My Idea for Enhance Shaman

The most unique aspect to shamans are their totems and ability to wield the different elements. So why not focus around that unique aspect? I think a way this can be incorporated into a Enhancement shaman is to base these elements within their totems. After all, to me the word enhance, essentially means to buff something up or make stronger. An idea I had is, what if the totems did this themselves? Instead of a shaman having some retro dated play style (which was complained abt b4 and will be again once shadowlands is released) to just have something new entirely.

For example:

Searing Totem (Master of Fire)- Can be placed on the ground to do its normal ticks of dmg to an enemy target, but it will also engulf the shaman in fire, allowing him to be a constant aoe of fire dmg to surrounding enemies.

A Wind/Lightning totem (Master of Storms) - Could surround the shaman in a storm giving him more haste, as well as chance to wpn procs to cast chain lightning.

Frost totem (Master of Frost) - Would cover the shaman in ice, slowing enemies around him and slightly increasing his armor, but also allowing for armor proc chance to freeze targets who hit him.

(Then maybe a 5min CD could be, laying all 3 totems down for 15sec to become the master of the elements. xD)

These would be considered offensive totems, which would be used in conjunction with 2 others. 1 offensive, 1 defensive, 1 group buff totem. So in essence they could lay three totems down at any given time, one from each category. One would be from the three previous listed ideas for a offensive totems, with the additional healing totem or cleansing totem of some kind, followed by a buffing totems like Windfury or a resistance increase or extra armor for the group.

Although people are happy for the most part in where shamans are headed for shadowlands, I can’t help but feel this is going backwards. I mean, people complained then, and will again 3 months after shadowlands release. I understand that people will always complain no matter what, but is going backwards really the answer here? Increasing the player skill base needed to play the class is good and all, but doesn’t strike me as being what I think of, when I think enhancement shaman. There’s not too much “enhancing” going on, and simply weaving in 1-2 range spells doesn’t seem to be the answer to me.

Anyways let me know what you guys think. Think a playstyle like this could exist? Does anyone have any other ideas for Enhancement or shamans in general? I would be interested to hear!

Sounds OP, just my kind of play style. I’m for it.

2 Likes

I don’t know, it seems kind of clunky and kind of tacked on.
How about something more simple like for an example a talent that makes totems give the shaman a passive buff while it’s active.
A fire totem out can temporarily give you Immolate, a stone totem gives you Stone Bulwark Shield like the past etc.
Give it a cooldown so it’s not spammable or something.

Here is my idea for an Enhancement Shaman.

Seeing how malestrom was removed as a resource that will not need to be covered.

So start with returning healing to our wolves and tune up our armor for pvp and pve. We are supposed to be one of the better armor classes yet we are as sturdy as cheap wet toilet paper.

We are getting totems back that’s ok but give us the old ability where we could drop all of our totems at once where we could choose which totem to drop select it and then hit the button and 4 totems would be dropped.

Give us earth shock back. We got flame and frost give us our 3rd shock back.
Give us a proper offensive cd that is base line and make it so its not a three min cd.

Change storm strike so it would do either one of two things debuff the target or give us a buff so that when we use a shock it would increase the damage but also would have an extra interaction which will be listed below this.

 Frost Shock- would freeze the target in place for 3 seconds and slow movement after that for 15 seconds while slowing attack and or casting speeds.

  Flame Shock- Ignite the target doing perodic flame damage.  The debuff from storm strike would increase the amount perodic damage and would spread Flame Shock up to 5 enemies within a 8 yrd range of your primary target. 

   Earth Shock- Instantly shocking the target with concussive force dealing damage to the target.  The effect from ss would make it so that Earth Shock had a 100% crit chance dealing massive damage to the target.

Now you could seat this in one of two way building up a stacking debuff when you pop a shock it consumes the debuff. Or which might be better due to your target dying to fast make it a stack able buff for you that can not be dispelled. So that if your target dies before you could pop a shock you would not lose progress.

So next on my list is windfury. Right now can do anywhere from tickling an enemy to doing some nice damage. This needs to be changed. Windfury along with totem and shocks is one of our iconic abilies so it needs to be buffed and forceful winds talent should be part of windfury. Not by much but damnit when it procs the enemy should feel it. Also the proc rate should be increased just a bit not much but I have fights where i get no wf procs. But then I have fights where wf procs a ton so this inconstancy should be looked at.

Lighting Shield should be baseline for all 3 specs of Shaman and maybe blizz could tune our armor buff to it. So not only does it do damage when we are hit but it is linked to our survivability.

So we keep rockbiter as an ability as we need something to hit and use when ss is on cd and of course we keep lava lash and Sundering should be baseline as well as Crashing storm talent that goes with Crash lighting.

Now what I have suggested means that we would be using storm strike a lot. But then we also have a choice on what to do when consuming the interaction it has with shocks. Also with the totems it allows us to place our totems but choose what we want based on group we are in or fight we are going into. This is to keep us from having to use more than one gcd to place our totems.

Now what I would also like to give enhancement shamans is something elemental shamans have had for a while and that is a knock back. Now this is centered for two situations first if you pull a big pack and well they are just chunking you down so fast you cant out heal it or you cant kill them fast enough. The second situation is pvp. I know pvp is painful as enhancement shaman and having something like thunderstorm would help when you get the melee classes on you. It should have the same functionality as elemental the knock back with the built in slow.

And finally I would bring back the old weapon embuements that we had where Frost brand, Flame Brand, Windfury. How I saw that they operated was the shocks were to hit your target when they were ranged once we were close that’s when the brands took over. So frost brand did frost damage and slowed your target when hit with your melee weapon, Flame brand well it burned your target with every strike of your melee weapon, and of course windfury turned on windfury so you could have a chance at that proc. These were activated just like lighting shield and had a one hour buff that was not dispellable. I will say it led to some funny and interesting moments watching shamans who forget to turn on their brands.

So this is something else that has been bothering me we are supposed to be the masters of the elements and what not but we can not use the element of wind to slow our fall. To me it seems like this is something we should be able to do to use the element of wind to slow falls or allow us to glide to the ground.

Now this next part is about weapons allow us to use swords. Open it up so we can have more options. I would love to be able to use swords and to transmog thunderfury which in its own right should have been a shaman weapon. I mean come on you get it from killing an air elemental and its effects look like storm strike when it procs. And on this how about this for a new weapon class short spears. Spears that are about as long as a 1h sword and are 1h weapons.

Now I know this is supposed to be about enhancement. But give us a tanking spec Call it Earth Warden so that we could be tanks if we want to. I would love to be able to be a back up tank for my guild as a shaman.

Anyway I expect some hate but this is what I would do for Enhancement Shaman it feels almost like reverting us to mop version but with a few extras put in.

1 Like

If this isn’t the truest thing ever! I quit in Cata and just came back like 3 weeks ago and I was shocked that they did not have swords yet! I mean if casters can walk around with Thunderfury on their hip, why the hell cant a shaman lmao