.

Including Stormweaver in the enhance tree is a solid step, but I believe we need a further buff to our healing to make this hybrid playstyle viable. We also lack strong defensives and if Blizzard intends our healing to offset that weakness, then the healing needs to be strong enough to justify it.

Uptime and Mobility (especially in PvP)

Uptime remains a persistent issue, particularly in PvP. Sticking to targets has always been difficult for Enhancement, and it’s even more noticeable without Ascendance or after its nerfs.

The new Winds of Al’Akir passive granting 5% movement speed is a nice addition, but it’s not enough on its own. Wordup suggested adding increased melee attack range to Spiritwalker’s Grace, which I think is a fantastic idea, it would finally give Enhancement a reason to take that talent. Personally, I’d like to see a baseline increase to Stormstrike range, or something similar, to improve our ability to stay connected to targets.

Final Thoughts

As mentioned, I think Wordup did an excellent job outlining many of Enhancement’s pain points and potential improvements. I largely agree with his analysis, though I personally don’t support moving the crit slow talent to a PvP talent. Enhancement already has too many strong PvP talent options, and adding it there would only make that competition worse.

If you have time check out wordup’s video:

3 Likes
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I’ve been posting over the years that Enh, being that it is supposed to be the Horde version of the paladin, should have An ability like ret wake. Of ashes, that triggers ascendance every 30s

Maybe primordial wave?

Enh daamge has felt very poor until ascendance. Is up

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Phase 4 Feedback: Enhancement Shaman

The recent Shaman class talent tree changes in Phase 4 initially had me worried. At first, I couldn’t access all of our crowd control and defensive tools. However, after spending some time tweaking the tree, I managed to fit everything I wanted, just without any of the cooldown reduction talents.

That’s what concerns me a bit, it feels like we now have less access to CC, utility, and defensives than before. I can live with that if other classes are being adjusted in a similar way. I assume this is part of the broader shift with Midnight, moving away from excessive CC and cooldowns in general, which I actually like as a design direction. I’m just worried that Enhancement might get left behind in that process.

Also, Spiritwalker’s Grace still feels unused for Enhance. I still think giving it a ranged component like letting melee abilities and attacks work at range while active would be a cool addition (though that might lean too much into the Ascendance niche). On the positive side, the permanent Earth Shield change is great and something the community has been asking for. A nice small win.

When it comes to Hero Talents, specifically for Enhance, I’m concerned that Ascendance doesn’t currently have enough impact to justify picking it. That makes the Descending Skies node potentially worthless in cases where Ascendance isn’t taken. I’d also like to see some love for Natural Gift it feels extremely lackluster.

Overall, the Midnight changes leave me wondering “what makes Enhancement stand out?” What’s its unique identity or reason to be brought to a group?

  • Resto remains distinct, and even more so now as the only healing spec with an interrupt.

  • Elemental does much of what Enhance does (and more) now that it has Thunderstorm and doesn’t rely on maintaining uptime.

So what’s Enhance’s edge? Instant heals? They’re nice but not really significant or game-changing. That’s what has me worried Enhance might be getting overshadowed.

I’m not in Alpha, so I can’t speak from hands-on experience, but this is how it looks from the outside. That said, I’m genuinely excited for Midnight overall. I just wanted to raise a few concerns about the finer details beyond general flow and feel.

One idea: maybe let Hex work with Maelstrom Weapon by consuming five stacks or even just make it instant for Enhance. That would give us a unique form of utility the other Shaman specs don’t have.

Lastly, I just want to say great job, Blizzard. Please take this as constructive feedback, because that’s exactly how it’s intended. I’m super excited for Midnight and can’t wait to see how things develop.

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Enhance looks pretty good for midnight. The WordUp videos have been so good. I am worried about mostly 3 things that are not addressed in those videos.

1.) Where is Ice/Frost damage? It’s a part of our mastery but has zero parts of our kit. They could ‘theoretically’ nerf our mastery by 1/3rd and we wouldn’t feel anything. That doesn’t seem like good design.

2.) I am a totemic enjoyer, and am worried that in the 30 seconds or so between totems it will be super boring. We’re just waiting for our next 1 min go window? Can we get someeeetthing inbetween. We have a few talents that can get changed no problem…

3.) Besides usesless totem shield and totem size (the most egregious talents on the hero talent tree though there are others that are so far beyond playable you could make an argument for one or two others), the 1 extra lava lash a minute is not even close to being enough. It’s so bad. It’s bad now when you got a totem every 20 seconds. Now it’s 1/3rd of the power. And beyond it’s power, it’s really uninteresting There’s a few opportunities for them to change weak talents to fun ones.

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Good riddance.

And they are still master of 4 elements. Ice isn’t an element, water is. Your talent Raging Maelstrom affects your two main water spells as an enhance shaman: healing surge and chain heal.

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Elemental and Enhancement are DPS specs. If the element isn’t represented in our damage profile, it just doesn’t hit the same, even if it’s technically there in healing spells that we should ideally be casting as little as possible to stay alive.

Aesthetics matters. By your logic, Fire and Frost mages should all be fine with the idea of all their fire and frost spells non-optionally turning purple and transparent since they’re actually arcane in nature anyway.

2 Likes
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Pretty sure shamans never used fire before WoW. Elemental shamans were basically based on orc shamans from wc3 having the voice line “storm, earth, and fire… heed my call”

initially in wow they had resto shamans but they didn’t really have a theme to them to make them make sense, until eventually they leaned into resto being based around the water element. This was fully cemented with kultiran shamans being tide sages—water elementalists.

Frost has always felt misplaced but even more so now that resto is the water elemental spec.

Aesthetics matter? Are there any example of frost shaman in lore? It seems like frost only existed in shaman because vanilla wow wanted to give them a CC via frost shock. It’s never been a developed aesthetic. It’s been tacked on the whole time.

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Suggesting that water was not part of the shaman identity until Kul Tirans is blatant revisionism, and I have the blisters from doing the damn water totem quests on 3 different shaman before you could mount at that level to prove it. Water has always been part of the shaman identity, and frost as merely another form of water belongs there just as certainly.

Unless you want to argue that shaman shouldn’t have anything to do with stone in our kits, because we have to stick specifically to earth, and ought to give up our lightning bolts because that’s not pure air.

We are the masters of the four elements. Frost is one of the four elements under the purview of water.

1 Like
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I didn’t say there wasn’t water before Kultirans, I said them making a race that had water mages in lore be the race’s connection to shamanism is what really cemented water mastery as a shaman identity.

Can you name any frost/ice shaman in lore? It’s underdeveloped and has never really been part of the identity. Blizzard’s decision to remove the ice spells seems to confirm it.

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my biggest gripe for enhancement shaman is how bloody FRAGILE we are. seriously, any cloth wearing class feels like they have more survivability than my enhancement shaman, at equal level and GS. it’s stupid. we’re second heaviest armor type, 2/3 of our specs use shields, we have healing, and our surivability is so pathetic someone 5 - 10 levels lower has more sustain and durability. complete garbage. as always, blizz screws over shamans

3 Likes
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shamans have been v good for awhile, with this season being an exception vs the norm.

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I don’t know if “mid-Dragonflight to mid-War Within” is really a long enough time frame to act like it’s the new normal, especially when even within that time frame we had serious issues plaguing entire builds.

Enhancement shaman being weak has been the standard for much more of WoW’s lifespan than the last couple years of being above average to strong.

2 Likes
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I honestly really don’t care what is new to the Shaman. The ONLY thing I would like is for the Devs to bring back the highlighted tooltip for Chain Lightning/ Lightning Bolt/ Tempest to flash when it becomes Instant Cast. The rest, well, ill adapt. Having to rely on an add-on to not waste Maelstrom Weapon charges kind of sucks. Visual queues are so much easier to play. Afterall, I already have 10 million buttons already.